Web Resources
Many readers want to know how I
came up with the plot to Honor
Killing.
• How
much of the book is true?
• How
much of it is pure invention?
• Could
it really happen?
• Just
how vulnerable are we in America to a catastrophic terrorist attack?
Now, while I'm not going to unveil
all my secrets, here are a few
of the resources I used when writing this book.
Inter-Active Reader's Guide
Further reading
Inter-active Reader's Guide
Book 1: Cargo
Book 2: Murder
Book 3: Satan in the Flames
Book 4: Maracaibo
Book 5: The 12th Imam
Book 6: Kourosh
Book 7: The Engineer
Book 8: Eva
Epilogue
Book 1: Cargo
“The
BVI. We don’t have a clue who Mr.Traventus is when he goes to the bank
or takes a plane.We don’t even know if he really exists. The BVI keeps
corporate ownership confidential – I mean, really confidential. This is
not Switzerland. They are really serious about protecting the identity
of the bad guys.” [Zvi Reuben briefing Israel Tan, p26]
Question: Are companies
registered in the British Virgin Islands really so secretive and
difficult to investigate?
Answer: Yes, and that is precisely why the mysterious
billionaire who owned the East Wind
III registered his company there. Offshore
Companies House and BVI
Offshore Services provide information on how the incorporation
process works, and on the BVI in general. Jost Van Dyke,
home to philandering British lawyer, Trevor Pettigrew, is of course a
prime tourist spot. "Epoxy
Foxy" Callahan has become so famous he now even has his own website. Pettigrew's office
is just across from the Government Dock in Road Town, Tortola. As for the
"Hollywood smile" of Mossad operator "Scott Harper," please suggest who you think
would best portray the man who entraps Pettigrew.
Book 2. Murder
Brannigan
made a note of the black plastic cable ties that bound the girl’s
wrists. They had used them in Afghanistan on prisoners. Whoever used
them here had applied them expertly. Whether they’d tossed her off the
dam or dumped her into the river below, the poor girl never had a
chance. [p71-72]
Question: Does the Brighton
dam, where the body of a Muslim-American girl is found by Dr. Eva
Romera while walking her dog, really exist?
Answer: Yes. Many residents of suburban Washington, DC have
never heard of the Brighton dam,
which blocks the Patuxent river to form Tridelphia resevoir on the
border between Maryland's Montgomery and Howard counties. While it's
not the Hoover Dam, the fall from the
top is more than sufficient to be fatal. And yes, dog-walkers do wander through
here. But the banks of the
Patuxent river are
so overgrown that access is difficult - which is why FBI Special Agent
Michael Brannigan and Detective MaryJo Slotnik are unable to catch the
terrorists who were stalking them through the forest.
Dr.
Kumar sighed. “You know, detective, in parts of my country we tolerate
certain practices by the Muslims that any normal person would find –
well,frankly inhuman. They call it honor killing. When a girl, such as
this one, dishonors her family before marriage, the family elders can
condemn her to death. The authorities know all about it, but in most
cases they are helpless because no witnesses ever come forward. I hope
that’s not what we’re seeing here. I would have thought Muslims in this
country would be coming here precisely to get away from that kind of –
barbarity!” [p76]
Question: Have honor killings ever happened in the
United States?
Answer: Yes.
The best-known case involved accused terrorists from the Abu Nidal
Organization, who allegedly murdered the sister of a member of their
terrorist cell in 1989. You can read the Justice Department affidavit
that describes the honor killing here
(PDF file). The MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base has a full entry on
the case.
Book 3: Satan in the Flames
Dressed
in blue jeans and a t-shirt that said, I Love New York, Mohsen’s
physical presence made his father bristle. But Hajj Imad wasn’t alone
among senior regime officials who found that his spawn failed to
embrace the Islamic Revolution with the same enthusiasm as his parents.
It wasn’t much of a consolation, but at least it avoided him
embarrassment. All of their sons and daughters were in love with the
West, and only went to mosque when they were forced to attend. They
preferred MP3 players to prayers. [p149]
Question: How
realistic is the scene in this chapter, where the 16-year old son of
Iran's master terrorist confronts his father as he is tracking U.S.
satellite movements on a subscriber-only website?
Answer: The defection to the U.S. of Ahmad Rezai, the son of
former Revolutionary Guards commander Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezai, is undoubtedly the
best-known instance of revolt by a son of the revolutionary elite.
As for U.S. military satellites, a great deal of public information is
available about their capabilities,
and
orbits.
And yes, there are user-groups that track satellite positions in real
time - but I'm not going to reveal them here! However, this public
tracking site is run by
NASA!
“Wishbone
Prime is a real weapon,” Zach explained. “The good news is that it’s
too large to fit in anything but a big tactical missile, such as the
old Soviet FROG, which has a limited range. Just enough to reach major
Indian cities – unless the wind happens to be blowing the wrong way.”
[p128]
Question: Is
Wishbone Prime the code-name of Pakistan's 1998 nuclear test, as
nuclear weapons expert Zach Miller tells Dr. Eva Romera when she visits
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory?
Answer:
The real name of Pakistan's 1998 tests are classified. However, U.S.
nuclear weapons tests
were given exotic names such as Starfish Prime, which was part of the
1962 Dominic series. (Trivia lovers: Starfish Prime was the first
time U.S. nuclear scientists saw the effect of
Electro-magnetic Pulse, which many today believe could be even more
devastating to U.S. infrastructure than a nuclear blast hitting
Washington, DC).
Book 4: Maracaibo
On
a side street beyond the main gate, David French was waiting for Chen’s
signal inside an unmarked white delivery van crammed with computer
screens and communications gear. He had monitored the entire
conversation until that point, and had gotten a visual of the Cuban DGI
counter-intelligence operative from the miniature camera lodged in
Chen’s glasses. Carlos Pena showed up in their data base as the deputy
cultural attache in Washington, DC who had handled Ana Montes until
January 2001, then returned to Cuba where he was promoted to director
of the North America division. Given his lowly status while in
Washington, this was a rather significant elevation. It all became
clear once Montes was busted and began to talk. What was Pena doing
here? he wondered. [p162]
Question: How realistic is the schedule that the East Wind III
follows on its voyage from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Maracaibo?
Answer: I carefully
plotted the progress of the East
Wind III based on an average speed of 12 knots, which is fairly
standard for coasters. This
task was made easier by using this incredible website, where
you can select the departure and arrival ports and calculate the
sailing time. Shipspotting.com
soon became one of my favorite sites for visualizing the East Wind III on its journey.
Geocities has a Shipping
101 primer on various types of cargo ships; and here are
registries of world shipping managers,
charterers,
and owners.
You can also track the location of Iranian state-owned ships.
Montes became the "go-to" analyst on Cuba for the entire U.S.
intelligence community.
Book 5: The 12th Imam
She
watched him disappear toward the Metro, and contemplated having another
glass of wine before she took the Marc train up to Camden station in
Baltimore. She was going to miss the vigor of his youthful body. But
there would be others. She wondered for a moment if his dismay at being
discovered was a put-on, then dismissed it. Muslim men, she thought.
Getting them to undress the first time was a feat. Getting them to keep
their clothes on after that was a joke. [p247]
Question: Is Joanna Greary,
the renegade FBI agent in the book, based on a real person?
Answer: In the
disclaimer on the credits page of the book, I am careful to insist that
all scenes in Honor Killing
are fictional, and
that "Any resemblance between the characters in this book and real
persons would be, to quote a famous passage from the 9/11 Commission
report, “a remarkable coincidence.”
As
he was saying these words, light appeared in a halo around him,
seemingly from out of nowhere. It burned with increasing intensity,
bright white, like a collar of shimmering diamond. He stood without
speaking, beaming at the crowd, for what seemed like several minutes as
the light burned around him like a diamond on fire. Finally, a lone
male voice in the crowd broke the spell. [p256]
Question: Iran's "boy president" in Honor Killing
believes that the 12th Imam will return at the End of Days to bring
about the ultimate triumph of Islam over the infidels. Is there any basis for this in fact?
Answer: Yes. When President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled to the United Nations General Assembly in
September 2005, he reported experiencing
a "religious vision"
and "seeing a light" while addressing world leaders. One of his first
acts as president, right after taking office in August 2005, was to
visit the well in Jamkaran, outside of Tehran, where the 12th Imam was
supposed to be hiding. According
to the Financial Times,
stories were circulating inside Iran that "as mayor of Tehran, he
drew up a new city plan for the imam 's return." Iranian commentator Amir
Taheri reported in April 2006 that Ahmadinejad was known to
disappear periodically to have "a khalvat
(tête-à-tête) with the Hidden Imam.
Book 6: Kourosh
“Singling
out a Muslim as a suspect in the murder of his own sister is racist,
it’s bigoted, and it has no business here in America. If the president
ever learned of what’s been going on over here, I guarantee you heads
would start to roll.” [p260]
Question:
Presidential
confidant Hilbert Christiansen nearly succeeds in shutting down an FBI
murder investigation. Could political cronies from outside of
government really have that much influence on law enforcement?
Answer:
Defeating cronyism and the power of unelected individuals has motivated
investigative journalists and members of Congress since the early days
of our Republic. In 230 years, little has changed.
Book 7: The Engineer
Sayeed
had described the place to him many times in great detail, but he was
in utter awe of it when they arrived. It was perfect. No, it was better
than perfect. At the bottom of the curve in Hay’s Beach Road, an
unmarked dirt path led nearly a half-mile through abandoned tobacco
fields to the water. There were no houses in sight all the way through
the fields. The land was flat, empty, and dark. “This is good,”
he said, tapping the young man on the shoulder from behind [307-8].
Question:
You chose
an unusual landing point for the Iranian ship. Why not just bring the
bomb into a U.S. container port?
Answer: I did extensive
research on U.S. port security while preparing a cover story that
appeared in Newsmax magazine in
December 2005,
and came away with the conclusion that the tremendous efforts
undertaken since 9/11 to enhance cargo screening and install radiation
detectors had reached the tipping point.
No
one I interviewed at Customs and Border Patrol had any illusion that
their systems were failsafe. However, if a terrorist had just one bomb,
would he want to take a 40% or 50% chance that the U.S. might discover
it? Most U.S. ports now have large VACIS
machines, portal monitors such as these I photographed at the port
of Newark/New York, hand-held radiation detectors, whole
cargo screeners such as the Eagle machine
in Baltimore,
and a host of other equipment, in addition to computerized cargo
manifest screening systems. While we should continue to upgrade port
security, 100% cargo inspection is over-kill. In my view, the
terrorists will strike elsewhere.
Chapter 8: Eva
O’Garrity
knew it wasn’t much of a prayer. But it was all that he could muster.
He crossed himself, and seeing Danny next to him do the same, he
whispered. “God have mercy on us all.” [p379]
Question: Chaplain Duncan
O'Garrity leads the crowd on the
National Mall in prayer during the final, climatic scenes of the book.
What can ordinary citizens do in the event of a nuclear attack?
Answer: A lot. Most estimates place the kill radius of a small
nuclear explosion in a city such as Washington, DC just two to three
miles.
Here's an Internet tool to calculate
overpressure zones (set the bomb blast to 20 KT - about the size of the
Hiroshima bomb and the likely size of a terrorist bomb) As
those of us who were brought up in the 1960s recall, the key is "duck
and cover" - or better yet, get underground and stay put until civil
defense radio stations sound the all clear. Here's a good backgrounder
on radiation detectors
available to the public. The last FEMA guide on
surviving nuclear attack was published in 1997. Newsmax
put out an excellent 1-2-3 of nuclear survival in 2002, and offers
a terrific World
Band radio equipped with a hand crank as a bonus to new
subscribers. Here's a more recent Internet guide to survival by
a vendor of radiation detectors and other gear. Bottom line is: don't panic, and
don't give up.
And here's
a map, from the Sept. 7, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, you can use to track the events of the
final scenes of the book (Ssshht!).
I've also prepared a printable
version should you need it (3.8 mb jpeg file), which you can download here.
A sizzling thriller about the next
battlefront in the war on terror from New York Times best-selling
author, Kenneth R. Timmerman.
MEDIA:
TO BOOK KEN ON YOUR SHOW, PLEASE CALL 301-946-2918, or better yet, EMAIL Ken directly
From the author of the national
best-sellers, The French Betrayal of America, and Shakedown!
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E-mail ktimmer@bellatlantic.net
