Frederick Forsyth - The Kill List

The team from TRADOC arrived in two unmarked cars and a small van. They took over the conference room and covered all the windows with black paper and masking tape. That done, they constructed the world’s simplest film set.

Basically, it was a bedsheet pinned to the wall. It, too, was black, and there were Koranic inscriptions on it in cursive Arab script. The sheet had been prepared in the workshop of one of the sound sets at Fort Eustis. It was a replica of the backdrop to all the broadcasts of the Preacher. In front of it was placed a simple wooden chair with arms.

At the other end of the hall, chairs, tables and lights created two working spaces for “Wardrobe” and “Makeup.” No one doing any of this had the faintest idea why.

The camera technician set up his camcorder, facing the chair. One of his colleagues sat in the chair to assist with range, focus and clarity. The sound engineer checked levels. The autocue operator set up his screen just under the camera lens so that the speaker’s eyeline would appear to be straight into the camera.

Mr. Suárez was led in and taken to Wardrobe, where a matronly senior sergeant, in civvies like everyone else, was waiting with the robe and headdress he would wear. These, too, had been selected by the Tracker from TRADOC’s enormous resources, with alterations performed by the wardrobe mistress, studying photographs of the Preacher.

“I don’t have to speak any Ayrab, do I?” protested Tony Suárez. “No one mentioned Ayrab.”

“Absolutely not,” he was assured by Mr. Mason, who now appeared to be directing. “Well, a couple of words, but it doesn’t matter about the pronunciation. Here, check them out, just to get the lip synch about right.” He gave Suárez a card with several Arabic words on it.

“Shit, man, these are complicated.”

An older man, who had been waiting quietly against the wall, stepped forward.

“Try and imitate me,” he said, and pronounced the foreign words like an Arab. Suárez tried. It was not the same, but the lips moved in the right direction. The dubbing would complete the job. Tony Suárez moved to the makeup chair. It took an hour.

The experienced makeup artist deepened the skin tone to make it slightly more swarthy. The black beard and mustache were applied. The shamagh headdress covered the hair of the scalp. Finally, the contact lenses gave the actor those arresting amber eyes. When he rose and turned, the Tracker was sure he was facing the Preacher.

Tony Suárez was led to the chair and sat down. Camcorder and sound levels, focus and autocue, received minor adjustments. The actor had spent an hour in the makeup chair, studying the text he would be reading off the autocue. He had most of it memorized, and though the Arabic did not sound like an Arab speaker, he had ceased to stumble over it.

“And cue,” said Capt. Mason. One day, he dreamed, he would be saying that to Brad Pitt and George Clooney. The film extra began to speak.

The Tracker murmured in Mason’s ear.

“More solemn, Tony,” said Mason. “It’s a confession. You’re the Grand Vizier telling the Sultan he got it all wrong, and he’s sorry. OK, roll again. And cue.”

After eight takes, Suárez had peaked and was fading. The Tracker called a halt.

“OK, people, it’s a wrap,” said Mason. He loved that phrase. The crew dismantled everything they had built. Tony Suárez was restored to his jeans and sweatshirt, clean-shaven and smelling faintly of cleansing cream. Wardrobe and Makeup were repacked and went back to the truck. The bedsheet came down, was rolled up and removed. The windows were cleared of black paper and tape.

While this was going on, the Tracker had the camcorder technician give him the five best takes of the brief speech. He chose the one he wanted and had the others erased.

The voice of the actor was still pure Californian. But the Tracker knew of a British TV mimic who had his audiences in stitches with his uncanny imitations of celebrities’ voices. He would fly across for the day and be well paid. Technicians would get the lip synch exact.

They handed the rented conference hall back to the hotel. Tony Suárez regretfully checked out of his suite and was driven back to Washington National and his night plane to Los Angeles. The Fort Eustis team was much closer to home and were there by sundown.

They had had a fun day, but they had never heard of the Preacher and had not the faintest idea what they had done. But the Tracker knew. He knew that when he launched what was in the cassette in his hand, there was going to be absolute chaos among the forces of Jihadism.

The man who descended with a smattering of Somalis from the Turkish airliner at Mogadishu airport had a passport that declared him to be a Dane, and other papers in five languages, including Somali, that identified him as working for the Save the Children fund.

His real name was not Jensen, and he worked for the Collections Division (general espionage) of Mossad. He had flown the previous day from Ben Gurion Airport to Larnaca in Cyprus, switched name and nationality, then flown on to Istanbul.

There was a long and tiresome wait in the business-class transit lounge for the flight south to Somalia, with a staging stop at Djibouti. But Turkish Airlines was still the only national flag carrier to serve Mogadishu.

It was eight a.m. and already hot out on the tarmac as the fifty passengers straggled into the arrivals building, the Somalis from economy class shouldering the three from business out of the way. The Dane was in no hurry; he waited his turn in front of the passport officer.

He had no visa, of course; visas are purchased on arrival, as he knew, having been there before. The passport officer studied the previous entry and exit stamps and studied his list. There was no ban on anyone called Jensen.

The Dane slipped a fifty-dollar bill under the glass screen.

“For the visa,” he murmured in English. The officer slid the note toward him, then noticed another fifty-dollar bill in the pages of the passport.

“A little something for your children,” murmured the Dane.

The passport officer nodded. He did not smile but stamped in the visa, glanced at the yellow fever chit, folded the passport, nodded and handed it back. For his children, of course. An honorable gift. Nice to meet a European who knew the rules.

There were two dilapidated taxis outside. The Dane hefted his single grip into the first, climbed in and said, “Peace Hotel, please.” The driver headed for the gated entrance to the airport compound, guarded by Ugandan soldiers.

The airport is in the center of the African Union military base, an inner zone of the Mogadishu enclave, surrounded by barbed wire, sandbags, blast walls and patrolled by Casper armored personnel carriers of the Union. Within the fortress is another fortress: Bancroft camp is where the “whiteys” live, the several hundred staff of contractors, aid agencies, visiting media and a few ex-mercenaries working as bodyguards for the fat cats.

The Americans lived inside their own compound at the far end of the runway, home to their embassy, some hangars of undisclosed contents and a training school for young Somalis being schooled to, one day, slip back into dangerous Somalia as American agents. Those who knew Somalia from long and disenchanting experience felt this to be a very fond hope indeed.

Also in the inner sanctuary, passing the windows of the moving car, were the other minisettlements for the United Nations, African Union senior officers, European Union and even the dowdy British embassy, which insisted with passion and mendacity that it was not another “spook central.”

The Dane Jensen did not dare stay inside Bancroft. He might meet another Dane or a real worker with Save the Children. He was headed for the one hotel outside the blast walls where a white man might stay with reasonable security.