Johnson - Lulu in Marrakech

LULU IN MARRAKECH

Diane Johnson, a twotime finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and threetime National Book Award finalist (most recently in 1997 for Le Divorce), is the author of thirteen previous books. Le Mariage (2001) and LAffaire (2006) are available from Penguin. Diane divides her time between San Francisco and Paris.

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First published 2009

Copyright Diane Johnson, 2008

All rights reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-141-91900-3

To the memory of Barbara Epstein,
MarieClaude de Brunhoff, and Pauline Abbe;
and, as always,
to John Murray

T he Koranic quotations are based on a classic 1934 translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, widely available in many editions. The intelligence-related epigraphs and some of Lulus references to CIA practices come from papers published from a colloquium on Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s, in several volumes, edited by Professor Roy Godson, of which I found Analysis and Estimates, Counterintelligence, and Clandestine Collection the most helpful. Many friends helped with special expertise, observations, and criticisms, especially John Beebe, Diana Ketchum, Robert Gottlieb, Craig Phillips, Sally Shelton-Colby, Marlise Simons, and Drusilla Walsh. Grateful thanks to my editor, Trena Keating; my agent, Lynn Nesbit; and as always to my husband, John Murray.

H ow indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones. The soul is tired in a moment, and in fear of losing the little that she does understand she retreats to the permanent lines which habit or chance have dictated, and suffers there.

E. M. Forster, A Passage to India

International terrorism may increasingly be a problem. Better intelligence to counter terrorist activities cannot be based on technological intelligence (e.g. photography, radio, and traffic intelligence) but must be based on clandestine agents activities, or what is called HUMINT .

Michael Handel, Avoiding Surprise in the 1980s

D uring training for my present job, I had been particularly struck by a foundation document of tradecraft, The Role of SelfDeception in Prediction Failures. It argues that Americans are especially prone to selfdeception and that our ability to fool ourselves is greater than the ability of others to fool us. History shows plenty of examples, but its my own thats made me understand the authors point. Am I myself more gullible than other Americans? Perhaps these are the very qualities I was recruited for: gullibility, and the rigidity of my belief in pragmatismfor I am determined not to let ideology, whether of love or patriotism, get the better of me again.

And when did the gullibility principle begin to work on me? Maybe not until I was on the plane to Marrakech, or even when I got the assignment to go there. Am I once again its victim? I still dont know, even now, how much of what happened had been orchestrated, how much was the collusion of unforeseen events.

B ut I should explain how I came to be involved in all this. Im Lulu Sawyernot my christened name, but it is now Lulu even in company records.

In our organization, we have foreign intelligence ( FI ), counterintelligence ( CI ), human intelligence ( HUMINT ), and communications intelligence ( COMMI ); theres covert, overt, clandestine, and paramilitary, and passive and aggressive in each category. I am FI/HUMINT/NOC . NOC means not officially connected to an embassy or government agency.

Human intelligence, said my handler, Sefton Taft, in a regretful toneI report to an insensitive and sometimes seemingly nottoofriendly case officer named Taft, who is stationed in Spain. HUMINT . It must still be gathered. These Arabs are so backward; things like electronic surveillance, technical collectionthese are useless. Knowledge is in someones head, its recorded in the knots of a camels bridle, in certain passages of the Koran. The Russians, God bless them, at least had radio communications, listening stations of their own, cell phones we could interceptthose were the days.

Human intelligence; an oxymoron, I remember saying.

HUMINT/FI had a basic mission in Morocco: to gather information intended to upgrade generally our database on the country, including information about the flow of money through certain Marrakech Islamic charities or, more startling, the European clubs and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It was the analysis at headquarters that it was the Moroccan NGOs, directed and mostly funded by foreigners, that formed the nexus of, or at least an important stage on, the money trail from Europe and America to various terrorist organizations, via Moroccan banking. It was important, because we had intelligence that the Islamists left over from recent crackdowns in Algeria had regrouped in the Sahara desert and were recruiting and attempting to radicalize everywhere in North AfricaMali, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and in the no mansland of the Western Saharaand unless they could be impeded would have a powerful AlQaidalike base within easy striking distance of Europe, as the bombings in Spain had shown.

HUMINT it makes you long for the old days, Taft had added. Satellite photos, listening devices, hard targets. Youre well-placed, Lulu. No matter what happens with the boyfriend, youll easily find a way of staying on in Moroccoa healthy, articulate, sociable girl like you.