And he would have languished there, virtually forgotten, except that – in a frightening avalanche of developments – the search for the Saracen hit a desperate pass.
Chapter Fourteen
THE SARACEN ARRIVED at the Syrian border just before lunchtime, getting off the bus from Beirut with a leather medical bag in one hand, a nondescript suitcase in the other and a remarkable plan in mind.
It was five years since he had graduated, with honours, as a doctor, and those were the missing years, the hungry years. It took me a long time to piece together his movements during that period, but one thing was beyond doubt – by the time he fronted the Syrian immigration officer he had solved the riddle which had occupied all his waking moments. He knew how to attack America.
As a doctor who claimed to be on his way to work in the sprawling refugee camps, he had his Lebanese passport stamped without any difficulty. Skirting the taxi drivers and assorted hustlers, he turned left in the trash-strewn parking lot and found a public bus that would take him into Damascus.
At the city’s main bus depot he checked his two bags at the stored- luggage counter, exited a side entrance and started to walk. He was determined to leave as little evidence as possible of his movements and, for that reason, he wouldn’t even take a cab.
For over an hour he made his way down dusty roads and through increasingly grim neighbourhoods – Damascus is home to almost two million people, five hundred thousand of whom are impoverished Palestinian refugees.
At last, at the intersection of two freeways, he found what he was looking for. Beneath the elevated roads was a no man’s land, a petrified forest of concrete pylons blackened by diesel fumes. The area was decorated by coloured lights, limp flags and quotes from the Qur’an which attested to the proprietors’ love of honesty. They were used-car lots.
Here, at the bottom of the automotive food chain, the Saracen chose an ancient Nissan Sunny. While the salesman praised the skill of a man who could see past the rust and find the diamond on the lot, the Saracen paid in cash. He added an extra five Syrian pounds in order to dispense with the transfer papers, and headed off into the dusk. The car burnt more oil than gas but the Saracen didn’t care – transport was only the vehicle’s secondary purpose. The primary one was accommodation. He knew that even in cheap hotels people remembered too much, and he spent three hours driving the city before he found a secluded area at the back of a supermarket parking lot and took up residence.
Over the weeks that followed he assembled the material he needed for the task ahead and let his personal hygiene go to hell. He started wearing clothes that were increasingly grimy and, while this might have offended his own standards, he had little choice – his plan depended on him being a perfect version of a homeless man. Finally, after one long surveillance trip to the battlefield, he was ready.
On the outskirts of Damascus, a four-storey glass and concrete building stood almost alone. The sign out front said THE SYRIAN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MEDICINE, but its exact purpose was unclear – nobody could remember the last time the country’s leaders sought medical treatment anywhere except in the private clinics of London or Paris.
Because Western intelligence was worried that the building was being used for nuclear or biological research, one of eight US satellites which patrolled the Middle East kept the institute under constant surveillance. It photographed faces through windows, recorded all deliveries and monitored the chemical signature of emissions but, unfortunately, didn’t take any photos of the immediate surroundings. As a result, there have never been any images of the homeless man who, according to a later report by the Syrian secret police, arrived in bits and pieces.
Early one Friday evening a security guard, passing through a garden at the end of the building, saw that an old tarp had been strung between two palms, colonizing under its shade a stand-pipe used to water the plants. A few days later a tiny cooking ring, a salvaged gas bottle and a battered cool-box also took up residence. But still the scores of people who walked by on their way from the parking lot to the front of the institute hadn’t actually seen the homesteader – not even after a well-worn copy of the Qur’an in an antique binding and two threadbare blankets appeared.
By then it was too late to do anything about it – Ramadan, the ninth month in the Islamic calendar and by far its most sacred, had started. The holy book on the blanket acted as a mute reminder to everyone that beggars, travellers and the poor have to be provided for under Islam. What True Believer would have a homeless man removed during Ramadan?
It was only then, protected by his religion, that the Saracen appeared, abandoning the Nissan in the supermarket parking lot, emerging on foot out of the dry scrub, settling in under the tarp as if he already belonged, which I’m sure was his plan. Bearded and ragged, wearing the anonymous long tunic and headdress of the countless thousands of Palestinian refugees, he cracked open the stand-pipe for some drinking water and started reading the Qur’an.