The Exile rk-4

by Andrew Britton

  “Except Bashir’s got something more valuable to a dictator than brains, and that’s a well-developed survival instinct,” Kealey said. “For him to do anything this drastic, he would need to have something to gain. And there’s nothing. In that respect, he’s like any other dictator. He’s interested in two things-one of them being power, which you already mentioned. And he’s got all he’s ever likely to have.”

  “Which leaves money,” Harper said.

  “Right,” Kealey said. “But killing Durant does nothing to boost his bank account. There’s no upside to ordering her death, so why would he do it?”

  “Pride? Anger? Separately or in combination, take your pick,” Harper suggested. He was, of course, still playing devil’s advocate here. But he wanted to see how far the other man had thought it through-and was admittedly enjoying it. “The sanctions Brenneman approved back in February are nothing to sneeze at, Ryan. The Sudanese defense minister had his personal accounts in the U.S. frozen and eventually seized. We’re talking about several million dollars, and the minister is a first cousin to Omar al-Bashir, not to mention one of his closest advisors. You don’t think that would be enough to provoke some kind of retaliation?”

  Kealey shook his head. “His only concern for his family is that they stick close to protect him. And if he really wanted to, he could throw him that much money as a bone. It’s chump change compared to what he stands to lose…enough to prompt a lot of talk, but that’s it.” Kealey shrugged. “Anything Bashir does to us is going to come back to him tenfold. He knows that. More to the point, he’s seen it happen in Iraq. After he pulled out of Kuwait back in ninety-one, Saddam did nothing but talk and wave his sword in the air, and that in itself was enough to bring him down. Bashir knows what he’s up against. And I don’t think he’s behind the attack.”

  Harper managed to look skeptical. “You realize that opinion puts you in the minority.”

  “Yeah, I know. But it’s what I think,” Kealey said. “Tell you something else. If he’d known what was coming ahead of time, my guess is he would have done everything in his ability to stop it.”

  “If that’s so…if he didn’t give the order…wouldn’t you say it’s a little surprising he hasn’t come up with whoever is responsible?”

  Kealey shook his head. “Sudan is neighbored by something like eight or nine countries,” he explained. “Two or three share a border directly with West Darfur. The militiamen could’ve slipped into Chad or Libya long before the fires burned themselves out at the camp. Or they could have headed into the mountains. Either way, they wouldn’t be easy to find, even with aerial coverage.”

  “But it’s open terrain. There’s hardly any vegetation. If they had planes-”

  “We’re using Blackbirds and Predator drones in Pakistan,” Kealey pointed out. “The most technologically sophisticated spy planes on the planet…and we still can’t find Osama bin Laden and his top cronies. I’ve never been that far north in Africa, but as far as I know, it’s the same kind of landscape. Plenty of caves and small villages to lose yourself in.”

  Harper nodded. Yes, indeed, he’d missed the hell out of this. The thoughts were jumping back and forth between him and Kealey like those brightly colored bouncy balls kids got from gum machines. “And what do you think about what came after? About our response?”

  “ Lack of a response, you mean.” Kealey shrugged. “What can I tell you? If I’m right-if Bashir wasn’t directly responsible-it’s probably a good thing that we didn’t hit them. God knows the man doesn’t deserve to live, but you can’t kill him for something he didn’t do. I’d need a lot more than ten fingers to list the problems it would create for us in the region. Just look at what’s happening in Kenya.” Another quick shrug. “On the other hand, someone ordered the attack, and someone pulled the trigger. Those are the people you have to find.”

  And kill, Harper thought but didn’t say…although Kealey’s expression told him he knew that was a critical part of it. Thing is, Kealey, the word is “we.” We need to find them. I still need you to realize that. Because as much as we’re alike, the very thing that separates us is the thing that makes you the perfect man for this job.

  Not for the first time, Harper found himself wondering about Kealey’s quick and utter readiness to take another person’s life. It was a question that had always bothered him. Did he feel anything at all for the six police officers he’d killed the previous week? Did his recent spate of heavy drinking stem in part from those deaths, or was it rooted entirely in what had come before? Somehow, Harper doubted that he had lost even a minute of sleep over the dead SAPS officers, which left only the not-so-distant past. In that respect, the drinking could almost be seen as a good thing. At the very least, it meant that the man had managed to retain some semblance of human empathy despite the things he had seen and done over the last twelve years.

  The waitress, a slim, attractive blonde in her midtwenties, approached to collect Harper’s plate. She lingered long enough to shoot a meaningful smile in Kealey’s direction, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  A few years earlier Harper would have waited until she walked off. Then he would have made some kind of comment about that long look, and Kealey would have said something back, and they would have shared a laugh. But those days were clearly gone. With this realization, Harper felt a twinge he attributed to some bittersweet mixture of nostalgia and regret swirling around inside him. He could see how far he and the Agency had fallen in Kealey’s eyes, and he could see how willing he was to use Kealey at all costs, and both troubled him deeply-especially when he stopped to consider how much the younger man had given his country.

  He waited until the disappointed waitress had wandered off, then said, “You were here when the attack took place, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. But you already knew that.”

  “What was the mood like?” Harper asked, noting the tension in the other man’s voice.

  “The mood?”

  “Here on the ground. How did people react when they heard she was dead?”

  Kealey shook his head slightly, a look of anger and confusion coming over his face. “I don’t know, John. What does that have to do with anything?”

  Harper, seeing he had pushed it too far, tried to backtrack. “I’m only asking because-”

  “I don’t care why you’re asking,” Kealey snapped, raising his voice a couple of notches. A few tables over, the couple stopped talking and turned to look at them. “You said you wanted five minutes, and I gave it to you against my better judgment. I’ve answered all the fucking questions I’m going to, okay? You said you wanted to explain why you’re here, so start explaining. Either that or go home and leave me in peace.”

  He made a move to slide out of the booth, and Harper immediately raised a hand in a gesture of contrition. “You’re right,” he said quickly, his voice little more than a murmur. “You’re absolutely right.” Kealey stopped before he could get to his feet and turned to look at him. “I’m not trying to waste your time, Ryan. I just wanted to get a feel for how it all played out on your end. I’m sorry… It won’t happen again.”

  For a few seconds Kealey didn’t respond or react in any way. Then, to Harper’s relief, he eased himself back into the booth. The couple was still looking at them, shooting little concerned glances in their direction, and for a second Harper thought they might have to move. But then the couple put their heads together in whispered conversation, reached a decision, and stood to leave. Harper waited until they were completely out of earshot. Then, realizing he could no longer delay the inevitable, he launched into the story.

  He began by describing the meeting that took place at Camp David the night Lily Durant was killed. He recounted as much of the actual conversation as he could remember, emphasizing Stralen’s hawkish rhetoric and the president’s grief-stricken state. From there he went on to describe the next two meetings he’d had with the president.

  The first occurred the day after that midnigh
t assembly at Aspen Lodge. Harper had requested an audience through Stan Chavis, the White House chief of staff, and was received by Brenneman in the Oval Office. By that time Walter Reynolds had identified Durant’s remains in the charred wreckage of Camp Hadith, and her body was already en route to Andrews Air Force Base. It was the worst possible time to try and talk the president down, but it had to be done. Once again, he implored Brenneman not to make a rash decision with respect to a retaliatory strike but was rebuffed for a second time. If anything, the president was even more distracted and desolate than he’d been the night before.

  The second and last meeting took place two weeks later. By this time the CIA had been effectively cut out of the decision-making process, at least with respect to Sudan, and Harper had been trying in vain to get another audience with Brenneman when the summons finally arrived. He and Robert Andrews had walked into the Cabinet Room two hours later to find the president waiting, along with Jeremy Thayer, the national security advisor, Brynn Fitzgerald, the secretary of state, and General Stralen and a couple his aides from the Defense Intelligence agency. The discussion that followed was both highly unusual and very uncomfortable, at least for the two senior CIA officials. It began with Thayer recounting the incident at Camp Hadith down to the last detail, including the brutal rape and murder of Lily Durant. To Harper’s surprise, the president absorbed Thayer’s carefully chosen words with remarkable poise. When Thayer was done, Fitzgerald laid out the evidence linking Omar al-Bashir to the Janjaweed raid on the camp.

  As it turned out, the case was entirely circumstantial-and that wasn’t good from the standpoint of validating an open U.S. response. Other than the thoroughly documented links between the Janjaweed and the Government of Sudan (GOS) forces, the State Department had been unable to turn up ironclad evidence that Bashir had directly ordered the attack. Since Bashir had refused to allow an FBI team into the country, the Bureau had not been a factor in the investigation, which had seriously hampered their progress.

  By the time Fitzgerald was done, Harper could no longer contain his disbelief, which had been rising steadily during her speech. The fact that the Agency had been cut out of the loop had done nothing to stop him from compiling evidence on his own, and he was willing to suffer the consequences for launching an unauthorized investigation if it enabled him to bring this farce to a halt. But as soon as he started to make his case, the president cut him off at the knees. To the shock of both CIA officials, Brenneman calmly but firmly ordered them to shut down the investigation, an order that essentially absolved the Sudanese dictator of any blame, regardless of whether or not he was actually responsible. When Harper tried to point this out to the president, Brenneman brought the meeting to an abrupt halt and dismissed everyone present, save for one man…

  “Let me guess,” Kealey said. “Your friend Joel Stralen.”

  Harper formed a gun with his thumb and forefinger and fired at him. “Good guess,” he said, then finished recounting the particulars of that second meeting. He sat quietly looking down at his drink for a while, then emptied his glass.

  “So,” Kealey said, “what do you make of it?”

  “I think Stralen talked the president into making a bad decision,” Harper said. “A decision based on emotion rather than facts.”

  “And Fitzgerald and Thayer?”

  Harper looked at him. “You tell me,” he said. “Just so I know my antennae haven’t been picking up scrambled signals.”

  “Based on what I’m hearing from you, I’d guess Fitzgerald and Thayer are somehow involved. Maybe not in a direct way, but certainly on the periphery. I think that whole meeting was scripted in advance, set up as a way to shut you down.”

  “‘You’ meaning…”

  “The Agency,” Kealey said, sounding impatient. “I thought I was pretty clear on that, John.”

  Harper realized at once what Kealey was doing-trying to emphasize the fact that he was no longer tied to the CIA. He was putting himself on the outside, distancing himself from the current situation. It wasn’t a good sign, but Harper brushed it aside. He wasn’t about to quit just yet.

  “It sounds to me like you caught Brenneman off guard when you said you’d initiated your own investigation,” Kealey went on. “Is that right?”

  “Without a doubt. To be honest, we hadn’t managed to come up with anything resembling hard proof, either…which is kind of ironic if you think about it. If he’d even bothered to hear me out, he would have been able to shut us down for the right reasons. But the way he did it leads me to think the whole thing was a scam, set up to provide the illusion of closure.”

  Kealey didn’t respond right away. In the sudden quiet Harper could hear the elevated voices of the two men at the bar. They seemed to be arguing about something, though he couldn’t tell what. Then the younger man’s voice brought him back to the matter at hand.

  “So let me try to sum this up,” Kealey said. “You think the president is up to something in Sudan. And you think he cut you and the rest of the Agency out of the loop.”

  “Yes. At least, that’s my best guess for the moment. And it appears you’d agree with it.”

  “I probably would,” Kealey said. “From what I’m hearing, anyway.”

  “Have you ever known me to relay inaccurate information?”

  “No.” Kealey’s eyes landed on his. “But convincing me won’t solve your problem. And it doesn’t sound to me like you have much in the way of proof.”

  Your problem. Again Kealey was intentionally-and unsubtly-distancing himself.

  “I’ve got more than you think,” Harper said. He extracted a few sheets of paper from a second folder and slid them across the table.

  Kealey reluctantly turned them around and looked them over. And while Harper wasn’t sure how much he knew about the intricacies of international banking, he would surely know enough to realize that he was looking at the record of a wire transfer initiated one month earlier, on April 30. Sixteen days after Durant had died in West Darfur. Harper waited as he quickly scanned the lines. According to the paperwork, a total of five million dollars had been wired from the Royal Bank of Canada in Nassau to the Paris branch of Bank Saderat Iran, or BSI. Other than the timing and the size of the transfer, nothing about it seemed unusual.

  Before he could say as much, Harper jumped in to explain. “All you see there is the SWIFT codes, which is why it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you. But I checked them out. The money originated with the Cowan Group, an incorporated company registered in Maryland. The full amount landed in an account belonging to Saud Bahwan Holdings, a shell company supposedly based in Ankara. Everything I’ve managed to dig up, though, indicates that SB Holdings is actually run out of Paris.”

  Kealey slid the documents back across the table. “Okay, but what does that have to do with-”

  “I’m getting to that,” Harper said. “Four hours after the initial transfer, a man with the proper ID and account number showed up at the Paris branch of BSI. This man, David Khadir, met with a senior manager and started wiring the money out of France. It took about two hours to send the full five million to fifty separate accounts in a half dozen countries, including Switzerland and Luxembourg. I’m sure you know what that means.”

  Kealey did. “He was smurfing the funds.”

  “Right.”

  Kealey took a second to think that over. Smurfing was one of the most reliable ways to hide both the source and final destination of illicit funds being transferred through the world’s financial institutions. He’d learned about the process two years earlier, Harper knew, when they had worked with the Financial Action Task Force to trace the electronic funds of an Iraqi terrorist. In fact, Harper had been put on to Khadir and the wire transfer he received one month earlier after going back to the FATF to get the information, as the task force was one of the few official entities that could cut through the red tape so quickly.

  He explained this to Kealey. “I brought it to their attentio
n…and as it turned out, they already had their eye on Khadir,” he said. “The story doesn’t relate to us, so I won’t get into it. Suffice it to say that the FATF doesn’t know everything, including Khadir’s real name. He’s actually Simon Nusairi, a Sudanese national who’d been living in Marseille till very recently. I’ve got a reasonably extensive dossier on him courtesy of a friend in Interpol.”

  Kealey looked at him. “The Agency dealing with Interpol? You must be kidding.”

  “Who said anything about the Agency?” Harper smiled. “I said it was a friend…but we’ll get around to that later.” He started to push across another manila folder, but Kealey blocked it with his hand.

  “Why don’t you just tell me why you were looking into this in the first place?” he said. “How does it relate to Lily Durant?”

  Harper sighed and pulled his drink in front of him but didn’t bother to lift the glass. He realized to his disappointment that it was empty. “After that last meeting at the White House, I started to dig a little bit deeper,” he said, gesturing for the pretty waitress. “The fact that Stralen was involved put me onto the Cowan Group, which is actually a front for a secret fund administered by the Department of Defense. It comes out of their operations and maintenance budget. There are six of these funds, one for each regional Unified Combat Command. Essentially, the DOD set them up to finance CINC discretionary projects.” He didn’t have to explain the term; they both knew it referred to the combatant commander in chiefs of the regional commands. “Usually that means training and joint exercises, but the money can be used however the commander sees fit. There’s virtually no oversight. Each regional commander has access to one of these accounts, and as it happens, the Cowan Group is administered by U.S. Africa Command, the newest UCC.”

  “What kind of money are we talking about?”

  “A fraction of the DOD’s annual budget, but it’s enough to suit their purposes,” Harper said. “After the wire transfer to SB Holdings in Paris, the balance in the Cowan account was just under fifteen million dollars. I imagine the other commanders have access to similar figures.”