IT WAS EID al-Adha, or the Sacrifice Feast, and I was back in Montreal to spend it with Chiheb.
Since the American sleeper revelation, we wanted to get him a visa so he could visit the United States. The goal was to get him to New York in hopes he could facilitate a meeting with the sleeper. I flew up to Canada to take him to Ottawa to get his visa paperwork.
I arrived in Montreal a few days before the holiday, the second of two Eid holidays. The better-known Eid al-Fitr celebrates the end of Ramadan, the month of dawn-to-sunset fasting. Eid al-Adha celebrates Abraham, who almost sacrificed his son for Allah, and signifies a Muslim’s submission to God’s will. The morning of Eid al-Adha, Muslims sacrifice a lamb. The meat is split among family, friends, and the poor.
A few days before Eid al-Adha, I took Chiheb to an Islamic butcher shop to buy a few lambs. Two for me. One for Chiheb. The butcher shop was at the back of a small supermarket with produce and dry goods. The meat was stored in refrigerated glass cases in the back. One of the butchers—a Muslim—met us at the counter.
“We’d like three lambs for Eid,” Chiheb said. “One for me and two for my friend. Do we sacrifice them here?”
The butcher took out his pad and started to take the order.
“Sorry,” he said. “Canadian law kicked in this year. You’re not allowed to slaughter it yourself. It has to be done by a licensed butcher.”
Chiheb looked at me and shook his head. The lambs aren’t just slaughtered and eaten. The slaughter is an integral part of the celebration. A good Muslim makes his own sacrifice.
“That is not right,” he said, placing both hands on the counter and leaning into his argument. “There are prayers. It is something that I need to do.”
“Sorry, that’s the law, but you still get your credit from God,” the butcher said, smiling. “Your hands are tied. You have to respect the laws of the country you live in.”
The butcher sounded like my father, I thought. God would understand, and even the Prophet Mohammed said to follow the laws of the land where you live. We were still fulfilling our obligation. But Chiheb was upset. He looked at me, urging me to protest. I looked away.
“Fine,” Chiheb said. “Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?”
The butcher gave up his pad and pen. Chiheb wrote out the prayer that is said when the lamb’s neck is cut. He wrote it in Arabic first. Then he wrote it in English and tore the sheet off the pad.
“May Allah force you to do this,” Chiheb said. “Make sure you give this to the Imam. Have him recite this Quranic verse while you are slaughtering the lambs.”
The butcher looked at me. Is this guy for real? his face said. I looked back at the butcher with my best Please take the paper face.
“Of course,” the butcher said, folding the page up and sliding it into his apron’s pocket.
For the rest of the day, I had to listen to Chiheb complain about the butcher and Canada’s laws. Another grievance on a long list.
Nelly and Kenny worked with the State Department to get the visa approved; otherwise Chiheb had no chance, given all that law enforcement already had on him. But it was my job to go through the motions. That meant getting the paperwork from the American Embassy. Chiheb knew a Tunisian in Ottawa, so we planned to meet him for dinner and take his temperature on our way there.
We met his friend at a Chinese buffet on the outskirts of Ottawa around 9:00 P.M. When we got there, the restaurant was deserted. The food on the buffet looked like it had sat all day under heat lamps. It was near closing, but the staff was happy to have a few more paying customers.
Over spring rolls and General Tso’s chicken, Chiheb ranted about the West and its war on Islam. His friend didn’t join in, but admitted he was thinking of moving to Saudi Arabia because he wanted to live in an Islamic country. That didn’t make him a jihadist. I scratched him off the list by the end of dinner.
This was normal since Jaser left the plot. Chiheb dragged me into meetings with like-minded brothers ready to help. But most of them were just lost souls having trouble coping with a foreign culture or angry about what they saw in the news. No different from Americans angry at Washington. Conversations got heated. There was real anger. But no one—Muslim or American—was about to derail a train over it. Anytime a Muslim expresses any anger they get stamped a terrorist. But what is the difference between a devout Muslim who doesn’t drink and a Mormon who doesn’t? Nothing. Same God. Different name. It was easy for non-Muslims to confuse a devout Muslim with Chiheb. But I knew different. Chiheb was a perversion who believed that God wanted him to kill in His name. His friend just wanted to live in a Muslim culture.
On the drive back from Ottawa, we talked about Chiheb’s recruiting. He hadn’t found another like-minded brother since we met.
“What made you trust me and know I was who I claimed to be?” he asked.
Chiheb was being polite, because what he really wanted to talk about was why he trusted me. But it would be rude not to ask me first.
“No disrespect, brother, but if you recall correctly, I pushed you away,” I said.
He started to laugh and smile and rub his beard.
“I do remember that,” he said. “That was very telling for me.”
“But I could tell every single hadith, every single passage of the Quran you interpreted, the way you saw the world was exactly how I saw the world,” I said. “Exactly the way my uncle taught me Islam. I saw me in you. I saw my uncle in you. I saw a true mujahid in you. But as happy as I was, I couldn’t trust you. I’d just met you. I believe in fatalism but I had to be sure.”
He laughed.
“That is exactly right,” he said.
He was smiling, his eyes bright and happy remembering our trip to San Jose. It made me sad. He and Tamer were friends. He’d found a like-minded brother, but he’d also found a friend. Someone to share meals with and talk with in a country so foreign to him. Al Qaeda used his isolation, his awkward social skills, and his naiveté to brainwash him. Part of me wished I could save him. Clean his mind of their filth.
“So, I ask you, brother,” I said. “What about me?”
“Your interpretation of certain hadiths led me to believe you were a true brother,” Chiheb said. “The fact that you pushed me away led me to believe you weren’t government. But what really did it for me that week was that night at the Moroccan restaurant. Do you remember that night?”
In my head, I couldn’t stop thinking about his face when he saw all the booze on the bar or the belly dancer.
“Remind me,” I said.
“Every test I put you through was good,” he said. “But it wasn’t until we were at that restaurant when you told me about your mother and how it turned you. How it brought you back to Islam. You cried that night. There was no way a government operative could fake that. I knew that night that you were a true brother.”
He was right. I wasn’t faking. Even though I’d twisted some of the details to appeal to Chiheb, the foundation of the story was true. My mother’s death was a defining moment in my life. Losing her was a pain I’d never felt before. But driving back to Montreal from Ottawa, I realized my mother was a hero. She made me into the man I am and armed me with a story that allowed me to infiltrate this evil and stop it. I was following through with her dying wish to use what she taught me about Islam to do good in this world.
“Speaking of true brothers, tell me about the brothers in Iran,” I said. “El Massoul is a brother like us, right?”
FBI Headquarters was after me to get more on Chiheb’s training in Iran. In the past I acted in awe of El Massoul and the brothers in Iran. But on this trip, I flipped it. I downplayed him, prompting Chiheb to defend him.
“No, no, no,” Chiheb said. “He was like a son to Sheikh Osama. He has been with him since he was a boy.”
I urged Chiheb on with “Oh, dear brothers” and Masha’Allah. But in my mind, I was puzzled. How did we miss bin Laden’s protégé? We had to know him.
“Tell me more about El Massoul,” I said. “I’m fascinated.”
Chiheb told me he had a bus company. He owned thirteen buses and his twenty-six-year-old son was in an Iranian prison. But El Massoul was proud because every single morning the entire prison was awakened by his son’s call to prayer. El Massoul’s son had a beautiful Quranic voice.
“How old is he, brother?”
Chiheb said he was around forty-six or forty-seven. He had wild salt-and-pepper hair and a scar under his left eye.
“I looked at it every day,” Chiheb said. “I wanted to ask him if that was from him being a mujahid.”
These nuggets didn’t seem like much at first glance. But to our intelligence analysts, these bits of conversation—the buses, the son, the scar—were bread crumbs to El Massoul.
On our way back from Ottawa, I dropped off Chiheb at his lab in Montreal. The plan was for him to get some work done and we would meet up for dinner later that night. The lab was located in an industrial part of town, and as we drove up to the campus, I started to hear some static coming from the dashboard.
Chiheb noticed it too.
“Tamer, what is that sound?” he said.
Chiheb feared technology because he assumed it allowed the government to listen to us.
“No idea,” I said as I fiddled with the radio.
The static stopped and I could hear Nelly and Doug talking. They were in a surveillance car nearby. Somehow, the signals got crossed and the receiver became the transmitter. Chiheb’s eyes went from the radio directly to the GPS unit in the middle of the dashboard. It was the only logical explanation. I smacked the GPS unit as I pulled in front of his lab.
“This stupid thing has been acting up,” I said as I yanked it off its mount.
“You should replace that one,” Chiheb said as he grabbed his bag. “I will call you when I’m done, brother.”
I tossed the GPS into the passenger seat and drove back to the safe house. I was angry when I arrived. I wasn’t sure if this technical glitch had just fucked up the case.
“Kenny, are you fucking kidding me right now?”
Kenny was checking the transmitter.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “It’s new tech but that’s obviously not supposed to happen.”
“You think it was the electrical lines?” Doug said. “It’s a very industrial area.”
But why it happened didn’t matter anymore.
“Get rid of it,” I said. “I never want to see that thing again. And tell Headquarters never to use that in the field.”
Joey pulled me aside before the debrief.
“What was his reaction?” Joey said.
“I blamed it on the GPS,” I said. “We could only hear them for a few seconds.”
Joey started pacing.
“Did he buy it?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”
Joey wasn’t convinced. He looked nervous.
I hadn’t eaten all day. I ordered a feast—Caesar salad, French onion soup, pizza, poutine (French fries with gravy and mozzarella) burgers, and pitchers of iced tea with lime. We spread the food out on the table and started to work. Topic number one was El Massoul.
Nelly grabbed my MacBook.
“What’s the password?” he said.
“King Tut,” I said, as Joey paced in front of me. “There is no way we don’t know who this guy is. I feel like I’m at the point I could give him a photo lineup and ask him which one he is.”
Joey laughed.
“You could probably show him your badge and he wouldn’t believe you’re government,” Joey said.
I heard Nelly typing. A few seconds later, he spun my laptop around so I could see the screen. He was on the FBI’s Rewards for Justice page. He scrolled through the Wanted photos.
“I bet you it’s one of these guys,” he said, pointing to a group of photos. “He has to be in the five-million-dollar range if he is that close to bin Laden.”
Joey was looking over my shoulder.
“Why don’t you just show him this website?” Nelly said.
Everyone was silent. I looked at Nelly and then Joey.
“You know what?” Joey said. “Why not?”
It wasn’t a bad idea, I thought. Our relationship was solid. But why would I be on that website?
Joey started pacing again.
“Tamer likes to search for different brothers that he reveres,” Joey said. “He came across the site and looks at it sometimes. It’s like an affirmation.”
“And next time I’m sitting with him, I’ll surf over to the site,” I said.
The plan was to grab dinner with Chiheb, pick up the meat from the butcher shop, and then go back to his apartment so I could show him the website. After the debrief, I got a call from Chiheb. Everyone knew it was my undercover phone, so Doug muted the TV and Joey put his hand up, signaling everyone to be quiet.
“Salamu alaikum, ” Chiheb said. “I am home now.”
“Wa alaikum al salam, ” I said. “How was your day, brother?”
“Al hamdul’Allah, ” he said, meaning “thank God.”
“Where do you feel like having dinner tonight? When will you be ready?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Come and pick me up when you are ready, insha’Allah. ”
I hung up the phone. Something was wrong. I told the team that I was going to pick him up later and go to dinner. Doug unmuted the TV and everyone jumped back into their conversations. Joey pulled me into the bedroom because he’d noticed the look on my face.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He sounded off.”
“Listen to me,” Joey said. “Do not look at him like the Arab Santa Claus. He is a mujahid that would cut your throat in a heartbeat if he suspected you were government. You know how he feels about munafiqeen.”
“I know.”
“Do you want a weapon?”
“No.”
“Then remember your training. Grab whatever you can and defend yourself,” Joey said as he grabbed a pen from the dresser and held it like a knife.
“I’m good, brother.”
I went back to my room to get changed and left for Chiheb’s apartment. As I climbed into the car, I saw the concern on Joey’s face. He had been in dangerous situations before and recognized the potential danger of the meeting. It was his job to protect me, but his nerves were getting the better of him. But I was confident we weren’t burned. Call it a gut feeling, but I knew the guy. There was something bothering him, but it wasn’t me.
I arrived around eight o’clock. It was October 26, 2012, the last day of Eid al-Adha, and we were headed to dinner before picking up our meat at the market.
Chiheb was standing in the foyer of the apartment building speaking with a woman when I arrived. He didn’t notice that I was there, so I parked and waited. After a few minutes, I brought him his Eid gifts—a box of dates and a prayer rug provided to me by the RCMP. Chiheb let me into the foyer.
“Eid Mubarak [Blessed Eid],” I said.
Chiheb took the gifts and thanked me. I ignored the woman and started for the door.
“I’ll wait in the car,” I said. “Take your time. We’re in no rush.”
He finally got in the car, and I studied him as I drove off. I found a seafood restaurant on my phone while I was waiting that wasn’t too far away. He barely spoke during the ride to the restaurant. My instincts were right. There was definitely something bothering him. I knew I had to address it.
“How was your day, habibi?” I asked, trying to fill the silence. “Al hamdul’Allah, ” he said, trying to smile.
I got lost on the way to the restaurant. I was a little preoccupied and couldn’t use the GPS anymore. We decided to try a Turkish restaurant downtown, but I could tell it was Americanized and probably had an open bar. I considered pushing him to look the other way so we could eat, but something was already bothering him.
I pulled over and turned to face him. Joey’s warnings echoed in my head. I didn’t want him to attack me while I drove.
“Talk to me, brother,” I said. “I know you. Something is bothering you.”
Chiheb forced another smile and crossed his hands between his legs.
“Tamer, you know me better than I know myself.”
Right then and there I relaxed. This wasn’t going to be about the equipment malfunction. His body language spoke volumes. He was embarrassed about something.
“What happened?”
“Today in the office, she was laughing and joking with a man in our group,” he said. “She was doing it very loud so I could hear them.”
It was girl trouble again. The Jordanian was talking to another man. Thank God. The wire glitch was forgotten.
“Tamer, you won’t believe, she touches his arm when she is laughing,” he said, looking like he was about to cry.
“Oh no, habibi. What did you do?”
“I waited until he left and then I talked to her,” he said.
“What did you say?”
“I told her that what she is doing is against Allah. She is not married to him and she shouldn’t be touching another man.”
I felt bad for this poor girl.
“What did she say?”
“She got very upset. She was yelling at me and told me none of your business. She shut the door of her office very hard.”
“I’m so sorry, Chiheb,” I said. “I can tell how much this is bothering you. But now you have your answer, right?”
“I think she did this because she knows I will see. I don’t want to be part of her doing haram. I have to forget her. May Allah forgive her.”
Chiheb’s phone rang, ending the conversation. One of his colleagues was calling to wish him Eid Mubarak. Chiheb asked his colleague if he knew of any good halal restaurants nearby. He told Chiheb about Château Kabab on Rue Guy in downtown Montreal. We got a table and had a long dinner. No jihad this time. We talked a little more about the Jordanian girl instead. I managed to shoot a text to Joey during dinner because I knew he was worried.
“All good. Just girl trouble.”
After dinner, we got ice cream at Tim Hortons. While we were eating, Chiheb called Jaser to wish him Eid Mubarak. It was a short call. Polite but not warm. Chiheb had no respect for Jaser any longer.
“We don’t discuss projects,” Chiheb said after hanging up. “If I said anything, Raed would hang up. He is fearful of the police. Any true believer should not be worried about jail or death. It would be an honor to die for Allah; why wouldn’t it be an honor to go to jail for Allah?”
Jaser was now munafiqeen.
It was close to midnight when we arrived at the market to pick up our lambs. The shop was busy because of the holiday.
“Sorry, guys, crazy day,” the butcher said. “It’s going to be another thirty minutes. I’m working on it now.”
I suggested we go back to my car to wait. I fired up my mobile hotspot. Chiheb opened his laptop and showed me some jihadi sites that posted videos of attacks. I got my MacBook from the back seat.
“Brother, you don’t mind if I check my e-mail?” I asked.
I logged on to my e-mail and then pulled up the Rewards for Justice website. The plan was to wait until we got back to his apartment, but I couldn’t.
“By the grace of God,” I said as I scrolled down the website.
He was talking about one of the jihadi websites, but stopped when he saw my screen.
“What’s that, brother?”
My MacBook was on my lap in the driver’s side. I turned the screen so he could see it better.
“These are the true brothers, just like you were discussing with me,” I said. “I saw this on TV. All the brothers wanted by the Americans are on this website. I wanted to see who these brothers were.”
He tilted his head and moved it so he could see the whole screen as I scrolled through the photos. I started reading about Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri. He pointed out one of the Pakistani individuals as I scrolled.
“By the grace of God, I know that brother,” he said. “I met that brother when I was in Iran. He is helping the Taliban.”
“These are the brothers—” I started to say when Chiheb gasped.
He snatched the MacBook off my lap. The screen smashed into the steering wheel as he pulled it into his lap. He tried to scroll up but didn’t know how to use a MacBook.
“Tell me what you’re trying to do,” I said, concerned that he was going to damage my computer. “Relax. What do you need?”
“Go back up, go back up,” he said, half handing it back, but clutching it at the same time.
I showed him how to scroll with both fingers. Seconds later, the picture of a barrel-chested man with a mane of thick, wild hair and a bushy beard with no mustache filled the screen.
“Tamer, that’s him,” Chiheb said. “Brother, that’s him.”
“That’s who?”
“El Massoul. That is the brother I spent six weeks with.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said.
We zoomed in on the picture and I saw the scar under his left eye.
“That’s his face,” Chiheb said. “Those are his eyes. That is his scar. That’s definitely him.”
According to Chiheb, El Massoul was Muhammad ar-Rahayyal, one of four terrorists who took part in the 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Pakistan. After a sixteen-hour standoff, ar-Rahayyal and the others opened fire, killing at least twenty passengers and injuring more than one hundred. Pakistani security forces arrested ar-Rahayyal. He was released from prison in January 2008. The hijackers were added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list in 2009 after they were indicted in federal court for the murder of U.S. nationals outside the United States.
As I read his bio, Chiheb agreed with everything until we got to his nationality. The website said he was Palestinian and hiding in a Middle Eastern country.
“He’s not Palestinian,” Chiheb said. “Every Palestinian speaks Arabic. El Massoul only speaks Farsi and Dari. He doesn’t speak Arabic well.”
Chiheb said he still had the crazy hair, but he had aged since the photo was taken. The image on the website was from 2000. I checked ar-Rahayyal’s date of birth. It checked out. Every single thing checked out. Without him knowing, Chiheb gave us El Massoul. Nelly’s idea panned out. Before we moved on, I checked the reward. Five million. Nelly nailed it.
After finding ar-Rahayyal, we were looking at other pictures when Chiheb suddenly had a solemn look on his face.
“Brother, what’s wrong?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“Talk to me. You seem upset.”
He sighed and stroked his beard. He paused for a full thirty seconds.
“I wish I was on that list,” he said.
His words hit me like a punch. He wanted to be on a list of murderers. Of men who brainwashed the young with an ideology of hate. He revered these men like bin Laden, who would send their followers to the grave for an ideology they refused to fight for themselves. Ar-Rahayyal wasn’t any different. He didn’t care if Chiheb lived or died as long as the attack was a success. He was safe in Iran, hiding in the shadows and sending others to die. His jihad was one of safety, if not comfort.
But I wasn’t me. I was Tamer. I had to bite back my words as I put my arm on his shoulder.
“God willing, one day, we will be at the top of that list with Sheikh Ayman,” I said. “We will be wanted for twenty-five million.”
He smiled.
“God willing.”