Resurrection Day (26 page)

Paul Burton regarded the three men and one woman who had joined him in the private room in the West Wing. They were the best brains in the business, had studied and probed the minds of some of the most wanted terrorists in the world. There was Professor Franklyn Ernest Young, head of the CIA's Psychiatric Affairs Section. Dr Janet H. Stern, a top New York psychiatrist and a recognised world expert on the behavioural psychology of terrorists, a woman who had written a half-dozen acclaimed books on the subject. Bud Leopold, a top FBI psychologist who had helped profile the Oklahoma bombers. Lucius Kane, a thirty-three-year-old blunt-talking CIA officer who was in charge of the Afghan desk, and who also had a Harvard degree in behavioural studies.

As soon as the experts were assembled in the room, Burton had outlined the threat and emphasised the absolute need for secrecy, before passing round copies of a twenty-two-page document entitled 'Abu Hasim: Personality and Behaviour Study'. The cover bore a 'Top Secret' stamp and the pale blue insignia of the CIA.

The origins of the document were no great secret to anyone present. For over forty years, the Agency had employed psychologists and behavioural analysts to study the personalities and behaviour of authoritative figures around the world. Put under the microscope were presidents and prime ministers, powerful business magnates, foreign politicians, top terrorists, religious leaders — people of significance whom the United States might have to consult, negotiate or come into conflict with, the idea being that the studies would help predict how such people would respond in a crisis situation that in some way involved the United States.

Each study involved considerable stealth, expense, travel and effort — agents were sent all over the globe to probe just a single aspect of a subject's character. It wasn't beyond the CIA's perseverance to send a covert Iraqi operative to the Tikrit district in northern Iraq, just to probe a peasant farm-worker who had attended school with Saddam Hussein when he was a ten-year-old, in order to learn more about the dictator's childhood. Or to seek out the former mistress of a dangerously right-wing Russian politician in Moscow, simply to get to know his sexual practices.

Every avenue of the subject's past and personality were relentlessly explored. Did he like girls or boys? Was he sexually aggressive? Assertive or placid as a child? Was he closer to his mother or to his father? Did he keep an animal as a pet, and was he cruel to it, or kind? Was he religious or irreligious? Sociable or a loner? How did the subject respond under duress? Endless questions had to be asked and answered before a profile was complete and the report written, only to be consigned to the CIA's Top Secret vaults until required, if ever.

Burton turned his attention to the folder on the man who was threatening to gas Washington and kill his wife and sons. He addressed Lucius Kane. 'Perhaps you'd like to start with the profile of Abu Hasim, Mr Kane? You're familiar more than most with the al-Qaeda, Hasim's activities and the character of the man. What's this study really saying about Abu Hasim?'

Kane cleared his throat, searching for the right words to convey his interpretation. 'What it's really telling us, sir, is that the man's a cult Islamic figure, a religious fanatic venerated by his followers. That he's a man who's both extremely cunning and capable of serious terrorist crimes. Someone who earnestly believes he's a saviour of the Islamic peoples, sent by Mohammad to rescue them from the evils of Western influence. A West he despises with an almost psychotic hatred.'

'You think he'll do what he says? Attempt to gas to death the population of Washington if he doesn't get his way?'

'Sir, the simple fact is, if Abu Hasim could, he'd destroy the entire United States, and without a shred of remorse,' Kane replied forcefully. 'Kill every man, woman and child in this country, and praise God afterwards. If I may be blunt, and with apologies to the lady present, he's not only mad, he's extremely fucking dangerous.'

12 November 11.05 a.m.

That Monday morning, the tourist crowds at the Washington Monument were thin on the ground, only a couple of half-empty tour buses in the parking lots. The sky was clear and blue, and half a mile away the White House rose up on Beacon Hill.

Karla Sharif and Nikolai Gorev arrived separately and sat on one of the benches. As they waited they saw Mohamed Rashid come down the path, scanning the few dozen tour bus passengers who'd stepped out with their cameras. Rashid took a video camera from his backpack and began to fiddle with it, the signal that it was safe to meet. He waited until he saw the return signal: Gorev opened a newspaper, pretended to read. Rashid came over, sat near them. 'Well?'

Gorev related his meeting with Visto. 'He'll get us what we need — the van, the uniforms, everything — within forty-eight hours.'

'How much?'

'Twenty thousand dollars.'

'Can he be trusted not to involve the police?'

'So I've been assured.'

'Let's hope you're right, Gorev. We'll need the van to move the chemical and device into the centre of Washington if we have to. There will be less risk of us being stopped in a police-type vehicle with proper markings.'

'What about the cargo and our two friends at the house?'

'I checked there this morning. There are no problems.' Rashid looked towards the distant White House with contempt. 'Everything now depends on the American President. On whether he has any intention of complying quickly with our demands. But we'll know the answer to that once I meet my contact.'

'When?'

'At noon, inshallah.' Rashid looked back at them. 'We'll meet afterwards. As soon as we know what the Americans' plans are, I pass on my report and Abu Hasim will decide our next move.'

Karla asked, 'And what if the news from the White House is bad? What if the Americans refuse to meet our demands?'

Rashid stood, fixed her with a steely look. 'Where's your faith, Karla Sharif? The American President will do exactly as we want of him. He has no other choice. What president in his right mind would condemn his own capital to death?'

'Mr Kane,' Paul Burton remarked grimly, 'you've painted an interesting but disturbing picture.'

For almost twenty minutes, the CIA's Lucius Kane had fascinated the others in the room with his account of Abu Hasim's life. The CIA report documented every important detail: Hasim's birth in 1957, as the seventeenth son of Sheikh Wahib Hasim and his eleventh wife, a Syrian woman; the fact that his father was one of the richest business magnates in the Middle East, a pious Sunni Muslim from the Yemen who had emigrated to Saudi Arabia at the turn of the twentieth century and begun the family business with a small construction company, destined to become an empire.

His father's friendship with the Saudi royal family was rewarded with the prestigious contract for the renovation of Mecca, Islam's holiest city, and that same friendship had eventually helped the Hasim family establish an industrial and financial conglomerate that built thousands of homes, military complexes, factories, roads and public buildings in almost every country in the Gulf. A conglomerate that had interests in international finance and banking, agriculture and irrigation, and exclusive rights to represent prestigious foreign companies such as Audi and Porsche.

The report also noted how his father had died in a plane crash in the early seventies, leaving behind no less than fifty-two sons and daughters, the fruit of twelve marriages, but even more impressively an industrial and financial estate worth over five billion US dollars, giving Abu Hasim an inheritance of over one hundred million, a fortune that he cannily invested, making himself even richer — worth over five hundred million dollars by some estimates.

It included details of how, after graduating from secondary school in 1973, Hasim made frequent trips to Beirut, the Lebanese capital, then a city of seedy and exotic nightclubs and bars. For several years he lived the life of the playboy, earning a reputation as a binge-drinking gambler who haunted the casinos of Beirut, often in the company of beautiful women. CIA sources pointed to his involvement in at least three drunken bar fights with other young men over attractive women, including bar-girls and dancers, and one woman believed to be a prostitute.

The report also pointed to Hasim's growing frustration within his family, his sense of being a black sheep, constantly in the shadow of an older brother who was his father's appointed successor, and his gradual realisation that he could not compete for his father's affection and gain authority in the family. And it pointed out how the black sheep finally found a cause in life, one that profoundly changed him, at the time of his enrolment at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah to study civil engineering, where he was introduced to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was to transform him into a hard-line Islamic fundamentalist.

There was an account of how, in 1979, when Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, Hasim, like so many young Muslims enraged by the invasion, volunteered to fight with the mujahidin rebels against the Soviet invaders. Using his immense wealth and engineering skills, he provided financial and tactical support for the mujahidin cause, helped build field hospitals and training camps, provided care and money for the families of the rebels, all of which elevated him to hero status among his comrades.

And how, emboldened by a Muslim victory against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Hasim turned his attention to his homeland of Saudi Arabia. With growing paranoia, he considered the Muslim world to be dominated by the influences of the West, especially the United States, which he characterised as 'the Great Satan'. If the Soviets could be defeated, Hasim reasoned, then so too could the West, criminal infidels who pillaged Arab oil fields and eroded Arab culture.

The report also detailed the extreme version of Islam that Hasim wanted to create throughout the Muslim world: the restoration to the Sharia, the strict Koranic law, banning women from schools and jobs, putting drinkers to the whip, stoning adulteresses to death, beheading murderers, cutting off thieves' hands, banning music, brothels and alcohol.

Even more terrifying was the long history of Hasim's terrorist actions, and the foundation of al-Qaeda, the Base, and his use of his wealth to aid Islamic countries and Muslim rebel groups: in Chechnya, Lebanon, Somalia, the Philippines, Pakistan and the Far East; his declaration of jihad, holy war, against the United States and the West, and the suicide bombing attacks by his supporters on US military bases and embassies.

'Basically,' Lucius Kane concluded, finishing his report, 'Hasim is a loner, an enigmatic and complex character, a fanatic. The vision that drives him is that of creating a united and powerful Islamic world, committed to the overthrow of the West's military and fiscal supremacy. He sees himself as a holy warrior, a kind of modern-day Saladin, the Muslim commander who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, and he believes that God is one hundred per cent on his side, and is totally prepared to be a martyr for the Arab cause. He's learned in Afghanistan that perseverance, self-sacrifice and determination can work in defeating a superior military power. Knowing, as he must do now, that he has the US by the throat, he won't back off. He'll see this through to the end.'

'There's definitely no chance the guy could be bluffing?' Burton asked. 'You're absolutely sure he could go through with a chemical attack on Washington?'

'No question. Hasim's into sheer, in-your-face terrorism. You saw what al-Qaeda was capable of in Nairobi and Tanzania, and when they attacked the Cole. He means it all right. He'll do what he says if he doesn't get his way.'

Burton was about to throw the subject to the floor when Professor Janet Stern beat him to it. A petite, bird-like woman in her late fifties, her bleached blonde hair cropped short, she wore a black polo-neck sweater, black Lycra pants and chunky shoes. With a pair of dark-framed glasses perched on her tiny nose, she reminded Burton of a feisty agony aunt from a New York glossy women's magazine.

'It's obvious as hell we're dealing with a religious zealot. And the kind of strict Islamic society Hasim wants to create suggests a powerful need for control. Lost as he must have been in a family of fifty-four, he has a deep-seated need to assert himself and prove his self-worth. He's also a guy who's had a love-hate relationship with his father, a man who was a powerful achiever and a fervent Muslim. Boys in particular are driven to compete with their fathers, and Hasim's no different.

'He wants to outshine that power, achievement and religious fervour, and make an even bigger impact than his old man. He's also punishing his family, loathes them for making him an outsider. Their friendship with the royal family, their business success, their upstanding position in Saudi society — everything they stand for he despises. He may have undergone a religious conversion, but he's still a rebel, and a competitive one. Realising his dream of returning to a Saudi Arabia that he's freed from the yoke of American and Western influence would prove his self-worth in a major way and eclipse his father's achievements. Subconsciously, that's really what drives him. He's trying to achieve something significant, something earth shattering in his life. And with his past record of serious terrorist crimes, that's what makes him very, very dangerous.'

'The time he spent in Beirut — drinking, gambling and whoring. I think that points to something.' Professor Franklyn Ernest Young, head of the CIA's Psychiatric Affairs Section spoke up. He was a large man with wild grey hair. 'Sure, a lot of wealthy young Arabs do that kind of thing — go abroad for R & R, sow their wild oats. But it seems to me that in Hasim's case, his father being strict and devoutly religious, it's like he was almost giving his old man the two fingers — saying to hell with you, buddy, I'll do it my way. It suggests Hasim has a desire to shock, to be unpredictable. The same with him going to fight in Afghanistan. Rich kids don't usually go off to fight wars. Yet he went and fought the Soviets that's pretty daring for someone from his background. And that kind of unpredictability and defiance, coupled with his religious fanaticism, makes him a difficult sonofabitch, someone who's unlikely to have any kind of meaningful dialogue with a perceived enemy like the United States.'

'The President's aim is to gain time to allow the FBI to try to find the device. Is there any way we can engage Hasim in meaningful discussion? Try to reason with him?'

'Not a chance.' Young shook his head forcefully from side to side. 'The guy's got us by the balls, and he knows it. He wants his demands handed to him on a plate. It's his way or nothing.'

'The only way you might get through to him is with religion,' Lucius Kane suggested. 'Through the Koran and God. That's the one angle that might work.'

'I don't buy that,' Professor Stern responded. 'For the most part, the Koran essentially preaches compassion, love and tolerance. Sensible, normal Muslims who abide by Mohammad's teachings don't plant bombs and try to gas hundreds of thousands of innocent people to death. No more than sensible, normal Christians who live by the Bible. But Hasim isn't in any way normal. The guy's a terrorist and a Muslim zealot, who practises an aberrant strain of Islam. A fanatic who reads into the Koran whatever he damn well pleases. He sees obscure meanings and takes his own interpretation. Quote him the Koran, and he'd quote it right back at you, with his own spin on it. Talk religion to him and you'd just be talking to a brick wall.'

'What if we threaten him?'

Bud Leopold, the FBI psychologist, shook his head vigorously. 'Won't work. The one thing you can't do is challenge him. At back of it all, the guy's unstable. Tell him we'll nuke him and his followers if he harms Washington, and he's just as likely to set off his device out of anger or defiance.'

'Then what are we supposed to do?' Burton was beginning to despair.

'Hasim's got nothing but contempt for the US. Trying to negotiate with him directly, even using an expert negotiator, would be a complete waste of time. He wouldn't listen. I'd say the only chance you've got is trying to talk to him through someone he'll trust. An intermediary whom he respects, or perceives as being on his side. Or at least understands where he's coming from.'

'But who?' Burton asked, with growing frustration. 'I can't think of any Arabs who'd be inclined to represent the US in talks and see things from our point of view. Especially someone Hasim would trust. Anyone he respects is likely to be a raving Islamic fundamentalist, like himself.'

'I can't think of anyone either,' Leopold answered. 'But I'm pretty sure it's the only way to go.'

The room fell silent. Burton looked at the others. 'Professor Young, Mr Kane? What do you think? Is it worth a try? Do I advise the President to go with this?'

Both men nodded, and Leopold said, 'Whoever it is we find, we'll have to try to brief them on exactly the right approach we'd like them to take, if they agree to help.'

'And what approach would that be?'

'Absurd as it sounds, we've got to see it totally from Hasim's point of view at the very outset of any communication, by telling him he's right. That the US shouldn't be on Saudi Arabian soil. That it's been guilty of interference in the region. That we've been in the wrong and that we intend to help him find a solution and achieve his aims.'

'Should we really be saying that?'

'It's strategy. We need to make sure Hasim sees that we're taking him seriously. That way, he's more likely to engage in dialogue.'

'But will he listen?'

'Look at it this way. He's no longer the insignificant, black-sheep son who couldn't gain position within his family. He's a man who holds the future of the Arab people in his hands, who's got the most powerful president in the world securely by the balls. He's going to be on a high, to feel omnipotent, acutely aware of his own importance in all of this. The idea that the United States is going to be in an inferior position to him in any dialogue will appeal directly to his ego. Me, I think he'll talk.'

'Let's hope you're right.' Burton glanced at his watch. The meeting had gone on for almost three hours. Everyone was starting to look exhausted. 'Any more thoughts, anyone, before we finish? Professor Stern?'

Janet Stern was noticeably silent, her lips pursed in thought. 'There's something we're all forgetting here, and it's pretty vital. Sure, I agree with what Frank's said about the opening tactics to take. And I go along with using someone he trusts as an intermediary, assuming they'd co-operate. I've even got the feeling Frank's right that Hasim will talk. But back of it all, I've got a lousy suspicion we'd all be completely wasting our time.'

'Why?'

'Because we're missing an important point here. One that's the core of the damned problem.'

Burton frowned. 'And what's that?'

'Hasim's got a chip on his shoulder as regards America. No, not a chip, more like a damned plank. He hates Washington, and everything it stands for. Hates it with a psychotic intensity. To him, it's the root of evil, the head of the beast that has to be slain, the Great Satan. Whether his demands are met or not, that intense loathing isn't going to go away. And that's the big danger. In his heart and mind, no matter what the outcome of his threat or any negotiation, this guy really wants to gas the capital.'

Washington, DC 12 November 8.57 a.m.