by Bobby Adair
Dr. Kassis said, “Most Africans are uneducated folk.”
“I am aware of this.” Najid didn’t like being schooled, and he let his tone communicate his displeasure.
“You asked for my honesty.”
Najid inhaled and tamped his anger. That was an emotion that never led to anything good. “Continue.”
“Many of these people do not trust modern medicine. They do not trust doctors or hospitals. You might have seen in your research that in the first two outbreaks of Ebola in 1976—north and west of here in what was Sudan and Zaire at the time—the epicenter of one outbreak was the hospital, and the epicenter became the hospital when a few sick Sudanese infected the staff, who in turn infected the other patients.”
Najid turned and looked at the hospital doors. “Are you saying that this hospital is the epicenter of this strain of Ebola?”
“I think the whole town of Kapchorwa is, but that is not my point. People talk. Stories spread. The story of fifty villages being devastated by this horrible disease—with Belgian nuns at a hospital being at the source—is a story too wicked not to pass along. I don’t doubt that everyone on the continent has heard it. I have little doubt that if these villagers tell scary stories to frighten their children at bedtime, that has got to be one of them.”
Najid asked, “What is the point of your story?”
“How many villagers have your men found in their homes?” asked Kassis.
“Many.”
“How many more do you think fled the village when they realized what was going on, taking the virus with them? How many do you think ran when we showed up in our yellow suits with guns?”
“Too many,” replied Najid.
“My point is that this strain of the virus has traveled outside this village already and is slowly spreading across the country on the feet of frightened peasants.”
“I can only hope that the runners are only recently infected, not symptomatic. Some things are beyond my control. I must accept that,” said Najid. “It may be a week or two before those turn.”
Kassis paused before speaking. “That is an overly optimistic guess.”
“That doesn’t matter. We are already committed to this course of action. We’ll control what we can, and leave the rest to Allah to decide. That will buy us time. Burning the village will not prevent the medical community from figuring out that this strain is airborne, but it will delay them finding out. The villagers in the jungle and the men blocking the road will delay them finding out. They will protect that road until they can’t. Then they will fade into the forest and shoot any medical personnel they see in the village. All of these things only buy us hours or days. But hours and days are all we need.” In Najid’s mind, it all made perfect sense.
“But the brutality of burning these people alive!”
“It is a mercy. They’ll suffer less in a fire than of the disease. Do you disagree with that?”
“The length of their suffering will be shorter. I can’t say that it will be less.”
Chapter 51
Everyone in the conference room was staring at Olivia. Olivia was staring at the map. It looked just like the map she’d seen days earlier on Dr. Wheeler’s computer.
Eric asked, “Olivia?”
Olivia’s heart was racing as she thought of Austin. Could he really be in that tiny Ugandan town with a terrorist? Austin’s was probably the only white American face in that town—a town too small for it to go unnoticed. And if he was there in the presence of an Arab, who was executing an operation to terrorize someone or to blow up something, Austin was in the gravest of dangers.
“Olivia?” Eric asked again.
She slowly turned, blinking unexpected tears back into her eyes. She opened her mouth but her voice cracked and gave her away. “My…my brother is there in…in Kapchorwa.”
A few jaws dropped. That took them all by as much surprise as it had taken Olivia.
Eric recovered the quickest. “Your brother is in Kapchorwa, Uganda? Right now?”
Olivia nodded.
Eric’s confusion showed on his face. He hated coincidences, and everyone knew it. But they also knew they came across them all the time. With enough data and enough time, any two random people or events could be tied together, kind of like that Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. “What’s he doing in Kapchorwa?”
Olivia looked back at the map and she rubbed her eyes, shaking her head because she didn’t believe it herself. “He’s there with some kind of college program. He’s a senior. He’s volunteering. He’s teaching kids.” Olivia felt herself falling apart as she thought about her little brother. She always thought of him as little. She’d seen him mostly as a kid, and not as much as a teenager, since she was already off in college or pursuing a career. She’d had a particularly hard time thinking of him as a college student. She shook her head again and turned to hide the tears that were starting to make their way down her cheeks.
Eric turned to Barry and gave him a nod. Barry was now in charge of the project.
Eric stood up and put a hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “Come with me. Let’s go grab one of the other conference rooms. Let’s call—”
“Austin,” Olivia said. “His name’s Austin.”
“Come on.”
Olivia stood, fishing for her cell phone in her purse as she did. She couldn’t get used to not having it with her.
Eric put a hand on her back and guided her toward the door. “It’s okay. I’m sure he’s fine. Let’s call him from another room.
Eric guided Olivia into one of the small conference rooms. They sat down and Olivia dialed Austin’s number. It took an uncomfortably long time for the phone to work its way through the connections. It rang a few times and cut over to voicemail. She looked at the phone and shakily dialed again. Eric patiently watched. She put the phone back to her ear, waited, let it ring, and got voicemail again.
Shaking her head, she placed the phone back in its cradle and looked at Eric. “Voicemail.”
“That’s okay. It’s okay.” He put a hand across hers. “Listen to me. I know you’re fearing the worst. But the worst almost never happens. You hear me?”
She nodded, knowing Eric’s argument was lacking but she had nothing to say about it. “What do I do?”
“Just be calm, Olivia, okay?”
Olivia took a few deep breaths. “It’s my brother.”
“We don’t know anything yet, right?”
Olivia nodded. “I know.”
“Okay. I understand why you’re worried. I’d be worried too if my brother wasn’t such a dipshit.”
Olivia laughed through her stress and nodded again. “I love him.”
“I know. He’s your brother. You have a right to be worried. When was the last time you talked to him?”
Olivia looked down, and a tear rolled over her cheek. “Before he left for Uganda.” She started to cry.
Eric leaned over and hugged her.
After a few long minutes, Olivia sniffled up the last of her tears and sat up straight.
“It’s okay to cry,” Eric told her.
She nodded and gave him half a smile.
“Have you talked to him through email or Facebook? Anything like that?”
“Yes,” Olivia nodded. “Of course. Maybe a week ago, he sent me some pictures.”
“Has anyone talked to him in the last few days?”
“Maybe my dad,” Olivia answered.
“Your dad? Can we call him?”
Olivia picked up the phone and dialed her father’s number.
On the third ring, Paul Cooper answered, “Hello?”
“Dad, this is Olivia.”
“Is something wrong?”
Olivia started to cry again.
“What’s wrong?” Paul asked.
Eric gestured for Olivia to give him the phone. Calmly, he said, “Mr. Cooper, this is Eric Murchison. I’m Olivia’s supervisor.”
“What’s wrong?” Paul asked. “Is Olivia okay?�
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“It’s okay, Mr. Cooper. Olivia is fine. Everything is all right here.”
“It’s not all right,” Paul said, getting impatient. “She’s crying.”
“Yes, listen.” Eric spoke slowly and calmly, “You know where Olivia works, so you’ll understand there’s a limit to what I can and can’t say. But I’ll tell you as much as I can, okay?”
“Alright.”
“Olivia is worried about your son, Austin.”
“Austin? Why, what happened?” Paul was clearly concerned.
“Nothing that we know of, Mr. Cooper.” Eric paused. “As far as we know, there isn’t anything at all wrong.” He paused again, thinking about what he was going to say next. “Olivia says that your son is in eastern Uganda this summer, teaching kids, is that right?”
“Yes,” Paul answered. “That’s right. He’s in Kapchorwa.”
“We’re investigating some events in eastern Uganda, and the name of that city came up. Olivia grew very concerned. That’s why we called you.” Eric nodded at Olivia and smiled reassuringly. “When was the last time you talked to your son?”
“Several days ago. Does this have to do with that Ebola epidemic?”
Eric hesitated before continuing. “We tried to call him, and we can’t get through.”
“No,” Paul replied, “there’s no service in Kapchorwa.”
“How do you get hold of him when you need to?” Eric asked.
A long pause followed. “I don’t know,” Paul admitted. “Heidi, my wife, has been trying to get through to him. She’s been worried. Tell me, Mr. Murchison, was she right to worry?”
Chapter 52
On the outside of the Tyvek suit, in a pocket Najid had constructed from tape and a piece of plastic, his satellite phone started vibrating. Few people had that number. One of them was his father, who was too far gone to use a phone without assistance. One was Dr. Kassis. Rashid was another. The last was Firas Hakimi. Najid knew what the call was about.
“Speak,” Najid said, raising the phone to his facemask.
“You know who this is, I trust.” It was the voice of Hakimi.
“I do,” answered, Najid.
Hakimi said, “Then you know that I am calling because your friend in Lahore chose to tell me about your bribes before he left this life.”
“That is unfortunate. Killing him was not necessary.” Najid was disdainful over Hakimi’s perpetual inability to face any situation pragmatically. Passion and extremism were the only things that Hakimi understood.
“It will also be unfortunate for you, Najid. Did you expect that you could just buy a hundred and eleven fighters with Western passports and that it would go unnoticed?”
“I did not.”
Hakimi didn’t like that answer and let his silence grow ominous before saying, “You have been a generous supporter and a friend. Explain to me what you have done, before I decide your fate.”
Najid resisted the urge to tell the upstart leader of the movement that he was nothing more than a charismatic puppet, and instead replied, “The questions you ask cannot be answered on a telephone. I will send an emissary to meet your man at the usual place. He will have words for only your ears. Please listen to him before you decide what to do with me. Afterward, I assure you, I will be at your disposal.”
“And if I wish to hear these words from your lips?” Hakimi was not happy.
“You cannot get to where I am before the time comes for me to leave. I can only tell you that what I do, I do to further our common cause.”
“You are dangerously ambitious for a man who should be kneeling to serve.”
Najid knew his father’s wealth strengthened his position and made kneeling to Hakimi unnecessary. “The details and depth of my service will become clear when you have spoken to my emissary. He will bring with him the time and place where we can meet and come to an understanding. I assure you, you will not be displeased when you know what I have done.”
“It is not for you to decide unilaterally what our brotherhood will do operationally,” scolded Hakimi.
“All I can say is that an opportunity arose that required decisive choices and swift action. There was no time to go through our usual process. If what I have done displeases you, I will kneel and accept punishment for my transgressions.”
“When can I expect this emissary?” Hakimi asked.
“He will meet your man tomorrow at noon,” replied Najid.
“See that he is not late.” Hakimi ended the call.
Najid put his soon-to-be-disposed-of phone back in his plastic, makeshift pocket. He looked down the dirt road and spotted one of his recruits hurrying by. “You.”
Jalal stopped and looked up. “Yes.”
“Come here.”
Jalal hurried over and stood in the dirt at the bottom of the hospital steps.
“Where are you from?” Najid asked.
Jalal shuffled nervously.
In a soothing voice, Najid asked, “Tell me where you are from.”
“London, sir.”
Najid eyed the recruit. “Do you have faith in Allah and our cause?”
“Of course.”
“Can you be trusted?”
“I swear to you that I am the most trustworthy of your men,” answered Jalal.
“Do you know the name, Firas Hakimi?”
Jalal nervously answered, “Yes. Everyone knows that name.”
“I have a message that I will tell you. You will deliver this message personally to him and only to him. Do you know what he looks like?”
“I have seen pictures.” Jalal puffed up with pride, “I would be honored to do this.”
“Come up here, and listen to me, then.”
Najid started constructing his lie.
Chapter 53
Of course he was bright. The CIA wouldn’t have had such a hard-on for him if he hadn’t been. He was tall. He was good looking. He was athletic. Exactly the kind of guy they’d pick to play James Bond in the movies when Daniel Craig got too old.
But Mitch Peterson never even thought about acting. Instead, he’d spent most of his twenties enamored with his gig as a real spy. Over time his love of his job slowly turned to disappointment and acceptance as he bounced from one do-nothing post to another, in one backwater country after another.
Kampala? None of his buddies from Stanford—now making six and seven figures a year—could even find it on a map.
So he sat in his second-floor office in a building that looked way too much like a high school, gazing out over the embassy wall, watching the sun slowly fall toward the horizon. The trip down the CIA ladder of un-success had a long way to go, and was going too slowly. He checked his watch.
Why did Langley have to set up a time for a call? Why not just call? Why make him wait in his office, pretending to fulfill the duties of a Cultural Attaché, until five-thirty p.m. local time? Mitch fantasized about a microfilm message hidden in a coconut at a dead drop, or a few cryptic words recorded to audio tape that would disappear in a puff of smoke after being heard.
Mitch sighed.
The reality of encrypted phone calls and encrypted emails was so mundane.
He wanted to get out of the office, go for a run, get cleaned up, and go to dinner with his buddy Lou—the son of a Ugandan politician—and hit that new club Lou kept talking about. That was all the excitement his CIA gig in Kampala allowed for, complete with the risk of catching something from the local party girls in a country rampant with HIV.
Sure, he’d gone afield from time to time, chasing down some false alarm about an Al Qaeda something-or-other. The alarms were rare and always led to nothing but a day or two of driving on dusty roads in humid air thick enough to swim in.
When the telephone rang forty-five minutes early, he smiled, thinking it was Langley, early for a nice change. “Peterson, speaking.”
“This is Art, can I come in?”
Art McConnell, who was technically his assistant, sat at a desk outside hi
s office, basically fulfilling all the duties of the Cultural Attaché except those where the Attaché’s physical presence was required.
“Sure, come in. I’m bored to tears waiting on my five-thirty call.”
The phone clicked.
Mitch laid his phone in its cradle and watched Art let himself in. “What’s up?”
A haggard Art McConnell crossed the office and sat down in one of the two chairs in front of Mitch’s desk. “I need you to talk to this woman I’ve got on hold.”
“What about?”
“Her kid is in some little town up north of Mbale, and she can’t get hold of him.”
“Jeez, Art. I don’t handle that stuff unless the kid is injured or dead. He’s not, is he?”
Art shook his head. “I’m sorry about this, but this woman is relentless. I’ve been on three calls with her for the better portion of the past three hours.”
“Where’s she calling from?”
“Denver, Colorado.”
Mitch looked at his watch. “Three hours? What is Denver, something like nine hours behind us?”
“Yes, I checked.”
Mitch leaned back and threw his feet up on his desk. “So she must be an early riser.”
“Yeah, and she probably already drank a pot of coffee because she talks a mile a minute.”
Mitch laughed. “That’s why you handle this kind of stuff.”
Art shook his head. “I can’t handle this one, Mitch. She’s demanding to talk with you.”
“Me, personally?”
“She asked for you by name.”
“You told her my name?” Mitch got a little angry.
“It’s public record, Mitch. She dug around and found your name. I think she dug up information on half the staff. She certainly talked to enough of them.”
“Why?”
Art shrugged. “I guess she didn’t know who to contact initially, and she got bounced around a bit before she landed on me.”
“Why us?”
“The kid is a college student in some kind of volunteer program through a university.”
“So we’ve got a record of the kid, right?” Mitch put his feet on the floor and rolled closer toward the desk.