The Language of Secrets (18 page)

But for Coale to have come out into the open, Khattak must have done something to increase his feeling of superiority. And security.

The INSET team was gathered in the center of the room. Khattak joined the others as they listened to Coale give the rundown. Laine Stoicheva stepped forward, in her new incarnation of ice-cold goddess, to provide the current operational status. They still hadn't discovered the means of communication between the two splinter cells. But they were getting closer. Something had happened.

Clusters formed around Laine. A website was projected onto a massive screen that blocked the view of the blizzard outside. The lights were dimmed.

Khattak read the banner that framed the interactive site. His heart sank.

THE ROSE OF DARKNESS.
FIGHTING THE NEW CRUSADES.

There was a drop-down menu to the right of the screen with a list of buttons. The questions were staggered on the buttons, one after the other, each with a link to a video.

Are you one of us?

Are you ready to fight?

Do you have the tools?

Do you know your enemy?

Will you do your part in the global jihad?

The questions and links were superimposed upon a colorful background—a repeating Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, of a drone attack. The GIF was spliced in two: The first image was that of the explosion over the largest house in a village. The second image captured the devastation of the survivors.

The chorus of a popular song played in the background of the video.

If I had a rocket launcher.

Links on the right-hand side of the screen led to a second series of videos, each with a single word between them, each the image of a violent bombing attack or its consequences.

Gaza. Beirut. Qana. Hamdani. Haditha. Fallujah. Baghdad.

The song was linked to images of Fallujah.

Under this list was an invitation to see more on successive pages.

One of the links was an invitation to visit a chat room. Laine Stoicheva clicked on the link. A group of photographs sprang from the screen. Each was the image of the outcome of an attack, this time perpetrated by jihadists. Visitors to the chat room were asked to rate the images on a scale of 1 to 10. The more graphic the image—American soldiers dragged through the streets of Somalia, the beheadings of journalists and aid workers, Muammar Qaddafi beaten to death—the higher the rating.

At the bottom of the site, a crawl crept across the screen, typed over a ribbon of green.

Hummers are hard to assemble and easy to disassemble at the hands of the mujahideen.

An Afghan warrior with a Kalashnikov poised on his shoulder stared back at the viewer from the corner of the screen. He was standing on top of a burnt-out Humvee.

If I had a rocket launcher.

“As you know, this is the website used by Hassan Ashkouri's group to solicit new recruits. You won't be surprised to learn that many jihadist websites are hosted by Internet service providers in the West, who often are unaware of the content on the sites. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft—they've all done it. Many of these jihadist sites are shared before they're taken down, allowing them to be folded and restarted. And we know that jihadist groups are continually refining the techniques they use to keep messages and information hidden online.”

Several of the team members nodded.

“The home page for this website is in Arabic. There's an encryption code that allows those who can pass a preliminary examination onto the English-language pages. It's aimed at a very exclusive group of young people who are targeted by specific messages—you know the purpose of narrowcasting, but for Inspector Khattak's sake I'll clarify.”

All eyes in the room turned to Esa Khattak.

He kept his attention on the screen.

The clarification was unnecessary. He'd spent nearly ten years with INSET. It was a tactic of Laine's, designed to unsettle him. To an end that would play itself out in time.

“Narrowcasting is an Internet technique used to attract identifiable segments of a population. In the case of the Rose of Darkness, it encourages the idea that new recruits—specifically young people born, raised, or educated in the West—are critically important to the success of the jihadist mission. Those in the West are in the optimal position to strike—to take revenge for what the Rose of Darkness calls the ‘new Crusades,' the wars waged by imperial powers on the Islamic world. Think of the invasion of Iraq. Or the current occupation of Afghanistan. Or Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Gaza.”

When some of the team members bristled, Laine went on, “The website uses this language to attract young people to the cause of jihad. And to persuade them to participate in revenge attacks on the West.”

Laine drew a breath.

“Most of you have known about the Rose of Darkness since the start of this operation. There's been a new development.”

She began to scroll through a conversation in the chat room. The time code identified it as having taken place the night before.

Laine signaled for the lights to be turned up again. Several of the team members blinked, rubbing at their eyes.

If I had a rocket launcher—

Laine muted the sound on the website.

“So. Thoughts? Conclusions?”

Coale watched his team, his fox face intent and alert.

A young man put up his hand.

“‘Hawiye' is a common Somali tribe name. That has to be Dinaase Abdi.”

Laine nodded. “Good. Yes, we've traced the connection to Abdi's phone. What else?”

“They're talking about the Nakba attack. For the first time. Online. They've hardly bothered to encrypt it.”

Nine days from now was New Year's Day.

It fit with everything Khattak knew of the case.

Coale's eyes flicked to him, and then away.

But Khattak caught the look. That look. And felt the subtle distancing of some of the other officers, though not from his former teammates.

“Do we know who RDSB is?” someone asked. “Or what the acronym stands for?”

“The connection was made at the public terminal at Nur. But we don't know by whom. It could have been anyone who was at the mosque last night. Jamshed Ali. Ashkouri himself, which would suggest a desperation about shutting Din Abdi down before he could say anything else. We're still going through the surveillance footage. And then we'll know if this is a communication between the different groups, or within the same one.”

Khattak shook his head. Laine responded at once.

“Do you have something to add, Inspector?”

Khattak looked around the room. Seeing many friends. And a few nominal adversaries. Men and women Coale had handpicked for his team.

“It's Ashkouri. Or someone he instructed.”

“How do you know this?” Coale demanded.

Khattak spoke to Laine.

“The name of the website. Do you recognize it?”

Laine made a quick scan of the screen. Her gaze returned to Esa's face.

“No. We ran it through all known databases. It doesn't suggest anything, except a taste for the theatrical. And that's common to these sites. Color, drama, danger, intrigue. It pulls young people in.”

Coale stalked closer.

“No known jihadist groups, no cross-references on the watch list. Spit it out, Khattak. What are you getting at?”

“It's something Ashkouri said to my partner at the halaqa yesterday.”

“No, it isn't.” Coale contradicted Khattak without compunction.

Khattak's eyes narrowed. The team gathered in the room knew this for what it was: a showdown between the old guard and the new. And only one man would emerge as the victor.

“Not in those exact words. If you were able to listen to Ashkouri, you must have heard him use the phrase ‘mud and crime.'”

“So?”

“The words are from a poem. The poem is called
A Grave for New York.
”

Silence enveloped the room, the murmurings hushed.

“That isn't the name of the website, Khattak.” Coale spoke with a fine condescension.

Her face pale, Laine interrupted Coale.

“A grave for New York? Is that a reference to September 11?”

It wasn't. Step by careful step, Khattak provided a summary of the poem, describing its context. The poem predated the 9/11 attacks by three decades. The richness of its themes, the scope of its imagination, the remarkable expressiveness of its language—none of these could be captured by a jihadist website, let alone in some essentialized form.

Khattak had the attention of every member of the team. He told the story of
A Grave for New York
, its drama and darkness, its prosody to the Arabs, its unrelenting indictment of Western materialism, in as plain and simple a language as he could.

The words shocked his audience, and he understood why. The poem was a declamatory work that built to a thunderous crescendo.

New York
+
New York
=
The grave and anything that comes from the grave.

New York
−
New York
=
The Sun.

And then Khattak quoted the closing lines of the poem. The quiet denouement.

The words hung suspended on the air, a stillness upon an immensity of snow.

But,

Peace be to the rose of darkness and sands,

Peace be to Beirut.

Ciprian Coale was speechless.

Esa Khattak pointed to the moniker on the screen.

“RDSB. The rose of darkness and sands. The ‘B' stands for Beirut.”

*   *   *

Khattak took the opportunity to stride to Killiam's office, and to close the door behind him.

Coale wanted an audience for his temper.

Khattak refused to provide it. Let Coale stew over the fact that Esa had just contributed something to the investigation that no other member of the team could have found, the manifest reason he'd been appointed to head CPS and asked by Killiam to consult on Mohsin's murder.

For the prodigal understanding of someone inside the fold.

Something that stuck in Coale's craw now.

He'd been looking for a way to humiliate Khattak.

His manipulations had backfired.

“Well?” Khattak asked.

He walked to the window in Killiam's office, studying road conditions that insisted everyone should have been sent home hours ago. The Nakba group were just as constrained by the weather as they were.

From Unionville to INSET headquarters, Khattak had driven through whiteout conditions. Coale lived near Port Credit. He wondered how the man was planning to get home. At Esa's repeated insistence, Ruksh had texted him the words “at home.” Misbah had replied with more concern for Esa's situation. She'd told him to book a room somewhere and stay overnight.