September 11: What if the planes had not struck the towers?<

Three times a week, Ivan Kovalski got up before dawn to run.An old habit preserved from his years of high school and university, when he practiced the fight at good level.With age and insomnia, he got up earlier and earlier.At six o'clock, the paths and the undergrowth were already usually full of his fellow men, doing their jogging before entering to shower in speed and catching the ferry.At five o'clock, there were only cracked in its kind.But it left him more time for breakfast.

He did not say it, but when he sank under the trees when he was still dark, it was always with a little knot in the stomach.Animals, stray dogs, or he did not know which prowler or monster emerged straight from his imagination.For him, it was a test of character, which allowed him to calmly face the wars of corridor within the administration as the stress of certain surveys.He sometimes had the impression that at the FBI his immediate colleagues and superiors were more dangerous than the criminals he was pursuing.

The previous winter, while he galloped serenely on a dirt road, grayed out by the icy air loaded with scent which rose from the Hudson, he had almost been overthrown by a deer who had tumbled from thickets.No matter how carefully, Ivan was gaining weight, and his outings kept him at a reasonable level.He had an interest, with what awaited him in the mountains of the Kush Hindu, or the Panshir, he did not yet know.Mary and he had not yet stopped their destination.

«Ivan had accompanied her to Nairobi, to investigate the attack on the American Embassy in Kenya on August 7, 1998: two hundred thirteen dead, thousands of injured, one hundred and fifty people made blind by shards of glass glass.»»

This Saturday, September 11, 2021, he had granted an additional outing, a little later than usual.It was nine o'clock, it was abnormally hot for the season, and the sun illuminated the lawn which descended in a soft slope towards the river.As it evolves within the agency, and that of Mary in the power plant, they had seen the size of their growing function housing, which had saved them to buy a housein the countryside and a small apartment on the coast.She was still sleeping, girls too.Basketball training had resumed, Brandon had spent the evening with club friends before taking the bus who took them to their first game of the season, in Pensylvania.

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It was by running that they had recovered, 23 years earlier, on the edge of the river but on the other side.Ivan had succeeded in the entrance exam to the FBI and had just been assigned to the I-49, the New York organization in charge of terrorism affairs.He loved his job and his boss, John O'Neil, an ambitious crack, patriot and hard worker, ultra competent but too dark and flamboyant so as not to attract a crowd of enemies.With his too showy costumes, his glimp hair and his complicated private life, he contrasts with the austerity of many of his colleagues in the FBI, Polish and Irish with the complete worn and shoes with pancake soles, part of the office at eighteenHolders to reach women and children.

O'Neil was fixing on Osama Ben Landen and Al-Qaida.Ivan had accompanied her to Nairobi, to investigate the attack on the American Embassy in Kenya on August 7, 1998: two hundred thirteen dead, thousands of injured, one hundred and fifty people made blind by shards of glass glass.Like many of his colleagues, he had never set foot outside the United States, and what he had discovered there had horrified him.It was his friend Stephen Gaudin, a Rouquin Râtre from the North End of Boston, just as novice as him in terms of traveling abroad, who had housed in a lost district, then questioned, Mohammed al-Owhali, oneauthors of the attack.

« Comme toujours les histoires de personnes prenaient le pas sur l'intérêt commun.»»

He was barely returned, returned but swollen in block, when he had encountered this great athletic blonde which he had trouble keeping the pace.He had spotted his training hours, not knowing how to approach him, until the day he had taken his courage in both hands, smiling at him when she was stretching on a small wall.She had given him his smile, not fooled and understanding very well where he wanted to come from.Their story had started like that, a perfectly American and perfectly erotic rose water film.

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Mary had a much brighter course than hers, an apartment much more pretty than hers, much more chic and wasp parents than her family, but he was much more copconcealment.His stories of academic works had not deceived him for a long time.She worked at the CIA, but did not want to tell her what she was doing there: "With brutes like you, always to speak wrongly and through, I am sure that you will quickly freeze your boss on what I work, if it's not in the media.Ivan had been deeply upset, especially since in contact with O'Neil, he had convinced himself, like him, that the transparency between the agencies was essential if we wanted to avoid the drama which sooner or later, would arrive in the territory of the United States.

The missed attack, but which had still killed six people and a thousand injured, in the car park of the World Trade Center in 1993, by an Islamist cell in Brooklyn and New Jersey led by Omar Abdel Rahman, was a sign that something was going on.The FBI may have detached agents in Alec, the CIA station devolved to Islamist terrorism, intelligence persisted not to transmit information however crucial to the criminal police officers.Officially, for fear of leaks and not to parasitize the intelligence work, but as always the stories of people took precedence over the common interest.The agent of the FBI Coleman, as neglected as O'Neil was elegant, the main member of the i-49 within Alec, following Bin Laden on track like his colleague and friend, having questioned Fadl al-Jamal, thesecretary of bin Laden in Karthoum, in Sudan, lived it on a daily basis.

« Avec plusieurs jeunes analystes, majoritairement des jeunes femmes, elles ne cessaient d'alerter sur les risques d'attentat sur le sol américain, mais entre la charge de travail et un certain dédain pour l'intuition féminine, leurs jeunes collègues les avaient baptisées "la famille Manson".»»

The contempt in which Michael Scheuer, the founder of Alec, held O'Neil, blocked all communication.The dismissal of Scheuer, guilty in the eyes of the White House of having wanted to get rid of Bin Laden during a hunt with Saudi princes, still reinforced the distrust of his subordinates, convinced that it was a maneuver of O 'Neil.

It is in this rather execrable atmosphere that Ivan organized a meeting, one evening in July 2001, between Ali Soufan, a young agent of the FBI of Lebanese, Muslim and Arabic, and Mary.Ali fascinated Ivan.His ease of speaking in public, his work force, his intelligence, and his flawless patriotism, moved by his recognition to his country of origin.He was investigating the attack on the USS Cole, in the port of Aden, in Yemen, where seventeen American sailors had just died in October 2000.Mary crossed a difficult phase.No matter how dedicated to the agency, she realized that there was a problem, and not that an organizational problem.The CIA was deeply macho.With several young analysts, mainly young women, they kept alerting to the risks of attack on American soil, but between the workload and a certain disdain for female intuition, their young colleagues had baptized them "The Manson family ", by the name of the killer of Sahron Tate, and the cohorts of his faithful:" They make us pass for a band of illuminated, but there are really worrying things.»»

Reluctant at first, she had ended up confiding in Ivan and Ali.Alec worked on an Al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur at the end of 1999: “Two of the types that were identified were also at meetings in Ryiad.We know by Saudi intelligence that they have American visas...»» « Putain, tu as leurs noms ?»»

"Khaled al-Midhar and Nawaf al-hazmi.If we know I told you that, I'm fucked up.»» Ali Soufan avait blémi : « Ces deux mecs sont aux Etats-unis, on les piste depuis des mois sans savoir ce qu'ils foutent là !»»

« Trop de tourisme en Afghanistan, les habitants n'en peuvent plus, il commence à y avoir des tensions.People leave waste everywhere in the mountains, the valleys are increasingly polluted.»»

O'Neil warned, the commando to which the two Saudis belonged had been dismantled.They were preparing a series of attacks from diverted planes, on the rounds of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.If Ivan had not taken his courage in both hands to smile at Mary, the world would have been definitively changed.

Georges Bush had not been re -elected and, after a learned destabilization campaign in Afghanistan, the Taliban had been gently dismissed, not without having delivered bin Laden before.It was their currency to guarantee an unacceptable exit door.

Ivan had his coffee in the kitchen watching television. Des émeutes venaient d'éclater sur l'esplanade des mosquées à Jérusalem, la Californie brûlait : « J'ai eu un message d'Ali, il revient d'une randonnée dans le Wakhan avec sa nouvelle copine, il me dit que l'ambiance change»» lui dit Mary en entrant dans la cuisine, en peignoir. « Ah oui, comment ça ?»» « Trop de tourisme en Afghanistan, les habitants n'en peuvent plus, il commence à y avoir des tensions.People leave waste everywhere in the mountains, the valleys are increasingly polluted. Et Kaboul n'est plus très sûre»»."But it's full of hotels and restaurants, we find all time, they make incredible sheep burgers!"I have a great memory, it was lively but really quiet.»» « Ecoute, je ne sais pas, il me dit qu'il commence à y avoir des agressions en ville.And the Taliban are starting to recruit among young people.They say that America behaves as if it were at home.»» « Ouais, enfin ceux là, d'ici à ce qu'ils reviennent, j'y crois moyen. On maintient notre trek cet hiver alors, ou pas ?»» « Je sais pas.I hesitate...»»

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