by Ward Larsen
Uday had a few decent technicians, including a precious handful who’d had some manner of cyber training. For a time they’d kept ahead of things in a game of electronic Whac-a-Mole, creating new Twitter feeds and messaging sites faster than anyone could wipe them out. But the endgame was increasingly clear—they could never outsmart all the world’s hackers. And without the internet to fuel fundamentalist flames, ISIS would quickly degrade to what the West held it to be: an isolated medieval tribe whose only product was brutality.
For Aziz Uday, it was all just another day at his impossible office.
“I have six more men inputting data,” said Anisa, the most able programmer on his team, as she arrived from the prayer room. Had the mosque remained active as a place of worship she would not have been allowed inside, at least not in the presence of men. The entire building had been requisitioned some weeks ago, becoming the main data center for ISIS. The resident mullahs had been relocated, with apologies, to nearby mosques.
“How many does that make?” Uday asked.
“Sixteen altogether, and that’s our limit—we’re out of keyboards.”
“How far have we gotten?”
“Ninety-four percent complete with the primary personnel database. Of course, that number is a moving target. We take in new recruits every day, and the raw data often takes weeks to reach us.”
Uday nodded. “I suspect some of the paperwork never reaches us at all.”
“We are concentrating on entries and not deletions. The files contain at least a thousand martyrs who have moved on to Paradise.”
“I don’t want to remove anyone—simply annotate their martyrdom. God willing, their profiles might still be useful.”
The project had been born last summer out of a request from the Shura Council for the names of those who’d perished in battle over the previous year. Records concerning next of kin—always fertile ground for recruiting brothers and cousins—could not be located, and it was soon discovered that the paperwork had been obliterated by an American bomb some months earlier. After much handwringing, it was Uday who suggested to the council that all records be digitized and placed in an electronic database. It was the kind of thing legitimate governments did.
Uday quickly regretted his suggestion. The council agreed it was a worthy undertaking, but at the same time lamented a lack of wherewithal to purchase more computers or electronic storage. That being the case, ISIS’s chief information officer was faced with a mountainous new task: With no increase in either budget or personnel, he was to acquire paperwork on every existing soldier of Allah, every incoming recruit, every vetted foreign contact, and store it in a single, secure electronic database. The project plodded along for half a year. Then, for reasons Uday did not understand, it seemed to find new emphasis in recent weeks, Chadeh inquiring about the status at every meeting. He wondered if it had to do with the new pivot to European operations.
“Did you mention the generators when you spoke with Chadeh?” asked Anisa.
“Wha … oh yes,” he stuttered, redirecting his thoughts. “But I wouldn’t expect miracles.”
“Miracles are a thing of God. I pray for no more than a few reliable kilowatt-hours.”
“Tell me about our latest videos. Are they finding traction?”
“Better than those of recent months,” she said. “The one claiming credit for the Grenoble bombing is circulating particularly well. Not exactly viral, but it has a high rate of being repeated on all platforms.”
“Finally a bit of good news,” he said.
“I think we should spend more time managing the social media. Committing so many hours to this database is pushing everything else aside.”
“We will be done soon, and then we can focus on the rest. It will be a simple matter to update the personnel list once each month—add the new arrivals, annotate who has been martyred and who has deserted.” Uday immediately sensed a mistake. Desertion was a taboo topic, something that didn’t exist in the caliphate’s earthly Paradise.
“The cowards are but a handful,” she retorted, “and we should keep their files most accurate of all. Once things have settled, they must be found and punished.” Anisa gave Uday a hard look that demanded a response.
“Of course,” he said. “But rest assured. If we do not keep up with them, God will hold them accountable.”
Anisa seemed satisfied by his logic, and she disappeared into the hallway.
Uday turned back to his screen, and no sooner had he begun typing than a message notification blinked. It was from Malika, a reverse flow in the delicate tributary Uday had built. On brevity alone, he couldn’t avoid reading it:
ARGU WILL HAVE RESULTS IN FOUR DAYS
As he dutifully configured the message for relay, Uday wondered what it was all about. He knew Chadeh was demanding something from his well-connected spy, but the details had escaped him. As he hit the send button, Uday was struck by the critical nature of his position. Had he been of a more scheming nature, it would have registered long ago: Every single communication between the Islamic State and its most critical spy in Europe passed through his fingers.
He remembered as a young boy learning about the Persian Royal Road, one of the first mail networks, instituted by Cyrus the Great. In those ancient days it had taken scores of messengers and horses a week to carry a document across the empire. Now instant messaging and e-mail had speeded things to nearly the speed of light, but information still traveled predictable routes.
And trusted messengers were as vital as ever.
It occurred to him that since Malika’s agent, Argu, was so important, it might be wise to set up an emergency means of communication. Thinking Chadeh would agree, Uday took the initiative, typing and encrypting his first message to Malika that had not been dictated from above.
PROVIDE BURNER TO ARGU AND SEND NUMBER
EMERGENCY USE ONLY
He read it through twice, and decided it was good—specific, with no real risk introduced. The moment he sent it, Uday felt a peculiar sensation. His hands seemed almost paralyzed over the keyboard. He pulled them away, balled his hands into fists a few times, and the numbness passed.
He quickly shrugged it off and got back to work.
SEVENTEEN
Slaton was patient in his travels, taking a full day to reach Italy, then another to wend his way to Paris. After a night in Turin, he utilized two trains, two taxis, and a bus, in each case taking every measure to leave as slight a footprint as possible. Although he could not know it, his final leg on a French TGV train was in fact the reverse of the route Zavier Baland had taken to Grenoble six days earlier.
The train pulled into the Gare de Lyon shortly before dinner, and Slaton took a cab to a small but restful hotel overlooking the Seine and the Île de la Grande Jatte, the narrow island that separated Baland’s neighborhood in Courbevoie from greater Paris, and so too the headquarters of DGSI. Slaton generally preferred such modest rooming houses over chain hotels whose corporate reservation systems and high traffic levels did nothing to promote the privacy he craved.
He checked in under the name Paul Aranson, in line with his new passport, and as the hotel’s agreeable new guest from Sweden he asked specifically for a room overlooking the river. The desk man was happy to oblige, and while waiting for a key Slaton engaged the concierge in a discourse about nearby restaurants and points of interest, not because he was hungry or bored but simply to establish a rapport with a young woman whose services might soon be needed for less conventional requests.
He took in the layout of the lobby, and studied a walking map on the wall that, in spite of its cartoonish appearance, he suspected was quite accurate. He noted roads and transportation hubs, and plotted the main boulevards from Courbevoie by which one could walk across the Seine toward Levallois-Perret.
One of the few details Talia had so far extracted on Baland was his habit of walking to work—he left slightly before eight on most mornings. Wondering how she’d determined this, he de
cided the most likely scenario was that she’d managed to locate and track his phone. Whatever the source, Slaton took it as fact—he had seen Talia work, and was glad to have her in his corner. Soon, however, a darker answer intervened. Could Mossad have had second thoughts and begun its own surveillance of Baland? He’d seen it time and again over the years, teams from competing agencies tripping over one another, often blowing an important op. One more possible complication, he thought.
Slaton was handed a key, and he assured the man at the desk that he didn’t need help with his bag, but thanked him all the same. He went past a tiny elevator and climbed a narrow set of stairs to the third floor. The room was comfortable and clean, and the view first-rate, a reaching panorama of the Seine winding its way east under the Pont de Courbevoie. He turned on the phone Bloch had given him, hoping it was secure as promised, and fully expecting that Mossad itself would track him once the device was powered. It was the way of the new world.
He saw one message from Talia. It contained no new background information on Baland, but did provide a detailed schedule of his appointments and meetings that reached into next month. Slaton grinned. She’s got hold of his phone. It was priceless information. Certainly meetings would be canceled and lunch reservations altered, but the essential fact remained—a leading DGSI officer had been careless.
Slaton studied Baland’s calendar. At eight tomorrow morning he saw a staff conference, presumably at the headquarters building since no other location was mentioned. Lunch the next day was at one o’clock with DGSI director Claude Michelis, a place called Le Quinze in the ninth arrondissement. A weekly press conference was set for three that same afternoon. Baland’s schedule tonight was clear.
Slaton turned off the phone and began unpacking his bag. Shirts went neatly in the closet, toothbrush by the sink. Trivialities to be sure, but rituals Slaton maintained when acting in his trained capacity. A grasp at normalcy in a role that so consistently precluded it. When everything was put away, he set his plans for the evening. Shower, a change of clothes, seek out a decent dinner in the heart of Paris—some of an assassin’s chores were less burdensome than others.
If only Christine and Davy could join me for just a few hours.
That fleeting thought only magnified his frustration. For a year he’d not gone more than a day without seeing them. Now he felt the old darkness closing in, albeit in the City of Light. Safe houses and countersurveillance. False identities and zeroed sight pictures. A brief internal debate ensued. Should he go outside right now and hail a cab? In twenty-four hours, more or less, he could be back in the tranquil South Pacific, the three of them sailing wherever the trade winds blew. But the opposing argument was devastating: How long could that last?
In the end, Slaton was compelled by his greatest strength, and on occasion his greatest weakness: Beholden to precision, he could never allow fate to intervene when control could be had. The answers he needed were clear, and they could only be found in the fabled city outside.
Dinner alone it was.
Afterward he would take a long and watchful stroll, absorbing the lights and fresh air, and making at least one pass down a particular nearby street. Then a thoughtful survey back toward the river, a last check of his phone, and finally a good night’s sleep.
All so as to be stationed discreetly in the vicinity of 45 Avenue Pasteur by seven fifteen the next morning.
EIGHTEEN
Breakfast was taken from a neighborhood boulangerie, rolls and a tall coffee, and Slaton carried it less than two blocks to reach his destination. He’d scouted the area methodically last night after drawing mental lines between Zavier Baland’s home and his office. There were any number of routes Baland might take on his way to work, but one particular intersection seemed a necessity before the options broadened.
There were never absolutes in predictive surveillance. Baland wouldn’t walk to work every day. Not when it was raining or when he had a breakfast meeting across town. Not when a sick child had to be taken to a doctor’s appointment. A given target’s habits often took weeks, even months to establish. That being the case, Slaton was fully prepared for failure. If Baland did not appear before nine this morning, he would go back to his room and contact Talia for updates. Then he would return tomorrow morning a few minutes earlier.
He scouted out positions along Avenue Pasteur, ending at the intersection of the far busier Boulevard Saint-Denis. By 7:25, with a newspaper and breakfast in hand, he was scanning the busy sidewalks from a bench in the Parc de Bécon, a charming municipal garden that graced the banks of the Seine. He occasionally referenced his phone, even though it was not powered up—it was fast becoming a more typical pastime to stare at a screen than to bury oneself in the terrible truths of Le Monde.
With a good line of sight down the length of Avenue Pasteur, Slaton visualized the face he hoped would appear. Instead of the recent pictures, however, he found himself going back fifteen years. The kills came back often enough in his dreams, so he rarely conjured them at will, but the old sight picture was unshakable in his mind: Samir alone at a table, smiling at a pretty waitress. Reading a newspaper and sitting perfectly still. Slaton could almost feel the tension in his finger, the mechanical action and recoil. Then two seconds of chaos. After taking one glimpse at the aftermath through his optic, he’d broken down his gun and egressed. A hit, yes. But had Samir survived?
8:01.
Slaton canvassed the buildings around him. Across the street was a six-by-ten array of apartments, each with two windows, and rows of trellises and planters filled the roof above. On the opposite corner he saw a different kind of roof, full of ductwork and ventilators, and a pharmacy at street level. A building acutely to his right was under construction, a warren of good hides for a shooter, but also busy work crews who were at this hour beginning their day. Slaton admonished himself for getting ahead of things. One step at a time.
8:06.
He noticed a man approaching on Avenue Pasteur. The timing was right, as was the height and build. The stride suggested a man in decent shape, about the right age, and on his way to work. Purposeful, but not in a rush. He was wearing an overcoat and carried a small attaché.
At seventy yards Slaton was curious.
At sixty he was interested.
He had exceptional eyesight, and as the man paused at the crosswalk, forty yards away, there was no longer any doubt. He was looking at Ali Samir—alias Zavier Baland.
* * *
At that same moment, as Slaton sat watching Baland, a single eye was locked firmly on him through the lens of a small camera. Not seventy yards from where he sat, across Boulevard Saint-Denis, an amorphous figure lay prone on an ill-kept garden rooftop. Soon her method of observation changed: she put down the camera, trading its viewfinder for the magnified scope on a compact rifle.
The watcher had arrived as she had for each of the last three mornings, by way of a fire escape ladder in the back alley. The garden around her was little more than a skeleton of pottery and dirt, a few wistful brown stalks remembering September. It all would be spectacular again in May, but whoever tended it—no doubt one of the tenants in the flats below—had clearly surrendered for the season.
The watcher was virtually invisible as she lay squeezed between rows of wooden planting boxes. She was good at shooting from concealed positions, and had done her share of it. New, however, was the flutter she’d felt in her stomach forty minutes ago. That was when she’d seen the tall man across the street take up a bench with a commanding view of the intersection. There was a second tingle as she’d watched him linger over a newspaper and coffee, yet she told herself it might be nothing at all. The problem was that she’d never set eyes on the man she was looking for—few had, and many of those were no longer of this earth. According to legend, the kidon had been killed … twice, actually … but rumors to the contrary lingered. She had to be sure.
She’d gone to great lengths to flush him out, knowing a better chance might never co
me. There had still been no word from the men she’d dispatched halfway around the world. Not that she was surprised. The flash drive had been her insurance. If it was the kidon, and if he came to Paris seeking Baland, this was where he would start. She knew because this was where she would have started. Baland, in all his obstinate predictability, had made his own hunter predictable.
But is that who I’m looking at? Or is it only the hope of so many years?
She’d taken one distant photo, but now she studied his face behind the aiming reticle, the thin cross centered on his head. She shifted to his chest and saw no bulkiness to suggest body armor. If it was him, why would he bother? He thinks he is the hunter.
With a glance at her watch, she looked down at a more acute angle. Right on schedule, the soon-to-be chief of DGSI appeared at the corner. Baland paused for traffic, then crossed the street into the park. She watched the man on the bench intently through her Zeiss scope and curled her finger around the trigger. She studied his face intently, but his features gave away little. He might be Israeli, but given his fair hair she would have guessed him to be a Swede or a German. Whatever he was, his food wrappers and newspaper went into the trash as Baland passed no more than twenty feet from where he sat.
The man in her viewfinder stood and began walking toward the park. The flutter became a wave. After so many years, could it really be true? Was this the man she’d been looking for? It wasn’t a certainty, not one hundred percent. In that moment, however, she decided it was enough. If it was the kidon, Baland might never reemerge from the park. And if that came to pass—her best chance would be lost.