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

     But Captain Roger was not easily discouraged. She wanted to report him to somebody but she knew that, in this French military working milieu, she would only be hurting herself. She also concluded that the captain’s relationship with al Khalil was not completely professional. She had noticed, for example, that he owned a rather luxurious new Mercedes SL convertible, a car that a French army captain couldn’t normally afford. She had also come across enough clues to conclude that the French oil company, Total, was paying bribes, or tribute, to AQIM through Roger in order to be left alone in Algeria. And Roger, with the acquiescence of Total, was taking five percent off the top. But she had nothing that would stand up in court, so she had held off saying anything to the general.

***

Al Khalil was visiting Paris and they were at the Chernoviz safe apartment. The captain was finishing a glass of red wine, and al Khalil held a glass of lemonade in his hand. They were sitting back in easy chairs. The TV was on but the sound was turned low.

     “My office is coming up in the world,” Roger said. “Somehow we were assigned an ENA graduate. Incredibly, she is knowledgeable about North Africa. In fact she was born in Mali, around Timbuktu.”

     “I suppose you’re lucky to get talented help. I wish I could say the same. But she doesn’t sound French. Is she?”

     Before answering, Roger stood up and went to the kitchen to pour himself another glass of wine. The weight of each step extracted a squeaking complaint from the pre-war parquet floor.

     “That’s an interesting question. I guess she could claim a Malian passport, a French passport, and even an American passport.”

     Roger explained his statement.

     “Doesn’t the fact that her stepfather is an American diplomat give your security people a problem?”

     “He’s not only a diplomat, he’s also an ambassador. But, on the other side of the scale, her grandfather is head of our organization.”

     Startled by Kella’s background and credentials, al Khalil paid close attention now. This was information he could possibly use.

     “Really? And her father, or stepfather, where is he an ambassador?”

     “You won’t believe this—Israel.”

    Detecting he was on the cusp of actionable information, Tariq asked, “When she goes to visit, I want to know.”

     He was aware of his sudden authoritarian tone but didn’t bother to disguise it, knowing he didn’t need to.

***

A few days later in her DGSE office, Kella received a CIMETERRE report, a transcript of a telephone conversation between al Khalil and Salim.

AL KHALIL: I am proceeding successfully with our Gaza friends. We’ll be on the ground in a week.

Using an Internet bulletin board on vegetarian cooking as prearranged with Steve, she shared the information with him.

     He replied:

As I told you last time we met, the enchilada wannabe wants to transfer his cooking to the East. If we’re going to affect the outcome, we need to be in the same kitchen. Could you pay your parents a visit? The date for the ceremony to which I invited you is coming up and I’ll be there as I hope you will also. We can discuss that on the phone.

39. On the Road toward Taba, Egypt

Al Khalil confirmed with a glance that two Egyptian police cars still sandwiched his bus. The Egyptians had insisted, explaining it was a routine practice adopted following the killing of tourists near Luxor. He and his thirty men had left the fourteenth century Monastery of St. Catherine, in the Southern Sinai, that morning. They were heading north along the Red Sea coast toward the resort on the Egyptian side of the border with Israel

     Al Khalil looked at his men. Some were dozing. Some were praying, fingering their prayer beads. Except that, as part of their disguise, al Khalil, under the Islamic concept of Taqiyyah, concealing one’s Muslim faith for self-protection, the prayer beads were rosaries and they were all in the garb of Cistercian monks.

     Al Khalil, who had spent much of his childhood in Belgium, where the Trappists had several monasteries, seized on the monk disguise because the Cistercians had split from the Benedictines in the belief that life in the abbeys was becoming too comfortable. They had established a reformist Cistercian order, its vows including the observance of nearly complete silence. Another, even stricter, Cistercian order, the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, was created later.

     To have his Salafists remain as silent as Cistercians fit al Khalil just fine. In his explanation to his men, he pointed out that they could not be questioned individually at the border. But personally he was just as happy that they remain quiet. Al Khalil, or Father Jerome Benoit, as his current passport read, was the only one in their group permitted to speak in order to facilitate the trip.

     As part of their cover, many carried away souvenirs and religious trinkets from St. Catherine. However, the Salafists had considered the visit well within the parameters of their religious beliefs. St. Catherine’s Monastery was located at the base of Jebel Musa, or Mount Moses, a fourteen-thousand-eight-hundred-foot peak where Moses, one of the prophets accepted by the Quran, was said to have received the Ten Commandments. The Monastery was also built on the site of where Moses was believed to have seen the Burning Bush. Also of interest to the jihadists was the Mosque inside the walls of the Monastery. Al Khalil had planned the visit as a means of strengthening their cover, and perhaps also a reconnaissance of a Christian site to be soon reconquered.

     While getting his men ready in the Malian desert camp for the coming operation against an Israeli nerve center, al Khalil had told them, quoting from an al Qaeda manual,