by Ward Larsen
In dealing with his new wife, Arwan was neither cruel nor kind—if anything, he seemed monumentally distracted. Not surprising, really, for a young man who should have been in school, but who instead spent his days hiding in cramped spaces and shooting people from great distances. He was rarely home, spending days on end in the field. This in itself Malika took as her first lesson—Arwan, the caliphate’s most celebrated living killer, was imbued with an inordinate degree of patience.
But not as much as me, she’d thought.
In the few days when they were together, Malika cooked for Arwan, cleaned whatever room they called home, and when called upon performed as a wife should. After a month she decided it was time for the next step. She told Arwan over breakfast one day that she too knew how to shoot. She said she wanted to learn his craft. He’d laughed at first, but Malika had stared at him long enough, her dark eyes drilling in until he realized she was serious.
That same afternoon, with a rifle in Arwan’s hand, they walked away from town in silence—far away, because ammunition was precious, and not to be wasted teaching wives which end of a gun was which. Arwan took up a position and set his example, sending five rounds into a hand-drawn target at fifty meters. Malika did the same to a second. When they walked closer and looked, her grouping was more tight. Malika had beamed. Arwan had stood expressionless. What he did next Malika would remember for the rest of her life.
“Take my hand, Malika.”
She looked at him curiously, saw his outstretched hand.
“Take it.”
She did so.
“Now squeeze, Malika. Squeeze my hand as hard as you possibly can.”
“As hard as I—”
Her words were cut off by a whimper as he crushed her hand in his own. “Do it!” he demanded.
Malika began to respond in kind. Her hand was in agony, but she fought back, cursing his ridiculous game. Bones crushed nerves, and blood vessels bulged. Her anger rose with each new stab of pain. He upped his intensity, and so did she. Malika was a physically strong woman, likely stronger than he was. She knew she was inflicting pain on him, yet his face remained strangely impassive. This angered her further, and she squeezed with every ounce of strength. She heard cartilage snap, and was sure bones would be next. Arwan’s face remained still, no different from when he drank his morning tea. Her own was no doubt chiseled in agony. Then Malika felt the first tears on her cheek.
Finally, she could take it no more. She yanked her hand out of his grasp. Malika stared at this boy she had married. His face remained unchanged, and his voice was calm as he said, “Have you ever killed a man, Malika?”
She didn’t answer as she flexed her hand to work out the pain.
“Have you?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes!” she said eagerly.
Arwan’s eyes narrowed. “Are you prepared to lay in a ditch full of sewage for twenty hours? Can you hold perfectly still while vermin chew your ankles?”
She looked at him blankly.
“There are many kinds of strength, Malika. Find them all, and then you can do something.”
With those words, Arwan’s second lesson was complete. Others soon followed. From that day in the tawny scrub, shooting under a hot summer sun, their relationship altered. Lessons on killing blunted traditional marital conduct. Husband and wife became teacher and student. It went on that way for three months, until one cool fall evening when an officer had come to her door and informed Malika that she was a widow. She made a point of grieving, and in truth she was sad, but less for her and Arwan’s joyless future than for the tactical knowledge he had not yet imparted.
Impatient to carry forward with her plan, Malika volunteered for the front lines as a sniper. The commander had laughed. Undeterred, she’d taken the forever young Arwan’s rifle and walked to the front lines. She killed two Peshmerga fighters that first day, six within a week. The commander changed his mind. For six months she honed her deadly craft, and by grace of God survived unscathed.
With her bona fides thus established, Malika sought out the highest-level officer who would see her, a colonel named Chadeh. She told him she wanted to go to France. She said she spoke fluent French, which was nearly true, and a bit of English, and that she might be very effective in coordinating attacks on European soil. Chadeh didn’t laugh, but he denied her request. He told her she was needed in Syria.
Malika made two more requests to go to France in the following months. Both were rejected by Chadeh, who was rising in the command structure. She did not make a fourth. At that point, Malika took matters into her own hands. One late-spring day, she leaned Arwan’s rifle against the wall of a beaten room in Raqqa. Malika had then gathered a few clothes, all the money she had, and started walking toward the Turkish border. When Chadeh heard from her next, in two months’ time, it was a phone call from a bistro on Rue de Rivoli.
Malika got up from the table and went to the curtained window. She pulled back the dreary cloth and looked out across the street. The afternoon sky was overwhelmed by heavy clouds, Monceau going grim in winter’s pensive half-light. She saw a half-dozen familiar cars parked along the street, and a few new arrivals. The people she saw, if they were spies, did not behave as such. They strolled lazily on the sidewalk or loitered in plain view. What worried her was the chance of others she might not be able to see.
She backed away from the window, and considered a host of new complications. An hour ago she’d seen a news report from the Philippines—she’d been keeping half an eye there. Four Frenchmen of Mediterranean extraction had been found dead under highly suspicious circumstances. The Far East was not a direction in which Chadeh normally looked, yet if he made the connection he might become suspicious. Malika already knew what to say if the matter came up—she would claim to know nothing, and he could hardly prove otherwise. On that ground, she decided she was safe. More maddening was the issue of a backup phone for Argu. Malika decided that was a battle she couldn’t win. She went to the door and slipped on her coat.
Twenty minutes later, on a smelly backstreet in Monceau, she purchased a burner at a convenience store. She of course paid cash, and on impulse bought a large bag of crisps and a soda. She covered the two blocks back to her flat quickly, once averting her face from a passing policeman, and later ducking into a used furniture store when a siren approached on a crossing street. Back in her room, she used a pair of scissors to cut the phone out of its infernal plastic packaging. She activated the handset, then recorded the number as a contact in her own phone.
She would include that number in her next message to Raqqa. Until Argu had the device in hand, however, Malika remained in control. She didn’t need much more time. Her plan had been years in the making, and this morning—she was increasingly sure—she had finally seen her target. Her first chance to finalize things had slipped away, but it hardly mattered.
Malika knew another chance would arrive very soon.
TWENTY-ONE
Uday located the new command center, and was ushered inside by a guard. The place had been set up only yesterday, in the shell of an ancient Christian church—regardless of faith, houses of worship were generally left untargeted. Inside he found an agitated Chadeh backed by a half-dozen others, most of whom Uday recognized. The mood was less that of a meeting than one of a tribunal.
Chadeh briefly explained the problem, then asked, “When did we send Malika the information on these four men?”
Uday had had the foresight to bring his laptop. He took a seat at a table and was soon referencing his communications log. “I sent her a contact number for the cell in Marseille almost two months ago.”
“And now these men end up dead halfway around the world? What was she thinking?”
It was a purely rhetorical question, but with Chadeh hovering behind him, Uday felt an urge to reply. “You believe Malika is responsible for this?” Much of the Shura Council was in attendance, and Uday felt everyone’s e
yes on him. For lack of a better target, the messenger was being blamed. He felt compelled to keep talking. “I can’t say if she ever made contact with these men. The South China Sea is not an area of operations we’ve discussed with her … and I know nothing of any missions there.”
“We keep contacts with groups in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, do we not?”
“We have loose associations, yes, but our footprint in the Philippines is virtually nil. The place where this happened, on a coral reef in the middle of the sea … I can think of no reason Malika would have sent recruits there.”
“Do we know who was responsible for their deaths?” one of the council members asked.
Chadeh said, “Perhaps they were engaged by a Special Forces unit. The Americans are active in that region.”
Uday referenced the most recent press release. “There have been no arrests, but the authorities say evidence leads them to believe that drug smuggling was involved.”
“Drugs?” Chadeh repeated. He paced about the room, and his mood seemed to brighten. “Yes,” he said, “that makes more sense. These recruits we unearth in Europe are useful, but so many are no more than impressionable criminals. They meet true believers in jail who steer them into our fold, but some give us nothing but trouble.”
Uday sensed the crisis ebbing. He said, “If you wish, I can contact Malika and ask if she knows anything about this.”
“Yes, a good next step,” said Chadeh. “And when you do, tell her to keep up the pressure on Argu. We must have his information by tomorrow.”
“Very well.”
One of the others said, “Perhaps it is time to tell Uday of our plans. We will soon need his team’s expertise.” The man who’d spoken was a recognized hafiz, meaning he had memorized the entire Quran. An impressive accomplishment, to be sure, but Uday had always been struck by the narrowness of that learning—such men often had no idea how the outside world functioned.
Uday watched Chadeh take a silent poll, before saying, “Leave us and wait outside.”
He was happy to comply.
* * *
Uday stepped through the great doors of the church, and outside he encountered the same guard who’d let him in. The guard nodded and offered him a cigarette. Uday took one, and without a word between them the two stood side by side in the gathering midday heat. Somewhere in the distance an explosion rang out, but neither flinched. Uday remembered hearing the first blasts of the war, so many years ago. At the time he’d thought it was distant thunder. Now the inverse had taken hold—the last rumble from a storm had been lost on him, and he’d been caught by surprise when rain began sweeping down. Such strange acclimatizations war brings.
Five minutes later he was summoned back inside. Only three people remained, Chadeh and two council members. Uday hoped his expression did not betray what he felt—that he would rather be anywhere else at that moment.
Chadeh said, “We are in agreement. As I recently mentioned, attacks in Europe will take on increasing importance in our overall strategy. We will soon launch a broad series of assaults. The skills of your team will be necessary to maximize their effectiveness.”
For the next ten minutes Uday listened as the three council members laid bare an audacious plan. Argu would soon provide critical information. When paired with Uday’s personnel database, it would be nothing short of a declaration of war. Uday finally understood why his project had found new emphasis.
“Will there be attacks using radiation?” he asked, sensing a connection to Grenoble.
“There are no bounds—we will use whatever can be leveraged. France’s weaknesses will soon be laid bare, and an army lies in wait to exploit our advantage.”
“Surely you recall how the Americans reacted to 9/11,” commented the hafiz. “A few thousand dead, and they went straight into Afghanistan—where they remain mired to this day. The French crusaders will take the same course. Hit them hard enough, and they will rush to our ground for the battle of the Apocalypse. When they do, followers of the Prophet from across the world will unite to bring us victory.”
Uday stood speechless. He looked at each of the three men in turn, thinking, Do they not realize what such an escalation will bring? They looked back at him expectantly, as if waiting for affirmation of their grand scheme. All Uday could say was, “May God be with us.”
Those words were instantly echoed around the room.
* * *
Baland decided to go home for lunch with his wife. He would normally have walked the entire way, but a light drizzle persuaded him to take the Métro across the river. From there he detoured to intercept his usual path. More than once he’d been reprimanded by his security minders for keeping such predictable habits. It was poor operational security, they said. Baland wished he could tell them how wrong they were.
The signal surprised him when he saw it, understandable since he’d seen it only once before. On the back side of a particular street sign near Boulevard Saint-Denis a circular sticker had been applied, the trendy logo of a surfboard manufacturer. There were a million such decorations across Paris. Part advertisement, part urban graffiti, this one had no doubt been ignored by a thousand passersby that morning. There was a fleeting moment of apprehension, and Baland slowed to take a good look at the sticker as he passed. On its circular edge, at the two o’clock position, a distinct notch had been cut out.
He kept going for another hundred yards, then took out his phone and called his wife. With a heartfelt apology, Baland said that he could not meet her for lunch after all. “Something has come up at work,” he explained, and heard disappointment in her voice when she replied, “That’s all right, darling. We’ll have dinner waiting.”
They exchanged a few words about the girls, and agreed to have a date soon. Baland ended the call and pocketed his phone. He pulled out his gloves, put his head down to the drizzle, and walked briskly to the bus stop at Bellini.
TWENTY-TWO
The meeting with Malika was a standing contingency, reserved for either critical situations or when all normal dead drops were thought to have been compromised. Baland didn’t like either prospect, but he tried not to speculate on the reason for the summons.
They would make contact at the Palais de Chaillot, where, in June 1940, a smug Adolf Hitler had been famously photographed alongside the Reich’s chief architect, Albert Speer. Baland spotted Malika on the very terrace where the Führer had gloated in victory, standing along the stone balustrade with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The plaza today was far busier than it had been then, throngs of tourists taking photographs, street merchants hawking trinkets, and a discreet police contingent roaming the perimeter. Malika had no doubt chosen the place for its highly public nature. Baland disliked it for the very same reason. No tourist would ever recognize him, but he was a relatively high-profile figure in the law-enforcement community, and in any case, there were too many cameras for his liking.
The two made eye contact when he was halfway up the stairs from the Jardins du Trocadéro, and on reaching the terrace he diverted away, implying that she should follow. He went to the entrance of France’s national maritime museum, the Musée National de la Marine, and bought a ticket. Without pausing, Baland went inside and began to wander. After ten minutes he took a seat on a bench in a conspicuously unpopular room dedicated to model ships encased in glass. Malika caught up two minutes later, and together they sat in study of a scale crafting of a thirty-four-gun frigate, the work of one Jean-Alain Picard, that had likely not seen so committed a pair of admirers in all its centuries.
“I don’t like this,” he said straightaway. “Direct meetings are dangerous.”
“You have a problem,” she replied.
“Believe me when I say I have many problems.”
“Not like this. A man was following you this morning.”
This caught Baland off guard. He averted his eyes from Monsieur Picard’s tiny mast and sails. Up close Malika was as he remembered, although each tim
e he saw her she seemed a bit heavier. Probably the Parisian food, he thought. She was dressed in casual Western clothing, bulky and layered for the season, which only added to her thickened appearance. Her black eyes held his gaze unswervingly, some underlying anger evident as always. During their first encounters in Paris, Baland had thought this was how she regarded the world, but in time he’d come to view it as a resentment reserved for him alone.
“Following me?” he said. “Who?”
“The man who has come to Paris to kill you.”
“What—” Baland cut himself off, realizing his voice had risen. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed. There were only two other people in the pass-through display room, a young Asian couple distracted by their cameras as they composed shots of every exhibit. “What are you talking about?” he asked in a distinctly lower tone.
Malika produced a photograph, and it took a moment for Baland to comprehend what he was looking at. He recognized his own silhouette on a sidewalk—if he wasn’t mistaken, the east side of Boulevard Saint-Denis.
“When was this taken?” he asked.
“This morning.” She pointed to a man sitting on a bench in the picture’s background. “I think it is the Israeli. The kidon.”
Baland’s suspicion was instantly supplanted by a jolt of fear. Israel had a handful of assassins in its employ, but there was no doubt which one Malika was referring to. “Slaton?” he said in a hesitant voice. “How can you be sure?”
“He followed you to work from Avenue Pasteur. If I’m right, you are lucky to be alive. You should be more careful.”
“I am not a spy, I am a policeman.”
“You are what you were born to be.”
He gave her a severe look. “What makes you think this is him? There are no pictures of the man. I know because you forced me to search his background—and I have the best intelligence assets in France at my disposal. According to the files, the man born as David Slaton died years ago in England.”