The 19th Hijacker

  ALSO BY JAMES RESTON, JR.

  To Defend, To Destroy, A novel 1971

  The Amnesty of John David Herndon, 1973

  The Knock at Midnight, A novel 1975

  The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery, 1977

  Our Father Who Art in Hell: the Life and Death of Jim Jones, 1981

  Sherman’s March and Vietnam, 1984

  The Lone Star: the Life of John Connally, 1987

  Collision at Home Plate: the Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti, 1991

  Galileo: A Life, 1994

  The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D., 1999

  Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade, 2001

  Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors, 2005

  Fragile Innocence: A Father’s Memoir of His Daughter’s Courageous Journey, 2006

  The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews, 2007

  Defenders of the Faith: Christianity and Islam Battle for the Soul of Europe, 2009

  The Accidental Victim: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas, 2013

  Luther’s Fortress: Martin Luther and His Reformation Under Siege, 2015

  A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial, 2018

  THE 19TH HIJACKER

  2021 © James Reston Jr.

  FIRST EDITION

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Though some characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are inspired by the historical events, the work as a whole is a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 9781645720201 (Hardcover)

  9781645720218 (ebook)

  For inquiries about volume orders, please contact:

  Republic Book Publishers

  27 West 20th Street, Suite 1103

  New York, NY 10011

  editor@republicbookpublishers.com

  Published in the United States by Republic Book Publishers

  Distributed by Independent Publishers Group

  www.ipgbook.com

  Book designed by Mark Karis

  Author photo by Christopher Casler

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Lee Hamilton

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO LEE HAMILTON, who in thirty-five years in Congress became a legendary figure for his folksy wisdom and expertise in foreign policy and national security matters. After his retirement from Congress in 1999, he became president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, where I have had a long association. He was also been the co-chairman (with ex-governor of New Jersey Tom Kean) of the blue-ribbon 9/11 Commission that had the thankless task of sorting out and explaining how the attack on America happened.

  The inspiration for this book came at a luncheon some ten years ago when I sat with Lee, as he regaled us with his fascinating stories about political life in Washington, for he is a great storyteller. The conversation drifted to 9/11 and eventually to the nineteen perpetrators. The Commission, he said, did not have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to delve deeply into the psychology and motivations of the villains. But one of them interested him immensely: the pilot who brought down Flight 93 into the mud of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

  Several things intrigued Hamilton about the figure I came to think of as the nineteenth hijacker. He came from a fine, middle-class family in Beirut, Lebanon. He was handsome and smart. Many options were open to him in life. His death was a waste. More importantly, the Commission Report made clear that Number 19 nearly pulled out of the operation a month before September 11 because of a romantic relationship with a lovely Turkish-German woman. I was immediately interested. Hamilton encouraged me to write a book about him.

  I thank him once again for steering me toward such a compelling and important story. Very little is known about the nineteen hijackers, and what little is known remains classified. While in my research for this book (which included trips to Beirut and Hamburg), I was able to track down several witnesses and participants to the events and gained access to a variety of significant documents, the hijacker’s wife had disappeared, and the hijacker himself, of course could not be interviewed. His life and death had to be imagined.

  I will call him Sami Haddad.

  You cannot stop martyrs. You can only reduce their number.

  —GRAHAM GREENE, THE COMEDIANS

  When you stare long into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you.

  —FREDERICK NIETZSCHE, APHORISM 146

  1

  SERGEANT BR AUN SHIFTED HIS WEIGHT uncomfortably in the car and looked again at his watch. Four o’clock. One more hour of this detail, and he would finally be off. The boys were going to a bar on the Elbchaussee and then on to a disco near the Reeperbahn. Braun was tired of the Reeperbahn. He used to enjoy the pantomime with those fleshy, half-naked whores behind glass, beckoning to him with their vulgar gestures, while he mugged back at them with a chimpanzee smile and thumbs-up. Now it made him feel dirty and stupid. Call Inge again? No, he was tired of Inge too. It was time to make some changes in his life. That’s what Kommissar Recht kept telling him, when the old curmudgeon said anything at all personal to him. What did Recht know about women anyway?

  At least, from the pictures and the videos in her file, Suspect 21 looked pretty. Olive skin, thick, shiny brown hair, perfect figure, a scent of the Orient. He imagined her on a couch in the harem. She had a certain grace about her when she walked, even as he had watched the footage of her leaving the hospital, with her face slightly bloated. Someone this lovely couldn’t possibly be involved in something this big, no matter what the first kommissar thought. And anyway, she had never been seen at the Marienstrasse apartment by any surveillance.

  A stubby postman came up the block, pushing his bag of mail ahead of him in a three-wheel cart. The detective watched the little man load the boxes one by one with care. A large, padded envelope came out of his mailbag. The postman looked at it briefly and then put it in its proper slot. He stepped back, glancing up at the windows of the apartment building. And then he waved to someone with evident pleasure—Braun could not see who—and pointed to the box. His job finished, the postman ambled down the street; 4:13 p.m.

  The stakeout showed Braun where he stood in the office. The first kommissar had given the principal villains to others. Braun had asked to be put on the task force in search of Omar, but the assignment had been given to someone else. The newspapers were now talking about a “Hamburg cell,” and in the chaos of gearing up the huge investigation in the past week, other colleagues got the plum jobs of tracking down those who had actually been seen going in and out of Marienstrasse 54 with Samir Haddad and the ringleader or Omar. Braun, with only five years’ experience, had to work the second tier—with this peripheral figure—a girlfriend. What does a girlfriend ever know? And he had to work under the annoying vice kommissar.

  The door of the apartment block opened, and Braun sat up. It was her, in the flesh. She was wearing slippers, an overcoat thrown over what looked like pink pajamas. Her hair was disheveled. Nice, Braun thought: sleeping at four o’clock in the afternoon. But then she was still recuperating. He thought about her throat.

  She walked languidly to the bank of postal boxes, where she strugg
led to insert her key. Braun made a mental note. Vice Kommissar Recht liked this kind of detail. Maybe she was still on heavy sedatives, he planned to say, but then he remembered that Recht did not appreciate his speculations. Only the facts; that’s all he ever wanted. As the girl pulled the bulky envelope from her slot, the detective reached for his squawker.

  “She’s just come out of her apartment, Vice Kommissar. Now she’s pulled a package from her postal slot. Should I move in and detain her?”

  The voice on the other end garbled an answer.

  “But don’t we want that package?”

  Again he strained to hear the answer over the static.

  “Okay, Herr Recht, your decision … Standing by.”

  Instinctively, Braun reached for his binoculars and then remembered they were in the trunk. Verdammtnochmal. When the suspect looked at the packet, he thought he saw a startled look cross her face, or was it only surprise?

  And then she walked briskly back to the apartment house door. Her gait was different, Braun thought, hurried.

  Karima had awoken that morning with a start and glanced at the clock. It was late, already past ten. She had missed her rounds. She was in for another scolding. She had had sufficient time to bounce back from her procedure, they would say, and didn’t she remember that the office was shorthanded? It had already been three days since her release from the hospital—tonsillectomies are not brain surgery after all—and they would expect her at least to make an appearance. For five full days she had lain in a hospital bed in that fugue state of painkillers. She was glad she had been out of commission on September 11. It gave her an excuse not to think about the news. Through the haze of Demerol, she had seen the buildings collapse into clouds of dust on the snowy television above her bed. Through her delirium she could hear the nurses whispering about the attacks in America.

  Sami still had not called, and he had not answered his phone in Florida when she called him. She hated these tiffs. He always brooded and cut her off, and then, in a few days or weeks, he would call as if nothing had happened. He was probably still mad about July, she thought, but that was just not fair. It was not her fault she had gotten sick.

  Sami could be so selfish sometimes. He had to know she was in pain. A simple call, that’s all she asked, no matter how busy he was or what he was feeling about her just then. She barely remembered his last call, just before they wheeled her into the operating room, except for his strange proclamation of love. If only life could be lived backward, she thought. In the months before her visit to Sami in Florida in July, she had found her stride as a resident. There had always been a morning ritual, a final, satisfying check before she went to work. She prided herself in her professional look: confident, well-kept, proper, her demeanor as starched as her white lab coat, her name embroidered proudly over the left pocket, Dr. Karima Ilgun, in longhand script—her ceremonial rite of passage into the profession. In the year since she had become confident in preparing a crown, in suturing and pulling a tooth without asking for help.

  She couldn’t believe that Sami would do something deliberately to hurt her, and yet there had been times in Florida when he was aloof and distracted and at times, tense.

  Now, she was eager to talk to him about the attacks. Where had he been when the towers came down, and what did he think about the whole thing? Was he still posturing? She felt like teasing him about his rhetoric. How did it sound to him now?

  She looked around her simple flat. How many happy times they had spent here. He could always make her laugh. She loved that more than anything. Some thought they made an odd couple, Lebanese and Turkish, or Turkish-German, as she preferred to think of herself. Tabbouleh and kebabs complement each other, someone had said. They were meze and sweet, syrupy Turkish coffee. Even in the wake of their quarrels and separations, their reunions had always been glorious. Despite his insensitivity, that was what she was focusing on now. Until the last few weeks, Sami had called her from Florida nearly every night. In July he had shown her his flight school and introduced her to his funny, quirky instructors. They’d flown to Miami, drank planter’s punch at sunset, and watched a man swallow a fiery sword. They’d run together on the white sand of the beach. They had mused about their next time together when his sister was getting married in Beirut. And they’d talked a little about their future, even about children …

  It was too late for the clinic. Her throat was throbbing. She went to the bathroom to rummage around for another pill and gazed at herself in the mirror. She looked terrible, eyes bloodshot, hair a mess. She blew into her hand and smelled the odor. What would Sami think? She needed to rest.

  It was late afternoon when she awoke. Idly, for the first time in days, she switched on the television. The American president again, talking about evildoers and proclaiming a crusade against the whole Arab world and against Islam itself. She heard the name Mohamed Atta. Sami had not called. He was probably in the classroom or in the simulator. Usually he called about midnight her time anyway, so there was still a chance. The shrill ring of the telephone startled her, and she leapt for it.

  “Sami!” There was a pause. “Sami?”

  “Hello, sister. This is Omar, Sami’s friend. Remember me?” The flat, accented voice was strange, faraway.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else. Who is this again?”

  “This is Omar. We talked a month ago, remember? After Sami asked me to call you, to see if you were all right, and if you needed anything.”

  She remembered vaguely. “Yes, I guess so.”

  “I know our beloved Sami now only by his warrior name, Abu Tariq,” the voice continued. “Let us honor the heroism of Abu Tariq.”

  “Sami? A hero? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  There was a pause, then, “I hope you are well.”

  “I’ve just had an operation.”

  “Yes, we know.”

  “You know?”

  “I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “I don’t understand. Why are you calling, Omar?”

  The voice paused again. Then deeper, slower, as if to underscore the gravity of what he was saying next. “I may want to come to see you, Karima. Sami would want me to have any of his papers he might have left with you.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said with rising annoyance. “He can come and get them himself if he wants his things. I haven’t heard from him.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” The phone clicked.

  Weird, she thought. Sami and his secretive friends, with their posturing and grandiose ideas. She had never liked them. She never understood what he saw in them.

  She could hear the postman fiddling with her mail slot outside. She shuffled to the window and peeked out to see the adorable Herr Schmitt, in his rumpled, postman’s uniform, smiling and pointing to her mailbox. She waved back. She grabbed a coat and went out to the street to get her mail. In her box was a large, lumpy, padded envelope, its flap copiously taped. She turned it over to see an American label and froze. From Sami.

  Inside, she closed the blinds and sat on the couch again, staring at the lumpy, padded envelope. She looked at the stamps, an image of the US Capitol, and the postmark, September 11, 2001. She turned the envelope over to see the return address: Super 8 Motel, Newark, New Jersey. New Jersey? Where was that? Her address was in Sami’s unmistakable scrawl. Instinctively—she did not know why—she put the envelope to her nose to smell it.

  The tape came off effortlessly, and she poured the contents onto her coffee table: a spiral notebook, a sheaf of papers, a pocket Koran, one gold coin, his engagement ring, a lollipop, two toothpicks, ten microcassettes, and a business envelope with her name on it. Carefully, her fingers trembling, she opened the letter, intent not to tear its flap.

  “My dear Karima,” she read.

  “My love. My beloved lady. My heart. You are my life …”

  The tel
ephone ring made her jump. For a moment she was disoriented. Her head was spinning. Hurriedly, instinctively, she stuffed the mess back into its padded envelope. At last. At last. She reached for the phone.

  “Sami?”

  “Hello.” Male voice. Unfamiliar.

  “Sami? Is that you?”

  “Karima Ilgun?”

  She stiffened. “This is Dr. Ilgun.”

  “This is Vice Kommissar Günther Recht of the Bundeskriminalamt.”

  “From where?”

  “From the BKA. German Federal Police.”

  “Oh.”