The Caliphate Read online

  “I have friends among those stars,” Marshall said. “I’ve been lucky.” He paused and added, “And so have you.”

  A dozen men and women approached the security turnstiles on the far end of the lobby in front of steps leading up to a large corridor backlit by windows on an interior courtyard. As Steve and Marshall turned left in front of the turnstiles, Steve saw a woman in a hijab go through the turnstiles. Steve stopped Marshall.

  “Did you see her? A Muslim woman? In here?”

  “I know. The CIA is an equal opportunity employer. And the Agency can use people who understand Islam. Besides, she passed the screening and the polygraph. Getting a job offer here is not easy.”

  “Okay, okay, but what happens when she decides that she’s more Muslim than American?”

  Steve shook his head.

  They went up several steps and turned into a small room where a guard was waiting for them. He checked Marshall’s badge, gave an ESCORT REQUIRED badge to Steve, and led them to an open elevator being held for them. They exited on the fifth floor directly into a conference room, thus avoiding the need to share corridors with under cover intelligence officers of the National Clandestine Service who might be leaving on secret missions the next day.

  “Hello everyone, I’m Isabel,” said a black-haired woman with lively dark eyes and a broad smile seated at the large conference table. “I’d like you to sign several forms Mr. Church,” she said, pointing to Steve.

  Marshall interceded, “If that’s a secrecy agreement, Steve is here not to acquire information but to share it.”

  “He still has to sign them.”

  She pushed them forward and, hesitating just a second, Steve signed them—rules and regulations. He shook his head slightly. Isabel then led them to a windowless conference room where four people waited for them. On one wall was a row of portraits that reminded Steve of the photos of Bogart and Bacall in movie theater lobbies. Certainly less glamorous but he assumed these people were stars in the world of clandestine operations.

  As they sat around the table, one of their hosts, a woman who seemed a bit younger than Steve, greeted them.

  “Hi. My name is Nicole. I’m with the Maghreb section of the Directorate of Intelligence.”

  She looked to her right.

  “And this is Jason. He’s with the National Counterterrorism Center. He focuses on radical Muslim terrorism. I don’t know if you realize it, but you’re one of the few survivors of a Salafist attack. In fact, you’re the only one I know of who lived through two attempts—two in less than a week, a record. We’re interested in anything you can share with us. For example, in hindsight, were there any indications of surveillance or any other interest in you beforehand?”

  After recounting his story, Steve said, “So, in a nutshell, yes there were signs. Somebody went through my stuff in the hotel, I had company for sure when I went to the mausoleum, but I thought Curly and his friends in Fes were on my side. The Moroccan police must have all those guys in jail by now.”

  “This definitely sounds like Tariq al Khalil’s style. We knew they had a cell in Morocco but it hasn’t been very active,” said Jason, his dark hair lightly spiked.

  At that point a slim woman in her late thirties entered the room.

  “Steve, this is Thérèse LaFont, the Chief of the Africa Division of the National Clandestine Service,” Marshall said.

  Steve recognized her from the last photograph on the wall. She had short blonde hair and was elegantly dressed in dark tailored slacks and jacket with a white silk blouse. She gave him a firm handshake.

  “I only heard part of your story, but that was some driving. The only thing that’s going to keep your father from going to jail for sharing our methods with an unauthorized and uncleared individual is for you to come to work for us.”

  She laughed. Steve managed a laugh, too.

  “My father showed me how to do that maneuver on a vacant lot in an old Ford. It stuck with me, luckily.”

  They spent the next few minutes focusing on the respective roles of Benjelloun as the Salafist penetration of the Moroccan security service, Spaceck’s over-the-top-zeal in trying to gain favor with the Moroccans to build himself a retirement sinecure, and Abdelhaq al Fassi’s continuing value to the king.

  “I understand, Steve, that you know Tariq al Khalil?” said LaFont, abruptly.

  “I met him a couple of times when I was in school in Brussels,” he replied, noticing the meeting was moving beyond his Moroccan experience.

  Nicole and Jason left the room and the two officers who had been sitting against the wall moved to the table. LaFont introduced them.

  “This is Philip, branch chief for the Maghreb and Mel, West African branch chief.”

  Philip, average height, average weight, dark hair with specks of gray. Could be any age, Steve thought. He was the original gray man who would be undistinguishable in a crowd. Mel was a heavy-set woman in her fifties with white hair. She was draped in an abundance of striped fabric.

  “According to our information, al Khalil has a front in Timbuktu called the International Muslim Relief Agency,” Philip said. “From there he is trying to establish a base for radical Islam in the entire Sahel, across North Africa, especially in countries with weak governance. His tools are his academic reputation, his Muslim Brotherhood ties, plenty of money, and the willingness to use physical violence. He is starting to make an impact. His goal is to establish a new Caliphate in the Sahel and grow it to include all of the Middle East.”

  He turned to Mel, who asked, “Steve, at West Gate International, do you need medical clearances before you travel?”

  Steve, puzzled by the non sequitur, nodded.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Philip shot a frown in Mel’s direction and took the conversational lead back.

  “Al Khalil recently traveled through Algeria with his operations chief. While he was in Ghardaia, a major town in the Northern Sahara, two French oil workers were killed for no known reason. We suspect that his presence in the area was not a coincidence.”

  LaFont leaned forward.

  “We have no one who can give us an “eyes-on-target” view of his set up in Timbuktu. Islam, radical or not, is not a topic the Malian Government wants to talk about with us. You know, I assume that Mali is a Muslim country. I’ll be up front with you, since you’re family,” she glanced and smiled at Marshall. “Our eventual goal, of course, is to have a source in al Khalil’s office, in his group. So what we need to get started is a general overview—who these people are and what they do. Of course names, identifying data, and assessments would be great.”

  Steve glanced at his father, leaned back, and said, “I definitely want to help. What I’ve seen and learned in the last month has convinced me that the Salafists are a threat.” He hesitated and added, “But if you’re thinking I can get this information for you, you’ve got the wrong guy. I have no idea how I would go about it.”

  “Well, you could do more than you think just by visiting him in Timbuktu. It’s just to give us context. The biggest thing we’d like you to do, that we would appreciate your doing, is to meet with al Khalil once or twice under some pretext. Hopefully you could go to his IMRA office and take a look around. We’ll take it from there.”

  “What do I tell my boss at West Gate? I do have a day job.”

  Marshall, who had let the conversation take its course, now jumped in.

  “Your people just told us that the cell that attacked Steve in Morocco came under al Khalil. Now you want him to walk into al Khalil’s office? Why does that make sense to you?”

  He looked at LaFont and at the two other CIA officers.

  “Yes, we talked about that and we reviewed the communications between al Khalil and the Moroccan cell,” Philip answered. “They never mentioned Steve’s name per se. The cell leader in Casablanca and al Khalil’s operations chief, who was in Morocco at the time, only mention a young American who worked for Ted Coogan.”

 
Marshall looked a bit surprised.

  “That’s new. When did you have those messages? Why weren’t they available while Steve was in Morocco? If you knew that he was in danger, why didn’t you take action to warn him and get him out?”

  He slapped his hand on the conference table with restrained anger.

  “We didn’t have those messages until after the fact, unfortunately,” LaFont said, shaking her hear. “Sorting and translating and then figuring out where the information should be sent took the National Security Agency a bit too long to make it actionable. Further, we didn’t know who the messages were about either, until you told us what was going on Marshall.”

  “When will the NSA understand that its information is not just for the historical record?” he asked.

  LaFont nodded in sympathy and turned to Steve.

  “I hope you don’t mind, we’ve already talked to your boss at West Gate. He said that he would reluctantly lend you to us, but he wants you back. Sounds like he’s got you on the fast track.”

  Mel, who had been silenced earlier, came back to the charge.

  “Before we let you go overseas on our behalf, you need to be medically cleared. We’ll sign you up for a full physical next week. Secondly, I don’t know what it’s like in the private sector, Steve, but here you’ll have to keep a tight record of all the expenses you expect to get reimbursed. And we’ll need receipts. We’ll buy your flight tickets, of course. We’ll get cheaper government fares.”

  Steve thought he was in the presence of a frustrated accountant. “Mel—it is Mel isn’t it? I admit that I’m new at this, but right now I think it’s more important that I … that we … focus on the actual mission.”

  Marshall looked at Steve then at LaFont and said, “Welcome to the government, Steve. For the privilege of taking risks on behalf of your country, you get to spend more time filling in forms than you do on actual operations.”

  Turning to LaFont, Marshall continued, “But since Mel brings up the issue of money, keep in mind that Steve, if he agrees to do this, will continue to be paid by West Gate since you’ve already made the arrangement. He won’t be paid by the Agency. In other words, you’re getting a freebie, so…”

  LaFont frowned at Mel.

  “Of course, and we appreciate it. I agree. We’ll minimize the paperwork.”

  Mel frowned back and said, “I only thought that since Steve’s new to the government he should know the rules.”

  LaFont looked at her watch and got up to leave.

  “Steve, thank you for your willingness to help us. I suggest that the next step is to train you on basic tradecraft, especially agent assessment, reporting, and show you what we’ve got on your new best friend al Khalil.”

  She left the room and they laid out a training program for Steve. As they were leaving the CIA’s Langley campus, Steve asked his father, “What’s with this Mel? I’ve met a lot of your CIA friends. She’s not like them.”

  “No, she’s not. The Agency is so thin that it’s taking people like her with no overseas experience in order to staff the desks. I heard she comes from HR and spent some time with the Recruitment Center. She’s obviously big on process.”

  Steve laughed.

  “If people like Mel are the face of the CIA with new applicants, the Agency has more problems than I thought.” Left unsaid were internal warning signals that he was entering a situation with more rules and oversight than he wanted.

  15. CIA Safe House, Virginia

  That evening, Marshall drove Steve to the safe house out in the countryside where he would live during his brief training period. They soon got off the highway and drove across familiar rolling hills. Although it was dusk, Steve could make out the large estates and forested properties.

  The training safe house turned out to be a comfortable six-bedroom structure on twenty wooded acres. An unobtrusive fence surrounded the property. In the front, the white cross-buck fence was the same type used by the horse farms in the area. The front gate was a simple white wooden pole with a counterweight dropped across the entrance road to bar vehicular access. It was controlled remotely by the authorized visitor or by security from inside the grounds.

  “The periphery of the property is guarded by concealed sensors and cameras monitored from a separate building recessed just inside the tree line,” Marshall said. “The office of security normally keeps a unit of guard dogs on the grounds. I want to remind you of a couple of things that you already know, which may come up early in the training. First, remember that the CIA is not part of law enforcement. It doesn’t have the power to arrest and doesn’t fall under the Department of Justice. Also, an ‘agent’ in CIA parlance is a foreign national recruited to steal secrets for an intelligence officer. The media still uses the FBI meaning of the word to describe the FBI staff officer who investigates and makes the arrests.”

  They turned into the driveway as Steve said, “Don’t worry Dad, I won’t embarrass you.”

  Inside, Steve resented his father’s assumption that the talk was necessary.

  ***

  After a week during which Steve had been introduced to basic tradecraft topics such as the spotting, assessing and developing of potential agents, Marshall dropped by after dinner as Steve was going through French language cards, French on one side, English on the other.

  “Sorry to interrupt you. I thought I’d come over and see how you’re doing, whether you need anything since you’re not allowed to leave.”

  “I guess these French irregular verbs will just have to wait,” Steve said, putting his cards aside.

  Marshall moved some books off a chair and sat down.

  “I have something to ask you. You know that two years ago I was initiated into the Knights of Malta, an organization created in Jerusalem in A.D. 1099. I think you would make a great addition to the Order and I would be proud to sponsor you. The investiture is scheduled to take place at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The ceremony itself dates back centuries; a lot of tradition there.”

  Steve had avoided following in his father’s wake, but he was intrigued by the offer.

  “What is the purpose of the Order, exactly? What do you do?”

  “Exactly?” Marshall grinned. “We raise money for wounded veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s what my chapter does anyway. Each chapter has its favorite cause.”

  “Sounds like a good cause. Let me think about it. You think I qualify to be a member?”

  “Well, there’s no test, if that’s what you mean. It is a Christian organization—it started in the Holy Land during the Crusades. We look for professional people who have attained a high level of accomplishment in their field. And the usual qualities, you know, trustworthiness, integrity, the usual personal values.”

  Steve looked serious.

  “I’m just getting started. I don’t have accomplishments.”

  “You’re wrong about that. But it’s also for people who we think have all of the personal attributes and who we judge will become successful. And that’s you. Am I wrong?”

  He grinned again.

  Steve didn’t want a confrontation with Marshall at this point. In fact, the offer actually sounded interesting. It sounded even better when Marshall added, “While we’re in Israel we can visit some of the Crusader castles—all part of the Order’s history.”

  ***

  The next day, he met his new instructor Juan, dressed in boots and cammies. Juan had black hair and a squat build. Steve learned over the next forty-eight hours that Juan was a former Special Forces master sergeant who had trained counter-narcotics forces in Colombia and Mexico.

  “I’m going to introduce you to weapons and explosives,” Juan told him. “We don’t expect you to use them but you need some knowledge for defensive reasons.”

  That day, Steve fired the Glock and other personal weapons. He was shown the various improvised explosive devices used by international terrorists and how these groups built and used car bombs, a weapon o
f choice in the Middle East.

  On the way back from the range in the old Ford Fairlane assigned for his training by the Base’s administration, Steve asked, “What about butane bombs?”

  “Yes, I heard about your experience in Morocco. Using the pressure inside the butane cylinder multiplies the force of the blast several fold—more bang for the buck. I understand they used Semtex to set it off. I’m not surprised. Remember Vaclav Havel, who became President of Czechoslovakia? He said that during the Cold War, his country had sold or given enough Semtex for the worlds’ terrorists to have an ample supply for the next one-hundred-fifty years.”

  ***

  When Juan picked up Steve the next day, he told him over coffee at a table in the kitchen, “Today, you make an IED and set it off. Like yesterday, the purpose is defensive. The rule of the range is that the student picks up his own duds—that means that if your device doesn’t explode, it’s your job to go pick it up. Nothing new about that; sort of like packing your own parachute.”

  They drove out to the range and, following Juan’s directions, Steve timed a six-inch piece of fuse, which allowed him to then cut a length that would burn for forty-five seconds. Steve held the cap up to his eyes and crimped the metal around the fuse.

  He pushed the cap into the C-4 and walked it out about fifty feet. Then he lit the fuse, turned around and walked back with a determined but unhurried step. Juan had taught him that, when dealing with explosives, one needed to be calm and measured.

  They both got into the bunker and watched through a quartz bomb-blast window and waited. Juan looked at his watch and said, “It’s been two minutes. Wait another minute and then go get it.” Juan watched him closely, Steve assumed, for any signs of fear or nervousness, but Steve was determined to show none.

  A long minute went by. They were waiting and watching through the window. Juan looked at his watch and said, “Time.” Steve started out of the bunker.