It was the job of the security guard to monitor all passersby along the beach, lest there be a replay of the unfortunate 2015 incident in Tunis, where a Salafist terrorist had pulled an AK-47 assault rifle from his umbrella and massacred thirty-eight guests at a five-star hotel, the majority of them British subjects. Not that the security guard could do much if faced with a similar set of circumstances. He had no weapon himself, only a radio. In the event of a terrorist incident, he was to issue an alert and then take “any and all” available measures to neutralize the attacker or attackers. Which meant that in all likelihood the security guard would lose his life trying to protect a bunch of half-naked, well-to-do Westerners. It was not the way he wished to die. But jobs were scarce in Casablanca, especially for boys from the Bidonvilles. Better to stand watch on the Plage Lalla Meriem than to sell fruit from a pushcart in the old medina. He’d done that, too.

It had been a slow afternoon, even for August, and so the woman approaching from the west, from the direction of Tahiti and the other beach clubs, received the guard’s full attention. She was small and dark-haired and, unlike most Western women who came to the beach, modestly dressed. There was a sadness about her, as though she had been recently widowed. From her right shoulder hung a beach bag. Louis Vuitton, a very popular model that summer. The guard wondered whether the woman realized that it cost more than many Moroccans would see in a lifetime.

Just then, one of the women reclining near the water’s edge, the unfriendly Frenchwoman, raised an arm in greeting. The sad-looking girl walked over and sat down at the end of the Frenchwoman’s chaise. The beach boys offered to bring a third, but the sad-looking woman declined; evidently, she would not be staying long. The tall, beautiful Englishwoman seemed annoyed by the intrusion. Bored, she stared listlessly out to sea while the Frenchwoman and the sad-looking girl talked intimately and shared cigarettes, which the Frenchwoman had produced from her own beach bag, also a Louis Vuitton, the same model in fact.

At length, the sad-looking girl rose and took her leave. The Frenchwoman, now wearing her sundress, walked with her for about a hundred meters along the tideline. Then the two embraced and went their separate ways, the sad-looking girl toward the beach clubs, the Frenchwoman to her chaise. A few words passed between her and the tall, beautiful Englishwoman. Then the Englishwoman rose and knotted her wrap around her waist. Much to the security guard’s delight, she did not bother with the sheer top. And he in turn was so distracted by the sight of her picture-perfect body that he did not bother to take more than a cursory glance inside their beach bags a moment later when they passed through the gate and reentered the hotel’s grounds.

Together the two women boarded an elevator and rode it to the fourth floor, where they were admitted into the row of three rooms that had been turned into one. The tall, beautiful Englishwoman entered the suite she shared with Monsieur Martel. At once, he drew her close and murmured something into her ear that the Frenchwoman couldn’t quite hear. It was no matter; inside the House of Spies they were listening. They always were.

48

Casablanca, Morocco

There was no contact from Mohammad Bakkar or his surrogates that night, and none the following morning, either. From King Saul Boulevard to Langley, and points in between, the mood turned bleak. Even Paul Rousseau, from his lair deep inside DGSI headquarters in Levallois-Perret, began to have his doubts. He feared that somewhere, somehow, the operation had sprung a leak and was taking on water. The most likely culprit was his unlikely asset. The asset he had burned and recruited without the consent of his chief or his minister. The asset to whom he had given a grant of blanket immunity. The hard young men around CIA Director Morris Payne shared Rousseau’s pessimism. Unlike the Frenchman, however, they were not prepared to wait indefinitely for the phone to ring. They were soldiers by trade rather than spies and believed in taking the fight directly to the enemy. Payne, it seemed, was similarly inclined. He summoned Adrian Carter to his office and made his views clear. Carter in turn passed them along to Gabriel via a secure videoconference. Carter was in the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center. Gabriel was in the makeshift op center at the House of Spies.

“No big hand motions,” he said.

“Translation?”

“Mohammad Bakkar is the star of the show. And the star of the show gets to set the time and place of the meeting.”

“Even a star needs good advice from time to time.”

“It’s not in keeping with the way the relationship has worked in the past. If I instruct Martel to initiate contact, Bakkar will smell a rat.”

“Maybe he already does.”

“Calling him won’t change that.”

“The seventh floor is of the opinion it might settle things one way or another.”

“Is that so?”

“And the White House—”

“Since when has the White House been involved in this?”

“They have been from the beginning. The president is said to be monitoring the situation carefully.”

“How comforting. Exactly how many people in Washington know about this, Adrian?”

“Hard to say.” Carter frowned. “What’s that noise?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It sounds as though someone is praying.”