A stormy session of the Council of Basirat is in Progress in an exclusive suite in Amdallah Hotel, Doha, less than two kilometres to the international airport. Voices are raised in anger and alarm, and the chairman, Sheik Abdulazeez is finding it difficult to maintain order with everyone talking at once.

“My brothers in Islam, let’s be calm. I know we’re all angry and not a little frightened because of recent developments, but I assure you that we will achieve nothing here if we continue like this. We know that recent developments in Nigeria have given all of us cause for alarm, but our principals expect us to come up with concrete explanations and solutions instead of shouting like a pack of frightened sallah rams! Now let’s look at the facts as they are. First, we had what appeared to be a strong reason to believe that a set of papers existed listing the names and activities of the major sponsors of Boko Haram, our principals.”

“Which turned out to be false,” interjects Yahaya Mohammed one of the council members.

“A fabrication of that damned impostor, Dr. Yesufu or whatever he called himself,” interjects another.

“Please, my brothers, let’s be calm,” pleads the chairman again. “According to our late informant...”

“May his soul rot forever in Jahannam!” cursed Ahmet, another council member vehemently.

“I agree with you, my brother,” says the chairman. “In fact, if there is a place worse than hell, I would gladly send the soul of Dr. Solomon there. To continue, these papers were presumed stolen by some girls who miraculously, sorry, mysteriously disappeared from the Boko Haram camp in Sambisa. The story turned out to be false, a decoy, to use military terminology, to divert our attention away from the activities of the nefarious Yesufu. This council decided that Solomon should not get away with his sabotage. A fatwa was issued and some faithful brothers carried out the death sentence in Seattle. We thought that settled the matter of the Chibok papers. But a few days ago, a series of assaults has given us cause to revisit the issues of those papers. Three out of four major supporters of our cause in Nigeria were assaulted and left half-dead by an attacker that calls himself Azrael, and the fourth one has seemingly disappeared from the surface of the earth.”

“Who is this Azrael?” asks Abdulmalik, one of the council members.

“No one knows,” responds the chairman patiently. “To continue, if there are no papers, how come it is only our sponsors in Nigeria that have been targeted? That is the puzzle we have to solve tonight. To state matters simply, this meeting is to answer the following questions: Is there a list of names containing the supporters of our cause? Two, are we dealing with an individual or an organisation? Three, who is the next target, and how can we forestall it? Four, how can we take out this opposition or render it powerless. These are the questions this meeting must answer. Now let us address them one by one.”

Major Hamid, the ex-military officer immediately raises his hand and the chairman recognises him.

“My brothers in Islam, this is an extremely delicate and dangerous matter,” he begins, his tone sending jitters down the spines of his listeners. “As an ex-military officer, I have a strong suspicion that we are not dealing with an individual but a powerful international organisation. This is because no individual will have the resources to carry out such daring assaults unless he has the backing of a powerful organisation that provides logistic support. Think about it yourselves. The victims have not been ordinary persons careless about their security. One is an ex-army general guarded day and night by a platoon of soldiers. Another is a wealthy businessman who knows the value of personal security and has the means to procure the best that money can buy. The third is a serving state governor protected round the clock by policemen and secret service men. No individual can ever get close enough to hurt such men. This makes me to conclude that we are not dealing with an individual but an international organisation. The name Azrael or Angel of Death is just an alias which, as you said, Chairman, is to divert our attention away from the real opposition. I suggest we dig into our networks and find out what the American CIA, the British MI6, the Russian KGB, most especially the Israeli Mossad, have been up to lately. To me, these assaults have the imprint of the Israeli Mossad.”

“Thank you, my brother,” responds the chairman. “That answers one question, but the most crucial. Is there a list of names somewhere or are we dealing with a random event?”

“Excuse me, chairman,” says another council member.

“Go right ahead.”

“I don’t think we need to panic over this matter. So far, all the people attacked have been Nigerians. I have a feeling that this could be a local vendetta, perpetrated by those who have grudges against our supporters. We all know that not all Muslims in Nigeria support what we are doing. We know that many do not share our vision, even among the emirs. That was why we had to take out one of the emirs to make the others fall in line. Still resentment remains especially against Boko Haram’s attack on mosques. Let’s face matters squarely, there are many Muslims in the northern region of Nigeria who regard us as a bunch of kaffirs, bloody unbelievers, terrorists and power mongers. It is not inconceivable that some organisation may have sprung up to hit back at some of our sponsors. Are we even sure that this so-called Azrael is not an agent of the Directorate of State Security or the Military Intelligence unit of the Nigerian Army? Those guys can be fantastic when there are no political impediments hampering their operations!”

“That’s true!” agree almost everyone in the room.

“So what do you suggest, brother?” asks the chairman.

“I advise we keep our fingers crossed on the issue of a list until we see an assault on any of our non-Nigerian sponsors.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” agrees the ex-military man and other members nod their heads in agreement. Just then, the chairman’s phone begins to vibrate.

“Just a minute, my brothers. This is an important call.”

The chairman accepts the call and puts the phone on his right ear. He listens for a while and then utters a horrendous scream.

“What happened? What is the matter?” ask council members fearfully.

The chairman cannot speak for a while, but puts down the phone on the rug.

“My principal, our major sponsor, has just been shot!’

“By whom?” shout many voices at once.

“Azrael, the Angel of Death!”

The meeting breaks up in utter pandemonium as council members scamper to get out of the door. The Angel of Death has struck too close to home for the comfort of council members. The principal sponsor in question lives in Doha. And if such a man could be struck by Azrael, it is not inconceivable that council members may soon be in his gun’s eye-sight. After all, the meeting is holding in the same city, Doha. Caution being the better part of valour, council members decide to get out of the city before death comes knocking on their door too.

***

Meanwhile, the man called the Angel of Death walks sedately into the plane at the Qatari international airport and takes his seat in the economy class. His seat is by the window. The plane is only three-quarters filled, and the two seats beside the Angel of Death are empty. He puts his only luggage, a carry-on bag on the seat beside him and puts the ear-piece in his ears as he listens to Jazz music. To the casual observer, he cuts the picture of total relaxation, a man whose only care in the world is to enjoy himself. But in his mind, he is utterly afraid, almost willing the pilot to take off immediately. Even though he has covered his tracks very well, he knows from past experiences in covert operations that no agent is save until he is completely out of the vicinity of his last kill. He could imagine the commotion going on in the city now as the news of the assault on the Qatari billionaire breaks. The police must have found the gun he left behind and his call card. Road blocks must have been mounted all over the city by now. Stop and search must be going on as well. Very soon, someone will remember the airport. Although his cover is solid and unassailable, he would rather avoid any entanglement with the police.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelt for take-off...” comes the announcement he has been praying for. He obeys eagerly, but remains tensed up within until the plane is in the air some five minutes after the announcement. Then he relaxes and smiles for the first time since he shot the billionaire. He truly begins to enjoy the jazz music and allows his mind to rewind the events of the last three days.

It was easy for him to locate the palatial home of the billionaire in Doha. But as soon as he saw it, he knew it was impossible for him to break into the place. The house is built like an English castle with an artificial moat dug right round the whole fortress. The surrounding walls are very high, probably twenty metres on each side, covered with barbed wires on top and no doubt electrified. He was sure that electronic surveillance gadgets must have been built into the wall to monitor movements. Light sweeps the whole place every night, and some speed boats filled with well-armed men navigate right round the castle day and night, so it is impossible to paddle or swim across the water without being detected. The only entrance into the compound is through a draw-bridge manned by many well-armed guards. This makes it impossible for a one-man assault on the compound except he has a tank. Still, he would not get in because all the guards need do was draw up the bridge and take his tank out with some anti-tank armament which he is sure they must have. Late at night, he could hear the sound of dogs patrolling the grounds and those canines would tear up any intruder within seconds if caught by them. Judging by their sounds, he knew they would not be less than eight. Back in his hotel room, Azrael pondered on the problems confronting this operation and finally decided that since he could not get in to hit the target, he would have to smoke the billionaire out of his lair and make him come to him.

He spent the whole of the next day assembling his arsenal which he got through the black market. He knew he was taking a risk by spreading so much money around, dollars especially, but he calculated that before the police would get wind of him, he should be long gone. The rest was up to mother luck. The night of the operation, he put his arsenal in a bag and walked to the corner of the hotel where he had left a rented sedan, a nondescript vehicle with a powerful engine. All the time he spent in the hotel and around the city, he was in complete disguise, altering his facial structure and carrying a false passport that supported his false identity. Twelve midnight found him in the woods opposite the drawbridge to the castle. He waited for about an hour after the bridge had been drawn up and the castle seemed to be in slumber. Then he fired the first smoke bomb over the castle and it landed on the lawn right by the swimming pool. It went off with a loud bang, spewing fire and smoke everywhere. The second bomb fortunately landed on a car and the fuel tank exploded along with the bomb. Four more fire bombs followed in quick succession, with one landing on the roof above the billionaire’s bedroom.

Chaos took over the castle, with guards and servants running into each other in the smoke-laden compound and mistaking one another for the enemy. In the melee, some guards ended up shooting some of their colleagues and the dogs, crazed by the dense smoke bit some of their handlers as they tried to control them. In this fevered atmosphere, the billionaire’s private guards hustled their master into a car and rushed him out of the beleaguered compound. As soon as he saw the drawbridge being lowered, Azrael smiled and hurried up to his second position. A private road snaked through the wood and led up to the castle. As he drove into the woods earlier in the night, Azrael stopped to plant some small explosives at the neck of a bend, the narrowest point on the road.

He raced to the bend and lay flat on his belly in the tall grasses. He puts on his night vision glasses and his special gun with the needle and syringe was firm in his right hand. As the first vehicle in the convoy of three cars tried to negotiate the bend, the first explosive went off, shattering the windshield and blinding the driver. The vehicle slew across the road with the driver still trying to control it. It hit the last explosive and burst into flames. The occupants, three guards and the driver crashed out of the burning car and ran for safety. The billionaire’s car is in the middle and ran into the first vehicle. But the guards on the ground ran up to the back door, force it open and drag the billionaire out of danger. The car exploded in flames only seconds later. The driver of the third car had seen what was happening and stopped. Four more guards spilled out of the car and ran towards their master. They picked him up and rushed him to their own car. As he climbs into the Jeep, Azrael shot him in the back of his neck. In seconds the billionaire went limp. In the ensuing confusion, the Angel of Death made fast his escape, leaving his weapons on the ground with his call cards and hand gloves. Within an hour, he checked out of the hotel and was on his way to the airport, having abandoned the sedan somewhere in the city.

“What would you like to eat, sir?” asks the hostess a second time.

“Rice will do,” replies Azrael, snapping out of his reveries.

“With chicken or beef, sir?”

“Chicken, please.”

The hostess serves him.

“What drink should I give you, sir?”

“Water, please.”

“I have some excellent beers and fruit juices, sir. I also have red wine.”

“Just water, thank you.”

The hostess serves him water and goes to the next seat. Azrael eats slowly, ruminatively, his mind going over his next operation. After his meal, he coils up on the three seats, using his carry-on bag as a pillow. He is soon fast asleep, for the first time in three days.

He sleeps for the rest of the trip and only wakes up when the pilot asks all passengers to put on their seat belts in preparation for their descent into John F.Kennedy International Airport, New York. While the other passengers respond with alacrity, Azrael is a little bit slow. The plane descends smoothly, then suddenly jerks violently as it touches the tarmac.

“Brace! Brace!” shouts the pilot as he struggles to stop the plane that suddenly goes out of control. Azrael is confused like many of the passengers. As the plane hurtles down the runway, he looks out of the window in perplexity instead of bending down and holding his head below his knees. Suddenly, the faulty braking system kicks in and the plane slews out of control and skids off the runway completely. It piles into the tail of another plane and stops. The passengers are violently thrown forward and slammed into the seats in front of them, but because most of them had assumed the brace position, they only sustain minor injuries. The overhead luggage compartments are thrown open and many bags fly out like missiles. One of them with a steel rim hit Azrael on the back of his head and he passes out. He is the only passenger carried out of the plane on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital.