Given that many of my clients are diplomats from third-world countries, perhaps it’s not surprising that my office is open for business on December thirty-first – at noon, of course, since the typical third-world diplomat usually doesn’t get out of bed before ten; and, in deference to both Gretchen and me, closing at six, so that there is still adequate time for New Year’s Eve celebrations. Early morning appointments, spawned by local Washington bureaucrats who prize arriving early at the office above all else, are, as might be expected, completely dormant during the Christmas Octave. As a matter of fact, until the week after Super Bowl Sunday, forget about it. Until then, nothing American tax dollars pay for gets done, unless it’s performed, as it often is, by US federal contractors with a misguided sense of responsibility. God knows, their employers, the United States Civil Service, have nothing of the sort, guided, misguided, or otherwise. Maybe something ought to be done about that. But I doubt it will – which, to tell the truth, shall, as it always has, make me a richer man with each New Year. As John Lennon’s mother used to say, “Perhaps money can’t buy happiness, but it certainly makes misery more comfortable.” Well, John may have been a totally confused victim of the vinyl recording industry, but his Mum obviously knew the score.
My very first appointment was a Dr. Zamel ibn Himar al-Wullah, senior policy attaché at the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen. He turned on his patented lost-puppy look as he sank into the couch by the window.
“Mr. Collins,” he touchingly sighed, “unfortunately, I am afraid that my country is woefully misunderstood in the world.”
“All countries,” I observed, “are woefully misunderstood in the world, especially, I might add, the United States of America. The world woefully misunderstands the USA as a huge, moronic bully who has somehow been magically blessed with weapons of unimaginable sophistication and power; as a rapacious economic colonialist bent on callous and unmerciful exploitation of innocent, pastoral native populations; as a mad squanderer who thoughtlessly plunders and rapes the environment; as a demented and evil chauvinist influence bent on substituting McDonald’s, Disney, blue jeans, rap music and xBox for the deep and highly-revered components of cultures that are centuries, yea, even millennia more mature than…”
“Yes, yes,” Dr. al-Wullah agreed, “you Americans are devils. Everybody at the United Nations knows that – you and Israel are the creations of Satan. Big deal. So what else is new?”
“I beg your pardon,” I hastened to point out, “but your interpretation of my statement is not at all what I was saying, nor, is it, in fact, anything even remotely resembling what I meant. Maybe you should have allowed me to finish.”
“It would have made no difference,” al-Wullah shrugged. “The righteous man heeds only the words of Allah,” he solemnly intoned, “no matter what he hears.”
“Such thinking,” I dryly replied, “has much in common with our own Pentecostal, Evangelist, Charismatic and Fundamentalist Christian sects here in America.”
“If they had the sense to follow Mohammed, peace be upon him,” he shot back, “then perhaps they would be blessed. As it is,” he shrugged again, “who knows? Many things are written, but only Allah is omniscient.”
“No offense,” I confessed, “but I find the image of Father Coughlin, Oral Roberts, Bob Jones, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Bishop Fulton Sheen and Jim Bakker busting their seventy-two virgins alongside Grand Ayatollah Khomeini a bit… surreal, to say the least.”
“No doubt,” al-Wullah concurred. “But you must admit, it is not only religion, but also politics, business and the arts that make strange bedfellows.”
“Also finance, science and software development,” I acknowledged. “But what can I do for you this afternoon?”
“I will not mince words with you, Mr. Collins,” al-Wullah minced, “because of my intense interest in international understanding,” he exaggerated, “and my deep respect for universal human rights,” he lied. “We in the Yemenite Government are extremely concerned with our country’s image on the world stage.”
That last statement, at least, I could believe. “As any sovereign nation would be,” I blathered, placing the required non sequitur perfectly, if I do say so myself.
“Yes, yes,” al-Wullah smiled with obvious satisfaction, “precisely. It is a most vexing situation, as I am sure you would agree. Yemen is, paradoxically, at once a very young country and a very old one.”
“That’s the Zen of it,” I quipped, plumbing for a sensible reaction.
“The Zen,” he pontificated, “is, as we know, a component of infidel Buddhist thought, and thus not truly compatible with the divine revelations of Mohammed, peace be upon him.”
Oh, well, I thought to myself, so much for that. “Which aspects of your relations with other countries concern your government the most?”
“Coffee,” al-Wullah responded in a New York second. “Yemen is coffee’s native habitat, you know.”
“Yes,” I assured him, “and Yemeni coffee is held in very high esteem by connoisseurs everywhere.”
“How true. So, consequently, we fear some… backlash… I suppose you would say… after recent events,” he fretted.
“Recent?” I needled. “Are you kidding me? Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt are the Islamo-fascist Axis of Evil. Practically every 9/11 hijacker had ties to at least two or three, if not all four of them. And speaking specifically of Yemen,” I pressed him, “what about this Anwar al-Awlaki joker, huh? According to the latest reports, he put the British shoe bomber, the Detroit jock bomber and the insane Fort Hood Army psychiatrist up to murder – or attempted murder, as the case may be.”
“Certainly,” he chided, “you must realize that Yemen is a very tolerant country, where…”
“Where the life of anyone who isn’t a Muslim,” I interrupted, “isn’t worth a share of General Motors stock.”
“Granted,” al-Wullah replied. “But who told them to reside in Yemen? Not me. Tom, I can assure you – anyone who is a Muslim, or at least, the certain sects of Islam we approve of, anyway, need fear nothing in Yemen, except, of course, the occasional roving band of heavily-armed religious fanatics hopped up on Qat. But everybody in Yemen has to watch out for those, and other than that – nothing. You can sleep all night with your front door open if you like. It’s a very friendly, welcoming place.”
“Sure,” I said, “like Utah is a friendly, welcoming place, as long as you’re a Mormon.”
“Mormons?” al-Wullah inquired, suddenly curious. “I have heard of these… Mormons. What can you tell me about them?”
“The Mormons,” I explained, “are very much like the Moslems, actually. Centuries after the Old and New Testaments were written, each religion was founded by a visionary leader who experienced a direct connection with Almighty God. And each of them wrote down what God told them in their own, new interpretation of His Word, both of which, coincidentally, maintained that God thinks guys like them should have lots and lots of women to sleep with. And each of them subsequently preached the Word of God as they had recently been told it, after which, huge moiling throngs of haplessly credulous, shockingly unintelligent and pathetically ignorant disciples appeared, followed by all Holy Hell breaking loose and blood flowing like water as various massacres spread all over their respective landscapes like athlete’s foot at the YMCA.”
“And despite that,” al-Wullah argued, and quite fallaciously, I might add, “here we are today.”
“Indeed,” I admitted, “we are. And Yemen wants to have its cake and eat it, too, it seems.”
At that, al-Wullah’s eyebrows shot up smartly. “Would you care to explain this… cake metaphor, Mr. Collins?”
“Sure,” I began, “it’s like this: Yemen’s only significant exports are coffee, fish and a little bit of oil. You’re just about out of the oil you can get at yourselves, and no foreigners who could get at the rest of it want to do business in Yemen because you’re all so corrupt…”
“Excuse me, but Yemen is not corrupt,” al-Wullah protested. “We just have a unique way of doing business, that’s all.”
“If you say so,” I humored. “Anyway, as I was about to state, despite your dwindling oil revenues, you’ve just started to export liquid natural gas to South Korea and want to keep doing that, of course, but the fact is, your fish exports aren’t about to put Norway out of business, so Yemen’s coffee is the only thing paying the bills. Consequently, you’re afraid someone might stand up and call for a coffee boycott. A trade sanction like that would reduce your per capita daily income from a dollar and a quarter to about forty-five cents.”
“Well, yes,” al-Wullah confessed, “such thoughts have occurred to us.”
“Okay,” I continued, “in that case, why haven’t you done something about Anwar al-Awlaki?”
“But we have,” al-Wullah insisted. “We mounted a US-backed air strike to kill him just last week!”
“But he’s still alive,” I sardonically observed, “despite the fact that the air strike managed to kill quite a few other people.”
“As the Americans often say,” al-Wullah shrugged once more, “’You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.’ We got a tip that al-Awlaki was at a party, so we did the only logical thing – we killed everybody there so we would be sure to get him. But when our troops on the ground went through the bodies afterwards, he wasn’t one of them. Who knows? Maybe he was never really there in the first place.”
“Maybe,” I remarked, “somebody didn’t like someone who actually was at that party and tricked you into killing that person for them.”
“Oh, my goodness,” al-Wullah exclaimed in a somewhat unconvincing manner, “what a terrible thing to have done! I would say, Mr. Collins, you must have a truly diabolical mind, that can construct such a scenario. I doubt that it could possibly be true. But even if it is true, surely Allah will punish the perpetrator severely in the afterlife.”
“No doubt,” I responded with just a hint of sarcasm, “such actions will severely decrease the number of virgins a fellow like that gets.”
“At the very least,” al-Wullah agreed, “one would hope so. But as you can readily ascertain, Mr. Collins, we are indeed sincerely trying to neutralize al-Awlaki.”
“I’m sure,” I lied, “that you’re doing your best. I mean, no government with the staunch integrity of Yemen’s would be afraid that taking out al-Awlaki might spark unrest at home or elicit the disapproval of your rich Arab neighbors.”
“No, no,” al-Wullah chuckled, waving his hand dismissively, “of course not; absolutely preposterous.”
“Right,” I pressed on, “let’s see now, chasing al-Awlaki… you’ve already had the party where you killed everyone but it turned out he wasn’t there. So, next you could bomb a hospital full of sick children and then say you were told it was his hideout…”
“Good, good,” al-Wullah murmured as he produced a leather bound notebook and began writing in it with a Montblanc pen, “… bomb hospital, say we were told it was his hideout…”
“… and then,” I added, “there’s the one where you execute a massive ambush on a convoy that he’s supposed to be in, but it turns out to be NGO aid workers with trucks full of food for starving refugees.”
“Nice one,” al-Wullah chortled, his head bobbing up and down with delight as he wrote, “very inventive.”
“Or you could,” I suggested, “try saying that you got a tip he’s hanging out with the Houthi clan insurgents whose protracted armed conflict with your central government created those refugees in the first place, then drop napalm and white phosphorous all over a refugee camp, after which you could claim you thought you were burning down a Houthi encampment with al-Awlaki in it.”
“Excellent,” al-Wullah quietly exulted, doing a little fist pump with his left hand as his right scribbled along smartly “… say we thought the refugees were Houthi clan militants harboring al-Awlaki…”
“Riddle a wedding with a dozen assault rifles on full auto,” I proposed, “and make sure to kill the bride. Then say you had a tip it was al-Awlaki in drag.”
“Outstanding,” al-Wullah gasped, “just marvelous! This stuff is the camel’s tooth, I tell you.”
“Blow up a car bomb in the middle of a crowded bazaar and then say you were told al-Awlaki would be riding in it, so your special forces booby-trapped it to blow up after twenty minutes of driving, but they assumed the car would be taking al-Awlaki out of town, but unfortunately it didn’t.”
“Brilliant,” al-Wullah whispered in awe, “simply brilliant. To combine such intricacy with such an impressive degree of plausible deniability.”
“Thanks,” I said, as humbly as possible. “Shoot down an airplane full of pilgrims on their way to Mecca, then tell the press you thought it was a chartered jet trying to sneak al-Awlaki out of Yemen.”
“Ingenious,” al-Wullah snickered, “simply ingenious! Tell you what,” he proclaimed with an ostentatious glance at his platinum Rolex, “now that we’re on the right track, it would be more convenient for me to go back to the embassy and begin briefings on this subject. Would you please spend the remainder of our time coming up with some more of these and then send them to me?”
“It’s your consultation,” I reminded him, “and your decision as to how the time will be spent. If you want me to spend it compiling a list of similar ideas about how Yemen can pretend to pursue al-Awlaki without ever catching him, I shall, and I will send it to you any way you like.”
“Yes, please, do so,” al-Wullah requested as he sheathed his pen, put away his notebook, took up his attaché case and made for the door. “I think it would be best if you fax the results to me at the embassy.”
“Fax it is, then,” I replied as his hand touched the door knob. “But one last thing.”
“What might that be?” He stopped and turned to look at me.
“You can also get plenty of additional ideas like these from the Pakistanis and the Afghanis. After all, they’ve both been hunting Osama bin Laden for over eight years now, and if an idea isn’t on the list I prepare for you, it’s bound to be on one of theirs.”
A broad smile spread across al-Wullah’s face as he opened the door. “Tom Collins, you may be damned expensive, but you’re worth every penny you charge.”