The Secret Soldier

where Gamal lived. He checked to make sure he was alone and then slipped the note under Gamal’s door.

AT 10:55, THE WAREHOUSE door creaked open. “General? Hello?”

Even before he saw Gamal, Bakr knew his reedy voice. Bakr stepped forward from the wall where he’d hidden himself. He dropped the garrote over Gamal’s neck and pulled tight. Gamal tried to scream but managed only a wet whisper. His hands came up and tugged at the wire as he desperately tried to take the killing pressure off his carotid artery.

But Bakr was stronger, and had the surprise and the leverage. With every second, Gamal weakened. Bakr tugged on Gamal’s neck until Gamal’s hands fell away and his feet drummed a death rattle against the floor.

“Traitor,” Bakr whispered. “Infidel. Apostate.” Let those be the last words that Gamal heard before the next world. Let him know that he would face an eternity of torment. Finally Gamal’s feet stopped their useless clacking and his body slumped. Bakr put him on the floor and flicked on the lights. Gamal’s face was mottled, his eyes bulging. The garrote had seared his neck. Bakr leaned close to Gamal’s mouth. Nothing. Not a breath.

Gamal still clenched the note in his fist. Bakr slipped it into his pocket, reminding himself to flush it away at the barracks. He had a sudden urge to mutilate the corpse, put Gamal’s pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger. Punish the traitor properly. But Gamal was already in hell, and that was punishment enough. Bakr flicked off the lights and left.

Fifteen minutes later, he lay in his bed, reading his Quran. He slept easily that night, and in the days that followed he hardly thought about what he’d done. Gamal had needed to die, and so Gamal had died.

THE CORPSE WAS FOUND a week later. Rumors blew through the base. A Star of David had been carved into Gamal’s chest, his eyes gouged out. His corpse had decomposed so badly that he could be identified only by the name on his uniform. Bakr waited for the police to take him away. But no one came, and Bakr saw that Ibrahim’s offer had been genuine.

Two weeks later, Bakr was ordered to report to the National Guard base at Jeddah, the headquarters of the western region. When he arrived, a sergeant escorted him to an unmarked black SUV. They drove north along the seaside road, past a gleaming white mosque that seemed to rise out of the Red Sea. The sergeant left him in a parking lot that looked out over a narrow inlet, told him to wait, and disappeared.

Bakr settled himself on a concrete bench. Nearby, a handful of families played on a public beach a few meters long. Even here the women wore long black abayas and burqas, as Saudi law required. Still, the children were having fun, squealing and running and dumping sand on one another. Public spaces such as the beach were rare in Saudi Arabia, and a great treat. Bakr didn’t object to the beach, as long as unmarried women didn’t pollute it with their presence and married ones stayed covered. As Allah had intended.

Ibrahim arrived a few minutes later. Today he wore traditional Saudi clothing, a thobe and ghutra. Bakr stood to salute, but Ibrahim shook his head and sat beside him. “Captain. It’s terrible what happened on your base.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It looks like the killer will never be found.”

“Then that’s Allah’s will, sir.”

“Lieutenant Gamal was deprived of a proper funeral,” Ibrahim said. Under Muslim law, corpses were supposed to be buried or cremated as soon as possible, never more than two days after death.

“Perhaps that’s as it should be. If the lieutenant betrayed our faith.”

“How long have you been putting your cell together, captain?”

“Sir?”

“Listen now. No more games. If I’d wanted to arrest you, I would have already.”

Bakr saw himself tumbling down the dune. Everything had led to this moment. “Three years.”

“How many men do you have?”

“Nine. Eight now, I suppose.”

“You’ve done well, captain. No one has ever hidden so much from me. So what is it you want?”

“For the land to be pure, sir. For us to live as Allah intended.”

“And you think King Abdullah is failing us.”

Bakr was silent.

“You don’t have to answer, captain. Every true Muslim knows it’s so.”

For a general to speak this way… Allah had rewarded his faith. For the second time in his life, he asked, “So what’s our next step?”

“Nothing can happen now, captain. Abdullah is too strong. But the moment will come when he’s weak. When he overreaches. It’s then that we’ll strike.”

BAKR QUIT THE NATIONAL Guard a year later. His superior officers were surprised, since he’d just received a promotion to major. One by one, his men followed him out. With them as trainers, he built his organization. To find recruits, he relied on a dozen deeply conservative clerics. He wanted a small, elite force. Let other groups make grand pronouncements. His men would strike on their own timetable and cause maximum damage. He saw Ibrahim once every few months. They both knew that meeting more frequently would be dangerous. Ibrahim provided tactical advice — and money. On a day-today basis, he let Bakr work without interference.

A year ago, Ibrahim had told Bakr that the time for action was coming. Abdullah had secretly told other princes that he wanted to install his son Khalid as the next king. Khalid was even more liberal than Abdullah, Ibrahim said. He would lead the nation astray, allowing women to drive and to vote, letting Christians and Jews into the Grand Mosque. He had even spoken of making peace with Israel. “Everything we believe in, Khalid hates,” Ibrahim said.

But Bakr and his men could stop Abdullah, Ibrahim said. Their attacks would reveal the opposition to Abdullah and Khalid. Many princes didn’t want Khalid to be king. The attacks would show them that the future of the House of Saud was at risk. They would force Khalid into exile and make Abdullah step down. A true guardian of the faith would take over.

“Can that really happen?” Bakr said.

“We’ll take control. And establish a new caliphate.”

WITH IBRAHIM’S MONEY, BAKR had built the most powerful jihadi group since the early days of Al Qaeda, before the American response to September 11 forced Osama and his men into hiding. Besides the suicide bombers who had gone through his camp in Saudi Arabia, Bakr had trained almost fifty men in close combat at his base in Lebanon. These were soldiers, ready to attack a well-guarded palace or oil refinery. With surprise on their side, and the willingness to martyr themselves, they had a good chance of overcoming a defensive force three times as large.

His first attacks had proved as successful as could have been hoped. With a dozen men, he’d killed almost one hundred people and disrupted crude oil shipments all over the Gulf. Bakr should have been ecstatic, especially with another attack coming.

Instead he couldn’t shake his fear that Ibrahim was using him. Over time, Bakr had realized how little he knew about Ibrahim’s plans. Ibrahim refused to tell Bakr which princes were backing them. Nor would he reveal the details of who would ultimately rule. “Too much information is dangerous,” he said. “For both of us.” Bakr wondered whether Ibrahim simply wanted to replace one branch of the royal family with another. Ibrahim’s story about Khalid sounded like palace intrigue, princes conspiring. Bakr didn’t want thieves replacing thieves. He wanted the House of Saud uprooted from its foundations.

As bad as the secrecy was Bakr’s suspicion about Ibrahim’s faith. Certainly the general seemed to believe. When Bakr prayed with him, he spoke his rakat— prayer verses — easily and correctly. Yet he’d told Bakr that he had only once performed the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the five pillars of Islam. The Quran itself said, “Hajj is the duty that mankind owes to Allah.” Certainly, a Muslim was required to conduct hajj only once. But with his wealth and power, Ibrahim could have performed hajj many times. Bakr himself had undertaken the pilgrimage three times. He