The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [164]
Bin Laden still sat with the men in his same casual manner, and it was easy for anyone to approach him. On one occasion, a Sudanese named Abu al-Sha‘tha came into the circle and spoke rudely to bin Laden in front of the other leaders. One of the men, Abu Jandal, recognized the man as a takfiri and offered to sit between him and bin Laden. “There is no need,” bin Laden assured him, but he put his hand on his pistol while he talked.
When the Sudanese takfiri made a sudden movement, Abu Jandal pounced on him and pulled his hands behind his back, sitting on the man until he could no longer move. Bin Laden laughed and said, “Abu Jandal, let the man be!”
But bin Laden and his Egyptian security men had been impressed by the alertness and strength of this loyal follower. Bin Laden gave Abu Jandal a pistol and made him his personal bodyguard. There were only two bullets in the gun, meant to kill bin Laden in the face of capture. Abu Jandal took care to polish the bullets every night, telling himself, “These are Sheikh Osama’s bullets. I pray to God not to let me use them.”
After the humiliation of Prince Turki by Mullah Omar, both the Taliban and bin Laden’s security force were on edge about an expected Saudi response. The Taliban caught a young Uzbek in Khost who was acting strangely. His name was Siddiq Ahmed, and he had grown up in the Kingdom as an expatriate. He admitted that Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh, had hired him to kill bin Laden (Prince Salman denies this). In return, the assassin would receive two million Saudi riyals and Saudi citizenship. “Did you expect that you would be able to kill Sheikh Osama bin Laden and escape from fourteen highly trained guards armed with automatic weapons?” Abu Jandal demanded. The boy was only eighteen, but he looked like a child. “I made a mistake,” he cried. He was dazed and pathetic. Finally, bin Laden said, “Release him.”
IN EARLY FEBRUARY 1999, bin Laden floated into Mike Scheuer’s sights once again. The CIA received intelligence that bin Laden was camping with a group of royal falconers from the United Arab Emirates in the desert south of Kandahar. The tip came from the bodyguard of one of the princes. They were hunting the houbara bustard, an endangered bird legendary for its speed and cunning, as well as its potency as an aphrodisiac. The princes arrived in a C-130, carrying generators, refrigerated trucks, elaborate air-conditioned tents, towering masts for their communications equipment and televisions, and nearly fifty four-by-four pickups, which they would leave behind for their Taliban hosts as gratuities. Scheuer could see the encampment vividly on reconnaissance photos. He could even make out the falcons roosting on their poles. But he could not find bin Laden’s smaller camp, which he knew must be nearby.
Whenever bin Laden set foot in the royal camp, the Emirati bodyguard would report to his American handler in Pakistan, and the information would be on Scheuer’s desk within the hour. Afghan spies placed in a wide circle around the camp confirmed the Saudi’s comings and goings.
Scheuer is tall and rumpled, with glasses and a bristling brown beard. One can imagine his portrait on the wall of a nineteenth-century Prussian estate. He is a driven and demanding person, who sleeps only a few hours a night. Coleman used to notice the employee sign-in sheets with “2:30 a.m.” or some such hour marked by Scheuer’s name. He would usually linger till eight at night. A pious Catholic of the type Coleman knew well, Scheuer had a cold detachment about the job he needed to do. Only a couple of months before, Scheuer had gotten intelligence that bin Laden would be spending