Washington, D.C.
October
WHAT BEGAN AS A calculated late-night leak to select reporters was confirmed as true by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the following day. The cable news channels devoted all their coverage to the story and even the networks preempted their daytime broadcasts. Terrorism, it seemed, trumped both soap operas and Judge Judy. U.S. and European intelligence agencies had identified a former Iraqi major from the Ministry of Interior, Mohammed Farooq, as the mastermind behind the recent terrorist attacks across Europe. Farooq had served as a cell leader for Amin Nawaz, using his skills as a trained special operations commander against both civilian and military targets. Farooq had slipped through the net that had led to Nawaz’s death by Albanian commandos and was believed to be on the run somewhere in Turkey. A dated, pixelated image of Farooq was broadcast to an international audience, giving terror a face. The United States would supply allied intelligence and law enforcement agencies with both assets, including classified biometric information that would aid in his capture.
What allied intelligence services did not know was that the human and signals intelligence provided by the United States would be intentionally misleading and that the biometric data—facial recognition, fingerprint and voice recognition—did not match Farooq’s.
Within hours, Mo was the most wanted man in the world. He had instant “cover for status” with any Islamic terrorist organization on the globe.