Gaffan was silent for a while.
“John.”
“Yeah.”
“You mind if I ask you about religion? Islam?”
“Ask away.” Though Wells didn’t like talking about his faith. Too often, Muslims saw him as an impostor, and non-Muslims a curiosity.
“I just don’t understand how you say you’re Muslim when all the guys we go after — it’s not like they’re Buddhists.”
“World War Two. We and the Germans were both Christian.”
“Yeah, but the Germans weren’t quoting the Bible when they attacked us. This is a religious war. That’s the way
“Brett. You’re Christian.”
“Sure.”
“You pray.”
“I’m kind of a Christmas and Easter guy, but yes.”
“Do you really, truly believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead?”
Gaffan looked away from Wells and onto the Mediterranean, as if the water might have the answer. “I don’t know. I’d like to.”
“There’s plenty in the Quran that I don’t believe. But all those years in Afghanistan, I accepted the brotherhood of Islam. I learned the words, and at some point I started to hear the music. Maybe because there was nothing else for me over there, maybe for my cover, but I did. And I believe in one God. As far as I’m concerned, putting those two things together makes me a Muslim. And most Muslims don’t want suicide bombs and jihad. They want to live their lives like everybody else.”
“They have a funny way of showing it.”
“You know better than that. Back to World War Two, the Japanese and their kamikaze pilots. Suicide for the emperor. We killed them, and they killed us. Now Japan’s one of our closest allies. It’s situational.”
“I hope you’re right, John. But I don’t think either of us is going to be out of work for a long time.”
“Then we better get to it.”
WELLS SPENT THE NEXT three hours examining the notebook and helicopter manual and engineering textbook and other papers and passports he’d taken from the farmhouse. Nothing jumped at him, but he did notice a few subtle points. The passports had been recently issued and looked genuine. The men in them were in their teens and twenties, from Saudi towns Wells didn’t know, presumably similar to the village where Meshaal had grown up. The passports had hardly been used. The only entry stamps Wells found were from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Dubai. He saw no visas from Europe or the United States — or from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iran. The lack of travel to those countries was more proof that this group operated independently of Al Qaeda and the Iranian government.
Wells’s Arabic wasn’t good enough to let him fully understand the engineering textbook. But it seemed to focus on building infrastructure, heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. Inside, Wells found two folded-up pages that held detailed schematics for truck bombs. The third was covered with what looked like a hand-drawn map of a highway. A section near the top was circled. But the map lacked any description or heading, and Wells couldn’t figure out where it was.
As for the name tags and patches, they were either genuine Saudi military badges or very good replicas. If the jihadis were as well trained as they seemed, they had a real chance of successfully breaching security at a Saudi military base, maybe even one of Abdullah’s palaces. Again, though, Wells found no evidence of a specific target.
Finally, he looked at the notebook he’d found in Talib’s room. It was filled with neat Arabic script, to-do lists that appeared routine.
DOWNSTAIRS, THE CRANCHI’S AIR-CONDITIONING had given out. The cabin was as stifling as Bourbon Street in July. Wells hoped the engines were more reliable than the boat’s other mechanicals. Meshaal’s face was slick with sweat. When Wells walked in, he jerked awake, lifting his hands protectively. He lowered them as he realized where he was. “How much longer before we get to Gaza?”
“A while.”
“How come we haven’t prayed yet today? At camp we prayed five times a day.”
Wells didn’t want to pray now, with a dead man’s blood under his fingernails and Gaffan wondering about his faith. “There’s a special rule about being at sea. You don’t have to.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“We’re not praying, Meshaal. Come on, let’s go up. It’s too hot here.”
The interrogation continued topside.
“Did you ever see the office in the farmhouse? The room with the computers?”
“A few times,” Meshaal said. “I brought food to the pilot.”
Meshaal hadn’t mentioned anything about a pilot before. “How do you know he was a pilot?”
“It was my job to take lunch to him. Once I came in and he was playing a flying game on his computer, turning the plane upside down. I asked him if I could play. He said, ‘No, you have to be a real pilot to play.’ I asked him if he was a real pilot, and he said yes, a helicopter pilot. Then Aziz came in and told me to get lost. I didn’t talk to him again.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know. And he left — I don’t know when, exactly — maybe a month ago. After he left, other people started to leave. Before that, if someone left, someone else usually came, but not anymore.”
“The people who left, did they say they were leaving for good?”
“They didn’t say, but yes. They didn’t leave any of their clothes behind. They left in twos and threes. They were going to Riyadh, and some to Jeddah and even a few to Mecca.”
“They told you?”
“No, but I heard.”
“Did they take weapons?”
“Some did. The ones who were flying didn’t.”
“Did Aziz ever say anything about Mecca? Attacking the Grand Mosque?”
“I told you a bunch of times. He never said anything to me.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Ten days ago. He told us the mission was coming soon.”
“Do you know what he wanted, why he came back?”
“It had to do with the special room.”
The kid was full of surprises.
“Meshaal. You never said anything about a special room.”
“You never asked. It was next to the little cabin behind the house. It was dug into the ground, made of concrete. Maybe three meters square, four meters deep.”
“A cell.”
“Yes. We dug it and put a metal roof on it and covered it with dirt, so it was hard to see. It had a special pipe with an engine to blow air inside so it wouldn’t get too hot and someone in it could breathe. The night Aziz came back, he made me and some others dig up the pipe and the engine and put it in a truck. Then two men drove it away.”
“Did they hold anyone in the cell?”
“One time they put someone in for four days.” Meshaal shook his head as if trying to rid his mind of the
