House of War

by Scott Mariani

  Once that was done, the old man waved him across and remained seated as Nazim walked over. They exchanged warm greetings in Arabic, and then al-Rashid reached out with a bony hand and patted the sofa cushion next to him. ‘Come, sit and talk to me.’

  Nazim accepted the honour of sitting by him, and gave his report on the morning’s events – or at any rate those he felt inclined to share. Ibrahim al-Rashid smiled at the news of the Juneau woman’s killing. It had been he himself, trusting nobody, who had ordered them to place the phone tap that had alerted them to her treachery. He was happy to hear that his precaution had brought results and the potential threat to their plan had been eliminated.

  ‘Allahu akbar walillahi’l-hamd.’ Allah is great and to Allah we give praise.

  ‘Mashallah,’ replied Nazim. Allah has willed it.

  ‘There remains the matter of the other infidel female,’ the old man said, with a certain air of disgust as though even referring to her left a bad taste in his mouth. ‘If she too poses a threat, then she too must be dealt with.’

  Al-Rashid was talking about the woman called Françoise, still untraced and at large, and an unknown risk factor although one could never be too careful. Nazim assured him that all efforts were being made on that front. ‘We will find her and do whatever is necessary. She will not be a problem.’

  The old man seemed pleased. ‘Now, tell me how things progress with the shipment.’

  ‘My meeting in Libya with our Parisian associate left me in no doubt that the plan will proceed smoothly, thanks to his connections. He has seen to it that the export permits and other administrative matters are all in order. The cargo departed from the Port of Tripoli aboard a MAERSK container ship two days ago. Transit time is seven days, if the passage is smooth, God willing.’

  ‘Mashallah. Our associate is indeed a useful asset. Did he personally travel with the cargo?’

  ‘No, but we have a man aboard the ship, overseeing the safety of the cargo. When the vessel reaches the Port of Le Havre our associate will be there to meet it. From there it will be transported by road to its final destination. I will be personally seeing to the distribution arrangements.’

  The language both men used was deliberately vague, but everyone in the room knew exactly what was being discussed, and what the plan aimed to achieve.

  ‘Excellent,’ the old man said with a smile. ‘It sounds as though nothing can stand in our way. I am proud of you, Nazim. This new strategy will drive a knife deep into the belly of the infidel and bring the House of War to its knees, inshallah.’

  ‘I am but a humble slave of Allah,’ Nazim replied piously.

  The old man nodded. ‘“Fight them and Allah will punish them by your hands, lay them low, and cover them with shame,”’ he said, quoting from the Qur’an. ‘“Therefore smite them on their necks and every joint and incapacitate them. Strike off their heads and cut off each of their fingers and toes. He will help you over them, and we will fight them until there is no more disbelief and all submit to the religion of Allah alone.”’

  From around the room came murmurs of reverence at the sacred words they had all known since boyhood. ‘Now let us have some tea,’ said al-Rashid, gesturing over to one of his men who stood by a sideboard with a silver tray filled with cups and saucers, ‘and we will talk more.’

  The tea was served, and while they drank the old Imam seemed to be watching Nazim with a curious eye. After a time he observed, ‘You appear troubled, my son. What is the matter?’

  Nazim was afraid to tell him what was on his mind, about the man he’d seen at the window of the woman’s apartment that morning. Even more afraid to have to confess that he’d allowed the man to go free. Such errors would not go unpunished. So Nazim just smiled and said, ‘Forgive me if I seemed distracted. I was just going over the details of the plan in my mind.’

  ‘Be at peace, Nazim,’ the old man reassured him. ‘Remember the message with which our Lord inspired the angels: “I am with you. Give firmness to the Believers. I will terrorise the unbelievers. And for those who believe and do good deeds will be gardens; the fulfilment of all desires.”’

  Soon after, it was time for the Asr, or afternoon prayer. All in the room prostrated themselves facing east towards Mecca, to symbolise the unity of the Islamic Ummah. The wise old man led the recitation of the four rakats that offered their devoted service to Allah.

  Once their prayers were done, Ibrahim al-Rashid and his retinue made to leave for the airport. There were smiles and handshakes and warm assurances that they would all meet again, in this world or the next. The bodyguards checked the corridor, then the old man was escorted from the suite and left.

  One of the men left inside the suite was a younger member called Sarfaraz Baqri. He was a loyal soldier who had been involved with a number of operations in France. He was strong on the technical side and knew a lot about chemicals and electronics, and his reputation as the techno-whizzkid of the gang was the reason Nazim now wanted his advice. Sarfaraz was talking to another trusted associate named Mohammed when Nazim took them aside and said he wanted to speak privately.

  Without confiding too many details, he told them about the man who had involved himself in their affairs and whom they must now track down. Sarfaraz listened without comment, then asked, ‘How do we find him, if we don’t know his name or where he lives?’

  ‘I’m certain that he has the Juneau woman’s phone. If we can locate its whereabouts, it can lead us to him. Can you do that?’

  Sarfaraz shrugged. ‘Sure, no problem. All we’d need is the number.’

  ‘I can find that out with one phone call.’

  ‘Okay. Once you have it, we can feed it into a GPS phone tracking app, and we can find him, easy.’

  ‘Even if it’s not turned on, or not connected to the internet?’

  Sarfaraz found the older man’s lack of technical savvy amusing, but allowed himself only a slight smile out of respect. After all, Nazim al-Kassar had been engaged in heroic jihad when Sarfaraz was still barely out of nappies.

  ‘Used to be, it was just governments and agency spooks who had the means to do stuff like that,’ the young man explained. ‘But not any more. I just need to get back to my place and get my kit. Then as long as he’s still got the phone it’ll take me just seconds to pinpoint him to within a metre.’

  Nazim said, ‘Then get to it. I want this man dead.’

  Chapter 20

  Ben didn’t have to travel far to have his private conversation with Michel Yassa. Just half an hour’s drive to the east from Saint-Denis lay the Forêt de Bondy. Once upon a time the deep, dark, sprawling forest had encircled the whole eastern side of the city and provided a notorious refuge for brigands and cutthroats. Now it was given over mostly to drug dealers and tourism, though there were still enough woodland trails and secluded areas for Ben’s purposes.

  He found a track wide enough for the car to negotiate and pushed as deep into the forest as he could, until he came to a lonely clearing in the middle of thick oaks and beeches, golden with the colours of autumn and fast shedding their leaves. This was as good a spot as any. He killed the engine and got out. The carpet of dead leaves and moss was spongy and soft underfoot as he walked around to the back of the car and opened the boot to reveal his prisoner curled up inside, blinking at the sudden light and looking fairly traumatised. The effects of Michel Yassa’s daytime drinking session had all but worn off.

  Ben said, ‘All right, now let’s talk. Where’s al-Kassar?’

  ‘I … I don’t … I thought …’

  Ben reached behind his hip and drew out one of the Glocks he’d appropriated from the Corsicans earlier, minus its cumbersome silencer. He pointed the muzzle in Michel Yassa’s face. ‘Are you going to lie to me, Michel? Because I don’t have a lot of time for liars. You’re going to tell me where I can find your associates, or I’m going to leave you here in the woods.’

  ‘If you’re here to kill me, then stop playing games and get on wi
th it. I don’t care. But you didn’t have to hurt her, you bastard.’

  Now it was Ben’s turn to be confused. He lowered the pistol. It had only been a bluff anyway, since he was all but certain that Michel had nothing whatsoever to do with Nazim al-Kassar. But that was the only certainty in his mind. ‘Why do you think I’m here to kill you?’

  Michel Yassa stared up at him. His eyes were wide and crazed with fear and grief. ‘You work for them, don’t you? How much did they pay you to kill her?’

  Ben stared back at him, then said, ‘Get out of the car, Michel.’

  Michel slowly, warily climbed out of the boot and looked around him. Ben could tell that he was thinking of bolting off into the trees. ‘Go for it,’ he said. ‘I’ll only catch you and drag you back here, and I won’t be so gentle this time.’

  ‘Shoot me, then, you piece of merde.’

  ‘I’m not going to shoot you, Michel.’

  ‘Then what the fuck do you want from me?’

  ‘To talk. That’s all.’

  ‘You have a gun. You pointed it at me.’

  ‘It was a test. You passed.’

  ‘If you’re not here to kill me, then who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m your friend,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe the best friend you’ve got right now. Everyone else seems to think you murdered her.’

  Michel’s face twisted in pain. ‘I wouldn’t have hurt a hair on her head! I loved her!’

  ‘I know you didn’t kill her,’ Ben said. ‘I was there just moments after it happened. I saw the man who did it. His name is Nazim, and he’s not a very nice person. You don’t look surprised to hear that, Michel. Because you were expecting someone bad to come knocking, weren’t you? Why else did you think I’d come to kill you?’

  Michel fell to his knees in the dirt and dead leaves, sobbing like a child. ‘Why’d it have to be her? Why couldn’t they have just killed me instead? She didn’t deserve to be punished for what I did.’

  This wasn’t making sense. ‘Punished for what, Michel?’

  But Michel just went on weeping, tears pouring down his face and dripping off his chin. ‘They slaughtered my family, now they’ve come for me. But killing me wasn’t enough for those sick, cruel bastards. How did they find her? How?’

  Ben crouched down in front of him and gripped his quaking shoulders. ‘Michel. Stop crying. Get it together and speak to me.’

  It took a while, but Michel managed to calm himself, and then a little while after that he began to talk.

  Michel explained that he was from Egypt, and had immigrated to France in 2015 along with the huge wave of new arrivals into the country that year. Though he was a Coptic Orthodox Christian, he’d had to fake being Muslim to get into France, since he claimed that the immigration authorities were turning away Christian minorities from Middle Eastern countries for fear of offending the Islamic majority. He hadn’t come to France by choice, but been forced to flee Egypt after his family, like many other Christians there, were persecuted by Sunni extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood. Officially they were considered terrorists by the Egyptian government, but Michel believed that the authorities secretly supported them. The situation there was getting worse every year.

  ‘What happened to your family?’ Ben asked.

  Michel struggled to contain his emotions as he talked. ‘My parents were kidnapped from our home and beheaded. My sister and I ran away, but she was caught, forced to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man. When she rebelled against him, she was stoned to death in the street by a mob. I only heard about it afterwards, because I was in hiding. I took a gun and went to the house of my dead sister’s husband. When he answered the door I shot him in the gut, then ran. Later I found out that he didn’t die. As much as I hated him for what he’d done, I thanked the Lord for not letting me become a murderer like the people who wiped out my family.’

  Michel took a deep breath, then went on, ‘Then I had to escape from Egypt. I had a small amount of money, but the trafficking gangs who bring you into Europe, they rob you of everything. Eventually I managed to reach France. I thought I was safe here. I was trying to make my way, and forget about the bad things that had happened back home, even though I couldn’t forget. I had a rough time of it at first, arriving in Europe with no money, nowhere to live. A week after I got to Paris I got caught shoplifting for food. I thought I was going to be deported. But then things got better. I found the job at the bar and worked hard. Then I met Romy, and we fell in love. I never told her about my past. It seemed like my life was starting to go well. But I was always afraid that the Brotherhood would come looking for me one day, out of revenge. I thought they might murder me, or kidnap me and take me back to Egypt to be tortured and executed. They have people everywhere. White guys too.’

  Now it was clear to Ben why the young guy had acted so terrified of him. ‘You believe they hurt Romy to punish you for what you did, and you were next. And I understand why you think that, Michel. But you’re wrong. This isn’t your fault. The man who killed her is an Iraqi, not an Egyptian. And he’s way too high up the chain of command to be running errands for the gangsters who harmed your family. Something else is going on.’

  It wasn’t easy telling someone that he and his dead family were too small fry for the real bad guys to bother about.

  Michel looked at Ben through swimming eyes full of confusion and anguish, fear and anger all mixed up. He said, ‘If it’s not about me, why would those men go after Romy? What has she done to them?’

  Ben replied, ‘I don’t know that yet. But I believe it’s connected with her work somehow. Romy recently accompanied her boss on a business trip to Libya. While she was there, she overheard and managed to secretly film a conversation between him and the man I told you about, Nazim al-Kassar.’

  ‘What conversation?’

  ‘Something to do with ancient statues, art treasures stored in a warehouse in Tripoli waiting to be exported, possibly to Europe though I can’t say for sure. The two of them were discussing a plan of some kind. Whatever it was, Romy was troubled enough by it to stay hidden. And she was right to be. Whatever’s going on, her boss has been in cahoots with some very bad people.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus Lord.’

  ‘I believe that’s the reason she got into danger. Someone found out that she knew, and they silenced her before she could tell anyone.’

  The colour had drained from Michel Yassa’s cheeks. ‘How do you know all this? How are you involved?’

  And so Ben told him everything.

  Chapter 21

  Michel listened in hushed silence as Ben laid it all out, from the beginning. How he’d bumped into Romy in the street, the way she’d appeared anxious and had been distracted enough not to notice that she’d dropped her phone. He described how he’d traced her address, and gone there to return her property. Everything except the history between himself and Nazim al-Kassar.

  Then he took out her phone to show Michel, and let him see the video clip. Silent tears ran down Michel’s face as he handled the phone. He ran his fingers over it as though he thought he could touch her through it. Smelled it as though it might retain a trace of her scent. He said nothing as he watched the video, then reluctantly handed the phone back to Ben.

  ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m sorry. I never asked her a lot about her work.’

  Ben said, ‘The call records show that you and she hadn’t spoken much by phone in the last few weeks. But they also show that she called you twice since she got back from her trip, two days ago and then again this morning. What did she say to you?’

  ‘I was surprised to hear from her. Like you say, we hadn’t spoken for a while. We’d split up, you know? All because of her mother. That evil racist old snake badmouthed me to Romy so much, she managed to convince her to break up the relationship. Can you believe that?’

  ‘I’ve met Madame Juneau,’ Ben said. ‘She is what she is.’

  ‘So when Romy called two days
ago, at first I was so happy to hear her voice after all those weeks. But she sounded scared. I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t tell me much over the phone. Just that she thought she was being followed. Said these guys had been tailing her in the street since she got back. Two or three of them, at different times.’

  ‘What kind of guys?’

  ‘Middle Eastern or North African, she said. It freaked me out, because I was suddenly thinking that the Brotherhood must have found me. I’d never, ever thought they would target her to get to me. I pleaded with her to come and stay with me for a few days. I told her she’d be safe there. Told her I’d look after her. But I think she thought I was trying to get back together with her or something. And maybe she was right. I still loved her. But most of all I just wanted her to be safe.’

  A tear rolled out of Michel’s eye and he wiped it. He went on, ‘I guess I pushed too hard. Suddenly she’s getting all cagey with me, like she regretted calling me and only did it to get it off her chest. Said forget it, she could handle it, and there was someone else who could help her.’

  This was something new. Ben said, ‘Someone else?’

  ‘A woman. I think Romy said her name was Françoise.’

  ‘Françoise who?’

  ‘Romy didn’t mention a second name.’

  ‘Who is she? How could she help her?’

  Michel shook his head. ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ben said with a sigh. ‘Tell me the rest.’

  ‘Afterwards I was really anxious, pacing up and down, not knowing what to do and thinking I should go over to her place and make sure she was okay. But I didn’t want to push her, you know? I had to respect her space. God help me, if only I’d listened to myself, I might have been able to keep her safe.’

  ‘Then she called you again, just this morning.’

  ‘She sounded even more terrified. She’d been on her way to catch the Métro to work when she saw this other guy following her in the street, really close and menacing. That’s when she phoned me, all in a panic.’