House of Spies Read online

  “Why?”

  “Appearances matter.”

  “Did she come to the meeting?”

  “No. She stayed at the hotel while I went over to Anfa.”

  “Anfa?”

  It was a wealthy enclave on a hill west of downtown, explained Martel, a place of palm-lined avenues and walled villas where the price per square meter rivaled London and Paris. Mohammad Bakkar owned a property there. As usual, Martel had to submit to a search before being allowed to enter. It was, he recalled now, more invasive than normal. Inside, he had expected to find Bakkar alone, as was customary for their meetings. Instead, another man was present.

  “Describe him, please.”

  “Tall, broad shoulders, big face and hands.”

  “His skin?”

  “Dark, but not too.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  “Western. Dark suit, white shirt, no tie.”

  “Scars or distinguishing features?”

  “No.”

  “Tattoos?”

  “I could only see his hands.”

  “And?”

  Martel shook his head.

  “Were you introduced?”

  “Barely.”

  “Did he speak?”

  “Not to me. Only to Mohammad.”

  “In Arabic, I presume.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mohammad Bakkar speaks Maghrebi Arabic.”

  “Darija,” said Martel.

  “And the other man? Was he a Darija speaker, too?”

  Martel shook his head.

  “You can tell the difference?”

  “I learned to speak a bit of Arabic when I was a child. I got it from my mother,” he added. “So, yes, I can tell the difference. He spoke like someone from Iraq.”

  “And you didn’t wonder about this man’s affiliation, given the fact that ISIS had taken over much of Iraq and Syria, and established a base of operations in Libya? Or perhaps you didn’t want to know,” added Rousseau contemptuously. “Perhaps it’s better not to ask too many questions in a situation like that.”

  “As a general rule,” said Martel, “they can be bad for business.”

  “Especially when the likes of ISIS are involved.” Rousseau checked his anger. “And the second meeting? When was that?”

  “Last December.”

  “After the attacks on Washington?”

  “Definitely.”

  “The exact date, please.”

  “I believe it was the nineteenth.”

  “And the circumstances?”

  “It was our annual winter meeting.”

  “Where did it take place?”

  “Mohammad kept changing the location. We finally met in a little village up in the Rif.”

  “What was on the agenda?”

  “Prices and approximate shipping dates for the new year. Mohammad and the Iraqi wanted to push even more product onto the market. Lots of product. And quickly.”

  “How was he dressed this time?”

  “Like a Moroccan.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He was wearing a djellaba.”

  “A traditional Moroccan robe with a hood.”

  Martel nodded. “And his face was thinner and sharper.”

  “He’d lost weight?”

  “Plastic surgery.”

  “Was there anything else different about him?”

  “Yes,” said Martel. “He walked with a limp.”

  41

  Côte d’Azur, France

  There was a part of Paul Rousseau that had no stomach for the deal that would have to be made. Jean-Luc Martel, he would say later, was proof positive France had erred in doing away with the guillotine. But Khalil the Iraqi—Khalil whose face had been altered, Khalil who walked with a limp—was well worth the price. Coercion alone would not be sufficient to drag Martel across the finish line. He would have to be transformed into a full-fledged asset of the Alpha Group—“an operative of French intelligence, so help me God,” lamented Rousseau—and only a promise of full immunity from prosecution would be sufficient to secure his unwavering cooperation. Rousseau had no power to make such a promise; only his minister could. Which presented Rousseau with yet another dilemma, for his minister still knew nothing of the operation. He was a man who, famously, did not like surprises. Perhaps in this case he would find it in his heart to make an exception.

  For now, Rousseau held his nose and put Martel through his paces. They went over it all again, slowly, meticulously, forward, backward, sideways, and every other way that Rousseau, who was looking for any inconsistency, any reason to question the authenticity of his source, could imagine. Particular attention was paid to the agenda of the winter meeting where Khalil the Iraqi had been present, especially the schedule for upcoming deliveries. Three large shipments were due in the next ten days. All would be concealed inside cargo ships bound from Libya. Two would be arriving at French ports—Marseilles and nearby Toulon—but the third would dock in the Italian port of Genoa.

  “If those drugs go missing,” said Martel, “there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  “Oranges,” said Rousseau. “Oranges.”

  It was at this point that Gabriel interjected himself into the proceedings for the first time. He did so with only the thinnest of introductions, and bearing several blank sheets of paper and a pencil and sharpener. For the better part of the next hour, he sat at the side of the man whose life he had turned inside out, and with his help produced composite sketches of the two versions of Khalil the Iraqi—the 2012 version who wore Western clothing, and the version who appeared in Morocco after the attacks on Washington wearing a traditional djellaba and walking with a noticeable limp. Martel had a famous eye for detail—he had said so himself many times in press interviews—and claimed to never forget a face. He was demanding, too, a trait he revealed fully when Gabriel could not produce a suitable chin for the surgically retooled version of Khalil. They went through three drafts before Martel, with unexpected enthusiasm, gave his approval.

  “That’s him. That’s the man I saw last December.”

  “You’re sure?” pressed Gabriel. “There’s no rush. We can do another draft, if you like.”

  “It’s not necessary. That’s exactly how he looked.”

  “And the limp?” asked Gabriel. “You never said which leg was injured.”

  “It was the right.”

  “You’re positive about that?”

  “No question.”

  “Did he offer any explanation?”

  “He said he’d been in a car accident. He didn’t say where.”

  Gabriel studied the finished sketches for a long moment before holding them up for Natalie to see. Her eyes widened involuntarily. Then, regaining her composure, she looked away and nodded slowly. Gabriel set aside the first sketch and contemplated the second at length. It was the new face of terror. It was the face of Saladin.

  They dragged him upstairs to Madame Sophie’s bedroom, smeared the side of his neck with Madame Sophie’s blood-red lipstick, and hosed him down with enough of Madame Sophie’s perfume that he left a vapor trail as he drove through the early-morning light, beaten and burned, toward his villa on the other side of the Baie de Cavalaire. He did not go alone. Nicolas Carnot, otherwise known as Christopher Keller, sat in the passenger seat, Martel’s mobile in one hand, a gun in the other. Behind them, in a second vehicle, were four officers of the Alpha Group. Previously, they had been employed by Dmitri Antonov at Villa Soleil. Now, like Nicolas Carnot, they were working for Martel. The exact circumstances surrounding their decision to forsake one master for another were cloudy, but such things were liable to happen in Saint-Tropez in the summertime.

  It was twelve minutes past five exactly when the two vehicles turned into the drive of Martel’s villa. Olivia Watson knew this because she had lain awake all night and had rushed to the bedroom window at the sound of car doors opening and closing in the forecourt. Now, she feigned sleep as the bed shifted beneath th
e weight of her errant lover. She rolled over, their eyes met in the half-light.

  “Where have you been, Jean-Luc?”

  “Business,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I tried to call you but my phone isn’t working. There’s no Internet either, and our landline is dead.”

  “There must be an outage.” His eyes closed.

  “Why is Nicolas downstairs? And who are those other men?”

  “I’ll explain everything in the morning.”

  “It is the morning, Jean-Luc.”

  He was silent. Olivia moved closer.

  “You smell like another woman.”

  “Olivia, please.”

  “Who was she, Jean-Luc? Where have you been?”

  42

  Paris

  The reckoning Paul Rousseau had been dreading occurred early that afternoon at the Interior Ministry in Paris. Like Jean-Luc Martel, he did not meet his fate alone; Gabriel went with him. They crossed the courtyard shoulder to shoulder and marched up the grand staircase to the minister’s imposing office, where Rousseau, never one for polite small talk, immediately confessed his operational sins. British intelligence, he said, had identified the source of the assault rifles used in the London attack as a French Moroccan named Nouredine Zakaria, a career criminal connected to one of France’s largest drug-trafficking networks. Without the authorization of his chief or the Interior Ministry, Rousseau and the Alpha Group had worked with two allied services—the British and, quite obviously, the Israelis—to penetrate the aforementioned network and turn its leader into an asset. The operation, he went on, had proven successful. Based on intelligence provided by the source, the Alpha Group and its partners could say with moderate confidence that ISIS had seized control of a significant portion of the illicit trade in North African hashish and that Saladin, the mysterious Iraqi mastermind of the group’s external operations division, was likely hiding in Morocco, a former French protectorate.

  The minister reacted about as well as could be expected, which was not well at all. A tirade ensued, much of it profane. Rousseau offered his resignation—he had written out a letter in longhand during the trip north from Provence—and for a long moment it seemed the minister was prepared to accept it. At length, he dropped the letter into his shredder. Ultimate responsibility for protecting the French homeland from terrorist attack, Islamic or otherwise, rested on the minister’s narrow shoulders. He was not about to lose a man like Paul Rousseau.

  “Where is Nouredine Zakaria now?”

  “Missing,” said Rousseau.

  “Has he gone to the caliphate?”

  Rousseau hesitated before answering. He was prepared to obfuscate, but in no way would he tell an outright lie. Nouredine Zakaria, he said quietly, was dead.

  “Dead how?” asked the minister.

  “I believe it occurred during a business transaction.”

  The minister looked at Gabriel. “I suppose you had something to do with this.”

  “Zakaria’s demise predated our involvement in this affair,” responded Gabriel with lawyerly precision.

  The minister was not mollified. “And the leader of the network? Your new asset?”

  “His name,” said Rousseau, “is Jean-Luc Martel.”

  The minister looked down and rearranged the papers on his desk. “That would explain your interest in Martel’s file on the day your headquarters was bombed.”

  “It would,” said Rousseau, holding his ground.

  “Jean-Luc has been the target of numerous inquiries. All have reached the same conclusion, that he is not involved in drugs.”

  “That conclusion,” said Rousseau carefully, “is incorrect.”

  “You know better?”

  “I have it on the highest authority.”

  “Who?”

  “Jean-Luc Martel.”

  The minister scoffed. “Why would he tell you such a thing?”

  “He didn’t have much of a choice.”

  “Why?”

  “René Devereaux.”

  “The name rings a bell.”

  “It should,” said Rousseau.

  “Where is Devereaux now?”

  “The same place as Nouredine Zakaria.”

  “Merde,” said the minister softly.

  There was a silence. Dust floated in the sunlight streaming through the window like fish in an aquarium. Rousseau cleared his throat gently, a signal he was about to venture onto treacherous ground.

  “I know that you and Martel are friends,” he said at last.

  “We are acquainted,” countered the minister quickly, “but we are not friends.”

  “Martel would be surprised to hear that. In fact, he invoked your name several times before finally agreeing to cooperate.”

  The minister could not hide his anger at Rousseau for airing dirty French laundry in front of an outsider, and an Israeli at that. “What is your point?” he asked.

  “My point,” said Rousseau, “is that I’m going to need Martel’s continued cooperation, which will require a grant of immunity. Such a grant might be sensitive given your relationship, but it’s necessary for the operation to move forward.”

  “What is your goal?”

  “Eliminating Saladin, of course.”

  “And you intend to use Martel in some sort of operational capacity?”

  “It is our only option.”

  The minister made a show of thought. “You’re right, a grant of immunity would be difficult. But if you were to request it—”

  “You’ll have the paperwork by the end of the day,” interjected Rousseau. “Frankly, it’s probably for the best. You’re not the only one in the current government who’s acquainted with Martel.”

  The minister was shuffling papers again. “We gave you wide latitude when we created the Alpha Group, but needless to say you’ve overstepped your authority.”

  Rousseau accepted the rebuke in penitential silence.

  “I won’t be kept in the dark any longer. Is that clear?”

  “It is, Minister.”

  “How do you intend to proceed?”

  “In the next ten days, Martel’s Moroccan supplier, a man named Mohammad Bakkar, is going to send several large shipments of hashish from ports in Libya. It is vital that we intercept them.”

  “You know the names of the vessels?”

  Rousseau nodded.

  “Bakkar and Saladin will suspect there’s an informant.”

  “That is correct.”

  “They’ll be angry.”

  Rousseau smiled. “That is our hope, minister.”

  The first ship, a Maltese-registered floating coffin called the Mediterranean Dream, was not due to leave Libya for another four days. Her point of departure was Khoms, a small commercial seaport east of Tripoli; and after a brief stop in Tunis, where she was scheduled to take on a load of produce, she would make directly for Genoa. The other two vessels, one flying a Bahamian flag, the other Panamanian, were both scheduled to depart Sirte in one week’s time, thus presenting Gabriel and Rousseau with a minor quandary. They agreed that seizing the Mediterranean Dream while the other two vessels were still in port in Libya would be a miscalculation, as it would provide Mohammad Bakkar and Saladin an opportunity to reroute the merchandise. Instead, they would wait until all three vessels were in international waters before making their first move.

  The delay weighed heavily on them both, especially Gabriel, who had watched Saladin’s retouched face emerge from the labors of his own hand. He carried the sketch with him always, even to his bed in Jerusalem, where he passed four restless nights at the side of his wife. At King Saul Boulevard he sat through endless briefings on matters he had left in the capable hands of Uzi Navot, but everyone could see his thoughts were elsewhere. During a meeting of the Cabinet his mind drifted as the ministers bickered endlessly. In his notebook he sketched a face. A face partially concealed by the h
ood of a djellaba.

  Rousseau woke Gabriel early the next morning with news that the Mediterranean Dream had left Tunis overnight and was now in international waters. But did it contain a concealed shipment of hashish from Morocco? Only one source said it would, the man who lived across the Baie de Cavalaire from Dmitri and Sophie Antonov. The man whose many sins had been officially forgiven and who was now under the complete and total control of a consortium of three intelligence services.

  To the uninitiated eye, however, there appeared to be no outward change in his conduct, save for the constant presence at his side of Christopher Keller. Indeed, everywhere Martel went, Keller was sure to follow. To Monaco and Madrid for a pair of previously scheduled business meetings. To Geneva for an eye-opening session with a Swiss banker of questionable ethics. And finally to Marseilles, from which the chief of Martel’s illicit narcotics division had vanished without a trace, leaving behind two dead bodyguards in his electronics shop overlooking the Place Jean Jaurès. The Marseilles police were under the impression René Devereaux had been killed by an underworld rival. Devereaux’s associates, including one Henri Villard, were of the same opinion. During a meeting with Martel and Keller in a safe flat near the Gare Saint-Charles, Villard was on edge about the upcoming shipments. He was afraid, rightly, that there had been a leak. Martel calmed his fears and instructed him to collect the cargo in the usual manner. Close scrutiny of the recording produced by the phone in Keller’s pocket—and of Villard’s movements and communications after the meeting—suggested Martel had not tried to send a clandestine warning to his old network. The hashish was on its way, the payment was loaded into the pipeline. For both the drug dealers and the spymasters, all systems appeared to be go.

  The message that would set the next act in motion was delivered through the usual channel, interior minister to interior minister, with no undue sense of urgency. A paid informant inside one of France’s most prominent drug gangs claimed that a large shipment of North African hashish would be arriving in Genoa the following day, aboard the Maltese-registered Mediterranean Dream. The Italians, if they didn’t have anything better to do, might want to check it out. They did indeed. In fact, units of the Guardia di Finanza, the Italian law-enforcement agency responsible for combating drug trafficking, boarded the vessel within minutes of its arrival and began breaking open the containers. Their search would eventually yield four metric tons of Moroccan hashish, not a record by any means but a respectable haul. Afterward, the Italian minister rang his French counterpart and thanked him for the information. The French minister said he was pleased to have been of assistance.