48

HEZBOLLAH COMMAND BUNKER, BEIRUT, LEBANON

It was time to summon a killer.

Sheikh Ja’far ibn al-Hussaini picked up the phone on his desk and dialed his chief of staff, telling him exactly whom he wanted to speak to and that the matter was urgent. A moment later, there was a knock on the door of his private office.

“Come,” said the Sheikh, sitting behind his desk and rereading the transcript of the call he had already read a half-dozen times.

When the door opened, in walked a tall, slim, muscular man in his forties with a thick black mustache, full beard, and bushy, unkempt eyebrows. He wore a black military uniform with red trim along with a black beret. His name was General Kareem bin Mubarak, and he was the commander of Amn al-Muddad, Hezbollah’s counterintelligence unit.

The man clicked his heels and snapped a salute. The Sheikh told him to sit.

“General Mubarak, it is now 100 percent confirmed that we have a traitor in our ranks,” the Sheikh began. “Furthermore, we know exactly who it is.”

“I just heard about the call, but I thought the caller had not given his name,” the general said.

“He didn’t. But you can listen to the recording for yourself. It’s a voice you will recognize immediately.”

“Who?”

“Amin al-Masri.”

“With the Radwan Unit? Impossible.”

“I know it is difficult to believe,” said the Sheikh, “but it’s true. I don’t know yet whom Amin is working for or why. What is clear is that he is responsible for launching the border raid without my approval. He and his men have captured three Americans. He has pushed us into a war with the Zionists. And now he is playing a game of extortion, trying to sell the prisoners to me or put them up for bid to other terrorist organizations the world over.”

The Sheikh slid a thick brown folder marked CLASSIFIED across the desk and ordered Mubarak to open it. Inside were photos and biographical details of al-Masri and each of the men under his command.

“What do you need me to do, Your Holiness?” Mubarak asked after quickly leafing through the materials.

“I want you to find al-Masri, I want you to find his men and the prisoners, and I want you to bring them back to me—alive, if at all possible,” the Sheikh replied. “And you must do this discreetly.”

“Meaning what, Your Holiness?”

“Under no circumstances must the media or the public catch wind that we are hunting for these men,” the Sheikh insisted. “It is imperative that we maintain the appearance to the Americans, to the Israelis, to Iran, to all of our allies and enemies, that this was our operation from beginning to end and that we are fully in control of the situation. Am I understood?”

“Absolutely, Your Holiness,” General Mubarak replied. “You can count on me.”

“I hope so,” the Sheikh said coolly, leaning forward in his chair. “As you know, there is, suddenly, an opening for someone to take charge of the Nasser Unit.”

Mubarak swallowed and nodded. Not that long before, he had been a witness when the Sheikh had drawn a pistol and blown out the brains of the previous commander of the Nasser Unit, the man responsible for all Hezbollah military operations south of the Litani River. Both the offer and the threat, therefore, could not have been clearer.

The moment Mubarak was dismissed, he headed straight back to his office.

Having served in the counterintelligence unit for nearly two decades—working his way up from a lowly case officer to the number two man in the unit and now, for the last three years, its head—Mubarak had been part of rooting out so many CIA and Mossad infiltrators and informants over the years that he had lost count. Yet never had he seen a Hezbollah officer as senior as Amin al-Masri go rogue.

It would have been impossible to believe if Mubarak had not donned headphones and listened to the recording of the phone call the Sheikh emailed to him. He listened to it twice, then a third time, and then a fourth.

The Sheikh was right. The voice was unmistakable, the evidence incontrovertible. Al-Masri actually had admitted to having captured the three Americans and was now trying to sell them to the Sheikh. For Mubarak, the big question was whether al-Masri was working alone or for someone else. Either way, he was playing the Sheikh for a fool. The fact that the Zionists had captured the man’s younger brother made the picture even more confusing. Yet all those matters would have to wait.

The first priority of business, Mubarak decided, was dispatching a commando team to capture the rest of the al-Masri family. To resolve this thing as quickly as possible without paying a single Lebanese pound, Mubarak needed leverage on Amin, and he needed it fast. That meant going after his family. In the file were photos of his mother, Jabira, along with her home address on the south side of Beirut. There were also pictures of Amin and Tanzeel’s siblings—including their ten-year-old sister, Hala, and seven-year-old brother, Farez, along with details about what schools they attended. All this Mubarak sent by encrypted email to one of his section leaders with the orders to grab any family members they could—alive—and discreetly take them to the Iranian embassy until further notice.

That completed, Mubarak transmitted photos of al-Masri to his entire force of intelligence operatives, spread out over the whole of Lebanon, with an order that he be arrested and brought to headquarters immediately. He offered a 150-million-pound reward—roughly 100,000 U.S. dollars—for whoever brought him in dead and a 300-million-pound reward if he was brought in alive. He sent the same notice to his colleagues on the general staff with orders from the Sheikh that the information be passed on immediately to the commanders at every roadblock and checkpoint across the country, as well as to units responsible for security at the airports and seaports. In none of his communications, however, did he explain why Amin al-Masri was the most wanted man in the country. That, he concluded, would have to wait.

One thing was missing, and it bothered Mubarak. No one at Hezbollah headquarters had received by email or text the video of the prisoners, the proof of life that al-Masri had promised to provide. But Mubarak couldn’t wait. Whether Amin had really grabbed hostages or was just trying to bluff them, the man was engaged in a high-stakes game of blackmail with the most powerful terrorist group on the planet. Whatever the truth, Mubarak had his orders, and now so did his men.

The hunt for Amin al-Masri was on.