The Convert's Song (22 page)

“False-flag attacks.”

“Right. It puts the heat on fucking al-Qaeda, which is killing Iranian and Hezbollah fighters in Syria, and Shiites all over.”

“I thought Iran was trying to get along with us, calm things down.”

Raymond affected a worldly look. “Maybe the politicians. Not Ali’s crew in the IRGC. They don’t believe in that make-nice-with-the-West shit. And they want the nuclear bomb, sooner or later. A lot of enemies in their neighborhood.”

Raymond’s new mission was aided by debriefings with al-Qaeda veterans who had fled to Iran and been detained. Iranian intelligence kept their useful Sunni rivals in a reasonably comfortable limbo, guesthouses rather than jails. The holy warriors gave him guidance and contacts in the terrorist underworld. Basing himself in Montpellier, a city he knew from drug trafficking, he infiltrated an al-Qaeda-connected network for his Iranian handlers.

“I incorporated my dope organization too. I told Ali: We’ve got a recruitment pool here. We find radicalized brothers. Criminals from Muslim backgrounds. Or converts, former military, dirty cops like Ortega. Professionals. They’ll be the point men. Back them up with cannon fodder. Kleenex terrorists.”

Chuckling, he produced a folded Kleenex from his pants pocket and opened it, revealing a joint. He lit it, leaned against the rail and took a hit, then offered the joint to Pescatore.

Pescatore had expected and dreaded this. He hadn’t smoked marijuana since his informant work with the Patrol. It made him stupid and sluggish. But for the role he was playing now, he needed to come off as weak. He hesitated. Raymond’s arm extended insistently across the table.

“For old times’ sake,” Raymond said.

They smoked. Raymond said his wife had helped lead the group but knew nothing about his Iranian ties.

“So the marriage was just part of the scam?”

Pescatore spoke with calculated scorn. He wanted to keep the guy off balance. Sure enough, Raymond looked hurt. His eyes glistened.

“No,
cuate.
How can you say that? I fell for Souraya like nobody else. She’s the mother of my sons. Devout, fearless. A Muslim wife
como dios manda.
It’s my own fault she hates me now.”

Pescatore would have found the sentimentality more convincing if it weren’t for all the cheating and the snide comments earlier. Raymond took a long hit. Resuming the story, he said everything went smoothly until his run-ins with the Commandant and French intelligence.

“That big French mug nearly messed up everything. A real
fregón
. First he used my wife’s immigration problems to lean on me. It got complicated running my network and feeding him at the same time. Then he figured out we’d popped this Iranian dissident in Lyon. Special assignment from Tehran. Esposito was breathing down my neck. But I had an idea. I reached out to a U.S. boss I had worked for. A counterterror supervisor Stateside. His career was tanking: divorce, alcohol. He needed a score. And I knew some embarrassing shit about his drinking. I told him, ‘I’ve got the goods on an al-Qaeda group in Europe.’ I gave him expendable fighters, gift-wrapped. He went to the French at a high level. He got his terrorist bust, his Brownie points. My problem went away.”

“They blew off the Commandant’s suspicions about the Iranians?”

“There was a dustup. I guess some agents wanted to look into it, some didn’t. Bottom line: they let it slide. But they all told me I was dead to them. They’d had enough of me. I said, ‘Fuck you,
maricones.
It’s not like you pay my bills.’”

Raymond sucked on the joint, his face feral and hungry behind the ember. Pescatore marveled at the seascape. It gave him vertigo. The wind deployed cloud formations. The sun seared the Moroccan coastline. He had read a line once about “the lion-colored hills of Africa.” Were they lion-colored? What color was a lion exactly? The champagne and weed had gotten all up on top of him.

“Ray,” he said. “The Buenos Aires airport. Was that real or a scam?”

The bleary eyes lowered. Pescatore thought,
As far as I can tell, you’ve been pretty truthful so far. Don’t lie to me now or I will throw your ass over the side.

Raymond said, “I didn’t run into you by accident. But a few days before the airport, I really did see you out of the blue. I was walking near Recoleta Cemetery. You went into that café, La Biela? I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had my Argentine guys look into what you were doing in BA. They shadowed you, found out you were taking a client to the airport, and I made the approach.”

“Why?”

“I needed help. The train was going too fast and I wanted to jump off.”

“You didn’t mention anything that night at dinner.”

“I had to be sure I could count on you. Besides, Ali hadn’t given the green light yet.”

Ali had been promoted to brigadier general. He launched the terror campaign to impress his hard-line political patrons. He started in South America in order to use Raymond’s infrastructure, cause strife in the region, and hurt Israel and al-Qaeda in one masterstroke.

“He wanted to hit the Jewish school in Buenos Aires,” Raymond said, chewing a pastry stuffed with
dulce de leche.
“He said we’d kill the children of Shin Bet and Mossad officers. It had to be a purely Jewish target. El Almacén was a double target: Argentine and Jewish.”

“You helped choose targets?” Pescatore couldn’t hide his disgust.

Raymond didn’t appear to notice. “Brigadier Ali respects my opinion. He says I have a knack for this stuff. A terrorist act is essentially an act of communication. Like a song, a performance. Narrative, images, symbols. Choreography.”

“I don’t understand,” said Pescatore, who understood perfectly.

“I told Ali, ‘We need to kill a lot of people. Major casualty count. Dramatic images. Otherwise, the media doesn’t give a shit about Argentina down in the middle of nowhere.’ That’s why we used suicide bombers. Psychosocial impact. We had to bring in two guys. We weren’t sure our Argentine
pibes
would go boom. If the car bomb had gone off at the school, we could have got five hundred easy.”

Pescatore’s headache had returned with a vengeance. He gritted his teeth. “Why did you call me?”

“I wanted to stop it,” Raymond exclaimed, voice anguished. “I really did. Everything was set. I was going to Beirut to watch the fireworks from there with Ali. I stopped in France to see my family. One afternoon I was kicking the ball around with Valentín. I freaked out. Shaking, hyperventilating. I couldn’t go through with it. I called Amélie Hidalgo in Bolivia with a throwaway phone. I’d set up the cell in Bolivia mainly as a decoy anyway. Ali had told me I could give those guys up if it would improve our chances in Argentina. That was within the plan.”

Raymond sagged against the rail.

“Then I took a huge risk and called you,” he said morosely. “There was no one else. I knew you were still my
cuate.
I could trust you with my life. If I burned the brigadier, someone had to bring me in. I was ready. I called three times. But you didn’t answer your phone. I had to catch a plane. Ali was expecting me. My wife was all gung ho about the attack. And she was in my face about family stuff: was I seeing women on the side, why didn’t I spend more time at home. She made me take her to buy furniture at fucking Ikea, which is more crowded than hell. I ran out of time.”

Pescatore rose, unable to sit still any longer. Raymond’s excuse for failing to stop a terrorist attack was his unruly domestic life. Pescatore paced back and forth on his side of the table.

“Why didn’t you warn someone else?” he asked. “Or figure out a way to reach me? How hard could that be?”

“I was torn.” Raymond’s voice hardened. “The plot was a masterpiece. I was proud of it. I believed in the cause, even though I got cold feet. I was ashamed of my weakness. The attack had a momentum of its own. It was meant to be. Like the Arabs say:
Maktub.
It was written.”

“It was written?” Pescatore roared, straining his throat. “What kinda bullshit is that? You selfish crazy coldhearted motherfucker!”

His head spun. He looked around wildly. He grabbed the nearest object, the bottle of Cardenal Mendoza. Raymond flinched. Pescatore wheeled and whipped the bottle as hard as he could at the doors of the balcony. The impact of glass on glass was spectacular.

There were exclamations in the house. Within seconds, Jérome appeared holding a pistol with two hands, pointed down. A shirtless Murphy ran up slapping a clip into his gun. They stared out onto the balcony through the jagged remnants of the door. Glass tinkled.

Pescatore stared back at Jérome and Murphy, a firing squad in the making. He saw Jérome edge to the right to remove Raymond from the line of fire. Pescatore was in a bad spot. His follow-through had left him away from the table and any semblance of cover.

Pescatore looked at Raymond, who had taken refuge in the far corner of the balcony. Their eyes locked. Raymond hesitated. His expression went from scared to sad to resolute.

Raymond raised a hand.

“Easy, easy, everything’s all right!” he shouted.

Speaking in French, he ordered Jérome and Murphy to get lost. He said they could clean up later. He used profanity. Finally, reluctantly, they obeyed.

Pescatore collapsed into his chair. He was breathing hard and sweating as if he had run a sprint. He stared into the distance.

Raymond patted him on the shoulder. He hovered awkwardly for a moment, then walked back around the table and sat down.

“I understand,” Raymond said. “Of course. You feel like I made you part of it. You feel guilt. You feel—”

“Ray,” Pescatore said hoarsely. “Do me a favor. Don’t explain to me what I feel.”

When the glass shattered, Pescatore thought his improvised mission had crumbled along with it. He had lost control and perhaps earned a bullet in the head. Now he realized he was wrong. In fact, he had been playing it too cool. His outburst was what Raymond had expected, totally in character. It had set the stage. He waited.

“I have a proposal,” Raymond said.

“I’m listening.”

“Europe was phase two. We hit prime-time. Yeah, the London attack could’ve been bigger. Yeah, Paris didn’t work out. Doesn’t matter. We racked up a body count and scared the shit out of everybody. Islam two, Infidels zero. Now Ali wants to do a strike in the U.S. We’re developing a project to launch from Latin America. Another false flag.”

Raymond paused for effect.

“You and me have to go to the FBI and the CIA,” he continued, more animated. “I told you Brigadier Ali is Mr. Most Wanted. He’s security-conscious, careful about travel. But the U.S. plot is so important he’ll run it personally. He’ll take risks. He trusts me. I can deliver a bona fide terrorist general. Now that’s a coup.”

I knew it,
Pescatore thought.
The Big Backstab.

“How?”

“We’ve run into obstacles,” Raymond said excitedly. “We need operatives with narco profiles. And a way to get them into the U.S. A while back, two of our Lebanese guys tried to hire a smuggler in Mexico to bring them across the border. Some
cabrones
took a hundred grand from them, then slit their throats in Matamoros.
Mataron a los moros.
That really discouraged the planners back in Iran. Ali’s looking for a southwest target. San Diego, LA, Houston. Right on the border, if we can find a good venue. The attack fuses the Islamic threat and the border threat. A fucking Fox News fascist redneck nightmare come to life.”

The idea had Raymond’s imprint. Pescatore could imagine him pitching it with the same excitement he showed in selling the betrayal.

“Just get me in front of the feds, a chance to talk to them,” Raymond said. “Let me do the voodoo that I do so well.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Listen. I know how to hook Ali. I say I’ve got a specialist he has to meet. A guy who’s the key for this plot because he’s wired in Latin America and the States. A guy who knows the border inside out: U.S. and Mexican cops, smuggling, the security structure. The bait is the guy.”

“And the guy is…”

“You.”

A
fter his second attempt at knotting the necktie, he gave up.

He hated ties with a passion. It wasn’t like he had a job interview. Although the others would probably be in workday embassy attire, he doubted that his wardrobe would be an issue. The blue sport coat and jeans would do fine.

The suite was sleek and comfortable, steel gray and beige. The minimalist style contrasted with the stone exterior and grounds of the hotel, once a duke’s manor. Facundo had recommended the place. He said Pescatore deserved a nice stay in Madrid after what he had been through and what awaited him.

Sitting at a small round table, he turned on his iPod. He wanted to hear the song again before she arrived.

The ballad was by Estopa, a duo of brothers from a factory town outside Barcelona. It was tender and melancholy. In Argentina, he had listened to the song when he thought about Isabel Puente. When he wondered if she felt as alone in Washington as he did in Buenos Aires, if she suppressed the same urge to call, write, or catch a plane and break the silence and solitude. The lyrics haunted him with the idea that he would gradually forget what she was like. He couldn’t imagine anything bleaker.

Recently, he had begun listening again to “Ya No Me Acuerdo.” He was in Spain. He missed Fatima. And now he was about to see Isabel Puente, his former fiancée and a current big shot at the Department of Homeland Security, for the first time in a long time.

She knocked on his door at ten a.m. sharp. They hugged with limited contact, as if over a fence. It was strange to stoop to Isabel; Fatima was about his height.

“Isabel. How are you? How was your flight?”

“Fine. Good to see you, Valentine.”

It had been a while since anyone had called him Valentine. He and Isabel always spoke English, interspersing Spanish words. She always called him by the name with which he had been inadvertently rechristened by the U.S. federal government.

“Come in,” he said. “Have a seat. Here, at the table.”

“Nice room.”

“I’m living large, right?”

Never mind the song. There was no way to forget Isabel. The feline Cuban features, the compact curves and sure-footed padding walk. There was no way to forget the slight trace of an accent, a melodic echo of Spanish. She looked a bit paler, a bit thinner—no doubt the result of long Washington office hours. Her embassy-appropriate outfit was a belted black dress beneath a silver summer blazer. Sunglasses nested in her hair, which she wore pinned back and hanging to her shoulders.

“You look good,” he said.

“You too. But tired.
Esas ojeras.
”

When they were living together, it had been a ritual. She would comment on the circles under his eyes and reach out to trace them with a finger. He instinctively anticipated her touch; it didn’t come.

“I haven’t slept for a month,” he said.

“You’ve been busy.”

Her smile was steely. Their last face-to-face conversations had been epic screaming matches or terse exchanges about the logistics of breaking up. Now she came off livelier than he’d expected. He understood why. She had returned to the mind-set in which she was the handler and he was the informant.

“I saw Leo Méndez a few months ago,” she said.

“My man Méndez. How’s he doing?”

“Good. He started a newsmagazine. He’s living between San Diego and Tijuana, depending on who gets mad at him. You know Leo: cop or journalist, he’s always sticking it to the man.”

“I likes that in him,” Pescatore said. “What’re you doing exactly at DHS-HQ? I figure you pretty much run the show by now.”

“My title has the words
assistant
and
deputy
in it, for what it’s worth. Basically, I oversee national security issues. Coordinate major cases. Terrorism, counterintelligence, arms trafficking, smuggling. Most national security cases have a border component.”

“You’re up to speed on what’s going on? I got the idea when I called that you already knew a lot.”

She stayed impassive. “As a courtesy, a colleague did advise me your name popped up after the attack in Argentina.”

“An FBI agent told me there’s a big-time internal investigation.”

“Since he told you that already, I can clarify there are two inquiries: the internal review and a CT investigation. The counterterrorism investigation takes precedence after London and Paris. And your new lead.”

“Well, I appreciate you zooming over here. You’re the…only one I can trust right now.”

He had hesitated because he sounded to himself like Raymond. At the villa two days before, he and Raymond had conferred until late. Murphy and Jérome had driven him to the Málaga airport and returned his phone. His first call was to Facundo, who was at home convalescing. They decided it was time to bring in the heavy artillery: Isabel. When Pescatore called, she listened calmly. Her reaction stoked his paranoia. As if she had been expecting to hear from him. She told him to make the quick flight to Madrid. He had thought she would put him in touch with U.S. agents there. Instead, she hurried over in person.

He rose. “I must’ve mislaid my manners. Can I offer you something to drink or eat? Room service?”

“Better not to have foreign nationals coming in and out right now,” she said. “Water is fine, thanks.”

He set out glasses, ice and bottles, water for her and Coke for himself. He took her through the story of the meeting with Raymond.

“I guess Brigadier General Ali is a great big deal,” Pescatore said.

“That’s accurate. He has American blood on his hands, military and civilian, going back to the nineties. Not to mention Israeli and European.”

“The baddest terrorist the public never heard of, according to Raymond.”

“He is dangerous and active. Apparently he has a lot of autonomy from the Iranian leadership.”

“A serious bargaining chip, then.”

“What did Raymond ask for?”

Raymond had made his case like a lawyer delivering a closing statement. He paced on his balcony as the sunset painted slashes of orange and purple. In exchange for the extraordinary service he intended to render, he wanted to avoid prison. And he wanted custody of his sons.

“But the kids are French citizens, aren’t they?” Isabel asked.

“Yep. I told him it sounded unrealistic to walk away with no time. He said he’d consider doing a couple years, at most, in a country club–type minimum-security facility. He hasn’t killed any Americans that he knows of, he said.”

“That he knows of.” Isabel shook her head. “What a piece of work. Four or five countries would want to prosecute him. By his own admission, he’s played a major role in several terrorist conspiracies resulting in the deaths of more than two hundred twenty-five people.”

“Buenos Aires, London, Paris, the Iranian activist in Lyon, his own guys. Yeah, that’s about right.”

“Don’t forget the terrorists he sent to Pakistan and Afghanistan and wherever else. They killed people, probably U.S. military personnel. If he doesn’t think he’s going to do hard prison time, he’s crazy.”

“He always cut deals before. He flipped and it worked.”

Pescatore thought back to Raymond’s performance on the balcony. When Raymond believed something, he had a way of making you believe it too. Even if you knew what the odds were, what an operator he was.

“Not this time. No matter what he offers, this is as bad as it gets. He has to turn himself in, negotiate face-to-face and hope for the best.”

“He’s too cagey.”

“Why does he want you to go to Iraq?”

“Well, Iran’s not an option. Lebanon could be, but the brigadier feels safe in Iraq. The Iranians are wired up with the Shiites in the government. The brigadier knows Iraq; he used to run guns and train Shiite militias. He has investments there. He thinks nobody can get at him in Iraq. Raymond feels safer there too.”

“It’s not a country where we could arrest them ourselves. The Iraqis aren’t going to cross the Quds Force.”

“This would be a get-acquainted meet. We’re hoping Brigadier Ali buys it and brings me into the project.”

“And he’s going to trust you to the point he’s willing to meet you again somewhere like Latin America, so we can grab him?”

Her widely spaced eyes raked him like searchlights. She sat with a leg beneath her in an alert pose. Isabel never quite kept still. Her hands toyed with each other and her glass and her hair.

“Yeah. Raymond thinks the general would come over to Central America or someplace to run things when the plot develops. Raymond says if he vouches for me, that’s half the battle. They’re tight from way back.”

“Does he know there are newspaper articles about how you went undercover in a Mexican cartel that had indirect links to Hezbollah cells at the Triple Border? For the Iranians, that’s not the best thing to have on your résumé.”

“Raymond’s got that covered. After all, he was a U.S. informant too, and the Quds Force knows it. If he says he’s known me since we were six and trusts me with his life, which he does, I’m cool. They’re all excited about this attack in the U.S. They need a specialist to make it happen.”

“Explain to me why an IRGC general is supposed to think Valentine Pescatore is the man for the job.”

“Hey, I had the same reaction. But now I’m convinced. With my Patrol experience, I do have a profile to help smuggle in terrorists and do recon. These guys might be superspies and everything, but Mexico’s a long way from home. They don’t really have a clue how to operate at the Line.”

“I’m still concerned about the scenario of bad guys killing you in Iraq.”

“Raymond’s had chances to kill me already. He cares about me. The attacks in Europe burned him. He can’t travel. He’s wanted. I’m a new asset, I compensate for that. He needs me to impress Brigadier Ali, to cut this deal with you guys. He’s on borrowed time with the Iranians. Sooner or later, they’ll find out he tried to drop a dime on them about Buenos Aires. Raymond’s rich as hell, but his life reminds me of that expression in Spanish. Escaping all the time? Fleeing forward?”

“Huyendo hacia adelante,”
she said drily. “I’m familiar with the term.”

She was insinuating that the phrase could apply to him.
Point taken,
he thought.

She added, “I’m not convinced this is wise or feasible.”

“Listen, Isabel.” He paused and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s good we’re talking just the two of us. I want to make something clear before we go to the embassy. I’m not asking permission. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna go to Baghdad, meet these guys, and do my best to lure out this Ali. If it works, I hope somebody is gonna scoop him up before it’s too late.”

Isabel’s thumb rose to press against her teeth. Not a good sign. Battle stations.

“Is this an offer or an ultimatum?” she asked.

“A proposal.”

“You propose a freelance op in a hostile zone out of the blue and everyone’s supposed to jump on board. On your terms.”

Her tone had turned flat and officious. They had fallen into a familiar dueling rhythm, building toward the flash point.

“Raymond dragged me into this,” he said. “I feel responsible.”

“Don’t blame yourself. It’s not noble, it’s dumb.”

“I’m not the only one to blame. I think the U.S. government shoulda known years ago Raymond was a liar playing all sides. He kept messing up, setting off alarm bells, and agencies kept letting him skate. When you get right down to it, I don’t understand how the CIA or FBI or somebody didn’t find out what he was up to and stop the attacks in Buenos Aires. It’s outrageous.”

“Maybe. That’s why there’s an internal review. But it’s easy to say, after the fact, that we should have known about a plot. It’s not realistic, Valentine. Especially if the target isn’t American.”

“Raymond’s American, though. And he was an informant.”

“Don’t rule out the possibility that the intelligence community knew more than you think. They may not have seen the act was imminent.”

“Or maybe they didn’t care if it was just South Americans dying. Maybe Raymond was still useful.”

“Look.” She leaned forward with her small palms pressed on the table, as if pouncing might become an option. “Once you’re inside the system you see how big it is, how much information there is, how many players. That’s usually the explanation, not conspiracies. Sometimes—”

His phone rang. He started to shut off the ringer when he saw, his heart leaping, that Fatima’s number was on the display. He had spoken the day before with Laurent. The French were fuming about the stunt pulled by Raymond’s men in Paris. Laurent had sent investigators to Spain. They believed Raymond had used a false identity to leave the European Union, perhaps via Morocco. Pescatore had asked to talk to Fatima, but Laurent had told him she was still too weak.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry,” Pescatore said to Isabel.

She nodded. He took the phone and went into the bedroom, which had two sliding panels rather than a normal door. He pulled shut a panel one-handed, got flustered, and retreated to a corner with the phone. Bad timing. But he couldn’t wait any longer. He sat on the bed and answered, keeping his voice low.

“Fatima?” he said.

“Valentín,” she said.
“Mon amour.
Where are you?”

Her words melted something inside him. Her voice sounded thick, dazed, even throatier than usual. She drifted between Spanish, French and English. She told him she was pumped full of painkillers.

“That’s okay, beautiful,” he said softly. “I’m in Madrid. Worried sick. I’d be right there with you, but your boy Laurent kicked me out of France.”

“You Americans and your guns,” she said.

“I’m sorry I hid that from you.”

She said something unintelligible. He hunched forward to listen, covering his left ear.

“Fatima? You there?”

“Valentín,” she said, disoriented. “I had a bad dream.”

“You did?”

“I dreamed you were singing to me. In the jungle. A funny Italian song. It was raining. Then I woke up, in the dream. I saw it was Raymond singing. By my bed. Very bad dream.”