The Caliphate Read online

Steve went out through the ornate lobby. He looked across the street before making a right turn up the slight incline of Rue Chellah and noticed another BMW with three men inside. This car was dark blue. The one in the back was hard to see. They seemed to be looking at him. He made his way around the corner to find a taxi before the blue car made its way around the block. He tried to remember what his father had said about surveillance. Where was Abdelhaq? Whatever happened to his vaunted protective team?

  He went into a bookstore to plan his next move where he picked up a guidebook. He should not have left the hotel without a firm plan to get to the Hilton. He was deep in thought when someone whispered his name, making him jump. It was a smiling Abdelhaq who wordlessly guided him to the blue BMW waiting outside.

  They drove past the palace, and past the Zawa Theatre. Abdelhaq pointed out the small airport behind the Rabat Hilton where King Hassan II had always kept a plane and crew for a fast get-away in case of a coup. Abdelhaq’s house was in the Pinede section of Souissi, named for its evergreens.

  Abdelhaq pointed to an inscription by the front gate: VILLA LEILA.

  “That’s my wife’s name,” he said, smiling. “We bought the house just before I was assigned to Tehran.”

  They walked through a spacious marbled entrance and Abdelhaq led Steve to a wood-paneled living room that looked out on a rock garden. They sat on banquettes against the wall.

  Steve brought him up to date about the events on the road back to Rabat and asked, “What happened to the protection you promised?”

  “It’s been a full day for me too, Steve. We interrogated all the drivers and mechanics that had access to the ministry cars. All but one, that is. And we pretty much concluded that he was the one who placed the bomb in the car. Anyway we’re looking for him. He’ll lead us to the rest of his group. The bottom line, as you Americans like to say, is that the protective team assigned to you was led by Benjelloun, the Salafist penetration of our service.”

  Abdelhaq stood up.

  “How about some dinner?”

  He opened the sliding glass doors to the dining room. A maid, head covered and with fading hennaed designs on her hands and feet, soon came in with a tagine. The couscous was already on the table. The maid removed the onion-domed top of the earthenware dish to reveal steaming chunks of lamb mixed with prunes, sprinkled with sesame seeds and almonds.

  Abdelhaq poured from a bottle of Gris de Boulaouane, a Moroccan rosé with an alcoholic content that matched the strong tastes of the dish. The aromas of saffron and cinnamon caused Steve’s stomach to signal that it had been a long eventful day with little food. They both helped themselves directly with their fingers. Abdelhaq took the couscous with his fingers, rolling it into a ball, a feat that Steve didn’t even attempt.

  “Tell me about Benjelloun and his gang. Is he now under arrest?”

  “We’re still looking for them. I suggest that you stay here tonight. Now that we know who to look for, you should leave Morocco. Since you told us he was in Khemisett a couple of hours ago, my people are looking for him right now. It shouldn’t take long. We’ll get you on a plane out tomorrow. But it would help my investigation if the Salafists think you’re still here. Some might do something else to reveal themselves. You can leave as a Canadian tourist in your disguise and with a Canadian passport.”

  “That guy Benjelloun was part of the security team that I met with. He seemed very uncomfortable when I told them I knew I was under surveillance.”

  “Your antennae are obviously better than Benjelloun’s boss in security. He should have pegged Benjelloun as a problem. That cretin comes from a politically connected family, so he may have gotten into security through the back door. He’s a problem we will deal with,” Abdelhaq said, with a scowl.

  After the meal, Steve and Abdelhaq returned to the banquettes, low to the floor and with an abundance of backrest pillows. Steve was beginning to feel safe and relaxed for the first time all day.

  “I know you and my father met in Iran but I was too young to know you then. How did you meet? What were you two doing?”

  “If your father hasn’t told you himself, it’s probably not my role to talk about it. I only will tell you that I probably owe him my life. At a roadblock, he wrested a rifle. I remember it was a German Heckler and Koch G3 rifle—standard issue for the Iranian army at the time, from the hands of the leader of the thugs who wanted to take us prisoners. You can ask him for the details.”

  “Well, I can tell you also that my father has the greatest respect for you.”

  ***

  The next day Abdelhaq took Steve to the airport at five a.m. for his Air France flight to Paris. Abdelhaq’s people, in plainclothes, were on both the public and the passengers-only sides of the passport check-in booth and security control area. Steve was wearing his disguise. Steve went through police and customs control with his fake passport with no problems.

  Abdelhaq took Steve to the VIP lounge and took his Canadian passport.

  “It will be easier for you now to travel under your true name. Ian Ross is registered on our airport records as having left Morocco today. That fills our need. If anyone is looking, you are still here. By the way, did I tell you that we arrested Benjelloun and his crew, the team that tried to shoot you? After we knew from you that they had been in Khemisett, it was easy to find them.”

  “Was that the whole cell? Is everyone under lock and key?” Steve asked.

  “Unfortunately, the leaders, one named Hussein, a Syrian, and Lahlou, a Moroccan, were able to leave the country. We’re dealing with the most dangerous and the most ambitious Salafist group. Their leader is Tariq al Khalil. He sometimes masquerades as a moderate intellectual, as you know.”

  “Al Khalil again!” Steve cried out.

  He told Abdelhaq how al Khalil’s name had come up during his lunch with Colonel Spaceck.

  “Today, we asked your embassy to send their defense attaché home. That was your friend Spaceck. He was part of the problem. It seems that he fingered you to Benjelloun as a CIA officer.”

  Steve, eyebrows raised in surprise, said “Why the hell would he say that? I never had a good feeling about that guy. He seemed out for the main chance. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was just the tip of the iceberg.”

  Steve’s flight number was called out over the loudspeaker as boarding. Abdelhaq briefly gripped his upper arm and said, “I want to thank you for the part you played in getting rid of this Salafist cell. It’s not over but we’ve a got on line on the others. We’ve gotten you a seat in first class, by the way.”

  He gave him a fatherly hug and told him to convey his greetings to Marshall.

  ***

  Steve sat back in the Air Bus that would take him to Paris on the first leg of his trip back to the United States. As the two Pratt & Whitney 6122 engines lifted the aircraft up to its cruising altitude of thirty-thousand feet, Steve became aware of his heartbeat—it was normal for the first time in several days. He felt good he had been able to draw the Salafists out of their holes, even if it was only by playing the role of the tethered goat Abdelhaq had chosen for him. He had taken a measured risk, which he now realized had been based on false information, that Abdelhaq’s men would protect him. But he had made his own luck.

  Later, on his connecting flight to Washington Dulles Airport from Charles de Gaulle, he realized he had learned something else about himself. Being a successful businessman would never be enough. He needed to be a part of something bigger.

  13. Timbuktu, Mali

  Al Khalil entered the impoverished town of mud and sand and likened its decay to the decay of Islam. He knew that twenty-first-century Timbuktu was a far cry from its days as a center of trade and scholarship. A visitor needed to bring the history of Timbuktu with him or be disappointed.

  The Malian Office of Tourism claimed that the oldest Islamic law library in the world was in Timbuktu. Although the United Nations and private foundations were providing resources to keep this institution from
disappearing completely, it was only a dusty shadow of its former self.

  Al Khalil found it hard to imagine that the town had once been fabulously wealthy and that pirogues loaded with gold from the Malinke Empire of Sundiata Keita had once come up the Niger River to meet the caravans from Libya and Egypt carrying spices and other goods.

  His cover, his front organization, was the International Muslim Relief Agency. His office occupied a mud-walled building distinguished from similar buildings only by a green banner with the initials IMRA. Warm breezes pulled on the banner’s loose ties.

  The day after al Khalil’s return to Timbuktu, Mamadou Diallo, his moneyman in Mali, came to report. The year before, Diallo had brought the director of the Morila goldmine on board. The mine had an output of eight-hundred-million dollars that year, and Diallo made sure that a ten-percent “tithe” was embezzled and placed in Tariq’s Swiss bank account. There were gold mines on the other side of the Guinean border to the south and west of Timbuktu as well, and he hoped to be able to work similar arrangements there.

  He stepped around people waiting outside in the shade of the building and went into the IMRA offices past a guard sitting in the in the open doorway. The IMRA offices were surprisingly well furnished, a step up from the bare Malian Government offices. Several Afghan rugs were on the floor, Arabic posters of Cairo’s Al Azhar Mosque and Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock hung on the walls and, instead of the usual photograph of the current Malian president on the highest place on the wall, green Islamic calligraphy spelled out the word “Allah.”

  Diallo walked by the case handlers talking to their applicants and knocked on the door to an internal office. He wiped the sweat from his face on the sleeve of his mud-cloth bubu before walking in. He exchanged greetings with al Khalil and went to an open case of water bottles in the corner of the room, grabbed one and took several swallows.

  Al Khalil sat behind a table rather than an office desk. In the corner was a locked metal cabinet. Because graven images were too close to Jahhiliya image worship, his secret was locked in the file cabinet. It held two prints, one an inexpensive engraving of Sheikh Abdelkader al Khalil, who had fought and died at the Battle of the Highway of the Martyrs in A.D. 732, when the Muslim armies had been beaten back by Charles Martel, who would become Charlemagne’s grandfather, and the other of Sheik Tariq Ibn Ziad, the Berber warrior who had led the Arab armies across the Straits of Gibraltar into Europe in 711, both in the style of Jacques Louis David’s painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps, a victorious warrior on a white horse. The hill, or jebel, overlooking the straits crossed by Tariq Ibn Ziad and his men had been named Jebel Tariq, later corrupted to Gibraltar.

  Out in plain sight on his desk was a sign in Arabic, quoting his grandfather, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

  It is in the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.

  Al Khalil looked up and said, “Amadou, what’s going on at the mines? The gold you’re getting for us is helpful. But you know that’s not why we’re here. The gold is only a means to an end.”

  Tariq looked down at papers in front of him, but before Diallo could say anything, he stood up with his hands on the table. “We need more recruits among the miners, not only the gold mines but the salt mines in Taoudenni. We need to organize special indoctrination for the more susceptible and transform them into dedicated warriors. We need to identify individuals from these groups for special training. They’re perfect recruits for our army. We must go faster.”

  His tone was commanding.

  “I know that and I’m working on it,” Diallo said defensively. “But these people are not like us, they’re Sufis. They even drink beer. They would rather play soccer than go to the mosque.”

  “At this rate, it’s going to take a hundred years. I’m taking the recruitment function away from you and giving it to Mohammed Lahlou. Maybe Moroccans are better at talking than at operations. You keep your focus on the money.”

  ***

  Four days later, Lahlou walked into the IMRA building and went directly into Tariq’s office. Tariq closed the top drawer of his metal file cabinet and turned around to witness an agitated and sweating Lahlou.

  “I spent the last couple of days at Taoudenni, like you told me. I think we’re wasting our time there. The workers are the scum, the rejects, of every other possible employment possibility. Taoudenni used to be for political prisoners working off their sentences. I’m sure some stayed, if they didn’t die first, because that’s the only thing they could do.”

  “All right, let’s forget about Taoudenni. But I wouldn’t bring up Morocco if I were you,”

  “Going after that American so quickly, with no information and no planning, was not my idea. I could have done it very well by myself, and our best penetration of Security, Benjelloun, would still be alive today and working for us,” Lahlou said.

  “If you’re such a smart operator, how is it that you spent eighteen years in prison?”

  At that point Hussein came in and sat down. Tariq could see Hussein had better news than Lahlou, whom he waved out of his office.

  “I’m making arrangements for the Gao meeting next month,” Hussein said.

  Tariq tapped a finger on his desk.

  “I was just going to ask you about that. It’s going to be the first meeting of all of my key Salafist leaders from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. I want to give them my orders for the next twelve months. Is everything ready?”

  “Remember the Tuareg rebellion a few years ago?” Hussein asked. “One of the concessions given to the Tuaregs was that the Malian Army would decrease its presence in the Northern region of the country. One of the forts they closed down was the one in Gao. That’s where we’ll meet. It used to be a French Foreign Legion Fort. I told the Malian colonel in charge of the Gao military district that IMRA needed it for its annual Saharan Conference. He’ll take five thousand to make it happen and clean the place up for us, but you know he’s going to pocket most of it.”

  Hussein went to get himself a bottle of water.

  “Good Hussein, I want you and Lahlou to make all the arrangements.”

  Tariq paused and looked down toward this desk on which several papers were lying.

  Frowning thoughtfully, he said, “Now, I keep hearing about the crusaders, the Western missionaries, and what they call NGO’s. How many are there in this area? What organizations do they belong to? Are they having any success turning our people away from Islam? Getting the Western influence out of our lands is our first priority. We need to eliminate these proselytizers. These infidel missionaries think that their blessings increase with their difficulties? I want to heap such blessings on them that they go straight to their heavens!”

  Tariq got up from his desk and walked toward the door. Hussein followed as Tariq said, “Hussein, work on it. Give me a plan. It shouldn’t be that hard. How many of these foreign preachers could there be? They need to be encouraged to go home.”

  Tariq opened the door and Hussein left the office.

  “You’re right. Eliminating the competition, priests and other do-gooders, should not be a difficult challenge.”

  Using more force than necessary, Tariq closed the door hard behind him.

  ***

  Later that day, Tariq took a plane to Paris via Bamako for a speaking engagement. Hussein knew that he also would stop in Brussels to see his wife Malika and daughter Jamila. Tariq had confided that he would probably send them to live in Cairo.

  In his absence, Hussein had time to reflect on his role in Tariq’s grand design. His objective had never been religious. He wanted to take revenge on the Syrian Baathist leadership. He would have been perfectly happy, and fulfilled, to shoot the entire Assad family, starting with Rifaat al-Assad who led the attack that killed his father, and now Bashir, the former president’s son who had taken over the country on old man Hafez al-Assad’s death. Creating a new Calip
hate was much bigger, too grand an idea to hope for, and probably too vast to even begin to contemplate.

  When recruited by Tariq, Hussein’s mind had focused on only one thing: Tariq’s promise to overthrow the Syrian regime and install a leader who would be loyal to the new Caliph.

  But the Assads still ruled Syria. No country had yet been folded into Tariq’s grand scheme, although potent groups within each of the Sahel countries professed an allegiance to the Salafist banner. The meeting in Gao would be critical for the continued success of Tariq’s movement. He decided he would stay with Tariq. His was the only game in town, for now.

  14. Langley, Virginia: CIA Headquarters

  Steve and Marshall were about to enter the Old Headquarters Building. Marshall had mentioned Steve’s brushes with radical Islamists in Morocco to his colleagues at the agency, who wanted to hear about it firsthand. They passed a statue of Nathan Hale.

  “Why Nathan Hale?” Steve asked. “Wasn’t he captured and hanged by the British? There must have been more successful American spies.”

  “Yes of course. But, as the first spy to be executed for the United States, he stands for the patriotism and bravery of clandestine operators over the years.”

  In Steve’s absence, to-do’s from other projects had accumulated in his Tysons Corner office. The catch-up work weighed like a millstone. Steve already suffered from the boredom of too many hours spent writing overdue periodic progress reports and attending staff meetings; the routine was almost numbing. He was also frustrated over the lack of news concerning Coogan’s death. The good news was that, to everyone’s surprise, the Moroccan Ministry of Defense had already asked that West Gate send a team to Rabat to begin the next phase of the negotiations. But Steve’s job as the initial developer of the project was over for the moment.

  As they walked over the CIA seal in the marble lobby, Steve saw on his left the bronze statue of General William Donovan, an Irish Catholic from Boston who had become the most decorated soldier of WWI and then founded the OSS, predecessor to the CIA. To his right was the Memorial Wall with eighty-eight stars symbolizing the CIA officers who had died in the line of duty and whose names could not be revealed.