It was after midnight and the house was quiet, though lying in bed McGarvey could sense the presence of the four-man security team, awake, watchful, ready for whatever trouble might happen. Liz and Todd had agreed to move out of their carriage house and bunk here for the duration, though Liz wanted to go to Monaco with her father.
“You’re awake,” Kathleen said softly beside him. “Can’t you sleep?”
McGarvey turned his head to look at her. “I was just about to drop off.”
She smiled. “Liar.” She reached over and brushed her fingertips lightly across his eyes, his nose, and his lips. “Make love to me, Kirk.”
THIRTY-SIX
There should have been no reason for him to come here.
Khalil was irritated as he fell in line with the passengers departing the Palma-Algiers ferryboat the MV Pierre Égout, the night air heavy with the odors of rotting garbage, broken sewers, and bunker oil from the numerous cargo ships in the filthy harbor. But there were times when the firm hand of a strong leader was required.
The operation was so close now that any loose end could not be tolerated.
From a distance the harborfront and downtown Algiers looked like any normal port city. But once off the ferry and away from the sounds of the boat’s diesel engines, the noise of traffic was punctuated with the not-so-distant sounds of gunfire. All of Algeria was a nation at war with itself. At least three hundred thousand people had been slaughtered in just the last ten years. More had died before that, and more were dying every day.
It was a perfect place for al-Quaida’s primary training camps; Afghanistan and western Pakistan had become too hot. By comparison to Algiers, those countries were peaceful paradises on earth, with coalition patrols penetrating even the most remote mountain strongholds. The move had been made necessary in the aftermath of 9/11, and Khalil had little doubt that al-Quaida would be on the move again after the next attack.
After he’d cleared customs and immigration on an Algerian passport, he gathered his robes around him and stopped just inside the terminal exit, out of the flow of pedestrian traffic coming off the ferry, to study the situation on the street. Two buses, one of them the airport shuttle, were parked directly in front. Several taxicabs were lined up at the stand to the left, and across the departing/arriving passenger lanes was a black Mercedes SUV with the DGSN national police emblem on its door and a lightbar on the roof. One man in uniform was seated behind the wheel, staring straight ahead.
The message had come to him in code on the old Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) Web site maintained by Al Hayat, a Saudi newspaper in London.
We have a leak. But he is probably SDECE.Advise. It was the French intelligence service. After their difficulties with the U.S. over the Iraq War, they had become anxious to prove they were friends.
Will arrive, Khalil had responded, with instructions. Now he walked outside and went across to the Mercedes.
Like the days before 9/11, they were on a path that had a life of its own and could no longer be controlled by mortal man.
Insha’allah. God’s will.
He reached the Mercedes, opened the door, and climbed up into the passenger seat.
The driver, camp commandant Ziad Amar, turned to him and, after a beat, smiled. “Welcome, my brother,” he said in Arabic. “I am truly blessed that thou art here.” He was nervous.
“As I am, my brother,” Khalil responded, though his mind was elsewhere.
Since 1830, when the French began their conquest of the country, Algeria had become a killing ground. Nothing had changed in the interim. People were still dying in droves, and the country attracted killers. Abdelkader, who was a sherif, which meant he was a descendant of Muhammed, had fought the French for nearly sixteen years before his defeat. Ever since then the mountain passes and desert sands of Algeria had run red with blood. With a dozen different terrorist groups, not all of them sympathetic to Osama bin Laden’s al-Quaida, and with bandits mostly in the south, charismatic leaders seemed to lurk around every bend.
Except for the motorized traffic and electric lights, Algiers had not changed in principle for two hundred years. As they headed away from the ferryboat terminal, Kahlil felt a connection with all the warrior chiefs before and since Abdelkader. He had come here on a matter of blood honor. He would leave with a clear conscience.
Insha’allah.
“You had a good trip?” Amar asked respectfully. He was a slightly built man, with narrow sloping shoulders, long effeminate fingers, and when he was bulding bombs, a steady nerve.
“What is the specific trouble that you are evidently incapable of dealing with on your own?” Khalil asked, his manner mild.
“Under normal cicumstances we would have killed the man.”
“What’s stopping you? He’s a traitor; deal with him as you deal with all traitors.”
“He’s probably been sending information about our operation back to Paris for months. Since they know where we are, and yet have not moved against us, it can only mean that they do not consider us a threat to French security. Or at least not enough of a threat to send a strike force or launch missiles.”
He had a point, Khalil thought. If they killed the spy, the French might reconsider the value of the camp and launch an attack.
As they headed directly south out of the city on the Medea Highway and up into the Hatatba Mountains, Khalil considered all the options. He’d been against bin Laden releasing the tape so soon after the failure to capture Shaw. Trying to rescue the former secretary of defense would have split the American forces, making it much more difficult for them to deal with the threat of another 9/11. As it was, they were even more highly motivated now, especially the CIA, and more acutely focused. Martial law in a country as vast and as open as the U.S. was mostly a joke, but no matter how slightly, it was increasing the risk that the martyrs for Allah would be caught.
Perhaps they needed a diversion, he thought. Something to refocus the French counterterrorism efforts and therefore make the Americans blink. Amar was dispensable, as were the thirty or forty mujahideen instructors and trainees at the old headquarters of the GIA that al-Quaida had taken over a couple of years ago. But the timing would have to be absolutely correct. If the French moved too late, as late as the same day of the attack of the martyrs in the U.S., the diversion would be useless. And if the attack came too soon, the French might realize it had been nothing more than a diversion.
“Tell me more about your French traitor. How did you first come to suspect him?”
“We found his satellite phone two days ago. Such devices are strictly forbidden, of course. But rather than confront the man, we watched him. He telephoned last night, and in French he gave a very complete report on all of our training activities for the previous twenty-four hours. That is when I sent the e-mail to you.”
“At what time did he make his call?”
“Midnight. He was on guard duty; one of the instructors overhead him talking and managed to get close enough to hear everything.”
“Will he be on guard duty again this evening?”
“Yes.”
Khalil smiled. “You did the correct thing after all, my brother. We will turn the situation to our advantage tonight.”
Amar was relieved. He shot a nervous glance at Khalil. “Will you interrogate him?”