A World I Never Made (19 page)

In the quiet that ensued, Pat remained still, motionless, as if to hold off making what Catherine had just done a historical fact. “I’ll search the others,” he said finally, still not moving.

“Yes, good,” Catherine replied, still outwardly calm, as if she had been interrupted while folding laundry or putting away groceries. “Take their extra magazines and ammunition, and their cell phones if they have them. I will hunt down Unclés cell phone. Doro will be calling:”

When Pat returned from searching the bodies on the scrim, Catherine was in her car, in the passenger’s seat, her head down, sobbing. He slipped behind the wheel, saw that the keys were in the ignition, and started the engine. When he looked at Catherine, she was drying her eyes with the sleeve of Daniel’s bulky old navy blue sweater.

“Paris,” he said. “Monsieur Duval.”

“Yes,” Catherine answered. “Thirty-three Rue de Matisse.”

~17~

MOROCCO, APRIL-MAY, 2003

Throughout April and into early May, Megan visited Abdullah al-Azirris shop weekly and sometimes more often. Abdullah made a living as a pharmacist, but his passions were history and politics. Once he got going on these subjects, it was hard to stop him. Their slow-moving chess games were pretexts. When customers came into the shop, as they often did, Megan stayed seated at the table in the corner, returning their stares until they looked away. Shamelessly, she taped all of her conversations with the pharmacist, as well as all of the conversations Abdullah had with his customers, even those in Arabic and Berber. She turned on the small, expensive, extremely high-performing recorder hidden in her bag before entering the shop and did not turn it off until she was back out on the street, usually an hour, sometimes as much as two hours later. She wore Western clothes, usually jeans or cotton slacks with a light sweater or a layer or two of loose tops. She wore the djellabas she had bought in her small suite at the Farah Hotel, or occasionally when she was with Lahani at his place. Hakim walked her to and from Abdullah’s shop and a cab driver she had hired on a permanent basis took her back and forth from the hotel to the Carrières Thomas market square.

She heard a lot of Muslim history in the shop: the life and times of the Prophet, the spread of Islam to the east and west and south after his death, the forceful expulsion of Muslims from Spain in 1492—and from all of Europe in 1683—Napoleons conquest of Egypt in 1798, the abolishment by the Turks of the caliphate in Istanbul in 1922. This last was, according to Abdullah, “the final blow to the pride of a shame-based culture.” As to the modern faith, it had been corrupted from within, by oil, hatred, and fanaticism: the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia who preached annihilation of everyone except themselves, the Shiites in Iran who stoned children to death, the tribal councils in Pakistan who ordered the gang rape of women who committed adultery, the “leaders” of Hamas and Hezbollah who sent teenage boys and girls to blow themselves up in crowds of innocent Israelis. Much of this Megan knew. She had been reading and writing extensively about Islam for more than two years. Nevertheless, she listened attentively. She could afford to be patient. Lahani had obtained a special visa for her that allowed her to stay in the country indefinitely. After each visit, she dated and labeled her tape according to the participants in the conversation—usually just her and Abdullah, though occasionally others,
two Berber women, neighboring shopkeeper,
etc. were included.

On the issue of terrorism, the pharmacist was of the strong opinion that al-Qaeda, having aroused the sleeping American giant, was now more interested in retaking Europe than in lashing out in anger at the United States. Only a fool would believe that America could be defeated, and Osama bin Laden, whatever else he was, was no fool. It would be far from preposterous, however, for him to believe that Europe could be reclaimed by exerting pressure from within and without. “It lacks the will,” Abdullah said.“It is like the lamb who trusts its butcher.” He cited excerpts from bin Laden”s taped messages and myriad postings on jihadist Web sites to support this theory. He knew of the Falcon of Andalus as an important figure in the history of Islam, but, like Professor Madani, the scholar Lahani had sent Megan to, he was unaware of a myth involving his return. “But it is a brilliant idea,” he said to Megan, “to rally the angry, humiliated masses behind the Falcon, risen from the dead to return Islam to its full glory, its rightful place as the dominant force on the planet:”

Only once was Megan exposed to the young male Muslim anger that she had seen so much of in Europe. On her third or fourth visit, sometime in mid-April, a man of perhaps twenty-five, in need of a shave, in jeans, running shoes, and a Western-style leather jacket, came into the shop asking for a toothache remedy. Megan and Abdullah were sitting at the chess table in the corner, a sight that the man reacted to with a contempt that he made no effort to conceal. Abdullah rose and, after a series of questions in Arabic, he took the man through the curtain behind his counter. When they came out a few minutes later, the man hurried out without looking at Megan.

“I am going to purchase an ingredient I need,” Abdullah said. “He has a cracked tooth that is very painful. It should come out, but he is deathly afraid of the dentist. I will only be ten minutes or so. You will no doubt need at least that much time to contemplate your next move:”

Megan knew what her next move was going to be. She didn’t care about the game, anyway. She had been left alone in the shop before and had spent the time sticking her nose and her finger into some of the more exotic sounding powders that lined the room. She was about to get up to wander around when a movement through the slats of the shuttered window to her right caught her attention. Two of the three young men she had seen
pray
ing on her first visit were in the dirt courtyard, smoking. The movement she saw was the man with the toothache joining them. Having seen him up close, having felt his hostility fill the shop, she remained seated and studied his companions, comfortably concealed behind the wooden shutter but able to see through the thin, sun-filled spaces between its slats. Also in their mid-twenties, the other two were dressed in Western-style clothes as well. Both needed shaves. All stood under a corrugated steel awning that rested on poles in the ground on one end and the tin roof of a small shed on the other. Morocco’s brief and mild winter had passed and the days were getting hotter and dryer.

As Megan was studying them, a fourth man joined the three. Megan immediately recognized this man as Mohammed, Abdel al-Lahani’s bulky, taciturn driver. He greeted them, his Arabic husky and guttural, and then proceeded to talk, commanding their attention with a presence and a confident, insistent voice that took Megan back, it was so out of character. They were only a few yards away. As their conversation drifted toward her, Megan took the recorder out of her purse and put it on the windowsill facing the courtyard. Abdullah had opened the unscreened window earlier to admit whatever breeze was out there but closed the shutters to keep out the African heat. On an impulse, she took her small digital camera out of her bag and snapped off a few pictures of the men, the viewfinder pressed against a slice of sunlight in between the shutter’s slats.

In a few minutes, they were done. Mohammed left. The three young men continued to smoke in the shade of the steel awning. Then a female voice called to them from one of the houses or shops that lined the street and they left, too.

When Abdullah returned, Megan mentioned the men.

“I saw the toothache man with three others in the courtyard,” she said. “When is he coming back for his remedy?”

“He doesn’t work, our young friend, but he is very busy. His mother will stop by later. Why?”

“I would like to talk to him.”

“You be wasting your time. I assume he was with his unemployed friends, the ones that hang out at the café next to the spice shop:”

“Yes, but one was older, more your age:”

Abdullah raised his thick eyebrows at this information, but said nothing.

“Who are they?” Megan asked.

“They are angry children,” the pharmacist answered. “They live off of their parents. They drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. They play the victim game, as there is nothing else for them to do:”

“Do you know the families?”

“Yes. I offered our young man an apprenticeship here last year. He sneered at me:”

“Where do they get their information?”

“Haven’t you noticed all the dishes? Everyone in this neighborhood is dirt poor, yet they all have satellite television. Al Jazeera is on all the time, twenty-four hours a day of jihadist propaganda. For their local poison they go to the mosque near the square:”

“Why won’t he talk to me?”

“You are a whore, and a Western one at that:”

“Are there many others like this?”

“I only know his group, but I sometimes pass the mosque on a Friday afternoon. The crowd spills into the courtyard to hear the new imam:”

“What is the young man’s name?”

“Sirhan al-Majid.”

“Can you help me talk to him, Abdullah? I am interested in this anger in the street. I have written about it, as you know.”

“I will try, but do not expect much. He is a restless fool, nothing more:”

“Thank you.” Megan recalled the burning look in al-Majid’s eyes as he listened to Mohammed in the courtyard. Restless fools, she knew from experience, tend to spill their guts. If she could get him to talk, from such dross she might find gold.

~18~

PARIS / RIYAHD, JANUARY 6, 2004

What exactly did they tell you, Charles?“

“That a witness saw two Arab men throw the old man off the cliff. They were carrying automatic rifles.”

“Who is the witness?”

“It was an anonymous call. A woman:”

“You don’t believe that my people did this, do you?”

“I don’t know what to believe:”

“As I said, our men went to Cap de la Hague. Monsieur Peletier would not cooperate. They left. Someone else is looking for our Monsieur Nolan. That is what I think:”

“Who? Why?”

“To find his daughter, of course:”

“Well, the DST is looking for her as well, now.”

There was a pause as Mustafa al-Siddiq took this in. “How is that?” he asked, keeping his voice casual.

“The Cherbourg police called them. They hear Arab men with automatic rifles; naturally they think terrorists:”

“Yes, but how do they know about Nolan
père et fille
?”

“They took apart Peletier’s computer. Apparently he made inquiries to Europol concerning Megan Nolan and a suspected terrorist named al-Zahra. He was asked by his niece to run some fingerprints. One set belongs to a known terrorist, Ahmed bin-Shalib. They discovered that Monsieur Nolan was in the country. They called Paris and were told about the suicide:”

“But they believe the suicide was real, no? The body identified by the father?”

“They are confused, Mustafa, but they have enormous resources and they are very curious:”

“And what is your role?”

“I have no role. DST advised us of the situation because it appears an American citizen is involved:”

“You told them nothing about me?”

“No.”

“Well then, I will contact Onyx. I will tell him the chase is off. He and his people must leave the country.”

“Why not coordinate with the DST? Your people developed this case. The background you can provide would be invaluable. We don’t have to tell them of our initiative:”

“No, Charles, we must withdraw. I am sure your DST will hunt down the Nolans and their friends and that justice will be done:”

Now Charles Raimondi was silent. He had covered up the dead body—one of al-Siddiq’s agents—in Volney Park. Now a respected former French policeman was dead. Thrown off of a cliff at around the same time other Saudi agents were in the vicinity. And neither Patrick nor Megan Nolan were any closer to being found. Had his decision to help al-Siddiq been wrong? Who actually was this Megan Nolan, and why exactly did al-Siddiq want her so badly?

“And you would like to be kept out of it?” he asked finally.

“I would prefer that, yes. We broke several rules, as you know. Why cause a fuss among the diplomats? They’re sensitive to these things. Good-bye, Charles. I look forward to seeing you at our next conference in Brussels:”

Charles Raimondi was a diplomat himself. His only connection to the world of intelligence was his role as liaison between the Foreign Office, where he worked as an assistant to the French Foreign Secretary, and the DST, France’s very powerful and very secretive intelligence agency. He had often used this connection to impress certain people, usually women, but the aura of danger that he liked to surround himself with did not exist. Until now. After hanging up the phone he considered his situation. How exactly had the shooting in Volney Park occurred? Was it possible that al-Siddiq’s men had attacked Laurence and Nolan first, rather than the other way around, as al-Siddiq had informed him when he asked for help in covering up the incident and getting the body returned to Saudi Arabia? Could a known terrorist—Ahmed bin-Shalib—be on the payroll of the Saudi Interior Ministry? Was it possible that al-Siddiq’s people killed Peletier? Looking around his lavishly appointed office and down at his manicured hands, it occurred to him how much he had to lose if these questions were to be answered in the affirmative and his role—perhaps rashly undertaken—discovered. He had known al-Siddiq for many years and trusted him, but perhaps it
was
better that he and his people, including the secret agent oddly code-named
Onyx,
disengage, and quickly.