He turned the top quickly to the left, felt it click, pointed the top of the pen toward the closest assailant but stopped when he realized his hand was shaking. He quickly got to his knees, steadied his left hand on the back of a chair and pushed the clasp firmly inward. The pulsed energy immediately superheated the air and moisture around the target with a flash of light and a loud bang.
The effect was not exactly what he had expected. In training, both light and sound had been twice as great. Nevertheless, the whole room instantly froze in time, its population temporarily deafened and paralyzed. The gunman that Steve had fired at appeared unsteady on his feet. He looked as if he was about to drop his weapon, holding it limply. For an instant, the only sound was from the Beatles singing “Help.”
Steve recovered first. With adrenalin pumping, he sprang to his feet and rushed toward the second gunman who was starting to drop to one knee, his hands going up to his ears as if to protect them from another explosion. He still held his weapon. Steve’s tackle took the gunman down.
Simultaneously, a shot rang out and the attacker immobilized by Steve’s weapon fell over backward. As the man fell, his carotid artery, pierced by the bullet, began to pump blood from his body in cadenced spurts. Steve quickly got his adversary face down and seized his weapon. He looked up and saw Izem about to fire a second shot.
“Tie them up!” he yelled, and directed one of the waiters to help him. He then went to look for Kella at the Wests’ table. He first saw Elise bending over John.
She looked at Steve and said, in shock, “He’s dead. John is dead.”
He bent down and felt for a pulse but could only hear and feel his own heart. He moved his hand from John’s throat to his chest but felt nothing.
“How about you? Are you hit?” he asked her.
“My brother is dead,” she said in a low monotone, eyes unfocused. “We were going home tomorrow.”
Then Steve saw Kella under the table. Blood colored the loose white shirt she wore over her halter-top. “Don’t move,” he said. “How are you?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I can’t move my arm.” Steve helped her up to one of the chairs. She was holding her left arm. Blood seeped onto her slacks. Steve took off his belt and used it as a tourniquet around her upper arm.
Izem had tied the surviving terrorist’s hands behind him and was now tying him to a chair. The wounded moaned, a woman shrieked in shock, her friend joined her in sympathy, some cried over their dead friends, some were in a helpless daze. Steve saw two men, whom he knew to be part of the Medecins-Sans-Frontieres group, trying to help the wounded. The floor was covered with broken glass, food, dishes, and silverware, forming islands in the middle of a crimson-tinted mixture of blood and Orangina soda.
“Take this guy to my room and keep him there until I get there,” Steve told Izem. “See what information you can get out of him in the meantime. Do not turn him over to the police. I’m going to take Kella to the hospital.”
He found Atrar, assembled Kella and two others who had been wounded and hurried to the hospital. There were as yet no police sirens to be heard.
20. Aéroport de Tombouctou
Kella, with a crewman in a flight suit on one side, and the French Embassy nurse on the other, walked under the tail and up the loading ramp of the French Air Force cargo plane—a Transall C-160, according to the crewman who had met her and Steve inside the terminal.
It was dark but she could see the outline of the high-winged aircraft outlined by red lights on its wings and tail, a tail that seemed to be two or three stories high. The pilot had not shut down the two engines and Kella tried to protect her face from the sand blowing toward her with her right hand. Her left arm was in a cast. The hard soles of the crewman’s shoes against the metal of the ramp punctuated the noise of the engines. Steve followed Kella, carrying her suitcase, which with considerable misgivings she had asked Steve to pack for her while she was at the hospital.
Before being hustled out of the plane, Steve, almost shouting to be heard over the noise of the engines, told her, “This is the best thing for you. We’re lucky this plane could pick you up. You need to get to a real hospital. Your grandfather the general will take care of you. Call me when you land.”
Kella was in pain. She winced as she tried to fit into the uncomfortable seat.
“Take care. You should really leave too. Don’t interview al Khalil. Stay away from him. They’re killers.”
Steve gave her quick kiss on the lips and went back out the loading ramp, which closed quickly behind him.
When the plane reached cruising altitude, the nurse took a look at Kella’s temporary cast.
“My name is Viviane,” she said. “We’re the only passengers. I’m here just to take care of you until we get to Paris. I think that your cast is okay until then. If you’re in pain, I can give you a painkiller if you want. It will put you to sleep. This flight doesn’t have a movie so you won’t miss much.”
Kella swallowed the pills that Viviane gave her and slept until they landed at Vélizy-Villacoublay Airport outside of Paris, where an ambulance was waiting to take her to Val de Grâce, a hospital usually reserved for the military. Kella was accorded the luxury of a private room.
***
One evening a week later, during dinner at her grandfather’s comfortable apartment on Rue de Longchamp in the upper scale 16th District, Kella’s grandfather, General Joulet, asked for a full account of what had happened to her in Timbuktu.
Kella poured coffee for the two of them and recounted her trip and the events that led to the NGO party and the terrorist attack.
“My friend Steve then took me to the Timbuktu Hospital. The doctor was Cuban but he spoke English with a New York accent.”
“Yes, Cuba has sent doctors and medical technicians all over the developing world,” he said. “During the Cold War, that niche belonged to the Bulgarians.”
“But the X-ray machine didn’t work, so he thought I should go to Dakar or Abidjan because the bullet fractured the bone. It wasn’t a clean break. Doctor Delforge said that I was lucky that the bullet missed the brachial artery. My arm is now held together by a plate and screws. My luck was that you were able to get me on that cargo plane. I am very grateful to you, Grand-père.”
Pointing to the sitting room, Joulet said, “Let’s go sit over there, Kella.” And pointing to a sofa, he added, “Take one of those pillows to put under your arm.”
After Kella got herself situated in an easy chair, Joulet brought her cup of coffee and put it on a small table to her right.
“Will you be able to return to your studies soon?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Forced bed rest does that. I don’t know what’s happening but in the last few months I’ve seen my best friend murdered by her father, and I’ve been shot at and had my arm broken.”
“You’ve been in more danger in the last few weeks than most people in their entire lives. You can stay away from these dangerous people and get back to your main task which is to graduate from the ENA. I’ve been in touch with the president, a friend from my riding club. He agreed to give you extra time to finish your year’s assignments. As soon as you’re well, you can go back to school and the slate will be wiped clean. You’ll be on the same schedule to graduate as the rest of your classmates, at least those that have made the grade.”
“Thanks very much, Grand-père, but I don’t think that’s what I want to do anymore. I’ve thought a lot about this. What is the connecting thread between these events that have turned my life upside down? Both were connected with the integristes, the jihadists. They are struggling and fighting amongst each other and now we, the West, the Christian world, have become targets.”
The general smiled and said, “Now you’re beginning to sound like my analysts. Except that you’re more direct. The only way they know how to write is to start with ‘on the one hand,’ and then qualify their conclusions with ‘but on the other,’ so they’re never wrong.
An American president, Truman I think, said ‘Give me one-armed economists.’ Anytime you want to leave school, I have a job for you as a counter terrorism analyst.”
She laughed at the idea.
“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want to sit in a cubicle, at a computer, all day long. Rather than analyze, I’d rather get the information that someone else can analyze. If your analysts get the wrong information, the end product is not going to be useful, right? But frankly speaking, I’m not sure I’m that kind of person, a collector I mean, who can convince others to steal secrets for me.”
“Well, if you prefer after you graduate you can join the diplomatic service and play an important role in this issue, which is the central global issue of your generation—how the radical Muslims are going to fit into the current century, or how they’re going to force the rest of us to live in their century. And their clock is no further than the thirteenth century, at most.”
“Grand-père, I don’t think the diplomats have done much. They all gather at the UN, sign meaningless resolutions, and then they go to their next cocktail parties in their chauffeur-driven cars. No, I think intelligence is the place to be in this fight. It’s more significant, has more impact. So, can you help me?”
General Joulet spent the rest of the evening trying to dissuade her, but in the end, she said, “I’ll be thirty years old soon. I’ve seen my friend killed, and been attacked by the same ideology. I’m not going to sit back and pretend none of this happened and is not happening to others every day. You said yourself it’s the most important issue that my generation will have to deal with. I want to make a difference and this is where I want to do it.”
21. Al Khalil’s Office
A day after the Salafist attack on the foreign-aid personnel, Hussein brought Karim to al Khalil and, in answer to questions, Karim recounted the operation. Al Khalil sat behind his desk, and Hussein sat in front of it. Karim stood in front of both. He played the role that Steve, whom he knew as Christopher, had outlined for him, although he believed the advice was obvious.
Waving his arms as he talked, Karim nearly shouted, “Dahmane told me this would be easy—convincing foreign crusaders to go home. If you had planned this operation well, you would have known that the party was going to be guarded. Everybody was shooting at us. Dahmane shouldn’t have died. I was almost killed. You should have told us that there would be guards. Everybody was shooting. They even had hand-grenades.”
“It was Allah’s will,” Hussein replied. “Dahmane died a shahid’s death. May we all be as fortunate,” and Karim uttered “Allahu Akbar” in automatic response.
Karim exaggerated his account according to Steve’s instructions. Also, he wanted to underline that his survival was due to his own skills and that the operation was not the walk in the park that everyone had expected.
Al Khalil picked up a copy of L’Essor.
“This morning’s paper reports that, in Canada, France, Switzerland, the United States, and other countries where the NGO’s central offices are located, the media have the foreign ministries under siege. I think NGO’s will be more careful to keep their people out of our lands in the future.”
Hussein drank from a plastic water bottle.
“Timbuktu is now full of diplomats, and newspaper people. The hotels are full.”
Al Khalil leaned back in his chair.
“Yes, I know. I already received phone calls and gave a couple of interviews. I’m putting our IMRA work up front, but I’m also explaining how unnatural it is to have missionaries among our believers. We can take care of our own.”
Karim walked to the wall on his right, picked up the only other chair in the room, brought it near Hussein and sat.
“What about the police. What do they know?”
“Don’t worry. They have no leads. The eyewitnesses were too shocked and busy trying to survive to be able to give the police any useful information or accurate descriptions. Dahmane carried no personal documentation and has not been identified There will be an investigation to satisfy the foreigners but all will go back to normal soon.”
“The objective was to chase the missionaries out,” al Khalil said.
This was a sign, Karim thought, that al Khalil was closing the books on the attack.
“Some are dead and the rest are leaving. Even some of the NGO people are packing, al hamdu’llah. The results are even better than we planned. Next time, Hussein, get more fire power on the target, just to make sure.”
22. Hôtel Bouctou
Steve hurried back to his room after getting Kella onto the French military plane, an hour and a half after the terrorist attack. Izem was threatening to burn off the soles of Karim’s feet, using the finest interrogation methods he had learned in the Libyan army. So far, Karim, tied to the only chair in the room, had admitted little other than that he was Algerian.
Steve told Izem to go outside and wait. When he left the room, Steve said, in French, “I guess the next step is to call the police. How will you like the salt mines in Taoudenni?”
It worked; Karim looked frightened.
“It wasn’t my fault. I was forced to do it,” he said.
“Forced to kill innocent people? Who forced you?”
“They are not innocent. They are forcing good Muslims away from Allah. They are saying lies about the Prophet.”
“Really? Did you hear anyone at that party say anything at all about the Prophet?”
“They are bad people. They should not be here. They have to leave. This is not their country.”
Steve repeated his question: “Who sent you? Who do you work for?”
Karim considered his answer.
“I’m thirsty. I need water.”
He glanced toward the bathroom.
Steve leaned down from his chair, pulled out a soda from the small room refrigerator, and handed it to Karim.
“There’s an opener on the side of the fridge,” he said pointing.
Karim, still tied to the chair, shrugged, “I can’t.”
Steve grinned and said, “Oh, I forgot. Well, for the time being, you’ll have to stay thirsty. Who sent you? It’s me or the Malian salt mines.”
“I work for IMRA. Either I do what they say or they kill me, so I do it.”
“IMRA? The IMRA that does social work among Muslims? Tell me who heads IMRA. Why the killings?”
“I told you, to make the missionaries and the other foreigners leave. We got our orders by Hussein.”
“And he is?”
Karim shifted his weight a bit on the chair.
“He’s Tariq al Khalil’s deputy.”
“So, the missionaries and the others were shot because they are foreigners. What about the Malians you killed? And what about you—is this your country? I thought you told my friend that you came from Algeria, right? Why are you here?”
Little by little, Steve pulled Karim’s story out. Karim had been a young student in a village outside Oran when the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which later became AQIM, raided it. Karim’s teachers, French and Algerians who were deemed too westernized by the Salafists, were among the over two-hundred-thousand people killed over a period of several years.
“One day they came when we were in class,” Karim said. “They killed all the teachers. They took nine of us with them. They put us in dirty chicken coops for two days without food or water before taking us out one at a time. We all agreed to become their soldiers. Before we knew it, we were ambushing Algerian patrols.
“I was arrested once and spent six months in jail at Sidi Belabbes. It was difficult; two of my friends died there. But they let me go after a year. Later, I went to the Sudan and I met Lahlou—he’s a Moroccan at IMRA—at a training camp. He recruited me for IMRA.”
Steve stood up.
“I find your story interesting, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t just turn you over to the Malian police. You killed some people today, including Malian Muslims. I don’t know how your religion wor
ks but I don’t think that killing other Muslims is the way to heaven, nor is killing Malian citizens the way to live a happy life in Mali.”
“I don’t want to go to jail. Please, I beg you! Let me go! What do you want?”
“Well, there’s nothing you have that I want. You think you can help me? How?”
“I will tell you about IMRA. What do you want to know about IMRA?”
“I’m just a photographer. What makes you think that IMRA is of any interest to me?”
Steve moved to the window and looked out.
“You’re an American. I know that al Khalil hates Americans. You are a crusader; otherwise you wouldn’t be here, in a Muslim land. I will tell you what al Khalil is doing and planning,” Karim said in a rush.
“You’re a murderer,” Steve said, pointing at him. “I should just turn you over. I don’t know. I don’t care about your information. But maybe I know someone who is. Maybe I can put you guys together. In the meantime you can talk to me. Let’s try it. If your information proves to be good, and you don’t lie, then we have a deal. If you’re speaking the truth, then I’ll say nothing to the police. But in case anything happens to me, I’m giving everything I know about you to a friend in the American Embassy in Bamako. And if something happens to me, the police of the world will be after you. But my friends will get to you first. I guarantee it.”
“May Allah, the merciful the beneficent, favor you,” he said in Arabic. Reverting back to French, he said, “If Hussein or al Khalil find out, they will kill me on the spot. This is very dangerous. But I will do it.”
“I want to see you right here in a week.” He looked at his watch. “I want to see you next Thursday at 6:15.”
Steve handed Karim the soda on his way out, but before letting him take it, he had him repeat the time of their next meeting.
***
Karim showed up. He had thought about it all week and had concluded he had little to lose. He was confident he could meet Steve and have no one the wiser. Rotting in Taoudenni was not an attractive alternative. And if it didn’t work out in his favor, Karim thought he could kill the American. He would thus get rid of one person who could identify him, and also get credit with al Khalil for eliminating a crusader who was also a spy, like all Americans in Muslim lands.
The Caliphate Page 17