She read about a signal that was eventually traced to Tariq’s satellite telephone. According to the report, Roger was extremely skeptical that the signal, if there was one, originated from anything his agent was carrying or wearing, which, if correct, would infer that something had gone wrong with his case.
Roger’s only suggestion was to continue to monitor the signal to determine without doubt where it came from and, if indeed it was related to al Khalil, try to piggyback on it as a check on the location of their agent. However, counterintelligence staff asserted that it had the power to override him and, if there was some sort of beacon in the phone, it indicated that another intelligence organization had gained access to the phone and might have done more than just plant a location device in it.
It was decided to steal the instrument and force al Khalil to buy another one. “Stuff” happened in urban areas, and Paris was no exception; al Khalil would not question such an incident.
***
A few days later, Jocelin called to ask Kella to come to his office one floor up. The secretary nodded that she could go in. Jocelin sat behind his desk to the right of the door. On the wall behind him was a map of North Africa and a military unit insignia. A man sitting in front of Jocelin’s desk stood up as he said, “Kella I want you to meet Captain Lucien Roger. I’m sure you saw his reports in the CIMETERRE file.”
Kella glanced at the captain and her gaze became embarrassingly fixed on the right side of his face, frozen in a permanent grimace. Considering the way the captain had looked her up and down—the elevator look, she thought—the grin appeared to her more like a leer.
“Allow me to express my deep pleasure at having you onboard,” Roger said. “I heard you graduated from the ENA, whose graduates don’t normally end up with us. It is truly an honor. I have to assume that you’re being groomed to be our boss in very short order.”
The sarcasm was not lost on Kella.
Jocelin’s voice allowed her to wrest her eyes from Roger’s face.
“I saw you looking at this when you came in,” he said, pointing to the insignia on the wall, a blue triangle with the point down, in the middle of which was a flame in the middle of a green and red rectangle. On the left was the number two and on the right was the suggestion of a deployed bird wing.
“It’s from my old unit, in Corsica, the Second Airborne Regiment of the Foreign Legion. Great outfit.”
“I assume that jumping out of perfectly good airplanes is not a requirement for me,” she said with a grin.
Roger, dressed in civilian clothes, said, “It depends on the mission, Mademoiselle.”
Jocelin shooed them out of his office.
“I have another meeting. But you’ll be working together and I assume that Captain Roger has a lot he wants to share with you, Kella.”
They moved to Roger’s office, on her floor. Sitting across from him, Kella said, “That’s a wonderful picture. Is that you? Growing up in Mali, I don’t think I ever rode a horse—a camel, yes; a horse, no.”
Roger turned away from the photograph without answering and Kella felt uneasy. She went in another direction.
“I was reading the CIMETERRE case, since I’ll be doing the operational support work. Al Khalil looks like an interesting person. Do you think he’s truly under our control? Also, I was wondering about that signal. What do you think that’s all about?”
Roger appeared startled.
“What? You’ve been on the desk two minutes and you’re already questioning me? I recruited him and he’s one of the best sources we have.”
In the face of his defensive attitude, she clearly had to be more sensitive and diplomatic. But before she could try her new tack, Roger continued in a calmer tone.
“I’m not convinced that the signal is coming from his phone. Those techies have it all wrong. I’m opposed to mounting an operation to steal it. It’s a waste of manpower. I could just ask him for it. But the DST boys have their best team on Tariq. They’re going to borrow that satellite phone and examine it. It’s probably going to create a diplomatic incident.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Roger questioned her about her African background, her studies, and her parents. In a few minutes, Kella felt that she had been wrung dry by an expert.
Finally, he said, “We need to continue this conversation later in a more relaxed atmosphere,” which she took to mean that she was dismissed and that he meant to go further than just leer at her.
As she walked out, she noticed another photo on the wall: Roger in a black and gold uniform, spurs and a cocked hat holding a horse by its reins. Unlike Jocelin, proud of his former unit and what it stood for, Roger was very much about himself. And from the way he had reacted, she concluded he was not comfortable in his skin.
***
Maurice, the burly DST team leader, waved to Paul farther down the Rue de Courcelles. They were on al Khalil. Their assigned objective was to separate him from his briefcase, where, they knew from the DGSE, he carried his satellite phone. Al Khalil had come out of the Saudi Arabian Embassy on Avenue Hoche and was proceeding north on Rue de Courcelles. Although Roger had briefed the team that al Khalil usually took taxis in Paris, he seemed headed toward the Courcelles Metro entrance, so Maurice sent two of his men ahead into the Metro station.
The team also knew from tapping his hotel phone that al Khalil was scheduled to make a presentation at the Salle Pleyel that afternoon. The two surveillants preceded al Khalil to the platform that would put him on the Metro heading west toward Charles de Gaulle Etoile.
By the time the subway pulled in to the Courcelles Station, Maurice had maneuvered three men in front of Tariq. He and Paul were immediately in back of him. As Tariq stepped onto the metro, he was prevented from moving forward by the three men in front of him who, their backs to him, barely gave him room to step onboard. The wagon was fairly crowded and, as the team had hoped, he didn’t push forward. Just before the doors to the metro started closing, the two who stayed on the platform acted in unison.
A few minutes before, Maurice had summarized the choreography for his team.
“The first action is to keep him very close to the door. The second action has three movements. That will be you Paul, and me. We don’t get on the metro but we’ll be immediately behind him as he gets on. You’ll be on the left. Movement one, stick him on the left side with this pin to get his attention away from the briefcase; movement two, I tear the briefcase from his hand; movement three, the doors close and the metro takes away us and his briefcase. It’s over and we have his phone.”
As planned, Paul stuck a needle in al Khalil’s left buttock. Al Khalil yelped in pain, turned to his left and looked behind him. As his shoulders started their rotation, Maurice, on Paul’s right, seized al Khalil’s briefcase with both hands and wrenched it away. The doors of the metro closed within a fraction of a second and the metro pulled away.
“They took my briefcase,” Al Khalil shouted. “Stop the train, stop the train!”
People looked at him strangely. The three men in front of him moved away in different directions as if to avoid getting involved with this helpless and indignant foreigner, probably an Arab.
“Served him right,” one muttered to no one in particular.
32. Timbuktu: IMRA Building
Hussein saw Karim outside sitting on the sand, his legs crossed in front of him, with a small group of militants in the shade of the building.
“What are you doing?” Hussein asked.
“I’m waiting for the boss. He wants me to drive him to the northern camp.”
“Come inside.”
Karim got up and followed him past several desks busy with welfare recipients into a far corner where there were two empty chairs away from anyone.
“We don’t have enough people at the camp. You have enough experience now to help out with the training. Also talk to Rashid up there. He’ll tell you where you’re needed most. When you go up there with Tariq, tak
e another driver to bring Tariq back.”
Karim was pleased with the increased trust being placed on his shoulders since the attack on the missionaries and the NGO workers. He gave some of the credit for the new mindset to Steve. He had taught him to be less passive, to recognize when he had choices and what they were. Being at the camp meant more responsibility, perhaps more independence, and probably more choices. He came to believe that his meeting with Steve had been meant to take place; Allah had clearly willed it. Such a life-changing event didn’t just happen. It had to be part of a greater design.
***
At the desert camp, Karim immediately became aware of the almost uninterrupted whining sound of small engines being operated at high speeds. Karim went toward the noise and found the airstrip. He counted five small planes that were flown remotely. Karim was fascinated by them and began to spend as much time as he could around the camouflage netting, under which the unmanned air vehicles, the UAVs, were hangared.
Karim knew that Rashid was in charge of the camp, which also included the obstacle course, the runs in the desert and the other physical training, as well as the weapons familiarization and the firing. Rashid’s priority was clearly the UAVs. He left the other activities to others.
***
One day after Karim came back from a run with the trainees, Rashid, a Moroccan Berber in his forties with a dark complexion and high forehead, called out to him.
“Karim, I want you to clean the engine of this drone. I’ll show you how and then you can finish it. These things weren’t made for a desert environment. Unless we can keep the sand out, it’s going to destroy the engines.”
Rashid spent two hours with him answering Karim’s questions on the workings of an internal-combustion engine.
A couple of days later, Karim made a point of sitting with Rashid at dinner.
“Where did you learn about UAVs?” he asked.
“Actually, I’m self-taught, but I attended a technical school near Casablanca, and one day I was given the chance to take an exam for a place in a French aeronautical school near Toulouse. The test was given in Algeria and Tunisia as well as Morocco. The school offered one slot to each country. I went and studied in France for two years.”
“Why didn’t you stay? I would have stayed,” Karim said, splitting the pit of a date out of his mouth.
“After the formal training, all of the French students were offered jobs in the French aircraft industry around Toulouse. The three of us kept getting turned down because we were Arabs.”
“The French are pigs,” Karim said. “So, what did you do? Go back to Morocco?”
Rashid laughed.
“Well, I felt isolated. The French students didn’t let us, the three Arabs, hang with them. One day, for something to do instead, we went to the Mosque. And we went back the following week.”
He reached for a piece of chicken in the plate of couscous.
“I don’t know what happened to the Tunisian and to the Algerian, but I found that the Salafists liked me. Eventually, I was introduced to Hussein when he was traveling through France, and he brought me to IMRA.”
Karim became Rashid’s best student and, at Rashid’s request, Hussein told Karim to stay at the camp as an assistant. Karim felt he was heading upward. He asked Rashid for manuals, which he pored over, asking a thousand questions about the UAVs. When Rashid taught him to pilot the little planes by remote control, Karim was as happy as he had ever been. Under Rashid’s tutelage, Karim became an accomplished UAV pilot.
One day under the camouflage netting, Rashid told Karim, “Our UAVs are not the most recent technology but we don’t need the latest technology. Our planes have the capability to carry out multiple functions including real-time or photo surveillance. Next week, I want you to help me experiment with different payloads.”
“What kind of payloads?”
“I’m going to adapt them to carry a number of different things since I don’t know what the mission is going to be yet. I want to know where to place cameras, sensors, or weapons. Right now, we don’t need the specific payload, just their weight and size.”
Rashid went and stood by one of his UAVs. He leaned down and touched its wing.
“Are they going to be flying bombs? Like the Americans’ smart bombs?” Karim asked.
“Don’t know yet.”
Karim concluded that Steve would want to know about these little planes and he started to mentally inventory them. Rashid had obtained the first UAV, the Mirsad-1, from the Lebanese Hezbollah.
“This one became famous when the Hezbollah used it against Israel during the 2006 war,” Rashid told him.
Rashid had four other UAVs, all obtained, Karim learned, through a retired American officer now in the arms business. Three, an IAI Harpy, an RQ-2, and an RUAG Ranger, had originally been developed in Israel. The Falcon was Jordanian, a joint venture between the King Abdullah Design and Development Bureau and Jordan Aerospace Industries, according to Rashid.
The Ranger was the closest to looking like and being a real airplane. Karim’s favorite was the RQ-2, bought and used by the U.S. Navy, which would retrieve it on board with the use of a net. With a wingspan of almost seventeen feet, it was no toy. But Karim found it easy to maneuver, and he loved to fly it around the skies of the Sahara, spotting caravans either in the distance or directly under the craft through its live TV system. Able to fly at an altitude of fifteen-thousand feet, it was unseen and unheard by people on the ground.
Karim made no notes, remembering that Steve told him it was too dangerous, but, since he worked with the planes on a daily basis, he found it easy to remember every detail because one day, Allah would put him back in touch with Steve. In the meantime, he continued to practice his remote flying skills over the Sahara.
33. McLean, Virginia
Steve went back to his West Gate job following his return to the United States and the award ceremony at Langley. His division chief, Charlie Van Diemen, a retired Air Force colonel, walked into Steve’s windowless office.
“You did it, Steve! We just received the first payment from the Moroccans for a two-year program to renovate Ben Guerir Air Base for fighter aircraft of the Moroccan Air Force.”
“That’s great. I discussed that project with the Moroccans but I never had the chance to go down there. Ben Guerir was used to support the Space Shuttle Program for a possible abort landing. I suppose we have other options these days.”
Van Diemen pointed to a plaque on the wall of Steve’s office addressed to “Boy Genius.”
“They were right,” he said.
The plaque was from the 51st Fighter Wing at Osan Air Force Base in South Korea, where Steve had worked on Counter Proliferation for two years.
“I really didn’t think you could do it,” Van Diemen said. “Breaking into a new market already dominated by French companies seemed like a long shot. But you certainly did it. If you can do it there, maybe you can do it in other countries as well. Don’t unpack.”
Steve knew he was highly thought of by his company. However, now that he was back at work, he was away from the action. He had mulled his options over several times. Joining the CIA fulltime was one. Yet he was extremely reluctant of having to depend on people like Mel. And, there were too many rules. Maybe a large organization had to dumb-down its regulations to protect itself from the lowest denominator. He hadn’t yet decided how to keep to his goal to resist the Salafists, al Khalil especially. But he had not dismissed it.
Later, Steve’s phone rang. It was “Mel from the office,” as she identified herself. That Mel, who didn’t think he was a “real” case officer, should call meant there was a serious problem.
“We were wondering if you could come today,” she said. “This afternoon would be all right.”
He looked at his watch. It was already early afternoon and he had a load of things to do.
“I could come in the morning.”
Not wanting to go through the hassle of the security chec
ks and badging, he asked, “How about if you came out to Salona Village? We could have coffee.”
They met at the Seven Seas Restaurant, owned by a retired CIA officer and a favorite of Agency employees because it was only five minutes away from headquarters along Dolley Madison Boulevard. When his father was in Northern Virginia on consultation, the restaurant was a favorite venue for his ROMEOs: Retired Old Men Eating Out.
When Steve went in, he immediately spotted Mel, this time in a different tent-dress but, as usual, one of many colors.
Great disguise for a spy, he thought.
Sitting with her was a young man in a dark suit: Josh, a trainee. Mel had told Steve on the phone that he would be with her. He slid onto the red-leatherette-covered bench of the booth across from the two of them, a large poster of tennis pro Pete Sampras.
After the introductions, Mel said, “Thérèse LaFont asked me to talk to you about taking a trip back to Mali, to see CALIPH/4.”
Mel and Josh each had already had a cup of coffee and were scanning menus. A waitress poured Steve a cup as soon as he sat down.
“I don’t need the menu, thanks,” he said. “Go ahead and order if you want. Coffee is all I’ll have.” He looked at his watch.
It had been three months since Steve had last seen Karim. “How is he?” he asked.
“We had a turnover in Bamako. Rod was reassigned. The new chief of station contacted CALIPH/4 and ran him for two months. First, he said the agent really had not been properly recruited, that he was not fully responsive when he first met him.”
Mel’s look challenged Steve to rebut her statement. Josh stirred his coffee.
“Not responsive? He stole al Khalil’s phone for us! How much more responsive can he be?”
His voice was a bit louder than necessary. He looked around but no one seemed to have noticed.
“Well, Therese thinks you should go over there and try to revive the operation.”
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