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Authors: David Hagberg

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BOOK: Soldier of God
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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?”
Khalil shook his head dreamily. He was no longer irritated. He was looking forward to the pleasure of the kill. “It won’t be necessary.”
“He doesn’t suspect that we’re onto him—”
Khalil dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand. “That doesn’t matter either, my friend.” He smiled again, his eyes half-closed. “You’ll see.”
Was it not said that for the man who could bend like the willow in the wind would come victory?
French Service 5 Operative François Brousseau entered his contact number on the satellite phone’s keypad with a shaking hand and waited for his call to Paris to go through. He stood on a rise behind the camp, looking down toward the Medea Highway in the distance. It was midnight, and there had been no lights on the highway for the past hour, which heightened his sense of isolation. For six weeks this place had operated as nothing more than a mujahideen training camp. Hand-to-hand combat, Stinger-missile dry-fire exercises, AK-47 live-fire practice, bomb making, infiltration and exfiltration lectures, and five times daily the prayers to Mecca.
Amar had driven away this evening, and three hours later he’d returned with Khalil himself. The second biggest prize of all behind bin Laden.
His call was answered.
“Oui.”
“Ici Hasni,”
he spoke softly, giving his code name. “Something new has developed. The king of spades—”
A dark presence loomed up behind him, and before Brousseau could react, something horribly sharp sliced deeply into the base of his neck where it attached to his right shoulder. His arm went instantly numb, and he dropped the phone.
Khalil pushed the French spy, stumbling nearly off-balance.
“Bonsoir, Monsieur Le Traître; maintenant, il est les temps pour votre mort,”
he said, and then he came at the man with the razor-sharp knife as if he were a hunter skinning the pelt from a wild animal, with no one to hear or care about the screams of the dying man.
McGarvey walked across the Place du Casino from his hotel and entered the soaring, marble-columned atrium of the Casino de Monte-Carlo a few minutes before ten on a balmy evening. The odor of money mingled in the air with cigarette smoke and expensive perfume.
He’d been in the principality since noon, but had kept a relatively low profile, waiting to see if his arrival had been noticed. But no one followed him when he took a walking tour around the harbor, nor had his room been searched while he was gone.
He found it odd that bin Laden’s warning and the president’s declaration of martial law were going all but unnoticed here. But as a waiter at a terrace café told him with a Gallic shrug, the world saw what America did after 9/11; this time, if it happens again, nothing will be different.
Nightlife was just getting into full swing, the streets packed with every style, from blue jeans and tee shirts off to play the slots; to micromini skirts and stiletto heels off to the discos; to jackets and demure cocktail dresses going to the roulette tables, international and English; and to people like McGarvey, dressed in evening clothes and heading for one-of-the-two Salles Privées, where only the well-heeled went to play mostly chemin de fer.
The newly remodeled casino had been brought back to all its Old-World magnificence, with soaring, ornately decorated ceilings from which hung massive crystal chandeliers; gold inlaid mahogany walls; rare paintings, sculptures, and other artwork, ranking the casino as an important gallery; handwoven, intricately patterned carpeting; and gilt mirrors in which patrons could admire themselves. But there were no clocks to remind them that it might be getting late.
There was no other gambling establishment like it anywhere in the world for sheer elegance. Even the best of Las Vegas or London couldn’t compare. With four main gaming rooms in two wings—the Salon de l’Europe, Salle Blanche, SalleTouzet, and the Salle Medecin—plus the two
Salles Privées on a good evening when American movie stars came up from the film festival at Cannes or Arab oil sheiks were in town, tens of millions of euros would switch hands.
This evening, however, the only excitement was the presence of Prince Abdul Salman, whose 428-foot yacht MV
Bedouin Wanderer
had been brought by her crew up from Palma on the big island of Mallorca earlier in the day. Whenever that happened, it signaled that the prince was planning on making a miniseason on the Cote d’Azur, and this meant action, because money always attracted money and beautiful women. The combination was glittering.
McGarvey stopped at the
caisse
to confirm that CitiBank had followed up on his instructions to establish a line of credit with the casino under his work name of Robert Brewster in the amount of one million dollars. Rencke had suggested using CIA funds, but this was personal and McGarvey was no longer on the payroll.
The head
caissier
, all discreet smiles, had been expecting him. “Oui, Monsieur Brewster. Everything is in order. Do you wish to make a withdrawal?”
“Ten thousand,” McGarvey said. “I’ll be in the Salles Privées.”
The
caissier
passed ten one-thousand-euro plaques across.
“Naturellement, Monsieur. Bonne fortune.”
McGarvey pocketed his plaques, then sauntered across the atrium and into the Salon de l’Europe, very busy with gamblers at the roulette wheels and the
trente et quarante
tables. This was the very end of the European vacation season, and most of the casino patrons were dressed in blue jeans and sneakers or sandals. Someone hit their number at one of the roulette wheels, and a cheer went up.
Passing through the Salle Blanche with its noisy slot machines and video poker games, into the Salle Touzet with its raucous craps tables and relatively subdued blackjack games, he came to the much more discreet Salle Médecin, which until the remodeling had been the old Salle Privée, where the big money played.
This room was in the east wing of the building, and McGarvey stopped just inside the doorway for a moment before he angled across to the entrance into the two private gaming rooms. A velvet rope blocked the opening. A security officer dressed in a tuxedo smiled as McGarvey walked up.
“Good evening, Monsieur Brewster,” he said, pleasantly, as he unhooked the rope and stood aside.
“Bon fortune.”
“Merci,”
McGarvey said, passing through directly into an ornately gilded and mirrored small room that could have been the interior of a jewel box.
The Salles Privées were arranged to the left and right, and they were busy this evening. A muted hum seemed to stay within the confines of the two rooms, as if the privileged class here did not want anyone outside their circle to hear what they were saying.
McGarvey caught a glimpse of Prince Salman seated at one of the chemin de fer tables in the left room. His pistol had come across in a sealed diplomatic package, which he hadn’t opened until he’d arrived at the Hotel de Paris across the Place from the casino. Now that he’d confirmed Salman was here, he fought the urge to return to his hotel, get his gun, and come back to wait until the prince left the casino to take him out.
It would be easy. It would be swift and sure and, most of all, clean.
The patrons were dressed in evening clothes, most of the women young, very beautiful, and bedecked in diamonds and haute couture. All but two of the ten players seated around the prince’s
tableau
were men, and there were no vacant seats.
McGarvey fixed a slight smile on his face, walked in, and took his place behind the brass rail at the fringe of the crowd. A waitress carrying a tray of champagne came by, and he took a glass as Salman said something and a murmur of approval arose from the onlookers.
“La banque est cent mille,”
Salman announced. As the banker for the moment, the dealing shoe was in front of him. He had just announced that he would be the bank for one hundred thousand euros, about $125,000.
Twenty years ago, at the height of the Arab oil stranglehold on the world, such a bet would have been very conservative in a place like this. But nowadays even in the Salles Privées, bets above fifty thousand were increasingly rare, except at the very height of the season.
The game was played at a kidney-shaped table, the players seated on the outside rim across from the croupier, who raked in the cards. Seated behind him on a tall chair was the
chef de parti
, or umpire.
Salman had offered to play anyone or any combination of players around the table for up to the full amount of the bank. If someone
wanted a piece of the action, he or she might push a pile of betting plaques forward. If a player wanted the entire bank, he or she would announce, “Banco.” If it was too rich a bet, that hand would be canceled and a smaller bank offered.
An expectant hush fell over the table.
Salman was seated with his back to the door. A young woman wearing a dazzling white off-the-shoulder evening dress, a dozen carats of diamonds around her long slender neck and a matching bracelet around one wrist, stood behind him, one hand delicately placed on his shoulder. She bent down and whispered something in his ear; he looked up and she kissed the side of his face.
McGarvey put his champagne glass aside and moved past the onlookers and through the opening in the rail at the opposite end of the table from Salman.
“Banco,”
he said. He nodded pleasantly to the
chef de parti
. “That is, if someone would relinquish a seat for me.”
An older American woman, seated in the number two position next to a man who was probably her husband, looked up at McGarvey with a rueful smile. She was slender and put together as if she might have been a model sometime in the past. She had a very small stack of black plaques, which were worth a thousand euros each. She scooped them up. “Take my place,” she offered. “The prince is just as lucky as he is charming.”
“Thank you,” McGarvey said, holding her chair, and when she got up he kissed her hand.
“Kill the smug bastard,” she whispered in McGarvey’s ear. Her husband started to get up too, but she waved him back. “Stick around; I’m just going to the ladies’.”
McGarvey turned to face the prince for the first time, and for what seemed like a very long moment he had no idea who he was looking at. Salman had Khalil’s eyes; though the prince’s were pale brown and the terrorist’s were jet black, they were the same shape, as were their faces and general build. Beyond that, McGarvey couldn’t be sure that they were the same man.
The way Salman held himself, his attitude and the expression in his eyes and on his mouth were that of a Saudi royal: he expressed a vague, indifferent amusement, as if he considered himself at the center of the world and only those important enough to be noticed by him understood
it. With a slackness that was almost effete, perhaps effeminate, he was the epitome of an ultrarich, bored playboy. The attitude was a studied one, but it was a badge of honor among a certain class.
Khalil had been intense, his movements and actions quick, precise, and sure. There’d been nothing vague about him. Nothing indifferent. The only attitude he’d seemed to share with the prince was the expectation that whoever he faced knew who was the center of the world, knew who was the superior intellect and the superior force.
All that passed through McGarvey’s head in an instant, as he nodded pleasantly to Salman and then took the plushy upholstered seat still warm from the American woman.
“Good evening, Mr … Brewster,” Salman said, languidly. “Did I hear you correctly—you have offered
banco?”
McGarvey nodded, though he knew that his one-million-dollar line of credit would not pose any serious threat to the Saudi prince. At some point one flip of the cards could end it. This would have to be more a game of psychology than of cards. McGarvey turned to the
chef de parti.
“May I assume that the gentleman banker is good for the money?”
A gasp rose from the players and the onlookers who’d heard the gauche remark. McGarvey had been less than polite; he’d been insulting.
Salman’s mouth tightened. “It is I who should be asking you the question.”
“My credit is on file with the
caissier
. I don’t believe anyone in Monaco would question
my
character or my honesty.”
“You are an honest American here in Monaco then, doing what?”
“Hunting down rabid animals,” McGarvey replied, sharply.
The chef de parti intervened before Salman could say anything else and thus escalate what already seemed to be unacceptable behavior for the
salle
. “Both gentlemen have sufficient funds to cover the bet. May we proceed?”
Salman slid four cards in quick succession from the shoe, slapping them on the table and turning them over for everyone to see. They were the discards: a king, a ten, a natural nine, and a three.
The croupier raked in the cards and placed them in a tray.
Salman slid two cards out of the shoe, which the croupier raked across to McGarvey, and then dealt himself two cards.
McGarvey glanced at his cards, then looked up at Salman and snorted
derisively.
“Neuf,”
he said, flipping his cards face up. They were a jack and a nine, which was a natural win unless the banker also had a nine.
Salman turned his cards up. They were a five and a three.
McGarvey laughed again. “Close, but no cigar,” he said boorishly. “Too bad.”
The croupier raked in the cards, then started to slide ten plaques, each worth ten thousand euros, across the table, but McGarvey made a brushing motion with his hand. “Let’s double it—that is, if the prince has the courage of his Bedouin ancestors.”
Already word had begun to spread through the casino that something was going on in one of the Salles Privées, and the room was completely filled. Someone brought McGarvey a glass of champagne, but he ignored it, his eyes locked on Salman’s, goading the man, and yet he still wasn’t sure that the prince was Khalil.
Normally, the shoe would have passed to the player on the banker’s right, but the
chef de parti
offered no objections when Salman passed it across to McGarvey.
“Deux cents milles,”
McGarvey said.
“Banco,”
Salman replied, immediately.
McGarvey slid two cards out of the shoe, which the croupier raked to Salman, then dealt himself two cards.
Salman smiled and flipped his cards over. They were a pair of fours, a natural eight that could be beaten only by a nine.
McGarvey flipped his cards over without taking his eyes off Salman. “They were a six and a deuce. A tie.”
“Quatre cents milles,”
McGarvey announced even before the croupier had raked in the cards.
“
Banco
,” Salman said. He gave McGarvey a forced smile. “It’s a dangerous game you are playing, Mr. Brewster.”
“Yes, it is,” McGarvey agreed. “Someone could get hurt.” Without looking down at the shoe, he dealt out two cards for Salman and two for himself.
BOOK: Soldier of God
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