Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [57]
The introduction was shot in a park across the street from the U.S. Embassy and contained a raging diatribe about America’s imperialism as well as its moral and cultural decline.
The film transitioned to a montage of American tourists at different attractions across the city, focusing on the heaviest and most unattractive ones he could find. He conducted man-on-the-street interviews, asking Americans their opinions about Islam and the involvement of their country in the affairs of various Muslim nations. All of the responses were then edited to make America look as evil as possible.
In what would become a chilling reminder from beyond the grave, he spliced together a series of shots of unattended bags in churches, parks, sidewalk cafés, metro stations, and department stores.
It ended with Ressam reading several passages from the Qur’an set to a popular jihadist tune from his ancestral home in Algeria. The picture then faded to black, and the music was replaced with the sound of French revelers counting down the final ten seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve. At zero, there was the audio and visual of a large, Hollywood explosion. Scenes of the 2005 Bali bombings were juxtaposed against scenes of supposed American atrocities against Muslim civilians and set to the music of the American national anthem.
Finally, the word fin appeared and the video was finished. There was a reason Ressam had never been able to find any work in the French film industry.
At this moment, though, it made no difference. As Ressam crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain, he had no misgivings, no second thoughts. He was about to launch his greatest production ever. It was all in the name of Allah the most merciful, the most compassionate.
Had he been struck with a change of heart, there would have been nothing he could do about it and he knew it. He understood why the cell phone had been wired to the vest he wore beneath his clothes. If he tried to back out, his handler would complete the job for him—from a distance of course.
Twice he thought he caught sight of the man, but each time he looked back, the figure was gone. The sensation was somewhat disquieting. Why that would bother him considering what he was about to do didn’t make much sense, and the ridiculousness of the emotion made him laugh nervously to himself.
Ressam crushed out his cigarette on the sidewalk and lit another. He held the smoke deep in his lungs and thought about his family. As he exhaled, he banished all worldly emotion from his heart. Like the tendrils of smoke, the last vestiges of humanity within his soul were banished from his body and whisked skyward into the warm Parisian night.
The crowd of tourists thickened as he wound his way deeper into the warren of narrow, twisting streets around the Rue Saint-Séverin. Predominantly off-limits to cars, it was one of the greatest concentrations of restaurants in all of Paris. It had almost every cuisine imaginable. Being in the shadow of Notre Dame guaranteed its popularity with tourists, particularly with Americans.
He had wanted to detonate inside one of the city’s many McDonald’s restaurants and had argued with his handler about it at great length. While the man agreed that it would have been wonderfully symbolic, the idea was to create the largest death toll possible and to make the Americans realize that there was no place they would ever be safe.
Firm in his belief that Islam could only prevail by slaughtering as many nonbelievers as possible, Ressam strode down the middle of the street to the busiest section of restaurants. All of the outdoor areas were packed. He checked his watch. He was right on time.
He unslung the backpack from his shoulder and casually carried it with one hand. Near the entrance to a Greek restaurant was a large sandwich board. It had a picture of a Greek fisherman