56

GHAT, LIBYA —27 NOVEMBER

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” Hamdi Yaşar said.

Abu Nakba, sitting out on the veranda and enjoying a beautiful desert morning, looked up from his breakfast of coffee and boiled eggs.

“Yesterday I told you that President Clarke was planning to announce his peace plan on the Haram al-Sharif. I wish now I had brought you this intelligence the moment it arrived in my hands,” Yaşar continued. “But I was so focused on the operation in London that I set it aside.”

“What is the problem?”

“We have been too successful.”

“How so?”

“Because London went so well, the American president has been frightened off. I received another message from Mashrawi early this morning. He’s just learned that the president has quietly canceled his trip to Jerusalem and will instead give his speech from the White House. I fear I have failed you, my father, just when victory was within our grasp.”

Abu Nakba took the younger man’s hand and looked back out across the desert. “You have not failed, my son. Stop believing the lies of Satan. A week ago, this opportunity did not exist. And then it did. And now it doesn’t. Does this stop the will of Allah? By no means. He has a plan. We just have to wait for it to reveal itself.”

“How can you speak of waiting? With all respect, the countdown is ticking to zero, and I have no plan. Neither does Mohammed al-Qassab.”

“But you have achieved so much success and so quickly. Was this not the hand of Allah guiding you?”

“Yes, of course, but those operations were easy compared with what lies ahead,” Yaşar protested.

Abu Nakba held up his hand, silencing the young man. “I have shared little of my personal story with you. As you know, I am an intensely private man. This is for my safety. And the safety of others. But there are some things you should know, Hamdi. My father was a Libyan. An oilman. But a drunk. A wastrel. He betrayed his religion and his family. He drank away all of our money and left my mother and me to the streets, and I hated him for it. My mother, however, I loved with all my heart and soul. She was a girl from Palestine. Ramallah, in fact. Her father came to Tripoli to work in the oil fields, but he died in a drilling explosion. Her mother died a few years later from cancer. So my mother grew up without means. Without education. She had a simple faith, a pure faith. But she had no way to earn a living. And then one night she was murdered by bandits —her throat was slashed —right before my eyes. I was only seven years old. And now I had no hope. No prospects. No future. I was alone. Hungry. Unwanted. Destined to die young and forgotten, full of bitterness and rage. Yet look what Allah has done. Look what he has made me, where I am today.”

Yaşar was quiet, and the old man continued.

“All that I am and have is Allah’s. Was it not he who guided and protected me when I joined the Muslim Brotherhood and fought in Egypt against Sadat and his cronies? Should I not have died in the mountains of Kandahar, fighting the Russians? Or later, in the streets of Mogadishu, fighting the Americans? Or in Fallujah and Mosul? Or in Raqqa and Aleppo? I can claim no credit for whatever successes I have achieved in my life, nor even for surviving as a Palestinian orphan boy to the ripe old age of eighty-three. I live because Allah has chosen me to live, and I serve at his pleasure. He could have taken me from this wretched earth. Instead, he has given me a bold new mission, and to accomplish it, he has given me you.”

“The wind is at your back, my father. Allah’s hand is mightily upon you, like one of the prophets of old. But perhaps I am not looked upon as fondly. Or maybe I was meant to help you get this far, but no further.”

“Nonsense. Put away such foolish talk. Do you really think I could have built Kairos from a forgotten corner of the desert by myself? No, I needed you, so Allah gave you to me. And look what he has done. Just look. We have ninety-seven full-time operatives. A budget of more than $40 million. Three successful operations that have dazzled our investors beyond anything they could have imagined. The Russians think they created us and that they sustain us. So do the Iranians. And the Turks. They all believe they are running us, that we are agents in their employ. They have no idea that they are all pawns in our little game.”

“It hardly seems little anymore,” Yaşar noted.

“That is true. But how could all of this have happened —how could you and I have seen so much favor in just a few short years —unless Allah was smiling upon us both?”

It was quiet for a good long while.

“How, then, shall we read this setback?” Yaşar finally asked.

“What, Clarke canceling his trip?”

“Yes. It changes everything.”

“Relax, my son. Allah will lead us —you must only have faith in the jihad to which we have both been called. In the meantime, you must go to Ankara and hold the hand of the sultan while we await a new door to open.”