As the days wore on, the walls of Room 456C began to reflect the operation’s unique nature. Upon one wall slowly appeared the murky outlines of a lethal new terrorist network led by a man who was largely a ghost. To the best of their ability they retraced bin Shafiq’s long journey through the bloodstream of Islamic extremism. Wherever there had been trouble, it seemed, there had been bin Shafiq, handing out Saudi oil money and Wahhabi propaganda by the fistful: Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Pakistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, and, of course, the Palestinian Authority. They were not without significant leads, however, because in carrying out two major attacks, bin Shafiq and the Brotherhood had surrendered more than a dozen names that could be investigated for connections and associations. And then there was Ibrahim el-Banna, the Egyptian imam of death, and Professor Ali Massoudi, the recruiter and talent spotter.

On the opposite wall there appeared another network: AAB Holdings. Using open sources and some that were not so open, Lavon painstakingly sifted through the layers of Zizi’s financial empire and assembled the disparate pieces like bits of an ancient artifact. At the top of the structure was AAB itself. Beneath it was an intricate financial web of subholding companies and corporate shells that allowed Zizi to extend his influence to nearly every corner of the globe under conditions of near-perfect corporate secrecy. With most of his companies registered in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, Lavon likened Zizi to a financial stealth fighter, capable of striking at will while avoiding detection by enemy radar. Despite the opaque nature of Zizi’s empire, Lavon came to the conclusion the numbers didn’t add up. “Zizi couldn’t possibly have earned enough from his early investments to justify the size of his later acquisitions,” he explained to Gabriel. “AAB Holdings is a front for the House of Saud.” As for trying to find Ahmed bin Shafiq anywhere within Zizi’s financial octopus, Lavon likened it to finding a needle in the Arabian Desert. “Not impossible,” he said, “but you’re likely to die of thirst trying.”