{"product_id":"the-faithful-spy-isbn-9780515144345","title":"The Faithful Spy","description":"\u003cb\u003e#1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Bestseller\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Edgar® Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDrawing from his experience as a correspondent in Iraq, Alex Berenson exploded onto the thriller scene with this perfectly crafted, highly-acclaimed debut novel—“a timely reminder of the extremely precarious way we live now” (\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYears ago, John Wells was an all-American boy from Montana. Now, he is roaming the mountains of Pakistan as a member of al Qaeda. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter a decade away from home, he despises the United States for its decadence. He hates America’s shallow, mindless culture of vice and violence. He is a devout Muslim. He is a brave warrior for Allah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe is a CIA operative. And he is coming home…“A well-crafted page-turner that addresses the most important issue of our time. It will keep you reading well into the night.”—Vince Flynn\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Berenson offers a very American story—a sort of terrorist \u003ci\u003eHigh Noon\u003c\/i\u003e…exciting.”—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A hold-your-breath thriller…a grabber.”—\u003ci\u003eSt. Louis Post-Dispatch \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An intriguing thriller studded with alarming possibilities.”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Daily News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A thriller worthy of Le Carré.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eAs a reporter for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003cb\u003eAlex Berenson\u003c\/b\u003e has covered topics ranging from the occupation of Iraq to the flooding of New Orleans to the financial crimes of Bernie Madoff. He is the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of the John Wells series, including \u003ci\u003eThe Faithful Spy\u003c\/i\u003e, which won winner of the 2007 Edgar Award. He lives in New York City.Chapter 1 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Present Day\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    North-West Frontier, on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    sheikh gul scowled at his congregation. “These days every Muslim must   fight jihad,” he said in Pashtun, his voice rising. “When the Mongols   invaded Baghdad, it didn’t help the people of Baghdad that they were   pious Muslims. They died at the swords of the infidels.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The sheikh threw his hands over his head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Now Islam is under siege again. Under siege in the land of the two   mosques, and the land of the two rivers”—Saudi Arabia and Iraq. “Under   siege here in Pakistan, where our leader works for Americans and Jews.   Everywhere we are under siege,” said the sheikh, Mohammed Gul. He was a   short, bearded man with a chunky body hidden under a smooth brown robe.   His voice seemed to belong to someone much larger. Inside the mosque, a   simple brick building whose walls were covered in flaking white paint,   the worshippers murmured agreement and drew together. Brothers in arms.   But their assent enraged the sheikh further.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “You say, ‘Yes, yes.’ But what do you do when prayers are finished? Do   you sacrifice yourselves? You go home and do nothing. Muslims today   love this world and hate death. We have abandoned jihad!” the sheikh   shouted. He stopped to look out over the crowd and wipe his brow. “And   so Allah has subjugated us. Only when we sacrifice ourselves will we   restore glory to Islam. On that day Allah will finally smile on us.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Except it sounds like none of us will be around to see it, Wells   thought. In the years that Wells had listened to Gul’s sermons, the   sheikh had gotten angrier and angrier. The source of his fury was easy   to understand. September 11 had faded, and Islam’s return to glory   remained distant as ever. The Jews still ruled Israel. The Americans   had installed a Shia government in Iraq, a country that had always been   ruled by Sunnis. Yes, Shias were Muslim too. But Shia and Sunni Muslims   had been at odds since the earliest days of Islam. To Osama and his   fellow fundamentalist Sunnis—sometimes called Wahhabis—the Shia were   little better than Jews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Al Qaeda, “the Base” of the revolution, had never recovered from the   loss of its own base in Afghanistan, Wells thought. When the Taliban   fell, Qaeda’s troops fled east to the North-West Frontier, the   mountainous border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Wells had narrowly   escaped an American bomb at Tora Bora, the last big fight of the Afghan   war. He liked to imagine that the bomb had been guided by Glen Holmes,   who had swung it away from the hut where Wells hid.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But the United States hadn’t closed the noose at Tora Bora, for reasons   Wells had never understood. Thousands of jihadis escaped. In 2002, they   reached the mountains of the North-West Frontier, so named by the   British, since the area was the northwest border of colonial India. The   North-West Frontier was a wild land ruled by Pashtuns, devout Muslims   who supported Qaeda’s brand of jihad, and was effectively closed to   Pakistani and American soldiers. Even the Special Forces could operate   there only for short stretches.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    So Qaeda survived. But it did not thrive. Osama and his lieutenants   scurried between holes, occasionally releasing tapes to rouse the   faithful. Every few months the group launched an attack. It had blasted   a train station in Madrid, blown up hotels in Egypt and subways in   London, attacked oil workers in Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, it fought the   American occupiers. But nothing that had shaken the world like   September 11.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Meanwhile Wells and his fellow jihadis eked out a miserable existence.   In theory, Qaeda’s paymasters had arranged for Pashtun villagers to   house them. In reality, they were a burden on desperately poor   families. They had to earn their keep like everyone else. Wells and the   half dozen Arabs living in this village, just outside Akora Khatak,   survived on stale bread and scraps of lamb. Wells did not want to guess   how much weight he had lost. He had hardly recognized himself the few   times he had seen himself in a mirror. The bullet hole in his left arm   had turned into a knot of scar tissue that ached unpredictably.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The winters were especially difficult, even for Wells, who had grown up   playing in the Bitterroot Range on the Montana-Idaho border. The cold   sank into his bones. He could only imagine what the Saudis thought.   Lots of them had been martyred in these mountains, but not from bombs   or bullets. They’d died of pneumonia and altitude sickness and   something that looked a lot like scurvy. They’d died asking for their   mothers, and a few had died cursing Osama and the awful place he’d led   them. Wells ate fresh fruit whenever he could, which wasn’t often, and   marveled at the toughness of the Pashtuns.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    To keep sane he practiced his soldiering as much as possible. The local   tribal leader had helped him set up a small firing range on flat ground   a few miles outside the village. Every few weeks Wells rode out with a   half dozen men and shot off as many rounds as he could spare. But he   couldn’t pretend he was doing anything more than passing time. They all   were. If America vs. Qaeda were a Pop Warner football game, the refs   would have invoked the mercy rule and ended it a long time ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Gul stepped into the crowd of worshippers. He looked at the men around   him and spoke again, his voice low and intense. “The time for speeches   is done, brothers,” he said. “Allah willing, we will see action soon.   May Allah bless all faithful Muslims. Amen.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The men clustered close to hug the sheikh. Waiting his turn, Wells   wondered if Gul knew something or was just trying to rally the   congregation. He poked with his tongue at a loose molar in the back of   his mouth, sending a spurt of pain through his jaw. Dental care in the   North-West Frontier left something to be desired. In a few weeks he   would have to visit the medical clinic in Akora to have the tooth   “examined.” Or maybe he’d just find a pair of pliers and do the job   himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Lately Wells had dreamed of leaving this place. He could hitch a ride   to Peshawar, catch a bus to Islamabad, and knock on the front gate of   the American embassy. Or, more accurately, knock on the roadblocks that   kept a truck bomb from getting too close to the embassy’s blastproof   walls. A few minutes and he’d be inside. A couple days and he’d be   home. No one would say he had failed. Not to his face, anyway. They’d   say he had done all he could, all anyone could. But somewhere inside he   would know better. And he would never forgive himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Because this wasn’t Pop Warner football. The mercy rule didn’t exist.   The men standing beside him in this mosque would happily give their   lives to be remembered as martyrs. They were stuck in these mountains,   but their goal remained unchanged. To punish the crusaders for their   hubris. To take back Jerusalem. To kill Americans. Qaeda’s desire to   destroy was limited only by its resources. For now the group was weak,   but that could change instantly. If Qaeda’s assassins succeeded in   killing Pakistan’s president, the country might suddenly have a Wahhabi   in charge. Then bin Laden would have a nuclear weapon to play with. An   Islamic bomb. And sooner or later there would be a big hole in New York   or London or Washington.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Anyway, living here had a few compensations. Wells had learned the   Koran better than he ever expected. He had a sense of how monks had   lived in the Middle Ages, copying Bibles by hand. He knew now how one   book could become moral and spiritual guidance and entertainment all at   once.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    After so many years in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Wells found that his   belief in Islam—once just a cover story—had turned real. The faith   touched him in a way that Christianity never had. Wells had always been   skeptical of religion. When he read the Koran at night on his bed alone   he suffered the same doubts about its promises of paradise as he did   when he read the apostles’ description of Christ rising from the dead.   Yet he loved the Koran’s exhortations that men should treat one another   as brothers and give all they could to charity. The umma, the   brotherhood, was real. He could walk into any house in this village and   be offered a cup of hot sweet tea and a meal by a family that could   barely feed its own children. And no one needed a priest’s help to   reach the divine in Islam; anyone who studied hard and was humble could   seek enlightenment for himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But Islam’s biggest strength was its greatest weakness, Wells thought.   The religion’s flexibility had made it a cloak for the anger of men   tired of being ruled by America and the West. Islam was the Marxism of   the twenty-first century, a cover for national liberation movements of   all stripes. Except that the high priests of Marxism had never promised   their followers rewards in the next world in exchange for their deaths   in this one. Wahhabis like bin Laden had married their fury at the   United States with a particularly nasty vision of Islam. They wanted to   take the religion back to the seventh-century desert. They couldn’t   compete in the modern world, so they would pretend that it didn’t   exist. Or destroy it. Their anger resonated with hundreds of millions   of desperately poor Muslims. But in Wells’s eyes they had perverted the   religion they claimed to represent. Islam wasn’t incompatible with   progress. In fact, Islamic nations had once been among the world’s most   advanced. Eight hundred years ago, as Christians burned witches, the   Muslim Abbasids had built a university in Baghdad that held eighty   thousand books. Then the Mongols had come. Things had gone downhill   ever since.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Wells kept his views to himself. Publicly, he spent hours each day   studying the Koran with Sheikh Gul and the clerics at the village   madrassa. His Qaeda superiors had taken notice. And that was the other   reason Wells stayed in the North-West Frontier. He believed that he had   at last convinced Qaeda’s leadership of his loyalty; the other jihadis   in the village had begun to listen to him more carefully. Or so he   hoped.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Wells’s turn to greet Sheikh Gul had come. Wells patted his heart, a   traditional sign of affection. “Allahu akbar,” he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Allahu akbar,” said the sheikh. “Will you come to the mosque tomorrow   morning to study, Jalal?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I would be honored,” Wells said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Salaam alaikum.” Peace be with you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Alaikum salaam.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    wells walked out of the mosque into the village’s dusty main street. As   he blinked in the weak spring sunlight, two bearded men walked toward   him. Wells knew them vaguely, though not their names. They lived in the   mountains, second-tier bodyguards for Osama.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Salaam alaikum, Jalal,” they said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Alaikum salaam.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The men tapped their chests in greeting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I am Shihab,” the shorter one said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Bassim.” The taller of the two, though Wells towered over him. His   shoes were leather and his white robe clean; maybe life in the   mountains had improved. Or maybe Osama was living in a village now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Allahu akbar,” Wells said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Allahu akbar.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “The mujaddid asks that you come with us,” Bassim said. Mujaddid. The   renewer, a man sent by Allah to lead Islam’s renaissance. Bin Laden was   the mujaddid.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Of course.” A battered Toyota Crown sedan was parked behind the men.   It was the only car in the village that Wells didn’t recognize, so it   must be theirs. He stepped toward it. Bassim steered him away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “He asks that you pack a bag. With everything you own that you wish to   keep.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The request was unexpected, but Wells merely nodded. “Shouldn’t take   long,” he said. They walked down an alley to the brick hut where Wells   lived with three other jihadis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Inside, Naji, a young Jordanian who had become Wells’s best friend in   the mountains, thumbed through a tattered magazine whose cover featured   Imran Khan, a famous Pakistani cricketeer-turned-politician. In the   corner a coffeepot boiled on a little steel stove.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Jalal,” Naji said, “have you found us any sponsors yet?” For months,   Naji and Wells had joked to each other about starting a cricket team   for Qaeda, maybe getting corporate sponsorship: “The Jihadis will blow   you away.” Wells wouldn’t have made those jokes to anyone else. But   Naji was more sophisticated than most jihadis. He had grown up in   Amman, Jordan’s capital, paradise compared to this village. And Wells   had saved Naji’s life the previous summer, stitching the Jordanian up   after Afghan police shot him at a border checkpoint. Since then the two   men had been able to talk openly about the frustrations of living in   the North-West Frontier.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Soon,” Wells said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hamra, Wells’s cat, rubbed against his leg and jumped on the thin gray   blanket that covered his narrow cot. She was a stray Wells had found   two years before, skinny, red—which explained her name; hamra means   “red” in Arabic—and a great leaper. She had chosen him. One winter   morning she had followed him around the village, mewing pathetically,   refusing to go away even when he shouted at her. He couldn’t bear   watching her starve, so despite warnings from his fellow villagers that   one cat would soon turn into ten, he’d taken her in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Hello, Hamra,” he said, petting her quickly as Bassim walked into the   hut. Shihab followed, murmuring something to Bassim that Wells couldn’t   hear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Bassim and Shihab—Naji,” Wells said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Marhaba,” Naji said. Hello. Shihab and Bassim ignored him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Please, have coffee,” Wells said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “We must leave soon,” Bassim said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Naji,” Wells said. “Can you leave us for a moment?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Naji looked at Bassim and Shihab. “Are you sure?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Nam.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As Naji walked out, Wells stopped him. “Naji,” Wells said. He ran his   fingers over Hamra’s head. “Take care of her while I’m gone.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “When will you be back, Jalal?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Wells merely shook his head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Hamdulillah, then,” Naji said. Praise be to God, a traditional Arabic   blessing. “Masalaama.” Good-bye.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Hamdulillah.” They hugged, briefly, and Naji walked out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    bassim and shihab looked on as Wells grabbed a canvas bag from under   his cot. He threw in the few ragged clothes he wanted: his spare robe,   a pair of beaten sneakers, a faded green wool sweater, its threads   loose. A world-band radio he’d bought in Akora Khatak a year before,   and a couple of spare batteries. The twelve thousand rupees—about two   hundred dollars—he had saved. He didn’t have much else. No photographs,   no television, no books except the Koran and a couple of Islamic   philosophy texts. He slipped those gently into the bag. And his guns,   of course. He lay on the dirt floor and pulled his AK and his Makarov   from under the bed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Those you can leave, Jalal,” Bassim said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Wells could not remember the last time he had slept without a rifle. He   would rather have left his clothes. “I’d rather not.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “You won’t need them where you’re going.”","brand":"G.P. 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