House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)(29)
“He works for the largest drug-trafficking network in Europe.”
“Doing what?”
“The polite way of saying it is that he handles security.”
“And the impolite way?”
“He’s an enforcer and assassin. The Police Nationale believes he’s personally killed at least twelve people. Not that they can prove it,” added Rousseau. “Nouredine is as careful as they come. So is his boss.”
“Who’s that?”
“First things first.” Rousseau held up the photo again. “Where did you get this?”
“I told you, from the British.”
“Yes, I heard you the first time. But where did the British get it?”
“It’s not important.”
“Oh,” said Rousseau, “but it is.”
17
Rue de Grenelle, Paris
“Exactly how many guns are we talking about?”
“I believe it was twenty.”
“And where did this operative of British intelligence lay his hands on twenty Kalashnikovs and HKs?”
Gabriel’s expression managed to convey both ignorance and indifference or something in between.
“And he posed as a Corsican?” asked Rousseau. “You’re sure of it?”
“Is that noteworthy?”
“It might be. You see, only someone who’s lived on the island for many years can imitate their speech.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“He is a friend of yours, this British agent?”
“We’re acquainted.”
“He must be very well connected to have pulled off something like this. And quite talented.”
“He has much to learn.”
“What is your interest in this shabby affair?” asked Rousseau.
“My interest,” said Gabriel, “is Saladin.”
“Mine, too. Which is why I’m going to count to ten and restrain my anger. Because it’s quite possible this British friend of yours has managed to prove something I’ve suspected for a long time.”
“What’s that?”
But Rousseau did not answer, at least not directly. Instead, adopting the demeanor of a professor, he took a detour backward in time, to the hopeful winter of 2011. In Tunisia and Egypt, a pair of oppressive regimes had been swept away by a sudden wave of popular anger and resentment. Libya was next. In January there were a smattering of protests over housing shortages and political corruption, protests that soon spiraled into a nationwide uprising. It quickly became apparent that Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s tyrannical ruler, would not follow the example of his counterparts in Tunis and Cairo and go quietly into the Arab night. He had ruled Libya with an iron fist for more than four decades, stealing its oil riches and murdering his opponents, sometimes only for the sake of his own entertainment. A man of the desert, he knew the fate that awaited him if he fell. And so he plunged his backward nation into a full-fledged civil war. Fearing a bloodbath, the West intervened militarily, with France taking a leading role. By October, Gaddafi was dead, and Libya was free.
“And what did we do? Did we flood Libya with money and other forms of assistance? Did we hold its hand while it tried to make the transition from a tribal society to a Western-style democracy? No,” said Rousseau, “we did none of those things. In fact, we did almost nothing at all. And what happened as a result of our inaction? Libya became yet another failed state, and ISIS moved into the void.”
The danger of an ISIS safe haven in North Africa, Rousseau continued, was obvious. It would allow the terrorists to infiltrate fighters and weaponry into Western Europe and attack virtually at will. But within months of ISIS’s arrival in Libya, police forces from Greece to Spain noticed another disturbing trend. The flow of narcotics from North Africa, especially hashish from Morocco, rose to unprecedented levels. What’s more, there was a change in the traditional smuggling routes. Where once the drug gangs were content to move their product across the Strait of Gibraltar one small boat or Jet Ski at a time—or overland to Egypt and then the Balkans—it was now coming across the water in massive cargo ships.
“Take, for example, the case of the Apollo, a Greek-registered rust bucket seized by the Italian navy off Sicily not long after ISIS set up shop in nearby Libya. The Italians had received a tip from a North African–based informant that the vessel contained an unusually large shipment of hashish. Even so, they were shocked by what they found. Seventeen metric tons, a record seizure.”
But the Apollo, explained Rousseau, was only the beginning. Over the next three years, European authorities made several more stunning seizures. All the vessels had one thing in common; they had called on Libyan ports. And all the raids were based on tips from well-placed North African informants. All totaled, more than three hundred metric tons of narcotics, with an estimated street value of three billion dollars, were taken off the market. Then the informants suddenly stopped talking, and the seizures slowed to a trickle.
“But why? Why the sudden change in the smuggling route? Why were the producers suddenly forcing massive quantities of merchandise onto the market? And why,” asked Rousseau, “did the informants go silent? Here in France we concluded there was a powerful new player on the scene. Someone with the muscle to seize control of the smuggling routes. Someone whose methods frightened the informants into silence. Someone who was willing to risk the loss of tons of precious cargo because they were more interested in making a great deal of money as quickly as possible. We determined there was only one group that fit that profile.”