Abassi invited us to his apartment the next day. He wanted to talk. For the past several days he and Chiheb had been in a constant fight. Chiheb thought Abassi was of true mind and heart for the cause, but didn’t agree with waiting. He had orders from overseas and wanted to act. But when I got to Abassi’s apartment, something was different.
“You’re a scientist,” Abassi told Chiheb. “You work with hazardous materials. You work with deadly diseases. You can get some. We can grow it in our own lab. Take it to a reservoir and put the virus in the water. It will mutate and grow on its own. They’ll drink it and we’ll have thousands of dead Americans.”
The Abassi I met in Quebec City finally had arrived. Even Chiheb was impressed. But it was the way Abassi explained the plot. He laid it out like someone sharing a cookie recipe. It was no big deal to either of them, and I sat there pretending to be impressed, but I was sick to my stomach.
“Look what I can come up with in a couple of days,” Abassi said. “Imagine if we take our time what we could accomplish.”
I realized we were at an impasse. Both wanted to kill Americans but disagreed how. I needed a change of scenery, so after dinner I took them to a small hookah bar on the east side near New York University. The scene was pretty mellow. There were a few students studying. A group was sitting at one table smoking hookah. We found a table near the back and ordered tea and baklava.
Abassi sat on a bench with his back to the wall. His legs were crossed and he wagged his foot up and down as he spoke. Abassi was holding court and looked very comfortable as we smoked and talked.
Chiheb was at the head of the table to his right. He was leaning forward like some anxious freak. He didn’t smoke. The hookah bar wasn’t on the path of Allah. In his mind, we were wasting time.
I was half listening to Abassi as I smoked.
“The U.S. government can never outsmart me,” Abassi said, taking a long pull off the hookah and sending a stream of smoke into the air above his head. “I know the FBI is always watching.”
He was looking at me as he spoke. I put a puzzled look on my face. Was he suggesting that I might be an informant for the FBI? I was exhausted with all the fighting between him and Chiheb. I needed to put Abassi on the defensive.
“Are you kidding me right now?” I said, keeping my voice measured but stern. “Is this your way of telling me that you are an informant for the FBI?”
I looked around the hookah bar like FBI agents were lurking around every corner. Abassi didn’t know what to say. Chiheb looked at me with a puzzled expression. This was the first time he’d seen me this upset. I let the weird energy crackle between us.
Then I snapped.
“Do you have any idea how important my company is to the Muslim Ummah?” I said, staring at Abassi. “Are you trying to tell me that you are bringing them to my door?”
Chiheb tried to interrupt me.
“Tamer . . .”
The other patrons started to notice our table. I kept my gaze locked on Abassi as I put my hand up for Chiheb to stop talking. Abassi uncrossed his legs and put both feet on the floor.
“Tamer, that’s not at all what I was saying,” he said, lowering his voice. “I would never—”
I stood up and smashed the small tea glass against the wall. I heard someone behind me gasp. Abassi and Chiheb recoiled as I threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table.
“Find your own way home,” I said.
This was my last-ditch effort to turn the tables on him. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but we were out of options.
I stormed out of the hookah bar and climbed into my car. Chiheb called my cell phone before I arrived at the safe house.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry, brother,” he said. “I understand. We took a cab home. Ahmed was upset.”
“Are you sure about him?” I said. “I don’t know if he is a like-minded brother.”
“He is,” Chiheb said. “But he isn’t worth it.”
Chiheb wanted to break ties with Abassi, but I still had work to do with him. We didn’t have enough to charge him. I couldn’t cut him loose.
“Okay,” I said. “I know you have work to do for school. I’ll spend some time with him tomorrow morning. I will call you after.”
The team met me at a hotel suite in midtown. As I told them what happened in the hookah bar, Abassi called me several times. I ignored the calls.
“You should answer it,” Nelly said after the third call.
I refused. I wanted him to sweat it out. He was isolated in a strange city. His benefactor just rejected him. Any reunion with his wife felt remote. He was freaking out.
Joey smirked when Abassi called again.
“I love the play,” Joey said. “Let him stew in it a bit more.”
After the fifth call, I answered. I could hear the fear in Abassi’s voice as he apologized. He asked me to come by his apartment to talk. I met him outside the building. He got into the passenger seat and apologized.
“Put yourself in my place,” he said. “A few months ago, I was finishing up my doctorate and getting married. My life was perfect. Then Canada takes away my visa. I’m away from my wife. I don’t know if I will get my degree. My brother is dying. The FBI almost doesn’t let me come to New York. I have no idea what is happening and didn’t know who I could trust.”
He reassured me over and over that he would never betray me to the FBI, because then he would have to answer to Allah.
“Only Allah knows what is truly in a man’s heart,” he said.
But even his apology felt like a threat.
The next day, I brought breakfast to his apartment. He was wide awake and working on both laptops. He ignored the breakfast and ushered me over to the computers. On the screens were scientific journals and stories about Mohammed Atta. Abassi was studying the engineering behind how the steel in the World Trade Center towers melted. He talked about jet fuel and melting points. Most of it went over my head.
“The brilliance of that attack was in its simplicity,” Abassi said.
Abassi wanted to top it. Chiheb’s plans weren’t big enough.
“We could do much bigger things that would truly make a difference,” he said.
I wanted to foster his excitement and keep him on track, so I asked him if he still wanted to go see Ground Zero. I had resisted in the past, but he refused to let it go. I ran it by FBI executive management. They refused at first but finally gave me the green light after the New York police commissioner’s office got on board.
Abassi stopped talking and smiled. He looked like a kid who was just told he was going to Disney World.
“Right now?” he said.
“Let’s go.”
As we walked through the memorial, a profound sense of loss came over me. It was my first time and I had to hold back tears. I had lost friends, and I didn’t want to be there with him. The other tourists had solemn looks on their faces. But as Abassi looked at each plaque detailing the attack, a different look came over his face. It wasn’t a smile. It was pride.
My tears turned to rage. I felt the same emotions and feelings I had when Chiheb put his arm around me and told me New York needed another 9/11. But I didn’t have time to be unprofessional.
Abassi walked over to the two pools where the towers once stood and looked at all the names engraved on them. He then looked up to the sky as if he was imagining where the towers once stood. In his mind’s eye, he could see the planes and the fire. He couldn’t hide his smile now. He handed me his phone and asked me to take a picture of him in front of the pools. I handed the phone back to him.
“I don’t think we’re allowed to take pictures here,” I said.
Abassi looked around the memorial.
“They’re taking pictures,” he said, pointing out some tourists snapping photos with their phones.
I needed this moment to be over, so I didn’t argue and snapped a picture. I later told Nelly that he needed to delete that image after we locked Abassi up.
I went into the bathroom as soon as we got back to his apartment. I threw some water on my face and gathered myself. When I came out, he couldn’t control his excitement.
“I was part of a study group in Tunisia,” he said. “It was during the Arab Spring. One of the brothers from the group is here.”
“In New York?” I said.
“Yes,” Abassi said. “He is a taxi driver but he is visiting family back in Tunisia. Another is studying in Atlanta. I haven’t been able to reach them, but I did talk to a brother studying computer science in Las Vegas.”
Abassi had a contact with al Nusra—an al Qaeda offshoot—in Jordan. He wanted to stay in the United States to restart the study group. The underground groups were breeding grounds for dissent in the Middle East, but Abassi wanted this one to be a terrorist cell.
“I will need a visa,” he said. “And we can get all of the like-minded brothers together. I will live here, pretending to work for your company while I prepare the attacks.”
I left his apartment with a promise to return and take him to dinner. I went over to the operations center so that I could meet with Ari and the team. Nelly and I had an I told you so look on our faces when we all sat down to review my conversations with Abassi.
The assistant U.S. attorney didn’t share our look.
“He didn’t break any laws,” he said after we were done laying out the evidence. “His thoughts and opinions, no matter how disgusting, aren’t illegal. He hasn’t met any elements of any crime. You have more work to do.”
I was exhausted. The last place I wanted to be was back at his apartment. Then I got a call from Chiheb. He was done working and wanted me to meet him at Abassi’s apartment, where he had spent most of the afternoon. Abassi went into the kitchen to make tea for us when I arrived. As he left the room, Chiheb leaned over and whispered to me.
“I got all of the scientific knowledge that I needed from him,” he said. “We are good now.”
The conversations must have provided Chiheb with enough details that he thought we didn’t need Abassi’s expertise anymore. Nothing Abassi said was going to convince Chiheb to work with him.
But I needed him to talk. I needed Abassi to commit to a terrorist act and make an overt act toward it. We had his intentions on tape, but I needed more for a charge.
“Please let him speak,” I said. “Then we’ll make a determination together.”
Abassi returned and we gave him the pulpit. I was having Jaser flashbacks. Abassi began his sermon by explaining the religious justification for committing jihad. Chiheb made comments but let Abassi speak for the most part. When Abassi said we were three travelers so our prayers could be shortened, Chiheb interrupted.
“Tamer is not a traveler,” he said. “This is his home.”
When you’re traveling, you can combine your prayers and they are shortened.
“Would you please just let the man finish his thought process?” I said, staring down Chiheb. “Let him talk, Chiheb. Stop interrupting and nitpicking every single thing he says. You’re harping on shit that we don’t need to talk about right now.”
Chiheb sat back in his chair and folded his arms.
“Fine,” he said. “I will just sit here and not say anything.”
Abassi took a sip of tea. He had my undivided attention and knew it.
“You see?” Abassi said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Abassi had pages of notes, but he skipped to point seven after Chiheb’s outburst.
“How can we do these projects and expect not to get killed or arrested with irrational behavior like this?” Abassi said, staring at Chiheb. “If you don’t tone it down we all will get captured or killed before our work is done.”
Abassi waved me over to the laptops set up on the desk. How to build a bomb, how to deliver weapons of mass destruction, how to commit mass killings on U.S. soil.
Everyone was quiet.
“I need to evaluate Chiheb’s orders in an effort to coordinate our efforts,” he said.
It was an olive branch to Chiheb. By now it was midnight, and I told them I had a meeting tomorrow. Really I just wanted to leave. I thanked Abassi for the tea and told him we’d talk in the morning. Chiheb left with me. He had a lot of work to do before he went to San Francisco for his conference. We walked up to his apartment together. I knew I had to make up with him now. Once in his apartment, I apologized.
“Tamer, you have to see that he is of this Dunya,” he said. “I agree with what he is saying, but I believe that he is just buying time to enjoy this world and its possessions.”
“Let me ask you something, Chiheb,” I said. “If I told you that there was a Jew that could supply us with the bombs we needed for Operation Happy New Year, would you tell me to buy them from him?”
Chiheb considered my question for a minute.
“I would tell you to buy them,” he said.
“Then how can you dismiss another Muslim, the one who started you on your path, so quickly?”
“Tamer, you should have seen him after you yelled at him,” Chiheb said. “We each went to our own apartments and before I could sit down, he was at my door. He was so upset. He started giving me all of the technical stuff about the projects. That was the proof that he was of this Dunya and not the afterlife.”
“Sincerity is only in the eyes of Allah,” I said. “While you are in San Francisco, I will spend some time with him. I will properly vet him, okay?”
I said it like I was asking his permission. I wanted him to know that he was still in charge.
“I will report back to you and you will ultimately make the final determination,” I said.
As I was leaving, I stopped at the door. I wanted to make sure Chiheb knew I was still with him.
“Don’t be mad at me, brother,” I said. “I lost my cool there a little bit.”
Chiheb put his arm on my shoulder.
“I could never be mad at my brother,” he said. “The only time I could be mad at you is if I felt that you were losing your sincerity.”
“Am I?”
“No,” he said. “I’m just saying that that’s the only time I will ever be mad at you.”
Stay on the path of Allah. That was his shot across the bow.