The Deceivers Read online

  “The one and only Gamal el-Masry.”

  Shakir and el-Masry had come to the United States as kids in the nineties, before September 11, when middle-class Arabs still had a shot at getting American visas. Their families wound up in Dallas. The North Texas heat agreed with Cairenes. As children, they’d been close, the eldest sons of ill-tempered fathers. They’d compared bruises more than once.

  But they’d grown apart. While Shakir dealt eight-balls, el-Masry drove for Uber. He had a wife, who never left home without a headscarf, and three little girls. He was a regular at the Masjid al-Sunni, a mosque in Cedar Crest. Its Saudi-trained imam preached that Allah wouldn’t be satisfied until the world lived under the laws of the Quran. El-Masry asked Shakir to pray with him every so often. Shakir found excuses to turn him down. Given his profession, he preferred to stay off Allah’s radar. He did fast for Ramadan every year, mainly to prove he could.

  Despite their differences, Shakir saw el-Masry and his family a few times a year. They were Facebook friends, too. El-Masry often posted news stories about American bombs that killed civilians in Syria. ALLAH WILLING, THE KAFFIRS WILL PAY FOR THIS!!!

  The second agent returned, holding a manila folder.

  “When was the last time you saw Gamal?” Reed said.

  “Maybe two months.”

  “You know how he feels about the United States?”

  “I’ve seen his Facebook page.”

  “What about terrorism? Has he talked about committing an attack himself? Think carefully, now.”

  “No.” But the possibility shocked Shakir less than he would have expected. El-Masry had a temper. Shakir had once seen his wife with a black eye. I fell, she said. Clumsy.

  “Seen his Twitter feed? That’s the nasty one.”

  “I’ve never even been on Twitter.”

  “Good for you.” Reed smirked. Shakir already knew he would grow to hate that smirk.

  The second agent slid photographs from the folder to Shakir. A pair of handsome Egyptian men, tall and skinny. “I’ve seen them at Gamal’s. Brothers, right?”

  “Rashid and Nassir Fardous. We’re very concerned about your cousin and his friends. They’ve reached out online to dangerous people. Raised money for Islamic charities tied to terrorist groups. That mosque—at least one guy from there wound up in Syria.”

  Reed stared at Shakir until Shakir couldn’t stand the silence. The silence and Reed’s pockmarked face. Shakir had always thought FBI agents were supposed to be pretty. “Has Gamal done anything? Besides the online stuff.”

  Reed’s smile revealed a mouthful of capped teeth. “Not yet. That’s about to change.”

  Slowly his meaning sunk in.

  “You want me to entrap my cousin.”

  “Just help him do what he wants. Now I’m gonna talk, and you’re gonna listen. Save your questions.” For the next half hour, Reed outlined the FBI’s plan.

  You go to Gamal, tell him you’ve seen the light. Guys beat you up in a Walmart parking lot, called you a dirty Arab, broke a couple ribs. You are seriously pissed . . . Or you had a dream that convinced you to change your ways so you don’t spend eternity in the fire. The Prophet was big on dreams, right? Either way, you’re ready to roll. You know he is, too . . . And, lucky you, the business you’re in, you know people who know people. Your buddies will be happy to hook you up. AKs, Kevlar vests, so you guys can last a while once the cops show up . . .

  You and Gamal and Rashid and Nassir pick a target, nice and juicy, New Year’s Eve downtown, whatever he likes, and you practice, you scout it . . . We’ll wire you, nothing cheap, nothing he’s gonna catch, and we’ll even set you up at an old gun range we bought east of town, it’s wired, too . . . We don’t need a ton of tape, just enough that it’s clear that everyone was more than willing . . . You make suicide videos, go right to the edge, like it’s really gonna happen . . . We’re watching all along, just in time we show up and make the bust . . .

  Presto! Ahmed Shakir, American hero. They’ll make a movie about you, my friend. The Muslim Who Came in From the Hot. Now, questions?

  “I’m setting up my own cousin?”

  “So he doesn’t kill innocent people.”

  “That’s not Gamal.”

  “Then he’s got nothing to worry about.”

  “He won’t believe I’m into this.”

  “He will. Same reason you trusted Jake, even though you never even saw him do a line, did you?”

  Reed was right. What a fool Shakir had been. “It’s entrapment.”

  “It’s not. Leave the law to the lawyers. Why we take it to the end, prove everyone was ready to go. Nobody gets entrapped into driving around with AKs and boxes of ammunition.”

  “I still don’t get why it has to go that far. Unless—” And then Shakir understood what Reed wasn’t telling him. “You want to make a show of it. How close it was. Show all those people watching on CNN what a good job the FBI did.”

  “I’d advise you to stay focused on your own role in this, Ahmed.”

  “Will I have to testify?”

  “No way around it. But here’s the best part. This little incident tonight, it goes away. I mean, a hundred percent. No charges, no plea bargain, it never happened.”

  Shakir saw why the agents hadn’t officially arrested him or taken him into custody. “You want me clean. So the defense can’t cross-examine me, ask me what I’m getting out of this.”

  “You’re a concerned citizen who came to us when you saw your cousin’s Facebook posts. We took it from there. But you will have to stop dealing while we put this together. Can’t have the Dallas cops stumbling onto you. Your buyers know where you live?”

  Shakir shook his head. He didn’t want desperate cokeheads showing up on his door.

  “Then just stop answering your phone. They’ll get the hint.” Reed paused. “And you have a girlfriend, right? Jeanelle.”

  A question that made Shakir wonder how long they’d been watching him. He hadn’t seen Jeanelle in two weeks. “Not my girlfriend, but, yes.”

  “Get rid of her. Can’t risk her either.”

  “How do I pay my bills?”

  “We’ll give you three thousand a month. Cash. You can even keep the money from tonight.”

  “And at the end it goes away.”

  “It goes away.”

  “What happens if you’re wrong? Gamal won’t play?”

  “If it comes to that, we’ll talk, but we’re not wrong.”

  “Can I talk to a lawyer?”

  “Talk to whoever you like, but this is a take-it-or-leave-it offer. One time only. Tonight.”

  “If I say no?”

  “You’re gonna make me say it, Ahmed.” Suddenly Reed seemed tired. He rubbed his knuckles across his pockmarked cheeks. “Two ounces isn’t the crime of the century, but you have the bad luck to be in Texas. Which doesn’t like cocaine. And you made it so easy. Didn’t even hide the cash. We have pictures, marked bills, a bag in the car with your prints. We’ll hand it to the DPD narc detectives. One call, you’re right in the middle of that two-to-ten band. Realistically, four or five years. We want to be nasty, we’ll make sure they hit your house, too. Don’t know how big a stash you have back there, but I’ll bet it takes you closer to eight. No gang looking out for you, that’s eight long years wherever the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sees fit to send you—”

  Shakir didn’t like any part of this offer. He didn’t want to get his cousin in trouble. He wasn’t sure he could trust this man across the table. In fact, he was sure he couldn’t. But he didn’t see any other way. He raised his hands in surrender. “You win.”

  “Good man. You’re doing the right thing. Keeping America safe.” Reed slid a blank white card to Shakir, a number handwritten on the back. “That’s my cell. Emergencies only. We’ll be in touch.”

>   The other agent, who had never introduced himself, disappeared. He returned in a minute with the plastic bag of Shakir’s stuff.

  “By the way, you can assume we’ve copied your house keys and put trackers on your phone and car. Don’t make us look for you.” Reed slid the bag across to Shakir. The second agent whispered in Reed’s ear and Reed grinned.

  “Ahmed, Agent Mercer thinks a beatdown would give you the perfect excuse for a change of heart.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to. But if you can’t get Gamal interested—”

  They left him with a black eye, a fat lip, and a bloody nose. Then they dumped him a block from the bus station downtown.

  “You need to go to the hospital,” el-Masry said.

  “Forget it.”

  “What happened?”

  Shakir spat blood into an empty Gatorade bottle that smelled of piss. “You were right.”

  “About what.”

  “About them.” He refused to say more, knowing his silence would drive el-Masry to imagine the worst.

  A week later, the bruises still mottling his face, he knocked on el-Masry’s door. “Cousin, I want to talk.” He was surprised how quickly el-Masry bought in. He’d expected he’d have to speak in the coded language of drug deals. But when he mentioned punishing his attackers, el-Masry nodded.

  “I knew Allah would give you a chance to save yourself from Hell. Staying out late, drinking alcohol, fornicating with their women. You think I don’t know.”

  If only.

  “You want to find these men, Ahmed?”

  “I told you, after they hit me, they drove off. I barely saw them.”

  “What, then?”

  “The Americans see us all the same way. Dirty Muslims. It’s only fair we do the same to them.”

  El-Masry patted Shakir’s hand. “Not just fair. Allah’s will.”

  “I’ve wasted my life, cousin. I’m ashamed.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Shakir quickly realized that for all their fury at the United States, his cousin and Rashid and Nassir suffered from a certain naïveté about their adopted homeland. They all worked alone as drivers, so they didn’t have American coworkers. They spent their free time with other devout Muslim men. Their understanding of American society came mostly from the imam’s sermons and television. They didn’t question Shakir’s breezy assurance that he could buy assault rifles from a gang of Hells Angels he had met at the Dirt Hole, like motorcycle gangs regularly sold AK-47s to random Egyptian immigrants. They barely raised their eyebrows when he told them that the Angels would let them train at an old gun range east of Dallas.

  Do they know what we’re doing?

  I told them we’re robbing a bank, Shakir said. They like that idea. They don’t like the police either.

  How much will all of this cost?

  Twenty thousand. Twenty-one, to be exact.

  You have that much?

  All my money, Shakir said. I was saving it to get married, but I’d rather use it for this.

  The most annoying part of being undercover was el-Masry’s insistence that Shakir pray at the mosque once every couple weeks. El-Masry wanted him to come even more frequently, but Shakir said that too much sudden devotion might look odd. The brothers at the mosque were briefly suspicious, but they welcomed him after el-Masry told them what had happened to him.

  He saw Reed and Mercer once a week. Reed, really. Mercer never spoke. They usually met at Burger Kings. Shakir didn’t know if Reed had a weakness for Whoppers or liked the restaurants because they tended to be empty. Shakir never saw the other agents, but he noticed a white Chevy pickup and a black Tahoe following him. The vehicles came and went almost randomly, and he realized Reed had told the truth about the trackers on his car and phone.

  After six weeks, he told Reed he was ready for the AKs.

  “You were right.” Shakir was almost embarrassed how enthusiastically his cousin had taken to the scheme. El-Masry liked to guess how many people they would kill. Each of us should do as many as Mateen—Omar Mateen, the shooter at Pulse, the Orlando gay nightclub, who had killed forty-nine. Times four. Two hundred.

  “For the guns, we need paperwork,” Reed said. He murmured in Mercer’s ear and Mercer left.

  “Nice to have an errand boy.”

  “Say it to him.”

  They sat in silence. Shakir wondered sometimes what Reed and Mercer did when they weren’t with him, if they went home to Houston or stayed up here, if they had families. Neither wore a wedding ring, but maybe FBI counterterror agents didn’t advertise they were married. But Shakir knew Reed enough now to know those questions would just annoy him.

  Mercer returned with a manila folder. Reed leafed through it, made notes on the pages inside. “This says we’re giving you five AKs, five thousand rounds of ammunition. Also five pistols. Glocks.”

  “Five?”

  “If anyone else joins up.” Reed slid two pieces of paper over, identical, both on official FBI letterhead, the figures inked in. Shakir skimmed, signed them, pushed one back. Reed wagged his fingers for the other.

  “This is for our protection, Mr. Shakir. Not yours.”

  Of course. “When do I get the guns?”

  “Park by the Sears at Southwest Center Mall at noon tomorrow. Shop inside for an hour. When you come back, they’ll be in your trunk. It should go without saying but I’ll say it anyway. Don’t leave them with your cousin or Rashid. Tell them you don’t want them in a house with kids—tell them whatever—but keep them yourself.”

  In truth, playing with the AKs was fun. The firing range where they practiced was on the edge of Grand Saline, a one-stoplight town seventy miles east of Dallas. Even with the GPS, Shakir barely spotted the building the first time. It was low, concrete-walled, set back from the road. Faded signs nailed to the front door read HARLEY PARKING ONLY and SUPPORT 81, the number a barely disguised code for Hells Angels.

  Inside, the range had ten shooting stalls that faced a thick sand berm. The odors of gunpowder and stale beer lingered faintly. Tattered targets hung at the far end. Posters warned, in black capital letters, FACE FORWARD! POINT WEAPONS DOWNRANGE! IF YOUR WEAPON JAMS, STAY IN YOUR STALL! And, more pithily, DON’T BE A DUMBASS, DUMBASS!

  They shot on semiautomatic. The AKs that the FBI had provided weren’t set for full auto, and Reed had warned Shakir not to try to modify them. You’ll just mess them up. After the first trip, Shakir downloaded manuals and online videos about how to attack for maximum civilian carnage. They were surprisingly common. Three-shot bursts. Carry magazines on your chest, where you can easily swap them out. Cover one another during reloading so that your targets can’t swarm you. They set up obstacles in the middle of the range and worked on their tactical skills. Their accuracy improved, though Shakir was under no illusions about their chances against a trained police team.

  They talked only once about the morality of what they were planning, or the fact it would surely result in their deaths. “You’re not worried, cousin? About hurting women and children?” Shakir said, as they were finishing the third session.

  “How many of us die every week in Syria? We’re the lucky ones. Attacking the enemy.”

  “Won’t you miss your daughters?”

  “I’ll see them in Heaven. Come on, cousin, don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts.” El-Masry swung his AK on Shakir. He smiled, but Shakir didn’t think he was joking.

  Shakir knew he wouldn’t mention his doubts again. For the first time, he was glad the FBI had found him. Even after el-Masry’s ready agreement, Shakir had feared he might be entrapping his cousin. And he still doubted el-Masry could have pulled this attack off without Shakir’s help. El-Masry and the Fardous brothers weren’t sophisticated enough to buy assault rifles without being noticed. But Shakir could imagine them bringing knives to a m
all and stabbing strangers until they were shot. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed hundreds of people, but they could have killed a dozen.

  He was nervous when he drove back that afternoon. He made a mistake. On Highway 19, the two-lane state road that led to the interstate, he missed a speed trap. Suddenly he was driving 67 in a 45 zone. Even as he hit his brakes he saw the white Chevy Suburban tucked behind a stand of trees. The Chevy had steel ramming bars mounted to its grille, a five-pointed black-and-red sheriff’s star on its driver’s-side door. It pulled out as he passed, flipped on its lights.

  El-Masry cursed in Arabic.

  “It’ll be fine.” As long as they don’t search the trunk and find five unregistered assault rifles.

  “This isn’t Dallas, Ahmed,” Rashid said. “They don’t like people like us here.”

  “If he tries to take us in—” El-Masry reached under the seat, where he had insisted on stowing a Glock.

  Shakir signaled, pulled over as far as he could. To the left and right, hay bales lay gold on close-mown fields. Fresh asphalt stretched to the horizon. Another lonely Texas highway. “Don’t be stupid.”

  The sheriff’s deputy wore a cowboy hat, a long-sleeved khaki shirt, wraparound sunglasses. “Howdy, gentlemen. Where you headed?”

  “Dallas.”

  “Where you coming from?”

  Shakir saw too late he should have had a cover story. “Dallas,” he mumbled.

  The deputy tilted his head in mock puzzlement. “What brings you to Van Zandt County, then?”

  “Just out for a drive.”

  In the passenger seat, el-Masry muttered in Arabic, Looking for infidel pigs to slaughter.

  The cop’s hand went to his pistol. “Excuse me, sir?”

  Shakir’s heart clenched. They were a sentence or two from shots fired. “He’s saying how beautiful it is here.”

  “Yeah. Got Walmarts and everything. So you gentlemen are all Arabs.”

  “Egyptian, yes.”

  “Home of the Pyramids, am I right?”

  Shakir wasn’t sure if the deputy was joking or wanted an answer. “Yes, sir,” he finally said.