operational documents on foot. It takes longer, but it’s much better.”
By now the clerics’ call to the faithful was echoing from the minaret high above the glowing white walls of the Mosque of Mahabat Khan, north of Andar Shehr . All five men hurried from the courtyard and joined the throng that moved in great droves of devout Muslims preparing to prostrate themselves before their God.
For the next hour Shakir Khan and his men would cast aside the possible release of their heroic brothers from Guantanamo and concentrate on their midday prayers. Allah is great . . . there is no other God . There would be time enough to set free Ibrahim and Yousaf during the long hot afternoon.
SHAKIR KHAN outlined his suggestions in carefully coded Arabic and summoned a messenger to transport them on the next camel train leaving the city, laden with the bountiful fruit crops from the lush Vale of Peshawar—apricots, peaches, plums, pears, lemons, and oranges. The communiqué was delivered after a two-day journey to Pakistan’s green, leafy new capital of Islamabad, ninety-four miles to the east of Peshawar.
The recipient was a Pakistani government official who kept a private office on Market Road a few hundred yards from the Parliament building. This is the center of the business district, known, curiously, as the Blue Area. Western Intelligence services are unwelcome here, for Islamabad represents the very heart of Islam, as its name suggests.
Shakir Khan’s recommendations were e-mailed in private to the most militant group of Sunni Muslim clergy in Saudi Arabia. These were the men who had financed the gigantic Faisal Masjid, the world’s biggest mosque, which stands on the outskirts of Islamabad, a religious fountain-head of Muslim learning and history.
From these powerful clerics Shakir Khan sought approval, both financial and spiritual. His message to them read: New U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding habeas corpus for detainees opens the gates of freedom to our brave fighters. Please appoint Washington attorneys to represent them in U.S. Appeals Court. Particular interest Yousaf Mohammed, and Ibrahim Sharif. There may be others.
From here the words of Shakir Khan were faxed from the frantic offices of one of the world’s great oil shipping terminals and lost in the daily maelstrom of international tanker communications. When that fax arrived in a small law firm in the City of London, it was utterly untraceable.
Which was how the law firm, Messrs Howard, Marks, and Cuthbert of London Wall came to appoint Epstein, Myerson, and Marsh, of 296 12th Street, Washington, DC, as the legal representatives of Yousaf and Ibrahim.
The senior partner of Epstein’s, as it was normally known, was a shrewd and legally savvy graduate of Harvard Law School, who had worked for several years as legal counsel to the Texas and Gulf Oil Corporation, based principally in Riyadh and Galveston.
Josh Epstein was sixty now, a big, fleshy man with dark hair and thick spectacles, who had somehow retained an aura of respectability despite grave suspicions among the politicos that he had a stupendously profitable sideline representing some of the most brutal jihadist killers on the planet. Worse yet, his paymasters were Saudi. In a city almost disappearing up its own backside with political correctness and adherence to the most lunatic human rights issues, Josh was, shall we say, a bit of an outsider.
We should also say, perhaps, that Josh did not give a two-cent damn for all that. His God was money, and he was surely in the right profession for
that. Dollars, euros, pounds, yen, rupees, rubles, sheqels, Josh loved them all in equal measure. But the sacks full of Saudi riyals were his favorites. Because those could be hidden away from the IRS.
And he could hardly disguise his joy when that e-mail came ghosting in from London’s cyberspace, appointing him to head up what might be a truly lucrative appeals court team. Hundreds of hours, all
By now the clerics’ call to the faithful was echoing from the minaret high above the glowing white walls of the Mosque of Mahabat Khan, north of Andar Shehr . All five men hurried from the courtyard and joined the throng that moved in great droves of devout Muslims preparing to prostrate themselves before their God.
For the next hour Shakir Khan and his men would cast aside the possible release of their heroic brothers from Guantanamo and concentrate on their midday prayers. Allah is great . . . there is no other God . There would be time enough to set free Ibrahim and Yousaf during the long hot afternoon.
SHAKIR KHAN outlined his suggestions in carefully coded Arabic and summoned a messenger to transport them on the next camel train leaving the city, laden with the bountiful fruit crops from the lush Vale of Peshawar—apricots, peaches, plums, pears, lemons, and oranges. The communiqué was delivered after a two-day journey to Pakistan’s green, leafy new capital of Islamabad, ninety-four miles to the east of Peshawar.
The recipient was a Pakistani government official who kept a private office on Market Road a few hundred yards from the Parliament building. This is the center of the business district, known, curiously, as the Blue Area. Western Intelligence services are unwelcome here, for Islamabad represents the very heart of Islam, as its name suggests.
Shakir Khan’s recommendations were e-mailed in private to the most militant group of Sunni Muslim clergy in Saudi Arabia. These were the men who had financed the gigantic Faisal Masjid, the world’s biggest mosque, which stands on the outskirts of Islamabad, a religious fountain-head of Muslim learning and history.
From these powerful clerics Shakir Khan sought approval, both financial and spiritual. His message to them read: New U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding habeas corpus for detainees opens the gates of freedom to our brave fighters. Please appoint Washington attorneys to represent them in U.S. Appeals Court. Particular interest Yousaf Mohammed, and Ibrahim Sharif. There may be others.
From here the words of Shakir Khan were faxed from the frantic offices of one of the world’s great oil shipping terminals and lost in the daily maelstrom of international tanker communications. When that fax arrived in a small law firm in the City of London, it was utterly untraceable.
Which was how the law firm, Messrs Howard, Marks, and Cuthbert of London Wall came to appoint Epstein, Myerson, and Marsh, of 296 12th Street, Washington, DC, as the legal representatives of Yousaf and Ibrahim.
The senior partner of Epstein’s, as it was normally known, was a shrewd and legally savvy graduate of Harvard Law School, who had worked for several years as legal counsel to the Texas and Gulf Oil Corporation, based principally in Riyadh and Galveston.
Josh Epstein was sixty now, a big, fleshy man with dark hair and thick spectacles, who had somehow retained an aura of respectability despite grave suspicions among the politicos that he had a stupendously profitable sideline representing some of the most brutal jihadist killers on the planet. Worse yet, his paymasters were Saudi. In a city almost disappearing up its own backside with political correctness and adherence to the most lunatic human rights issues, Josh was, shall we say, a bit of an outsider.
We should also say, perhaps, that Josh did not give a two-cent damn for all that. His God was money, and he was surely in the right profession for
that. Dollars, euros, pounds, yen, rupees, rubles, sheqels, Josh loved them all in equal measure. But the sacks full of Saudi riyals were his favorites. Because those could be hidden away from the IRS.
And he could hardly disguise his joy when that e-mail came ghosting in from London’s cyberspace, appointing him to head up what might be a truly lucrative appeals court team. Hundreds of hours, all
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