The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(35)
Najwa grimaced. She switched off three monitors and changed the channel on the fourth to Fox News. The blowback about the president’s stumble would be instant. A ticker across the bottom of the screen already announced: Freshwater blunders over DC car bomb, promises to play with terrorists. The host currently live was Beau Clarkson, a former communications director for the Prometheus Group. A portly man nudging sixty, he turned to his guest, Heather Bowles, a Tea Party–backed congressional candidate.
“Heather, how is our commander in chief going to track down the DC bomber when she cannot even finish a sentence?” he asked.
Bowles, a rangy brunette in her forties, laughed out loud, throwing her head back before she spoke. “Beau, this is what I have been saying all along. It’s barely ten days since the president survived an attempted assassination. Lord knows, I have plenty of issues with the president, but this was a heinous attack not just on her, but on America and its values. She can’t speak properly, let alone command an intensive counterterrorism operation. She needs a rest. A long one.”
Clarkson nodded, and looked serious. “But the White House doctors say she is fit to return to work.”
“The White House doctors.” Bowles snorted derisively. “You and I both know she was never fit to start work. We still don’t even know what kind of toxin was administered. Ten days ago the president nearly died, and we are supposed to believe that she can run the country when we are under attack? The DC bomb could have been the worst terrorist outrage since 9/11, in the heart of our capital. We need leadership from the White House. We don’t need an invalid in the Oval Office.”
Fox News was leading the charge, but Najwa knew an army would quickly go on the attack. She watched Clarkson and Bowles’s back-and-forth for a couple more minutes, then checked her Twitter feed on her computer. A hashtag was already trending: #playdeadinthewater
She shook her head and switched off the television. Najwa was an experienced reporter, but the public capacity to generate vitriol and hatred still had the power to unsettle her. The speed and timing of the tweets indicated a high level of planning and organization. Whoever was directing the Twitter storm had been waiting to pounce. Even if Freshwater had not stumbled, the attack would have been launched anyway on some other pretext. It would not be difficult, she knew, to whip the same people up into a frenzy against Al-Jazeera, or even her personally.
She glanced at the door to the office. Not for the first time, she worried about security. This building was full of spies, many of whom were intensely interested in the work of the Arab world’s most influential television station. She had thought about asking for a CCTV link to the Safety and Security Service operations room, but that would mean staff there could watch her and her colleagues while they were at work so it wasn’t an option. And in any case, who knew who was watching the UN? Back in 2004, a British politician in then prime minister Tony Blair’s government had caused a scandal by revealing that the SG’s office was bugged by MI6, the British foreign intelligence service. The ensuing furor resulted in wry smiles throughout the complex, for this was hardly news to UN insiders. A door code and an alarm were adequate protection against thieves. But a hostile organization, like the Saudi Mukhabarat or Iran’s secret service, known as VAJA, would easily be able to get past them.
Her phone beeped, so she picked it up and looked at the screen. A new tweet from a prioritized account: @darkstone
D.C. bomb was loaded with shrapnel. Pieces now being tested for possible chemical/bio-contaminants. Who or what is Al-Jaysh al-Arbaeen?
Najwa processed what she had just read. Contaminated shrapnel. Ugh. New York Avenue led directly onto Pennsylvania Avenue near the site of the White House. The streets around the president’s residence were always packed, with tourists and locals, and the carnage would have been terrible. The claim of responsibility by the Army of Forty had appeared from nowhere, sent to the news agencies. @darkstone was asking the right question. All Najwa knew was that Jaysh was Arabic for army while Arbaeen meant forty.
She spent the next twenty minutes trying to find out more. Modern-day terror groups, especially Islamic ones, were usually deft users of the Internet and social media. But the Army of Forty had no website, Twitter handle, Facebook page, or Instagram account. Her Arabic-language Internet searches did not yield anything. Nor were there any leads in the jihadi deepweb, the clandestine corner of the Internet where the extremists gathered on restricted-entry forums using code names. Then it came to her.
The Shia holy day of Ashura.
After which came the Shia holy day of Arbaeen.
She opened a new window in her browser and typed in “www.farsi.com.” A virtual Farsi-character keyboard appeared, and she began typing rapidly.
14
Yael stared again at the screen of her phone, half-hoping she had imagined the message. She had not. Isis Franklin was dead, found hanged in her prison cell in Istanbul. Yael placed her phone on the table in front of her, trying to disentangle the flurry of emotions and memories.
Isis sitting next to her on the bench on Dag Hammarskj?ld Plaza, just by the UN building, trying to persuade her to come out to party at Zone. The gold flecks in her dark eyes shining, her black hair pulled back tight from her forehead.
“Don’t be coy, babe. You are a star. The whole building’s talking about you. Everyone wants to meet you. Don’t think. Just do.”