The Madmen of Benghazi

by Gérard de Villiers

  With this much firepower at his disposal, Abu Bukatalla could easily blow away the Americans protecting al-Senussi. The field would then be open for the Islamist camp. Qatar would gladly support the first candidate he named, and the man would be elected easily. Alternately, when the next government was formed, the Islamists could arrange to control all the key positions.

  Thanks to Qatar, which supplied all the gasoline consumed in Libya, Abu Bukatalla was in a strong bargaining position.

  His cell rang.

  “They’ve arrived,” said the lookout whom he had stationed near Abd-al-Raziq’s villa. “The infidels have two vehicles positioned at the ends of the street. Others are inside, with him.”

  “Shukran,” said Abu Bukatalla, thanking him. “We’ll be there soon. When you see us coming, attack one of the infidels’ vehicles.”

  “Allahu akbar!” said the takfiri in a throbbing voice.

  The column of pickups pulled out of the farm and took the Third Ring Road, heading west.

  In Benghazi, nobody was surprised to encounter such a convoy. You saw them all the time, heading for the front or returning from it. Nobody controlled the movements of the various militias, which were fiercely jealous of their independence; there was no central command or military police since General Younes’s death, and anyone flying the flag of the revolution could display weapons. So Abu Bukatalla didn’t risk running into any problems.

  They ran three red lights in a row—no one would dispute the right of way with such a powerful armada—and reached the al-Mhayshi suburb. This was a neighborhood of luxurious properties belonging to Qaddafi supporters who had quietly amassed large fortunes during the forty-two years of his rule.

  Abu Bukatalla saw his lookout leaning against a wall, just before the corner of the next street. When the man saw the militia pickups, he shouldered an RPG-7, kneeled, and took aim at the Cherokee blocking the road to the villa.

  Cynthia and Malko had reached the Ouzou’s metal detector and were passing the “guards” sprawled on old leather sofas when a group of a half dozen men and women came into the hotel. One of them was an unusually small, energetic-looking woman wearing boots and a field jacket and holding an antitank mine—almost certainly a dummy—in her right hand.

  Malko felt his pulse start to race.

  “Are you Manuela Esteban?” he asked.

  She looked up in surprise.

  “Yes, I am. Do I know you?”

  “No. I was a good friend of Peter Farnborough.”

  “But Peter—”

  “—is dead, I know. That’s why I’m here. Can we talk?”

  “Sure. I’ll just take this up to my room.”

  “May I come with you?” asked Malko.

  Esteban quickly looked him over and decided there was nothing sexual in his request.

  “Bueno,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Malko took a moment to run over to Cynthia, who was standing uncertainly in the middle of the lobby.

  “This is the person I wanted to see,” he said. “Go back up to your room and I’ll come for you.”

  He got into the elevator just in time. The tiny Spanish woman came up only to his shoulder, but she might be able to help him find Abu Bukatalla.

  “They’re attacking!” said Ted into his cell.

  He was answered with a roar of joy. The Obeidi tribesmen were gathered three streets away, in pickups like Abu Bukatalla’s, galvanized by the idea of avenging General Younes. As their first pickup started up, the 23 mm gunner fired a short burst in the air to make sure his twin guns were working properly. A few minutes later, it was facing a pickup truck flying the white flag of Abu Bukatalla’s militia. In front of them, the Cherokee hit by the RPG-7 grenade was burning.

  The Americans had cautiously taken positions inside the villa.

  The two pickup trucks reacted in exactly the same way, slewing broadside to the street so their automatic weapons could fire on their adversaries.

  For a few moments, nothing could be heard over the deafening boom-boom-boom of the 23 mm cannons as their shells tore the two vehicles to pieces.

  In any civilized city, neighbors would have rushed to the phone to call the police. But Benghazi had no police and many Qaddafists in hiding, so the fight might well be a legitimate one.

  Abruptly, silence fell. The drawback of these automatic weapons was that their magazines emptied quickly when they were fired in long bursts. Another firefight broke out a little farther down the street as Obeidi pickups attacked the rear of Abu Bukatalla’s column.

  The first two vehicles to face off were now ablaze, and their occupants all dead or wounded, including the gunners. The 23 mm barrels pointed uselessly at the sky.

  Abu Bukatalla, who had been lying low from the start of the attack, jumped out into the street while it was still protected and climbed into another pickup. He was furious. How did the Americans know he was planning to attack? He gave some orders on his cell, and the armed pickups began to withdraw. Disengagement had always been one of the militias’ strong points.

  Greatly outnumbered by its adversaries, one pickup sacrificed itself to slow them down.

  As he fled, Abu Bukatalla raged. He’d been unmasked in Ibrahim al-Senussi’s eyes. King Idris’s grandson now knew that the takfiri wanted to kill him. He would have to make a new attempt to get rid of this American pawn while he was still in Benghazi.

  At whatever cost.

  The detonations were becoming fewer, muffled by the house’s thick walls.

  Al-Senussi was lying behind a heavy sofa, screened by the body of a CIA operative. Other Americans and Obeidi tribesmen were positioned in the rooms and the garden, but the battle never got that far.

  Finally, silence fell.

  Ted had been communicating by radio with his men outside throughout the battle. He now turned to the Libyan and said, “They’re running away! They lost three vehicles and quite a few men.”

  “And you’re really sure it was Abu Bukatalla?” asked al-Senussi.

  Ted was incredulous. They kept telling al-Senussi that the Islamists planned to kill him and had already tried when he was landing in Cairo, yet he still couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes, it was,” he said. “Unfortunately, he got away. But the dead are there, and we can identify them.”

  Al-Senussi stood up, dazed. He was handed a glass of hot tea, which he took and gulped down.

  “What am I supposed to do now?”

  He was answered by an old man with a beard, the head of the Obeidi tribe.

  “Take power and kill those bad Muslims,” he said coldly. “Those God crazies think they know the Quran better than we do. Then bring peace to Libya, inshallah.”

  Al-Senussi didn’t answer. At the moment, he mainly wanted to go back to the Ouzou and Cynthia. He didn’t feel at all cut out to be a king.

  Sitting on Manuela Esteban’s bed, Malko listened as the young mine clearer told her story. She’d been reticent at first, until he convinced her that she could help him find Farnborough’s killers.

  “I know how Peter got the information he was looking for,” she said. “It was through me.”

  “How so?”

  “At the arms bazaar, I was buying beer from an old Chadian, a Toubou who also sells weapons. He’d told me he got the guns from Abu Bukatalla’s militia. Peter asked to meet him, and I took him to his stand in the market. I didn’t hear what they talked about, but when we left, Peter said he had a meeting the next day with someone who would lead him to Abu Bukatalla.”

  “And the next day we found Peter killed,” continued Malko. “So this man betrayed him.”

  “Yes, probably.”

  “Would you recognize him?”

  “Sure, but I don’t know his name.”

  “But you know where he is in the market?

  “Yes, he’s always at the same place, not far from Syria Street.”

  “When could we see him?”

  Esteban hesitated, then looked at her watch.
/>
  “The market should be open now, but it’s dangerous. I don’t know if—”

  “Let’s go there,” said Malko. “You don’t need to show yourself. All you have to do is point the man out to me. After that, you can leave.”

  After a short silence, she agreed.

  “Bueno, I’ll go with you. I was very fond of Peter.”

  The market occupied a broad esplanade between Algeria and Syria Streets in the Assilmani neighborhood north of the city, not far from the sea. Hundreds of cars were scattered in a makeshift parking lot. The CIA agent driving Malko parked their blue Ford on Syria Street, ready to take off. Malko got out, with Manuela Esteban on his heels.

  One thing struck him immediately: the silence, despite the hundreds of people on the square—merchants, buyers, and others strolling the improvised alleyways.

  It was like a huge flea market.

  At one stand, a trestle displayed handguns, empty magazines, a couple of AK-47s, even an ancient Schmeisser submachine gun from Afrika Korps days.

  Along the alleys, people were talking quietly, and the merchants didn’t appear to be hustling their customers. Everything took place in a kind of muffled silence. It was eerie.

  Malko turned to the young Spanish woman and asked, “Which way is it?”

  “That way, in the back. I hope he’s there.”

  As they walked, they encountered looks of surprise but not hostility. Malko happened to notice a man take a six-pack of Heineken beer out of a crate. Meeting Malko’s eye, he ran off in shame, as if he’d been caught with child pornography.

  The prevailing mood was sober. It felt like people were on their guard.

  “Do the police ever come here?” he asked.

  “What police? There aren’t any in Benghazi, and the traffic cops aren’t armed.”

  They continued walking. There weren’t any sophisticated weapons to be seen, not even RPGs, but maybe you had to ask for them. There was a lot of ammunition, quite a few handguns, some of them unusual, uniforms, boots—and beer.

  They had crossed almost the entire market when Esteban tugged at Malko’s sleeve.

  “That’s him over there. The guy with the Kalashnikov.”

  She was pointing at a very dark-skinned old man with a short white beard. He wore a black turban whose ends fell on either side of his face. In demonstrating an AK-47 to a potential buyer, he suddenly aimed at the sky and fired a short burst.

  “He’s showing that it’s in good working order,” she said under her breath.

  The Toubou and his customer continued talking and gesturing, and Malko and Esteban moved away. She seemed ill at ease.

  “I think I’m going to leave you now,” she said.

  “How will you get back to the hotel?”

  “I’ll take a cab.”

  There were black-and-white taxis everywhere. Without waiting for Malko’s answer, she disappeared.

  He glanced at his watch. Night was falling, and the market would soon close. The old Toubou was already starting to stack his pistols in a metal box.

  Malko slipped into the crowd and walked back to the blue Ford.

  “We’re going to be following somebody,” he told the CIA agent.

  The American drove the car to the edge of the market, where the Toubou had almost finished packing up. He was carrying cardboard boxes to an old station wagon parked along Syria Street. Most of the other merchants were doing the same.

  A quarter of an hour later, the Toubou slid behind the wheel and took off, accompanied by his helper, a small, equally dark-skinned boy. They turned into Syria Street and headed east, with the Ford following. It was already very dark, and there was no risk of the Toubou taking special notice of their car, which had Libyan plates. Besides, traffic was very heavy.

  After a couple of miles, the station wagon turned into a small, dark street and pulled up in front of a low stone building. It was a nice enough neighborhood, with parked cars around.

  The Toubou went inside, leaving the boy to lug the cartons into a ground-floor garage. Malko and the agent parked a little farther on and doused their headlights.

  When the station wagon was empty, the boy went into the house in turn.

  “What do we do now?” asked the agent.

  “We wait.”

  The man inside had led Peter Farnborough to his death, so he must have a connection to Abu Bukatalla. They couldn’t approach him in his home, of course, so they would have to wait for him to come out.

  Malko turned to the American and said, “We may have to kidnap him.”

  “In that case, I’ll need to talk to Ted.”

  “Go ahead and call him.”

  When he had the special-ops leader on the line, he handed Malko the phone.

  “Ibrahim is okay,” Ted announced right away. “And the bastards lost quite a few men.”

  “Did you capture Abu Bukatalla?”

  “No.”

  “Were you able to follow them?”

  “No, we weren’t. Two of their pickups sacrificed themselves so they could get away.”

  Malko explained his situation. “This Toubou is our connection with Abu Bukatalla, and we have to make him talk,” he said. “We can only do it on our own, so we’ll have to question him ‘at home.’ ”

  Malko sensed reluctance, and Ted finally said:

  “I have to get the green light from Cairo, though I think they’ll give it to us. But it’ll be a one-way street.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can’t turn the guy loose afterward. Too dangerous, politically. When you’re finished with him, he’s got to go.”

  Ted hung up.

  In other words, if they kidnapped the old man, they would have to execute him. It wasn’t Ted’s decision, and enemy losses didn’t concern him. He’d seen too many “bandits” killed in cold blood in Afghanistan and Iraq to be greatly troubled by the Toubou’s fate.

  This was war. In war, people die.

  Malko looked at the building’s gray facade and thought of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play Dirty Hands. In this business you sometimes had to get your hands dirty, give up part of your soul so as not to fail. It was a dilemma as old as the world.

  Of course, if the Toubou stayed at home until morning, that would avoid the problem, because they couldn’t stake out the house all night without being noticed.

  Malko started when the CIA operative spoke:

  “He’s coming out.”

  It was true. The old man had emerged from the house and was heading for his car. He got in and took off, promptly followed by the blue Ford.

  They drove for about twenty minutes, until they reached a wide avenue. The Toubou parked his station wagon among the other cars on a wide pullout across from the Venezia Café. He had barely stopped when a man stepped out of the shadows and joined him in his car. The two spent a few minutes together, then walked over to the big open-air restaurant. They took a table right below an enormous television screen showing a soccer match. They ordered nonalcoholic beer and were obviously going to have dinner.

  “So what do we do now?” asked the American.

  “We wait some more!”

  It would be too risky for them to go sit in the restaurant, even though there were foreigners at a couple of the tables. The great majority of the clientele was Libyan, all men.

  Adjoining the restaurant was its twin, reserved for families; a few women were eating there.

  Malko pondered his next move. It would be tricky to continue following the Toubou; he might spot them. On the other hand, he was their only possible link to Abu Bukatalla. And Peter Farnborough had been brutally murdered because the man had warned the takfiri that the Englishman was on his trail.

  Al-Senussi and Cynthia were sitting in the gloomy Ouzou dining room, eating in silence. Following the second attempt on his life, al-Senussi had come back to the hotel feeling deeply shaken. He now believed Cynthia’s story about the attack on their plane, and he suspected there would be more attempts.r />
  For her part, Cynthia was in the doldrums over her aborted rendezvous with Malko. He hadn’t returned to the hotel, and the tiny Spanish woman was eating with some other NGO staffers at a table not far from theirs.

  The Libyan broke the silence.

  “Are you in contact with the leader of the Americans?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course. Why?”

  “I want you to go see them. I want to leave here, and not be part of their operation anymore. I’m very happy in London, I make a good living, and nobody tries to kill me. People here are too brutal.”

  Cynthia shot him a withering look. “Don’t you want me to be the queen of Libya anymore?”

  Al-Senussi ducked the question. “It’s just that I don’t want to die yet. This life isn’t for me. I want you to ask your American friends to get me out of Benghazi as fast as possible.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No, tomorrow morning. Tonight you’re staying with me. Tell one of the security agents to drive you to where they are. I’m not setting foot outside the hotel. And tonight I need to relax.”

  He gave the young woman a burning look, and she understood what “relaxing” would involve.

  Malko was still considering his options when the old man and his companion came out of the restaurant and headed for the station wagon. The Toubou took the wheel and drove along the side of the road, stopping near a small van a hundred yards farther on.

  Malko and the agent followed on foot, lost in the crowd of restaurant customers returning to their cars.

  They watched as some odd goings-on took place in the darkness. The unknown man opened the back of his van and pulled out a long package wrapped in cloth, which the Toubou immediately stowed in his station wagon. After three more such transfers, the man closed the van’s doors.

  Malko figured it out.

  “That guy must be part of Abu Bukatalla’s militia,” he said. “He’s selling weapons. The Toubou sold an AK-47 for him and must’ve given him the money.”

  The two men were now separating.

  “Do we follow the militia guy?” asked the agent.