The Convert's Song (25 page)

Few casualties remained in the shrine. Police did investigative work. Militia fighters—who apparently had as much clout as cops in this area—helped the bearded, turbaned clerics clean up. With rags, mops and pails, fighters and clerics pushed the debris into piles. They paused now and then, looked up and thumped their heads and chests in sorrow.

The sheikh joined the lamentation. He turned in a dismayed circle, taking it all in. He tottered suddenly. Pescatore gripped his fleshy arm to steady him. The sheikh pointed.

It took Pescatore a moment to comprehend that he was looking at a heap of human remains.

“People,” the sheikh said, grimacing.

“God rest their souls,” Pescatore said.

He was beyond shock, beyond nausea. Carnage followed him. Or worse, he brought it with him.

Pescatore turned to Raymond. But Raymond wasn’t paying attention. He was on the phone, talking fast, ready to move on.

T
he safe house was on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad.

The vehicle carrying the brigadier’s men took a circuitous route. The Suburban followed. Eventually, Raymond and Pescatore switched from the Suburban to the lead vehicle. Pescatore was told to leave his cell phone with Mustafa, the driver, who would wait at a distance.

They arrived twenty minutes later. The residential street was lined with high walls and palm trees. A chubby teenager opened a gate. Guards with rifles appeared in the driveway. The two-story house had a pastel Southern California look—except for the lack of paint and repairs. The lawn was a wilderness of weeds. A well-to-do Sunni family had abandoned the home when sectarian combat turned the area into the fiefdom of a Shiite militia. Brigadier Ali had commandeered the property to use it as an occasional base.

“He could operate out of the Iranian embassy if he wanted,” Raymond said. “The ambassador was in the Quds Force with him. But this is discreet.”

Pescatore counted nine gunmen, including three in the vehicle. Civilian clothes, but they carried themselves like soldiers. Raymond turned over his pistol to a guard and Pescatore followed suit. The guard gave Pescatore a quick pat-down—and near heart failure. It was not an aggressive frisk, however. His being with Raymond ensured respectful treatment. Raymond waded into a flurry of handshakes, backslaps, heart-touching,
salaam alaikum
s and
alhamdulillah
s. Pescatore wished he would turn the volume down. Pescatore had gone from jaw-grinding tension to subdued anticipation. He smoothed his clothes and centered his belt buckle.

The guards said the brigadier had not yet arrived. Pescatore and Raymond waited on a raised veranda.

“Shouldn’t be long,” Raymond said. “How you doing?”

“Slow motion.”

“Hey, Ahmed, is that a soccer ball?”

Raymond jogged down the three steps. A guard was poking his foot at a black-and-white ball half hidden in the weeds. The guard kicked the ball to Raymond. He spun it up on his foot and passed it back. They began kicking the ball back and forth, moving into the driveway.

“Ahmed Zidane!” Raymond declared.

The youthful guard grinned. He clung to the rifle strapped over his shoulder as he lunged to trap a high pass. With his leonine hair and beard, he resembled a cross between Imam Ali and a Bee Gee.

“Valentín, come on,” Raymond called, waving at him. “A little keep-up drill.”

The last thing Pescatore wanted to do was play soccer. But he’d look bad if he declined. He joined the three-way game. The objective was to keep the ball in the air. When they were kids, Pescatore and Raymond had done this for hours. Raymond had been a wizard. He had put more energy into juggling—a good way to impress girls—than he did into games. His moves now were masterly. He clowned and danced. He delivered commentary in English, Arabic and Spanish. He engaged Pescatore in a short-range volley of head passes. Pescatore was rusty; he lost the ball several times and had to run into the high weeds to retrieve it. The guards moved closer to watch. Pescatore spun to fire a back-heel pass.

“Dale, maestro!”
Raymond said. “Puttin’ on a show!”

Raymond caught the ball on top of his right foot and balanced it there. He went into a joyful exhibition: foot to foot, thigh to thigh, low balls, high balls. He ducked forward and hunched his shoulders, forming a cradle to catch the descending ball on his neck. He held the ball there behind his head, arms wide like a statue of a soaring man. Maintaining the stance, he let out a triumphant whoop. The guards cheered. Pescatore joined in.

The guards stiffened. Raymond’s sudden pass whizzed by Pescatore’s head. He jogged onto the lawn in pursuit of the ball, then surveyed the scene from the weeds.

Brigadier Ali had materialized on the veranda. Two gunmen flanked him. Ali had his lips clamped on a thin cigar. He raised his hands and clapped with a kind of sardonic benevolence.

The Iranian general must have entered the compound on foot. Either that or he had already been inside the house. Probably watching from a window.

If Raymond was embarrassed, he shrugged it off. He gave Brigadier Ali a hug and kisses on the cheek. Pescatore tossed the ball aside. He approached the veranda and stood at attention.

“General, it is my pleasure to finally introduce my friend Valentín, about whom you have already heard so much,” Raymond said ceremoniously.

Pescatore went up the steps. They shook hands. Brigadier Ali gripped his left biceps, as if gauging his strength. Pescatore said it was an honor.

“The honor is mine.” Ali spoke accented English. His smile was brief.

He led them into the house. The two gunmen followed them upstairs into a smell of dust and intermittent use. The gunmen opened a door to a study and took up positions in the hall outside. In the bare and dimly lit study, the Iranian sat in a high-backed leather chair behind an oak desk which had a laptop computer and two cell phones on top of it. A picture window overlooked the lawn and driveway. The air conditioner was not doing much.

Pescatore had spent hours reading and listening to briefings about the brigadier. The combined might of several spy agencies had produced few pictures. None was more recent than the photo in Bolivia six years before. Ali was fifty-three now. His shoulders and neck were meaty and powerful in a collarless shirt of gray silk. He had a slight and solid belly. His short, well-groomed beard had acquired tinges of gray. His hairline had receded farther, a narrow rampart cresting above the middle of his forehead. He had thin hard lips bracketed by indented lines descending from his nostrils. He wore a designer watch. When he stared intently, he lowered his narrow chin, raised his eyes, and tilted his head—the coiled pose of a world-class chess grand master who played on a board piled with corpses and cash. A high-rolling gangster general.

For once, Raymond didn’t talk. A bodyguard poured tea and left.

“You are very young.”

The voice had a coiled quality too. Brigadier Ali said the words with a hint of surprise and disappointment. Pescatore took it in stride. People tended to think he was younger than he was. The brigadier had started with a challenge to test his mettle. He reacted as if it were a compliment.

“Thank you, sir. Actually, I’m only a year younger than Raymond.”

“It’s true,” Raymond said. “He knows how to handle himself. You should have seen him today. We had a problem near the shrine.”

Raymond told the story of the bombing and the brawl, displaying his black eye. Brigadier Ali shook his head indulgently, paternally. Pescatore remembered Raymond saying Ali had four daughters. Raymond wasn’t just the protégé and partner in crime. He was a proxy son, brash, charismatic and spoiled.

Raymond crowed about how Pescatore had dropped a larger opponent.

“No big deal, I used to box,” Pescatore said, lifting his fists. “Did some wrestling too.”

The brigadier’s smile lasted longer this time. He said he had been a military wrestling champion many years ago. Pescatore knew this from a briefing, which was why he had mentioned wrestling in the first place. In reality, his experience with wrestling was limited to high-school gym class.

“You see it here and here.” Brigadier Ali touched his own nose, which was flat and slightly dented, and a misshapen right ear. “These are not sports for pretty boys.”

Raymond chortled with gusto. Brigadier Ali asked about Pescatore’s background and family. He answered with the truth. This wasn’t exactly undercover; he was playing a modified version of himself.

The general’s chin went down, the eyes went up, and the head tilted.

“I am curious why you are here, what motivates you,” he said quietly. “Have you become one of us? Do you believe there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet?”

“No, sir. No, I sure don’t. I used to be Roman Catholic, but I got disgusted with the priests and everything. That turned me off religion.”

“What are your views on the Islamic Republic of Iran?”

“I don’t have strong opinions one way or the other. No, sir, I’ll be straight with you. My motivation is money. The more, the better.”

“That is all?”

“There’s another thing,” Pescatore said, putting rancor in his voice. “I really dislike the U.S. government. They treated me very badly. I’m sick of their shit and they deserve what they get.”

Ali nodded knowingly. “How long were you a border policeman?”

“Six years.”

It had actually been closer to five. He chided himself; details like that could be checked. He sipped tea. Sweat pooled at the back of his neck and on his upper lip. The room was stuffy; the cigar smoke didn’t help. He described his career in the Patrol. He painted a portrait of a resentful agent who felt used and abandoned. A distortion built on a kernel of truth.

“I’ve done TDYs—temporary missions—in California, Texas, and Arizona. I’ve investigated smuggling, so I know the networks that move migrants. I have sources in Mexican law enforcement and the drug cartels, which overlap, as you know, sir.”

“Los narcos mexicanos son los más fuertes,”
Brigadier Ali said. He spoke decent Spanish with a Caribbean inflection.

“Afirmativo, mi general.”
Pescatore widened his eyes amiably. He saw Raymond nod in approval. Raymond’s leg was jiggling nonstop. It was making Pescatore even more nervous.

“We find it difficult to operate in Mexico.” The Iranian frowned. “Troubles with Mexican intelligence. Very aggressive.”

“Yes, sir. I’m not surprised. You might as well be flying into Miami. U.S. agents are right there with the Mexicans at the airports. They do targeting of passenger manifests for threats. The CISEN, the Mexican intelligence service, they’re tough. They work with the Americans tracking SIAs, special interest aliens, from countries with a terrorist or hostile intelligence presence. You, sir, would be considered an SIA. And an OTM: other than Mexican. The Mexicans make SIAs available to the CIA for questioning, in person or by videoconference.”

He was tossing out acronyms to enhance his expert status and because he was on edge. The soldier digested the terms, filing them in his head. He gestured at Pescatore to continue.

“The bottom line is, General, the Mexicans—cops and narcos—know U.S. psychology. They want a good business environment. They help the Americans on anything related to Islamic terrorism. They understand no one cares if the narcos massacre seventy Central American migrants. But if a Pakistani crosses the Line from Tijuana and shoots five Americans in the Horton Plaza shopping center in San Diego, and it traces back to training with al-Qaeda, then the shit hits the fan.”

“A disaster,” Raymond explained. “A political uproar.”

“Congressional committees, media frenzy, bosses getting fired. It would hurt commerce and Mexican-American relations.”

“Un tremendo lío,”
Brigadier Ali said, showing off his slang.

“Exactamente, mi general.
Like that case a couple of years ago when your guys tried to hire the Zetas cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Big mistake. The op was doomed from the get-go. The Zetas associate that your man contacted damn near broke his leg running to tell the DEA. Why in the world would a Mexican drug cartel, which makes millions of dollars a day, want to get involved in Islamic terrorism? Why would the Zetas want to bring down the U.S. military on their heads? Crazy. I’m surprised the Quds Force was that unsophisticated.”

Although he had feared coming off as disrespectful, his candor was rewarded. The general waved the cigar dismissively in a flurry of smoke. “This was amateur. My group is functioning at another level entirely.”

“I sure hope so.” Pescatore scowled, playing the hard-ass professional to the hilt now. “What you have to do is hide your fingerprints. You need an intermediary who isn’t Middle Eastern. A Spanish-speaking American like me who can recruit, pay bribes, facilitate.”

“What is the best way to infiltrate a team into the United States?”

Brigadier Ali leaned forward, his heavy hands extended on the oak. Pescatore sipped tea to slow himself down.

“Well, I hate to take money out of my own pocket, sir. But really the best thing would be to send them in legally through an airport, with clean passports from a visa waiver country. Europe, Australia, someplace like that.”

Ali nodded, acknowledging his rigor. “No, the Mexico border.”

“Then it depends on who the team are. If they’re Latin, it’s easier.”

“Assume they might or might not be,” Raymond said.

“Either way, they should have Latin American passports. They could fly into Central America, maybe from Ecuador or Venezuela, which are wide open border-wise and friendly to you guys. If the operatives cross illegally from Guatemala into Mexico, we find smugglers with Mexican police protection, specialists in clients like Indians and Chinese who pay fifty thousand a head. That’s why they don’t get robbed and raped and kidnapped as much as the Central Americans. The Mexicans need to think your guys are VIP illegal immigrants, not terrorists.”

“Do you know smugglers?”

“Yes, sir. At the U.S. line, sir, you have two choices. The ports of entry are easiest if we have a connection. We pay off a CBP field operations inspector and he just waves a vehicle past his booth. The downside is, there are a lot of eyes at a port. The other way is through open land: the desert or the mountains. It takes longer, it’s physically demanding, dangerous. Allies inside the Border Patrol could help.”

“Good.” Ali put down his cigar. “What were you doing in Argentina?”

That caught him off guard. The conversation had been clicking along as he had envisioned it. But Raymond had warned him: Ali is a
cabrón.
He changes topics like a prosecutor. He messes with your head. Be ready.

Inadvertently, Pescatore wiped sweat from his upper lip. “Argentina?”

“Yes.” The stare was a laser. The smile had vanished.

This was a vulnerable aspect of the cover story. Raymond had said the Iranians didn’t know about Pescatore’s work for Facundo. If they did, that was a problem. If they had found out the Argentine police had arrested him as a suspect, that could reveal Raymond’s attempt to warn him and might end up with both of them dead.