Harvath recognized them immediately. “Palmyra,” he said. “Syria.”
She was impressed. “You know it.”
“All too well.”
On a recent assignment, Harvath had barely escaped from that part of Syria with his life. He had passed right through Palmyra.
What ISIS had done to that ancient city was as bad as what the Taliban and their RPGs had done to the Bamiyan statues of Buddha in Afghanistan.
“Across Syria, Iraq, and Libya, ISIS has overrun UNESCO world heritage sites, slaughtering archeologists and plundering everything they can get their hands on.”
As she spoke, she backed her points up with slide after slide.
“They load the looted artifacts onto cargo ships headed for southern Italian ports. There, the Mafia usually purchases them with cash. Increasingly, though, we’re seeing payment made in weapons.
“The Mafia then help smuggle the weapons farther north into Europe, where ISIS and other terror groups can carry out attacks.”
Immediately, Harvath’s mind was drawn to what had happened at the cathedral in Spain. “What about explosives?” he asked.
Lovett nodded. “The Italian organized crime groups are all interconnected. The Cosa Nostra, the Camorra, the N’drangheta — what one doesn’t have, the other can get. They’re supplied by an array of arms dealers from Ukraine, Russia, and other places across the Balkans and Eastern Europe.”
“What about the name I gave you? The guy our Libyan smuggler, Halim, gave up?”
She took a sip of her Diet Coke and pulled up a new series of images, surveillance photos taken by Italian police. “Sicily is home to a highly organized, ruthless Nigerian criminal network known as the Black Axe. They operate with the permission of the Sicilian Mafia.
“The name you gave me, Festus Aghaku, he was a tassista for the Black Axe. It’s Italian for taxi driver. His job was to meet the smuggling boats from Libya out at sea and sneak in high-paying customers before Italian authorities could get to them.”
Harvath held up his hand and interrupted. “You said his job was to meet the smuggling boats from Libya. What’s he doing now?”
Lovett advanced to her next slide. “He’s dead.”
The image showed a corpse inside an unzipped body bag. “What happened to him?”
“He drowned. The same night, the same storm, as your chemistry student, Mustapha Marzouk.
“The Italians have a handful of informants in the Black Axe. From what I’ve been able to gather,” Lovett continued, “Festus Aghaku didn’t want to go out that night, but he was forced to.”
“Forced by whom?”
“The Sicilian Mafia. Allegedly, there was a VIP who needed to be picked up off the coast of Lampedusa. The Cosa Nostra didn’t care about the storm. Festus Aghaku was a dead man if he didn’t go.”
“So what happened?”
“He went. The storm was much worse than predicted. The boat sank. He and two Nigerian crew members drowned.”
“Do we know who the VIP was?” Harvath asked. “Did they mention Mustapha Marzouk by name?”
“No.”
“What about where he was going once he reached Italy?”
Lovett shook her head. “They didn’t mention that either. But they wouldn’t have known his final destination. That’s not how it’s set up. The Black Axe runs the water taxi portion. That’s it. Once the customer gets to dry land, the Cosa Nostra takes over. They then run the smuggling routes up through Italy and into the rest of Europe.”
Harvath hated the Mafia. They thrived on human suffering. He didn’t care if they were Italian, Nigerian, or Libyan. Profiting off other people’s misery, they were nothing more than animals in his book.
The Sicilians were some of the most violent. They paid lip service to honor and respect while they trafficked in drugs, money laundering, blackmail, weapons, and terrorism. There was nothing honorable or respectable about how they made their livings.
“So who would have been in charge of getting Mustapha Marzouk to his final destination?” he asked.
The CIA officer advanced to her next slide. On it was a sixty-something-year-old man with dark, olive-colored skin, a prominent Roman nose, and a pair of green eyes saddled with heavy bags. His receding hairline had gone gray and boasted two prominent widow’s peaks.
“Meet Carlo Ragusa. Anything and everything the Black Axe does in Sicily, it does because Ragusa allows them to. He’s the one who sent Festus Aghaku and his crew into the storm that night. He’s also the one who can tell you where Mustapha Marzouk was headed.”
It was some of the best news Harvath had gotten yet. “Where do I find him?”
Lovett winced and clicked to her next slide.
CHAPTER 50
Tursunov checked out of his hotel late that morning and took the train out to Charles de Gaulle Airport.
There, he caught a taxi back into the city and, under a different passport, checked into Le Meurice, the grand luxury hotel on the rue de Rivoli.
It resembled a modern-day Versailles. Gilded mirrors. Silk draperies. Crystal chandeliers and velvet couches. He was offended by the opulence.
Opening the doors to his balcony, the cacophony from the street below pierced the cashmere-wrapped silence of the suite. Horns blared, brakes squealed, and engines growled. Trucks rumbled past and scooters buzzed like angry wasps.
Removing his Gauloises, he slid one from the pack, placed it between his lips, and struck a match.
Inhaling a cloud of leathery smoke into his lungs, he leaned forward against the wrought-iron railing and smiled. The view was perfect.
He was directly across the street from the Jardin des Tuileries.
From where he stood, he could look out over the entirety of the Terrasse des Feuillants — the area along the edge of the park where the Fête des Tuileries was in full swing, and where the attack would take place. He had the perfect front-row seat.
Like the Spanish coordinator in Santiago, Abdel would be close, just in case his men chickened out. He had the numbers of the cell phones attached to their vests programmed into his phone. If something happened, if they didn’t go off at the appointed time, he would detonate them remotely.
That meant that the Moroccan would be someplace where he could watch the event unfold without attracting attention. Tursunov had no idea where. That was by design.
The less they knew about each other’s movements, the better. The more compartmentalized they were, the less chance there was of the full plot being discovered.
It was a similar blueprint to what had been carried out in Spain. The only person who interacted with him was the head of operations for the country. The martyrs themselves never saw his face. They didn’t need to. All that mattered was that they do their job.
After cutting the throat of the drug dealer, Tursunov had contacted Abdel and arranged to meet.
The Moroccan didn’t want to believe that his nephew was involved in a drug ring, but based on what Tursunov explained to him, he had no choice.
Sharing his concern that the chemist’s apartment, phone, and email communications were being monitored, the Tajik laid out a very specific course of action he wanted Abdel to follow. Then he handed him a stack of banknotes and a clean cell phone.
It hadn’t taken long for the dead lieutenant’s body in the men’s room to be discovered. As soon as the police were called, the undercover officers following the chemist and his two drug-cooking cohorts descended on the café. After initial questioning at the scene, all three were taken in for further interrogation.
It was an attempt to get the trio to admit to what the police already suspected them of — drug manufacturing. They knew the young men were not involved in the murder. The victim was part of the gang they cooked for. There was also a trail of partial bloody footprints that led out the back of the café.