CHAPTER 54
B ack in his hotel room in Islamabad, al-Falid checked that the Egyptian passport he would use to depart Islamabad for the city he had chosen for the first warning attack was with his tickets. He packed his American passport into his hold luggage and looked at his watch. By now, if Allah was willing, the tug boats would have reached the Indonesian port of Surabaya. There was still another fifteen minutes before he was scheduled to connect to an internet chat room, so he began to flick through the cable channels on the television. His eyes hardened as a program showing the hated American evangelist came on the screen.
For over a month now, the Reverend Jerry Buffett had been delivering his ‘Wake Up America – A Call to Arms’ series of sermons on his weekly television show, and the Buffett Evangelical Center for Christ was bursting at the seams. More than 15,000 people had packed into the huge auditorium and hundreds more were standing against the tiered walls, while even more were seated in the aisles. The front two rows were reserved for major benefactors and Richard Halliwell and his wife had the best seats. Constance Halliwell was seated beside her husband, directly in front of the huge stage. She was short and prim-looking, with immaculately groomed auburn hair and she was dressed in a pink Valentino twin-set with beige Ferragamo shoes and matching leather handbag, and around her neck was a string of large, almost flawless pink pearls. As the great evangelist addressed the crowd, Constance Halliwell, like the rest of the adoring congregation, hung on Jerry Buffett’s every word, mesmerised by his charisma and the total wisdom of what he had to say. Constance thought that if anyone should run for President, it was definitely this man.
‘The Messiah can only return when the Palestinians are evicted and all of the Promised Land is back in the hands of God’s chosen people, the Israelis!’ the Reverend Buffett thundered, coming to the end of his address. ‘This road map to peace is a disaster and needs to be torn up.’
Constance Halliwell turned and whispered in her husband’s ear. ‘That’s so true, Richard. That is so true.’
‘We’ve already been given the map, and it’s right here in this book,’ Buffett said, his deep voice resonating around the auditorium as he opened his bible on the lectern at the mark for chapter 17 of Genesis. The Lord said to Abraham, ‘I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.’
‘What God has promised to his chosen people my brothers and sisters, is the land of Canaan – all the land of Canaan, the land we now call Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and we defy God’s commands at our peril.’ Jerry Buffett was talking softly now, urgently and persuasively, and Constance Halliwell and thousands of others sat motionless, transfixed as he delivered a warning that was designed to go well beyond the auditorium in Atlanta. Jerry Buffett had no doubts as to what he was doing; he knew his remarks would be picked up and broadcast to the Arab world by television and radio. As well as delivering the word of the Lord to the faithful, Jerry Buffett was delivering a very blunt warning to the Arabs and the other unbelievers he so detested.
Amon al-Falid was burning with anger. His hatred for the Great Satan sank to even darker depths as he listened to the infidel’s Imam attack the holy path of Islam, a path that defined al-Falid’s very being and the meaning for his existence.
The Reverend Jerry Buffett paced back and forth across the huge stage as he brought the service to its dramatic finale. ‘My brothers and sisters be ready! Zechariah warns us in Chapter 14: “For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle… then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations.” Be ready! Only those who believe will be taken up to heaven in the rapture. Those who ignore the one true God of the universe will be left behind. When that terrible day comes, and it’s coming soon, trains will crash and planes will fall out of the sky as Christian pilots and drivers and their Christian passengers are raptured up to join the Lord. Wives who believe will suddenly be taken straight from their kitchens, leaving unbelieving husbands begging for mercy in a fiery inferno.’
Constance Halliwell reached across and took her husband’s hand.
‘The Lord will appear in a blaze of triumphal light, with all the prophets, and Zechariah will be standing there, right behind him. There will be a great trembling across the four corners of the Earth, and our Lord will give the unbelievers one last terrible stare. Then he will shake his head in sadness and vast creaking chasms will open and hundreds of millions of unbelievers will fall, screaming, into the fiery bowels of the earth.’ al-Falid was almost incandescent with rage, and he spat towards the television in the corner of his hotel room. ‘Khalid Kadeer was wrong,’ he seethed. The infidel with his blasphemous criticism of the great prophet, peace be upon him, must never be accommodated. If Allah, the Most Kind, the Most Merciful was willing, the infidel would surely be annihilated. He flicked the off button on the remote and turned to his laptop, typing in the address for an internet chat room.
The site al-Falid was using to communicate with the tugs was a popular dating site that had private chat rooms, just one of the many al-Qaeda used on a regular basis. Internet chat rooms were the safest way to communicate, although for the tugs, a chat room could only be used when they were in dock. al-Falid logged in and followed the prompts, relieved to see that ‘Bald Eagle’ was already in the ‘bedroom’, which meant his son Malik had reached Surabaya. As soon as al-Falid entered the room as ‘Red Hot Chili Pepper’, someone with the avatar ‘Fat, Wet and Hot’ tried to engage in conversation.
Fat, Wet and Hot: ‘What’s your pepper like Chili?’ al-Falid kept his anger in check. Western decadence knew no bounds and ‘Fat, Wet and Hot’ was undoubtedly an infidel. Amon al-Falid knew that no self-respecting Muslim would even visit a chat room, let alone engage in conversation.
Fat, Wet and Hot: ‘Hey! Are you in the bedroom Red Hot Chili Pepper? Speak to me!’ al-Falid maintained his silence and simply remained online, invisible, anonymous and dangerous. Despite the billions of dollars the CIA and other intelligence agencies spent researching and acquiring the latest technology, the anonymity of a chat room was something that even the most sophisticated monitoring systems had so far been unable to penetrate. al-Falid typed in his invitation.
Red Hot Chili Pepper: ‘Can I interest you in a private chat, Bald Eagle?’ It had amused al-Falid to assign the American symbol of power for his son to use as a nickname.
Bald Eagle: ‘Sounds better than what Fat, Wet and Hot’s got to offer!’ al-Falid smiled grimly. He had trained all of his operatives, including his son, to use the infidel’s language. Some al-Qaeda cells failed because they didn’t blend in. If blending in meant drinking in an infidel’s bar that was permitted. If it meant using foul and suggestive language in a chat room in pursuit of the greater cause, Allah, the Most Kind, the Most Merciful, would forgive that too. The next exchange from ‘Fat, Wet and Hot’ prompted a mild rebuke from the chat room’s automated controller.
Fat Wet and Hot: ‘Blow your chili pepper out your arse, faggot!’
Itzy: ‘Be polite Fat, Wet and Hot.’
Fat, Wet and Hot: ‘Blow it out yours too!’
Itzy: Fat, Wet and Hot is being disconnected now.
Red Hot Chili Pepper: ‘You have arrived?’ al-Falid asked when they were in their private chat room.
Bald Eagle: ‘Yesterday, and we are planning to leave within the hour. The weather looks good, and after we complete other activities, we should arrive on schedule.’ al-Falid looked at the screen and nodded to himself in understanding. Malik had learned the lessons well. Always assume the infidel was watching, even in an anonymous chat room. Keep any transmission short and to the point, but vague. Within Malik’s banal conversation, a wealth of information had passed between them. Malik’s message told al-Falid that the refueling at Surabaya had gone without a hitch, and that the ‘other activities’, the stinger missile training, was on track and the Montgomery and the Wavell would arrive on the same schedule as the Jerusalem Bay.
Red Hot Chili Pepper: ‘Mummy is looking forward to being reunited with her chickens.’ al-Falid had already been in a chat room with ‘Mummy’, the Jerusalem Bay, several days earlier, before the mother ship had left Monrovia with her deadly cargo stacked on her decks, en route to the target city 21,000 kilometres to the east.
Bald Eagle: ‘May the force be with you.’
