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ОглавлениеChapter 18 Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
IN THE FINAL WEEKS OF his brief but portentous life, Farid Khan, murderer of eighteen innocent souls in the land of his birth, left a series of increasingly desperate postings on an Islamic Internet message board lamenting the fact he didn’t have enough money to buy a proper wedding present for his sister. Apparently, he was considering skipping the wedding to avoid embarrassment. But there was just one problem with the story, Dina pointed out. Allah had blessed the Khan family with four boys, but no girls.
“I believe he was referring to a martyrdom payment—a payment he’d been promised by Malik. That’s the Hamas way. Hamas always looks after the posthumous financial needs of its shahids.”
“Did he ever get the money?”
“A week before the attack, he made one final posting saying that he had been granted the means to buy his sister a gift. He would be able to attend the wedding after all, thanks be to Allah.”
“So Malik eventually kept his word.”
“That’s true, but only after his shahid threatened not to go ahead with the mission. The network might have enough cash on hand to fund another round of attacks, but if Rashid and Malik are going to become the next Bin Laden and Zawahiri—”
“They’re going to need an infusion of working capital.”
“Exactly.”
Gabriel stepped forward and gazed at Dina’s galaxy of names, phone numbers, and faces. Then he turned to Lavon and asked, “How much do you think it would take to create a new jihadist terror group with a truly global reach?”
“Twenty million should do it,” Lavon replied. “Maybe a bit more if you want to give them first-class accommodations and travel.”
“That’s a lot of money, Eli.”
“Terror doesn’t come cheap.” Lavon gave Gabriel a sidelong look. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we have two choices. We can sit here staring at our telephone and e-mail matrixes, hoping a piece of actionable intelligence falls into our lap, or . . .” Gabriel’s voice trailed off.
“Or what?”
“Or we can go into the terrorism business ourselves.”
“And how would we do that?”
“We give them the money, Eli. We give them the money.”
There are two basic types of intelligence, Gabriel needlessly reminded his team. There is human intelligence, or “humint” in the jargon of the trade, and signals intelligence, also known as “sigint.” But the ability to track the flow of money in real time through the global banking system had given spies a powerful third form of intelligence gathering sometimes referred to as “finint,” or financial intelligence. For the most part, finint was highly reliable. Money didn’t lie; it simply went where it was told to go. What’s more, the electronic trail of intelligence left by its movements was predictive in nature. The Islamic terrorists had learned long ago how to deceive Western spy agencies with false chatter, but rarely did they invest precious financial resources in deception. Money usually went to real operatives who were engaged in real plots. Follow the money, said Gabriel, and it would illuminate the intentions of Rashid and Malik like the lights of an airport runway.
But how to go about doing it? That was the question Gabriel and his team wrestled over for the remainder of that long and sleepless night. A clever forgery? No, insisted Gabriel, the jihadist world was far too insular for that. If the team tried to create a wealthy Muslim benefactor out of whole cloth, the terrorists would plop him in front of a camera and saw off his head with a butter knife. The money would have to come from someone with unimpeachable jihadist credentials. Otherwise, the terrorists would never accept it. But where to find someone who straddled both sides of the divide? Someone who would be regarded by the jihadists as genuine and yet would still be willing to work on behalf of Israeli and American intelligence. Call the Old Man, Yaakov suggested. In all likelihood, he would have a name at the tip of his nicotine-stained fingers. And if he didn’t, he would surely know where to find one.
As it turned out, Shamron did have a name, which he murmured into Gabriel’s ear, via secure telephone, a few minutes after four a.m. Washington time. Shamron had been watching this person for many years. The approach would be fraught with risk for Gabriel, both personal and professional, but Shamron had in his file drawers a substantial amount of evidence to suggest it might be received in a positive manner. He took the idea to Uzi Navot, and within minutes, Navot signed off on it. And thus, with a stroke of Navot’s ludicrous gold pen, the return of Gabriel Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, was made complete.
The members of the Barak team had engaged in many profound arguments over the years, yet none would ever rival the one that took place within the walls of the house on N Street that morning in December. Chiara dismissed the idea as a dangerous flight of fancy; Dina called it a waste of precious time and resources that would surely come to nothing. Even Eli Lavon, Gabriel’s closest friend and ally, was glum about the prospects for success. “It will turn out to be our version of Rashid,” he said. “We’ll congratulate ourselves on our cleverness. Then, one day, it will blow up in our face.”
Much to everyone’s surprise, it was Sarah who came to Gabriel’s defense. Sarah knew Shamron’s candidate far better than the others, and Sarah believed in the power of redemption. “She’s not her father’s daughter,” Sarah said. “She’s different. She’s trying to change things.”
“That’s true,” said Dina, “but that doesn’t mean she would ever agree to work with us.”
“The worst thing she can do is say no.”
“Maybe,” said Lavon gloomily. “Or maybe the worst thing she can do is say yes.”