The Afghan

To overcome the latter danger, they use the hundi system, which, with variations, is as old as the first caliphate. Hundi is based on the total-trust concept, which any lawyer will advise against. But it works because any money launderer who cheated his customer would soon be out of business or worse. The payer hands over his money in cash to the hundi man in place A and asks that his friend in place B shall receive the equivalent minus the hundi man’s cut. The hundi man has a trusted partner, usually a relative in place B. He informs his partner, and instructs him to make the money available-all in cash-to the payer’s friend who will identify himself thus.

Given the tens of millions of Muslims who send money back to families in the home country, and given that there are neither computers nor even checkable dockets, and given that it is all in cash and both payers and receivers can use pseudonyms, the money movements are virtually impossible to intercept or trace. For communications, the solution lies in hiding the terrorist messages in three-figure codes which can be e-mailed or texted round the world. Only the recipient, with a decipher list of up to three hundred such number groups, can work out the message. This works for brief instructions and warnings. Occasionally, a lengthy and exact text must travel halfway round the world. Only the West is always in a hurry. The East has patience. If it takes so long, then it takes that long. The Rasha sailed that night and made her way back to Gwadar. There, a loyal emissary, alerted in Karachi down the coast by a text message, had arrived on his motorcycle. He took the letter and rode north across Pakistan to the small but fanatic town of Miram Shah. There, the man trusted enough to go into the high peaks of South Waziristan was waiting at the named chaikhana and the sealed package changed hands again. The reply came back the same way. It took ten days. But Dr. al-Khattab did not stay in the Arabian Gulf. He flew to Cairo, and then due west to Morocco. There, he interviewed and selected the four North Africans who would become part of the second crew. Because he was still not under surveillance, his journey appeared on no one’s radar.

When the handsome cards were dealt, Mr. Wei Wing Li received a pair of twos. Short, squat and toadlike, his shoulders were surmounted by a football of a head and a face deeply pitted with smallpox. But he was good at his job. He and his crew had arrived at the hidden creek on the Zamboanga peninsula two days before the Java Star. Their journey from China, where they featured in the criminal underworld of Guangdong, had not involved the inconvenience of passports or visas. They had simply boarded a freighter whose captain had been amply rewarded, and had thus arrived off Jolo Island, where two speedboats out of the Filipino creeks had taken them off.

Mr. Wei had greeted his host, Mr. Lampong, and the local Abu Sayyaf chieftain who had recommended him, inspected the living quarters for his dozen crewmen, taken the fifty percent of his fee “up front” and asked to see the workshops. After a lengthy inspection, he counted the tanks of oxygen and acetylene, and pronounced himself satisfied. Then he studied the photos taken in Liverpool. When the Java Star was finally in the creek, he knew what had to be done and set about it.

Ship transformation was his specialty, and over fifty cargo vessels plying the seas of Southeast Asia with false names and papers also had false shapes thanks to Mr. Wei. He had said he needed two weeks and had been given three, but not an hour longer. In that time, the Java Star was going to become the Countess of Richmond. Mr. Wei did not know that. He did not need to know. In the photos he studied, the name of the vessel had been air-brushed out. Mr.

Wei was not bothered with names or papers. It was shapes that concerned him. There would be parts of the Java Star to cut out and others to cut off. There would be features to be fashioned from welded steel. But most of all, he would create six long, steel sea containers that would occupy the deck from below the bridge to the forepeak in three pairs.

Yet they would not be real. From all sides, and from above, they would appear authentic down to the Hapag-Lloyd’s markings. They would pass inspection at a range of a few feet. Yet inside, they would have no interior walls; they would constitute a long gallery with a hinged, removable roof, and access through a new door, to be cut in the bulkhead below the bridge and then disguised to be invisible unless one knew the location of the release catch. What Mr. Wei and his team would not do was the painting. The Filipino terrorists would do that, and the ship’s new name would be applied after he had left. The day he fired up his oxyacetylene cutters, the Countess of Richmond was passing through the Suez Canal.

When Ali Aziz al-Khattab returned to the villa, he was a changed man. He ordered the shackles removed from his prisoner, and invited him to share his table at lunch. His eyes glittered with a deep excitement. “I have communicated with the sheikh himself,” he purred. Clearly, the honor consumed him. The reply was not written. It had been confided in the mountains to the messenger verbally, and he had memorized it. This is also a common practice in the higher reaches of Al Qaeda.

The messenger had been brought all the way to the Arabian Gulf, and when the Rasha docked the message had been given word for word to Dr. al-Khattab. “There is one last formality,” he said. “Would you please raise the hem of your dishdasha to the midthigh?”

Martin did so. He knew nothing of al-Khattab’s scientific discipline, only that he had a doctorate. He prayed it was not in dermatology. The Kuwaiti examined the puckered scar with keen attention. It was exactly where he was told it would be. It had the six stitches sutured into place in a Jaji cave eighteen years earlier by a man he revered.

“Thank you, my friend. The sheikh himself sends his personal greetings. What an incredible honor. He and the doctor remembered the young warrior and the words spoken.

“He has authorized me to include you in a mission that will inflict on the Great Satan a blow so terrible that even the destruction of the towers will seem minor.

“You have offered your life to Allah. The offer is accepted. You will die gloriously, a true shahid. You and your fellow martyrs will be spoken of a thousand years from now.”

After three weeks of wasted time. Dr. al-Khattab was now in a hurry. The resources of Al Qaeda down the entire coasts were called upon. A barber came to trim the shaggy mane to a Western-style haircut. He also prepared to shave off the beard. Martin protested. As a Muslim and as an Afghan, he wanted his beard. Al-Khattab conceded it could be clipped to a neat Vandyke around the point of the chin, but no longer.

Suleiman himself took full-face photos, and twenty-four hours later appeared with a perfect passport, showing the bearer to be a marine engineer from Bahrain, known to be a staunchly pro-Western sultanate. A tailor came, took measurements and reappeared with shoes, socks, shirt, tie and dark gray suit, along with a small valise to carry them. The traveling party prepared to leave the next day. Suleiman, who turned out to be from Abu Dhabi, would be going all the way, accompanying the Afghan. The other two were “muscle,” locally produced, locally recruited and dispensable. The villa, having served its purpose, would be scoured and abandoned.

As he prepared to leave before them, Dr. al-Khattab turned to Martin. “I envy you, Afghan. You can never know how much. You have fought for Allah, bled for Him, taken pain and the foulness of the infidel for Him. And now you will die for Him. If only I could be with you.” He held out his hand, English style, then recalled that he was an Arab and embraced the Afghan. At the door, he turned one final time. “You will be in paradise before me, Afghan. Save a place for me there.