The Afghan

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If the young Talib bodyguard had known that making the cell phone call would kill him, he would not have done it. But he did not know, so he did, and it did.

On the seventh of July 2005, four suicide bombers let off their haversack bombs in Central London. They killed fifty-two commuters and injured about seven hundred, at least one hundred crippled for life. Three of the four were British born and raised but of Pakistani immigrant parentage. The fourth was a Jamaican by birth, British by naturalization, and had converted to Islam. He and one other were still teenagers; the third was twenty-two and the group leader thirty. All had been radicalized, or brainwashed, into extreme fanaticism, not abroad but right in the heart of England after attending extremist mosques and listening to similar preachers. Within twenty-four hours of the explosion, they had been identified and traced to various residences in and around the northern city of Leeds; indeed, all had spoken with varying strengths of Yorkshire accent. The leader was a special-needs teacher called Mohammad Siddique Khan. During the scouring of their homes and possessions, the police discovered a small treasure trove that they chose not to reveal. There were four receipts showing that one of the senior two had bought cell phones of the buy-use-and-throw variety, tri-band versions usable almost anywhere in the world, and each containing a prepaid SIM card worth about twenty pounds sterling. The phones had all been bought for cash and all were missing. But the police traced their numbers and “red-flagged” them all in case they ever came on stream.

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