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.
It seemed strange that he was also the vendor of cigarettes. That man had been easy-going, garrulous, talking to everyone, touching the men on the arm, winking at the women, lighting everyone’s cigarettes with a red plastic lighter. This man, by contrast, was quietly dangerous. She felt a bit afraid of him.
He gave full details of the route followed by the consignment of cocaine. It had passed through the hands of several gangs and had been transferred to different vehicles three times. As well as the paramilitary base he had located two smaller encampments and several city addresses for ISGS groups.
‘This is gold dust,’ Tab said. Tamara agreed. The results were more than she had hoped for, and she felt jubilant.
‘Good,’ said Abdul briskly. ‘Did you bring my stuff?’
‘Of course.’ He had asked for money in local currencies, pills for the gastric ailments that often afflicted visitors to North Africa, a simple compass – and one thing that had puzzled her: a yard of narrow-gauge titanium wire, fixed to wooden handles at each end, the whole ensemble sewn inside a cotton sash of the type worn by men as a belt around a traditional robe. She wondered if he would explain that.