The Convert's Song (12 page)

“I understand the network had Middle Eastern links,” Belhaj said.

The information came from her briefing at the French embassy in La Paz. She had told Pescatore that Hidalgo was the best source they would find; the Bolivian authorities were not cooperating.

The lawyer frowned.

“I should make something clear,” she said. “I have my hands full. Two hundred thousand people live in the Chapare. It is a labyrinth, geographically and otherwise. The
cocalero
unions, the political parties, the police and military, the drug mafias—local, Brazilian, Colombian, Argentine. My reputation is based on absolute neutrality. I am not an informant for anyone.”

“I want to protect your reputation,” Belhaj said.

“I resent being dragged into an affair of international terrorism. That’s the only reason I am talking to you. And why I receive you here in the open, on my territory, which is crawling with spies.”

Hidalgo resumed her story. She said that Kharroubi’s companies shipped cars, pineapples and other products to Argentina and overseas. The firms were thought to be screens for cocaine smuggling to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

“There was a foreigner. Hardly anyone saw him in person or knew his real name. An influential partner of Ramón’s gang, people said. People called him Ali Baba.”

“Was he from the Arab world? Or possibly a Latin American of Middle Eastern origin?”

“I have no idea. I never met him myself.”

“Did Ramón talk about Islam?”

“He mentioned he was Muslim the way I could tell you I am Catholic. He talked more about world politics, feminist issues, things he thought would impress me. He wanted me to understand the Islamic movements in the context of the anti-imperialist struggle. In fact…”

The lawyer unlocked a cabinet, removed a book, and, holding it as if it were toxic, gave it to Belhaj. Pescatore saw the word
CARLOS
in block letters on a black cover. The title was French:
L’Islam Révolutionnaire.

“Written in prison,” Hidalgo said. “The author is Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan terrorist from the eighties. His ode to bin Laden. He wants the leftists and revolutionaries of the world to rally behind al-Qaeda. Pure and absolute shit. Please keep it for evidence, fingerprints, whatever.”

Raymond had given her the book during what turned out to be his last visit to her office. A turf war broke out between his trafficking group and rival mafias. She did not see him again.

Belhaj opened the book to the title page and passed it to Pescatore. He saw the initial
R
below a handwritten inscription in French: “To Amélie, the loveliest revolutionary.”

Raymond’s ornate loops and swirls hadn’t changed much. Pescatore nodded to indicate that he recognized the handwriting.

“How about the phone call, the terrorism warning?” Belhaj asked.

“It was two weeks ago,” Hidalgo said. “Ramón telephoned me here. He asked if I remembered him. I was surprised. He said he had always trusted and respected me. He needed to transmit sensitive information to the government.”

Raymond had told her that an Islamic terrorist cell was in Bolivia preparing an attack. He gave her a name and the address of a safe house in La Paz. He declined to say where he was or answer questions.

“He said I needed to advise the authorities right away. Like he was reading from a script. Lives at risk. Not a moment to lose. Before he hung up, he joked in a creepy way. He called me the queen of the jungle again. He said: ‘You see how strong my sentiments are, my queen? Even though you rejected me, I haven’t stopped thinking about you.’ As if he were doing me an honor. I called a friend in the Justice Ministry. The police tracked down the group. The terrorism angle was kept secret.”

The two main suspects were a Spanish convert and a Bolivian convert who had studied in Madrid. The third suspect was a local criminal who owned the safe house where police found AK-47s, pistols, grenades, and a computer containing extremist literature and videos. The converts had visited a shopping mall in La Paz and driven around embassies, diplomatic residences, and other places frequented by foreigners. They had shot a lot of video. But there was no hard evidence of a specific plot.

Pescatore wiped sweat from his face. Any shred of doubt had vanished. It was Raymond who had called Pescatore’s phone, just as he had called Amélie Hidalgo. Once again he couldn’t help thinking, with a hollowness in the pit of his stomach, that things might have turned out better in Buenos Aires if he had handled Raymond differently.

Hidalgo poured more tea. Belhaj thanked her and said, “There is something I don’t understand, if you permit me. Why did you keep Ramón’s identity secret at first?”

Hidalgo nodded as if she had been expecting the question.

“The authorities and the traffickers know my rules. I may pass on information, but I protect my sources. Beyond whatever annoying infatuation Ramón may have had, that is why he chose me. My friend at the Justice Ministry implored me to tell him more. At that point, no one had died. The suspects in La Paz were captured. So I told my friend only that I had received the information from overseas. I assume the security services, who monitor me rather brazenly, retrieved the number from my phone records and traced it to France.”

“Then the attack in Buenos Aires happened.”

“Exactly.” Hidalgo’s eyes smoldered. “All bets were off. I wasn’t sure if Ramón was involved, but I had to do something. I identified him to the Bolivians and made myself available to you.”

Pescatore decided to ask a question. In his best Argentine accent, he said, “Ms. Hidalgo, did Ramón talk about where he was from or his childhood?”

“No. He lived in Buenos Aires and I assumed he was from there.”

“Ma’am, you said ‘hardly anyone’ saw Ali Baba. Someone did see him?”

Hidalgo returned his gaze. Her fingers tapped at the base of her throat.

“I know of one instance,” she said slowly. “About six years ago, not long after Ramón gave me the book.”

It was a violent period, the lawyer explained. Brazilian traffickers were fighting Raymond’s group. There were shootings. The warring factions manipulated the police, tipping them off about enemy activity. One night, a special investigative team busted two SUVs on the highway en route to Santa Cruz. The vehicles were full of weapons, cash and cocaine.

“They detained Ramón and a man with a Middle Eastern name,” she said. “I think it was this Ali Baba, his mysterious partner. The police questioned them. There was haggling. My understanding is that it got very tense, because the Brazilian narcos put pressure on the police. They wanted Ramón dead. But a large bribe was paid. Everyone shook hands and the police sent the two of them on their way. That kind of thing is not unusual. What stands out is this: The man they called Ali Baba was carrying a foreign passport. A diplomatic passport.”

T
he original plan, dictated by the security concerns of the French embassy, had been to get out of the Chapare before dark.

Yet here they were: sitting after dinner at a hotel in the jungle. Rain pattered on the thatched roof of the outdoor dining area, a candlelit island in the encroaching blackness. Pescatore and Belhaj were the only diners. The hotel had been recommended, grudgingly, by the embassy security man after he finished complaining about the risks. The low-slung complex off the main highway offered a swimming pool, rustic decor, two dozen cabins for guests. It survived on a clientele of government visitors, foreign-aid workers, and adventure tourists.

The security man and the driver had gone to their cabins after dinner. Pescatore had expected Fatima Belhaj to call it a night as well. Instead, the two of them worked their way through a second bottle of wine while discussing the day’s developments. The official language between them slid gradually from Spanish to English.

“Do you think we’ll hear from Amélie tonight?” Pescatore asked.

“I doubt it.” Belhaj held out her glass for him to pour the last of the Chilean red. “I hope tomorrow.”

“You were nice about it, but you worked her over pretty good.”

“We have come upon something important with this
type
Ali Baba.”

After Hidalgo dropped her bombshell, Belhaj had coaxed the lawyer to tell them more about Ali Baba and his diplomatic passport. Hidalgo resisted. She had told them everything she knew. She refused to endanger her source. Belhaj warned that there was grave danger of terrorist attacks as long as Raymond was at large. They had to find him—and find out as much as they could about him. Pescatore chimed in to explain that he had been at the scene of the carnage in Buenos Aires. He described the suicide bombing at the delicatessen, how fate had saved Claudia Rabinovich and wiped out her father and son.

Amélie Hidalgo grumbled and relented. She said she would do what she could. But she couldn’t promise anything. They would have to wait.

Pescatore listened to the noises of the night: birds, frogs, insects, monkeys, an unsettling shriek of indeterminate provenance.

“What a racket,” Pescatore said. “Are you a city person like me?”

“Yes,” Belhaj said. “I grew up in an HLM, public residences outside Paris. Pure cement.”

“Like the housing projects where they have the riots?”

“Exactly. I find this place beautiful.”

“Yeah, but it’s narco-land. I’d be more comfortable if we were armed.”

The candle was enclosed in a red glass square. When Belhaj turned toward him, the light flickered in her heavy-lidded eyes and played across her deep cleavage. At some point during the oppressively hot day, she had undone the top buttons of her olive-colored work shirt.

“Our guard is armed,” she said. “I am prohibited from carrying a gun overseas.”

“You don’t seem disappointed.”

“Except during operations, I have rarely drawn my gun. Often I don’t carry it.”

That was a difference between Belhaj and Isabel Puente. Isabel felt naked without her sidearm. She trained religiously at the range and had been in two shootouts that he knew of. Pescatore found himself comparing the women. Belhaj was less talkative and more relaxed than Isabel, whose in-your-face style was alternately engaging and fierce. Physically, Isabel was petite if proportionately voluptuous. Belhaj had a high waist and those long legs; she was bigger all over.

The manager, a woman with a bespectacled outdoorsy look who had served the meal, inquired about an after-dinner drink. Belhaj raised her eyebrows at Pescatore. They ordered Baileys Irish Cream on the rocks. The manager left the bottle and an ice bucket and bade them good night. The light soon went out in the reception building.

Pescatore swirled his glass, ice cubes clinking, the caramel color aflame in the candlelight. He said, “Ali Baba’s passport, what do you think? Iranian? The Quds Force uses diplomatic cover. They’re in the region causing trouble, making money. Of course, if it’s Iranian, I’m confused, because Raymond’s network was Sunni, not Shiite.”

“I don’t exclude the possibility. But she did not say it was a Middle Eastern passport. And it could have been false.”

“That’s true. You can buy documents in Venezuela, Honduras, Belize. Or Raymond could have hooked him up with Florencia. A diplomatic passport, though—that’s hard to score. Your people can’t find a trace of Ray in France?”

“Not yet. It takes time pursuing aliases, requesting data to the European Union.”

“Slick as he is, I don’t think Raymond could stay invisible in Europe.”

“The enigmatic Raymond.” She used the candle to light a cigarette. “How did you become friends?”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Eight.”

“Eight? Jeez. Well, I don’t have any. Raymond either. There was the Argentine thing in common, his mom and my dad. Our families had us play together. Ever since I can remember, he was around and we were friends.”

“Like brothers.”

“When we were little, he was funny, smart, generous. A year older too, so I learned a lot from him. Like it or not, he influenced the sports I played, the music and movies I liked, how I talked. And he was one of those guys who everybody wanted to be like, be around. Especially once he started singing. He was a star. When he sang, the bad side of him kind of melted away. You wanted to believe in him.”

Flashes of lightning illuminated the treeline, accompanied by a sustained hiss and crackle. Thunder followed. The rain gathered force.

“But why is it he still feels this connection to you, this confidence?” she asked.

“I wonder about that. His family had more money: he went to private school, lived in a better neighborhood. But he said my neighborhood was where ‘the real people’ lived, whatever that meant. I was closer to the street, I guess, and he wished he was from the street. Of course, he did more crazy illegal stuff than I ever dreamed of.”

“He romanticized gangsterism.”

“But he had this weird attitude with me. Florencia mentioned it, remember? He said I was the one person he could trust. He told me: ‘Things are so simple with you. You say something and you mean it.’”

Belhaj puffed smoke. He liked watching her alternate the cigarette and the drink. The languid grace with which she crossed her thighs. Her curls swirling.

“Do you think Raymond is bisexual?” she asked.

He bobbed his head back as if avoiding a punch. “Excuse me?”

“If he sleeps with men as well as women.”

“I understand the question. I’m trying to figure out why you would ask that.”

She flashed the slightly lopsided grin. “I know his type. Professional informants, double agents. Selling information, changing sides. They seduce and betray. They use sex for that, even with other men.”

The idea irked him. If you’re asking a guy about his relationship with his oldest friend, and then you ask if that oldest friend is bisexual, there’s an implication. He wondered if she was messing with him again. She sounded sincere.

“I never considered that,” he said. “When I hung out with him, he chased women nonstop and bragged about how much he got over. Looks like that hasn’t changed.”

He considered telling her about Raymond stealing his girlfriend, but chose not to open that particular Pandora’s box. He finished his drink, enjoying the sweet tang of the Baileys, feeling mellow. Belhaj did not appear to be tipsy, though he had never heard her talk so much. Her percussive North African accent had gotten stronger.

“A Casanova type,” she said.

“A dog. He had this habit of hitting on waitresses. It was a game to him. If the waitress was halfway pretty, he’d go into his sweet-talk routine. He’d sing her ‘Angelina,’ by Louis Prima.”

Belhaj looked at him blankly.

“You know, Louis Prima,” he said. “‘Just a Gigolo’? ‘Banana Split for My Baby’? You never heard of him?”

“No.”

“Oh, man, he’s great. New Orleans Sicilian. A mix of Louis Armstrong and Dean Martin. You don’t know that song ‘Angelina,’ about the waitress at the pizzeria?”

“I promise you, I do not.”

Pescatore chuckled. “I’ve had enough to drink to the point where I might just sing it.”

She widened her eyes in jovial expectation. “Please.”

The impulse took over. Tapping out the bouncy rhythm on the wood, he belted out the song with gusto—even the words in Italian. Belhaj laughed and applauded.

“A positive influence of Raymond,” she said. “And good pronunciation.”

“My old man’s really Italian, he basically passed through Argentina.”

“You are Mexican too, no?”

“Yep. You keep pouring that, I’ll start with the
rancheras.
”

Belhaj topped off his drink.

“So, Fatima,” he said. “Now that I’ve told you about my childhood, and I’ve done my goofy Louis Prima imitation, and you questioned my sexual orientation and everything—”

She laughed again. “His orientation, not yours.”

“Anyway. I gotta ask you. I don’t know about Paris, but in Chicago you don’t meet a lotta big-time federal counterterrorism investigators who grew up in public housing projects. How did you come to be a cop?”

She lowered her brows, feigning wariness. “A biographical question.”

“Yep.”

She shrugged. “The main reason is my father.”

Her father had emigrated to France from the Moroccan countryside—
le bled,
she called it. People in his village pitched in to buy him a suit for the journey. In France, her father built a life thanks to a job that was the source of his pride and dignity: he drove a municipal bus.

“The bus was his ship.” Belhaj spoke with a tenderness that Pescatore had not seen before. “He was the captain. He kept it impeccable. He knew the passengers’ names. They gave him gifts for his children. One passenger was a chief in the police intelligence service. This man was a legend. He investigated big dossiers of terrorism. Lebanon, Algeria, Pakistan.
Arabisant:
he spoke Arabic. At this time he was older, a chief of the analysts in the service. One day he saw my father very sad. My father explained he had a problem with his daughter.”

Pescatore leaned forward, forearms on thighs. He said, “Which was you.”

“Which was me.”

Belhaj sipped her drink. Her voice slowed, lingering on the memories. Thunder boomed. Rain fell in sheets.

Her childhood had been difficult. Older brothers slid into crime and drugs, consuming her parents’ energies. She was an excellent student, but solitary and moody. When she was an adolescent, her braininess and taste for revealing outfits brought constant harassment from the two groups that dominated the housing project: Islamic fundamentalists and street gangs.

“I was miserable,” she said. “I hated to go anywhere, they were always waiting to abuse me. At school too. I spent more and more time hiding at home. Reading, eating. I had the very bad depression. I was fat also.”

“Hard to believe,” Pescatore said.

“I weighed twenty-five kilos more than now. Fifty pounds?”

He could see it now. She had reinvented herself. She had sculpted her beauty out of excess and trauma. She carried herself with the awareness, the daily joy, of that achievement.

By the time she was seventeen, her grades had plummeted. Her father was devastated. Her teachers had always told him that she was bright, that she would go far if her attitude didn’t interfere. When the veteran intelligence officer heard the story on the bus, he offered to help.

“He came to our apartment Sunday for couscous,” she said. “For my father, it was like a presidential visit. We talked. About his travels, cases, Islam, espionage. I was fascinated. He was so cerebral. And
raffiné.
”

“Refined?”

“Yes. The policemen I had known were alcoholic brutes or frightened boys from the provinces—they never saw so many blacks and Arabs. The chief became my, eh, mentor. I went to the university and he helped me to join the service. I started as an analyst and translator. Interesting, but too much wearing the headphones, transcription. I changed to investigator.”

“I bet you put the fear a’ God into those assholes in the projects when they saw you in uniform.”

Her teeth gleamed in the shadows. “That was a good day.”

“A real French success story, huh?”

“C’est vrai.
In this aspect, France is improving. I told Jean-Louis, my mentor, ‘The police don’t want me. They don’t even consider me French.’ He said,
‘Au contraire, chérie.
You are a Frenchwoman. You will be a French policewoman. And you will command a great respect.’ Many women from the
banlieue
join the police or the military. It helps them break with the projects, the fundamentalists, their families. What you comprehend with the Islamist networks is that the extremist is searching for an identity. I was too, but I found it on the other side.”

“Lucky for the good guys,” Pescatore said.

He raised his glass. She clinked it with hers. They watched the downpour. He glanced over at her. She held his gaze. He thought again about the resemblance, in the eyes, to the angel in
The Madonna of the Rocks.

“What?” she asked finally.

“I was thinking,” he said. “Right now, the smugglers are out there moving dope and cash and chemicals. The narcos are running their labs and coca pits. Cops and soldiers prowling around. Everybody getting real wet. You and me, we’re sitting here nice and dry with our Baileys in this beautiful spot. I could sit here all night.”

“Moi aussi,”
she said.

After a moment, she rose. “But let’s go.”

Caught off guard, he got up. They stood at the edge of the dining area. The rain hammered the roof and the grass. A path of flat stones, vaguely visible, led to the cluster of cabins several hundred feet away.

“I do not think it will stop,” she said.

“I think you’re right.”

He extended his hand. She took it. Confidence and desire flooded him.

They bolted onto the path and ran silently, holding hands, splashing through puddles, charging through curtains of water. The guest quarters were organized in units of three attached cabins enclosing an entrance porch. Pescatore and Belhaj had cabins facing each other. They stumbled into the shelter of the porch area, dripping wet. They caught their breath, smiling at each other. She tossed her head back, shaking out her mane of curls in a halo of water.