Segal shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong on both counts. It’s not heroin. And it’s not cocaine either. I almost wish it were. It’s something much more sinister.’
Chapter 48
Ben and Roth exchanged glances. Roth’s brow was crinkled in concentration, his eyes as sharp as a laser-guided weapons system locked onto its target.
Segal shifted to the edge of the bed, staring at the cheap hotel-room carpet as he came to the critical revelation. He’d finally managed to control the emotions that had been threatening to tip him over, and spoke calmly and mechanically.
‘You obviously know, as everyone does, that Islamist terror organisations have been heavily involved in the drug trade for many years. You also know that their primary source, for a long time, was Afghanistan, where the cultivation of opium poppy and the facilities for refining the raw opium into heroin expanded enormously with the economic disruptions caused by the Soviet invasion. The Afghan government were unable to channel many resources into combating the growing illegal drug trade, because all their financial and technical aid was focused on fighting the insurgents. Worse, many corrupt Afghan authorities were willing to aid the drug traffickers, getting rich in the process. But the more enterprising elements within the insurgent factions were also very quick to get in on the act.
‘As instability and war in the region went on and on, so did heroin production. The continued American military presence only intensified matters, to the point where al-Qaeda and the Taliban became viewed as little more than glorified drug cartels. Which was a distortion of reality, since while actual drug cartels are only interested in personal gain, the Islamists saw themselves as engaged in a holy war that needed funding wherever it could get it. Moreover, if the fruits of the drug trade helped to weaken and destabilise the Western countries that were the ultimate target of their jihad crusade, so much the better. That’s a crucial part of this. Drugs foster crime, violence, mental illness and social decay, and are one of the most effective means of rotting a civilisation from the inside out. And that’s exactly what they want to happen, in Europe and eventually the USA.’
‘We get it,’ Ben said. Roth was staring intently at Segal and processing every word.
‘I’m just filling in the background, so that you understand what this is really all about. Eventually, things reached the stage where enough was enough. After a 2017 UN report estimated that opium production had increased by eighty-seven per cent in just that year alone, the American military combined forces with the Afghan authorities in what was basically a CIA-guided mission to obliterate the opium trade. The ensuing air strikes were highly effective in destroying nearly all the country’s refinement facilities. While they stopped short of reducing the poor poppy farmers to total destitution, they nonetheless absolutely hammered the supply of heroin available to the traffickers.’
‘You know your shit,’ Roth said. ‘Not all of this is declassified information.’
Segal shrugged. ‘Yes, well, you might say I have the inside track.’
‘Go on,’ Ben said.
‘So, refusing to be deterred by such minor setbacks as the near-blanket destruction of the Afghan narcotics trade, the Islamists just switched gears,’ Segal continued. ‘Remember, they don’t spend their ill-gotten gains on mansions and gold-plated Rolls Royces. Every penny goes into well-protected bank accounts, hidden behind layers of fronts, where it just grows and grows. They possess huge financial resources for developing new alliances and fresh ways of developing drugs that could replace the traditional heroin, allowing them to continue to accrue wealth while stepping up the attack on the moral and social integrity of the West. What might those new drugs be? They considered many options. Cocaine has always been the poor relation, and its value has bottomed out in recent years. Other forms of recreational drug, like methamphetamine or marijuana, just don’t have the same kind of market traction or profitability. Nor did the Islamists wish to truck with the organised cartels of Central and South America. So the question was, “Where do we go?”’
‘China,’ Roth said. Ben looked at him and wondered, not for the first time, whether the American knew more about all this than he was letting on.
Segal replied, ‘China, exactly.’
‘Why China?’ Ben asked.
‘Because,’ Segal explained, ‘China is the world’s largest producer of a totally synthetic, lab-created opioid drug that is not only quicker, easier and cheaper to manufacture than its traditional competitors, but also infinitely more powerful. Rendering the likes of heroin and cocaine virtually obsolete in the modern age.’
‘He’s right, man, the times they are a changin’,’ Roth said. ‘There’s a new kid on the block, and its name is fentanyl. You don’t have to cultivate it, you don’t have to harvest it, and you don’t have to refine the raw material into a finished product. All you need is a basic lab, some beakers and whatnot, and some geek with a chemistry degree. Think of it as Heroin 2.0.’
‘Fentanyl?’
‘Technically, it’s a painkiller,’ Roth said. ‘At least, that’s how they envisaged it, when they invented it back in the fifties. Then, it was used solely as a medical drug. Before long they started putting it in patches, and fuckin’ lollipops, and pretty soon after that it was all over the place. Over time the lines between medicinal and recreational applications became kind of blurred, like they are with morphine.’
‘Except that fentanyl is between fifty and a hundred times more potent than morphine,’ Segal said. ‘Which is the main reason for its far greater popularity among the increasingly drug-dependent Western public. Fatal overdoses from prescription and non-prescription pain-relieving medications are outstripping the likes of heroin by a greater and greater margin each year. The modern synthetic opioid crisis is a fast-growing problem, with fentanyl emerging as its biggest contender. All the bans and regulations in the world can’t stem the supply. Not with four hundred thousand manufacturers across China generating over a hundred billion dollars annually.’
‘And it’s toxic as hell,’ Roth said. ‘Drug squad dogs trained to sniff out heroin or coke all day long will die if they get just a tiny whiff of fentanyl fumes. Some addict who gets through thirty to forty bags of smack a day can use a single bag of fentanyl and drop dead on the spot. A quarter gram dose can be fatal. One pound of it is enough to kill two hundred thousand people. And one ton? We are talking major kick-ass lethality. A chemical weapon of mass destruction.’
‘The maths are pretty simple,’ Segal said gravely. ‘One ton of pure fentanyl is sufficient to kill four hundred million people.’
Ben looked at Roth, then at Segal. It seemed like an impossible number. His mind began to swim. ‘That’s more than double the population of Western Europe.’
‘And they’ve got nine times that quantity,’ Roth said.
‘That’s not all,’ Segal said. ‘It gets worse again.’
Chapter 49
‘How can it get any worse?’ Ben said.
Roth laughed. ‘This guy’s a hoot. I can’t wait to hear the punchline.’
‘It’s worse for the simple reason that they’re not doing this for the money,’ Segal replied. ‘Which means the fentanyl isn’t going to be stored somewhere and drip-fed into the system like any other retail product the seller has invested in. When that shipment reaches France, just over two and a half hours from now, they intend to dump the entire quantity on the market all at once, for free. Gratis. It will create a tidal surge of chaos such as has never been seen in Europe before. Drug gangs will be slaughtering each other wholesale in broad daylight over who can gain the biggest slice of the cake. The police will be totally unable to contain the violence. There’ll be stampedes and riots. The streets will be lined with comatose bodies and the hospitals will be choked with fatal overdose cases. Within weeks the number of hopeless addicts will multiply exponentially, and half the kids in France will be using. Within months, the effect on the whole society will be devastating, the state’
s resources strained far past breaking point. It’s not hard to imagine what comes next.’
‘The next generation of warfare,’ Roth said. ‘They can’t beat us on the battlefield. So this is how they take us down instead.’
‘Using drugs to destabilise the enemy is nothing new,’ Segal said glumly. ‘It’s what the CIA did to the American blacks through the nineteen-seventies and eighties, injecting drugs into their community to tear it apart and weaken potential resistance against oppressive government policy. A century and a half earlier, the same thing was being done to the American Indians, with cheap toxic alcohol, while in the mid-eighteen-hundreds the British were deliberately causing the Chinese to become addicted to opium. Now maybe the Chinese are getting their own back on Western Europe, using the jihadis as pawns in the game. And I’m afraid the strategy may succeed. Look at us. We’re already on our knees. The signs of our decaying secular culture are all around, as the institutions collapse, traditions are erased and the population sinks into mindless degeneracy and nihilism, believing in nothing, living in an ideological void. One small push is all it might take to topple the whole crumbling edifice into total collapse. With the crusaders of the new holy war just waiting at the gates to come marching in and seize power.’
Margot Segal sat slumped in shock and dismay at what she’d been hearing. ‘I just can’t believe anyone could be so vicious and cruel. What have we done to them? What could make them hate us so much?’
‘It’s all right there in their book, Ma’am,’ Roth explained. ‘“The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorise them. They are your enemy and Allah’s enemy.” Qur’an surah eight, verse fifty-nine.’
‘The terrible part is,’ said Julien Segal, shaking his head, ‘that sometimes I think it’s not so hard to understand why they despise us so bitterly. The more our Western world loses its way, the more it only confirms their faith and motivation to press on to victory against an enemy that lacks the fire, courage and motivation to oppose them. There’s a kind of purity to the way they think. Nothing we can do can deter or influence them. Their belief is absolute.’
‘Sounds like you sympathise quite a bit with your terrorist buddies,’ Roth said. ‘Maybe you were happy to do your part helping them, so you can go on being their little dhimmi when they set up the new Caliphate of Europe, the House of War becomes the House of Islam and the black flag of ISIL is flying over Paris, Brussels and London. Maybe you’re really a closet terrorist yourself, as well as a coward. Which makes me wonder if I maybe shouldn’t just shoot your worthless ass, right now.’ Roth took out his pistol. ‘Sorry, Margot, but your husband is a prick.’
Segal put up his hands. ‘Please! You can’t—’
It was hard to tell whether Roth was joking or serious. ‘Nobody’s shooting anybody,’ Ben said, pushing the gun away. ‘You and I have better things to do.’ He glanced at his watch. Six a.m. ‘We still have some time to work out a plan of attack.’
‘Jawohl, Herr Kommandant. So what do you have in mind?’
Ben turned to Segal. ‘Tell me exactly what’s scheduled after the ship comes into port.’
Segal was sweating, still staring at the gun in Roth’s hand. ‘Everything’s set up to look completely legitimate. I have the paperwork, export licences and itemised descriptions of the cargo contents to show to the harbour master, who signs them over to the care of the Institute. Then the crates are to be unloaded from the ship onto a pair of flatbed trucks.’
‘Whose trucks? Nazim’s?’
Segal shook his head. ‘They’re rentals. The drivers are just a couple of men for hire who have no idea what they’re transporting.’
‘So Nazim won’t have any of his people there except you?’
‘Until the moment the ship arrives, it’s just me,’ Segal said. ‘But he has a man on board. Ostensibly a crew member, but his real job was to supervise the loading of the cargo in Tripoli and keep an eye on it en route. His name’s Zahran Azzam Yasin, a Libyan. He’s one of Nazim’s most committed and dangerous jihadists. A real fanatic.’
‘Like the rest of his men are only touchy-feely semi-fanatics,’ Roth said.
Ben asked, ‘Where do the trucks go from there?’
‘To a chemicals warehouse in Sandouville, about sixteen kilometres from Le Havre. Nazim and his crew will be waiting for it there. The drivers are expecting to unload the crates there, get paid and go home. That isn’t what’s going to happen, unfortunately for them.’
‘Why unfortunately? What will they do to those poor men?’ Margot gasped.
‘Chérie, what do you think?’ Segal replied sadly, then turned back to Ben. ‘The warehouse is owned by ETZ International, which is a front for a variety of terror operations. The official owners don’t exist. The real owners have arranged for it to burn down afterwards. Five hundred gallons of kerosene will make sure there’s no trace left of the missing drivers, or anything that could link back to Nazim and his crew.’
‘That’ll do it,’ Roth said.
‘Meanwhile, the plaster Lamassu will have been removed from the crates and broken open. The fentanyl is contained inside two hundred sealed aluminium drums weighing forty-five kilograms apiece. Nine tons, to be divided into ton-and-a-half payloads aboard six smaller commercial vans driven by Nazim’s men, which will then make their separate ways to Paris. They’ll rendezvous at a secure location in the city and wait for evening. Come nightfall the processing plant will be getting into full swing, subdividing the fentanyl into nine thousand kilo bricks for fast distribution via the jihadist network.’
Ben asked, ‘How the hell do they expect to carry nine tons of merchandise in two hundred metal drums underground through a ventilation shaft at street level without anyone noticing?’
‘Haven’t you been following the news?’ replied Segal. ‘Tomorrow night is Saturday. Every weekend the anti-government disturbances are getting worse. The whole of Paris is braced for another round of anarchy and violence. The police will have their hands full. It’s the perfect diversion for Nazim to do whatever he wants.’ He shook his head. ‘If the authorities think the situation is falling to pieces now, wait until the effect of nine tons of lethal free drugs begins to hit the population of Paris. Things will degenerate very quickly. And that’s just the first shipment. There will be more to come.’
There was silence for a few moments as they deliberated. Roth said, ‘Way I see it, we have two options. Plan A, we hit them at the warehouse as they’re unloading the crates. Plan B, we head back to the city, wait for tomorrow night and jump on them as they make the drop-off.’
Ben didn’t agree. ‘Either of those plans involves us getting into a battle with the full force of Nazim’s men. There are only two of us, remember?’
‘Then we call in the cavalry,’ Roth said. ‘The GIGN boys will be itching to get even after what happened last night.’
‘All the more reason to keep them out of it. Striking back in anger makes for bad tactical planning. They’ll roll in with the tanks and artillery, Nazim will see them coming from a mile off and there’ll be a bloody slaughter. In the middle of which, Nazim himself is liable to slip straight out of our hands and disappear for ever.’
‘Doesn’t have to be the cops,’ Roth said. ‘You know people. I know people. We can do it right. There’s still time to make the arrangements, if we act fast.’
Ben knew that he need make only one call to Jeff and Tuesday at Le Val, and they’d happily rush to Paris with enough personnel backup and weaponry to overthrow a modestly-sized dictatorship. But he had no intention of involving his friends in danger.
‘No. There’s a better way.’
‘Which is what?’ Roth asked.
‘To strike where the weakest link in the chain is. Nazim can’t afford to raise suspicions by posting twenty shifty-looking terrorist thugs at the docks. That’s why he’s leaving that job to Segal, because the transfer o
f the cargo has to look as innocuous as possible. So you and I will intercept the trucks with the crates on board before they even leave the port. The drivers will have to be bundled away somewhere they can’t kick up a fuss. They might get banged up a little but that’s better than having your head sliced off.’
‘What about Zahran Yasin?’ Segal asked anxiously. ‘He’ll be there dockside as they unload the cargo. He’s supposed to ride along in one of the trucks.’
‘Mr Yasin won’t be making that trip,’ Ben said. ‘One man isn’t going to be a problem, between two of us. Are you able to recognise him?’
Segal nodded. ‘I remember him from the one time I saw him. A small man, very slender and wiry. He has a shaven head and a long black beard. He looks incredibly menacing.’
‘Then stick close to me and make sure you point him out the moment you see him. Roth and I will do the rest. Nobody else gets hurt, and all being well we can pull this off without firing a shot or drawing the slightest attention to ourselves. Then we make for some alternative location where we can smash the Lamassu open ourselves and grab what’s inside.’
Roth thought about it. ‘And what do you plan on doing with nine freakin’ tons of fentanyl?’
Ben replied, ‘Two can play at the hostage game. If Nazim wants to try to get his drugs back, he’s going to have to come and get them on our terms, alone. That’s where we take him down.’
Roth frowned. ‘He won’t go for it. He’ll know it’s a trap.’
‘Of course he’ll know. But he’ll go for it, because he has to. Nazim might be pretty high up in his organisation’s chain of command but he’s not the top of it. Not even close. He’s just a soldier in an army. And whatever he might be risking if he takes our bait, he knows it’s nothing next to what his superiors will do to him if he loses their fentanyl. Then it’s him on the wrong end of the knife.’
‘I like the sound of that,’ said Segal, smiling for the first time. ‘I hope they chop off his rotten head.’
House of War Page 25