Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [89]
“What kind of information were you hoping to get?”
“Names, places, anything actionable. But he was also a computer technician and we thought he might be our back door into the government’s counterintelligence network.”
Jack frowned. “Why would you want access to that?”
“To explore. We think that over the last several years, helped by the politicians who were in their pocket, the Hand of Allah has been slowly infiltrating the British government with hadist sleeper agents like al-Fida. Particularly the Home and Foreign Offices. All the way to the top. Which means they’d have access to and control of the counterterrorist branches, like MI5 and—”
“MI6,” Jack said. “Adam Swain.”
She nodded. “He and his gang of thugs may not look like your average Muslim radicals, but they are sympathizers. We believe they were bought off by some very deep pockets.”
“And you think Zuabi’s behind all this?”
“Without a doubt,” Sara said. “But he’s very clever about it. He keeps everything on a need-to-know basis. I don’t think even his own men—the true believers—are aware of how far this reaches. Even though al-Fida worked for the government, I never got the impression he knew anything about Swain and the others. Zuabi likes things fragmented so that it’s not so easy to connect the dots.”
“That still doesn’t tell me about Copeland. How did he fit?”
“Copeland was working with us,” she said, “a clandestine consultant, I’d guess you’d say.”
Jack nodded. Typical Bob. “So he knew about al-Fida all along.”
“Al-Fida—and several others.”
“What kind of ‘others’?” That didn’t sound good.
“When Abdal left for California a few weeks ago, he didn’t say anything to me about his real purpose in going there because that would have betrayed his oath to Zuabi. But I knew that his trip wasn’t for consulate business, so we started taking a closer look. We discovered that the Home Office had sent several employees to San Francisco over the last two years, all Muslims, all traveling on diplomatic passports.”
“A sleeper cell?”
She nodded. “We think they’re planning something in the U.S. That exploding Land Rover was a good indication that we’re right. Al-Fida was like a child, no impulse control and a desire to be patted on the head—I can certainly attest to that. When he went off the rails, the Hand of Allah had to scramble to cover their tracks. They couldn’t afford for him to expose them and interfere with their real objective.”
“So why didn’t they just kill him?”
“I suppose Zuabi had his reasons,” Sara said. “Perhaps he wished to allow a loyal follower to make peace with God or take his own life. That would have been honorable. Either way, after Abdal returned to London he was very subdued. If not for me, for wanting to spend more time together, I believe he would have died by his own hand.”
“Not that I believe Swain, but he told me that killing al-Fida was not on his to-do list.”
“That may be true,” she said. “I think Abdal was killed by a man who is devoted to Zuabi, another true believer.”
Jack suddenly remembered the guy he nearly bumped into last night as he left the pub near al-Fida’s house, a dark, angular-faced man with a wispy black goatee who had seemed to be in a hurry. Jack had thought the man was just another Muslim resident of the neighborhood, but maybe he was wrong.
“You have a name?” he asked.
Sara hesitated.
“Maybe I know him,” Jack prodded.
“Hassan Haddad,” she said. “He’s one of the Hand of Allah’s top soldiers, recruited when he was a child by Zuabi himself. Very skilled, quite ruthless. We picked him up on a cell phone call, tailed him for several days, followed him to Bulgaria where we think he may have been in contact with an arms merchant named Anton Chilikov. We don’t know if any purchases were made, but Haddad killed one of our agents to prevent us