Liar's Market

CHAPTER FIVE

BY J. P. TOWLE

Special to the Washington Post

LONDON—Nearly four months after the shooting outside the U.S. Embassy in London that took the life of a young American tourist, questions remained as to the motive of the Pakistan-born taxi driver blamed in the attack.

U.S. and British intelligence officials say there is little doubt Ibn Mussa Ibrahim attacked to protest American foreign policy.

But if so, skeptics ask, why shoot an unarmed civilian? And why was Ibrahim himself later found shot to death and stuffed in the boot of his taxi?

Security cameras outside the embassy captured the attack on video. The tapes show a shadowy, bearded figure behind the wheel of the black London taxi. The cab pulled up at the embassy’s outer gates just before the driver let loose with a spray of automatic gunfire.

The embassy had already closed for the day when 19-year-old Karen Ann Hermann of Oakview, MD, who had just left the building, was caught in the hail of bullets fired from the cab. She died at the scene.

But friends of the 26-year-old cabbie insist he had no interest in politics. Ibrahim immigrated to the U.K. in 1996.

“All he wanted was to earn enough money to bring his fiancée from Peshawar,” said Ibrahim’s roommate, Farid Zacharias. “Al Qaeda? No way. He loved American movies and Burger King.”

An alternate theory is that Ibrahim’s taxi was hijacked before the embassy attack.

“You can’t tell me that’s him in those videos,” Zacharias argued. “It was dark and raining. How can they be sure?”

But security spokesmen say Ibrahim’s were the only fingerprints found in the cab and on the murder weapon, later recovered in London’s High Park.

“We think he was a sleeper, like the Sept. 11 hijackers,” a senior intelligence source said. “Several have been inserted into Western Europe and the U.S. to await assassination orders.”

As to why the cabbie was subsequently killed, it may be because he missed embassy personnel in the April attack.

“Murdering one young tourist probably didn’t pack the political punch his Al Qaeda masters were looking for,” the same high-level source said.

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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION

(continued…)

So, Carrie, we were talking about the murder of Karen Ann Hermann.

Right. As I said, I didn’t learn her name until later, but she was there in the lobby when I came out of the reception for the visiting senators. She left the building ahead of me. If I hadn’t gotten held up talking to the Gunny at the front desk, I probably would have been outside, too, when it happened.

You might have even been shot. Has that ever occurred to you?

Of course it has. It’s amazing more people weren’t hurt in that attack. It was really bad luck that she happened to be there the moment that terrorist drove up.

And so Karen Hermann died in your place.

I—what? In my place? Wait a minute, what are you saying? Are you suggesting he had a specific target? And I was it?

What do you think?

That’s not what the papers have been saying, and my husband never mentioned there was any suspicion it could have been something like that. Why would a terrorist target me specifically?

You said yourself you were struck by the similarity in your appearances that evening—yours and Karen Hermann’s.

Strictly superficial similarities.

You said you were taken aback by how much you looked alike.

It was a rainy day. Raincoats and umbrellas tend to be pretty generic. Plus, we both had our hair tucked up under berets, so, yes, we looked a little alike.

Enough that you were struck by it. You said it spooked you for a second.

Yes, but that’s because I’m a twin.

You have a twin? An identical twin?

Yes—or rather, I did have. Isabel died when we were eighteen, along with our parents. When you grow up with an identical twin, though, you never quite lose that sense that there’s supposed to be a mirror image of you out there somewhere. Even now, I get a shock when I accidentally see myself reflected in a store window or something, thinking it’s Izzie. Except, of course, it can’t be. She’s been gone over ten years. Still, I never seem to stop looking for her.

Was it a car accident she and your parents died in?

You must have this somewhere in those thick files of yours.

If so, I haven’t seen it. I mean, we try to be thorough, but unless it’s directly relevant to this investigation, the Bureau hasn’t got resources to waste on trivial details.

It isn’t trivial to me.

No, I’m sure. Sorry. That’s not what I meant. How did they die?

A fire. Our house burned down just after New Year’s in 1993. I was back at school by then. It was during my freshman year at Georgetown.

Your sister didn’t go?

No. She was still living at home with our parents back in San Diego. She didn’t go to college because she—well, she just didn’t go, that’s all. Anyway, the fire broke out in the middle of the night. No one survived.

I’m sorry.

Yes, well, anyway—as I said, after spending the first eighteen years of your life as half of a twosome, something always seems incomplete when you’re alone. That’s why I was momentarily struck by the similarity in Karen’s and my appearance that day at the embassy.

And it never occurred to you that someone else might have been confused by it, as well. The shooter in the cab, for example? And shot the wrong person?

But that would mean—wait a minute, are you serious? Is there any proof at all that man was lying in wait for me?

I’m asking if it might have occurred to you.

Well, the answer is, no, it didn’t. What possible evidence could you have that he was?

Security cameras at the embassy recorded the attack. We’ve analyzed those tapes six ways to Sunday. There’s no audio, but when the cab pulls up in front of Karen, she ducks down and looks inside, like the driver hailed her. And the Marines at the front gate said they heard the driver call out to her just before he opened fire.

He called her by name?

He called out a name. It might have been Karen, the Marines thought. Then again, it could just as easily have been Carrie.

You’re serious, aren’t you?

Dead serious. We even called in a lip-reader to look at the tapes. She confirms the Marines’ story, although she couldn’t be sure, either, exactly what name he called.

My God. You mean…? That poor girl.

Yeah, that poor girl. And her poor family back home. Did you know Karen Hermann’s parents are both deaf?

I think I read that, yes.

Here’s something you probably didn’t read. Her father? He had a stroke three days after her funeral. He’s back home now, but paralyzed, they say. He can’t sign anymore, so even though his wife can still talk to him, he can’t answer. Can you imagine the mom? She lost her only child, and now, on top of the grief of that, she hasn’t even got her husband’s support.

That’s awful. I’m so sorry.

You’re sorry. Yeah, well—anyway—let’s put Karen Hermann back in the file for the moment and move on, shall we? You were saying that you and your family were supposed to stay on in London until the summer. But then, right after this shooting, you left early and came back to D.C.

That’s right. Drum had already been notified that he was being promoted to Operations Deputy at Langley. We’d been delaying our departure so our son could finish out the school year. But after the attack at the embassy, the official threat level was notched up and dependents and non-essential personnel were being shipped out. Drum decided there was no point in sticking around any longer, so we left a couple of weeks later.

And then?

Then, nothing. He started his new job at CIA headquarters. I was tied up with getting us settled after the move.

You went to live with your husband’s mother?

Yes. The MacNeils have a big old family home over in Virginia, right on the Potomac—but you know already that, don’t you? Anyway, it’s just a few miles from Langley, so it was convenient for Drum. His mother has been rattling around in it by herself ever since his father died. She has a daughter, as well—Drum’s sister, Eleanor—but she lives in New York and hardly ever returns to D.C. Anyway, I think I said that Drum inherited the house when his father died. When he was posted back to Langley, neither he nor his mother would hear of us living anywhere else.

How did you feel about that?

It wasn’t the first time. We’d lived there before the posting to London, too—after Africa, when Jonah, our son, was a baby.

I know, but I asked how you felt about it. Not many young wives would want to live with their mothers-in-law.

Well, no, neither did I particularly, to be honest. But we left London so suddenly, I didn’t have time to convince Drum we should be looking for our own place.

So you just went along with what he wanted?

To begin with, yes. You have to understand, I had a lot on my plate. There’s a ton of personal admin that has to be taken care when these transfers come through. With Drum as busy as he was at work, that all fell on me—the shipment of our personal effects, getting what we’d left behind out of storage. Drum’s Jag was in storage, but I had to find a car for myself. I also had Jonah to get settled. Had to try to find a summer day camp that was still accepting registration. There was no way a six-year-old could be expected to hang around the house all summer. He would have been bored silly, and Althea—that’s Drum’s mother—she wasn’t used to having noisy children underfoot, either.

Anyway, bottom line—living there wasn’t ideal, as far as I was concerned, but with our rushed departure from London, it’s what I was handed. I tried to make the best of it.

And your husband? How did he seem when you got back to D.C.?

He was even busier than he’d been in London, just as I suspected he’d be—which was another reason he had no interest in house hunting.

How did he settle in?

It’s been tough for him, the past two or three months.

How so?

Well, being back at headquarters is not like being out in the field. You’re a lot more independent out there. Back here—well, you must know this yourself. The FBI can’t be that different from the rest of the government. There’s a lot of bureaucracy to deal with. Political gamesmanship, that sort of thing. Drum hates all that.

So he wasn’t happy?

He was showing signs of stress, I’d say. It wasn’t that he couldn’t handle the deputy’s job, mind you. He was really pleased to have been promoted. It was more like, he was champing at the bit to get to it. He wanted to put his mark on things, he said. Travel out to the posts, get to know all the station chiefs.

And what was stopping him?

As I say, bureaucracy. It seems there was some big organizational review underway—still the fallout from September 11, I gather. You know—trying to decide what the Agency did wrong, coming up with recommendations on what they might do differently in future. When Drum got back from London, the Director asked him to take on the running of that task force for a few weeks. Said it needed a little fire put under it. Drum felt he couldn’t say no, especially when the Director stressed how high profile it was, and how important to the Agency’s future. But Drum was more and more frustrated with every passing week. Said he was spending his days pushing paper around, chairing endless meetings—except not the ones he wanted to be in on.

And which were those?

The ones dealing with day-to-day operations, I suppose.

And so?

So, nothing. What could he do? He had to get the damn job finished, he said. That’s what he was trying to do. All I know is, we hardly ever saw him. Most days, he left home before Jonah was up and came back long after he was in bed. After I’d gone to bed, too, for the most part.

He left at what time in the morning, generally?

About seven. He liked to beat the traffic and be at his desk before seven-thirty.

Always?

Whenever he was in town, yes. As I say, he was almost always gone by the time Jonah came downstairs for breakfast.

So, he had a routine that never varied.

Not really.

And then two days ago, something changed. Right, Carrie?

You know it did. That was the day everything changed.

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