House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)(124)

Nearly lost in the finger-pointing was the fact that Saladin, the author of a transatlantic trail of bloodshed and broken buildings, was no more. At first, his legion of followers, including some who openly walked the streets of London, refused to believe he was really gone. Surely, they claimed, it was nothing more than a piece of black American propaganda designed to weaken ISIS’s grip on a generation of young Islamic radicals. The photograph of Saladin’s lifeless, retooled face didn’t help matters, for it bore little resemblance to the original. But when ISIS confirmed his passing on one of its primary social media channels, even his most ardent supporters seemed to accept the fact he was truly gone. His closest lieutenants had no time to mourn; they were too busy dodging American bombs and missiles. London was the last straw. The final battle—the one ISIS hoped would lead to the return of the Mahdi and commence the countdown to the end of days—had begun.

But what were the exact circumstances of Saladin’s death at the compound in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco? The White House—and the president himself—gave several conflicting versions of the story. Complicating the issue further was a report from an independent Moroccan news site concerning three Toyota Land Cruisers found in the southeast corner of the country, not far from the sand sea at Erg Chebbi. One of the SUVs appeared to have crashed, but the other two were burned-out shells. The Web site claimed they were destroyed by an American Predator drone, a claim supported by an accompanying photograph of Hellfire missile fragments. The White House denied the report in the strongest possible language. So, too, did the government of Morocco. Then, for good measure, it shut down the Web site that had published the photos and tossed its editor in jail.

The allegation of an American drone strike on Moroccan soil ignited protests across the country, especially in the Bidonvilles where the ISIS recruiters plied their deadly trade. The unrest nearly overshadowed the brutal killing of Mohammad Bakkar, Morocco’s largest producer of hashish, the self-proclaimed king of the Rif Mountains. The deplorable condition of the body, said the gendarmes, suggested Bakkar had been the target of a drug-related vendetta. Harder to explain was the fact that Jean-Luc Martel, the wildly successful French hotelier and restaurateur, had been found lying a few feet away, with two neat bullet holes in the face. The Moroccans were not terribly interested in trying to determine how Martel had met his fate or why; they wanted only to move the matter off their plate as quickly as possible. They delivered his body to the French Embassy, signed the necessary paperwork, and bid JLM a fond adieu.

In France, though, Jean-Luc Martel’s violent end was an occasion for serious investigation, both by the press and the authorities, and no small amount of soul-searching. The circumstances surrounding his death suggested that the rumors about him had been true after all, that he was not a businessman with a golden touch but an international drug trafficker in disguise. As details found their way onto the pages of Le Monde and Le Figaro, once-promising political careers crumbled. The French president was forced to issue a statement of regret over his friendship with Martel, as were the interior minister and half the members of the National Assembly. As usual, the French press approached the matter philosophically. Jean-Luc Martel was viewed as a metaphor for all that was ailing modern France. His sins were France’s sins. He was evidence that something, somewhere, was amiss with the Fifth Republic.

Arrests soon followed, from the headquarters of JLM Enterprises in Geneva to the streets of Marseilles. His hotels were padlocked, his restaurants and retail outlets shuttered, his properties and bank accounts seized and frozen. In fact, the only thing the French government didn’t lay claim to was his corpse, which languished for several days in a Paris morgue before a distant family member from his village in Provence finally requested it for burial. The funeral and graveside services were poorly attended. Notably absent was Olivia Watson, the beautiful former fashion model who was Martel’s companion and business partner. All efforts to locate Miss Watson, by the French authorities and the media, were without success. Her gallery in Saint-Tropez remained closed for business, its display window overlooking the Place de l’Ormeau empty of paintings. The same was true of her clothing boutique on the rue Gambetta. The villa she shared with Martel appeared deserted. Curiously, so, too, did the garish palace on the opposite side of the bay.

But was there a connection between the death of Jean-Luc Martel and the killing of the ISIS terror mastermind known as Saladin? A connection other than a similar time and place? Even the most conspiratorially minded journalists thought it unlikely. Still, there were enough tenuous links to merit a second look, and look they did—from the West End of London, to the seventh arrondissement of Paris, to an empty art gallery in Saint-Tropez, to a patch of blood-soaked pavement near the entrance of Downing Street. Reporters who specialized in matters related to security and intelligence thought they could detect a pattern. There was smoke, they said. And where there was smoke there was usually the prince of fire.

In time, even the most carefully woven lies unravel. All it takes is a loose thread. Or a man who feels compelled, for reasons of honor, or perhaps out of a sense of debt, to bring the truth to light. Not all of it, of course, for that would have been insecure. Only a small slice of it, enough to keep a promise. He gave the story to Samantha Cooke of London’s Telegraph, who crashed it in time for the Sunday edition. Within hours, it had set four distant capitals ablaze. The Americans ridiculed the account as pure fantasy, and the reviews from the British and the French were only slightly less caustic. Only the Israelis refused to comment, but then that was their standard procedure when it came to intelligence operations. They had learned the hard way that it was better to say nothing at all than issue a denial no one would believe anyway. In this case, at least, their reputation was well deserved.