“What’s that?”
But Rousseau did not answer, at least not directly. Instead, adopting the demeanor of a professor, he took a detour backward in time, to the hopeful winter of 2011. In Tunisia and Egypt, a pair of oppressive regimes had been swept away by a sudden wave of popular anger and resentment. Libya was next. In January there were a smattering of protests over housing shortages and political corruption, protests that soon spiraled into a nationwide uprising. It quickly became apparent that Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s tyrannical ruler, would not follow the example of his counterparts in Tunis and Cairo and go quietly into the Arab night. He had ruled Libya with an iron fist for more than four decades, stealing its oil riches and murdering his opponents, sometimes only for the sake of his own entertainment. A man of the desert, he knew the fate that awaited him if he fell. And so he plunged his backward nation into a full-fledged civil war. Fearing a bloodbath, the West intervened militarily, with France taking a leading role. By October, Gaddafi was dead, and Libya was free.
“And what did we do? Did we flood Libya with money and other forms of assistance? Did we hold its hand while it tried to make the transition from a tribal society to a Western-style democracy? No,” said Rousseau, “we did none of those things. In fact, we did almost nothing at all. And what happened as a result of our inaction? Libya became yet another failed state, and ISIS moved into the void.”
The danger of an ISIS safe haven in North Africa, Rousseau continued, was obvious. It would allow the terrorists to infiltrate fighters and weaponry into Western Europe and attack virtually at will. But within months of ISIS’s arrival in Libya, police forces from Greece to Spain noticed another disturbing trend. The flow of narcotics from North Africa, especially hashish from Morocco, rose to unprecedented levels. What’s more, there was a change in the traditional smuggling routes. Where once the drug gangs were content to move their product across the Strait of Gibraltar one small boat or Jet Ski at a time—or overland to Egypt and then the Balkans—it was now coming across the water in massive cargo ships.
“Take, for example, the case of the Apollo, a Greek-registered rust bucket seized by the Italian navy off Sicily not long after ISIS set up shop in nearby Libya. The Italians had received a tip from a North African–based informant that the vessel contained an unusually large shipment of hashish. Even so, they were shocked by what they found. Seventeen metric tons, a record seizure.”
But the Apollo, explained Rousseau, was only the beginning. Over the next three years, European authorities made several more stunning seizures. All the vessels had one thing in common; they had called on Libyan ports. And all the raids were based on tips from well-placed North African informants. All totaled, more than three hundred metric tons of narcotics, with an estimated street value of three billion dollars, were taken off the market. Then the informants suddenly stopped talking, and the seizures slowed to a trickle.
“But why? Why the sudden change in the smuggling route? Why were the producers suddenly forcing massive quantities of merchandise onto the market? And why,” asked Rousseau, “did the informants go silent? Here in France we concluded there was a powerful new player on the scene. Someone with the muscle to seize control of the smuggling routes. Someone whose methods frightened the informants into silence. Someone who was willing to risk the loss of tons of precious cargo because they were more interested in making a great deal of money as quickly as possible. We determined there was only one group that fit that profile.”
“ISIS.”
Rousseau nodded slowly. “The marriage between hashish and terrorism,” he said, “is as old as time itself. As you know, the word assassin is derived from the Arabic hashashin, the Shia killers who acted under the influence of hashish. Hezbollah, their descendants in Lebanon, finance their operations in part through the sale of hashish, much of it to customers in your country. And almost since its inception, ISIS has been an active player in the drug world, mainly by imposing taxes on product that moves through territory it controls. We now believe the Islamic State has taken over much of the European trade in illicit narcotics. And most of those drugs flow through the organization of one man. The man your friend works for,” he added, tapping the photograph of Nouredine Zakaria.
Rousseau’s pipe had gone dead. Much to Gabriel’s disappointment, the Frenchman reached for his pouch.
“My greatest fear,” Rousseau continued, “was that the relationship was more than financial, that ISIS would use the infrastructure of this man’s distribution network to carry out attacks in Europe. If your British friend is correct, if Nouredine Zakaria supplied the weapons used in London, then it appears my fears have been realized. The question is, was Nouredine operating on his own? Or did he do it with his boss’s blessing?”
“Maybe we should ask him.”
“Nouredine’s boss? Easier said than done. You see,” explained Rousseau, “he’s a very popular man here in France, especially among the rich and well connected. They dine in his restaurants and drink and dance in his nightclubs. They sleep in his hotels, shop in his boutiques, and adorn their fingers and necks with items from his exclusive line of jewelry. And, yes, on occasion, they smoke or snort or inject his drugs. The current president of the Republic is a personal friend. So are the interior minister and a good many others inside French law enforcement. They make certain that uncomfortable questions are never asked and that investigations never stray too close to his business empire.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Jean-Luc Martel.”
“JLM?”
Rousseau appeared genuinely surprised. “You know the name?”
“I’ve spent a lot time in your country over the years. Jean-Luc Martel is rather hard to miss.”
“He’s quite the celebrity, I’ll grant you that. One of our most successful entrepreneurs. At least that’s what they write about him. But it’s all a sham. Martel’s real business is drugs.” Rousseau was silent for a moment. “And if I were to speak these words in my minister’s office, he would laugh me out of the room. And then he would hurry off to dinner at Martel’s new restaurant on the boulevard Saint-Germain. It’s all the rage.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Rousseau smiled in spite of himself.
“Perhaps Martel can be reasoned with,” said Gabriel. “An appeal to his patriotism.”
“Jean-Luc Martel? Not possible.”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to turn him the old-fashioned way.”
“How?”
“Leave that to me.”
There was a silence.
“And if we can?” asked Rousseau.
“It might very well lead us to the one we’re both looking for.”
“Yes,” said Rousseau. “It might indeed. But my minister will never approve.”