NEW JERSEY
The KLM 747 cargo plane seemed to hang in the clear blue sky a minute or so after its wheels had lifted off runway 22 at Newark International. It was particularly hot for late May. The winds were coming from the south, raising New York’s temperature by maybe ten degrees. When the southerlies blow at Newark, the aircraft switch to runways 22L and 22R, on a bearing of two hundred and twenty degrees. That takes departing aircraft within half a mile of the newly named BurgerFantastic plant.
Takar el Sayden stood in the parking lot, looking over the main gate at the giant plane. If I took a photo right now, it would be perfect for a corporate brochure, he thought ruefully. Just one shot would capture the big bright red and yellow BurgerFantastic sign at the gate, with the jet seemingly suspended over it. As he turned away to walk towards the office entrance, he realised he hadn’t noticed the jets for years – just like everyone else who worked under the flight path. Why was it that he had noticed that plane today? He had a deepening sense of unease. Everything felt wrong. C’mon, Takar, try and work through this.
‘Hi, Carol,’ he said as he forced a heavy-hearted smile in the direction of his receptionist.
‘Hi, Takar,’ she replied cheerfully. ‘Warm today.’
‘Sure is – southerly winds,’ said Takar, putting his foot on the first step up to his office.
‘Oh, Mr Ali’s waiting for you in your office. He said he was early. I knew he was the first appointment in your schedule so I showed him on up.’
A weariness came over Takar. Damn this guy, over twenty minutes early! Always catching me off guard.
‘I hope that’s okay?’ said Carol, concerned at his expression.
Takar recovered his composure. ‘What? Oh yeah, sure, it’s fine, Carol.’
The man with the scars was sitting in one of the two chairs facing Takar’s desk. He turned as Takar entered but didn’t stand up.
‘Good morning,’ he said in that cold monotone voice.
‘Mr Ali, I believe,’ said Takar, taking his seat behind the desk, ‘but I’ll bet that’s not your real name.’
‘Names are unimportant, Takar. What is important are our actions,’ said Ibrahim Fallah.
Takar did not reply. Through the window over his adversary’s head he could see another white jet angling skyward. Weird – I’ve never noticed a plane out of that window before either.
‘To business,’ said his visitor, straightening in his chair. ‘The good news, Takar, is that my superiors are very pleased with progress and with your cooperation. I am to reiterate that you and your family will be rewarded and not harmed, if you continue to assist.’
Takar sighed.
Fallah continued. ‘I gather that your rebranding is going well?’ he enquired, as he cocked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the new sign at the front of the depot.
‘Yes, over one hundred new signs already up on my restaurants. New logos on menus, napkins, you name it. A pile of promotional material will be delivered to the restaurants on Wednesday and Thursday.’
‘So that will all be in place for the start of the advertising campaign on Friday?’ asked Fallah.
‘Yes,’ replied Takar, ‘TV, radio, newspaper advertising, the whole lot starts on Friday.’
‘Excellent, excellent.’
‘If you say so.’
‘And the funds in the bank are more than adequate?’
‘So far, no problem. The advertising agency sent me invoices last week, which I’ve paid. The new signage is costing nearly a million dollars.’
Fallah nodded. ‘The fifty million in instalments should be adequate for our first year. If funds come under pressure, let me know at once.’
‘I will, don’t worry.’
‘And so, the final piece in the jigsaw,’ said Fallah. He bent down and unzipped the front pouch on a black suitcase on wheels. He produced what looked like a glossy brochure.
‘Now, my information is that the two vats in which you prepare your sauce every night are Alfa Laval models – five-hundred-gallon capacity vats of jacketed stainless steel.’
As he opened the brochure, Takar realised he was looking at a copy of the liquidator’s sale catalogue from when they had bought the plant. Where the hell do they get all this stuff?
‘In the case are fourteen plastic bags. Each bag contains five pounds of powder. You will empty one bag into each vat every night. I will bring you fourteen bags every Monday morning. You can keep them in your office. Just make sure each vat gets one bag per night.’
Takar nodded.
‘Again, I want to reassure you that the powder is harmless. If you wish, every week, I will myself taste some powder from any bag you nominate.’ As if to prove the point, Fallah opened the clip seal on one of the bags and scooped a crooked fingerful into his mouth.
‘My friends will be buying burgers every day in your restaurants and testing the sauce. If there’s no powder,’ he paused, ‘then Tasha, Farah and Jasmin die. Followed by the rest of your family.’
Takar stared at him and clenched his fists. He forced himself not to say anything.
Fallah continued. ‘Please start with these two bags, on the last night of this month. So that all the sauce that goes out of here from the first of June has the powder in it.’
Takar nodded. He knew he had to obey. If some smart way out of this ever occurred to him, well, he’d deal with it then. For now, he was trapped.
*
Back in his apartment at the New York Metropolitan Library on Fifth Avenue, Ibrahim Fallah smiled at himself in the mirror. These were the best of times. He ran a finger over the deep scar on his right cheek. That had been worth it. A piece of hot shrapnel from the exploding Russian tank had seared his cheek as he leaped off its turret. As he jumped, he had heard the screams of the tank’s four Russian crew as their bodies were shredded with shrapnel from the two grenades he’d dropped down their top hatch. After the Russian army crawled out of his country, he returned to his life as a man of literature at the library. It was a lonely and quiet life, but he found fulfilment among his books and in his studies of Islam.
His many years of quiet, law-abiding existence in New York made him an ideal ‘sleeper’ – someone who could blend their normal lifestyle with their terrorism, without raising suspicion. He kept himself to himself. That was one of the secrets. When the order had come from his old comrade Baddar Mussan, al-Qaeda’s chief of intelligence, he had been thrilled. He hadn’t enjoyed killing the old man in the factory, but it was a heavy responsibility to serve in this battle against the West, and the West’s war on his brothers in so many countries.
His days were particularly busy now. As well as his work at the library, he had a new routine. As instructed, he had bought a nondescript white Toyota delivery van from a dealer in New Jersey, using fake ID of course. As promised, a book of dockets had arrived in the post, authorising collection of supplies of cephalosporin antibiotic, in both tablet and freeze-dried powder form, from the Yamoura logistics building. It was located on the Transworld Corporate Park in Queens, close to La Guardia airport, where all Yamoura’s products were flown in. The guys at the warehouse simply scanned his docket, got a quickly scribbled signature and helped him load the van with the correct product. His was just one of dozens of trucks and vans that turned up there every day to collect stock. He used the same ID when collecting stock as he had when buying the van. You just couldn’t be too careful. The most stupid small details could derail a really good plan. What if I backed the van into someone else’s at the warehouse? The warehouse guys might check driver’s details from the licence tag. What if the name didn’t match his signature on the collection dockets? Yes, I need to concentrate over every single detail.
His orders were to build up a stock of the powder and tablets in his garage. Every Monday morning, he would be bringing fourteen bags of powder to Takar el Sayden at the factory in Newark. The tablets were for the dumping. Any chance he got during the week, he’d do some surveillance on el Sayden’s wife and pretty daughters. Nice family. It would be a pity to kill them, as he suspected that he would eventually have to do. He always took a few photographs to give to el Sayden, together with the latest photos of his family in Tripoli, which arrived in his Dropbox account every week or so: that kept Takar on his toes.