time.” Wells guessing again, trying to move the conversation forward.
“He came every few weeks.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Riyadh? Jeddah?”
“I don’t know.”
“How old was he?”
“Old. Maybe your age.”
“Of course. I saw him lots of times. He lived in the house upstairs.”
“In the front room?”
“Yes. Mostly he stayed there or in the office at the back. A few times he spoke to us in class. He said the men against us were strong soldiers, and if we weren’t careful they’d kill us. Sometimes he prayed with us. He knew the whole Quran by heart. He never made a mistake.”
“Did he say the soldiers would be American?”
“Yes. Sometimes he watched us train. He yelled at me once for holding my AK the wrong way. He told me to respect it.”
“He was right. Did he tell you the mission?”
“No. I thought maybe it would be attacking a place where the Americans live, but he never said.”
“You mean a housing compound. Like in Riyadh or Dhahran.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you think that?”
“We practiced with car bombs. How to make them. Twice we blew them up. What do you need such a big bomb for? Only to attack a place that’s very well guarded.”
“But he never said the target?”
“I told you. He never talked to me. Only yelled at me for the AK. And one time when I made a mistake at dinner and spilled date juice. He said to me, ‘This camp is expensive, and the people who are paying, they don’t want to waste money, so be careful.’ You could see he wasn’t nice. And that was even before—”
Meshaal broke off.
“Before what?”
“Nothing.” But Meshaal wouldn’t meet Wells’s eyes.
Wells decided to let the question go for now. “That time in the kitchen, Aziz didn’t say who those people were, the ones paying for the training?”
“No. But one of the men — his name was Talib, he was one of the ones you killed — he said something like, ‘Even though they might not like what you learn.’ I didn’t know what he meant, but Aziz didn’t like him saying that. He looked at Talib like he wanted to slit his throat.”
Wells pulled out the Saudi passport he’d taken from the upstairs bedroom at the farmhouse. “This was Talib?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask Aziz why he was mad?”
“Of course not. I was just happy that he wasn’t mad at me anymore.”
“Did he ever say anything about King Abdullah?”
“He hated Abdullah. He told us Abdullah makes peace with the Jews and lets the infidels into Mecca.”
“Do you hate Abdullah?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Aziz say he was planning a revolt against Abdullah?”
“Not really. No.”
“Besides Aziz, were there other Saudi soldiers in camp?”
“Yes. Plus one from Iraq. I didn’t like him. He was crazy. He punched me when I couldn’t do enough push- ups. It wasn’t my fault.”
“How many push-ups can you do?”
“One time I did twenty-eight. How about you?”
“A few more,” Wells said. “And how did you get to the camp?”
“I drove through Jordan—”
“I mean, how did you find out about it?”
“My cleric at home asked me if I wanted to fight in the jihad. I said yes, and he said he would help.”
So Aziz — whoever he was — had recruiters who reached into the Saudi heartland and plucked off teenagers in ones and twos. Between the passports Wells had found, the paper trail that the camp must have produced, and Meshaal’s testimony, the Saudi
On the other hand, Duto and the CIA would have to pay attention now that Meshaal had confirmed that the jihadis were targeting American soldiers. The United States couldn’t ignore that warning, no matter how much it wanted to stay out of the fight between Abdullah and Saeed.
Which led to the obvious question: If Saeed and Mansour were focused on Abdullah and succession, why would they target the United States? Why wake the dragon? Maybe Talib had blurted out the answer that day in the kitchen. Maybe Aziz — whoever he was — had grander plans than his paymasters knew.
FOR HOURS, WELLS ASKED Meshaal about his recruitment and training, what weapons he’d used, what tactics he’d practiced, the other jihadis. The biggest surprise came when Wells asked about Princess Alia’s bombing. He didn’t expect Meshaal would know anything, but Meshaal told him that one jihadi had frequently dressed in a burqa.
“He slept in a little room behind the farmhouse, because no one liked him. They hated him even more than me. But Talib told us to be nice to him. He left a while ago, and when we heard that Alia blew up, we all knew it had to be him.”
Eventually Meshaal’s energy flagged, and he went below and lay in the narrow bunk where Wells had stowed the duffel bag from the farmhouse. He lay beside the bag and closed his eyes and fell asleep almost immediately. He looked very young.
Wells came back up, sat beside Gaffan at the helm. The sun was strong now, the glare high off the water. Gaffan had run them westsouthwest to get away from the main shipping lane between Lebanon and Cyprus. Still, the waters were busy with diesel-belching trawlers from Beirut and container ships that ran between Tel Aviv and Istanbul.
“You were talking to him awhile.”
“He knows a lot. He was there five months, and he’s not stupid. And because they didn’t care about him, they talked in front of him. He already told me he’s sure that someone from the camp assassinated Alia. And he says the commander talked about targeting American soldiers.”
“I still wish there’d been another way to do it.”
“There wasn’t.”
“This is the place where the numbers don’t add up.”
“You think chain of command makes it easier. The last thing I was involved with, some good soldiers, they did some things I’ll bet they wish they could take back. But they had a colonel in charge, and authorization. They told themselves it was okay. Just following orders.”
“And what happened to them?”
“They died. Most of them.”
“You saying what I think?” Gaffan said.
“No. It wasn’t me. It’s complicated. But what I’m trying to say, you operate the way we do, you can never lay it on somebody else. You answer to yourself.”
“And if you answer wrong?”
“Then you pay. One way or another.”
