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Again, for Margo,
who asks the right questions
and should never stop asking them
PART ONE
EXPENDABLE TURTLE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, TO THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 2019
1
It’s easy to forget, now that so many facts have been laid bare, but we once lived in a state of holy ignorance. We didn’t believe this to be the case. No, we studied the world and examined facts and argued over their interpretation. We took newspapers with a grain of salt, because to depend on strangers for knowledge was foolishness. Verification was our go-to word. We even debated whether or not the facts themselves could be trusted, and this sort of meta-analysis made us feel like we were truly critical, that we were looking at the world unencumbered by Pollyanna notions. We were wrong. Sometime over the past fifty years the center of the world had moved, and we hadn’t noticed.
You would imagine that I’m talking about regular people, citizens going about their days focused on bread and love and children. I could be, but for fourteen years I had worked as an analyst for America’s premier foreign intelligence agency, and even in the halls of Langley, armed to the teeth with secret information and specialized enlightenment, we wallowed in the same kind of ignorance. We made policy recommendations and sent employees out into the world, sometimes to die, based on a basic misunderstanding of how the world functioned.
For half a century, we were distracted. We let the wrong people grow stronger, so that by the time we were able to look directly at them and see them for what they were, it was too late to draw up search warrants and set court dates and frog-march them in orange vests to Leavenworth. That would have been a better, cleaner solution.
I joined CIA from graduate school in 2005, seduced by a pale poli-sci professor who had spent a mysterious part of his youth in Prague. Though my stated interest, when asked, was international relations, that was only an excuse to get at the thing that truly excited my younger self: secret knowledge. Fieldwork was naturally attractive, but I’d quickly discounted myself. My social skills have always been lackluster, my physical courage less a known fact than a hypothetical, and confrontations have never gone well for me. In short, I was temperamentally unfit to be a spy, but I knew how to strategize, and I knew how to analyze. Despite my inability to charm them, I understood people because I had always observed them from the outside, as if through a microscope.
It helped that I looked different. In Boston, among the pink-cheeked children of America’s aristocracy, or the striving descendants of the African labor that had built the country, I was never quite one with any of them. My skin set me apart from the former, my lack of enslaved pedigree from the latter. When I told them my people were Sahrawi, they blinked ignorantly, and I knew I could fill that void with whatever I liked. That we were Saharan royalty, that we ran caravans loaded with gold, that we kept our own slaves. I didn’t, but I easily could have. And when my older brother later died in the African hinterlands, I could have made that part of my mythology, too, but I didn’t have it in me to do that.
What my professor understood, which I hadn’t, was that this outsider status was precisely what would endear me to the Agency. He said, “You were born here, but your parents weren’t. How does that feel, Abdul?”
I told him that it made me feel mildly schizophrenic. My soul was in this country, while my heart was tied to a place I didn’t know.
“And you speak Arabic.”
“Hassānīya Arabic, yes, and I’ve studied modern standard.”
“Do you dream it?”
I smiled, shrugged, nodded.
“Photographic memory, I’m told.”
“No. Just a good one. Like, I don’t have to take notes at your lectures.”
“I’ve noticed,” he said. Then: “Sunni, yes?”
Four years earlier rogue members of the Sunni faith had declared war on America in an explosive fashion, so it was inevitable that I hesitated. “I was raised that way,” I told him.
“How does that make you feel?” he asked pointedly.
I was unsure what he was getting at. “It makes me feel that the world is more complicated than people believe.”
He might have pressed further but chose not to. Instead, he moved to the core of his pitch: “And you want to understand how the world really works.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
He rocked his head, chewing the inside of his lip. “No, Abdul. Not everyone. Most people don’t. But I can connect you with people who do understand.”
Which is to say that he fooled me, just as he was fooling himself, because fourteen years later neither of us knew how the world really worked. We only looked at it through a more sophisticated lens and believed that our lens was the highest resolution that could be achieved short of divinity. Belief usually isn’t enough.
In the outside world, what some would call the real world, I’d fallen in love with another first-generationer, Laura Pozzolli, a beautiful linguist with a biting wit and an instinctive sense for right and wrong that I could never match. By January 2019, we had been married seven years. Our son, Rashid, was six.
There is nothing like a family to help you discover the limits of your abilities. At the office I swam like a shark from one project to the next, my analytical skills put eagerly to the test against country after country, yet at home I was a turtle, graceful in one moment, struggling on muddy banks the next. The tension between home and work did not get better with time, and when the phone periodically rang in the middle of dinner and I had to drive off to examine time-sensitive cables or captured documents from terrorist safe houses, the look on Laura’s face told me more than her occasional outbursts ever would: This was not what she’d signed up for. She’d been raised by a Communist father who had always endeavored to take on half of the child-rearing himself, and when her parents met me they warned her that, no matter how good my intentions, I would inevitably fall back on the ways of my culture, leaving her with the babies and housekeeping. We’d laughed about that, though I never told Laura that after meeting her my mother criticized the girth of her hips, then pointedly asked in Hassānīya how many grandchildren she could expect.
I’d like to say that I worked overtime to alleviate my in-laws’ worries, but when I look back there’s little sign I really tried. When Paul, my section chief, called, I never said no, and when Laura pointed this out I asked her who she thought was going to pay the mortgage. Quite rightly, she accused me of becoming my father.
It was on such a night that the phone rang, and Laura glared at me from across the table as I answered it. Rashid was twirling spaghetti on his fork, unaware of the tension. By the time I hung up, Laura was covering my plate with plastic wrap on the counter. I told her I didn’t know what time I’d get back, but that wasn’t news. Security prevented me learning anything until I’d arrived at headquarters.
2
On th
e cold drive to Langley, I listened to NPR. For the past three weeks, the president had refused to fund the government, demanding money for his southern border wall, leading to a shutdown of basic government services. Then the news turned to the Russian-tainted 2016 presidential election; Nexus founder Gilbert Powell had testified before Congress on his company’s extensive safeguards against foreign attack. Unlike his contemporaries from Facebook and Google, Powell soothed his audience with a mix of charm and perfectly remembered statistics. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I drove, if tonight’s cable or fresh intelligence might touch on this or another of our current national obsessions.
The interconnected offices of Africa section are in the original building, looking every one of their seventy years. As I passed through security there was no visible sign of the government shutdown. Agency work went on as usual.
Paul was in his office, the air bone dry from the overworked radiators, with two women who chose not to stand when he brought me inside. Though they were vague about their positions and only shared their given names—Sally and Mel—it was clear that they were creatures of the seventh floor, because Paul always deferred to them, something I’d only seen in the presence of the director himself.
“We have an issue in Western Sahara,” Paul told me.
Sally passed over a thick yet heavily redacted file. Inside, I found a graying white man staring back at me. Oddly familiar—where had I seen him? Late forties, though photos on later pages (surveillance shots on mildly familiar European streets, one in Manhattan) suggested he was older. The flesh around his eyes was dark, and his long nose, in one shot, looked as if it had been broken. On the third page I found his birthdate—June 21, 1970. His name was Milo Weaver.
Most of the things I learned in that office didn’t come from the blacked-out file but from Sally and Mel. They explained that Weaver had once been one of ours, though no one wanted to tell me which department he’d come from, and in 2008 he had left to work with the United Nations. Again, no one wanted to tell me whether or not the split was amicable, and the page that might have told me this was a mess of thick black lines. The only entirely unredacted page was in the back, a list of twenty questions that began:
1. Please list your locations between October 4, 2018, and today.
October 4 … yes, now I remembered—Milo Weaver’s face had shown up on an Interpol Red Notice in October. The Red Notice, as far as I knew, was still live.
“These questions are for him?” I asked.
Mel, a tight-lipped Latina in a beige pantsuit, tilted her head and nodded. “Weaver’s been on the periphery for years. We catch sight of him in the background at UN functions. Periodically shows up at their New York Headquarters. Supposedly part of UNESCO, but we know better.”
“I don’t. What does that mean?”
She ignored my question and pushed on. “Then in May of last year, he was in New York meeting with the Bureau.”
“With Assistant Director Rachel Proulx, out in the open,” Sally picked up, smiling grimly.
“The Bureau,” Paul said contemptuously.
The women grinned; everyone enjoyed teasing the FBI.
“Rachel Proulx,” I said, remembering newspaper headlines and cable news talking heads. “Wasn’t she connected to the Massive Brigade case?”
“Yes,” Mel said.
“Why was she meeting with UNESCO?” I asked.
“She doesn’t talk to us,” Mel said bitterly. “But Weaver—you’ll see in the file. Long history with the Massive Brigade. In fact, he saved Martin Bishop’s life in Europe ten years ago, and continued to help him, all the way to 2017. A lot of people are no longer with us because Weaver aided and abetted that terrorist.”
It didn’t make any sense. Why would the UN help a radical group that we’d put on the terrorist list? Or was this Milo Weaver acting independently? Either way, it was a damning connection. Martin Bishop’s Massive Brigade had terrified the nation for a long time until the FBI took out its leadership. But then, unexpectedly, the remnants of the Brigade rose up, as one. Their second reign of terror last year had spread with bombs, shootings, bank robberies, and demonstrations that crippled whole cities, all led by a stern-looking middle-aged acolyte named Ingrid Parker. Her face had been plastered across every screen and front page for months; she became the representative of chaos. The last big act they committed had been in June, when a truck bomb exploded outside Houston’s Toyota Center during a basketball tournament, killing three. And then, for the last half year, silence. Not a single sighting or online screed.
“I thought the Massive Brigade was disbanded,” I said, because this was what everyone assumed.
Mel looked over at Sally, who raised her eyebrow. “Well,” Sally said, “we’ve got word from the Germans that Ingrid Parker was seen in Berlin. Coordinating with European radicals.”
“Which would explain their silence,” Mel pointed out. “We might not know what they’re up to, but you can bet it’s big.”
I tapped the file. “And you think Milo Weaver can tell us what it is.”
“Bingo,” Mel said.
Sally leaned closer. “He dropped off the grid in October. Then, yesterday—three whole months later—we find out he’s in Laayoune, Western Sahara.”
“Why there?”
“Why do you think, Abdul?”
Laayoune, which the Spanish called El Aaiún, is the capital of the disputed desert expanse just south of Morocco called Western Sahara. It’s where my people come from. Yet despite my knowledge of its industries and history and culture, I was no expert on the city itself. The closest I’d ever come to it was a disastrous week in Rabat with my brother, Haroun, in 2000, when I was still a teenager. We’d been looking to connect with our heritage. A mugging and a visit to a questionable brothel was as close as I’d ever gotten, though Haroun returned to explore further and pushed on, making it all the way to Laayoune. He, however, was no longer available, and it looked like I was the most qualified person in the building.
“Milo Weaver is there because it’s an excellent place to hide.”
This seemed to satisfy them, in the same way that we’re all satisfied when experts give us unequivocal opinions. We forget that everyone has an agenda, even if it’s as mundane as keeping their jobs.
“And the position on the ground there?” asked Sally. “I’m not familiar.”
I gave them a quick history lesson. In 1975, after controlling the area for almost a century, Spain handed it over to Morocco and Mauritania. By the next year, the Polisario Front had proclaimed an independent Sahrawi republic and was at war with both countries, supported with arms from Algeria. Mauritania pulled out in 1979, and in 1991 the UN negotiated a cease-fire with the promise that Morocco would hold a referendum on independence the next year. “Twenty-eight years later,” I explained, “that referendum still hasn’t been held, and the UN’s peacekeepers—MINURSO—are still there. But violence hasn’t broken out. Yet.”
“Didn’t you write something for outside publication about this?” asked Sally.
She knew about my one academic credit, a short piece on Sahrawi identity under French and Spanish domination, published in Foreign Affairs a couple of years ago. “Tangentially. The important thing is that Western Sahara remains disputed territory, and people are impatient.”
“So there’s no one for us to piss off,” Paul said.
“Everyone’s already pissed off,” I said, and that earned smiles from Sally and Mel, whoever they were.
“Your, ah, brother,” Mel said, for the first time sounding unsure. “He passed away in that region, yes?”
“South of there. Mauritania. 2009.”
“What was his job again?”
Again? It was a peculiar word to slip in, a subtle way of rewriting history. “Consultant. For foreign investors. He worked most of the continent. I’m told he was good at his job.”
“Right,” Mel said, nodding, and it struck me that even though they were coming to me for a
nswers, they still weren’t sure they trusted me. As if Haroun’s loyalties might say something about my own. But he’d been gone ten years now, and few people can maintain loyalty for so long.
“Who told you?” Sally asked.
“What?”
“That your brother was good at his job.”
“I cleared out his desk at Global Partners. His coworkers were devastated.”
Sally seemed to accept that, and Mel chewed the inside of her cheek. Paul cleared his throat and said, “Rest assured, Abdul. We’d feel the same.”
By the time I returned home, midnight had come and gone, and Rashid was asleep. Laura was watching television. Over the last few years political news had become a spectator sport, and like any spectator sport it brought us together even when we weren’t otherwise talking. I sat with her a moment as a so-called expert in security discussed progressive groups that were using some of the protest techniques invented by the now-defunct Massive Brigade, and there again was the face of Ingrid Parker—hard and unforgiving. They flashed through shots of Massive Brigade graffiti, its initials stylized as M3, as Parker, in her half-year silence, had gained the stature of a folk hero. More than anything, I wanted to tell Laura what I’d heard, that the Massive Brigade might be ready for a revival, but I only told her that I had to leave for a couple of days. “I’ll be back by the weekend.”
“Where?”
“Africa.”
“It’s a big continent,” she said, but knew I couldn’t be more specific. She turned back to the television. “Your shirts are in the dryer.”
3
By the next day, I was dragging my carry-on through the busy Terminal 2 of Mohammed V International Airport, outside Casablanca, looking for pastilla, a chicken-and-werqa-dough pie that, after seventeen hours of travel, was the only thing I craved. Greasy bag and pile of paper napkins in hand, I sat near a large family of six children and two wives, watching how the patriarch, a heavy, grizzled man, sat with his knees open, his gut hanging over his groin, and a phone pressed hard into his cheek, talking quietly while chewing a toothpick. One of his wives sat on a bag “nexting” (as Rashid called it) with N3XU5, or Nexus, the social media app that boasted absolute privacy—no GPS tracking, encrypted text and video, and no message retention in the cloud—and had become ubiquitous outside North America, to the delight of Gilbert Powell’s shareholders. One of the children, a boy, hung over his mother’s shoulder, half asleep, half reading her messages.
The Last Tourist Page 1
