The Black Widow

GID HEADQUARTERS, AMMAN

FAREED BARAKAT KNEW MORE ABOUT ISIS than any other intelligence officer in the world, and with good reason. The movement had its roots in the grim Amman suburb of Zarqa, where, in a two-story house overlooking a derelict cemetery, there had once lived a man named Ahmad Fadil Nazzal al-Khalayleh, a heavy drinker, a vandal, a vicious street brawler who had so many tattoos the neighborhood children referred to him as “the green man.” His mother was a devout Muslim who believed that only Islam could save her troubled son. She enrolled him for religious instruction at the al-Hussein Ben Ali Mosque, and it was there al-Khalayleh found his true calling. He quickly became a radical and a committed enemy of the Jordanian monarchy, which he was determined to topple with force. He spent several years inside the GID’s secret prisons, including a stint in the notorious desert fortress at al-Jafr. The leader of his cellblock was Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a firebrand preacher who was one of the foremost theoreticians of jihadism. In 1999, when a young, untested king ascended to the throne after the death of his father, he decided to release more than a thousand criminals and political prisoners in a traditional gesture of goodwill. Two of the men he freed were al-Maqdisi and his violent pupil from Zarqa.

By then, the former street brawler with many tattoos was known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Not long after his release, he made his way to Afghanistan and pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And in March 2003, with the American invasion of Iraq looming, he slipped into Baghdad and formed the resistance cells that would eventually come to be known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. The wave of beheadings and spectacular sectarian bombings carried out by Zarqawi and his associates pushed the country to the brink of all-out civil war. He was the prototype of a new kind of Islamic extremist, willing to use horrifying violence to shock and terrify. Even Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, rebuked him.

An American air strike ended Zarqawi’s life in June 2006, and by the end of the decade al-Qaeda in Iraq had been decimated. But in 2011 two events conspired to revive its fortunes: the outbreak of civil war in Syria and the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. Now known as ISIS, the group rose from the ashes and rushed into the power vacuum along the Syria–Iraq border. The land under its control stretched from the cradle of civilization to the doorstep of Europe. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was squarely in its sights. So, too, was Israel.

Among the thousands of young Muslims from the Middle East and Europe who were drawn to the siren song of ISIS was a young Jordanian named Jalal Nasser. Like Zarqawi, Nasser was from a prominent East Bank tribe, the Bani Hassan, though his family was better off than the Khalaylehs of Zarqa. He attended a private secondary school in Amman and King’s College in London. Soon after the outbreak of civil war in Syria, however, he met with an ISIS recruiter in Amman and inquired about making his way to the caliphate. The recruiter advised Jalal that he could be more useful elsewhere.

“In Europe?” asked Gabriel.

Fareed nodded.

“How do you know this?”

“Sources and methods,” said Fareed, which meant he had no interest in answering Gabriel’s question.

“Why not take him off the streets?”

“Jalal is from a good family, a family that has been loyal to the monarchy for a long time. If we had arrested him, it would have caused problems.” A careful smile. “Collateral damage.”

“So you put him on an airplane to London and waved good-bye.”

“Not entirely. Every time he comes back to Amman, we bring him in for a little chat. And we watch him from time to time in England to make certain he isn’t plotting against us.”

“Did you tell the British about him?”

Silence.

“What about your friends at Langley?”

More silence.

“Why not?”

“Because we didn’t want to turn a small problem into a big problem. These days, that seems to be the American way.”

“Careful, Fareed. You never know who’s listening.”

“Not here,” he said, glancing around his vast office. “It’s perfectly secure.”

“Says who?”

“Langley.”

Gabriel smiled.

“So why are you so interested in Jalal?” asked Fareed.

Gabriel handed him another photograph.

“The woman from the Paris attack?”

Gabriel nodded. Then he instructed Fareed to look carefully at the man seated alone in the corner of the café, with an open laptop computer.

“Jalal?”

“In the flesh.”

“Any chance it’s a coincidence?”

Gabriel handed the Jordanian two more photos: Safia Bourihane and Jalal Nasser on the rue de Rivoli, Safia Bourihane and Jalal Nasser on the Champs-Élysées.

“I guess not.”

“There’s more.”

Gabriel gave Fareed two more photos: Jalal Nasser with Margreet Janssen at a restaurant in Amsterdam, Jalal Nasser holding his recently slapped cheek on a street in the red-light district.

“Shit,” said Fareed softly.

“The Office concurs.”

Fareed returned the photos. “Who else knows about this?”

“Paul Rousseau.”

“Alpha Group?”

Gabriel nodded.

“They’re quite good.”

“You’ve worked with them?”

“On occasion.” Fareed shrugged. “As a rule, France’s problems come from other parts of the Arab world.”

“Not anymore.” Gabriel returned the photos to his briefcase.

“I assume you have Jalal under watch.”

“As of last night.”

“Have you had a chance to peek at that laptop?”

“Not yet. You?”

“We drained it the last time we brought him in for a chat. It was clean as a whistle. But that doesn’t mean anything. Jalal is very good with computers. They’re all very good. And getting better by the day.”

Fareed started to light one of his English cigarettes but stopped. It seemed that Gabriel’s aversion to tobacco was well known to the GID.

“I don’t suppose you’ve mentioned any of this to the Americans.”

“Who?”

“What about the British?”

“In passing.”

“There’s no such thing when it comes to the British. Furthermore,” said Fareed with his newsreader formality, “I know for a fact they’re terrified that they’re going to be hit next.”

“They should be terrified.”

Fareed ignited his gold lighter and touched his cigarette to the slender flame. “So what was Jalal’s connection to Paris and Amsterdam?”

“I’m not sure yet. He might be just a recruiter or talent spotter. Or he might be the project manager.” Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Or maybe,” he said finally, “he’s the one they call Saladin.”

Fareed Barakat looked up sharply.

“Obviously,” said Gabriel, “you’ve heard the name.”

“Yes,” conceded Fareed, “I’ve heard it.”

“Is he?”

“Not a chance.”

“Does he exist?”

“Saladin?” Fareed nodded slowly. “Yes, he exists.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s our worst nightmare. Other than that,” said Fareed, “I haven’t a clue.”

15

GID HEADQUARTERS, AMMAN

OF THE TERRORIST’S NAMESAKE, HOWEVER, the GID chief knew a great deal. Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, or Saladin, was born into a prominent family of Kurds, in the town of Tikrit, in approximately 1138. His father was a soldier of fortune. Young Saladin lived for a time in Baalbek, in present-day Lebanon, and in Damascus, where he drank wine, pursued women, and played polo by candlelight. Damascus was the city he preferred over all others. Later, he would describe Egypt, the financial hub of his empire, as a whore who tried to separate him from his faithful wife Damascus.

His realm stretched from Yemen to Tunisia and north to Syria. It was ruled over by a hodgepodge of princes, emirs, and greedy relatives, all held together by Saladin’s diplomatic skills and considerable charisma. He used violence to great effect, but found it distasteful. To his favorite son, Zahir, he once remarked: “I warn you against shedding blood, indulging in it and making a habit of it, for blood never sleeps.”

He was lame and sickly, watched over constantly by a team of twenty-one doctors, including the philosopher and Talmudic scholar Maimonides, who was appointed his court physician in Cairo. Lacking in personal vanity—in Jerusalem he once laughed uproariously when a courtier splashed his silk robes with mud—he had little interest in personal riches or earthly delights. He was happiest when surrounded by poets and men of learning, but mainly it was the concept of jihad, or holy war, that consumed him. He built mosques and Islamic centers of learning across his lands and lavished money and favors on preachers and religious scholars. His goal was to re-create the zeal that had allowed Islam’s earliest followers to conquer half of the known world. And once the sacred rage had been rekindled, he focused it on the one prize that had eluded him: Jerusalem.

A smallish outpost fed by springs, the city occupied a strategic high ground at the crossroads of three continents, a geographical sin for which it would be punished throughout the ages. Besieged, plundered, captured and recaptured, Jerusalem had been ruled by Jebusites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and, of course, the Jews. When Omar al-Khattab, a close confidant of Muhammad, conquered Jerusalem in 639 with a small band of Arab cameleers from the Hejaz and Yemen, it was a predominantly Christian city. Four and a half centuries later, Pope Urban II would dispatch an expeditionary force numbering several thousand European Christians to reclaim Jerusalem from the Muslims, whom he regarded as a people “alien to God.” The Christian soldiers, who would one day be known as Crusaders, breached the city’s defenses on the night of July 13, 1099, and slaughtered its inhabitants, including three thousand men, women, and children who had taken shelter inside the great al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

It was Saladin, the son of a Kurdish soldier of fortune from Tikrit, who would return the favor. After humiliating the thirst-crazed Crusader force at the Battle of Hattin near Tiberias—Saladin personally sliced off the arm of Raynald of Châtillon—the Muslims reclaimed Jerusalem after a negotiated surrender. Saladin tore down the large cross that had been erected atop the Dome of the Rock, scrubbed its courts with Damascene rosewater to remove the last foul traces of the infidel, and sold thousands of Christians into slavery or the harem. Jerusalem would remain under Islamic control until 1917, when the British seized it from the Ottoman Turks. And when the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1924, so, too, did the last Muslim caliphate.

But now ISIS had declared a new caliphate. At present, it included only portions of western Iraq and eastern Syria, with Raqqa as its capital. Saladin, the new Saladin, was ISIS’s chief of external operations—or so believed Fareed Barakat and the Jordanian General Intelligence Department. Unfortunately, the GID knew almost nothing else about Saladin, including his real name.

“Is he Iraqi?”

“He might be. Or he might be a Tunisian or a Saudi or an Egyptian or an Englishman or one of the other lunatics who’ve rushed to Syria to live in this new Islamic paradise of theirs.”

“Surely, the GID doesn’t believe that.”

“We don’t,” Fareed conceded. “We think he’s probably a former Iraqi military officer. Who knows? Maybe he’s from Tikrit, just like Saladin.”

“And Saddam.”

“Ah, yes, let’s not forget Saddam.” Fareed exhaled a lungful of smoke toward the high ceiling of his office. “We had our problems with Saddam, but we warned the Americans they would rue the day they toppled him. They didn’t listen, of course. Nor did they listen when we asked them to do something about Syria. Not our problem, they said. We’re putting the Middle East in our rearview mirror. No more American wars in Muslim lands. And now look at the situation. A quarter of a million dead, hundreds of thousands more streaming into Europe, Russia and Iran working together to dominate the Middle East.” He shook his head slowly. “Have I left anything out?”

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