The Convert's Song (21 page)

Oh yeah?
he thought.
How about police headquarters?

He told himself that Raymond had identified his hotel because Pescatore had put the phone number in the e-mail he had sent him. These guys were not deranged holy warriors. More like sophisticated gangsters: slick and brazen enough to have monitored him, maybe with the help of sources at the hotel or even in law enforcement. They had slipped in ahead of the police to engage him and then improvised on the fly.

Paralyzed, avoiding the blue-eyed gaze, he reread the note. Raymond’s offer was risky, outrageous, and completely characteristic of him. As the initial impact wore off, Pescatore told himself they were unlikely to hurt him. Raymond had passed up a chance to whack him in Bolivia and—if Raymond had been involved in the ambush—another one in the Rock. What would he gain now? The gambit was consistent with Raymond’s previous behavior: whether out of friendship, self-preservation, or both, he intended to keep Pescatore alive and well. Perhaps he had decided that the time had come, once again, to try to cut a deal.

Pescatore wanted answers. He wanted payback. Now he was being handed a chance to confront Raymond one-on-one.

The gaze of the blond man had not faltered. Pescatore looked him in the eye. He thought,
It’s up to you, homes.

S
tepping out of the car, he saw the low hills across the water.

The sight of the coast of Morocco made him think of Fatima. A warm wind ruffled the palm trees. The shaved-headed driver, whose first name was Murphy, carried Pescatore’s suitcase. The thickset blond man, Jérome, limped ahead to open a front door covered with grillwork. The white-walled villa was on the southern coast of Spain. A winding road led to the property in a residential enclave behind walls, gates, cameras, guardhouses, and the yellow armored truck of a security company.

The trip had lasted overnight and through the morning. Murphy and Jérome had been efficient and silent. After Pescatore agreed to go along for the ride, they went into countersurveillance mode. Leaving the Parisian highway, they sped to a garage, patted him down, and took away his phone. They changed vehicles and drove to a small airport north of Paris to catch a private jet. It landed at a lonely airfield in the pitch-black flatlands of central Spain. The drive south was interrupted by two stops at safe houses to change cars. The geography and methods led him to think he was traveling, in reverse, along a drug-smuggling corridor.

In the villa, their footsteps echoed on marble. He caught a glimpse of a piano in an atrium-like living room, floor-to-c
eiling
windows with a view of the water, a spiral staircase with an ornate iron railing. Murphy and Jérome stepped aside, but not far. Raymond hurried down from the second floor.

“My mean main man. You’re here!”

Raymond looked as if he’d just taken a dip. His hair was wet. A sleeveless V-neck shirt displayed his tanned, lean build and long, corded arms. He wore warm-up pants and loafers. His smile was exuberant.

“Hey man,” Pescatore said.

Raymond gave him a palm-slapping handshake and leaned in for a brief hug, as if not wanting to come on too strong.

“Great to see you, Valentín. Thanks for coming. I hope the fellas didn’t spook you too bad.”

“Nah.”

“I likes that in you. Come on,
fiera,
check out the view.”

Raymond led the way to the large square balcony, which had blue and white ceramic tiles. The balcony overlooked a cliff that dropped to a rocky cove. To the right, a pool deck was built into the side of the cliff. Steps descended to a dock, where a big, fast-looking boat was moored. The cove opened onto the luminous expanse of waves and sky.

“What a spot, right?” Raymond said. “That’s Africa across the strait.”

Pescatore lifted his face to the warmth of the sun. He heard amplified music from the pool area. A swimmer cleaved the surface: a young woman. She propelled herself out of the water onto the pool deck. She had cascading tresses and a lithe brown body. She could have starred in an ad for the joys of the Costa del Sol. Raymond blew a kiss down at her. She mustered enough energy to raise a hand, holding it high to display herself at full taut extension, then tumbled languidly into a lounger.

“A bona fide
andaluza,
” Raymond murmured. “Twenty-two. Fucks like a rabbit.”

That was when Pescatore experienced an impulse to throw him off the balcony onto the rocks below. Pescatore had chased him across land and sea through terror and bloodshed. Pescatore had killed people; people he loved had come close to dying. And here was Raymond showing off his beach palace and latest babe as if Pescatore had dropped in for a fun-in-the-sun vacation. It was surreal, obscene, psychotic.

He resisted the urge. He could not deny the conviction that Raymond had protected him repeatedly, from Chicago to Paris. During the overnight trip, he had made a decision: he would play Raymond the way Raymond played everybody else.

“Damn,” Pescatore said. “Looks like an actress.”

“
Y tanto.
You hear that tune, man?”

Pescatore listened to the suave virtuoso interplay of guitar and voice drifting from the pool deck. He knew it word for word, note for note.

“I sang ‘This Masquerade’ for her,” Raymond said. “Now she listens to George Benson all day.”

“You always said he was one of the best.”

“Nobody else scats along with the guitar like that.”

“So this is where you been?” Pescatore demanded. “Bodies dropping like flies, you’re chilling in your little supervillain hideout. That’s fucked up.”

“No, man, I just got here. I barely use this place. Look, Valentín, you had a brutal trip. You want to rest awhile? Want to change? Murphy,
coup de main,
get my
cuate
an espresso!”

Pescatore accepted the espresso and the offer to clean himself up. When he returned from upstairs, the rustic wooden table on the balcony was covered with food: a potato omelet; platters of shrimp, octopus and mussels; ham and chorizo; fresh bread; gazpacho. Raymond popped open a bottle of champagne.

“Serious spread,” Pescatore said.

Raymond sat with his back to the railing. The henchmen and the Andalusian girlfriend were nowhere to be seen.

“Figli maschi,”
Raymond said.

They raised glasses. The toast reminded Pescatore of their dinner in Buenos Aires and of Raymond’s sons.

Raymond asked anxiously, “You saw my boys?”

“At a police station.”

He didn’t plan to disclose that Fatima had given him inside access to raids, much less mention his romance with her. Or the ambush.

“How were they?”

“Ramón was squalling up a storm, poor little guy.”

Pescatore spoke more gently than he had intended. Tears brimmed in Raymond’s hooded eyes. Despite his vigor and swagger, he looked tired. The cheekbones seemed more pronounced. He hunched in his Springsteen-album pose, fingers at his mouth, one leg jiggling.

Pescatore continued, “Now Valentín, he showed some heart. I talked to him a minute. He’s a Bulls fan.”

“He’s crazy about basketball, soccer, all sports.” Raymond’s voice quavered. “He’s strong and fast for his age. Got an ear for music too.”

Pescatore nodded. The octopus was cooked to the right chewy consistency. The ice-cold champagne took the edge off his headache. The wind tempered the heat. It occurred to him that nobody else knew his location. He was off the grid, under the radar, outside time.

“What did they do with the boys?” Raymond asked “Where are they?”

“With relatives of your wife. I think.”

Pain tightened Raymond’s face. “I’m so worried about
mis gorditos.
They need me, they’re alone, and I can’t do anything about it.”

Pescatore nodded, unsure how to respond.

“And my wife?” Raymond asked.

“What can I say, man? She dropped a dime on you.”

“I knew it.”

“Way I heard, she identified you as the big boss.”

“Some nerve. She’s in deep. That French lady detective who got shot? My wife’s people did that. I had nothing to do with it.”

Pescatore stared at him. He rode another wave of homicidal fury. He didn’t buy Raymond’s story. Raymond was far more capable than his jailed wife of engineering an assassination. Pescatore had a flashback of sprinting to Fatima after the gunfight in the Rock, her body crumpled amid broken glass. He shook his head to dislodge the image, trying to look unruffled.

“When Souraya gets mad, it’s over,
che,
” Raymond said. “You know her problem? Her father was a famous imam. They pounded that jihadi shit into her head when she was growing up. And she takes it seriously.”

“What, you don’t?”

“I mean, I do to a point.” Raymond rolled his eyes. “As a tool, a means to an end. It’s not like I want to go back to the seventh century.”

That probably explains why you’re eating chorizo,
Pescatore thought. He said, “Souraya told the French police you’re the new Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”

“Qué hija de puta.
Man, I’m like a lieutenant at best. A facilitator. Not the fucking mastermind. The
mero mero,
he’s—” Raymond was at full speed, words spilling over each other. He grinned slyly. “Actually, you’ve seen him. You got his picture in the Chapare. They called me middle of the night. I had to stop the Bolivian cops from carving you up. Don’t you know who the dude in the photo is? Didn’t the French tell you? Or the Americans?”

Pescatore sipped champagne. He wiped his mouth carefully. He rested his elbows on the wood and interlaced his fingers.

“I’m not here to answer questions, Ray,” he said. “I’m here because you sent for me. I want to hear the whole story, start to finish. And spare me the bullshit.”

“Of course, of course.” He opened his arms magnanimously.

Raymond started with Buenos Aires: his plunge back into criminality, his conversion. He had taken the religion very seriously at first, tormenting himself when he went astray. He changed perspective under the influence of his Arab-Argentine associates.

“Ortega, the cop, he was a convert like me. Hard-core. One thing I learned fast: a convert is like a guided missile. But Kharroubi and the other
turcos
were more interesting. They talked the Islamic talk, but for them it was really a nationalist, anti-i
mperialist
cause. That made sense to me. More than rubbing your forehead on the floor every five minutes. I’m Sunni, but I could care less about Sunni-Shiite beefs. They liked to live large; so do I. I got them to push into Bolivia, go to the coca source, take the business to the next level.”

Using plates to represent continents, Raymond traced out the empire he had built using Florencia’s border contacts and fraudulent documents and Kharroubi’s smuggling racket. He had joined forces with a Lebanese-dominated web of drug traffickers and money launderers. They were all over: Latin America, West Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Whether Shiite, Sunni, or Christian, true believers or pure businessmen, they got with the program dictated from Lebanon and kicked back part of their profits to Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah needs nonstop cash, bro. They got an army to pay for, covert ops overseas, a political party at home, hospitals, charities, welfare. And they’re getting rich off dope: sheikhs in Lebanon, Iranian generals along with them. If you hurt the decadent drug-addicted infidels in the bargain, all the better. You make allies with cartels and guerrillas, fuck up Uncle Sam in his backyard. Asymmetric crime warfare.”

Iran, Hezbollah’s sponsor, had pressured the Lebanese militia to crank up the cocaine business for financing, he said. Clerics had issued fatwas justifying the drug trade as a covert jihad.

“Hezbollah brothers introduced me to the dude in the photo,” he said. “Ali Houmayoun. Back then, he was a major in the IRGC. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Did South American ops for the Quds Force, their external unit. A badass. The Mossad once tried to whack him in Istanbul. Killed his brother: mistaken identity. He hates those Israeli fuckers with a passion. We made him a partner, helped him develop sources for documents, laundering. But I ran into trouble with U.S. agents.”

“You were still a cooperator?”

Raymond popped open another bottle of champagne. “My status was fuzzy.”

In Argentina, he retained informal contact with the Miami antidrug task force for which he had worked. He took advantage of relationships he had developed with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Raymond claimed he had learned to manipulate them as much as they manipulated him.

“You know the feds,” he said. “You play them against each other, exploit rivalries. They were hot for dope and terrorists. I threw bones to my old handlers now and then, off the books. Sometimes one agency, sometimes another. I ratted out competitors. Then the task force started sniffing around my Hezbollah connects. Intercepts made them curious. I needed to protect Ali. So I sacrificed a truckload of coke in Buenos Aires Province. Satisfied the gringos, but I had to relocate to Bolivia.”

“Some drama up there too.”

“Straight-up gang war, homes!” Raymond mimicked firing a tommy gun. “Like Cagney and Bogart. The worst part was when the major and I got busted with a load in the jungle. A cop took that photo. Ali was furious. He hates cameras. I was like, ‘Hey,
boludo,
focus on the fact that these Bolivian cops are arguing about whether to kill us or not. And your diplomatic passport doesn’t impress them.’ I’ve talked my way out of jams, but nothing like that night in the Chapare. Saved our asses. It made us brothers forever.”

Pescatore saw a glimmer of an offer in the making.
If Raymond calls him his brother,
he thought,
he’s probably sizing him up to fuck him over.

Raymond moved to Spain, the gateway to Europe for cocaine and hash, to consolidate his drug ring with the help of Ortega, who shuttled back and forth from Argentina. Major Ali was still their partner, but he returned to Iran. He rose to colonel and brought Raymond to Tehran. Raymond underwent training: survival, self-defense, tradecraft, urban and rural combat, surveillance and countersurveillance, Arabic and Farsi lessons. He became a spy.

“I loved that shit. I guess I’ve been doing it all my life, one way or another. They told me I was a natural.”

No doubt,
Pescatore thought. He noted that Raymond had filled in the crucial gap in the timeline Pescatore had assembled.

“What about being a true-blue frontline holy warrior, sacrificing yourself for your Muslim brothers and everything?” Pescatore asked.

“I’m still a soldier, man. It’s still a holy war. But I’m in the command post. I’m not some little grunt.”

A Latin American woman in an apron came onto the balcony and cleared the plates. She set out fruit, desserts and a bottle, which Raymond hoisted delightedly. Cardenal Mendoza brandy.

“El Cardenal, baby. I wouldn’t fail you.” Raymond got up with a snifter of it and paced. Silhouetted against the view, he looked as if he were onstage.

Raymond painted the Iranian security forces as a state within a state, a swarm of mafias. Once renowned for bombings, assassinations and hostage taking, they had grown corrupt and sloppy. Thanks to his talent and wealth, Ali was a powerhouse. Raymond was his star agent.

“Ali’s a brilliant strategic thinker. He put together his own unit. He was sick of Israel and the U.S. killing Iranian scientists, sabotaging the nuke program, all the sanctions. And Iran kept fucking up the retaliations. His idea was to infiltrate al-Qaeda and use them. Beauty of it is, you have an existing structure, a known brand. Hungry jihadis. Give them direction and resources and point them at the target. Your enemy isn’t sure who hit him.”