The Rift, Rachel Lynch [books recommended by bts .txt] 📗

time, it could send a steady stream of reconnaissance data, delivering a comprehensive picture of either a large area or a prime target. As well as conducting its usual task of searching the desert for alleged training camps for terrorist cells, the aircraft had been tasked with a flight over Morocco to confirm the whereabouts of Fawaz bin Nabil. Aerial photographs confirmed that he was present at his residence seven days ago. The check-up was routine for any persons of interest who had changed their habits lately, and Fawaz had. It was how Five Eyes had come across the anomaly in the first place. The US intelligence was the shared within the Five Eyes nations, and agents on the ground confirmed the data, with Fawaz’s palatial mansion coming under further scrutiny. It had been noticed that activity at the riad had tapered off over the last couple of days, and so Secret Service operators active in Marrakech were tasked with getting close to the property to observe and report back. The ground personnel in Marrakech submersed themselves in the culture of their target for years on end, and they knew the best ways to access routes by road and sea. Inland, they used Toyota Land Cruisers, perfect for the choking Saharan sand.

Fawaz bin Nabil was long suspected of being behind the biggest movement of hashish from Africa to Europe in the history of record-keeping. Morocco supplied one million kilos of hashish per year, most of it going to Europe, where it was worth around eight billion euros. Operation Lionfish had failed to link the transactions to Nabil Trading, but the surveillance continued at the cost of one member state with interest in where all the money was going – the USA. The superpower had been torn for decades by two divergent imperatives: the need to protect enduring American interests on the one hand – oil – and the desire to stay clear of the incumbent entanglements of the region. As a result, the American foreign policy budget sunk billions into Middle East and North Africa. The Global Hawk’s contribution was a tiny part of the overall investment.

Photographs from the Global Hawk were sent in real time to an airbase near Bedford County, Virginia. From there, they were assessed and processed by specially trained military personnel, who forwarded them to the relevant department at the Pentagon. The photos showed zero activity at the riad for over thirty-six hours.

The operator, sat in an airbase near Washington DC, deftly sent commands to the lone vehicle and dictated the limitations of the search. Only last week, the same aircraft had searched for a missing vessel off the coast of Nigeria that had been hijacked. The mission was a success, but half the crew died in the rescue operation.

The Land Cruiser on the ground was picked up by the aircraft and visual confirmed by the operator in Bedford County. The two men stopped the truck away from the road and used night-vision binoculars to assess the lack of activity. They’d been there for four hours. Their communication with each other was infrequent and usually took the form of banter about the Super Bowl, women, what they missed about home. But for the most part, they concentrated on the task at hand.

Darkness shrouded them and they felt sure that they were alone. They’d done it enough times. They knew the usual suspects who ran North Africa, and they had names for them. This one they called Bin Bin.

‘Door opening, twelve o’clock,’ one said.

‘Got it.’ The other confirmed sight.

Even at a hundred thousand feet, the thermal warmth given off by the human body was picked up on the Global Hawk, and the operator sat at a desk in Virginia watching and listening to the whole manoeuvre.

‘He’s on his own.’ The observation came from the agent on the ground. ‘Why has he no guards? He’s outdoors smoking a cigarette with no one else around.’

‘Is it Bin Bin?’ his partner asked.

‘It can’t be.’ Their range was three hundred metres, easily manageable for the L3Harris night-vision goggles.

‘Nope, it’s his body double.’ The special agent was sure. ‘Nabil is never seen carrying a phone, let alone scrolling through it and interacting.’

The operator in Virginia requested authority to enter the property. It was granted. The two men moved quickly and silently, like the Barbary lion sometimes spotted in the dunes. They closed in on the only two entrances/exits and split up. The man they’d seen flicked his cigarette away, got into a vehicle, on his own, and drove away from the residence.

‘Confirm, it’s not Bin Bin.’

‘Affirmative.’

They moved towards the entrances separately and approached the security fences that threatened enough voltage to kill ten lions. A quick test confirmed that it was switched off. They climbed over and worked quickly, searching each room of the luxurious residence. After ten minutes, they’d confirmed that no one was home. No security, no maids and no caretakers. The place was abandoned.

They had no record of Fawaz leaving the property and not even the US budget could spread to watching one man’s back every day for a week at the cost of ten million dollars per flight.

The fact was that Fawaz bin Nabil, or Bin Bin, was gone, and it begged the question why he’d left his body double – well known to the Secret Service duo – swinging his dick in the breeze for all to see, and his mansion in the desert unguarded. The only explanation was that Fawaz bin Nabil no longer cared.

Chapter 43

Thirty miles southwest of Lyon in the city of Saint-Étienne, Fawaz peered out of the window of a stone townhouse, once owned by a mining family, across the dark Loire river to the cathedral, which was lit brightly in the night sky. The journey through France had gone without incident after the episode with the cyclists. He was quite confident that he looked pedestrian enough to be forgettable: just a Basque gentleman making his way to his farm in the