The Caliphate Read online

  “Don’t worry,” Juan said, “we’ve only lost a few students. Besides it would look bad on my record. Seriously, I’ll go with you, Steve.”

  “No. I don’t need any special favors. If the SOP is for me to get it, I’ll get it.”

  As he walked out of the bunker, the instructor followed and quickly caught up with him. Having Juan beside him made Steve feel that the danger was acceptable—here was someone whose expertise was explosives; he wouldn’t be with him if he thought the risk was high.

  They walked toward the IED, both watching closely for telltale smoke. Steve and Juan stood for another second by the device before the instructor picked it up and pulled the fuse out of the detonating cap.

  He gave the whole package to Steve and told him, “The problem was that you didn’t push the fuse into the cap firmly enough. Also, we normally use two fuses and two caps for insurance, but I didn’t tell you to do that this time. The problem was in part mine. That’s why I came with you.”

  He had Steve do it again, with two detonator caps, and this time the device exploded, sending a cloud of dirt and rocks up into the sky.

  As they left the range, Juan said, “Now that I gave you instructions on what headquarters thought you should know, tomorrow morning I’ll show you what headquarters should have told me to show you. Ever hear of non-lethal weapons? Sounds like an oxymoron but the military has been doing a lot of work in this area and so have we. We’ve adapted the technology that the military needs to stop a crowd at a distance without shooting and reduced it to something you can carry in your pocket with a range of thirty feet. It’s called Pulsed Energy Projectile, or PEP. I’ll show you after breakfast tomorrow.”

  Steve left the next day at 10 a.m. after two hours of instruction on the new personal weapon.

  16. Paris: Kella’s Apartment

  Kella ran down the stairs as fast as she could. The fear of Hamad behind her coursed through her veins. To get away from him, she thought of jumping down from landing to landing.

  Was it possible?

  She jumped and came down lightly, but Hamad jumped after her.

  He reached for her.

  She felt the touch of steel on her back.

  Was the knife in her back?

  Somehow she knew that her blouse had been cut open.

  She kept running down the stairs—for her life!

  How many flights of stairs so far? How long would it take to reach the street?

  She lifted up her robe with one hand to go faster.

  Hamad yelled, “Whore! Whore!”

  She tripped and Hamad suddenly was on top of her.

  He straddled her.

  She was terrified.

  Was he going to rape her?

  She couldn’t move her arms or legs.

  He raised the knife and shouted, “Allah hu Akbar,” his face a demon’s mask.

  The knife came down slowly but inexorably toward her heart.

  His face was closer, grimacing with anger, with the effort.

  Was she dead now? Bells were ringing. She must be in the Basilica of Saint-Denis.

  ***

  The ringing woke her. She was in a sweat, her head turning from one side to the other. Her heart pounding, pounding, told her she was alive. Her phone was ringing. She put her light on. It was 6:30 in the morning. It was Steve.

  “Hey, I was hoping to catch you at home before you left for the day so I stayed up late. I’m in Virginia, at home. I’ve been thinking about you. How are you?”

  “I’m okay. Wait a minute, I’ll be right back.”

  She went to the bathroom and washed her face.

  “It’s early here you know. But I’m glad you called. I’m okay, but to tell you the truth I have problems concentrating, in my studies I mean.”

  “I have the remedy: a trip. I’ve just accepted a temporary freelance assignment as a photojournalist. I’m going to do the definitive piece on the Tuaregs. Come with me.”

  “What? The Tuaregs? It’s been done already,” she told him, laughing.

  “Maybe, but it’s not like I’m going to do it because you’re going to be my secret weapon. How about going with me? What better guide could I have? You even speak Tuareg, don’t you? Have you already taken your trip to Timbuktu? I hope not.”

  “It’s Tamasheq—the language, I mean.”

  She was glad to be distracted from her nightmare of Hamad, but Steve’s call was doubly welcome. She was attracted to the prospects of traveling with him in her native land. Yet she felt she had to put up a little resistance.

  “Steve, it’s a wonderful offer, but I can’t just pick up and leave my studies at a moment’s notice. I was planning a visit to my relatives in Timbuktu but not this afternoon. Are you going through an early mid-life crisis? I thought you liked your job.”

  “Trust me, Kella. I know this is sudden and you’ve got a ton of questions. I’ll answer them all when I see you in Timbuktu. Think of it as Fate. Think Lady Luck and the spirit of adventure. Think Baraka.”

  Without too much effort, he persuaded her to join him and they agreed to make their own separate ways to Timbuktu and meet there a week later.

  ***

  In coordination with the central cover staff, Marshall, Phillip, and Mel had settled on Steve’s cover. Sitting in the staff’s conference room, Yukio, the cover officer explained.

  “Your photojournalism cover will give you a reason to be in Mali and to make contacts with just about anyone in the Timbuktu area. And it will provide a pretext to contact al Khalil and IMRA, which presumably provides assistance to Tuaregs.”

  “What about sending Steve into the lion’s den in true name?” Marshall asked. “The Salafists targeted him in Morocco. They know his name. Everybody has his name it was in the newspaper.”

  Mel interjected, “I’ll get the forms from State for Steve to fill out.”

  “I can’t very well contact al Khalil in alias since we’ve already met,” Steve spoke up.

  “An alias passport at this late date is out of the question,” Yukio said. “Passports are controlled by the State Department with an iron grip—you wouldn’t believe the red tape.”

  “Listen, since I have to travel in true name, and since I have to meet al Khalil in true name, I’ll use my middle name, Christopher, when making contacts in Mali just to keep a lower profile,” Steve said decisively. “I have a hard time believing that al Khalil has anyone actively screening the names of everyone arriving and leaving Mali; the risk must be minuscule. As far as Tariq himself, I’m sure I can convince him that I have no involvement with the Quran documents.”

  If I can actually reach him, he thought.

  When the meeting was over, Marshall pulled Steve aside in the hallway. His father’s face was drawn and serious.

  “As usual, the real cover will not be what the CIA provides, but what you can do with it and how you conduct yourself.”

  With Marshall’s interference, Mel was forced to let Steve plan and buy his own flight tickets. Mel was only looking at the cost to the government, but Marshall had pointed out that all tickets bought at government fares are so labeled and would give Steve away.

  ***

  Steve left Dulles on a five-and-a-half-hour night flight to Paris, had breakfast at Charles De Gaulle airport during the four-hour layover, and read and dozed during the eight-and-a-half-hour leg to Bamako.

  As they flew over the hundred-mile-long ergs and then the massive dark and rocky plateaus of the Anti-Atlas range, Steve was struck by the vast desolate space and wondered how anyone could survive down there.

  The moment he stepped out of the plane at Bamako Airport the acrid smell of smoke filled his nostrils. He had expected the heat and the poverty. He knew that, with few paved roads, it would be dusty. But he knew he would always associate the burning smell with Bamako.

  Upon arrival at l’Amitié Hôtel, he made arrangements to rent a Toyota Land Cruiser for pick-up in Timbuktu.

  In answer to his question, the
desk clerk told him, “The smell, Monsieur? Ah, you mean you smell smoke! That’s from the fields, Monsieur. They burn the old crop.”

  He looked at Steve like a kind teacher at a student with limited intellectual ability.

  As pre-arranged, he met the CIA’s chief of station, Rod Descouteaux, at his home on the banks of the Niger the evening he arrived. The purpose of the meeting was simply to give Steve a local contact in case of problems.

  Rod was in his thirties, tall and thin, with sandy hair combed straight back. They sat outside on a patio lit by the dining room lights. Outlined against the moonlit sky were hundreds of fruit bats flying over the river.

  Sipping a dirty martini, Rod said, “I appreciate your help. IMRA is an information target but I have had problems just getting access, let alone recruiting anyone in al Khalil’s group. Since you already know al Khalil, it should be simple. You meet him once or twice, take his temperature, take a look at his operation, and you’re done.”

  “I don’t guarantee anything but I’ll do my best.”

  Before Steve took his leave, Rod told him, “You should call on the cultural attaché at the embassy tomorrow. It will reinforce your cover. He’s in charge of contacts with the media for the embassy and might know some people who could open doors for you in Timbuktu for your photo shoots.”

  ***

  Before getting on an Air Mali flight to Timbuktu the next day, Steve stopped by the American embassy, a whitewashed building that had once been a bank. He told the cultural attaché, a bearded, rather short and rotund Afro-American, about his photographic assignment. In return, he received the names of a couple of Malian officials in Timbuktu who might be helpful. The attaché, a friendly and outgoing bon-vivant walked him out to the street and, laughing, he said, “Thank God that my great-grandfather was a slow runner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing really.” Seeing Steve puzzled face, he added, “Only that I’m here today as an American diplomat rather than in the ranks of the local unemployed getting picked up by government trucks for unpaid labor only because one of my ancestors got caught and sold to the slave traders on the coast.”

  As his Antonov-24 landed in Timbuktu, he noticed the rusted wreck of his plane’s twin that had been pushed to the side of the runway. After checking in at the Hôtel Bouctou, he followed Rod’s advice and hired a local driver. By any measure, anyone born and raised in Mali was not half as expert behind the wheel as the average Westerner. He hired a Tuareg named Atrar who had driven a truck in Marseilles for five years and spoke decent French. He soon realized that, along with Atrar, he inherited the driver’s wife, young son, and brother.

  When Atrar showed up to take Steve to a Tuareg camp outside of Timbuktu, he came with his brother, Izem. On the way out, Atrar proudly told Izem, who sat in the front passenger seat like a security guard, “Tell Monsieur Christophe; go on.”

  Izem appeared initially reluctant but said, “I am a soldier. Ever since I was a young boy. When we fought the Malian Army, maybe fifteen years ago, I rode with my brothers. It is our history to fight. At the beginning we won. We knew the desert. But too many Malians—they took over the wells.”

  “And what did you do after the fighting?” Steve asked. “Were you a prisoner?”

  “No, never. Many of us made our way to the military camps on the other side of the Libyan border. At first, the Libyans didn’t know what to do with us. But, they saw that we were good soldiers. They trained us, gave us guns, and we became part of the Libyan Army. We patrolled the Libyan Desert, and then we fought in Chad.”

  Again prompted by Atrar, Izem said, “My name means ‘lion’ in Tamasheq.”

  Steve realized Izem could be useful to him, although he didn’t yet know how.

  Later that day, he began to establish his cover credentials as a photojournalist. Back in his room, he sent his first message to CIA headquarters in Langley. Using steganography, Steve was able to hide his message in the photographs he took that day. His email, sent to an ostensibly commercial URL, summarized his visit to the Tuareg camp and the attached photographs hid his real message.

  Steganography is the modern version of microdots. Steve had the option of hiding his messages in graphic images, Web sites, or recorded music. In view of the questionable reliability of the Malian telephone system, he communicated to the outside world through his handheld Iridium 9505A satellite phone.

  He first called Kella from his hotel room phone. The phone made clicking noises for so long that Steve assumed the call was being relayed through Paris. Eventually, after finding stairs that led to the flat roof of the small hotel, he called her on the satellite phone, which could not be used inside. He reached her quickly and they made plans for dinner that night at the Poulet d’Or, not far from the Petit Marché, an open market.

  When he found the restaurant and sat at a table for two, Steve learned the Poulet d’Or, or Golden Chicken, took its name seriously. Fried and boiled chicken dishes accompanied by couscous monopolized the menu. He was ordering Gazelle beer from Senegal when Kella entered.

  He took in her harmonious curves as she approached. She was conservatively dressed in jeans, sandals, and a military-style long sleeve shirt with épaulettes. He had looked forward to this moment and he was not disappointed. He hoped he’d read the same conclusion in Kella’s smile when she seated herself at the table.

  Suspecting Steve’s apparent change in career was a result of the events in Morocco, she asked, “Did you leave West Gate?”

  “No,” he replied. “I’m just taking unpaid leave. The Moroccan project is moving along nicely. My part is done. I ran into a magazine publisher and we just clicked. He said he was looking for a freelance photographer who could write and had overseas experience for a project that would last a month or so. When he said the focus of the article was going to be the Tuaregs, I told him that he had found his man.”

  “You’re full of surprises. I can’t stay here a month, though. I’ve got ten days.”

  “Well, let’s make the most of them. By the way, the name I’m using here whenever I don’t need documentation is Christopher—my middle name.”

  Reacting to Kella’s questioning glance he added, “Well, okay, I’m a little nervous that the same guys who tried to get me in Morocco might somehow learn I’m now here. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to call me Christopher in public—in fact all the time here.”

  “Sounds mysterious. I never thought of it before, but are there Salafists here too?”

  She glanced around the restaurant.

  “Are you ready for this? I learned that Tariq al Khalil is here, running a social welfare group.”

  “You’re kidding. What happens if he learns you’re here? What about the publicity surrounding you and the Quran documents?”

  “For now, I’m just going to get material for the magazine. It may turn out that going to see him with my cameras may be the best defense. What about the relatives you want to find?”

  Kella looked at him with one eyebrow raised like a question mark. Steve didn’t respond and she said, “Thiyya is my birth mother’s cousin. Her husband is Azrur. Other Tuaregs will know them. It’s a small tribal community. I’ve been thinking about spending time here with them ever since that day when Faridah died. They’re my closest birth relatives. Besides, I’m sure that they’ll be able to help with your article, and I hope to write a paper for school out of this time in Timbuktu.”

  “Okay, I’m good to go. How do we start looking for them? There’s a lot of desert out there. Your Imazighen relatives could be anywhere.”

  “I’m impressed. You’ve been doing some reading. Did you also know that Imazighen means ‘free and noble people?’ You must have read some of Timbuktu’s history. Do you know about Mansa Musa? He was a fourteenth-century Malian emperor who made a pilgrimage to Mecca with sixty-thousand men and twelve-thousand slave girls. His baggage train included eighty camels each carrying three-hundred pounds of gold. He spread so much gold
in Egypt that the price fell and didn’t recover for years.”

  “Sounds like something out of a movie.”

  Steve drove her back to her hotel, the Hendrina Khan. On the way, Kella related a a bit of trivia.

  “Remember A.Q. Khan, the father of the ‘Islamic Bomb?’ This is his hotel. He named it after his Dutch wife.”

  He stopped in front of the hotel.

  “Fascinating!”

  Under the gaze of a guard and the doorman, he kissed her goodnight. As he drove away, it occurred to him he was now thinking of Vera after rather than before the kiss.

  ***

  The next day, Kella went to the Catholic orphanage from which the Hastings had adopted her. The building was fairly large including a dormitory for fifty children, two classrooms and an office. A sandy courtyard surrounded by a seven-foot wall was full of running and laughing children. Next to the courtyard was a church. Mother Superior Catherine was still there, surprised and pleased to see her.

  “Oh my dear!” she exclaimed. “I still remember how the Hastings fell in love with you the moment they saw you, especially Madame Alexandra. Your stepfather held a very important position at the American Embassy in Bamako, you know. He came to Timbuktu to take care of any American citizens affected by the Tuareg rebellion. And when Madame came with him, I made sure that she saw you. Somehow I just knew that she would want to adopt you.”

  “My stepmother said that you had warned her that Tuaregs are very independent people.”

  Mother Catherine laughed and said, “That is true. I didn’t want her to be surprised. I also told her that your DNA was quite a mixture of European, Berber, Arab, and Negro, and she said that explained why you were such a beautiful child. She promised to bring you up in the church. Has she?”

  “Yes, Mother Catherine. I would like to get in touch with my birth relatives while I’m here. How do you think I can find them? I suppose they’re still nomads and moving around quite a bit.”

  “Start with the marabout, a Muslim holy man very close to the Tuaregs. He knows everything.”

  Then Mother Catherine told her how to find him.