“Remember this,” he began. “Our brother Ansary was arrested by the Chinese authorities for owning a newspaper.” He looked at Tursun and briefly clasped his hand. “He was tortured and brutalized for this harmless offence.” Celil looked across the room and found Bary’s eyes beneath the shadow of his cap. “Our brother Abdul was imprisoned for insulting a Han.” Celil appeared to wince, as if somehow sharing the memory. “He was tortured and beaten for exercising his right to speak.” Moving behind Almas, Celil now squeezed the muscles of the Kazakh’s shoulders and stared directly ahead at Tursun. “Our brother Memet has come to us to free his Turkic brothers from the yoke of Chinese oppression.” Almas bowed his head. “And we remember those who have died for our cause, who now regard us from paradise. We remember, in par tic ular, our brother Enver Semed, a proud Uighur fighter held in the gulag of Guantanamo and later betrayed by the American infidel. We remember our Muslim brothers and sisters who are tortured daily at Abu Ghraib. We fight on behalf of all Muslims who find their lands occupied by imperial powers.”
Celil picked up the pad. Five floors down, in a dusty Chinese courtyard, children were laughing.
“Here is what we plan. The Americans have paid us in dollars and blood. They believe that they control us. But their government has sided with the pigs of Beijing who occupy our land. We are stronger than the infidels. We will defeat them.”
Abdul Bary was the most intelligent and thoughtful of the four men gathered in Shanghai that evening. He removed his baseball cap and placed it on the table. The edge of the cap touched a detonator and he separated the two objects like a superstition. Bary felt that the language of jihad, its grammar and vocabulary, sat uneasily on the tongue of Ablimit Celil, who was no more a man of God than the cats and dogs who roamed the filthy, dilapidated corridors of the anonymous apartment block in which they had found themselves. Every molecule of Celil’s shabby, corrupted face spoke of violence and a zeal for blood. Did he truly believe in the possibility of an Eastern Turkestan, or had he moved beyond politics into the facile, deadly playground of violence for its own sake? Yet what choice did Bary now possess but to follow such men? How else could he bring about change in his country, if not through bombs and terror? It had never mattered to him who bankrolled the safe houses, who smuggled the explosives, who prepared the bombs or drew up the plans. All he wanted was results. He wanted the Chinese to stop shooting unarmed Muslim boys and girls. He wanted to stop innocent Uighurs being suspended from the ceilings of Chinese prisons and beaten repeatedly by their guards. He wanted an end to electric shocks, to torture, to imprisonment without trial. He wanted Uighurs to be free to express themselves without fear of execution for “political crimes.” He wanted justice. This is what the Americans had promised them; this is what their new masters in Islamabad now seemed prepared to guarantee. If the short-term price of independence was an Islamist state, an Eastern Turkestan ruled by shariah law, so be it. The Uighur homeland would, at least, be independent. Chinese Xinjiang would have ceased to exist.
“Abdul?”
“Yes?”
He had not been listening. Celil fixed him with an impatient gaze. “You must concentrate. You must listen. It is the inspiration of our benefactor that we should kill the infidels who have betrayed our cause.”
Abdul placed the cap back on his head. He did not immediately understand the significance of what Celil was saying.
“The attacks will take place six days from now, on the night of Saturday June the 11th. After that, we will not see each other again for many months. They will be simultaneous attacks, inspired by the bravery and the courage of our brothers in New York, our brothers in Egypt and Madrid. It is our destiny not only to bring destruction to the infidel Chinese, but also to the Americans who have made their homes among them. Our attacks will also claim the lives of Miles Coolidge and Shahpour Goodarzi, spies who will pay for their treachery and cunning.”
“How do you propose this?” Abdul asked. His experience, his gut, immediately reacted against any unnecessary complications.
Celil paused. Did he sense Abdul’s reservations? To remove Miles and Shahpour had been the initiative of Hasib Qadir. It was the sole condition of the ISI’s co-operation, and one that Celil readily agreed to. The plan was otherwise as straightforward as it was barbarous. It would bring ruin to Hollywood and terror to the streets of Shanghai. On the evening of 11 June, Ansary Tursun was to make his way to Paradise City and purchase a ticket, using cash, for the advertised 8:15 performance in Screen Eight of the Silver Reel Cinema. It would be a Saturday night; the multiplex would be packed. Once the film was under way, nobody would notice when Ansary exited the auditorium after thirty minutes, leaving a rucksack under his seat.
At the same time, Ablimit would arrange a crash meeting with Miles Coolidge for 8:45 p.m. He would arrive at Screen Four for the 8:25 performance, conceal his IED beneath his seat in the back row, and leave by the western fire exit before the film had begun.
On the morning of Friday 10 June, Memet Almas was to send a text message to Shahpour Goodarzi, asking him to telephone his grandparents in Sacramento. Memet would then arrange an emergency meeting with Shahpour at Larry’s bar on Nanyang Road. The American would be asked to arrive at eight o’clock. Memet would go to the bar an hour earlier, leave his rucksack in the cloakroom, purchase a drink and a small plate of food, then leave before half-past seven.
The final member of the cell, Abdul Bary, was to take his wife and daughter to the sixth floor of the Paradise City mall and order a meal at the Teppenyaki Shinju, which was one of four restaurants located immediately beneath the seventh-floor foyer of the Silver Reel multiplex. On a Saturday night, each of the restaurants would be packed with diners, but it would be unusual for an impoverished Uighur family to be among them. Therefore, to avoid drawing the attention of passing security officials, Abdul was to dress as smartly as possible in the hope of passing himself off as a businessman visiting from overseas. At 8:15 he would begin to complain of a stomach cramp and go to the washrooms. He would take his rucksack with him, telling his wife that it contained necessary medicines. He would then withdraw the IED, place the device in the metal bin of the disabled washroom and return to his family. At 8:30, still complaining of sickness, Abdul would ask for the bill and leave the restaurant.
Celil now looked at each of the four men in turn. He had arrived at the most vital part of the meeting.
“You will go to the locations in order to prepare yourselves this week,” he told them. “Each of the four devices will be timed to detonate at exactly nine o’clock. You are responsible for this. God has provided us with the tools to carry out his sacred work and now you must perform his task. I leave your bombs with you now.” He indicated the three devices on the table. “Remember,” he said, “this is only the first stage of our battle, a first phase in our work. There is more to come. Now let God be in your hearts. May he bring us together soon in Beijing.”
47
The conversation with Waterfield had prompted Joe to act. If he was going to engage Isabella’s co-operation in finding Ablimit Celil, this was the moment to do so. He did not feel that he was manipulating her by taking advantage of her mood of candour. On the contrary: she possessed vital information that it was his duty to extract.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“How much do you know about what Miles has been doing in China since 1997?”
Isabella had removed her hat because the sun had been obscured by a bank of yellowed clouds. She did not look at Joe as she said, “Very little.”
“Are you interested in knowing?”
She touched her face. “Not really.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re not in business together, are we? We’re husband and wife. I think it’s better that I don’t know things like that.”
“He doesn’t talk to you about his work? He doesn’t complain or celebrate or use you as a shoulder to cry on?”
