“The one thing they do have in the Bidonvilles,” Dina was saying, “is Islam. And thanks to Wahhabi and Salafist preachers, it’s getting more and more extreme. Do you remember the attack in 2003? All those boys who blew themselves up came from the Bidonvilles of Sidi Moumen.”
Gabriel did remember the attacks, of course, but in much of the West they were largely forgotten: fourteen bombings against mainly Western and Jewish targets, forty-five dead, more than a hundred wounded. They were the work of an al-Qaeda affiliate known as Salafia Jihadia, which in turn had ties to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. For all its natural beauty and Western tourism, Morocco remained a hotbed of radical Islam where ISIS had managed to establish deep roots and numerous cells. More than thirteen hundred Moroccans had traveled to the caliphate to fight for ISIS—along with several hundred more ethnic Moroccans from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands—and Moroccans had played an outsize role in ISIS’s recent terror campaign in Western Europe. And then there was Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch Moroccan who shot and stabbed filmmaker and writer Theo van Gogh on a street in Amsterdam. The killing was not the spontaneous act of one troubled man; Bouyeri was a member of a cell of radical North African Muslims based in The Hague known as the Hofstad Network. For the most part, Morocco’s security services had managed to deflect the country’s extremism outward. Still, there were plenty of plots at home. Morocco’s interior ministry had boasted recently that it had broken up more than three hundred terror plots, including one involving mustard gas. There were some things, thought Gabriel, that were better left unsaid.
They breasted a hill and the pale blue Atlantic opened before them. The Morocco Mall, with its futuristic IMAX movie theater and Western boutiques, occupied a newly developed stretch of land along the coast. Dina followed the Corniche toward downtown, past beach clubs and restaurants and sparkling white seafront villas. One was the size of a commercial building.
“It belongs to a Saudi prince. And over there,” said Dina, “is the Four Seasons.”
She slowed so Gabriel could have a look. At the gated entrance to the grounds, two security guards in dark suits were searching the undercarriage of an arriving car for explosives. Only if it passed inspection would it be allowed to proceed along the drive to the hotel’s covered motor court.
“There’s a magnetometer just inside the door,” said Dina. “All bags and guests, no exceptions. We’ll have to bring the guns in from the beach. It won’t be a problem.”
“Think the boys from Salafia Jihadia know that, too?”
“I hope not,” said Dina with a rare smile.
They continued along the Corniche past the massive Hassan II Mosque, the outer walls of the ancient medina, and the sprawling port. Finally, they entered Casablanca’s old French colonial center, with its wide curving boulevards and its unique blend of Moorish, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco architecture. It had once been a place where cosmopolitan Casablancans strolled elegant colonnades dressed in the latest fashions from Paris, and dined in some of the world’s finest restaurants. Now it was a monument to decay and danger. Soot blackened the floral stucco facades; rust rotted the wrought-iron balustrades. The smart set kept to the trendy quartiers of Gauthier and Maarif, leaving old Casablanca to the robed, the veiled, and the street vendors who sold spoiled fruit and cheap cassettes of sermons and Koranic verses.
The one sign of progress was the shining new streetcar that snaked along the boulevard Mohammed V, past the boarded-up shops and the arcades where the homeless dozed on beds of cardboard. Dina followed a tram for several blocks and then turned into a narrow side street and parked. On one side was an eight-story apartment building that looked as though it were about to collapse beneath the weight of the satellite dishes sprouting like mushrooms from the balconies. On the other was a crumbling, vine-covered wall with a once-ornate cedar door. Guarding it was a panting feral dog.
“Why are we stopping?” asked Gabriel.
“We’re here.”
“Where?”
“The command post.”
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
Gabriel eyed the canine warily. “What about him?”
“He’s harmless. It’s the rats you have to worry about.”
Just then, one scurried past along the pavement. It was the size of a raccoon. The dog recoiled in fear. So did Gabriel.
“Maybe we should go back to the Four Seasons.”
“It’s not safe.”
“Neither is this place.”
“It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
“What’s it like on the inside?”
Dina switched off the engine. “It’s haunted. But otherwise it’s quite nice.”
They sidestepped the panting dog and passed through the cedar doorway, into a hidden paradise. There was an azure-blue swimming pool, a red clay tennis court, and a seemingly endless garden of bougainvillea, hibiscus, banana trees, and date palms. The immense house was built in the Moroccan tradition, with tiled interior courtyards where the incessant murmur of Casablanca faded to silence. The labyrinthine rooms seemed frozen in time. It might have been 1967, the year the owner tossed a few belongings into a bag and fled to Israel. Or perhaps, thought Gabriel, it was a more genteel age. An age when everyone in the neighborhood spoke French and worried about how long it would be before the Germans were parading down the Champs-élysées.
The two caretakers were named Tarek and Hamid. They had purchased the job from the previous caretakers, who had grown too old to look after the place. They avoided the interior of the house, keeping to the gardens and the small guest cottage instead. Their wives, children, and grandchildren lived in a nearby Bidonville.
“We’re the new owners,” said Gabriel. “Why can’t we just fire them?”
“Bad idea,” said Yaakov Rossman. Before transferring to the Office, Yaakov had worked for Shabak, Israel’s internal security service, running agents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He spoke fluent Arabic and was an expert on Arab and Islamic cultures. “If we try to let them go, it will cause an uproar. It would be bad for our cover.”
“So we’ll give them a generous severance package.”
“That’s an even worse idea. Every relative they have from every corner of the country will be pouring through our door looking for money.” Yaakov shook his head reproachfully. “You really don’t know much about these people, do you?”
“So we keep the caretakers,” said Gabriel. “But what’s this nonsense about the place being haunted?”
They were standing in the cool silence of the house’s main internal courtyard. Yaakov glanced nervously at Dina, who in turn looked at Eli Lavon. It was Lavon, Gabriel’s oldest friend in the world, who eventually answered.
“Her name is Aisha.”
“Muhammad’s wife?”
“Not that Aisha. Different Aisha.”
“Different how?”
“Aisha is a jinn.”
“A what?”
“A demon.”
Gabriel looked to Yaakov for a fuller explanation.
“Muslims believe that Allah fashioned man out of clay. The jinns he made from fire.”