House of Spies Read online

  “And will you be dining in the hotel this evening?” he wondered.

  “Yes,” answered Keller quickly. “A table for five, please.”

  It was an upside-down hotel—lobby on the top floor, guest floors below. JLM and party were on the fourth. Martel and Olivia were in a room together, with Mikhail and Natalie on one side and Keller on the other. When the bags had been delivered, and the bellmen tipped and dismissed, Mikhail and Keller opened the interior communicating doors, turning the three rooms effectively into one.

  “That’s much better,” said Keller. “Lunch, anyone?”

  The message arrived at the House of Spies shortly after noon, as Hamid and Tarek were standing over the toilet in Gabriel’s bathroom, reciting verses of the Koran to drive away the jinns. It stated that JLM and party had arrived safely at the Four Seasons, that there had been no communication from Mohammad Bakkar or his surrogates, and that JLM and party were now sharing a lunch at the hotel’s terrace restaurant. Gabriel fired the message securely to the Op Center at King Saul Boulevard, which in turn forwarded it to Langley, Vauxhall Cross, and DGSI headquarters in Levallois-Perret, where it was greeted with a level of interest that far outweighed its operational significance.

  The prayers over the toilet bowl ended a few minutes after one, lunch at half past. Dina and Yaakov Rossman departed the House of Spies a few minutes later in one of the rented cars. Dina was wearing a pair of loose cotton trousers and a white blouse, and was clutching a shoulder bag that bore the name of an exclusive French designer. Yaakov looked as though he were about to make a night raid into Gaza. By two o’clock they were reclining in a private cabana at the Tahiti Beach Club on the Corniche. Gabriel instructed them to remain there until further notice. Then he turned up the volume on the audio feed from the three connecting rooms at the Four Seasons.

  “Someone needs to bring the bag into the hotel,” said Eli Lavon.

  “Thanks, Eli,” replied Gabriel. “I would have never thought of that myself.”

  “I was just trying to be helpful.”

  “Forgive me, it was the jinns talking.”

  Lavon smiled. “Who did you have in mind?”

  “Mikhail is the most obvious candidate.”

  “Even I would be suspicious of Mikhail.”

  “Then maybe it’s a job for a woman.”

  “Or two,” suggested Lavon. “Besides, it’s time they declared a truce, don’t you think?”

  “They got off on the wrong foot, that’s all.”

  Lavon shrugged. “Could’ve happened to anyone.”

  There was a security guard at the gate that led from the back of the hotel’s secluded grounds to the Plage Lalla Meriem, Casablanca’s main public beach. Dressed in a dark suit despite the midafternoon heat, he watched the women—the tall Englishwoman whom he had seen several times before, and a Frenchwoman of sour disposition—making their way across the flat dark sand toward the water’s edge. The Englishwoman wore a shimmering floral wrap knotted at her narrow waist and a top of translucent material, but the Frenchwoman was more modestly attired in a cotton sundress. Instantly, the beach boys were upon them. They placed two chaises at the tideline and erected two umbrellas against the scalding sun. The Englishwoman asked for drinks and, when they arrived, tipped the boys far too much. Despite many visits to Morocco, she had no familiarity with Moroccan money. For that reason, and others, the boys fought over the privilege of waiting on her.

  The security guard returned to the game he was playing on his mobile phone; the beach boys, to the shade of their hut. Natalie stepped out of her sundress and placed it in her Vuitton beach bag. Olivia unknotted her wrap and removed her top. Then she stretched out her long body on the chaise and turned her flawless face to the sun.

  “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

  “I was only playing a role.”

  “You played it very well.”

  Natalie adopted Olivia’s reclined pose and closed her eyes to the sun. “The truth is,” she said after a moment, “you’re not really worth disliking. You were simply a means to an end.”

  “Jean-Luc?”

  “He’s a means to an end, too. And in case you were wondering, I like him even less than I like you.”

  “So you do like me?” said Olivia playfully.

  “A little,” Natalie admitted.

  Two muscled Moroccan men in their midtwenties walked past in the ankle-deep surf, chatting in Darija. Listening, Natalie smiled.

  “They’re talking about you,” she said.

  “How can you tell?”

  Natalie opened her eyes and stared at Olivia blankly.

  “You speak Moroccan?”

  “Moroccan isn’t a language, Olivia. In fact, they speak three different languages here. French, Berber, and—”

  “Maybe this was a mistake,” said Olivia, cutting her off.

  Natalie smiled.

  “How is it you speak Arabic?”

  “My parents were from Algeria.”

  “So you’re an Arab?”

  “No,” said Natalie. “I’m not.”

  “So Jean-Luc was right after all. When we left your villa that afternoon he said—”

  “That I look like a Jew from Marseilles.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do you think?”

  “You were listening?”

  “We always are.”

  Olivia rubbed oil onto her shoulders. “What were those Moroccans saying about me?”

  “It would be difficult to translate.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “You must be used to it by now.”

  “You, too. You’re very beautiful.”

  “For a Jewish girl from Marseilles.”

  “Are you?”

  “I was once,” said Natalie. “Not anymore.”

  “Was it that bad?”

  “Being a Jew in France? Yes,” said Natalie, “it was that bad.”

  “Is that why you became a spy?”

  “I’m not a spy. I’m Sophie Antonov, your friend from across the bay. My husband is in business with your boyfriend. They’re doing something together here in Casablanca that they don’t like to talk about.”

  “Partner,” said Olivia. “Jean-Luc doesn’t like to be known as my boyfriend.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Between Jean-Luc and me?”

  Natalie nodded.

  “I thought you said you were listening.”

  “We are. But you know him better than anyone.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. But, no,” said Olivia, “he doesn’t seem to suspect that I was the one who betrayed him.”

  “You didn’t betray him.”

  “How would you describe it?”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “For once,” said Olivia.

  The two muscled Moroccans had returned. One stared at Olivia without reserve.

  “Are you planning to tell me why we’re here?” she asked.

  “The less you know,” replied Natalie, “the better.”

  “That’s the way it works in your trade?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I in danger?”

  “That depends on whether you remove any more clothing.”

  “I have a right to know.”

  Natalie gave no answer.

  “I suppose it has something to do with those shipments of hashish that were seized.”

  “What hashish?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Exactly,” said Natalie. “Anything I tell you will only make it harder for you to play your role.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The loving partner of Jean-Luc Martel who has no idea how he really makes his money.”

  “It comes from his hotels and restaurants.”

  “And his art gallery,” said Natalie.

  “The gallery is mine.” Drowsily, Olivia said, “There’s one of your friends.”

  Natalie looked up a
nd saw Dina walking slowly toward them along the water’s edge.

  “She seems very sad,” said Olivia.

  “She has reason to.”

  “What happened to her leg?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “None of my business—is that what you’re saying?”

  “I was trying to be polite.”

  “How refreshing.” Olivia raised a hand to her brow to shade her eyes from the glare. “It’s funny, but it looks like she has the same bag as you.”

  “Does she really?” Natalie smiled. “Isn’t that a coincidence.”

  It was the job of the security guard to monitor all passersby along the beach, lest there be a replay of the unfortunate 2015 incident in Tunis, where a Salafist terrorist had pulled an AK-47 assault rifle from his umbrella and massacred thirty-eight guests at a five-star hotel, the majority of them British subjects. Not that the security guard could do much if faced with a similar set of circumstances. He had no weapon himself, only a radio. In the event of a terrorist incident, he was to issue an alert and then take “any and all” available measures to neutralize the attacker or attackers. Which meant that in all likelihood the security guard would lose his life trying to protect a bunch of half-naked, well-to-do Westerners. It was not the way he wished to die. But jobs were scarce in Casablanca, especially for boys from the Bidonvilles. Better to stand watch on the Plage Lalla Meriem than to sell fruit from a pushcart in the old medina. He’d done that, too.

  It had been a slow afternoon, even for August, and so the woman approaching from the west, from the direction of Tahiti and the other beach clubs, received the guard’s full attention. She was small and dark-haired and, unlike most Western women who came to the beach, modestly dressed. There was a sadness about her, as though she had been recently widowed. From her right shoulder hung a beach bag. Louis Vuitton, a very popular model that summer. The guard wondered whether the woman realized that it cost more than many Moroccans would see in a lifetime.

  Just then, one of the women reclining near the water’s edge, the unfriendly Frenchwoman, raised an arm in greeting. The sad-looking girl walked over and sat down at the end of the Frenchwoman’s chaise. The beach boys offered to bring a third, but the sad-looking woman declined; evidently, she would not be staying long. The tall, beautiful Englishwoman seemed annoyed by the intrusion. Bored, she stared listlessly out to sea while the Frenchwoman and the sad-looking girl talked intimately and shared cigarettes, which the Frenchwoman had produced from her own beach bag, also a Louis Vuitton, the same model in fact.

  At length, the sad-looking girl rose and took her leave. The Frenchwoman, now wearing her sundress, walked with her for about a hundred meters along the tideline. Then the two embraced and went their separate ways, the sad-looking girl toward the beach clubs, the Frenchwoman to her chaise. A few words passed between her and the tall, beautiful Englishwoman. Then the Englishwoman rose and knotted her wrap around her waist. Much to the security guard’s delight, she did not bother with the sheer top. And he in turn was so distracted by the sight of her picture-perfect body that he did not bother to take more than a cursory glance inside their beach bags a moment later when they passed through the gate and reentered the hotel’s grounds.

  Together the two women boarded an elevator and rode it to the fourth floor, where they were admitted into the row of three rooms that had been turned into one. The tall, beautiful Englishwoman entered the suite she shared with Monsieur Martel. At once, he drew her close and murmured something into her ear that the Frenchwoman couldn’t quite hear. It was no matter; inside the House of Spies they were listening. They always were.

  48

  Casablanca, Morocco

  There was no contact from Mohammad Bakkar or his surrogates that night, and none the following morning, either. From King Saul Boulevard to Langley, and points in between, the mood turned bleak. Even Paul Rousseau, from his lair deep inside DGSI headquarters in Levallois-Perret, began to have his doubts. He feared that somewhere, somehow, the operation had sprung a leak and was taking on water. The most likely culprit was his unlikely asset. The asset he had burned and recruited without the consent of his chief or his minister. The asset to whom he had given a grant of blanket immunity. The hard young men around CIA Director Morris Payne shared Rousseau’s pessimism. Unlike the Frenchman, however, they were not prepared to wait indefinitely for the phone to ring. They were soldiers by trade rather than spies and believed in taking the fight directly to the enemy. Payne, it seemed, was similarly inclined. He summoned Adrian Carter to his office and made his views clear. Carter in turn passed them along to Gabriel via a secure videoconference. Carter was in the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center. Gabriel was in the makeshift op center at the House of Spies.

  “No big hand motions,” he said.

  “Translation?”

  “Mohammad Bakkar is the star of the show. And the star of the show gets to set the time and place of the meeting.”

  “Even a star needs good advice from time to time.”

  “It’s not in keeping with the way the relationship has worked in the past. If I instruct Martel to initiate contact, Bakkar will smell a rat.”

  “Maybe he already does.”

  “Calling him won’t change that.”

  “The seventh floor is of the opinion it might settle things one way or another.”

  “Is that so?”

  “And the White House—”

  “Since when has the White House been involved in this?”

  “They have been from the beginning. The president is said to be monitoring the situation carefully.”

  “How comforting. Exactly how many people in Washington know about this, Adrian?”

  “Hard to say.” Carter frowned. “What’s that noise?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It sounds as though someone is praying.”

  “They are.”

  “Who?”

  “Tarek and Hamid. They’re trying to drive away the jinns.”

  “The what?”

  “Jinns,” said Gabriel.

  “I prefer mine with a splash of tonic and a lime.”

  Gabriel asked Carter about the status of the pair of drones that Morris Payne had committed to the operation. One was a Sentinel stealth surveillance drone. The other was a Predator. Carter explained that the Sentinel had been moved into the theater and could be airborne over Morocco as soon as Gabriel had a target. The Predator, with its two deadly Hellfire missiles, was on a hot standby. The CIA had no authority to launch a strike in Morocco; only the president could. And even then, said Carter, it would have to be a last resort.

  “The Moroccans,” he said, “will go ape shit.”

  “How long will it take to get the Predator into position to take a shot?”

  “Depends on the location of the target. Two hours, bare minimum.”

  “Two hours is too long.”

  “They’re not the swiftest cats in the jungle. But all this is moot,” said Carter, “unless Mohammad Bakkar summons your boy to a meeting.”

  “He’ll call,” said Gabriel, and killed the connection.

  Privately, however, he was not so sure. And when noontime came and went with no contact, he succumbed temporarily to the same despair that had taken hold among his partners in Paris and Washington. He distracted himself by tending to his characters—the Antonovs and their friends Jean-Luc Martel and Olivia Watson. He sent Martel and Mikhail into the wilds of Casablanca to view potential sites for a new hotel that JLM Enterprises had no intention of building. Natalie and Olivia he dispatched to the massive Morocco Mall, where, armed with Martel’s credit cards, they pillaged several exclusive boutiques. Afterward, they shared a late lunch with Christopher Keller in the Quartier Gauthier. Keller detected no evidence of surveillance, Moroccan DST or otherwise. Eli Lavon, who tailed Martel and Mikhail during their ersatz search for property, returned with an identical report.

  In midafternoon, with Gabriel’s mood dar
kening, there was another crisis involving the jinns. Hamid had found an open window in one of the bedrooms—in point of fact, it was Dina’s—and feared several new demons had entered the house as a result. With Yaakov, he raised again the idea of an exorcism. He knew a man from his Bidonville who would handle it for a reasonable price, sacrificial goat included. Gabriel overruled him; they would rely on salt, blood, and milk and hope for the best. Hamid was clearly dubious. “As you wish,” he said gravely. “But I fear it will end badly. For all of us.”

  By five o’clock even Gabriel was convinced the House of Spies was haunted and that Aisha and her fiery friends were plotting against him. He sent Natalie and Olivia down to the beach to catch the afternoon’s last sun and went for a walk alone—with no bodyguards or weapons—through the dirty arcades of old Casablanca. He wandered aimlessly for a time, across crowded squares, along boulevards thick with evening traffic, until he found a café where most of the patrons wore Western clothing. At a table in the darkest corner sat three Americans: two young men and a girl.

  In French he ordered a café noir. Too late, he realized he had no Moroccan currency. It was no matter; the waiter was more than happy to accept euros. Outside, the din of the street was oppressive. It smothered the sound of the television over the bar, and the quiet conversation of the three Americans, and the vibration, at twelve minutes past six o’clock, of Gabriel’s mobile phone. He read the message a moment later and smiled. It seemed Mohammad Bakkar wanted a word with Jean-Luc Martel in Fez the following evening.

  Gabriel dispatched a brief message to Adrian Carter at Langley before slipping the phone into his pocket. Then he ordered another coffee and drank it in the manner of a man who had all the time in the world for everything.

  49

  Fez, Morocco

  A few minutes before noon the following day, Christopher Keller stood outside the entrance of the hotel, watching the porters loading the bags into the cars. Martel came along a moment later, followed by Mikhail, Natalie, and Olivia. He was holding a printout of the bill, which he handed to Keller.