Tracker stared at the face. Smooth, clean-shaven, beaming—something vaguely familiar. He took from his desk drawer the original print of the photo he had brought back from Islamabad on his iPhone. It was folded over to eliminate the half he did not want. He wanted it now. The other grinning schoolboy, fifteen years ago.
As a single son, the Tracker knew that when two such form a schooltime friendship of best buddies, the bond sometimes never dies. He recalled the warning from Ariel—someone sending e-traffic to the warehouse in Kismayo. The Troll responding to acknowledge receipt with thanks. The Preacher had a friend in the West.
• • •
Captain Mason studied the presumed face of the Preacher, former Zulfiqar Ali Shah, former Abu Azzam, as he would now look. And by its side the picture of the unsuspecting Tony Suárez, out-of-work bit-part actor dwelling in a squat in Malibu.
“Sure, it can be done,” he said at length. “With makeup, hair, wardrobe, contact lenses, script with rehearsal, autocue.” He tapped the photo of the Preacher.
“Does this guy ever speak?”
“Occasionally.”
“Can’t answer for the voice.”
“Leave the voice to me,” said the Tracker.
• • •
Captain Mason, in civilian clothes and calling himself Mr. Mason, flew to Hollywood with a block of dollars and came back with Mr. Suárez. He was lodged in a very comfortable suite in a chain hotel twenty miles from Fort Eustis. To ensure he did not wander, he was assigned a minder in the person of a stunning blond corporal, who was assured all she need do to serve her country was prevent the Californian guest from wandering out of the hotel or into her bedroom for forty-eight hours.
Whether Mr. Suárez believed his services were really desired because of preproduction for an art-house movie being made for a Middle East client with a lot of money to spend was irrelevant. Whether the movie had a plot did not concern him. He was simply content to be in a luxurious suite with a champagne bar, enough dollars to purchase several years of barbecue equipment and the companionship of a blonde who could stop traffic. Capt. Mason had reserved a large conference room in the same hotel and told him the “screen test” would take place the next day.
The team from TRADOC arrived in two unmarked cars and a small van. They took over the conference room and covered all the windows with black paper and masking tape. That done, they constructed the world’s simplest film set.
Basically, it was a bedsheet pinned to the wall. It, too, was black, and there were Koranic inscriptions on it in cursive Arab script. The sheet had been prepared in the workshop of one of the sound sets at Fort Eustis. It was a replica of the backdrop to all the broadcasts of the Preacher. In front of it was placed a simple wooden chair with arms.
At the other end of the hall, chairs, tables and lights created two working spaces for “Wardrobe” and “Makeup.” No one doing any of this had the faintest idea why.
The camera technician set up his camcorder, facing the chair. One of his colleagues sat in the chair to assist with range, focus and clarity. The sound engineer checked levels. The autocue operator set up his screen just under the camera lens so that the speaker’s eyeline would appear to be straight into the camera.
Mr. Suárez was led in and taken to Wardrobe, where a matronly senior sergeant, in civvies like everyone else, was waiting with the robe and headdress he would wear. These, too, had been selected by the Tracker from TRADOC’s enormous resources, with alterations performed by the wardrobe mistress, studying photographs of the Preacher.
“I don’t have to speak any Ayrab, do I?” protested Tony Suárez. “No one mentioned Ayrab.”
“Absolutely not,” he was assured by Mr. Mason, who now appeared to be directing. “Well, a couple of words, but it doesn’t matter about the pronunciation. Here, check them out, just to get the lip synch about right.” He gave Suárez a card with several Arabic words on it.
“Shit, man, these are complicated.”
An older man, who had been waiting quietly against the wall, stepped forward.
“Try and imitate me,” he said, and pronounced the foreign words like an Arab. Suárez tried. It was not the same, but the lips moved in the right direction. The dubbing would complete the job. Tony Suárez moved to the makeup chair. It took an hour.
The experienced makeup artist deepened the skin tone to make it slightly more swarthy. The black beard and mustache were applied. The shamagh headdress covered the hair of the scalp. Finally, the contact lenses gave the actor those arresting amber eyes. When he rose and turned, the Tracker was sure he was facing the Preacher.
Tony Suárez was led to the chair and sat down. Camcorder and sound levels, focus and autocue, received minor adjustments. The actor had spent an hour in the makeup chair, studying the text he would be reading off the autocue. He had most of it memorized, and though the Arabic did not sound like an Arab speaker, he had ceased to stumble over it.
“And cue,” said Capt. Mason. One day, he dreamed, he would be saying that to Brad Pitt and George Clooney. The film extra began to speak.
The Tracker murmured in Mason’s ear.
“More solemn, Tony,” said Mason. “It’s a confession. You’re the Grand Vizier telling the Sultan he got it all wrong, and he’s sorry. OK, roll again. And cue.”
After eight takes, Suárez had peaked and was fading. The Tracker called a halt.
“OK, people, it’s a wrap,” said Mason. He loved that phrase. The crew dismantled everything they had built. Tony Suárez was restored to his jeans and sweatshirt, clean-shaven and smelling faintly of cleansing cream. Wardrobe and Makeup were repacked and went back to the truck. The bedsheet came down, was rolled up and removed. The windows were cleared of black paper and tape.
While this was going on, the Tracker had the camcorder technician give him the five best takes of the brief speech. He chose the one he wanted and had the others erased.
The voice of the actor was still pure Californian. But the Tracker knew of a British TV mimic who had his audiences in stitches with his uncanny imitations of celebrities’ voices. He would fly across for the day and be well paid. Technicians would get the lip synch exact.
They handed the rented conference hall back to the hotel. Tony Suárez regretfully checked out of his suite and was driven back to Washington National and his night plane to Los Angeles. The Fort Eustis team was much closer to home and were there by sundown.
They had had a fun day, but they had never heard of the Preacher and had not the faintest idea what they had done. But the Tracker knew. He knew that when he launched what was in the cassette in his hand, there was going to be absolute chaos among the forces of Jihadism.
• • •
The man who descended with a smattering of Somalis from the Turkish airliner at Mogadishu airport had a passport that declared him to be a Dane, and other papers in five languages, including Somali, that identified him as working for the Save the Children fund.
His real name was not Jensen, and he worked for the Collections Division (general espionage) of Mossad. He had flown the previous day from Ben Gurion Airport to Larnaca in Cyprus, switched name and nationality, then flown on to Istanbul.
There was a long and tiresome wait in the business-class transit lounge for the flight south to Somalia, with a staging stop at Djibouti. But Turkish Airlines was still the only national flag carrier to serve Mogadishu.
It was eight a.m. and already hot out on the tarmac as the fifty passengers straggled into the arrivals building, the Somalis from economy class shouldering the three from business out of the way. The Dane was in no hurry; he waited his turn in front of the passport officer.
He had no visa, of course; visas are purchased on arrival, as he knew, having been there before. The passport officer studied the previous entry and exit stamps and studied his list. There was no ban on anyone called Jensen.
The Dane slipped a fifty-dollar bill under the glass screen.
“For the visa,” he m
urmured in English. The officer slid the note toward him, then noticed another fifty-dollar bill in the pages of the passport.
“A little something for your children,” murmured the Dane.
The passport officer nodded. He did not smile but stamped in the visa, glanced at the yellow fever chit, folded the passport, nodded and handed it back. For his children, of course. An honorable gift. Nice to meet a European who knew the rules.
There were two dilapidated taxis outside. The Dane hefted his single grip into the first, climbed in and said, “Peace Hotel, please.” The driver headed for the gated entrance to the airport compound, guarded by Ugandan soldiers.
The airport is in the center of the African Union military base, an inner zone of the Mogadishu enclave, surrounded by barbed wire, sandbags, blast walls and patrolled by Casper armored personnel carriers of the Union. Within the fortress is another fortress: Bancroft camp is where the “whiteys” live, the several hundred staff of contractors, aid agencies, visiting media and a few ex-mercenaries working as bodyguards for the fat cats.
The Americans lived inside their own compound at the far end of the runway, home to their embassy, some hangars of undisclosed contents and a training school for young Somalis being schooled to, one day, slip back into dangerous Somalia as American agents. Those who knew Somalia from long and disenchanting experience felt this to be a very fond hope indeed.
Also in the inner sanctuary, passing the windows of the moving car, were the other minisettlements for the United Nations, African Union senior officers, European Union and even the dowdy British embassy, which insisted with passion and mendacity that it was not another “spook central.”
The Dane Jensen did not dare stay inside Bancroft. He might meet another Dane or a real worker with Save the Children. He was headed for the one hotel outside the blast walls where a white man might stay with reasonable security.
The taxi passed through the last manned gate—more red-and-white-striped poles, more Ugandans—and out on the one-mile strip to central Mogadishu. Though it was not his first trip, the Dane was still amazed at the sea of rubble to which twenty years of civil war had reduced the once elegant African city.
The cab turned up an alley; a paid street urchin hauled aside a tangle of barbed wire, and a nine-foot-high steel gate creaked open. There had been no communication; someone was watching through a hole.
With the cab paid off, the Dane checked in and was shown to his room; small, just functional, with frosted windows (against occupant recognition) and curtains drawn (against the heat). He stripped off, stood for a while under the tepid dribble from the shower, did his best to soap and dry, and changed clothing.
In flip-flops, rough canvas jeans and a long, no-button cotton shirt, he was wearing much what a local Somali might wear. There was a satchel slung over one shoulder and wraparound dark glasses. The hands were tanned from the Israeli sun. The pale face and blond hair were clearly European.
He knew a place that rented scooters. A second taxi, summoned by the Peace Hotel, took him there. In the cab he removed the shamagh from his satchel. He wrapped the basic Arab headdress around the blond locks and drew the trailing tail across the face, tucking the hem into the fold on the other side. There was nothing suspicious in this; those who wear a shamagh often protect the nose and mouth against the constant dust and sand gusts.
He rented a rickety white Piaggio moped; the renter knew him from previous visits. Always requiring a substantial dollar deposit, the vehicle always returned intact, no need for silly formalities like a license.
Joining the stream of donkey carts, falling-to-pieces trucks, pickups and other scooters, avoiding the occasional camel or pedestrian, looking exactly like a Somali going about his business, the Dane puttered down Maka al-Mukarama, the highway slicing through the center of Mogadishu.
He passed the gleaming white Isbahaysiga Mosque, impressive for its lack of damage, and glanced across the road to something less attractive. The Darawsha refugee camp had not been moved or improved since his last visit. It was still a sea of hovel/squalor, housing ten thousand hungry and frightened refugees. They had no sanitation, food, employment or hope, and their children played in the urine pools. They were truly, he thought, those Frantz Fanon had called the wretched of the Earth, and Darawsha was one of eighteen poverty cities inside the enclave. The Western aid agencies tried, but it was an impossible job.
The Dane glanced at his cheap watch. He was on time. The meetings were always at twelve noon. The man he had come to see would glance at the usual spot. If he was not there—ninety-nine percent of the time—the other man would get on with his life. If he was there, the signals would be exchanged.
The moped took him to the ruined Italian Quarter. A white man going there without a large armed escort would be a fool. The danger was not murder but kidnapping. A European or American could be worth up to two million dollars. But with Somali sandals, African shirt and shamagh around his head and face, the Israeli agent felt safe if he kept it short.
The fish come ashore every morning at a small horseshoe bay opposite the al-Uruba Hotel, where the surge of the Indian Ocean throws the fishing skiffs out of the swell and onto the beach. Then the skinny dark men who have fished all night carry their jacks, kings and shark up to the market shed, hoping for buyers.
The market is two hundred yards from the bay, a ninety-foot, unlit shed stinking of fish, some fresh, some not. The Dane’s agent was the market manager. At noon, as he was paid to do every day, Mr. Kaamal Duale stepped out of his office and surveyed the crowd gazing at the market.
Most had come to buy, but not yet. Those with money would get the fresh fish; in one-hundred-degree heat, without any form of refrigeration, it would start to smell quite quickly. Then bargains were to be had.
If Mr. Duale was surprised to see his handler in the crowd, he did not give a sign of it. He simply stared. He nodded. The man astride the Piaggio nodded back and raised his right hand across his chest. Fingers spread, closed, spread again. There were two more slight nods, and the scooterist wheeled away. The rendezvous was set: usual place, ten tomorrow morning.
The next day the Dane descended for breakfast at eight. He was in luck, there were eggs. He took two, fried, with bread and tea. He did not want to eat much; he was trying not to use the lavatory.
His scooter was parked by the compound wall. At half past nine he kicked it into life, waited for the steel gate to open and let him out and headed back toward the gate of the African Union camp. As he approached the concrete blocks and the guardhouse, he reached up to snatch off his shamagh. The blond hair at once gave him away.
A Ugandan soldier emerged from the shelter, rifle unslung. But just short of the barrier pole, the blond rider swerved away, raised a hand and called, “Jambo.”
The Ugandan, hearing his native Swahili, lowered his gun. Another crazy mzungu. He just wanted to go back home, but the pay was good, and he would soon have enough for cattle and a wife. The mzungu swerved into the parking lot of the Village Café beside the entrance gate, stopped and went in.
The fish market manager was at a table, taking coffee. The Dane went to the bar and ordered the same, thinking of the rich, aromatic coffee he could get at the cafeteria back at the office in Tel Aviv.
They did the exchange in the men’s room of the Village Café, as always. The Dane produced dollars, the world’s common currency even in the hostile lands. The Somali watched with appreciation as they were counted out.
There would be a portion for the fisherman who would carry the message south to Kismayo in the morning, but he would be paid in virtually valueless Somali shillings. Duale would keep all the dollars, saving for the day when he had enough to emigrate.
And there was the consignment, a short aluminum tube like the sort used to protect fine cigars. But this was custom-made, stronger and heavier. He secreted it inside his waistband.
Back in his office, he had a small, rugged generator, secretly donated by the Israelis. I
t ran on the most dubious kerosene, but it made electricity. This could power his air conditioner and his fridge/freezer. He was the only man in the fish market who always had fresh fish.
Among these was a yard-long kingfish, purchased that morning and now frozen rock-solid. In the evening his fisherman would take it, with the tube rammed deep into its entrails, and sail south, fishing all the way, landing two days later at the fish dock at Kismayo.
There he would sell the kingfish, no longer quite fresh, to a tally clerk at the market and say it was from his friend. He did not know why nor did he care. He was just another poor Somali trying to raise four sons to take over his skiff when they were able.
The two men in the Village Café emerged, finished their coffee separately and left, also separately. Mr. Duale took his tube home and rammed it into the deep stomach of the frozen kingfish. The blond man wrapped his shamagh around his head and face and motored back to the rental garage. He returned the Piaggio, recovered most of his deposit, and the renter gave him a lift to the hotel. There were no cabs about, and he did not want to lose a good, if irregular, client.
The Dane had to wait until the departing Turkish Airlines flight at eight the next morning. He killed the time reading a novel in English in his room. Then a bowl of camel stew and bed.
In the dusk the fisherman put the kingfish, wrapped in wet sacking, in the fish locker of his skiff. But he slashed the tail to mark it out from any others he might catch. Then he put to sea, turned south and spread his lines.
At nine the next day, after the usual boarding chaos, the Turkish airliner lifted off. The Dane watched the buildings and fortifications of Bancroft camp fall away. Far to the south, a fishing skiff, lateen sail bending to the wind, plodded past Marka. The airliner turned north, refueled at Djibouti and in midafternoon landed at Istanbul.
The Dane from the Save the Children fund stayed airside, raced through the transit procedures and caught the last flight to Larnaca. He changed name, passport and ticket in his hotel room and took the first flight the next day back to Tel Aviv.