Agent of Influence: A Thriller (17 page)

             
Sean was intrigued. “Marilyn mentioned him in her report. What exactly is the Caliphate? I know I’ve heard the term somewhere before.”

“You probably have heard Bin Laden call for one. He likes to throw out the term during h
is pronouncements. Anyway, the Caliphate was, for several thousand years the symbol of a unified Muslim people. The Caliphate dates all the way back to the death of the Prophet Mohammad in the 600s.  He is considered the successor, for lack of a better word, of the prophet. The Caliphate was abolished by the Western powers after the destruction of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.”

             
“When the Ottoman Empire was carved into today’s countries you mean,” Sean interjected.

“Exactly. You have to understand; most Muslims identify themselves by their religious sect, not by what country they are from. There has been a lot of in-house fighting between the Sunnis and Shias over the years. Hell, most of their countries were randomly carved out of the sand by our European allies. For roughly thirteen centuries the Caliphate was the supreme Muslim ruler, and for much of that time Islam dominated their Christian counterparts in
Europe.”

             
“So the Brotherhood of the Caliphate wants one ruler for all Muslims?” Sean asked.

“Yes, although the Caliphate is as much a religious leader as anything else. The splitting of the
Ottoman Empire helped us out by creating a lot of rivalries within the Muslim community, all vying for different goals. The generation of today has grown up with the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah, each one of them pushing for all sorts of things from the destruction of Israel and their occupation of the Holy Land, to America’s occupation of Saudi Arabia, along with a long list of other real and perceived grievances. With so many factions, the hope of a Caliphate has died out except in the older generation who remember the world wars and the failed peace treaties that followed.”

             
The brief history lesson started the wheels turning in Sean’s mind. “A single Muslim state would be extremely powerful. If the Ottoman Empire had survived World War I, we would have had a hell of a time controlling the region.” Sean picked up on the subtleties of the situation quickly. His intuition was one of the qualities that made him particularly good at his job.

“That’s a fair assessment,” Colin said with a contemplative nod. “Imagine World War II with the Ottoman Empire working with
Germany, and then think if the Ottoman Empire had come under the control of one of these hardcore fundamentalist types. I doubt there would be any Jews left in the world today. Like I said before, there were just too many varying opinions and religious sects to deal with though. By the 1940s Saudi Arabia already signed their first deal with Standard Oil, and Egypt was working hand-in-hand with the Soviets by the 50s. They couldn’t even get the Muslim leaders to choose sides in the Cold War, much less the Arab street.”

             
“Well, it’s an interesting history lesson if nothing else. Not sure if it will be useful for me or not,” Sean said as he glanced at the numerous clocks behind Colin’s desk. “I need to shower and call the boss.”

“I’ll have a guard
show you where everything is.” They both rose simultaneously, and shook hands. “As soon as you get settled in we can start our search. Aziz will be hard to find though. He seems to have gone to ground during the last few weeks,” Colin said.

             
“I figured as much. Take me to all his normal places starting tomorrow morning. I also got a few ideas from Marilyn regarding where to locate him.”

Chapter 22

White House – Oval Office

The outgoing President gazed out onto the West Lawn of the White House as he waited for the FBI and CIA directors to arrive with the latest information. He could see the workers dismantling the massive Christmas tree. All the power this small room vested to its occupant could do nothing to stem the mounting frustration and weakness he felt as his term as President rapidly approached its conclusion. The holder of the most powerful and sought after job in the world typically did not wait for anyone, but Allan Gray was already a lame duck, two months removed from being voted out of office after only one term. The vein just below the last remnants of his graying temple of hair bulged with anger as he replayed his numerous mistakes over the past few months.  The expensive tumbler of bourbon in his hand did nothing to soothe his temper. He yanked his tie down, ignoring his normal protocol, and for what seemed like the hundredth time, tried to come to grips with his predicament.

Allan Gray considered himself a true patriot, a man who came from a broken family, no money, and yet lived the American dream by ascending to the Presidency. He was about to return to those humble roots.  He still believed in his heart that he fulfilled his promises, but the voters rejected him, stabbing him in the back, he thought, in a rare moment of self-pity, after traveling a long and difficult road together. The truth was much more complicated, and he knew it.

The attacks of 10/01/00 occurred right in the heart of his campaign for the Presidency. The outgoing President responded quickly to the attack, invading the sanctuary of Al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan. He left office with soaring approval numbers after pulling off the ultimate curtain call. The Vice-President normally would have been in a prime position to easily win the election. With the economy flourishing, all he needed to do was run a cautious campaign and promise to continue the same economic policies. The strategy worked perfectly until the attacks devastated New York and Washington D.C. that sunny October day.

Allan
had received his party’s nomination by default. Most of the other major players wanted nothing to do with an incumbent party with a sixty percent approval rating. As the Governor of California, Allan had a huge advantage against his primary opponents that he leveraged to the hilt. He welcomed the fight for the highest office in the land and threw himself full throttle into the primaries, and once he secured the nomination, the general election.

Allan was forced to take an aggressive approach in order to have a chance at winning the general election. He talked tough on foreign policy and warned the American people that the last few years were a mirage, and that the country always had to be ready to defend itself from external enemies. The rhetoric fell on a deaf public, and the electorate considered him to be a loose cannon until after the attacks. He then looked like a sage, and the media was forced to take notice.

He rode this new wave of support to a stunning victory, vowing to ignore party lines and continue to take the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and beyond. The normal two-month honeymoon enjoyed by a new president stretched for a little over a year, and he soon finished the task his predecessor started in Afghanistan. The country now possessed a fledgling democracy. With victory in hand, Allan Gray turned the military’s focus to another rogue state, Iraq, and its brutal dictator. He warned the American citizenry numerous times to expect casualties, perhaps many thousands. He was convinced that in the long run, any American deaths would save ten times that number from the iron grip of a man who had already shown a propensity for gassing his own people when they stepped out of line.

             
Allan made one crucial mistake however that he now felt had cost him the election. Instead of immediately launching the invasion against Iraq, he tried the diplomatic route through the United Nations, even though he knew it was a doomed enterprise. H knew that there were already eight years of sanctions that the U.N. systematically ignored. Instead of punishing the dictator, these sanctions were used by many U.N. members as a way to enrich themselves with black market Iraqi oil and all sorts of other government contracts that were thrown into the maze of bureaucracy. Once inside the black hole of the United Nations, the contracts were fixed to the bureaucrats liking, until they came out on the other end of the pipeline. A lump of coal turned into the proverbial diamond, Allan thought in disgust.

What he first thought would look like a gracious effort by him to give the U.N. one more chance only allowed Saddam to better prepare, and the “peace nuts” to rally throughout the world. Of course, he admitted to himself, he knew the war would have to be waged once he moved the army into place. He also knew Saddam would never give in to their demands. He was convinced that once he called the U.N.’s bluff, then they would grudgingly have to enforce their own sanctions.

Allan now realized he had thought too highly of the United Nations. The Iraqi leader routinely massacred thousands of his own people by gassing them with chemical weapons, and paid rewards to families of Palestinian suicide bombers for murdering Israeli civilians. If this was not enough, the Iraqi leader butchered hundreds of thousands of Muslims by starting a war with Iran.

Allan had simply never thought the horrid deeds of the “Butcher of Baghdad” would be lost amidst the shouts of “No blood for oil.”  He belted back another swig of bourbon at the thought and laughed sardonically at the infantile slogan. If all he wanted was oil, all he had to do was allow the sanctions to be lifted, and the oil could start flowing. He knew this was one of the real reasons so many at the U.N. opposed him. Most of the countries that complained the loudest already had oil deals signed with the dictator, and they were just waiting for the shackles of the sanctions to be lifted so they could start importing their booty.

By the time he gave final authorization for the invasion, it had already become a media event. The military mounted a lightning-quick strike that conquered the country in a matter of months, but upon their approach into the capital, Saddam’s forces resisted and a bloody battle for control of Baghdad ensued. Several thousand U.S. soldiers died in the bloodbath. The aftermath of the war also proved to be difficult. When no chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons were found, the united front Allan put together after his election quickly began to crumble.

Compounding the problem was the bitterness still festering between the majority Shia population and the Sunnis who dominated the country for thirty years.
Iraq soon became ravaged by two smaller wars; a sectarian conflict between the Sunni and Shia, and the counter-insurgency against the Western armies. Added to this volatile mix was a group of foreign invaders answering the call to jihad. While the foreign jihadists could not defeat the U.S. militarily on a battlefield, the mounting deaths from IEDs began to wear down public support of the war.

Allan stared into the brown liquid of his glass and contemplated his mistakes. He now believed his major strategic blunder had been his mad dash to the capital. In their haste to end the war, the army moved at a breakneck pace to encircle
Baghdad.  Instead of actively seeking a fight, the U.S. military only engaged the Iraqi army units that were directly in their path. Once they chose to flee, the army let them go, and continued to streak towards the capital instead of taking the time to round them up. This allowed thousands of regular soldiers and Saddam Feddeyan guards to melt into the civilian population, where they would later wage a brutal war of attrition against the occupying army. 

The opposition party pounced on the apprehension of the populace and demanded that Allan chart a new course of action. The plight of the Iraqis was not worth American lives anymore, the opposition argued. After a
ll, we already conquered Saddam therefore the Iraqis should be left to their own devices. They demanded an immediate pullout. Allan found the argument ridiculous and did not attempt to counterattack, thinking the idea would never gain any traction. By the time he realized his error and began to use the bully pulpit of his Presidency, it was too late to repair the damage. Allan believed that true freedom, no matter how difficult, was the only way to solve the deep problems in the Middle East. After all, it took the U.S. over ten years and thousands of deaths before it devised a workable system of its own. Times were different now though, and the population no longer had the attention span to see difficult fights through to their conclusion.

             
He continued to reserve the majority of his frustration for the media. A sarcastic grimace spread across his face as he thought about the media’s utter hypocrisy. Reporters loved to shout the horrors of the world to the nation every evening on the news. The media would constantly whine about all the different populations being brutalized across the globe and ask, why were we not more engaged?

Yet, whenever the
U.S. ventured into a volatile situation like Iraq the same people would accuse him of imperialism at the earliest opportunity. They only wanted to help other brutalized populations while U.S. citizens and soldiers were guaranteed safety and protection from all these same horrors. As soon as U.S. citizens or military members died, as when the bodies of U.S. soldiers were dragged through the dusty streets of Khartoum in the early 1990s, the media would clamor that it was no longer worth the effort. The same people who claimed to be the champions of the downtrodden apparently thought the freedom of other people was only important if it could be done without sacrificing American lives.

             
After he lost the election fifty-five percent to forty five percent, and took a bloodbath in the Electoral College, it took Allan a few days to accept his defeat. Shortly thereafter, the CIA Director approached him with a piece of unnerving information and a concern that Allan frankly found hard to believe at first. The thought that the Senator from Nevada could have a forged background raised all sorts of questions. Who were the individuals that helped arrange the potential lies about the Senator’s past and why? The Senator was perhaps lying about his background at a time when fanatical Muslims like Bin Laden were calling for the destruction of the United States.