The Faithful Spy

“Your father,” the otherwise silent Shihab said from the back seat, “died in a car accident.”

Bassim turned to glare at Shihab as Wells bit his lip to stifle his laughter. Finally Bassim tapped the gas and they lurched back into traffic. No one said anything the rest of the trip. two hours later the Toyota rolled into Peshawar, the biggest city in the North-West Frontier, a million-person jumble of crumbling concrete buildings and brick huts. Bassim nosed the sedan through a slum clogged with donkey carts hauling propane tanks and garbage. The roads became so crowded that the car could go no farther. In front of a tiny shop whose windows were filled with dusty tins of condensed milk, Bassim killed the engine. Shihab hopped out and opened Wells’s door.

“Come,” he said, tugging Wells down the street. The rich heavy stench of sewage and mud filled the air. Wells stepped through piles of rotten fruit and donkey shit. Children ran around them, kicking cans and a torn sphere that had once been a soccer ball. So many children. They were everywhere in Pakistan. They sat on the streets, selling toys and overripe bananas, eyes shining with hunger. In neighborhoods like this one they surrounded anyone standing still, their hands out, smiling and asking for “rupees, rupees.” The lucky ones found their way to the madrassas, Islamic schools that educated them well in the Koran and badly in everything else. What would they do when they grew up, if not join the jihad? Bassim pushed open the rusting steel door of an apartment building and pulled Wells inside. “Third floor.” He and Shihab seemed desperate to get off the street. Wells wondered whether bin Laden would really risk living here.

The stairwell was dark and smelled of piss and onions. When they reached the third floor, Bassim tugged Wells toward the back of the building. He knocked twice on a steel door, then paused and knocked twice again.

“Nam?” a voice said from inside.

Bassim said nothing but knocked twice more. The door swung open. A man in a turban waved them in with his AK. The room was dark and dreary, lit by a trickle of fading daylight that leaked through the dirty window high on the back wall. Beneath the window, a small poster of bin Laden had been pinned up carefully.

“Sit,” the guard said, pointing to a bench covered with tattered red cushions. Wells took a closer look around. Behind a blue beaded curtain, a narrow corridor led to the back of the apartment. In a corner, water boiled on a stove beside scissors, a razor, and a blue plastic mirror. The only other furniture was a wooden chair that had been placed atop a bunch of newspapers.

The minutes ticked by. No one said a word. Wells had never seen Arab men quiet for this long. He wondered if they really planned to shoot him in here. So be it. He had done his best. Nonetheless, he looked around, half-consciously plotting escape routes. That boiling water would come in handy.

Wells heard the shuffle of footsteps in the corridor. “Stand,” the guard said quickly, gesturing with his rifle. As they jumped up, the curtain parted and four men walked in, led by a heavy man wearing square steel glasses. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Wells understood why his minders had been so nervous. Zawahiri was bin Laden’s deputy, a man almost more important to Qaeda than the sheikh himself. He knew the details of the group’s operations, its financing, where its men were hidden. Bin Laden set broad strategy and spoke for the organization, but without Zawahiri Qaeda could not function. Zawahiri hugged Shihab and Bassim and nodded to Wells.

“Salaam alaikum, Jalal.”

“Salaam alaikum, Mujahid.”

“Allahu akbar.”

“Allahu akbar.”

“We have much to talk about. But first you must shave.” Zawahiri pointed at the pot of water.

“Shave?” Wells was proud of his thick, bushy beard, which he had not trimmed since coming to the North-West Frontier. Every Qaeda member wanted “a beard the length of a fist,” which fatwas — religious edicts — had decreed the minimum acceptable length. Wells’s was even longer.

“The Prophet would not approve,” Wells said.

“In this case he would.” Behind the glasses, Zawahiri’s eyes were flat.

Wells decided not to argue. “To the skin?”

“Nam,” Zawahiri said. “To the skin.”

So while the other men watched, Wells clipped his long brown beard with the scissors, leaving tufts of curly hair on the counter by the stove.

He looked in the mirror. In place of his beard, a pathetic coat of peach fuzz covered his face. Already he hardly recognized himself. He dipped the razor — a plastic single-blade — in the pot and scraped it over his skin. He had to admit he enjoyed the sensation of shaving, the heat of the blade on his face. He took his time, using short smooth strokes, tapping the razor against the pot to shake out the stubble. Finally he was done. Again he looked in the mirror.