The young man found Abdul’s cheap phone and handed it to his companion.
The older man turned it on and pressed buttons confidently. Abdul guessed he was looking at the contacts directory and the list of recent calls. What he found would support Abdul’s cover: cheap hotels, car repair workshops, currency changers, and a couple of hookers.
The older man said: ‘Search the car.’
Abdul stood watching. The man began with the open trunk. He picked up Abdul’s small travelling bag and emptied its contents onto the road. There was not much: a towel, a Koran, a few simple toiletries, a phone charger. He threw all the cigarettes out and lifted the floor panel to reveal the spare wheel and the toolkit. Without replacing anything, he opened the rear doors. He thrust his hands between the back and the flat of the seats and bent to peer underneath.
In the front he looked under the dashboard, inside the glove box, and into the door pockets. He noticed the loose panel in the driver’s door and removed it. ‘Binoculars,’ he said triumphantly, and Abdul felt a chill of fear. Binoculars were not as incriminating as a gun, but they were costly, and why would a vendor of cigarettes need them?
‘Very useful in the desert,’ Abdul said, beginning to feel desperate. ‘You’re probably carrying a pair yourselves.’
‘These look expensive.’ The older man examined the glasses. ‘Made in Kunming,’ he read. ‘They’re Chinese.’
‘Exactly,’ said Abdul. ‘I got them from the Sudanese captain who sold me the cigarettes. They were a bargain.’
Again his story was plausible. The Sudanese armed forces bought a lot from China, which was their country’s biggest trading partner. Much of the equipment ended up on the black market.
The older man said shrewdly: ‘Were you using these when we came along?’
‘I was going to, after my prayers. I wanted to know how big the village is. What do you think – fifty people? A hundred?’ It was a deliberate underestimate, to give the impression that he had not looked.
‘Never mind,’ said the man. ‘You’re not going there.’ He gave Abdul a long, hard stare, probably making up his mind whether to believe Abdul or kill him. Suddenly he said: ‘Where’s your gun?’
‘Gun? I have no gun.’ Abdul did not carry one. Firearms got an undercover officer into trouble more often than they got him out, and here was a dramatic example. If a weapon had been found now, they would have felt sure Abdul was not an innocent vendor of cigarettes.
‘Open the hood,’ the older man said to the younger.
He obeyed. As Abdul knew, there was nothing hidden in the engine compartment. ‘All clear,’ he reported.
‘You don’t seem very scared,’ the older man said to Abdul. ‘You can see we’re jihadis. We might decide to kill you.’
Abdul stared back, but allowed himself to tremble slightly.
The man nodded, making a decision, and handed the cheap phone back to Abdul. ‘Turn your car around,’ he said. ‘Go back the way you came.’
Abdul decided not to look too relieved. ‘But I was hoping to sell –’ He pretended to think better of his protest. ‘Would you like a carton?’
‘As a gift?’
Abdul was tempted to agree, but the character he was playing would not have been so generous. ‘I’m a poor man,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘Go back,’ the jihadi repeated.
Abdul gave a disappointed shrug, pretending to give up hope of sales. ‘As you wish,’ he said.
The man beckoned his comrade, and the two of them returned to the truck.
Abdul began to pick up his scattered possessions.
The truck roared away.
He watched it disappear into the desert. Then at last he spoke, in English. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he breathed. ‘That was close.’
*
Tamara had joined the CIA because of people like Kiah.
With all her heart she believed in freedom, democracy and justice, but those values were under attack all around the world, and Kiah was one of the victims. Tamara knew that the things she cherished had to be fought for. She often thought of the words of a traditional song: ‘If I should die and my soul gets lost, it’s nobody’s fault but mine.’ Everybody was responsible. It was a gospel song, and Tamara was Jewish, but the message was for everyone.
Here in North Africa, American forces were fighting against terrorists whose values were violence, bigotry and fear. The armed gangs associated with Islamic State murdered, kidnapped and raped Africans whose religion or ethnicity did not meet with the approval of fundamentalist warlords. Their violence, plus the southward creep of the Sahara Desert, were driving people like Kiah to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean in inflatable dinghies.
The US army, allied with the French and with national armies, attacked and destroyed terrorist encampments whenever they could find them.
Finding them was the problem.
The Sahara Desert was the size of the United States. And that was where Tamara came in. The CIA cooperated with other nations to provide intelligence for attacking armies. Tab was attached to the European Union mission but was in truth an officer of the DGSE, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, which was the French CIA. Abdul was a part of the same effort.
So far the project had had little impact. The jihadis continued to ravage much of North Africa more or less freely.
Tamara was hoping Abdul would change that.
She had never met him before, though she had spoken to him on the phone. However, this was not the first time the CIA had sent an undercover agent to spy out ISGS camps. Tamara had known Abdul’s predecessor, Omar. She had been the one who discovered Omar’s body, a corpse without hands or feet dumped in the desert. She had found the missing hands and feet a hundred yards away. That was how far the dying man had crawled on his elbows and knees while he bled to death. Tamara knew she would never get over that.
And now Abdul was following in Omar’s footsteps.
He had been in touch intermittently, whenever he could get a phone signal. Then, two days ago, he had called to say he had arrived in Chad and had some good news that he would report in person. He had requested some supplies and given precise directions to this location.
And now they knew what he had been doing.
Tamara was electrified, but keeping her excitement under control. ‘It might be Hufra,’ she said. ‘Even if not, it’s a fantastic discovery. Five hundred men, with truck-mounted artillery? It’s a major establishment!’
Abdul said: ‘When will you move?’
‘Two days, three at the most,’ she said. The armed forces of the United States, France and Niger would flatten the encampment. They would burn the tents and huts, confiscate the weapons, and interrogate any jihadis who survived the battle. In a matter of days the wind would blow away the ashes, the sun would bleach the garbage, and the desert would begin to reconquer the area.
And Africa would be a bit safer for people like Kiah and Naji.
Abdul gave precise directions to the encampment.
Both Tamara and Tab had notebooks on their knees and wrote down everything he said. Tamara was awestruck. She could hardly digest the fact that she was talking to a man who had taken such risks with his own life and achieved such a coup. As he talked, and she made notes, she took every chance of studying him. He had dark skin and a trim black beard and unusual light-brown eyes that had a flinty look. His face was taut with strain, and he appeared older than twenty-five. He was tall and broad-shouldered; she recalled that while attending the State University of New York he had been a mixed-martial-arts fighter.