Hagen felt his feet coming off the floor, panic sweeping through him as he looked at the Secret Service agents, who merely stood watching as if made of stone. This was the first time in Hagen’s life that another human being had laid a hand on him in anger, and it was the most unnerving sensation he had ever experienced. “Yes, sir,” he croaked, feeling his bladder threatening to let go.
Couture released him and set off down the hall with a curt nod to the Secret Service men, both of whom nodded back.
Hagen stood straightening his suit, taking the time to regain his composure and to make sure that he hadn’t wet himself. “Thanks a lot for the help,” he said to the lead Secret Service man.
The agent stared back at him, expressionless. “Help with what, Mr. Hagen?”
5
Gil Shannon sat at a table in Rick’s Café drinking a cup of coffee. This was not the same Rick’s Café from the 1942 film classic Casablanca. The movie had not even been shot in Morocco. However, the café was modeled after the café from the Humphrey Bogart film, and since its doors had opened in 2004, it had become one of the city’s main tourist attractions.
The largest city in Morocco, Casablanca proper was home to three and a half million people, catering to many different corporations from all over the world and boasting the largest artificial port in North Africa. It was a modern city that had kept in touch with its cultural past, but it was not without political and religious turmoil. Since 2003, at least seventeen suicide bombers had blown themselves up there, killing more than thirty-five people and injuring well over a hundred. Most of the bombers were known to have been linked with Al Qaeda.
Gil was waiting for a Russian contact named Sergei Zhilov. A former member of the Russian Vysotniki (Rangers), Zhilov was now a freelance operator who prowled the African continent from Casablanca to Mombasa, Kenya, in search of mercenary work. The CIA had employed him shortly after the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, to help root out Islamic terrorists in North Africa — specifically terrorists linked to a group called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an extremist organization operating predominantly out of Yemen, though it had originally formed in Saudi Arabia in direct resistance to the al-Saud monarchy (the Saudi royal family). AQAP was known to be the primary force behind the attack on the American mission in Benghazi, during which two former US Navy SEALs, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, had been killed on a rooftop by mortar fire while helping defend American diplomatic personnel.
Gil had come to Casablanca at the behest of SAD (Special Activities Division of the CIA) director Robert Pope to hunt down and kill two AQAP operatives known to be hiding within the city. Though Gil had never known Doherty or Woods, he was a fellow Navy SEAL, and he had taken their deaths personally. So when Bob Pope had offered to bring him out of retirement and put him back into the game for the purpose of eliminating AQAP insurgents, he had been unable to turn down the offer.
Gil’s wife, Marie, had not taken his decision to go back in very well. In fact, she’d more or less kicked him out of the house because of it. She told him he could either turn down Pope’s offer or find another place to live, because she could not go back to worrying about him 24/7 whenever he was not at home.
Gil was sickened by the thought of separation, but he just wasn’t ready to give up the life of an operator, so he had kissed her and left the house, with tears welling in his eyes.
The CIA had not been permitted its own in-house operators since the Cold War, so at Pope’s “suggestion,” Gil was hired by a PMC (private military company) called Obsidian Optio Inc. Obsidian held security contracts with the CIA all over the world, and this made it easy for Gil to move around without drawing attention. Another benefit to being officially employed in the private sector was that he was well paid, even though he did virtually no work for Obsidian itself. In 1989 the United Nations Mercenary Convention strictly forbid governments from contracting of mercenaries; however, countries sidestepped this technicality by never referring to the mercenaries they hired as mercenaries. They were “security specialists.”
Sergei Zhilov entered the café dressed in khaki trousers and a maroon T-shirt. He was a big man, with reddish hair and green eyes, knotted muscles in his neck, shoulders, and arms, and he was sweating like he’d just come from a dead lift competition.
Gil raised a hand to get his attention, and he came to sit at the table.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Gil had blue eyes and sandy blond hair that he kept cut high and tight in military fashion.
Zhilov shook his head. “That I don’t drink,” he remarked in a gravelly voice, resting his arms on the table, the veins in his forearms bulging like power cords beneath the skin. “Bad for digestion.”
“More for me then.” Gil took a drink of his coffee and set down the cup. It was a fine white coffee cup bearing the inscription “Rick’s Café.” “So have you found them?”
Zhilov nodded. “They’ve rented a house near the old Medina.” The Medina was the old Arab quarter of the city, full of markets and tourists anxious to haggle with the vendors. “They must have problems with money,” Zhilov added. “The place is a toilet.”
“You’re sure it’s them, though, you’ve seen them?”
Zhilov nodded again, signaling to a waiter for a glass of water by tipping his big hand toward his mouth. “They come and go without worry. They buy food and eat in the street like there is no danger. They’re watchful, but they feel secure. I can see.”
“Are they armed?”
“I think yes.” Zhilov wiped the sweat from his face with his hand. “They wear jackets, and it’s too hot for that, so I think yes.”
“How did you find them?”
Zhilov shrugged. “I ask the Jews. The Jews know everything in this city.”
Gil narrowed his gaze. “What Jews?”
Zhilov thumbed casually over his shoulder, as if the people in question might be standing in the doorway behind him. “Those goddamn guys with Mohave.”
LX Mohave was another American-owned PMC, one that focused primarily on intelligence and cryptographic technologies, and the company was known to hire former Israeli Mossad agents.
Gil’s eyes narrowed. “You were talking with Mohave about my mission?”
“No,” Zhilov said irritably. “Why would I talk to them about you? They don’t care about you. I was talking to them about these goddamn guys you wanted me to find.” He snatched the glass of water from the waiter’s hand as he arrived, gulping it down. “Another,” he said, shoving the glass back into his hand and waving him away.
“Hey, Sergei,” Gil said, “I need to know if Mohave knows about my mission here. It’s extremely important.”
Zhilov leaned into the table, meeting Gil’s gaze. “Listen to me, you goddamn guy. Mohave doesn’t give a tough shit about your mission, okay? You got it? I don’t tell them nothing. These goddamn guys over there, they owe me favors, so I ask them. And I tell you these goddamn Jews, they know everything around here. Don’t ask me how they know, because I don’t care, and I don’t ask. All I care is that they know. See? That’s why your goddamn CIA, they hire me and not some other goddamn guy. They know I know who knows the shit. See what I say?”
Gil chuckled and sat back. “Yeah, I see what you say. Can you show me where they live, these goddamn guys?”
“You bet,” Zhilov said. “But first we eat. I know good place. Then we wait for dark. These goddamn guys over there, they’re watchful right now. They see your face, they gonna run because you look like what you are. Me, I look nothing like what I am. See? I can go anywhere in the daylight, but you, you goddamn guy…” He shook his head. “You look like a Yankee killer. They see you, they run. So you trust me. I know Casablanca. I know how to get you close to these goddamn guys. But first we eat.”