The Convert's Song (17 page)

“What’s with the masks?” Pescatore asked, lifting the one in his hand.

“To protect our identities,” Belhaj said. “It is common for police in Europe.”

“Yeah, I guess I’ve seen that on TV.”

“Not in the States?”

“Over there, these are strictly for bank robbers. Pretty intimidating.”

She grinned. “To terrorize the terrorists.”

At four a.m., Belhaj decided it was time. She pulled her curls back into a ponytail and put on her ski mask. The others followed suit.

SWAT officers scaled the wall from the street and entered the backyard from a property next door. Belhaj, Pescatore and her team crouched by the portico. On the other side of the wall, flash-bang grenades went off in the dark. The SWAT team made entry into the house. Pistols drawn, the plainclothes officers loped behind Belhaj up the driveway. As he ran, Pescatore had to restrain the reflex to pull the gun from his ankle holster. He could not show the gun unless he had no choice. Once he did, his little game was over. He charged over the lawn, passing the shadows of a swing set and a trampoline, almost tripping over a soccer ball. Radios echoed with shouted commands, doors banging, women screaming, a child wailing. Lights went on.

The interior had high ceilings and a modern design. A SWAT officer in full body armor stood in the middle of the living room with his foot on the neck of a prone and shirtless man, one of the visitors. Belhaj talked into the radio. A calm voice reported that the house was secure. Pescatore heard a woman in the kitchen. Her snarls and threats reverberated off walls. Voices told her to shut up.

Madame Mercer,
Pescatore thought.

The investigators spread out and began a search. The living room was handsomely but sparsely furnished. The walls were bare. A Koran sat in a place of honor on a reading stand. Pescatore hunched over and examined a row of DVDs on a shelf beneath a king-size plasma television. He touched Belhaj’s arm.

“Look,
The Battle of Algiers,
” he said. “Ray really liked that movie.”

Her mask brought out the beauty of her eyes. She asked, “The politics or the cinematography?”

“Both. Can I look around?”

“Yes.”

Pescatore poked his head into an adjoining study. An electric piano. Lots of books in English, Spanish, French and Arabic. A collection of vintage CDs and record albums.

Belhaj called his name. He followed her up the stairs and down a hall past officers. They entered a bedroom.

Pescatore came face-to-face with a miniature Raymond.

The boy was about four. He wore footed, one-piece pajamas decorated with Chicago Bulls insignias. He had his father’s distinctive deep-set eyes, his high cheekbones, his thin build. He hugged a large stuffed lion. He looked scared, but he was dry-eyed. Anger glinted in his sidelong stare at the large invaders with masks and helmets and guns.

He’s got his old man’s attitude too,
Pescatore thought.

The younger brother, meanwhile, wailed tragically in the arms of an older woman in a head scarf sitting on a bed. Pescatore assumed she was a nanny.

Pescatore asked Belhaj if he could talk to the older boy. She told an officer to clear everyone else out of the room. Pescatore pulled off his mask, thankful for the cool air on his face, and squatted on his heels.

The boy had taken refuge behind a toy drum set. Glancing around, Pescatore saw nothing Islamic or fundamentalist. There were piles of toys and many posters: European soccer players, NBA players, Disney characters, Muppets. The compact discs included not just children’s songs but selections that he could imagine Raymond choosing to start a musical education at an early age: classical music, big band, Santana, the Beatles. In a corner were a xylophone, a mini-keyboard and a guitar.

“How you doing, son?” Pescatore’s voice caught in his throat.

Instinctively, he had spoken in English. The boy looked at him intently, eyes wide. Pescatore realized that, without even trying, he sounded like Raymond. No matter what other languages this family used, he had no doubt that Raymond spoke to his sons in English.

The boy’s arms were wrapped around the stuffed lion, which was half his size and wore a jeans jacket.

“That’s a cool lion,” Pescatore said. “What’s his name?”

The boy looked down. He mumbled something that sounded like
Roland.

“I’m a friend of your dad,” Pescatore said. “From Chicago. You know Chicago?”

“Bulls.”

The boy said the word very softly in accented English, still looking down.

“That’s right, the Chicago Bulls basketball team, like your pajamas,” Pescatore said. “My name is Valentín.”

The boy perked up again, making eye contact.

“Valentín,” the boy said, mimicking Pescatore’s pronunciation.

“You got it, son. And you?”

“Valentín.”

“Right, that’s me.” Pescatore chuckled. “Now, what’s your name?”

The boy’s face constricted into a mask of frustration, cheeks puffing out, eyes almost closed. Then Pescatore understood. He remembered the Commandant reacting strangely to his name. He felt tears well up.

In a gruff halting voice, the boy said, “I—am—Valentín!”

G
arde à vue.

He hadn’t come up with a good translation yet. “Police custody” fell short. After twelve hours, he had a solid understanding of the term. French law gave the police up to four days to interrogate terrorism suspects. No defense attorneys. No prosecutors. Just cops firing questions around the clock. Although they hadn’t thumped anybody, he believed this was chiefly because they didn’t need to: their information was too good. Still,
garde à vue
was a world of shit in which you did not want to live. French law enforcement did not pussyfoot around with terrorists.

“Once, we put a whole family in jail,” Fatima Belhaj had told him during the ride to headquarters. “The son was the suspect. His brother was an accomplice. The father was a radical imam. And the mother, she was detained for criminal association. If they had a dog we would have got him too, but dogs are
haram
.”

It was evening. An investigator placed another cup of coffee in front of Pescatore. He gave up his best
Merci, monsieur.
Luckily, the squad had a Nespresso machine and kept it cranking. Pescatore sat at a back table in the chilly underground room. The officers sat or stood near the one-way glass facing onto the empty interrogation chamber. They swilled coffee, reviewed documents, talked on phones, and worked at laptops.

Pescatore knew more now about Raymond’s family. In addition to the house, they owned luxury apartments on France’s southwest coast and in Spanish Morocco. The police had found evidence of serious wealth: bank accounts, real estate, luxury vehicles. Raymond’s wife, Souraya, was twenty-six and had a law degree from Morocco. The sons were Valentín, age four, and Ramón, age two.

Pescatore was still getting his mind around the discovery that Raymond had named one of his sons after him. Unlike other things Raymond had done or said, the gesture could not be written off as manipulative or deceitful. Then there was his decision to give the second son the Spanish version of his own name. Fatima believed that Raymond looked back on his friendship with Pescatore with a sense of loss. He had tried to re-create a symbolic version of it with his sons. Pescatore was haunted by the image of little Valentín clinging to his lion. He had taken a liking to the kid; he had felt a tug of protective obligation. In the boy’s face, Pescatore had seen the solitary awareness that this invasion of strangers was going to change his life in a bad way.

The interrogations up until now had been warm-up acts. Belhaj had watched her team question the nanny, the wife’s brother, his associate and the wife, who had said little except to protest that the police had taken away her hijab. Belhaj had announced that she planned to interrogate the wife herself. She had taken refuge in her office, smoking up a storm, to prepare. The investigators hurried back and forth to answer her questions and provide data from the search.

A door opened on the far side of the interrogation room. Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, brought in Souraya. They sat her down at the table. She was not handcuffed.

Although Souraya was Moroccan, her complexion was lighter than Belhaj’s. Her features were sharper. Under the smocklike garment, her shoulders were high and slender. Her long disheveled black hair swirled around eyes full of fury. There were rings under the eyes; she hadn’t slept since the rude awakening of the arrest. Her face was dominated by a wide and sullen mouth. Pescatore remembered Raymond calling her a princess and a lioness.

Addressing her guards and the unseen watchers, Souraya demanded her head scarf.

“It is shameful that you leave me uncovered this way,” she said, her strident delivery no doubt polished in university halls and street protests. “It is a violation, a humiliation. You trample my most basic human rights.”

In spite of himself, Pescatore experienced a pang of empathy. He recalled his arrest in Argentina: the shirt over his face, the smells of horses and urine, the absolute helplessness. He had a fleeting irrational fear that someone was going to decide he was on the wrong side of the glass.

Belhaj arrived. She passed Pescatore and the investigators and went into the interrogation room. The guards exited, leaving the two women alone. Belhaj’s entrance rattled Souraya. She watched in consternation as Belhaj put a folder on the table. Belhaj removed her leather jacket and draped it methodically on the back of a chair. She wore a tight pullover shirt, jeans tucked into boots. Her gun and badge flanked her metal belt buckle. She took her time lighting a cigarette.

“Now we are going to see something,” an investigator said. He fanned his knees open and closed suggestively. There were chuckles and comments.

Belhaj’s deputy, who was named Laurent, raised his head from his laptop. He was a short man in his forties with neat chiseled features and small round glasses that gave him an air of studious expectation. He made a stern growling noise that put an end to the snickering.

Souraya spoke rapidly in Arabic.

“One speaks French here,” Belhaj said.

Souraya switched to French and raised her voice. After some back-and-forth, Pescatore caught the gist. Souraya refused to believe that the DCRI employed a female North African–looking investigator. She suspected that Belhaj was really a Moroccan intelligence officer, an interloper brought in under false pretenses to grill her. Souraya turned to the glass to appeal to the spectators again.

“This Moroccan spy has no jurisdiction here. We are in France. I have my rights!”

“Very amusing.” Belhaj shook her head. “A terrorist who wants to destroy France, who despises everything about France, and now she has rights. Because she is in France. I have news for you, Souraya. I am a commander of the French police. Look at the badge. Yes, I am Moroccan too. But I am nothing at all like you. I am not a pathetic fanatical slave. I smoke, I drink, I give orders, I do what I please. And my job is to fuck you up.”

Belhaj sat. She crossed her legs and puffed smoke. Souraya stared at her balefully.

“Where is your husband?” Belhaj asked. She used the familiar
tu
form.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

Belhaj took a thoughtful drag of the cigarette. “I just met his Argentine girlfriend in Buenos Aires. You know her? Florencia? Fat, old, grotesque. Still, she must do something better than you. He can’t get enough of her. He was over there fucking her a few weeks ago. Before the attacks. He sings to her. ‘Sophisticated Lady.’ Isn’t that romantic? Does he sing to you?”

“I have nothing to say,” Souraya snapped. But the mention of Florencia had hit a nerve. Her eyes smoldered.

“Perhaps my colleagues were reluctant to spell things out,” Belhaj said. “Let me explain your situation. From a preliminary look at the evidence, e-mails, credit cards, et cetera, it is clear that you had prior knowledge of the plot in Buenos Aires. You helped your husband buy plane tickets on the Internet. Those facts in and of themselves constitute terrorist conspiracy in the murders of two hundred people, including two French citizens. Which means, Madame the lawyer, Madame the terrorist, that you are fucked.”

Pescatore had never heard her speak so crudely and brutally. She exuded contempt. She was transformed.

“Nonsense,” Souraya said.

“You know the law. There is no question we have enough evidence to hold you for trial. A case this complex, international angles, procedure and paperwork, that means four years in pre-trial detention. The number of victims increases the chances of a conviction and a long sentence. If by some remote chance you are acquitted, that’s fine: we deport you to Morocco. You are high on the wanted list of the Mukhabarat. They can’t wait to get hold of you. They will hang you upside down by your feet to drain the stupidities out of your head. And that will be just an
amuse-bouche.
”

Souraya folded her arms. She repeated her demand for the head scarf. Belhaj got up and paced, her boots loud.

“Enough crap about the head scarf,” she said. “Wipe yourself with the head scarf. You are a repugnant hypocrite. You pretend to fight for your brothers and sisters in the
banlieue.
Look at the palace you live in, that stuck-up neighborhood. Pure bourgeois Western decadence. Financed by filthy sinful drug money.”

“Don’t you dare judge me.”

“Natural human weakness, I suppose. You grew up in a stinking slum in Casablanca. Now this man showers you with money. Fine. But don’t call yourself an Islamist. Look at how you raise your sons. Pop music, Disney, Batman!”

“I am entitled to provide the best for my sons. They must learn how to live in the West, even if they are not of the West. That is the path to true resistance.”

A ripple of reaction went through the investigators. Belhaj had broken through, elicited a response. She dropped her cigarette and ground it beneath her boot as if it were Souraya’s face. She laughed savagely.

“Is that how Raymond justifies it? Is that what you tell yourself? You deluded fool. Manipulated first by the Moroccan
barbus,
then this phony American Islamo-gangster playboy. You disgust me. The way you got rid of your first husband. You remember him, no? Bilal? The one who blew himself up in Afghanistan?”

“Bilal is a glorious martyr. You are not fit to utter his name.”

“A martyr. A cuckold! Raymond played that boy like a violin. He sent him to die. The guilt must eat you alive.”

“Shut up!”

Belhaj stalked up to the table. It looked for a moment as if she was going to slap the prisoner. Souraya reared back. Belhaj opened the folder on the table. She took out a paper: a printout of a color photo.

At the sight of the photo, Souraya let out a wail of anguish and revulsion. The sound echoed in the small room. She turned away, shaking violently, weeping. Pescatore thought for a moment that she would throw up. He saw the officers around him leaning forward.

Belhaj waited for the woman’s lament to subside. She let the impact sink in, the silence gather.

“Yes, it is his head,” she said softly. “That happens with kamikazes. The body disintegrates, the head flies off intact. Poor Bilal. So pathetic, so inept. His bomb vest malfunctioned. It was a partial detonation, too weak to kill the American soldiers he attacked. Their only injuries came from the spray of his bones and flesh.”

“Liar!” Souraya sobbed. She wiped her eyes and nose. “He killed five infidels.”

“No. Raymond deceived you. He told you that to make you feel better. I read the dossier. I have a news story. Voilà. ‘No fatalities except failed bomber.’ Your martyr’s fiasco rated a few paragraphs. As meaningless as his life. Raymond must have had a good laugh. And of course, infidelity breeds infidelity. You cheated on Bilal. Raymond cheats on you.”

Souraya was rigid and livid. Her Medusa-like shock of hair gave her the look of a madwoman.

“Where is Raymond?” Belhaj asked. “What is he plotting? What are the targets?”

“You are wasting your time.”

“No. It is you whose time is running out.” Belhaj walked around the table. She stood behind Souraya, uncomfortably close. She reached over her to pull another photo from the folder.

“Your boys,” Belhaj hissed in her ear. She put her hands on Souraya’s shoulders, a sarcastic caress. The woman shook her off, tendons and veins bulging in her neck. “Valentín and Ramón. Not Muslim names. But very cute.”

“They have Muslim names,” Souraya said in a strangled voice, as if speaking against her better judgment. “Seifullah and Ayman.”

“But Raymond gives the orders in your house,” Belhaj retorted. “And they respond to the names he gave them. Take a good look at the boys, Souraya. I have made it my personal mission to ensure you never see them again.”

Belhaj walked back around the table. Her voice grew colder. Each word was like a blow.

“Never again. You are an unfit mother: a murderer, a terrorist, a drug trafficker, a money launderer, a monster. You are going to prison. Your husband too, if he lives. I have already conferred with the family services agency. We need to split the boys up, of course. Easier that way. We are looking for foster families to take immediate custody. I think nice Jewish families would be best, don’t you? With time and effort, the right cultural—”

“Dirty whore!”

Souraya erupted. She shot to her feet and charged around the table. Belhaj planted herself in a defensive stance with her hands waist-high. She was unhurried; she might have been doing a martial arts warm-up. As Souraya came at her, Belhaj stepped into the lunge and slammed the heel of her hand into the bridge of her assailant’s nose. Then she slid sideways and swept the woman’s legs out from under her.

Souraya sat on the floor holding her face. Blood leaked through her fingers. Sobs racked her body.

Amid exclamations and toppling chairs, investigators rushed into the interrogation room. Belhaj made a calming gesture. She asked for a towel and a glass of water for the prisoner. Catching her breath, she leaned over next to Souraya.

Pescatore could not take his eyes off Fatima. Her serenity had returned with the speed of someone pulling off a mask.

She’s a
pantera
,
he thought, thinking of the term that Facundo used for Israeli commandos and other badass warriors.
I wouldn’t want her interrogating me.
He remembered the forbidden pistol on his ankle.

“We are going to get you cleaned up,” Belhaj said. “And then, because you love your boys, because Raymond Mercer has destroyed your life, you will tell us everything we need to know.”

Souraya ended up talking until midnight.

Pescatore was a bit surprised that she betrayed Raymond so fast. He concluded that she had made the stark calculation that her situation was hopeless. The threat about the children had shaken her. She would do whatever it took not to lose them, to protect what was left of her family. It also had become clear to Pescatore that her relationship with Raymond was tormented. The guilt over Bilal festered. There were accumulated resentments: of how Raymond dictated the upbringing of the boys, of his secrecy, and, above all, of his affairs with other women. She peppered Belhaj with questions about Florencia.