The Caliphate Page 9

  One of the young men wore a faded jellaba. He had the typical round Moroccan face and wore tinted glasses that made him look both studious and closed. Hussein thought he looked like an accountant, but Lahlou had told him that he was a law student and an explosives specialist. The other wore stained dark slacks and a gray shirt that once had been white. He seemed to be from Southern Morocco, a Berber from the Anti-Atlas Mountains.

  “This is Ribb, from the Ministry of Defense—the one I told you about,” Lahlou said to Hussein, gesturing toward the man in the stained western garb. “Ribb sometimes works in the kitchen, often as a messenger, and he unloads trucks. He knows the drivers at the Ministry and heard them say they had picked up an American who flew in from Paris, but the American told his driver he had started his trip from Washington.”

  Lahlou seemed pleased and nervous at the same time that he could report on a target of opportunity.

  “Repeat what you told me about the American,” Lahlou told Ribb.

  “I know that one of our drivers picked him up at the airport and took him to the Tour Hassan Hotel in Rabat. The drivers think that he’s here to set up a secret project,” Ribb said.

  “Is he CIA?” asked Hussein.

  Ribb smiled. “Of course.”

  “If he’s CIA, why didn’t the American Embassy send a car for him?” Hussein demanded.

  “The very fact that an Embassy car didn’t pick him up proves he’s CIA,” Lahlou said. “He’s hiding his American government connection,” he added, giving Hussein a knowing look to emphasize that he understood CIA methods. Lahlou felt he was playing at the top of his game. He was also nervous because he might be asked to mount an operation against this American. Taking on a dangerous mission had never been Lahlou’s strong point.

  “Well, I don’t know. He could be a nobody. Why focus on him? We would do better to go after the CIA chief in Morocco, or the American Ambassador.” Hussein said.

  He suddenly remembered al Khalil’s comments about the young American in Paris who was Coogan’s helper. He also started putting this information together with a conversation he’d had in Paris with a Moroccan diplomat who had met a young American at a cocktail party. The American was on his way to Morocco on business, allegedly.

  He asked the student with the tinted glasses, “Are you any good with computers, the Internet?” The law student nodded and Hussein told him, “A couple of days ago, there was a news report in a Paris newspaper about a Dr. Coogan who was killed by the Ikhwan. The reporter was close; the execution was ordered by al Khalil. Coogan was involved in the forgeries of the Quranic documents. I assume you know about it. There was a photo with the article. I want you to get the photograph through the internet. I want to know if Allah is smiling on us and answering our prayer.”

  The student took his glasses of and wiped one lens with his finger, “I’ll make a copy of the photograph.

  Ribb, the Berber, said, “I can find out from the drivers when they’re supposed to take the American back to the airport.”

  “I’ll get in touch with Tariq and see what he wants to do,” Hussein said. “Maybe we can kidnap him and get some of our militants out of jail in an exchange.”

  “A kidnapping will wake up the whole security establishment against us,” Lahlou said. “We would have to take him to Marrakesh and have our men hide him. Killing him is simpler and easier. We do it and it’s done.”

  Lahlou surprised Hussein by his boldness.

  “I didn’t ask what would be easier,” Hussein said dismissively. “Get more information on him and I’ll see what Tariq has to say.”

  “Take me to my hotel,” he instructed Lahlou.

  On the way, Hussein was surprised at the high number of Europeans, both men and women, in the street shopping or otherwise going about their business. He noticed that most women wore the usual loose jellabas down to their ankles, but that many were without veils. Some walked with long strides that revealed their high heeled shoes. In fact, it seemed to him that they wanted their European fashion to show. He was startled, to say the least, that one woman’s high heeled shoes were bright red.

  Al Khalil will go ballistic, he thought.

  ***

  The next morning, Hussein and Lahlou met at the mosque and Lahlou suggested they go to a café he often frequented.

  “More comfortable,” he said.

  They walked out of the mosque into the maze of old passageways and stingy streets without sidewalks. Here, Hussein noticed, the occasional European stood out, unlike in the more modern part of the city. On a broader street, they went past a theater playing an Egyptian movie. The women were all veiled. None dared to wear western garments, least of all red high-heels.

  “I sent an email to al Khalil about the American,” Hussein said. “No answer yet. But I know what he’ll say. Do it, with greatest impact. So start planning.”

  Hussein didn’t know Casablanca, but he knew the culture of the Arab world’s rabbit warrens, be they called casbahs or medinas. Each political party and labor union had its public fronts and its underground factions. The ruling families, many claiming to be descended from the Prophet, the Arab equivalent of Mayflower ancestry, had its alliances based on strategic marriages and grievances going back generations. Each group kept an eye on the others through paid informants, ambitious men aspiring to become members of the organization or family, and others seeking favors. Watching them all was the king’s security service. The pecuniary opportunities for clever informants, who frequently were able to sell their information to several paymasters, were abundant. But establishing and violating trusts, the essence of the game, was a high-risk enterprise. Those who did not grasp this ground-truth either disappeared or survived as maimed warnings.

  Hussein looked about him with the surface interest of a visitor but with the educated eyes of a master of the game. He assumed that their walk was not unobserved. He also assumed that Lahlou had a reason for taking him on this walk through the labyrinths of the old city. Hussein wondered if Lahlou was cleverer than he appeared, if perhaps in this warren, he, Hussein, was not the rabbit rather than the ferret.

  They reached a café whose owner welcomed Lahlou. Hussein assumed he was part of Lahlou’s network. Lahlou led the way inside and they sat at a small table in the back by the wall. The air was heavy with smoke. No women or tourists had ever crossed the threshold. The owner came over immediately with a pot of sweet mint tea and two glasses decorated in imitation gold leaf.

  “What is your source for your information on the American, besides Ribb I mean?” Hussein asked.

  Lahlou hesitated a second and replied, “Our informant knows a colonel at the American Embassy. He wants to retire in Morocco after he leaves the Air Force next year.”

  “What about the visiting American?”

  “Spaceck, that’s the colonel, said that the visitor really is a nobody and that he, Spaceck, could get them a better deal on anything they want.”

  “But is the visitor CIA?” Hussein insisted.

  “Oh, here is what my lawyer got from the Internet,” and he handed the photo and the article about Coogan and Steve to Hussein.

  “So, is this the same person?”

  “I don’t know yet. Ribb will show it to the driver and get back to me.”

  “Let me know as soon as possible,” Hussein said with a slight smile of anticipation.

  “All right, I’ll call you at the hotel. In any case, Spaceck said that the American’s business story doesn’t make sense, and that he is too young to have the job he claims to have.”

  Hussein smiled.

  This Spaceck character could be useful, he thought. But he also wondered if Spaceck wasn’t trying too hard. Perhaps his reasons went beyond money. Maybe Spaceck was the spy. Hussein had survived in an environment rife with duplicity, betrayals, and obscure motivations.

  That night, Lahlou called Hussein at his four-room hotel in the depths of the medina.

  “My brother, you were inspired by Al
lah. You were right.”

  Hussein answered, “Al hamdu‘llah. You know what to do.”

  Before al Khalil answered his first message, Hussein sent him a second one.

  “The merchandise is genuine. I will consummate the transaction, which will terminate the Berlin-Paris activity. There is only one God, only one Quran.”

  As an afterthought, he added, “May Allah bless this enterprise.”

  10. Rabat: Tour Hassan Hotel

  In his room, Steve checked his email. He and his father, Marshall, used a still-experimental encryption system developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory to secure their email communications. Based on his CIA experience, Marshall had said don’t write anything that would get sources killed, cause catastrophic consequences, or embarrass you or your employer if it appeared in The New York Times. He had long ago concluded his father and the CIA had too many rules.

  Marshall’s last message to Steve said, “Just a reminder to get in touch with my friend Abdelhaq in Morocco. He hasn’t seen you since Iran in 1978 or ’79. You’ll enjoy his hospitality, as well as the best Moroccan meal in the country.”

  When preparing for his trip from Virginia, Steve had not done enough to set up his schedule in Rabat. But other than the car sent to pick him up at the airport by the Ministry of Defense, the few appointments he had made seemed to have been written in disappearing ink. He spent a day showing up for appointments in Rabat only to be told by smiling secretaries that either her boss was busy or out of town, or that the very important person for whom she worked would deign to see him very soon, Inshallah—if God willed. “Very soon” invariably turned into a wait of hours, and Steve was muttering to himself, “Welcome to the Third World.”

  He had PowerPoint presentations on the three main topics that he hoped would interest the Moroccans. First, he’d present the accumulated experiences and lessons learned of the U.S. Army special ops warriors. What they had to say about Iraq and Afghanistan should be of interest to the Forces Armées Royales, the FAR, which was still fighting the Polisario in Mauritania.

  Second, he would present the use of technology in keeping track of insurgents and terrorists through ground sensors and Unmanned Air Vehicles. And third, Steve had learned that the FAR were planning major relocations of their bases away from the cities to the less developed areas of the country. West Gate had a track record of helping establish new bases in Iraq and of moving old ones in the United States. West Gate could offer people with hands on experience in all of these areas. Steve was convinced that West Gate could add value to Morocco’s military capability and that Morocco’s 1.3-billion-dollar defense budget could add value to West Gate’s bottom line. Steve could already see himself into a new corner office.

  ***

  Steve went out to see the city before leaving for his first appointment. The taxi took him by his old house, his school, and eventually left him off at the Salé medina. Salé had been a homeport to Barbary Coast pirates in the eighteenth century and now offered the best shopping in Rabat.

  A water-seller with bare legs, sandals, a short tunic with red and gold fringes but no sleeves and a large flat hat in several colors from which small bells hung, was trying to attract customers at the entrance to the medina by ringing a bell he held in his hand.

  Steve went by this Moroccan Harlequin as someone made a purchase. Harlequin unhooked a brass cup from several hanging from a bandolier across his chest and filled it with water from a water skin hanging from one shoulder. Steve entered a narrow alley lined with stalls.

  He wandered through the alleyways of the small Salé medina. He stopped to watch an artisan chiseling intricate geometric designs on a round brass tray. He could see several finished products hanging in the shop and bought one, after a bout of rigorous and expected bargaining. Farther on he started to bid for a handmade Rabat rug, blue designs in the center on a field of red that would have to be shipped. But it was getting late. He suspended the negotiations and went back to his hotel.

  Once in his room, he wanted to check his PowerPoint one more time and went to his laptop. It had been turned off for the last two hours but was surprisingly warm to the touch. Concerned, he quickly went through the password and thumb-print identification procedure and satisfied himself that his presentations were still there. It seemed unlikely that the hotel maid had been surfing the Internet or that she could even get through his biometric security software.

  He returned to his dresser and wished that he had paid more attention when taking fresh clothes from the drawers. He couldn’t be sure but, on closer inspection, he thought his clothes were not as he had arranged when taking them out of the suitcase. He had brought brochures to leave behind after his meetings and, on checking them, was sure someone had been through them; they were definitely out of order.

  He found no other suspicious indications but wondered whether he should have “trapped” drawers and doors as he had seen in the movies. Nothing had been stolen, as far as he could tell. He was annoyed that one of his father’s stories forced itself on him. From his service in Romania, he had concluded that if a surreptitious visitor has taken nothing, it is most likely that he has left something behind. He started looking for microphones, half-heartedly and self-consciously, a bit embarrassed. Wasn’t this just another of his father’s rules? Still, he felt uneasy.

  ***

  The next day, Steve walked out of his hotel toward the center of town and went into a shop. Several singletons came in after he did—two men and a woman. None paid attention to him. He went out, walked two blocks to another shop and again observed people who came in shortly after he did while ostensibly looking at the merchandise. None was a repeat. He figured the people he was looking for were probably young men, which allowed him to eliminate seventy-five percent of his possible surveillants thus far.

  He went to one more shop and he had a repeat, a young Moroccan in sunglasses, a New York Yankees t-shirt and Nikes, easy to remember. He then took a cab to the Mausoleum of Mohammed V, the monarch in power when Morocco became independent in 1956. There he told the driver to wait, and went up the marble steps of the white crenellated mausoleum, past a guard in red with a white cape, black boots, and a green fez.

  The guard’s rifle looked very much like an M-1, the U.S. Army’s primary infantry weapon in World War II and Korea. As a member of Lehigh’s rifle team, he had seen but never fired the weapon. He wondered if that was the vintage of the average FAR weaponry. At the top of the steps, he looked back at the surrounding ruins of the old mosque on which the mausoleum was built and noticed New York getting out of a cab in back of the one he was still using. New York had a friend, same age, about twenty-five, also slight of build but at least five-feet, ten.

  Steve concluded that the unwanted attention was not a mugging in the making. They didn’t seem threatening; they apparently just wanted to keep him in sight. He cut short his surveillance-detection, went back to the hotel to pick up his briefing materials, and headed for the Ministry positioning himself in the back seat so as to keep his eyes on the cab’s rear and side view mirrors. A white Fiat shepherded him from the hotel to the Ministry.

  He arrived early for his meetings and drank more sweet tea than he really wanted while he waited. He sensed a changing attitude for the better from the outer offices. The Moroccan officers liked that he had been in Morocco as a young boy and that he was familiar with their country. His presentations were also creating interest.

  The colonel with whom he had met walked him out of his office and gave him a promising handshake as he left, further bolstering Steve’s confidence. His next appointment was at a training camp, not far from Rabat, he had been told, whose commandant was interested in West Gate’s interactive software, Urban Warfare Tactics for Small Unit Leaders 2.0.—not at the top of Steve’s priority list. Nevertheless, it was a useful entrée to the training side of the FAR.

  The ministry car assigned to him was waiting. They left at 10:25. As they headed out of town, Steve hear
d something loose in the trunk clanging against one side then the other on the turns and over bumps, as if the spare tire was not well secured. They were not quite beyond Rabat’s city limits when the driver received a call.

  “Mr. Church, General Labibi has asked me to bring you back to the ministry,” the driver said. It was 10:38.

  General Labibi was one of the heretofore unavailable principals. Steve hoped Labibi’s sudden interest meant his project was picking up traction with Labibi’s superiors. Steve decided to go back.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told the driver, who parked in the street outside the Ministry entrance. “Keep that air conditioner on. I think something’s banging around in the trunk—can you hear it? Is it the spare?”

  The driver merely shrugged.

  Steve was inside General Labibi’s outer office for no more than five minutes when he, and most likely everyone else in Rabat, heard a thunderous explosion.

  Shards of glass from the window flew across the room like arrows seeking their targets. A uniformed officer fell to the ground with a glass shard in his neck. The building rocked. Inside the offices of the Ministry, the blast was followed by several seconds of total silence.

  Steve, the secretary to whom he was speaking, and the dozen officers and secretaries either sitting or walking through the office, froze as if the projector depicting their lives had stopped. They looked at each other questioningly for another second. Then the choreography broke down. The slow learners rushed to the windows, others attacked the telephones, and a few ran out. Steve heard a secretary stage-whisper, “It’s a coup!” The room reeked of fear born of confusion and uncertainty.