The Intercept Read Online Free PDF Page A

homes. Majid Kazir arrived less than ten minutes later, looking dazed and dark-eyed from having stayed up all night. He pulled a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and sat down at the table, plucked open the soda can tab with a long thumbnail, and drank as though to wash away a bad taste in his mouth. He badly needed the caffeine.
    Kazir smelled of bleach. “Mother is finished,” he said.
    This was Kazir’s mother’s house, but Kazir was not referring to her. The beauty salon attached to the structure belonged to his mother, was staffed by his two sisters, and was managed by Kazir. Kazir’s hair was kinky but flat. He had no use for beauty products himself, but the shop did a steady business and his mother and sisters were always pleased.
    The shop had been closed for four days. Their trip to visit relatives in Pennsylvania had been arranged by Kazir to take place this week. He needed the house to himself.
    As the manager, one of his responsibilities was to procure supplies used in the treatments. He had been patiently amassing a modest stockpile of hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and acid from various beauty supply stores over the past eight months. The three ingredients in acetone peroxide, or triacetone triperoxide, could form a primary high explosive. The compound’s notorious sensitivity to impact, heat, and friction earned it a nickname among the Islamist underground organizations.
    Mother of Satan.
    Shah said, “Mother is packed and ready?”
    Kazir nodded, suppressing a carbonation belch. He looked at his still-trembling hand. Kazir had been heating and mixing the ingredients all night. “Mother was a bitch tonight, my friend.”
    Kazir finished his soda and tossed the empty can into the sink. Shah had been put in contact with him through the network. Kazir did not come to him espousing jihad and anti-American sentiments—which was good, since those are all hallmarks of a law enforcement plant. Kazir was serious, and he was quiet. His only hot point of anger was the place of women in American society. He detested their independence, which he claimed was the reason he had so much trouble finding a wife. Indeed, his own mother and sisters venerated him as the man of the household, so much so that he was required to contribute very little to the family business. Even this, he resented.
    He believed that he was meant for bigger and better things. This was his first stride toward greatness, following in the footsteps of his Moroccan countrymen, who had orchestrated the Madrid commuter train bombings. Outwardly, he appeared to pay Shah’s bid for martyrdom much respect, but Shah suspected that Kazir would never exhibit the same level of commitment as Shah—that is to say, the ultimate commitment. In this endeavor, Kazir had taken great care that his participation not be discovered.
    Kazir had been trained as a chemist in the same camp Shah had attended, in the high mountains of Waziristan on the Pakistan and Afghanistan border. Shah had confidence that the explosive would not fail him—nor he it.
    Shah pulled the cell phone from his pocket. “Here.” He placed it on the table before Kazir, who regarded it as one might regard a cockroach.
    “What is this?”
    “A telephone,” said Shah. “It contains my statement. My video. You will upload it precisely at eleven A.M .”
    Kazir looked at the flip phone. “You videoed it yourself?”
    “Of course.” It was an older device with the chipset of a pay-as-you-go convenience store phone. He had used its low-res camera to record his final words while locked in the bathroom stall of a Middle Eastern restaurant on Twenty-eighth Street. His other phone, his public phone, he had “lost” along with his laptop. Those devices could not be trusted.
    “Dispose of this when you are done,” said Shah.
    “I do not like handling electronic devices,” said Kazir.
    High-impact explosives, yes. But smartphones, no. Shah shook his head. This man refined hydrogen peroxide