“I’m only useful when I’m locked down,” he said.
“I understand why you feel that way,” Allison said. “But be careful about—”
“Be careful about what I smash?”
“Yes but also, be careful about what hammer you choose.”
She broke eye contact and put her earrings in her purse, signaling that he was free to go now. He hesitated. He wanted to, not give her something, not reward her for her insight, but let her know that he had heard her even though his decisions would probably be based on a thousand things other than her advice. It was still sane advice.
“As a psychiatrist,” he said, “if you had to send someone over there to . . .”
“To keep an eye on things?” she said, smiling at how close he was edging on saying things he shouldn’t.
“Yes. What kind of person would you send? I’m assuming not a surgeon, not an administrative type, maybe a nurse?”
“Well, to a nonsectarian hospital being run by two countries that may not completely grasp the meaning of the term? I’d send a man of God.”
He half smiled. “Which god? Assuming that an American imam, for example, would be under suspicion because he could be turned.”
She shook her head. “You live in a cold and brutal world, Ryan Kealey.”
She put her hand on the door handle and let herself out.
Kealey watched her walk down the cement path toward her car. He stepped out, closed the door after him, and followed the same path to his own. After all they had experienced together, been with each other, they simply half raised their arms in good-bye. Then he followed her taillights out of the suburb.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JEBEL MUSA, SINAI PENINSULA
Until today, thirty-two-year-old Lieutenant Bassam Adjo—a five-year veteran of Egypt’s elite Task Force 777—had never spied on his own country. On and above the borders looking outward, yes. On unauthorized aliens coming in, yes. But never on Egyptians in Egypt. That was the job of the Mubahath el-Dawla, the General Directorate of State Security Investigations, which reported to the minister of the interior and spied on everyone, including the minister of the interior. They were useless, the information they collected serving as a deterrent to anyone within the government acting against anyone else within the government. The result was the same as if no one had any intelligence about anyone else. That was all nonsense. But this . . .
Spying on ordinary citizens made him uneasy, as if the precious democracy he supported—an oasis in a desert of theocracies and dictatorships, so incredibly hard won after the years of Egyptian Spring and subsequent falls of several governments—was starting to dry around the edges once more.
Perhaps, though, this mission was not without justification, he told himself. At least he hoped so. He loved and respected his organization too deeply to imagine its mission changing.
Based northeast of the capital in a nondescript hangar at the Cairo International Airport, the seventy-man Task Force 777 typically patrolled the outer regions of the ancient nation in a fleet of Mi-8 and Westland command choppers. Now, however, a commando group under Lieutenant Adjo was crouched on a ledge 1,920 meters above Wadi el-Deir, the passage that connects Mt. Sinai to the Plain of el Raha—the Plain of Rest, where the restless Israelites awaited the return of Moses and built themselves a calf of gold to worship.
Adjo was lying on his belly, the sleeves of his leather jacket fluttering as he stared at the Mountain of Moses through night-vision goggles. He was studying a black cave at the summit of the sacred mountain. It was in this cave that the prophet was said to have dwelt for forty days while he communed with God and crafted the tablets of the Ten Commandments.
Beside Adjo, Cpl. Kek Massari was listening to an electro-acoustic amplifier. They lay in silence until, with a heavy sigh, Massari removed the headphones.
“The wind is too severe,” Massari said, pulling the hood of his jacket over his ears. “I can’t make out anything.”
“I can’t see very much, either,” Adjo admitted. All he had seen since they arrived three hours before, shortly before dusk, were the thirty or so pilgrims milling around the mouth of the cave.
Adjo rolled on his side and motioned to a radio operator who was crouching by his equipment outside a tent, the canvas flaps whipping in the cold mountain air. The young man hurried over and dropped to his knees beside the officer.
“Tell the pilot we’re staying the night,” Adjo said, cupping his hand by the private’s ear.
“Staying the night,” he repeated. “Yes, sir.”
The private ran back to his radio and transmitted the message. The helicopter that had ferried the four men—the fourth member, huddled inside the tent, was a veteran climber in case they needed to reach a different vantage point—had landed on an outcropping on the other side of the mountain, some three hundred meters down, where it could not be heard or seen by anyone on Mt. Sinai. Theirs was a delicate reconnaissance due to the nature of the reputed individual they were seeking and the ramifications of whatever he might be doing.
“Did you tell him we’re staying?” asked Massari.
Adjo nodded.
“We are among the fortunate,” Massari said sarcastically, rolling his eyes heavenward.
“We have warm clothes, at least,” Adjo said, taking another look at the cave. “Not like those robed devils. Take a break until the wind quiets.”
“I don’t mind waiting with—”
“Grab it when you can get it,” Adjo admonished him.
Massari gathered his gear to go to the tent as Adjo continued to watch the cave. He had never been to Mt. Sinai. Due to the high tourist volume and the fact that three major religions revered Moses and had to commingle here, this region was a joint protectorate of the Egyptian government and the United Nations. Though he was not a particularly religious man, Adjo was not immune to the power of these ancient sites. This place was not like the pyramids at Giza, which were the handiwork of men. Here, the hand of God had been felt. His voice had echoed through the very crags at which Adjo was looking.
That was a lot for a man to comprehend. He didn’t know how Moses did it. He was a prophet, yes, but still a man. Did one just accept that the finger of the Almighty had touched him? Did events simply carry him along, events whose tides and currents the shepherd could not resist? Perhaps both. Or perhaps he was a man big enough, wise enough, strong enough to believe that he could do what, after all, God had appointed him to do.
Maybe it was just as well that he had this assignment. The lieutenant could not afford to be swayed by what he sensed, by what he wanted to feel, only by what he saw. The mission was too important for misinterpretation.
The powerful binoculars sat on a small, squat tripod that prevented the equipment from shaking as Adjo’s hands trembled in the cold. A stubby antenna jutted from between the two eyepieces and pale white numbers scrolled along the bottom left of the green, glowing image, a time-stamp and file reference numbers for the digital recording being made on a laptop in the tent. It was a very different age for surveillance compared to when Adjo first joined the army in 1998. Back then, the big transition was still replacing the aged Soviet equipment with new infantry combat vehicles from the United States. When the war against jihadists began in 2001—a slow-burning World War III to those who were inclined to take a long, large view—more and more sophisticated electronics were added to the arsenal. The son of a fisherman who hated the water—it was too restricting for him—Adjo was excited to transfer to 777 when the opportunity arose. He loved the adventure but that was the least of what motivated him on patrols in the dry, baking desert and now the mountains. He loved being a part of one of the most honored divisions of the oldest military force on the planet. Whereas most of his comrades had joined the military as a way to make a living—and there was certainly nothing dishonorable about that—the weight of Adjo’s responsibility had inspired him to levels of performance he had never imagined. His commanding officer had two
brass paperweights on his desk—which no longer held paper, merely these sentiments: one said, “The Army Makes Men,” the other, “Men Make the Army.”
“Which is the truer?” Lieutenant General Samra would ask newcomers.
In twenty years, according to the officer, no one had ever been able to choose.
After another hour there was movement outside the cave they were watching. Adjo clacked two rocks three times—their prearranged summons—and Massari hurried over. Everything he heard, like everything Adjo saw, was also being digitally stored. As Massari rolled up the hem of his wool cap and slid the headphones on, people were emerging from the cave, incongruously holding battery-powered lanterns.
If this was the work of God, the bushes would burn, Adjo thought, comforted by his own clear grasp of the situation.
He watched the group of men, now forty-odd strong, most of them wearing dark, loose-fitting djellabas with the hoods drawn up for warmth, as they formed a semicircle, their backs to Adjo. They were looking at the mouth of the cave.
Suddenly, something fell among the men, landing heavily at their feet. The three men nearest the object flinched, taking backward steps that kicked up a fine layer of sand.
Adjo studied the object. It appeared to be a pole about two and a half meters long. Though the dust partially obscured Adjo’s view, what he did see confounded him. The pole appeared to expand width-wise at one end, as though it were a child’s balloon inflated with a single, long breath. This fattened end shifted slightly from side to side and appeared to rise slightly, all under its own power, it seemed; while the bulk of the pole, still earthbound, twitched once in S-curves along its length and back again. After a moment, the serpentine shape lay down and was stiff again. Hands emerged from the darkness of the cave to retrieve the object.
“They seem to be chanting,” reported Massari. His voice was calm; in the darkness, he had seen nothing of what had transpired.
Adjo raised one of his companion’s earphones. “What are they saying?” he demanded.
Massari replied, “The Stranger has returned!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Jonathan Harper had loved Washington, once.
When he had first arrived years ago, he’d felt profoundly that if he didn’t work in government he would have worked at a café or sold tickets at Union Station or driven a cab, just to be around all this. It didn’t only feel like the center of the world, it was the center of the world. What was decided in every office had ripple effects through every other office and thus, through all of civilization.
Then down through history, he thought as he drove toward Capitol Hill for a meeting with a senator.
And the city endured. Washington and all it represented had weathered the extremes of Joseph McCarthy and Jimmy Carter. It had survived wars and terror threats, impeachments and assassinations. And it would always endure. As the old joke went, “Show of hands, all those in favor of abolishing democracy!”
He still loved his job but now he was no longer sure whether he deserved to love his job, having failed it. He was supposed to be protecting the nation, and Isobel Garcia was dead.
It was nine a.m. and he was stuck at his fifth red light in a row when he received a secure text message from Ryan Kealey:
EN ROUTE TO FT. JACKSON
Always full of little surprises, Harper thought. And sometimes big ones.
Rather than text him back, the deputy director waited until he could access a secure phone line in the Russell Senate office building. Simultaneously, he opened his tablet and pulled up the IACA file on the base. The Inter-Agency Cooperation Assessment file rated the affiliations and loyalties of every military, intelligence, and industrial resource in the world. It was the equivalent of pledged delegates in a political contest. Fort Jackson’s commander, General Emory Farrell, came up with a cumulative tag of intelligence cooperation at 41 percent.
That was a good ranking for a military officer. One hundred percent, for example, would be if the president ordered everyone on the base to a war zone. General Farrell would, of course, comply. This rating—based on past experience with organizations other than the military—meant that a petitioner asking for military cooperation on a nonmilitary undertaking would have a near-even chance of getting a favorable response. Considering that Farrell’s cooperation with the navy was rated at 32 percent, that was encouraging.
What Harper didn’t know, of course, was what Kealey was hoping to accomplish at Fort Jackson. Kealey was pretty independent, with Harper’s blessings, but at least he kept his superior in the loop, even now when Harper knew he was continuing to rankle over Hernandez.
“What have you got?” Harper asked when Kealey picked up.
“Someone who would be perfect for the trip,” Kealey said. “I wanted to get to him before someone else does.”
“Name?”
“Major James Phair.”
“Isn’t he the AWOL who did the Iraq walkabout?”
“That’s the man,” Kealey said. “Only I’m not convinced he was AWOL. Not strictly speaking.”
“Sure sounded like it when I read the repatriation debrief summary,” Harper said.
“Well, if you want to look at it that way, it sounded more like treason, aiding and abetting an enemy combatant,” Kealey said.
“Right. That’s much better.”
“But I don’t think ‘sounded like’ is enough to base a decision on. Anyway, that’s why I want to get a measure of the man himself.”
“Shit,” Harper said to no prompt in particular. It was a general, all-encompassing utterance.
“I know,” Kealey said.
“This trip of yours already has more potential holes than surface,” Harper said. “I have no budget, no support. We have no evidence the doctor was involved in San Antonio, no firm, justifiable reason to suspect his motives and actions with this hospital in Iraq—”
“So, fine. We’re on our own, trying to stand on balloons,” Kealey said. “What else is new?”
“Balloons?”
“Something I saw at a circus in Shanghai,” Kealey said. “Too much weight in one place, they pop. Lean wrong, you fall. But if you center yourself exactly, neutralize your downward impact the way this Chinese acrobat did—”
“I see.”
“Look, we need someone who can read the situation in terms of both practical logistics and theological analysis. It’s going to be tough finding a nonsecular national we can buy or a local we can train. We might as well look at someone who has had a foot in both worlds and is still a federal employee.”
Harper had to agree with the reasoning—the logic of compromise—even if he didn’t relish the reality. He rubber-stamped the visit to Fort Jackson. Since Kealey’s logged itinerary was filed at six a.m., showing he was catching a seven-ten flight to Columbia Metropolitan Airport, his feet were probably already on the ground in South Carolina, anyway.
Kealey told him he would text as soon as he had additional information, though the deputy director knew him well enough to know this: whatever he received would probably be after the fact. In this case, though, Harper didn’t blame him.
They had no strong reason to be tracking Dr. al-Shenawi, so the less Harper knew about it before Kealey did anything, the better. The agent’s diminished level of communication with his old friend, which had been notable since Texas, saddened Harper but didn’t surprise him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CAIRO, EGYPT
On the books, the two hangars at the Cairo International Airport were a training center for the Egyptian Military Academy. But it was an open secret that this was a staging area and barracks for Task Force 777. The government had chosen this site for that reason. They wanted emissaries from other nations, especially countries in this region, to see the comings and goings of the airborne soldiers. They wanted outsiders to know that Egypt was watching its borders, that gunships were prepared to take action against expeditionary forces. They wanted
the world to know that their internal affairs were settled and strong enough to withstand any scavengers who might be thinking Egypt had been weakened over the past few years.
After the helicopter had returned to collect them as scheduled, Lieutenant Adjo and his team had gone directly to the debriefing center in Hangar One to make their report. It was a small room with ivory-white walls and a small wooden conference table in the center. There was a computer, a phone, and a pitcher of water with a glass. There were folding chairs, which the men opened for themselves. They were not permitted to go to barracks, however much a shower and change of clothes would have been welcome. The lieutenant general liked his information raw, unwashed, without a cleared head. He feared that minute, important observations could be lost or memories freshened as traces of the site itself were washed away.
Adjo was not looking forward to the meeting. He disliked failure, disliked it more than his superiors. But that was small comfort. He had confirmed that something was going on up there, but that was all. He had been unable to identify anyone and had chosen not to go to the cave to reconnoiter. That was outside the mission parameters and he did not want to risk scaring away whoever was there.
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