The Exile rk-4

by Andrew Britton

Kealey looked at her. “First bring this yacht ashore and dump Saduq somewhere your people can keep him out of sight and sound for a while,” he said. “Then contact Harper and have him get the two of us into Sudan.”

  CHAPTER 17

  WASHINGTON, D.C..ASWAN, EGYPT. KHARTOUM

  It was six o’clock in the evening in Washington, D.C., when the waiter arrived at the small corner table Harper had reserved for his dinner with Robert Andrews at the crowded Dubliner Pub on North Capitol Street. He’d ordered a Jameson’s on the rocks and a corned beef sandwich as an afterthought; the food would help preserve the appearance that he had an appetite for something that was both solid and did not have an alcoholic proof measure.

  Andrews, who’d arrived shortly after Harper, had gotten a Philly cheesesteak and a Sam Adams. The DCI was a native Philadelphian and seemed to relish being identified with the city. He’d also played college baseball and secretly harbored a dream that he’d be drafted by his hometown team. After a World Series game he’d attended at Yankee Stadium in 2009, he had been thrown into a weeklong funk because the New York Yankees rallied late to defeat his beloved Phillies. What had added insult to injury was that some wiseass in the control booth had put a clip from the movie Rocky Balboa up on the Diamond Vision screen to pump up the local fans. It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. In jumbo high-definition, no less.

  In Andrews’s often stated opinion, it had been unprincipled, unsportsmanlike thievery for the Yanks to appropriate Rocky, as iconic to Philadelphia as the Liberty Bell, for their ballpark. Never mind that Stallone the actor hailed from Hell’s Kitchen in New York, Rocky the character was from the tough streets of Kensington, in South Philly. What could the Phillies have done to counter that move? Neither De Niro’s “You talkin’ to me?” line nor Pacino’s “Attica!” had seemed effective rallying cries when his beloved hometown team fell behind by a few runs. With that one low-down coup, he had lamented, it became a fait accompli that the damned Yankees would wind up drinking the victory champagne.

  Wishing they had nothing more serious to discuss now than ill-gotten Yankee supremacy, Harper eyed his tumbler and made himself reach for his sandwich, reluctant to seem too anxious for the former. Opposite him, Andrews prepared to take a bite of his dinner, carefully using his knife and fork to fold an ample wad of onions and melted provolone around a slice of steak. Unlike his boss, Harper had never been much of a professional sports fan. As a boy he had envisioned himself in daring exploits on faraway shores, and as a young man he’d gotten to live out his share. He had never felt any of their outcomes turned on rallying cries, although in hindsight he thought it possible he had sometimes partially gotten through on dumb luck.

  He wondered why all this was passing through his mind right now. None of it had anything to do with anything, or at least he didn’t think it did. Unless it was to show that when you were in the thick of exceptional situations, there sometimes seemed no discernible way to sequence the cause and effect of how they’d developed or know whether your attempts to seize control of them were anything but self-deceptive, if not altogether delusory. Still, you kept on plugging away; the alternative was a concession Harper did not have it within himself to ever make.

  He chewed his sandwich without tasting it, estimating it would be appropriate to start on his whiskey in a minute.

  “John, you look like you haven’t slept for a week,” Andrews said.

  “Thank you,” Harper said. “Considering it’s been months since I’ve actually gotten a decent night’s shut-eye, I’ll take that as encouragement that I’m holding my own under pressure.”

  Andrews gave a small smile. “It’s nice to enjoy the food and atmosphere here after a long day of White House briefings, particularly when they involve Stralen, Fitzgerald, and POTUS all but showing me the door midway through…which you may recall is what they did that day back in April at Camp David,” he said. “I got the sense from your call, though, that you had something urgent to talk about.”

  Harper nodded slowly. “I weighed having this conversation over the phone,” he said. “I hate to sound paranoid… A secure line falls within my comfort zone under most circumstances.”

  “Don’t sweat it, John. When push comes to shove, I’ll always take a noisy tavern over SCIP encryption. The NSA developed the damn protocols, and who the hell can trust them to keep their ears out of our business?”

  Harper chuckled. He supposed paranoia was a professional hazard.

  The two men sat without saying anything for a while. Around them the tavern, with its paneled walls and polished horseshoe bar, was becoming jammed with the usual Capitol Hill end-of-the-day office crowd-politicians, lobbyists, aides, secretaries.

  “So,” Andrews said, “where do things stand?”

  “Ryan Kealey contacted me about an hour ago-he was aboard Hassan al-Saduq’s play boat in Limbe,” Harper said in a low voice. “It was eleven o’clock at night there, and al-Saduq was about to be handed over into the custody of the EU antipiracy task force.”

  “From aboard the yacht?”

  “That’s correct. Kealey and his team aboard were apparently waiting for a launch.”

  “Are there legitimate grounds for holding him?”

  “One could make a reasonable argument.” Harper shrugged. “I’m not sure the evidentiary case would persuade a judge, particularly in Cameroon…but it isn’t too important. Saduq gave Kealey whatever he could of importance. I’ll have a complete report on your desk in the morning.”

  “This sounds positive.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t ask to meet here just to tell me about it.”

  “No.”

  “So I gather there’s a negative you haven’t mentioned yet.”

  “More than one.” Harper picked up his whiskey, took a long swallow, felt the smooth warmth spread from his throat to his chest. Then he put down the tumbler, leaned slightly forward, and spoke in a voice only Andrews could have heard over the hubbub of the crowd and the rhythmic pop music thumping from the juke. “Cullen White and the leader of the Darfur People’s Army met with Saduq approximately forty-eight hours ago. They’d flown from Khartoum to his ranch in Quaila…White apparently as a money courier.”

  Andrews heard his fork clink against the rim of his plate and realized he’d almost dropped it. “Goddamn,” he said, glancing quickly around to make sure no one was in earshot. “This links him right up to that captured boatful of Russian and Libyan hardware.”

  Harper nodded. “White and whoever put him on the ground in Sudan,” he said, his voice hushed. “I won’t say the name of the person I suspect that is. Won’t even whisper it. But I don’t really think it’s necessary.”

  “No, not at all-we know whose protege he’s always been.” Andrews was shaking his head. “Okay, let’s have the rest.”

  “Kealey wasn’t able to keep the deal from getting done,” he said. “The Somali Blackbeard made off with the payment. He’s an up-and-comer on the scene, and Kealey and the EU task force people are convinced he means to keep his end of the bargain…meaning we’ve got the equivalent of two tactical tank and fighter helo squadrons and an unknown amount of ordnance about to fall into unknown hands in Sudan.” He paused, seeing the question on the DCI’s face. “For purposes equally unknown.”

  Andrews frowned. “John, we can’t target our spy birds in on their movement without State and the DOD getting wind of it.”

  “And the DIA by extension,” Harper said. The ten-ton gorilla in the room. “If we’re going to track them, it will have to be done old school. From the ground. You mentioned the scene at Camp David, and you and I might as well be right there now in that truck, discussing Ryan Kealey being our man. We need to put him and a member of his team in Sudan, and there isn’t any time to waste.”

  Several seconds elapsed. Andrews massaged his temples, his dinner no longer commanding a sliver of attention. “Our problem is that this
isn’t April anymore. The way the rhetoric’s heated up, we’re lucky our existing embassy staff in Khartoum hasn’t already been told to pack their luggage.”

  Harper sighed. “Speaking of which…our man there’s Seth Holland,” Harper said. “He’s experienced and can provide support. But he’ll have to work around the chief of mission, Walter Reynolds.”

  Andrews gave a nod of tacit acknowledgment. Reynolds and Brynn Fitzgerald had a long-standing friendship, and putting him in the loop would be potentially no less compromising than a request to jog the orbit of a Keyhole sat.

  “I’ve got no doubts about Holland,” he said. “But it comes back around to what I told you about the difficulty of getting anyone into the country.”

  Harper had some more of his whiskey but deliberately refrained from emptying the tumbler. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered what Julie-and Allison Dearborn-would think of both his impulse to slug it down and his calculated moderation in the presence of his boss. Wasn’t that supposed to be the telltale sign of a problem? “The intended route for the Russki shipment was through Egypt,” he said. “That obviously doesn’t happen without full Egyptian complicity…from the president down to Mukhabarat al-Amma. ”

  Andrews nodded, the concentration on his face signaling that he’d again immediately registered Harper’s unspoken communication. Mukhabarat al-Amma was Egypt’s name for its General Intelligence Service, a rough equivalent to the CIA. The agencies had been involved in numerous cooperative efforts, several ongoing, to keep tabs on several antigovernment factions with ties to Hamas and other militant Islamists. Over the past year alone intel provided by the CIA had thwarted a major terrorist bombing in Cairo and a conspiracy against President Mubarak’s life.

  Harper and Andrews sat in a thoughtful pocket of silence amid the swells of dinnertime pub noise around them. It seemed that a long period elapsed before the DCI at last lifted his fork and knife, used them to skillfully form another amalgam of steak, onions, and cheese, and took his next bite. Swallowing, then, he glanced at his wristwatch.

  “Let’s finish up and ask for the check,” he said. “It’s damn near two o’clock in the morning in Cairo, and I don’t want the person I need to call there feeling too cranky when I get him out of bed.”

  “Asser, how are you this morning?” Andrews said over his sat phone.

  He waited, listening to his counterpart at Mukhabarat al-Amma produce a sequence of phlegmy rumbling sounds as he shook off sleep at the other end of the line. The DCI was in his study in the two-bedroom Tenth Street apartment he had recently bought for over three-quarters of a million dollars, a canny real estate agent having persuaded him it would be cheaper and easier to maintain than the spacious old two-story, four-bedroom home across the Potomac in which he and his wife had raised their four children. Thus far the verdict was out; although Andrews appreciated the lower maintenance costs, the concierge, and private elevator, he had nearly broken his neck twice slipping on the too-slick tiles of the building’s marble lobby on rainy days and missed staring wistfully into the bedroom his youngest daughter had vacated when she went off to college.

  “At this hour, Robert, it is only technically morning, and I have a poor mind for technicalities even when wide awake,” Asser Kassab replied with a snorting yawn. “That said, I assume you would not have gotten me out of bed for an inconsequential reason.”

  Andrews went right for it. “Asser,” he said, “I need to get two people into the Sudanese capital.”

  “May I ask who they are?”

  “Employees of an Egyptian chemical company.”

  “Though not Egyptian nationals, I assume.”

  “A technicality,” Andrews said with a wry smile. “Though you’re correct. They’re Westerners.”

  A sigh. “And which of our companies employs them?”

  “That’s your pick and choose,” Andrews said. “They’ll have proper identification and international work permits. But I’ll need your assistance with their specific professional affiliation.”

  Kassab’s negative reaction was almost palpable across the vast distance between them. “This cannot be done,” he said.

  “Of course it can. Your government just opened that huge new Products Marketing Center in Khartoum. On Al-Steen Street. Nice-looking place-I’ve got aerial photos going back to when the foundation was laid.”

  “I do not doubt it,” Kassab said. “Or your general inquisitiveness.”

  Andrews admittedly enjoyed his displeasure, however much a token it might be. “How many corporations have their export offices there? Must be dozens of them, selling everything from petrochemicals to paints.”

  “I tell you it cannot be done,” Kassab repeated emphatically. “We…my country, that is…respects America’s position regarding Omar al-Bashir. But we share a geographic border and have vital economic ties with the Sudanese.”

  “Unfortunately that’s part of the problem,” Andrews said, deciding to play his trump card. “And it’s why you’re going to help me.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That your country was prepared to assist in the cross-border transport of a massive armaments shipment to the Sudanese army, presumably from Aswan down to Wadi Halfa, in violation of the United Nations arms embargo,” Andrews said. “This is before it was captured by pirates at the Horn.”

  “I know nothing of it.”

  “Of course you don’t, Asser. I wouldn’t figure head of Egyptian intelligence would have a clue.”

  “It is perhaps good for our friendship that I am too drowsy to have noticed your sarcasm,” Kassab said. “Moreover, if what you tell me is correct, this movement of weapons would not have been sanctioned by my government. There are many outlaws in the south, and their network is well organized.”

  “No thanks to your agency providing support,” Andrews said.

  Silence. “I think, Robert, that I would rather not continue our chat right now. I will happily return your call from my office tomorrow-”

  “I think you’d better hang on the phone until I’ve finished my piece,” Andrews said. “Whether or not you believe it, we’re on the same page here. Or does your government not want Omar al-Bashir to stay comfortably nestled in the presidential palace?”

  “A gross mischaracterization,” Kassab said. “I must remind you that, like the United States, we are not a signatory to the ICC. As I have also made clear, this no more makes us supporters of his regime than it does your government or the others that abstained. We simply contend that acting on the warrant for his arrest would throw his already destabilized nation into anarchy. Whatever new issues may have arisen to aggravate the already dangerous tensions between America and Sudan…presumably they would include this arms sale you’ve mentioned…I would recommend pursuing a remedy through diplomatic channels.”

  Andrews scowled with growing anger and impatience. He was good at keeping his temper in check; if he wasn’t, the bureaucracy through which he’d steered for his entire career would have long since spat him out. But when the dam broke, it came down with a crash.

  “Look, Asser, it’s time to cut the bullshit,” he said. “I called you from my home instead of the office for a reason. And tired as you are from standing around with your head in the desert sand, I think that tells you something about the delicacy of my own situation.”

  “Robert, listen to me-”

  “No. Now you listen. The GIS owns at least half the petrochemical companies headquartered in that Products Marketing Center.”

  “Robert…”

  “It controls and coordinates the smuggling operations down at the borders and would have been instrumental in running that illegal weapons shipment down into Sudan,” Andrews said. “If that information somehow leaked out to various House and Senate subcommittees, there could be repercussions. For example, my agency might have to pull its support of the GIS’s efforts to keep your president from getting his head blown off by hard-core extremists on a daily basis.
” He paused, took a deep breath. “Asser, you talked about what’s building between the United States and Sudan. Man to man, I’m telling you the situation’s on the verge of exploding, and I’m trying to stop that, even if it means Bashir stays in power, which falls right in line with your own government’s preference. I’m also going to tell you that the damned shipment is still heading into Sudan-just not to its original buyer.”

  Kassab hesitated. “To whom, then, is it going?”

  “That’s frankly something I might not share with you if I knew,” Andrews said. “But I will advise that you do yourself a favor and cooperate.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. Then, finally, a heavy, resigned sigh. “Where are your chemical workers presently located?”

  “Cameroon,” Harper said. “They can be out of Yaounde and on their way to Cairo within twenty-four hours.”

  “Very well,” Kassab said. “Please send me their photographs immediately so the corporate identifications can be readied. When they arrive here, I will see to it they are met at the airport and accompanied to Aswan with a special escort. The Nile River Ferry Company runs a daily boat into Wadi Halfa. Although an air shuttle would be faster, the ferry would probably be best as I have personal influence with its ownership.”

  “Got it.”

  “Also, I would suggest you make sure your people have ample funds to cover their travel expenses-including those that may arise without prior notice. These are lean budgetary times, and a bit extra might be of use here and there.”

  “Right. Anything else?”

  “Only that I might return to my sleep and dream peaceful, uninterrupted dreams.”

  Andrews grinned. “Asser, if you’re very fortunate, it might happen after you retire,” he said. “Men like us, though…I’m guessing we’ve seen too much of what makes the world tick to ever enjoy that luxury again.”

  The ferry from Aswan to Wadi Halfa was a crowded, rackety metal steamer that ostensibly left at noon every Monday from a sand-blown pier at Aswan High Dam-or El Sadd el Ali-on the large man-made body of water known as Lake Nasser. Bound by a system of three massive dikes on the Egyptian side of the Nile, the reservoir was the product of a major construction effort in the 1970s, its southern edge lapping up on the pebbled Sudanese shoreline, where the preference was to call it Buhayrat Nubiya.