Maybe such a person would have handed his son over to his sister to raise.
In those circumstances, Leyla Cumali-al-Nassouri would have reacted with alarm when an American, an investigator, showed up and discovered the boy’s existence.
But what about the little guy’s mother? Where was she? Dead, probably – bombed or shot in any one of the dozen countries where Muslim women are cut down on a daily basis.
I found a bench, sat down and stared at the ground. After a long time I looked up and, from that moment forward, with an overwhelming sense that I had reached a watershed, I no longer believed that Leyla al-Nassouri had been speaking on the phone to a terrorist. I believed she had been talking to her brother.
At last I had squared my circle – I understood the real connection between an Arab fanatic and a moderate Turkish cop. They hadn’t been discussing the mechanics of a deadly plot or the kill-rate of smallpox. We had assumed they were and had gone charging through the door marked ‘terrorism’, but the truth was far more human: they were family.
Yes, she probably knew he was an outlaw, but I doubted she had any idea of the magnitude of the attack in which he was involved. There were countless Arab men who were Islamic fundamentalists and believed in jihad – twenty thousand on the US no-fly list alone – all of whom had some sort of price on their head and were trying to make sure that Echelon or its offspring couldn’t find them. To her mind, he was probably one of them – a garden-variety fanatic. There was no evidence to show that she knew he was plotting murder on an industrial scale or that she was even aware he was in the Hindu Kush.
I started to walk fast, weaving through knots of vacationers, dodging traffic and heading towards the hotel. But what of the two phone calls? Why, at that critical time, had the Saracen risked everything to speak to her?
Like I said, I was finding clarity. In the filing cabinet in Cumali’s bedroom I had found the bill from the regional hospital – the one that showed that the little guy had been admitted with meningococcal meningitis. I couldn’t remember the exact date of his admission, but I didn’t need to – I was certain it coincided with the two phone calls between Leyla Cumali and her brother.
Once she learned how gravely ill he was, she would have posted the coded note on the internet message board, telling the Saracen to phone her urgently. In her distress, she would have reasoned that a father had a right to know and, given her brother’s religious devotion, he would have wanted to pray for his son.
Most sites that offer dating and personal ads automatically alert other users to posts that might interest them. The Saracen would have received a text message telling him that a fellow-devotee of an obscure poet – or something similar – had posted an item. Knowing it had to be bad news, he would have phoned her at the designated phone box and listened to her prerecorded coded message.
What a time that must have been for him. On a desolate mountaintop in Afghanistan, trying to test half a lifetime’s work, three people dying of sledgehammer smallpox in a sealed hut, he aware that, if he was discovered, it would probably mean instant death, and then to be told that his son was critically – perhaps fatally – ill.
Desperate, he would have arranged to get an update from Cumali, and that was the second call he made. She would have told him that the drugs had worked, the crisis was past and his son was safe – that was why there were no more calls.
But there was one other thing I realized, and I couldn’t avoid it – the Saracen must have loved the little guy with all his heart to have risked everything for a phone call. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it at all – I knew from shooting the Rider of the Blue that if you’re going to kill a man, far better it’s a monster than a loving father.
I flew up the steps of the hotel, burst into my room, threw a change of clothes into a bag and grabbed my passport. I knew the Saracen’s surname now, the same as his sister’s – al-Nassouri – and I knew where the family came from.
I was going to Saudi Arabia.
Part Four
Chapter One
TURKISH AIRLINES FLIGHT 473 took off from Milas airport, banked hard through the setting sun and headed across a corner of the Mediterranean towards Beirut.
After leaving the hotel, I got in the Fiat, drove hard to the airport and took the first plane that was heading south – anything that would get me closer to Saudi Arabia.
My idea was to save as much time as possible. While I was in the air I would call ahead and organize for a US government jet to rendezvous with me halfway there – on the runway in Lebanon.
No sooner had the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean come into view and the FASTEN SEATBELT sign been turned off than I took my cellphone and headed for the bathroom. With the door locked and no time to worry about who might be eavesdropping, I called Battleboi in New York. First, I had to know where the hell in Saudi I was going.