Free The Sleeper by Christopher Dickey Page A

bomb he was going to use to blow up L.A. International Airport. He turned state’s evidence and testified in court about Osama’s operations. He said the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan were organized by nationality. He said he’d seen Swedes and Germans there. He said he’d seen dogs killed with cyanide gas, and had been told you could use gas like that near the air intakes of big buildings to kill hundreds of people. He also talked about the gatekeeper, a man who received the holy war’s volunteers when they came, and told them where to go when they went out. Abu Zubayr. The recruits were sent to him in Pakistan, where he looked them over with his one good eye.
    Abu Zubayr was the man who finally separated the minnows from the sharks. But in 1999 Abu Zubayr dropped out of sight. Nobody seemed to know what happened to him. Maybe he was in Afghanistan. Maybe he was in some Pakistani dungeon. Or maybe he disappeared because he was the one man who knew every fish in the sea, and he had a new assignment: to prepare the second wave.
    What interested me most was Abu Zubayr’s cover. He was a honey merchant. In Abu Seif’s address book there were addresses for several different import and export companies. To the extent that I could cross-check what they traded, they all seemed to have one product in common whether they were in New York, Granada, Aden, Peshawar, or Nairobi, whether they were called Shami Goods and Services or Asl Sweets. They all sold honey.
    I left the cybercafé at about three in the morning. The guns, groans, and splashes of gore were still echoing down the street. Above me I could see the Alhambra. Maybe it was the greatest achievement of Islam. I don’t know. I didn’t see it up close. But from where I was it looked like my idea of Alamut, the city where the Old Man of the Mountain lived in the Crusades, the place where he built a paradise and convinced his followers he held the key to it before sending them to spread terror all over the world and down through history.
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    The apartment blocks where Pilar and Bassam al-Shami had lived were brutally lonely late at night. One or two lights were on, but the main street and the alleys that led off it were dead silent. The only footsteps in the stairwell were mine. The turning of the key in the door echoed down the hall.
    I was not sure what I was looking for on this second trip. Nothing had changed in the apartment since I left it. The curtains were still drawn. The little oriental carpet in the front hall was still crooked. The mess in the computer room was the same.
    The box by the TV had a dozen or so videos in it, some in the cases, some not. I started popping them in the machine and fast forwarding. They weren’t even from Hong Kong. Most looked like they were made in the Philippines. The only Bruce Lee was Enter the Dragon. But when I opened the case, the tape had no label.
    A home movie: The first scene was a street scene where most of the people in the street were black. Men were dressed in short-sleeved shirts and, some of them, in ties. The camera seemed to be shooting aimlessly, like it was left on by accident. A couple of shop signs had the word “Nairobi” in them, so I guessed that’s where we were. A blonde woman in a safari hat and shirt and khaki slacks was standing in a busy square. Behind her were a couple of skyscrapers and a low building. Africans walked in front of her and behind her and took no notice at all. Now she was standing across the street in front of a craft shop, with a bunch of carved giraffes on each side of her, waving. Now she was in another city street, waving again. I could see the same skyscraper again. Black glass front, white stone sides. A parking lot with a guard at the entrance. Another low building. Lots of cars. Lots of traffic noise. Lots of Africans in short-sleeved shirts with ties. A street vendor passes with a cart full of brilliantly colored fruit.