“Actually, given the political sensitivity of the mission, very few people in the building know about it. Even here in the Center,” Taylor added. “It’s special access only. We’re using one of our smaller op rooms. We’ll be totally black.”
Taylor led Navot along a corridor lined with numbered doors, behind which nameless, faceless analysts and operators tracked terrorists and plots around the globe. At the end of the hall was a short flight of metal stairs and another checkpoint, through which Taylor and Navot passed without scrutiny. Beyond it was an ill-lit foyer and a cipher-protected door. Taylor punched the code rapidly into the keypad and stared directly into the lens of the biometric reader. A few seconds later the door opened with a snap.
“Welcome to the Black Hole,” he said, leading Navot inside. “The others are already here.” Taylor introduced Navot to Graham Seymour, perhaps forgetting they were well acquainted, perhaps not, and then to Paul Rousseau. “And Adrian I assume you know.”
“Very well,” said Navot, accepting Carter’s outstretched hand. “Adrian and I have been through the wars together, and we have the scars to prove it.”
It took a moment for Navot’s eyes to fully adjust to the gloom. Outside, it was early morning of what promised to be an oppressive summer’s day, but in the restricted ops room deep inside Langley it was a permanent night. At desks around the perimeter sat several technicians, their youthful faces lit by the glow of computer screens. Two wore flight suits, the two who were piloting the pair of drones now loitering above eastern Morocco without the knowledge of the Moroccan government. Images from the aircraft’s high-resolution cameras flickered on the screens at the front of the room. The Predator, with its two Hellfire missiles, was already above Erfoud. But the Sentinel stealth drone was southeast of Fez, thus granting its camera an unobstructed view of the Palais Faraj. Navot watched as Christopher Keller and Jean-Luc Martel stepped into the hotel’s forecourt. A few seconds later, two Mercedes sedans slipped beneath an archway and turned south toward the mountains.
Navot sat down next to Graham Seymour. Kyle Taylor had pulled Adrian Carter into a corner of the room for a private consultation. The tension between them was obvious.
“Any idea who’s running the show?” asked Navot.
“For the moment,” replied Graham Seymour, “I’d say the ball is in Gabriel’s court.”
“For how long?”
“Until the minute Saladin shows his face. If that happens,” said Seymour, “all bets are off.”
The traffic in the Ville Nouvelle was a nightmare. Even in ancient Fez there seemed to be no escaping it. Eventually, the commercial buildings receded and small plots of cultivated farmland appeared, along with new apartment buildings. They were three-level blockhouses, old before their time, with garages on the ground level. Most of the garages had been converted into tiny restaurants and shops, or were being used as pens for animals. Sheep and goats grazed among newly planted olive trees. Families shared picnic lunches in whatever shade they could find.
Gradually, the land tilted toward the distant peaks of the Middle Atlas, and the olive trees gave way to dense groves of carob and argan and Aleppo pine. Eagles circled overhead, searching for jackals. And above the eagles, thought Christopher Keller, the drones were searching for Saladin.
The first town of any significance was Imouzzer. Built by the French, it was inhabited by some thirteen thousand members of the A?t Seghrouchen, a prominent Berber tribe that spoke a distinct dialect of the ancient Berber tongue. The air was several degrees cooler—they were now above four thousand feet in elevation—and the souks and male-only cafés along the main street were crowded. Keller scanned the faces of the young and old alike. They were noticeably different from the faces he had seen in Casablanca and Fez. European features, fairer hair and eyes. It was as if they had crossed an invisible border.
Just then, Keller’s mobile phone pulsed with an incoming message. He read it and then looked at Martel.
“Our friends are under the impression we’re being followed again. They think it might be the same man who was with us yesterday in Meknes and Volubilis. They’d like us to get a better photo of him.”
“What do they have in mind?”
Keller instructed the driver to pull over at a kiosk at the far end of town. The car carrying Mikhail, Natalie, and Olivia stopped behind them, as did a dusty Renault. In the side-view mirror, Keller could see the passenger—cropped dark hair, wide cheekbones, sunglasses, American baseball cap—but the driver was obscured.
“Get us a couple bottles of water,” he told Martel.
“It’s not the friendliest of towns.”
“I’m sure you can take care of yourself.”
Martel climbed out and walked over to the kiosk. Keller peered into the side-view mirror and saw the passenger stepping from the Renault. Through the heavily tinted rear window of the Mercedes, Keller snapped a photo of the passing figure. The result was a useless blurred profile. But a moment later, when the man returned to the Renault, Keller captured a clear three-quarter image of the man’s face. He showed it to Martel when the Frenchman slid into the backseat with two sweating bottles of Sidi Ali mineral water.
“That’s definitely him,” said Martel. “He’s the one I saw in the Rif last winter with Khalil.”
As the car eased away from the curb, Keller sent the photo to the Casablanca command post. Then he checked the side-view mirror. The second Mercedes was directly behind them. And behind the Mercedes was a dusty Renault with two men inside.
Many years of close and sometimes controversial cooperation between the CIA and the Moroccan DST had earned Langley access to Morocco’s long list of known jihadists and fellow travelers. As a result, it took the analysts in the Counterterrorism Center a matter of minutes to identify the man in Keller’s photograph. He was Nazir Bensa?d, a former member of the Moroccan Salafia Jihadia who was jailed after the Casablanca suicide bombings in 2003. Released in 2012, Bensa?d made his way to Turkey and eventually to the caliphate of ISIS. The government of Morocco was under the impression that he was still there. Obviously, that was not the case.
A photo of Bensa?d taken at the time of his imprisonment soon appeared on the display screens of the Black Hole in the CTC, along with another photo snapped in 2012 during the Moroccan’s arrival at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. Both photos were forwarded to Gabriel, who sent them on to Keller. Keller confirmed that Nazir Bensa?d was the man he had just seen.