But this was what happened when you began thinking in layers: It was addictive. There was always another layer to be discovered, another truth to be found. He said, “I never told you his name.”
“Don’t be petty, Nabil. You should be pleased I caught this early.”
With a smoothness that surprised even himself, Nabil said, “I was already aware of this.”
Stunned silence. “You were?”
“Of course. It wasn’t important for you to know.”
“Not important? Are you mad? Of course it’s important! I’m not bringing a CIA agent into my house.”
“He’s not going anywhere near your house,” Nabil said, not knowing if this was true or not. “Only the banker.”
It seemed to calm him some. “But still. This isn’t what I was expecting.”
“If that’s how you feel, Mr. Kwambai, then we can double your fee.”
Silence again, but there was nothing stunned about it. It was the silence of mental calculations.
“That’s my offer,” Nabil said, feeling very sure of himself, more sure than he had in a long time. “If you’re not interested I’ll take my business elsewhere. We’ll know not to approach you again.”
“Let’s not be rash,” said Kwambai.
* * *
—
On Wednesday he again found Sam Matheson in his room at the InterContinental. There were heavy rings beneath his eyes, sunburn across his forehead and cheeks, and Nabil wondered if the cross-country race had taken a serious toll on him. He’d verified that a man named Sam Wallis had registered, and that his car had come in eleventh among thirty-eight participants. According to the records, he’d originally signed on with a partner, one Saïd Mourit, but Mourit had been dropped before the race began.
He gave no sign that he knew Matheson’s real name, only suggested that they continue their conversation in the street.
“Too claustrophobic?” asked Sam.
“Exactly.”
In the nearby city market, they walked on packed earth among the crowds and vendors hiding under umbrellas. Nabil quietly said, “Mr. Matheson, I know who you work for.”
To his credit, the American didn’t slow his step. Above, the blazing sun made his sunburn look all the worse. A nonchalant grin remained plastered to his face, and he shrugged. “Who do I work for?”
“The CIA.”
“My assumption was that if I’d told you, you wouldn’t have accepted the deal.”
“You were right.”
Beside a table piled high with overpriced fabrics, he turned to face Nabil. He was a few inches shorter, but the confidence in his movements made him seem taller than he was. “The offer’s the same, Nabil. Those pirates are a public menace. They’re screwing with business. We’re getting pressured from all sides to get any kind of intel we can.”
“Even from people like us?”
Sam waved that off. “Your group’s new. No one knows about you. In a few years, maybe we’ll pay the pirates for intel on you. It all depends on what our masters ask for.”
“This is something we have in common,” Nabil said as he gazed at the intelligence agent who had suddenly opened himself up in a way that he would never have done. It was almost suicidal. What he’d expected was a denial, and then a quick withdrawal. Perhaps even this had been calculated by Rome.
Or perhaps, he thought suddenly, Ansar al-Islam had nothing to do with this, and it was precisely how the American presented it. The CIA just wanted some information.
It was time to make a decision.
“And this man from the bank who’s coming tomorrow?” he asked. “What is he?”
The smile faded from the American’s lips before returning. It was a momentary lapse—less than a second—but Nabil didn’t forget it. Sam said, “His name’s Paul Fisher. Yes, he’s an agent, too. But the money is real. After he’s finished the transfer you can do what you like to him.”
“You want us to kill your colleague?”
“I didn’t say that,” Sam corrected. “It’s up to you. Consider it a gift. If you like, you can claim responsibility, and he’ll be your first public execution.”
“A videotaped beheading. Is that what you imagine?”
“It’s not like you haven’t done it before.”
That was unexpected. “Have I?”
Sam Matheson licked his lips—nervousness…or appetite? “As I say, it’s up to you.”
It was only then that Nabil knew what to do. This man, whether or not he was from the CIA, had been sent by the Imam. Like the blinding sunlight pouring down on them, the realization fell upon him, and he knew. He was to kill a man named Paul Fisher. That was the Imam’s desire. Why? Matheson was little help on this; perhaps he didn’t know.
“He’s become a liability. We don’t need him anymore.”
Nabil turned toward Koinange Street, began walking, and reached into his pocket. He took out a pair of mirrored sunglasses and slipped them on, signaling Ghedi and Dalmar. “It’s a remarkable gift. First, money, and then one of your own. I just wonder why the CIA would give him to us. It’s not as if you couldn’t get rid of him yourself.”
“Despite what people say, the CIA prefers not to kill its own employees.”
“You’re very wicked, Sam.”
Sam Matheson didn’t answer. He seemed to consider the statement as they reached the street, and the van drew up, its large door sliding open. Ghedi and Dalmar jumped out and grabbed Matheson by the biceps and flung him inside. Nabil watched the door close again and the van jerk forward and swerve away. He watched it disappear into the afternoon traffic.
As he walked back to his car, he rummaged through his pocket and came up with a pack of Winstons. He lit one and inhaled deeply. It was the first one he’d had in three days; he was doing well.
When you’re being watched, all your actions, however small, take on a presence of their own—each has its own significance and its own variety of interpretations. You light a cigarette, and that might mean that you’re nervous, you’re relaxed, you’ve been co-opted by Western forms of decadence, or that you’re desperately stopping time in order to invent your next lie.
He had to stop thinking this way. If Ansar al-Islam was watching, the only important detail was the taking of Sam Matheson. They would know that Aslim Taslam left hesitation to those with less faith.
* * *
—
Nabil took Sam Matheson’s dry, surprisingly heavy hand from the table and dropped it back into the crumpled plastic bag, then slipped the bag into the pocket of his jacket as Kwambai fed Paul Fisher the lie: “Your suitcase, yes, full of clothes—you hadn’t even unpacked. But no magical computer.”
Nabil disagreed with this tactic, but Kwambai had been living with the doublespeak of politics for too long. He no longer knew how to be straight, and now he’d gone over the deep end. Yesterday’s evidence had been irrefutable. Nabil had returned from the market, having stopped at a mosque along the way to offer his Asr prayer. After Sam Matheson, he’d felt the need for some community. He’d driven up the hill to find Ghedi in the driveway, looking distraught. “He killed him,” Ghedi said. “Kwambai killed the American.”
Kwambai explained himself as they stood over Sam Matheson’s corpse in the basement. “He saw me. Your men brought him through the living room without a hood and he saw me. I couldn’t let him live.”
Kwambai had put two bullets in Sam’s chest and one through his neck; sticky blood covered the floor, and the flies had already begun to swarm. Standing over him, the politician began to tremble all over. It was probably the first man he’d ever killed with his own hand. Kwambai said, “His fingerprints. He said we’ll need them for the computer.”
“Why did he say that?”
“He thought it would save
his life.”
“So you had a conversation first?”
The politician seemed to have run out of words, so Nabil asked Ghedi and Dalmar to remove the American’s hands while he took Kwambai outside and they looked for a spot to bury him among the low, dry trees in his backyard. Together, they dug a deep hole. Nabil stopped once, asked where east was, and kneeled in the dirt to offer his Maghrib prayer, while Kwambai ran into the house for more drink. By the time they finished, it was dark. All four men carried the body to the hole, and then Ghedi and Dalmar were given the unenviable task of cleaning the basement room.
Over those later hours, as they filled the hole and stumbled back to the house, Kwambai’s drunkenness faded and was replaced by a strange giddiness. He talked about the act he’d committed, the feel of the pistol, the kick of the bullet as it left the chamber, the American’s stunned eyes that slowly lost their sheen. He described these things as a man describes his first time with a woman, with the pleasure of a wonderful thing newly discovered.
The old politician had become a murderer, and he had enjoyed it.
Afterward, the dynamic changed. Kwambai wanted nothing more than to be at the forefront of their operation. He quit mentioning money, only asked endless questions and offered suggestions for improvement, and when they brought in Paul Fisher, he was waiting in the basement to stare directly into his eyes. He no longer cared who saw him, because he wanted to kill this one, too. Nabil had lost control of the operation.
And now Kwambai was twisting the interrogation with his doublespeak and lies. The computer was sitting upstairs on the long oak table, awaiting the codes and the fingerprint. All he had to do was ask Fisher to type in the code, and they would all be two million euros richer. But Kwambai wanted to stretch this out, wanted to torture the American, and Nabil had no interest in watching it.
So when Paul Fisher said, “I don’t believe you,” Nabil gave a quick but crucial signal to Dalmar and Ghedi, walked out, and climbed the stairs to the living room.
During the weeks since that bloody basement in Rome, he’d grown so tired of it all. He wondered when the light would begin to shine. People were not dying for the jihad; they were dying for the preparation for the jihad. For the bank accounts and the arms and the escapes from capture. One spent so much time dealing with the moment that the original dream, the one that made him cast away his fishing nets, seemed more distant than ever. How long could this go on?
Even the Imam had asked him afterward if he still had the heart for the fight. For fighting, yes, always. But when you descend into a tenement basement in Rome and find two bruised, broken men tied up, facing a camera on a tripod, and then use a beautiful ceremonial sword to remove their heads, there is no battle rush, no visible battle won. Just a flooded floor, your body soaked in blood and sweat, and the ache in your arms from hacking with a blade better suited to adorning a wall.
Daniel Kwambai’s woody house was full of European furniture mixed with Kenyan folk kitsch. It was as uncomfortable as Kwambai himself. Nabil settled at the long table beneath an iron chandelier and opened the briefcase, running his fingers lightly over the keyboard and the flat screen, the things that offered entrance to a Swiss bank’s deepest secrets.
It was all still so strange to him. For a fisherman’s son, none of this could ever feel comfortable. The computer. The narrow, Vespa-buzzing streets of Rome and the cacophony of Nairobi’s taxi horns. The wily, now quite mad, political animal that was Daniel Kwambai. He felt more comfortable with those drunk ex-fishermen the world called pirates.
He heard Kwambai climbing the steps slowly as the muted gunshots filled the house. The fat man paused, looked back, then continued. By the time he reached the end of the table Ghedi and Dalmar had finished. It could happen so quickly.
“I thought they would wait,” Kwambai said.
“I told them to do it as soon as you’d left the room. He’d been tortured enough.”
“Torture?” Kwambai shook his head. “Perhaps you would have given him all the facts up front, Nabil? We now know that Benjamin Muoki is working with them, but that’s all we’re going to get because you don’t want the poor American feeling distraught.”
Nabil shrugged.
“And what if the codes are fake?”
“I’ve considered that,” Nabil said, because he had. If they lost two million euros, then so be it. He wasn’t going to give this monster another happy murder.
Kwambai turned the computer around, closer to himself, and sat down. “Well, it’s reckless, and with this much money you can’t afford to be reckless. You know what’s going on here; you have to think. That’s what Rome expects of you. It’s what I expect of you.”
It was remarkable, really, how Kwambai was acting as if Aslim Taslam were his own fiefdom. But the politician was wrong. Nabil had been thinking for weeks. He’d been noting Kwambai’s own reckless moves and raising each one to the light to see it better, pairing them up randomly to find connections. But only now, hearing his command to think, did a single thread of logic form to connect all the disparate clues. It was so perfectly simple that his hands became warm from embarrassment. He’d been thinking in the wrong direction.
Do not confuse use with friendship.
“The hand?” said Kwambai. A pause. “What is it, Nabil?”
Nabil blinked but still couldn’t see the old man well. He rooted around his jacket pocket and came up with the hand. He dropped it on the table.
Those who can help are welcome, but those whose help takes too much from us, those should be dealt with harshly.
He heard the crackle of plastic as Kwambai took it out. “This had better work,” he heard the Kenyan say. “This thing is foul. You smell it?”
“Disgusting,” Nabil muttered as Kwambai powered up the computer.
“Where the hell am I supposed to scan the fingerprint?”
“Perhaps the Americans lied to you, Daniel.”
An awkward pause. “Perhaps.”
From downstairs came the sound of Ghedi and Dalmar grunting, moving Paul Fisher’s body around. Bodies everywhere. Yet here Nabil was, planning on one more, as soon as the money had been transferred.
SAM
“They’re inside,” Natalia chirped through the radio in his ear.
Sam leaned toward the apartment’s high window, careful not to touch the tripod and shotgun mike, and gazed across Via del Corso at the mosque, the sound of car horns and buzzing Vespas rising through the heat to him. Ticklish sweat rolled down his back. From her position at an outdoor café, Natalia had a clear view of the entrance, while Sam could see only the upper window to the room where Saïd and Lorenzo would be taken once they’d introduced themselves to the Imam.
It was a tricky operation, enough so that a week ago, sweating in his temporary Repubblica apartment near the station, he’d suggested that Saïd leave town. The Moroccan had gotten up on his elbow, the light playing over his long olive body, and stared, a flash of anger in his thick brows. “You think I can’t do this?”
“Of course you can.”
“I’ve built up all the contacts. It’s taken months. You know that.”
“I know. I’m just…”
“We shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
It was true, perhaps. But by now Sam couldn’t quite imagine what life would look like without Saïd in it. “Too late,” he said, watching his lover’s fleshy lips. “You want me to hide what I’m feeling?”
The Moroccan smiled. “It’s what we do. We should be good at it.” Seeing that the joke hadn’t played well, Saïd kissed him and said officiously, “Plenty of time, young man. We’re still on for the rally?”
“Absolutely.”
“You and me under the Kenyan stars again. We’ll have plenty of time to figure out our future.”
Which, Sam noted wit
h satisfaction, was the first time Saïd had used that blessed word, future.
So he’d gone over the operation a hundred times more, adjusting details here and there and even bringing in an extra agent to provide coverage inside. Paul Fisher, from Geneva.
“Paul,” he said from his window perch. “You’re there?”
“Sì,” came the whisper.
“Everything’s smooth. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Though they’d known each other in the academy, it was a surprise to see Paul again. He was the most visibly nervous agent he’d ever dealt with. Sam even called Geneva to make sure that this was a man he could depend on. “Fisher’s top-notch for his age,” was the reply, which told him nothing.
While briefing Paul in his apartment, though, Sam had discovered a small P-83, a Polish gun, in Paul’s jacket. “Where’d this come from?”
“A Milanese I know.”
“Why?”
Paul shrugged. “I like backup.”
“Not on this job,” he said and put the gun in his desk drawer. “I’m not having you get them killed.”
Paul had been sitting at the foot of the bed where Sam had last made love to Saïd. He hated this fidgety man touching those sheets. Paul said, “I wasn’t planning on using it.”
“Then you don’t need to carry it.”
Paul nodded unsurely.
While it had taken weeks to set up and could go wrong easily, the operation itself was simple. Lorenzo and Saïd were to visit the mosque and sit down with the Imam in his study to discuss a Camorra arms shipment they had intercepted and wished to sell to like-minded people. From his post across the street, Sam would record the conversation. Natalia would watch the street for activity or reinforcements. Paul was to wait in the prayer hall to help facilitate any emergency escape.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 73
