Alan sat back. He expected the imam to ask, “Why this question?” but he didn’t. He seemed perfectly comfortable having shared his point of view, and Alan was inwardly grateful. They finished their tea in silence.
“Wel , I’ve taken up too much of your time, Mohammed. Thank you.” Alan arose and patted the imam on his upper left arm avoiding the proffered hand of the imam and said, “Dinner some time soon?” as he stepped quickly outside.
“That is the best idea I’ve heard al day, young man. Have Aly cal me,” the imam cried out as Alan had about reached his car and waved in response. CASABLANCA, MOROCCO
IT WAS TWILIGHT in Casablanca. The last vestiges of the sun’s omnipotent presence faded upon the western horizon, leaving traces of silver where minutes before gold and pink had reigned.
Inside a garage adjacent to an al eyway stinking of garbage, penury, and hopelessness, two men in Muslim dress worked relentlessly at a poorly lit bench creating a tool of destruction neither completely understood.
The first was cal ed Mustafa Kifta, a man who believed in the rewards of paradise without question. He was pouring over sheets of written instructions taken from the Al Qaeda handbook as if the words, as confusing as they were, had been handed to them by Al ah himself. His older brother, Ibrahim, a zealot who believed the quickest way to paradise was to kil as many infidels as possible in the shortest amount of time, worked feverishly over the device, a smal screwdriver in his hand and a box of crude tools open at his side.
“We must make haste Ibrahim,” Mustafa said, beads of sweat pearling along his brow. “The great ship sails at midnight.”
“Yes, my brother, you’ve reminded me a dozen times in the last hour. But this must be done right. We fol ow the manual step for step and try not to blow ourselves up in the process,” Ibrahim told him patiently. “And when the time is right, we will make our mark on the world and win the favor of Al ah forever.”
“The truth is, I don’t real y care about the virgins awaiting us in paradise, my brother. I am happy with my wife and child.”
“Who knows?” said Ibrahim laughing. “Our deed commands such courage and faith that Al ah wil probably reward me with more virgins than even my imagination can fathom.”
“Wishful thinking, my brother. Wishful thinking.”
The Kifta brothers carried their detonator down to the docks. They had already loaded the bow end of their fishing trawler with enough explosives to topple a good-sized building. Now, they were left with the task of connecting wires from a twelve-volt battery to the safety kil switch and then running them from the detonator to the explosives. They were excited and scared. More than anything, they were committed.
“We drop our mooring at 11:15 exactly,” Ibrahim told his younger brother. “That wil leave us enough time to meet the great ship of the infidels in the deep waters beyond the breakwater.”
“Yes,” was al his brother said in reply.
The “great ship,” as they cal ed it, was in fact the mammoth cruise ship Jupiter. It was scheduled to leave the port of Casablanca at midnight. The vessel’s destination, with a crew and passenger list of nearly three thousand three hundred human beings aboard, was the port of Gibraltar.
The brothers’ plan was simple. Wel , it wasn’t their plan, but it was truly simple. They were to crash their tiny trawler into the hul of the cruise ship at ful throttle, blowing a hole in its hul the size of an elephant, and sending the ship and its passengers to a watery grave. If everything went wel they would undoubtedly be heroes to the terrorists of the world.
“Heroes, not martyrs,” Ibrahim reminded his brother.
The trawler was twenty-five years old. It was not equipped with an autopilot. The plan was for Ibrahim to hold the boat’s steering wheel until they were a hundred yards from the vessel, then lock the rudder; they had practiced the maneuver a dozen times, and experience told them a hundred yards would al ow them enough time to activate the kil switch and jump to safety while their trawler, with its rudder locked, could only proceed directly into Jupiter’s side. It was perfect. The man who trained