I fumbled through my carry-on bag until I found my toothbrush and paste. Then I turned off the overhead light and the room was illuminated merely by the greenish glow of our electronic gear.
Just then, the bathroom door opened and Yael came out. I slid past her into the bathroom and took a cold shower. When I finally came out of the bathroom and clicked off the light, Yael was already in bed and under the covers. She just looked back at me and shrugged.
The room was tiny. There was nowhere else to lie down. If there’d been a full bathtub instead of a mere shower stall, at least I could have slept in the tub. Without another option, however, I reluctantly climbed into the bed and thought the entire hotel must be able to hear it creak. If I could have, I would have moved myself over to the very edge of the mattress, but there was literally no room to move at all. And so I lay there, trying not to move, listening to her breathing.
Sometime later, she turned over, and the bed made a terrible racket. Once she’d settled, her mouth was right by my left ear. “I’m sorry, J. B.,” she whispered.
“For what?” I whispered back, surprised.
“For the way I treated you at first. And for not telling you sooner.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m a big boy. I’ll be okay. I’m glad you’re happy.”
“I’m not sure I’m the kind of girl that can do happy,” she said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I do. You know what I see, what I know, where I am, where my job takes me. Not exactly conducive to being a happy person.”
“Maybe it’s time to stop.”
“Maybe it is.”
“I’m going to stop,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“When this is done, I’m going to put in my letter of resignation at the Times.”
“Why? You’re such a great reporter.”
I didn’t reply. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, straining with every ounce of my being not to turn and kiss this woman.
“I don’t know,” I said finally, deciding I was better off talking than not. “I think I’m just through.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe this is it for me, too.”
“There’s always the prime minister’s office,” I said, trying to be helpful.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “If I’m done, I need to be really done. I need to start a new life—a real life.”
“Meaning what?”
“Being a wife. Being a mom. Taking my kids to the park, to the beach, to the mountains, teaching them to read, to write, to sing.”
“You’ll be good at that,” I said.
“You think so?” she asked.
“I do.”
And a few moments later, she nestled up next to me and fell sound asleep.
94
NIZIP, TURKEY
I didn’t sleep that night.
I couldn’t. For the next few hours, I just listened to the monotonous ticking of my grandfather’s pocket watch on the nightstand beside me and prayed for strength and mercy. In my forty-some-odd years, I’d made a lot of mistakes, done a lot of things I wasn’t proud of. But that was the past. That was behind me. I was on a new path now. I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to honor my Lord. I just wasn’t sure I was going to make it.
By God’s grace, I made it through the night without kissing the beautiful and unavailable woman sleeping beside me. And in the morning, the new day brought very good news.
Yael grabbed the satphone off the floor on her side of the bed, beside her MP5, and took the call from Dutch. “You’re kidding,” she said. “That’s incredible. Okay, we’re on it.”
“What?” I asked, suddenly feeling a jolt of adrenaline surge through my system.
“They think they may have found him.”
“Who? Khalif?”
“They’re not certain,” she explained. “But a few minutes ago, Al-Siddiq was let out of his cell. Someone apologized to him, told him they had to make sure he hadn’t been compromised. Then—well, here, let’s take a look.”
She jumped out of bed, grabbed her laptop, and powered it up. In a moment we had our headphones on and were watching video footage transmitted from the mountain. The time stamp read, 07:12:36.
At first, I didn’t recognize Al-Siddiq. He was no longer wearing an oxford shirt and tweed blazer. Rather, he had on a traditional white thawb similar to the one I had worn entering Turkey. His head was covered in a red- and white-checked headdress known as a ghutra, secured to his head with a classic igal, a thick black cord that was worn doubled. He was strolling across the courtyard with another man, about his same height, also dressed in traditional white robes, though this one was wearing a ceremonial outer cloak known as a bisht. This man’s ghutra completely obscured his face from anything but a direct, eye-to-eye view.
“Thank you for coming, father,” the shrouded man said, speaking so softly we had to play it back several times to be sure.
“It is my honor,” Al-Siddiq said.
“Ahmed and Faisal explained their procedures?”
“They did, and of course I fully understand.”
“I hope you know they meant you no harm.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“We cannot be too careful.”
“I know,” Al-Siddiq said.
“You are my guest of honor.”
“No, Your Excellency; it is my honor completely.”
“So would you like to see her?”
“Is that possible?”
“It is surely possible.”
“Then, yes, absolutely, I would love that.”
“Good—she will be here in a matter of moments.”
“She is coming? Here? Now?” Al-Siddiq asked.
“They are bringing her even as we speak.”
The satphone rang. Yael answered it and motioned me to patch in through the app on my phone. It was Ari Shalit.
“Have you seen it?” Shalit asked, urgency thick in his voice.
“We’re watching it now,” she said.
“Both of you?”
“Yes.”
“J. B. is with you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m here,” I said.
“Good—so is it him?”
“Maybe,” I said tentatively.
“It looks like him,” Shalit said.
“I can’t see his face,” I said.
“Can you tell by his walk, his gait?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“But does it sound like him?”
“Hard to say,” I confessed. “He’s speaking low, almost mumbling. That’s not like him. That’s not how he was with me.”
“Maybe he’s different with his father-in-law,” Shalit said.
“Maybe.”
“But of what you could hear, does it sound like him—the style, the cadence, the air of authority?” Shalit pressed.
“Maybe—it’s possible—it’s a start,” I replied. “We’ll need more, but—”
Shalit cut me off. “No, no, you’re not understanding the situation,” he said. “I need an answer. I need to know now. The prime minister needs to know—not later, not tomorrow—we need to know right now, this second.”
“Why? What’s the rush?” I pushed back.
“If it is Khalif, how long do you think he’s going to stay in that compound?” Shalit asked. “A few hours? A day? This is Abu Khalif. This is the emir of the Islamic State. He could leave in the middle of the night. He could leave in the middle of this conversation. This is the most wanted man on the planet. Just because we’ve found him—if we’ve found him—that doesn’t mean we’ll know where he is tomorrow.”
Yael looked at me. I could see strain and fatigue in her eyes.
“You’re the expert, Mr. Collins,” Shalit pressed. “This is why you’re here. No one in the West—no one outside his inner circle—has spent as much time with Abu Khalif as you have.”
“Right now I’m looking at a man in a robe, with a shroud over his face, mumbling, practically talking under his breath, and you want a 100 percent positive ID?”
“It’s not what I want,” he shot back. “The prime minister and the entire security cabinet are assembled. They’re in the Kirya, in the war room. They’re waiting for an answer. Are we go or no go?”
“I need a few minutes,” I said.
“You don’t have a few minutes,” Shalit warned me. “Right now there’s a caravan of women and children heading toward the compound. As best we can tell, all four of Khalif’s wives and all of his children have been staying in Nizip, and now they’re headed to see Khalif—if it’s him—and they’re almost there. Dutch has a sniper rifle out. He’s in position. He has this guy in his sights. He’s ready to take the shot—and risk the consequences of two hundred ISIS fighters going crazy and storming up the mountain—but we need an answer, and we need it now.”
95
My mind was racing and the pressure was enormous.
It did seem like Khalif, but could I be certain? If I was wrong, I’d be condemning an innocent man to death. Well, maybe not innocent. This was clearly a senior ISIS commander. He was surrounded by two hundred or more ISIS fighters. But was he the emir or not? For that, I needed more data. I needed more time. But Shalit wasn’t going to give it to me.
So far, all the pieces of the puzzle were consistent with this being Khalif. The shrouded man had called Al-Siddiq “father,” a term of honor, affection, respect. He’d apologized to Al-Siddiq for having his men interrogate him. And he had used the names Ahmed and Faisal—the first names of two of the Baqouba brothers. It would make sense they would be with Khalif, helping to protect him and vet his guests. What’s more, Al-Siddiq seemed excited to see someone, a woman, and the shrouded man seemed to have planned ahead for Al-Saddiq to see her. Could it be Aisha, the professor’s daughter, the emir’s wife?
In almost every way, it added up. But there was a real risk. What I was seeing wasn’t hard evidence. There could be other Ahmeds. There could be other Faisals. Al-Siddiq was Khalif’s father-in-law, but he was the theological mentor of the entire Islamic State movement. There could be any number of other senior leaders who revered him as “father.” And we hadn’t actually heard any mention of a wife or a daughter, much less the name Aisha.
“Collins,” Shalit pushed, “I need an answer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t. I don’t have enough data.”
“You’ve got all you’re going to get.”
“Then my answer is no—I can’t say beyond a doubt that this is Khalif. I’m sorry.”
“Yael, what do you say?” Shalit demanded.
“Don’t ask me that,” she replied.
“I’m not asking,” Shalit said. “I’m ordering you to give me your assessment.”
“You heard the expert,” she demurred. “He spent hours with Khalif. He wants this guy as badly as any of us. But even he can’t say for certain.”
“Can you?” he asked.
Silence.
“You’re the head of the unit tracking him,” Shalit continued. “Collins doesn’t work for us. You do.”
“But you pulled him onto this team over my objections,” she argued. “You didn’t do it out of pity. You did it because he knows what he’s talking about. He knows this guy. He’s seen his face. He’s heard his voice. He’s the expert, and if he’s not sure, then I’m not sure.”
Shalit cursed.
Then Yael nudged me. She was staring at the live video feeds from the mountaintop positions. The women and children had arrived. They were pouring into the compound. Whatever chance we might have had was now lost, and suddenly the line went dead. The call was over. Shalit had hung up.
Yael just stood there, staring at the monitor, the satphone in her hand, not sure what to say or do. I didn’t know either, and I felt sick.
I excused myself and headed into the bathroom and took a shower. By the time I came out, Yael was dressed in faded jeans and a gray sweatshirt and was sitting at the same desk, still watching the real-time video feed of the courtyard. As hundreds of armed men milled about at the edges of the compound, the children all gravitated to the shrouded man sitting under an archway, in the shadows, partially obscured from our view. Meanwhile, Al-Siddiq sat on the other side of the courtyard, beside a woman wearing a headscarf who appeared to be in her late thirties. They spoke in whispers. Our microphones weren’t picking up any of it, but it certainly looked like a man and his married daughter catching up on old times.
Yael looked at me. “It was the right call, J. B. It was. The case was circumstantial. Ari was pushing you too hard, probably because he was being pushed too hard. For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I said, but Yael’s encouragement didn’t erase the gnawing feeling in my gut that I’d just made a very serious error in judgment.
Over the course of the next few hours, we picked up bits of audio—little snatches of sound—that gave me more and more confidence the man we were staring at so intently was, in fact, Abu Khalif. He finally used the name Aisha and then used it several more times. What’s more, he asked Al-Siddiq for an update on the death toll from the attacks in America.
What sealed it for me was when the shrouded man asked for an update on the fatwa. And then came the moment that made my blood run cold.
“Has anyone found him yet?” he asked.
“Who?” Al-Siddiq pressed.
“Collins. Have we tracked him down? Has anyone gotten a lead on his surviving family? If one of our people find them, I don’t want them killed. I want them alive. Make sure all our people know that. Especially James Bradley. I want him captured and brought to the site. I will take my vengeance out on him myself.”
With that, the man I was now certain was Abu Khalif disappeared. He got up, left the courtyard, entered the front door of the mosque, and was completely obscured from our view. For the next three days, while the women and children remained in the compound and Al-Siddiq took a morning and evening stroll, often with his daughter, we did not see Khalif again, nor did we hear his voice.
Shalit was furious, and I couldn’t blame him. The longer Dutch and Pritchard and the others were up on those mountains, the more likely they were going to get spotted and captured. If they were caught, they’d be beheaded, or burned alive, right before our eyes. We were out of options and out of time, and there was no way to sugarcoat it—this was my fault.
96
“What if the women and children leave?” I asked.
It was about three in the morning on the fourth day. Yael and I were drinking bad black coffee we’d heated in a tin pan on a small portable hot plate and watching the monitors so Dutch and Pritchard and the guys in the mountains could get a few hours of shut-eye.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, let’s say the wives and kids all get up and leave one morning; what’s the plan? We haven’t seen Khalif in days. We don’t know where in the compound he actually is at this point. The last time we saw him, he went into the mosque. But he could be anywhere, underground or in one of the two wings. So what if Dutch or the other snipers never get another look at him?”
She looked at me, considering. Then she said, “Honestly? I don’t think it matters whether we can see him or not. Khalif is never leaving that compound.”
“What do you mean? Why do you say that?”
“Think about it. This is where Khalif has chosen to settle himself, his wives, his kids, and his senior leadership. He’s safe here. He’s in a NATO country, safe from air strikes by the U.S. or Israel. The Turkish police aren’t in sight. Neither is the military. He isn’t going anywhere. He’s essentially got carte blanche.”
“Why?”
“Why is the president of Turkey—with his megalomaniacal dreams of becoming an all-powerful sultan and reviving the glories of the Ottoman Empire—allowing the emir of the Islamic State to reside i
n his territory? I have no idea.”
“You think he knows?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no, but let’s face it—the government in Ankara are a bunch of Islamists, and they’re becoming more radicalized every day. Why else have they been letting foreign fighters cross their territory to go fight for ISIS? Should it really surprise us the head of ISIS is living right here?”
“So you guys have to storm the place, like how the Americans got bin Laden in that compound in Pakistan.”
“With the force we’ve got?”
“Well, you’d obviously need more men.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“Dutch has been begging for more manpower, heavier weapons—but the security cabinet says no.”
“Because if a bunch of Israeli commandos get caught or killed on Turkish soil, you’ve just triggered a war with NATO?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“What about the Jordanians? The Egyptians? The emirates? They all want to take out Khalif. They’ve all provided tremendous support. You’ve seen it. This is historic—Israelis and Arabs working so closely on a major intelligence and military operation? It might be unprecedented.”
“But they’re not going to risk being seen as invading a NATO ally either.”
“So where does that leave us?” I asked.
“The Kurds,” Yael replied.
“The Kurds?”
“The Syrian Kurdish rebels, to be precise. They now control most of the border with Turkey, and they hate ISIS with a passion. They also hate the Turks. They want their own country. They want to link up with the Turkish Kurds—between ten and twenty million people—and the Iraqi Kurds to create a unified Republic of Kurdistan.”
“So how does that help us?”
“A few days ago, a squad of Syrian Kurdish rebels near Aleppo got into a firefight with Assad’s forces. The Kurds won. The regime guys were slaughtered. In the process, the Kurds captured a Russian-made surface-to-surface missile launcher—the SS-21 Scarab C. It’s got a range of about 115 miles, and it’s equipped with a GPS-linked guidance system, so it’s pretty accurate.”