Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  Harry felt as though the blood had drained from his face, staring in mute shock at the savagely mutilated form of the man in the chair before him. His fellow intelligence officer.

  “They’re planning an attack. . .next Saturday, on the Stade. . .we have to shut them down, immédiatement. We. . .”

  More white noise, as Harry looked up to find Belkaïd smiling at him.

  “You were right, brother, after all. We found our spy.”

  10:03 A.M.

  Palais de l'Élysée

  Paris, France

  “Mon Dieu. . .” the French president breathed thoughtfully, shaking his head as he glanced over the hastily prepared briefing before him. “Who authorized this operation?”

  “I did, mon presidente,” Brunet replied, gazing steadily into Denis Albéric’s eyes. They were both from the same generation, as strange as that seemed, in this moment. A generation which had grown up under De Gaulle in the late ‘60s, in the era when France had reasserted itself once more on the world stage.

  L'Europe, depuis l'Atlantique jusqu'à l'Oural. . .Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, as De Gaulle had famously put it. A Europe which would decide the destiny of the world.

  But Destiny had proved a far more fickle mistress, as any Frenchman should have expected.

  Her father had been a fairly low-ranking deputy in the Ministère de la Défense. Albéric’s, a colonel in the French Army—a paratroop officer.

  But here they both were. . .with Destiny taking a hand once more.

  “This was a joint operation set up with the cooperation of les Américains,” she continued evenly, glancing over at her DGSI counterpart, sitting in another chair a few feet away, “and run out of Alliance Base.”

  “And you believe that your officer has now been compromised?” Albéric mused, tenting his fingers before him as he seemed to consider her words.

  “We have to consider that possibility. His last signal indicated that he had intelligence of an imminent attack—and now he’s gone dark. He missed the drop, and we have CCTV footage of him getting into a van not far from Liège’s Outremeuse district. After that—nothing.”

  “And the DGSI was never read in on any of this?” Raoul Dubois demanded, finally finding his voice. “Pour quoi?”

  Why.

  “Few even at the DGSE knew, Raoul,” she replied, meeting the DGSI chief’s gaze with a composed stare of her own. She’d gotten a few hours of sleep before coming here, but they were precious little enough. “A handful of operations personnel—a few of us at the top. We were minimizing risk.”

  “It would not appear as though you succeeded.”

  She ignored Dubois’ jab with a mighty effort, refocusing her attention on the president, even as Albéric cleared his throat.

  “And you’re telling me that this terrorist cell may have now crossed the border into France?”

  “It’s a contingency we must be prepared for, mon presidente. Two of the target vehicles were on a southwest heading from Liège when the VSSE lost track of them.”

  “You have a number of public appearances coming up over the course of the next week,” she continued, ticking them off on her fingers, “your visit with flood victims in Orléans, your visit to Pozières for the memorial, your appearance at the qualifying game for the World Cup at the Stade de France. . .you’re going to be exposed, in public. Vulnerable.”

  “I am always vulnerable, madame le directeur. I am the President of the Republic. I can’t hide from that.”

  “Bien sûr que non.” Of course not. “I am only suggesting that you minimize your exposure until we in the security services,” she glanced over at Dubois, “can better ascertain the threat.”

  There was a long pause—uncertainty and a measure of fear playing across Denis Albéric’s features as he weighed out her proposal, glancing back and forth between his two intelligence chiefs. Seeking reassurance and finding none.

  But even as she watched, something of a grim resolution seemed to settle over the president’s countenance.

  “Non,” he replied finally, a sharp edge creeping into his voice. “I will not alter my schedule, or fail to keep my commitments to the people of France. I have a job to do. As do both of you.”

  11:03 A.M.

  The safehouse

  Ardennes Department, France

  “I simply can’t believe it.” The words seemed distant and far-away, penetrating through into his mind as if spoken in a dream.

  Harry glanced over to see Yassin’s face distorted in anger and pain, anguish in his eyes. Their own differences, seemingly buried by the tide of new grief. Of betrayal.

  “I trusted him—loved him as a brother. And he betrayed us. He killed Reza.”

  No, Harry thought, scarce daring even to think the words, he didn’t. That was me. Because I’ve betrayed you too.

  And he had failed to recognize an ally, until it was far too late for both of them.

  Had the signs been there, all along, just waiting for him to recognize them? To realize the truth?

  Haunting, damning questions, but deep down. . .he knew the truth. There had been no “signs.” They had both played their parts to perfection, to the very last—both of them blind, unknowing. Inextricably entwined in a grotesque danse macabre that had been bound to claim one of them or the other, at the last.

  Or so he would tell himself, long after this was over. Again and again. When the ghosts came to visit in the night.

  But Marwan wasn’t dead—yet.

  He stared down into the cup of coffee in his hands, his mind once again turning over the dilemma facing him. Looking for an exit. Something—anything.

  But each door he found was sealed off, each exit blocked. Marwan wouldn’t make it five hundred meters in his current condition—even assuming they knew the country and he didn’t. And more of Belkaïd’s men had arrived the hour before, all of them armed—he had to assume they would have a perimeter flung out, even in the light summer rain now falling outside.

  No way out. Except forward, as ever—even though he knew what that would mean this time. The price they would both have to pay.

  “. . .I just think,” he heard Yassin say, realizing only then that he had been talking this whole time. How long had it been? “I was the one who first met Marwan. I introduced him to Reza—to you. You even warned me then that he could be French intelligence, and I refused to listen.”

  Tears welled up in his eyes as he stared at Harry. Tears of sorrow and wrath. “If I had only listened. . .my brother might still be alive.”

  Harry set down his cup on the bare counter of the kitchen, beckoning to Yassin with his hand—wrapping an arm around the younger man’s shoulders as he broke down, the tears flowing freely. Hot, angry tears running down his cheeks.

  “I. . .I would have killed him, Ibrahim,” he sobbed, lost in his own grief. “I still should—it should be mine, by right. My duty.”

  “Insh’allah,” Harry whispered quietly, suppressing the emotions roiling within himself—an inner revulsion that left him nearly nauseous, his hand resting on Yassin’s upper back, only inches from his neck.

  A moment, and he could have snapped it—like breaking a rotten branch—Yassin dead before the realization of the betrayal had even made it to his brain.

  The man who had once saved his life, dead at his feet. As he would be, sooner or later. Only one way out of this, for any of them.

  And it was so tempting to do it—now, before he could think, before he could pull himself back from that precipice. End it all, right here—right now. The void, beckoning to him.

  But Aryn appeared in the doorway of the kitchen in that moment, his dark eyes meeting Harry’s. “Belkaïd wants you. Downstairs.”

  It was a long moment before Harry responded, knowing in his gut that this was it—the moment of truth. His decision already made, and even yet. . .

  “I’ll be there.”

  11:09 A.M.

  Médiacité

  Liège, Belg
ium

  He shouldn’t have been here. Deep down, Armand Césaire knew that. Even his presence represented a potential compromise. But he had to know.

  Médiacité’s head of security had given him access after he’d presented his credentials—he had no jurisdiction here, in Belgium, and they both knew that, but in the present environment. . .the man had simply asked him if it was connected to the explosion outside the city, and he’d declined to respond, in that way that confirmed the man’s suspicions more firmly than if he’d spoken the words.

  And now here they were, reviewing the security footage from the afternoon prior—a lengthy, painstaking process that might lead absolutely nowhere, as Césaire knew all too well. LYSANDER might not even have made it as far as the mall.

  But it was a starting point. And he had precious few of those.

  He reached up, pushing aside his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose—shaking his head wearily. Something was wrong, he knew that much, instincts honed by decades of intelligence work warning of danger.

  He had to find a way to get to Daniel—to find him, in the midst of this chaos. If it wasn’t already too late.

  His eyes narrowed then, focusing in on one screen of the CCTV imagery—a vaguely familiar figure captured approaching the main entrance of the mall. Daniel Mahrez.

  “This man,” he announced, indicating his undercover with a forefinger. “Let’s follow him.”

  Ten minutes later, after identifying another man in the footage as a Belgian intelligence officer—a man he’d been introduced to at VSSE Headquarters only days prior—Césaire knew what had happened, a sad sense of irony twisting like a knife in his stomach.

  The VSSE had put surveillance on LYSANDER without knowing his identity—and he knew that if he could pick up their people from the CCTV cameras, then Daniel had seen them too. But he hadn’t known who they were. . .

  And he’d bolted—there, on the very cusp of making contact once more. Of providing them with the details of whatever this. . .attack was which he had warned of in his signal.

  Césaire’s face twisted into a sad, bitter grimace, something deep inside telling him that they were already far past the point of no return. That this mistake had been fatal.

  Oh, the irony. . .

  11:20 A.M.

  The safehouse

  Ardennes Department, France

  Harry knew from the moment he saw the tripod-mounted cellphone camera—the tarpaulins now draping the walls—what was to come.

  He’d stood in so many of these rooms before—analyzed so many videos—and yet. . .he’d never actually been there. In the moment when it happened.

  Marwan—whatever his name truly was—was, if possible, even bloodier and more disfigured than when he’d last laid eyes upon him, sagging limply against the bonds holding him to the chair, his hair matted with blood, one eye swollen closed. It struck Harry in that moment just how young he was—but that had been the purpose, after all, hadn’t it? Young enough to infiltrate himself into a cell of young radicals in Molenbeek, to present himself as one of them.

  And he’d done it—fooling everyone until the very last, when Harry’s phone call to French intelligence had compromised them both. Each of them denouncing the other in an effort, not just to survive, but to weaken the enemy.

  Harry suppressed a shudder at the memory of that fateful moment in the Liège apartment, the moment when the tables had turned—the savage triumph he’d felt then. A triumph turned to ashes in his mouth. He had won when he should have lost, lived when he should have died. Once again.

  For losing would have left an officer in place with a team, a network to rely upon—someone who could have stopped all of this. Not someone alone, out in the cold.

  It was the kind of mistake that could cause a man to go out back and blow out his own brains. His blood an atonement for his sins.

  But there was no atonement to be found here, Harry realized, his gaze flickering around the room—taking in the positions of Belkaïd’s men, a couple of them armed with AKs, positioned just out of the camera’s frame. No redemption. Nothing but the knowledge of what was about to happen. Of what he must do.

  Marwan stirred as Harry entered the room, murmuring a vile curse in French, turning his head ever so slightly to spit on the floor—blood and phlegm landing on the plastic dropsheet.

  “He’s confessed,” Gamal Belkaïd smiled, his eyes meeting Harry’s. “To everything. . .to betraying his brothers—to betraying his faith.”

  Marwan coughed up more blood, spitting out a defiant “non”, his remaining open eye simmering with hatred as he stared toward them. “You’re the ones who have betrayed Islam—you’re not Muslims, you’re animals. You are of the Khawarij, apostates, all of you.”

  And here they were once again, Harry thought, remembering Ismail Bessimi’s words, standing there in that muddy North Yorkshire lane—his hand on the shoulder of a young man about to take his own life. Reciting the words of their own Prophet back to him, warning of those who would come—men just like these around them, men who would pervert doctrine for their own ends. “And in the day of reckoning, they will rise with the Dajjal.”

  A false messiah. For false believers.

  But Marwan wasn’t done, his voice rising with what remained of his strength. “You kill the innocent, you kill everyone—you break every law of warfare the Prophet ever gave us, and you use his words as a cover for your crimes. You—”

  Belkaïd’s fist caught him in the side of the head and he reeled, the flow of words suddenly cut short. A baleful light in the older man’s eyes as he pulled back, rubbing his knuckles.

  “Enough.” He seemed on the verge of saying something else, then thought better of it, picking up a long, wicked knife from the table behind him and turning it over in his hand—extending it hilt-first to Harry.

  “Take this,” he said, his eyes filled with a dark, implacable fury, “and take his head.”

  No. It was all Harry could do not to recoil physically from the knife, a wave of nausea threatening to overwhelm him. But there could be no delay—no hesitation—in this moment, everyone’s eyes focused on both of them.

  He reached out, taking the knife from Belkaïd’s hand, accepting a dark black balaclava from one of his guards and pulling it on over his head, down until his eyes stared out through the slits of the ski mask. Moving into position behind Marwan’s battered and bloodied figure as the camera began to roll.

  “You have invaded the lands of the Ummah,” he began simply, staring out at the camera. Seeing his. . .friends from Molenbeek standing there, just off to one side. Yassin and Driss, the pair who had stopped Marwan from shooting him there in the boxing club. . .it seemed so long ago. Aryn, standing a few feet away. All that remained. “You have sent your spies among us, trying to sow discord, to turn the faithful against one another.”

  Harry felt his voice tremble ever so slightly, the knife hilt cold in his sweat-slick hand. This wasn’t possible—it wasn’t happening.

  But it was. There was a part of him, even yet, which wanted to take the knife and lash out—disable a guard, perhaps even kill Belkaïd himself. But as he’d learned so long ago. . .you couldn’t save the world.

  “So in the name of Allah,” he continued, wrapping a hand around Marwan’s throat—pulling his head back, “I give you back your spy.”

  Chapter 30

  4:03 A.M. Central European Summer Time, August 3rd

  The Boulevard Mortier

  Paris, France

  Fifteen hundred euros was a lot of money for a boy from the banlieus. A lot of money, Bilel ben Samadi thought, his thighs burning as he pedaled the bike down the Paris boulevard, his gaze flickering back and forth at the shadowed spaces between the streetlights. It had been a long ride from the public housing where he lived in Aulnay-sous-Bois, but the money was just too good. Impossible to turn down.

  The fourteen-year-old had never seen the man before in his life, but his friend Yacine had bought drugs from him
in the past. And he’d been willing to give him a third of the money up-front.

  All he had to do was deliver a backpack—drop it off on the street, really, in front of the GPS address displayed on the brightly-lit screen of his phone mounted to his handlebars in front of him.

  It was hard to know what was in the backpack—it wasn’t heavy, maybe five kilos at most.

  A long wall ran along the perimeter of the street to his right, a faint chill running through Bilel’s body as he took in the razor-wire surmounting its top. The bollards blocking off the curb from vehicle access, and ahead—an entrance in the wall which almost appeared. . .fortified.

  What was this place? The fourteen-year-old slowed, taking his foot off the bike’s pedal—the worn sole of his battered tennis shoe scraping against the asphalt. Police, perhaps? If so. . .

  His older brother and their cousin from Belgium had been stopped by the police two years before, stopped and searched as a suspect in the robbery of a small market in the banlieu.

  His brother Salim had gotten away, but their cousin had struggled against them, and been beaten, severely. He was still in a wheelchair, would likely never leave it, according to the doctors. The former soccer player, reduced to a flabby husk of his former self.

  The memory was almost enough to make the teenager turn the bike around, but. . .no. It was far too much money to be tossed away so lightly, particularly after he had ridden so far.

  His mother would think he had stolen it, but. . .perhaps, if he only gave her a little, here and there. Bien sûr. Of course. That might work.

  Unstrapping the backpack from his shoulders and hefting it in one hand, he gripped the handlebars of his bike once more, pedaling rapidly toward the entrance. Drop the bag, and race off.

  Maybe before anyone even saw him. Before the police—if it was the police—could react.

  He was fifty feet away when the gendarme appeared, his uniformed figure cloaked in the shadows of the entrance—a hoarse shout breaking through the humid early morning air, even as the long gun in the man’s hand came up, the familiar outline of a rifle aimed at his head. “Halt!”