The Caliphate, André Gallo [best books to read ever .TXT] 📗

the sparsely furnished room. Al Khalil and his lieutenants sat at a long wooden table cluttered with cups, plastic bottles of water, tea, coffee and two platters of finger food—dates, peanuts, mango slices, and sugar biscuits on one and slices of dried fish on the other. The one ashtray was overworked for the task at hand since they all smoked, El Maghrebi incessantly. Cigarette butts surrounded the table.

     Fahmy was a beefy individual dressed in suit pants and a short-sleeved, Hilton Pyramids Golf Resort polo shirt.

     “As you have explained to us in the past, Sheikh al Khalil, the subversion of the Sahelian countries is a worthy objective,” Fahmy said. “And it will happen. But to go forward, we need funds and, in spite of our efforts and of blessings from Allah, progress is slow. Our financiers expect results in their lifetime. We need a splashy event that the world will notice. If it happens in Egypt, the population will respond. Egypt must be the core, the focus, of our action. It is the rock on which we can lever the entire Middle East.”

     Kawar had taken his ascot off and was fanning himself with a magazine.

     “Jordan has one of the few remaining kingdoms left in the world. It is ruled by an illegitimate dynasty installed by the British. Over half of the population is Palestinian. We’ll have a groundswell of support if we strike in Amman.”

     Hussein, who usually said little in these strategy sessions, saw an opening to achieve his life goal.

     “The Assad family has killed many thousands of our Muslim brothers in Syria, my father among them. What could be more right, more pleasing to Allah, than to strike the Assads?”

     El Maghrebi, who had been quiet, pinched his cigarette from his lips.

     “You all need to do more than talk. I only hear planning for possible future actions coming from most of you.”

     He took a long drag on his cigarette.

    “You need to start somewhere. Nothing will take place unless you take military action. There is no better time to start than right away. We in AQIM are the only real revolutionaries. You can come to Algeria and I’ll show you. But leave your fancy clothes home.”

     Fahmy and Kawar answered in loud voices speaking at the same time.

     “You are so successful that you have to live in the desert and move your camp every day,” Kawar said. “In my country, open warfare is not the answer,” Fahmy said.

     Al Khalil stood up so quickly that his hand brushed his cup from the table. It broke as it crashed against the hard floor.

     “I have listened to all of you. We will have a strategy before we leave. The Sahelian initiative must go on. But I agree that it is a long term program that is too subtle for our donors who suffer from strategic myopia.”

     Salim was at one of the tables but said nothing. He got up to leave with al Khalil.

***

Karim knocked on Steve’s door at 11:30 p.m.

     “Here it is,” he said with a nervous smile. “I couldn’t get my hands on the phone until after al Khalil went to bed. He always opens his window at night and he keeps it on his desk right under the window. I have to get back right away before anyone notices. I’m the night guard tonight. I’ll come back for the phone in a couple of hours, whenever I can. The phone needs to be back in his room before he gets up for morning prayers.”

     With that he was gone. Steve’s questions remained unasked and unanswered.

     Hank first looked at all the external aspects of the device to see what he had to do to make the CIA gift identical. He noticed a slight nick on the side of the grey Globalstar 1700 and carefully nicked the new one identically. He plugged al Khalil’s satellite phone into his computer and, using CIA-developed software, quickly found al Khalil’s password, “1141346.” He then transferred all the settings in Tariq’s phone to his computer and from his computer to the new phone. He placed the old battery in the new phone as well. He needed no advice from CIA Headquarters, but called his support team in Langley to inform them that he had finished his task. After a few questions to double-check his work, his CIA team signed off. And the waiting resumed.

     About an hour and a half before sunrise, Steve was forced to conclude that Karim had run into an obstacle and wasn’t coming back to pick up the phone and return it in a way that al Khalil would never know that it had left the fort. If al Khalil noticed that his phone was missing, Karim would immediately be under suspicion.

     Steve left the hotel with a bundle under his arm. Before getting in his car, he looked to make sure no one saw him and dressed in the Tuareg robes and sandals that he had found in the package given to him by the Tuareg amenokal earlier that week. He made sure that his tagoulmoust hid as much of his face as possible. He then headed out for the fort with the CIA phone.

     There were no streetlights but his headlights and a star-bright sky provided good visibility. Once out of town, he turned off his lights. Campfires dotting the night landscape helped to keep him on the sandy track and the luminous screen of his GPS kept him on direction. He left his car about a hundred-and-fifty yards from the fort under an ancient and gnarled baobab tree, a symbol of the time when the Sahara was green. Several goats were also under the tree and moved to make room for the car with the utmost reluctance and bleats of complaint.

     The