The Convert's Song (18 page)

“He has a right under Islamic law to more than one wife,” Souraya hissed. “But not to run around with gutter whores and make a fool of me.”

The dog gets dogged, Pescatore thought.

Souraya’s confession revealed that she was an active player in the network, though Raymond compartmentalized information. In addition to what she picked up from him, Souraya learned a lot through the wives of other jihadis, a circle of informal informants. She said Raymond’s group financed itself with drug money. It drew inspiration and training from al-Qaeda but was autonomous. Raymond had gone to al-Qaeda bosses in Pakistan to get their blessing. The “wise elders” in the tribal areas were busy hiding from drone strikes and happy to leave the specifics to him. Souraya showed no knowledge of Raymond’s warning calls to Pescatore and Amélie Hidalgo about the plots in South America. She had never heard of Ali Baba and did not recognize the face in the photo.

To Pescatore’s surprise, Belhaj asked about drug money going to Lebanon and contacts with Iranian intelligence. She had not dismissed the Commandant’s theory after all.

Souraya shook her head disdainfully. Beirut was a destination for drugs and money, she said. But that was business. She doubted that Raymond had Shiite connections.

“The brothers use Iran as a passage to Pakistan,” she said. “The Iranian services generally don’t interfere. That doesn’t mean we have anything to do with the Shiites. They are serpents and heretics. We despise them just as we despise you.”

The next stage in Raymond’s plan called for simultaneous attacks in Europe, Souraya said. The likely targets were London and Paris. She had not seen Raymond in weeks. He was moving around, making preparations.

“Don’t think my arrest will stop the project,” she said. “If anything, it will speed things up.”

Souraya gave them names and information about phones, e-mail addresses, and documents. She warned that her knowledge was incomplete.

“He has bank accounts, passports, identities I don’t know about, allies everywhere,” Souraya said. She tapped her temple. “He is smarter than you. You watch: There has not been a major attack in Europe since London in 2005. He will pull it off.”

Belhaj asked, “Will he take part personally?”

“It depends on the needs of the network. He is prepared for martyrdom.”

I wonder,
Pescatore thought.
More like he’s prepared others for martyrdom.

Over the bloodstained towel she held to her face, Souraya’s look of pure hatred had not wavered. From what she had pieced together, she predicted the plot in Paris would target public places. She spoke with bitter admiration.

“He’s a master of choreography,” she said. “The new Carlos the Jackal, the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of his generation. The idea is to use a world city as a world stage. Iconic backdrops. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Champs-Élysées. If I were you, I would be very worried about the Champs-Élysées.”

P
escatore had seen
The Battle of Algiers
a number of times.

He wasn’t obsessed with the film like Raymond had been, but it had made an impression on him as a kid. In Argentina, he had seen it again with Facundo, who said the Pentagon used it as a counterinsurgency primer. Pescatore had rediscovered the haunting sound track, especially the opening theme: drum, cello, horns sounding the call to arms while paratroopers swarmed the Casbah hunting Ali La Pointe, hoodlum turned revolutionary.

The melody echoed in his head as he watched the counterterrorism apparatus of the French state rumble into action. He had a privileged vantage point next to Fatima Belhaj in the Peugeot 407, the rolling command post from which she coordinated offense and defense.

The offense was the hunt for the attack cells. After Souraya’s interrogation, the French had warned the British and other allies about the threat. Counterterrorism agencies had spent the day casting a net of communications intercepts and border and transportation alerts. They combed through data about Raymond’s crew, tracking down cars, phones, and addresses, questioning relatives and associates, kicking down doors. They activated sources in mosques, prisons, eateries, housing projects, martial arts clubs, Islamic bookstores, halal butcher shops, and even black-market rings that raised and sold sheep to fundamentalists for slaughter.

The defense was the protection of potential targets in Paris. Because of the existing fear of riots, the police brass were reluctant to further agitate the public with news of a terrorist plot. And counterterrorism security measures had been in place for months because of conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa. The police quietly augmented the deployments.

“This is one place in Paris where everybody mixes, all races, socioeconomic classes,” Fatima said, driving toward the Arc de Triomphe, the traffic flowing in rivers of light into the portal. “We were coming here with my brothers and sisters when I was young. The
cité,
our apartment complex, was ugly and boring. No cinema, nothing to do. We were coming to the Champs-Élysées to walk, see the lights, go to McDo. Like tourists.”

The avenue was a magnificent corridor of stone, metal and glass. It glowed like a grounded constellation. Saturday night had brought out crowds. Sightseeing buses disgorged Americans, Europeans and Asians. Spotlights and flashbulbs lit up the bustle at a movie premiere. Families lined up at a crepe stand where an African in a chef’s hat worked his spatula with a flourish.

Pescatore saw more faces of immigrant, working-class France than he had seen since his arrival. The youths moved in groups in an international uniform worn with obligatory swagger: hooded sweatshirts, gold chains, baggy low-slung jeans, and basketball shoes. He saw a young man—flattop haircut, sprinter’s build, tracksuit in the colors of the Algerian flag—greet a friend. After shaking hands, they touched their hearts. Pescatore thought that was cool. The girls wore tight pants and miniskirts and the occasional head scarf. He spotted ethnically mixed groups; Belhaj used the phrase
black-blanc-beur
(black-white-Arab).

“Everybody’s pretty well behaved,” Pescatore said. “Of course, it’s wall-to-wall cops.”

The Champs-Élysées was one of the best-policed stretches of pavement in the country. Crime was low, Fatima said, except for petty theft and occasional brawls. Red-and-white patrol cars glided by. Beat cops on foot had been reinforced by a regiment of the CRS, who walked in groups of four. Pescatore remembered that the Commandant had served in the riot squad; he saw jouster-like bulk, bull necks, trousers tucked into laced boots, leather gloves stuck in back pockets, lumbering wide-armed walks.

Belhaj pointed out the undercover officers of the anticrime brigade and her counterterror agency on foot, in cars, and two to a motorcycle. Pescatore put himself inside their heads. Scanning sidewalks and vehicles, mentally rehearsing the quick draw, visualizing a confrontation with a terrorist appearing out of a crowd, imagining their obliteration by a human bomb. They had been staring at photos of Raymond, memorizing his face, forging a psychic bond with their prey.

What a fucking mess you made, bro,
Pescatore thought.

He yawned and rubbed his unshaven cheek. He had changed and taken a quick shower at his hotel. Otherwise he hadn’t stopped since the night before, when the interrogation had ended and Souraya had been allowed to see relatives and a lawyer.

Belhaj had brought Pescatore to her office and asked him to write an e-mail to Raymond. Although Raymond had not mentioned it on the phone, she believed he had received Pescatore’s first e-mail from Buenos Aires. They went over the wording. Pescatore wrote that he was in France and knew Raymond’s wife had been arrested. He offered to mediate with the authorities and implored Raymond to make contact before anybody else got hurt. He gave him his cell phone number and the hotel number as well; the last thing he wanted was to miss another call.

I met Valentín
pequeño, he wrote.
Great kid. They’re taking good care of him. But for his sake, for your family’s sake, this is the time to do the right thing.

Now, Pescatore checked his phone again: no response. Belhaj parked near the place de l’Étoile, the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe where a dozen avenues formed a star. She talked on her radio. Her squad was chasing a tip about suspicious characters stockpiling weapons in a storage basement near the airport. Belhaj opened her door, saying she wanted to take a look at security in the Charles de Gaulle l’Étoile station, an underground hub for the subway and the RER, the regional train line.

Riding down on the escalator, Pescatore saw a police officer walk by between uniformed soldiers with rifles. The RER was the main rail line to the
banlieue.
On weekends and during times of urban unrest, intelligence officers monitored outlying stations and alerted downtown units if street gangs or suspected groups of
casseurs,
vandals, were on their way. With the hospitalized “Jour de Paye” graffiti artist unlikely to survive, the police knew that disturbances would break out in the projects sooner or later. But they were determined to prevent the spectacle of cars burning on the Champs-Élysées, which would hurt tourism, political fortunes, and law enforcement careers.

Riots were the least of Fatima’s worries. Although Souraya had talked about attacks on landmarks, Fatima was concerned about bombs on trains.

“Nobody wants another Madrid or London,” she said as they walked through the crowded station. “The tactic is too easy, too devastating. It has required a lot of work and luck to avoid something like this in France.”

They reached a train platform. A row of riot police and canine units stood along the wall. When the train arrived, the officers stepped forward, eyes roving over the emerging passengers, and intercepted selected young males, mostly in groups and mostly minorities. The police checked their identification cards, questioned them, frisked them, and, for the most part, sent them on their way. It was a largely silent, strangely efficient ritual. The other passengers went about their business unfazed. The youths complied with little resistance.

Another train arrived. The riot police stopped a rowdy group. As the officers ordered them against the wall to be searched, a police German shepherd got overexcited. The dog barked and lunged, leaping against a leash held by a canine officer in a blue jumpsuit.

“Careful with that dog!” snapped a young man with a retro Afro and a T-shirt decorated with a map of the island of Guadalupe. His palms flat on the wall, he glanced fearfully over his shoulder. “He’s trained to bite blacks and Arabs, right?”

The police released the group. The youths loped toward the escalator. Their chant echoed: “It’s payday!”

Pescatore raised his eyebrows at Belhaj. He asked, “So just stop and frisk, no probable cause?”

“The law allows the police to check papers and conduct searches,” she said.

“I don’t want to sound politically correct and everything, but don’t you guys get sued for profiling?”

Belhaj’s phone rang. An informant wanted to meet right away. Pescatore took care to keep his ankle holster concealed when they jumped in the car. Belhaj hit the gas, lights and siren. She blazed into the traffic madness around the Arc de Triomphe.

Out of the blue, her eyes on the street, she asked: “You hurt your foot?”

“What?”

“You walk uneven. Like your foot hurts.”

Pescatore did his best to play it cool. He wasn’t used to wearing a goddamn ankle holster, and it showed.

She’s running the biggest manhunt of her career, but she doesn’t miss a trick,
he thought.
That’s what happens when you try to hide something from the cop you’re sleeping with.

“Oh yeah, well, you know,” he said. “I pulled my hamstring in the Almacén attack. The back of the leg. It clutches up on me now and then. I hurt it when I was dragging my boss, Facundo, after his heart attack. You never met him, he’s plenty big.”

His chuckle sounded weak and forced. But she was distracted by a radio call from her deputy, Laurent. Minutes later, Laurent’s car swung in behind them carrying more investigators. They sped to the Périphérique, the highway encircling the city, and headed east.

Pescatore decided to stave off further inquiries by asking a question that had been nagging at him.

“Fatima, are you in touch with the FBI and CIA?”

Concentrated on driving, she adopted a mock-wary expression with lowered eyebrows.

“Why?”

“Number one, they’re pretty good at finding people when they want to. Especially Americans. Number two, they have questions to answer. What Raymond did for them, why they let him slide last year in Montpellier, like that.”

“They do not know where he is. They are not talkative about him.”

“Do they know I’m working with you?”

“I suppose. I did not ask their permission. I would only discuss you with them if it is urgently relevant.”

He liked that answer. He asked, “Do you buy this idea that Raymond runs the show by himself, like Carlos the Jackal? The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of his generation?”

She glanced at him, her hand resting on top of the wheel.

“No.”

“Me either. Not just because he saved our lives in Bolivia. I’m not convinced he’s the mastermind.”

“Souraya’s perception is inconsistent with facts she does not know.”

“Right. I think he exaggerated his role to impress her. If he’s the boss, I don’t see why he warned about the attacks in South America. And he claimed to me he wasn’t. For what that’s worth.”

They exited at Porte de Pantin past the northeast corner of the Périphérique and zoomed down a boulevard, lights flashing but no sirens.

“I’m looking for motivations,” he continued. “He talks the ideological stuff, but I think it’s more about money. And juice. Glory. He always acted like he was living in a movie.”

“An unusual profile.”

“I think he’s got somebody behind him pushing.”

“En tout cas,
his level in the hierarchy is academic. There is a plot. We must stop him.”

Belhaj’s informant was named Adel. He was a former Islamo-
braqueur,
a professional robber of armored cars who had used the loot to finance extremist causes. She had enlisted him to look into the chatter about a terrorist arsenal in a storage locker. The meet was in Buttes-Chaumont Park. Shrouded in darkness now, the sprawling park featured a lake and a kind of urban mountain range with rock formations. Adel waited in a hillside clearing near a gazebo with a view that was no doubt impressive in the daytime. He shook hands with Belhaj, Pescatore and Laurent, touching his heart each time. The other investigators stood in a loose perimeter.

Adel was in his thirties, with droopy eyes and a falconlike profile beneath short crinkly hair. He spoke in a slow voice with a strong Arabic accent.

“Madame la commissaire,”
he said. “I keep expecting to hear you’ve been named Minister of the Interior.”

“When they make me minister,
habibi,
I’ll appoint you my adviser,” Belhaj said, her charm turned up high.

“Good idea. Special counselor in charge of relations with
la racaille.
”

“Careful using that term in my presence,” Belhaj said, glancing around sarcastically.

Racaille
meant “thugs” or “rabble.” Belhaj had told Pescatore that street guys could use it to refer to themselves, but it became a throw-down insult in the mouth of a cop or politician.

Adel’s appearance straddled the line between thuggish businessman and classy hoodlum. He had a wiry build and wore a maroon jacket over a pressed black shirt and slacks. His manner was courtly and deliberate. He reported that he had tracked down a gun dealer who owned a basement storage unit in a working-class area called Stains. Months earlier, the arms dealer had rented the unit to a group of Islamists. They used it to store the assault rifles, pistols, grenades and ammunition that the dealer had sold them. The dealer had provided the storage as part of the sale and kept the keys to the cache in case of an emergency.

“Last night they show up,” Adel said. “Four of them. They pull the material out of the
cave,
load it into two cars, and leave in a hurry. Like they had a big score in the works. They made it sound like it was a bank or an armored car. But he thinks it’s something else. The kind of thing you folks worry about.”

“Why does he think that?” she asked.

“They are not professionals. He doesn’t believe they’ve done a robbery in their lives. One is a Turk, an ex-convict. But the others are
petits blancs.
Students or radical types. Converts, though they don’t wear beards.”

Petits blancs
meant “white guys,” as far as Pescatore could tell. Adel gave descriptions of vehicles and suspects. Laurent jotted on a notepad.

“Did you get any phones?” Belhaj said.

Adel made a gesture—head back, chest out, arms widespread—that said the question was beneath her. He squinted at his cell phone and read off numbers. Laurent wrote them down.