The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage by Francesca Salerno

we’re after a third or fourth tier Al Qaeda operator. We’ve let it be known that our bounty on this guy has been cut back because he’s been wounded, or because his peers think he’s a jackass, or because he’s been demoted. We put that information out on the net. What do you think happens then?”
     
    “If he takes the bait,” a male voice in the audience answered, “he does something to make the headlines necessary to restore his street cred.”
     
    “Exactly,” Warsaw said. “Either he’ll just slither into the shadows, or if he’s got some guts he’ll do something to raise his professional profile, to make news, to prove that he’s still a player. So we’ve played him, in effect. He’s doing something in response to something we did. We have successfully manipulated his behavior, and if he’s not careful we catch him in our sights. That’s the benefit of identifying what Al Qaeda leaders value, what they care about. When we know that, we can push their buttons and make intelligent guesses about their responses.”
     
    The discussion that followed was wide-ranging and a little too theoretical for Kate, but an hour into the meeting the subject of nuclear weapons in terrorist hands came up. Kate listened.
     
    “The President of the United States has stated that Al Qaeda’s leadership has been—and I think I’m paraphrasing a little here—has been determined ‘to secure a nuclear weapon, a weapon of mass destruction, that they would have no compunction about using.’ Let’s look at this thesis a little more carefully. In the first place,” Warsaw said, “it’s far from easy to recognize a nuclear bomb when you find one. We know Al Qaeda has already been scammed once, maybe more. Few experts can tell a real bomb from a fake bomb. That means that if someone starts searching for a nuclear weapon on the black market, they run the risk of being duped by the Mossad or the Mukhabarat or just some run-of-the-mill con man with more courage than brains.
     
    “But even if Al Qaeda acquires a nuclear weapon,” Warsaw continued, “I imagine that, besides me and a few other guys who have spent our lives thinking about deterrence and game theory, by the time Al Qaeda gets a nuclear bomb, they will realize that it’s worth more to them intact than exploded. A nuclear bomb is much too valuable to waste killing people. We already know that’s what they’re thinking—you have seen the phrase we pulled out of the ether last week: ‘we are now the world’s tenth nuclear power.’
     
    “Think about what that means. Al Qaeda, once it possesses a nuclear weapon, is no longer just a band of desperadoes hiding in caves. Why kill the citizens of New York and earn the undying hatred of most of the world when you could use the bomb to initiate blackmail and start negotiating for real benefits? If they are indeed the world’s tenth nuclear power, then they have more real power than ninety per cent of the world’s sovereign states.
     
    “I think it’s far more likely, if Al Qaeda ever acquires a nuclear bomb, that they will announce to us that they’ve planted it in one of a dozen major U.S. cities and then they will start telling us what they want. Terrorism is much more about having a pulpit and a lever than it is about killing people. PR is what it’s mainly about, not murder. Al Qaeda is in the business of converting people.”
     
    A woman in the audience interrupted him. “What about the Twin Towers? AQ did not hesitate to kill three thousand people.”
     
    “That footage of the second plane hitting Tower Two is undoubtedly the most watched piece of film in the whole history of human communication,” Warsaw said. “Hundreds of millions of people have seen it. The 9/11 disaster was about death, certainly, but it was also about theater. Who knew about Al Qaeda before 9/11? Nobody! And afterwards? Everybody knew who they were. I’m really quite convinced that a nuclear bomb is worth far, far