Chapter 43
The Medina
Tangier, Morocco
When Gunther Klaus awoke, he felt prickly and tired, another poor night’s sleep adding to his collective fatigue.
The room had no windows and one door. The only light came from a naked overhead bulb and a slit of light beneath the door.
He estimated the dimensions of his quarters to be roughly ten by thirteen feet.
Nearer a closet than a place to live. The shared bathroom was two floors down, and the only appliance, an electric hot plate in one corner, was perilously close to the sheetless stained mattress.
The mattress reeked of bodily fluids and hashish.
Depressing as all that was, for the last eighteen hours there was no place on earth Klaus would rather have been—or at least, no place in Tangier. Because aside from the bartender, who would be sound asleep at this hour, no one knew where he was.
The tiny room was situated above the Kasbah Bar.
Alcohol was an acceptable vice in Morocco, although generally kept indoors out of respect for Islamic sensitivities.
Klaus had patronized the Kasbah a number of times.
He wasn’t a regular by any means, but he’d been here enough to know that the owner, who tended the bar most nights, kept a handful of rooms for rent on the top floor.
Klaus had seen cash deftly change hands, and watched customers creep up the narrow staircase.
Some did so in the company of prostitutes.
Others were more guarded—gaunt, ebony-skinned men from the south awaiting their final push to Europe.
Tangier’s geographic position was unique.
Less than twenty miles across the Strait of Gibraltar was Punta de Tarifa, Spain, making this the nearest jumping-off point between the continents.
For that reason, Tangier was a natural hub for human trafficking.
And the old medina, as had been the case for a thousand years, was central to the action.
Its maze of streets and alleys—some too narrow for people to pass shoulder to shoulder—were all but impossible to police.
The Kasbah Bar, Klaus had decided, was the perfect place to hole up for a night.
Any longer, however, was out of the question.
If all went to plan, today he would reconnect with the Americans.
He’d spent a largely sleepless night weighing how to make that happen. Countless ideas had rushed into his head and vaporized just as easily. The sticking point was always the same. He had to leave a message where the Americans would see it, yet do so under the noses of the Russians.
It was at dawn, with the morning call to prayer reverberating against the ancient stucco walls, that he’d finally come up with a plan.
He’d lain still for a time, working through the angles.
It wasn’t perfect, but no plan was. As Klaus put on his shirt and shoes, details fell into place.
His cash was running desperately low, but he thought he might pull it off.
He went downstairs in a hurry. An old woman sweeping the floor of the deserted bar shot him a disapproving look. Nothing good ever went on upstairs. Klaus returned an empty smile and continued outside.
The dawn air was cool, and as he walked south kernels of the basic tradecraft he’d been taught took hold.
He had made his most important purchase the previous afternoon.
Feeling exposed on his way to the Kasbah, he’d stopped at a souvenir shop and paid cash for a cheap gray hoodie.
Today it seemed like the best investment in clothing he had ever made, surpassing so many fine suits from Armani and Saint Laurent.
Klaus lifted the hood over his head, donned sunglasses, and headed up the cobblestone lane.
—
Klaus found that the easiest part of his plan, surprisingly, was renting the donkey.
Tourist schemes in the old medina were legion, and among the favorites were private tours of the old town on the backs of tethered mules.
For Europeans on holiday, it was the perfect Instagram moment—an exotic adventure to be shared with the world.
The moment Klaus was after was precisely the opposite.
Taking a tour would allow him to approach his target with maximum anonymity, and when the time for a picture came, he hoped it would reach the smallest-possible audience.
He was cautious as he approached the lane where the guides queued up. He surveyed the streets continuously, watching for Slavic faces that paid him too much attention. With his sunglasses and hoodie, he appeared to be just another fair-skinned tourist trying to ward off the sun.
The tours, Klaus knew, followed a canned route that passed directly in front of the building he was targeting.
It took the rest of his cash to make everything happen, and even then, he had to bargain down the price with the guide—a grizzled old Berber whose traditional clothing was covered in traditional dust.
Klaus was committing to an all-or-nothing gambit, yet it seemed his best chance to reestablish contact with the Americans.
He was sure they were looking for him, yet so were the Russians.
He’d been told the latter had a strong ground game in Morocco.
Klaus was counting on the American’s reliance on technology, although his CIA handler had cautioned him on that very point.
There are a lot of cameras in the city and virtually all are compromised. We can hack them, but so can the GRU.
His handler had followed up with suggestions on how to minimize his exposure: avoid busy streets and choke points, employ simple countermeasures like broad hats and sunglasses.
For a man who stashed gray money in dark corners of the world, who was used to dining in the company of starch-collared bankers and lawyers, it was a departure of the lowest order.
He was in the untenable position of being pursued by two of the world’s great powers.
He wanted to be seen by one but not the other.
Early that morning, tossing and turning on his smelly rented mattress, the answer had arrived like a vision: the one place in Tangier where the Americans would surely have a surveillance advantage.
The Tangier American Legation was the only U.S.
National Historic Landmark situated in another country.
The tiny plot of land had been gifted to America by Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah over two hundred years ago.
During World War II it served as a hub for U.S.
intelligence in Africa. In more recent times, a museum had been established to celebrate the long-standing alliance between the United States and the kingdom of Morocco.
Gunther Klaus viewed it in a far narrower light: if the CIA was electronically monitoring any place in Tangier, it would be the beige Moorish facade of the American Legation Museum.
Once payment for his tour was finalized, he mounted a malodorous beast named Earl, the first in a train of four donkeys.
The three behind him were ridden by Americans, part of a tour group that had arrived by ferry from Spain.
A teenage girl wearing yoga pants and a cowboy hat snapped selfies relentlessly.
Her father, at the rear, was drenched in sweat under an Indiana Jones hat.
Earl turned out to be old and slow. As was the Berber.
The guide led the caravan on the usual route, a cobblestone path marked by puddles of brown leavings.
After one mosque and countless spice stalls, the tiny wagon train rounded a corner, and Klaus spotted the museum ahead.
He saw people milling about, although nothing like the throngs that had been at the souk yesterday.
The American Legation Museum might be a point of interest, but it was second-tier at best.
Klaus waited until they were directly in front of the museum’s entrance, a passageway that led to an arched tunnel.
On the portico ceiling he saw what he was after—the telltale plastic dome of a camera and the associated conduit.
He reached beneath the hoodie at his beltline and removed a piece of cardboard.
Then, for a few precious moments, he removed his knockoff Ray-Bans, pulled back his hood, and looked directly at the camera.
The entire process, after hours of planning and the expenditure of his remaining euros, took mere seconds to execute.
Klaus put his ensemble back in place and settled in for the rest of the ride. He could do nothing more. He was out of both money and ideas.
Fifteen minutes later, the old Berber helped him dismount. “I hope you enjoyed your tour,” he said. His helpful hand ended with an upturned palm that lingered suggestively for a gratuity.
The Swiss banker who was, at least on paper, a millionaire forty times over, smiled feebly, and said, “I will recommend Earl to all my friends.”