Kealey was lost in thought as he watched the passing structures for movement. It had been four days since the failed assassination attempt on Nuri al-Maliki, four days since Harper’s call. Since then, he had talked to two other men, both of whom were prominent figures on the American payroll, but neither of whom could be trusted. Sitting across from him, they had plied him with strong tea and offered their justification for the monetary assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency. When pressed for specifics, they were quick to provide what appeared to be hard numbers, but it was all meaningless. The Agency’s lack of assets and infrastructure in the region was not a well-guarded secret. Stories were rarely checked out with due diligence, and it was not expensive for these men to push the lies down the line. Eventually, it always seemed to come down to a staff officer in the Iraqi National Guard who would swear that, yes, those funds had been made available to the target organization. They had turned over their weapons, they were now beholden to the United States…Kealey could not accept these words at face value, because nothing ever seemed to change.
For this reason, he had decided to take a chance in the upcoming meeting. He had proof of financial irregularities in this case, but that wouldn’t justify his actions if it all went wrong. What he was about to do was completely off the reservation, and if it yielded anything less than a flood of information, Harper would almost certainly run him out of the Agency. In all honesty, though, Kealey didn’t care too much if that happened. He was tired of the work, tired of the Agency—tired of everything.
They turned off the main road, bringing them into an area that had obviously seen some of the worst fighting. A small boy watched the passing vehicles for a few seconds, then ducked out of view behind a low cement wall marked with Arabic graffiti. Kealey had just enough time to read the message: THE AMERICANS ARE MURDERERS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN. SADDAM IS STILL THE LEADER. Up ahead, he could see a pair of fighters standing outside one of the few structures that was still intact. Apart from the two men, the street was empty. “Stop here for a second.”
The Tacoma slowed to a halt as he used a handheld radio to call back to the following vehicles. The other man was studying the scene through the windshield. “What do you think?”
“I don’t like it,” Kealey replied. “But then again, there isn’t much I do like about this place.” He thought about it for a few seconds. “I’ll have Walland turn around and stay back with the third vehicle. That should give him clear shots from the back of his truck, if it comes to that. I want coverage on these guys up here, but like I said, they’ll probably have people in the surrounding buildings.”
He turned to face Owen. “Once I’m inside, give it a few minutes; then do the same. Turn your vehicle around. If something happens, they’ll expect us to go straight for Highway 10. This way, we catch them off-guard.”
The other man nodded; Highway 10 ran through the heart of the city, east to west, and was the quickest route back to the marine base east of the city. “When you start moving,” Kealey continued, “watch those guards to see what they do. If you see something you don’t like, hit your SQUELCH button twice, okay? They’ll let me keep the radio.”
Another nod. Kealey made the necessary call to the following vehicles, and then they rolled forward, braking to a halt once more next to the guards. He handed over his rifle, stock first.
The Delta colonel took it reluctantly. “You know, if something goes wrong, we won’t be able to help you in there.”
“I know,” Kealey replied. “Don’t worry about me. Just watch these guys.” He slung the pack over his shoulder and climbed out of the vehicle.
As he approached the door, one of the fighters gestured for him to raise his hands. He complied, and the man performed a quick search, briefly examining the PRC-148 handheld radio hanging from Kealey’s right hip. When he was satisfied, the guard made a move for the backpack, but it was pulled out of reach.
“This is for Kassem.” Kealey spoke softly in Arabic, but his tone left no room for argument. “Go and ask him if you must, but no one else touches it. He will tell you the same.”
The fighter, his face partially concealed by a wound kaffiyeh, measured him up with calm brown eyes. Kealey simply returned the stare, his face devoid of expression. Finally, the man stepped back, and Kealey passed through into the darkened hallway.
CHAPTER 4
LONDON
Alight rain was falling steadily as a young woman hurried along New Bond Street, pulling the lapels of her coat together in a vain attempt to save her blouse from further damage. She was already soaked to the skin, despite having left the small café on Oxford Street just five minutes earlier. She had eaten her lunch alone, as usual, and the clouds had waited for her to step onto the sidewalk before opening up. Looking up at the swirling sky, Naomi Kharmai wondered if the weather had joined the rest of the world in working against her. As her green eyes flickered over the surrounding sea of umbrellas, she couldn’t help but feel a little naïve, like a tourist in her own city. She briefly considered hailing a cab, but then decided she was already too wet for it to make a difference.
Kharmai had recently celebrated her thirty-first birthday, but her small, slender build belied her years. Her caramel-colored skin betrayed her Indian heritage, as did her jet-black hair, but she had never set foot on the Asian continent. She was British by birth, but she was also a naturalized American citizen. This last qualification was something of a necessity, as her office was located in the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square, where she was officially listed as a senior analyst with the Office of Defense Cooperation. This description was not, however, entirely accurate. Naomi was an analyst, but not for the ODC. In reality, she was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The recruiters had come looking for her nearly five years earlier. She’d been working at Bell Labs at the time, in the Computer Science and Software center in Murray Hill. Kharmai had truly despised the job, an entry-level position with little hope of advancement. She had graduated third in her class at Stanford, but that could only take her so far in a company that was home to some of the most brilliant minds in the field of computer engineering. Feeling more than a little neglected, she’d jumped at the chance to work in the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, where she was given access to some of the latest innovations and, more importantly, the opportunity to actually use the technology in a meaningful way. But Naomi’s talents were not limited to the science of cryptography. It wasn’t long before her language skills earned her a place in the CTC, the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center. It was there that Jonathan Harper, in desperate need of an Arabic language specialist for an upcoming operation, had found her the previous year.
The rain started coming harder. She tucked her head down a little and increased her pace as she crossed the square for the shelter of the embassy. Climbing the short flight of marble stairs, she pulled open the door to the service entrance, then dug her ID out of her purse for the benefit of the armed marine at the security checkpoint.
He gave her a smile, which she tried to return as they went through the ritual. After being passed through, she made her way directly to the elevator. Soon she was in her office on the third floor. The term “office” was perhaps overly generous, as it was nothing more than a small, windowless cubbyhole. Secretly, Naomi suspected the room had been hijacked from some unfortunate janitor to make room for her. She sometimes caught herself sneaking little glances at the custodians she passed in the halls, searching for the smallest hint of forthcoming retribution.
She turned on her computer, then shrugged off her coat and draped it over the radiator. She was doing her best to wring the water out of her hair when someone tapped on the door. “Yeah?”
One of her fellow analysts poked her head in. “Hey, Naomi.” A little grin appeared on her face. “You forgot your umbrella again, didn’t you?”
Kharmai sighed in acknowledgment. “You’d think I would know better. I mean, I did live here until I was e
ighteen.”
“Well, if you haven’t learned by now, you never will. Anyway, the boss wants to talk to you.”
“Okay. What’s the agenda?”
“I’m not sure,” the woman replied. “But you’re the only one invited to the party. He wants you to bring these.”
She took the proffered list and glanced at the numbered files. “Where is he?”
“Room C.”
Naomi raised an eyebrow. Conference Rooms A through E were secure, with cipher locks on the doors and lead shielding in the walls. They were reserved for the most delicate embassy business, and since most of what was said in the building was not for public consumption, the rooms were usually occupied. Still, it wasn’t often that she was summoned for a private discussion with the ranking CIA officer in the embassy. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single precedent, which made her slightly uneasy.
She shrugged in resignation; she’d find out soon enough. “I’m on my way.”
As usual, Naomi nearly missed Emmett Mills when she finally made it to the conference room, balancing a steaming cup of coffee and a stack of paperwork in her arms. At five feet three, Naomi was only a few inches shorter than the silver-haired chief of station, but she knew that the man’s slight stature merely served to disguise a powerful intellect. By his midthirties, Mills had already earned four master’s degrees from three different schools, as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
Now fifty-four and approaching mandatory retirement, he was something of a legend at Langley. Naomi knew about most of the things he had pulled off during his illustrious career, but even if she’d been kept in the dark, she would have recognized the man’s experience in his confident, finely drawn features. Mills was constantly wearing a slightly bemused smile, as though appraising the talent—or ineptitude—of the next generation. It always made her feel self-conscious, feelings that were not quite canceled out by the knowledge that he needed her. Mills had spent the majority of his career in the operations directorate; as a result, he relied heavily on Naomi when it came to technical matters. Since her posting to the embassy, she had been responsible for most of the electronic traffic between their department and the various British intelligence agencies.
“Glad you could finally make it, Kharmai.” She started in on a feeble apology, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Do me a favor and kick on that doorstop. We’ve only got a few minutes before the defense attaché shows up to claim the room, so I’ll make this brief. Did you find everything I asked for?”
She nodded as she took the seat across from him, nearly spilling her coffee in the process. Behind her, the door eased shut with a gentle click, locking automatically. She held up a folder. “This is a copy of our current watch list. All of these people have been linked in some way to one of the nine major terrorist groups in Iraq, and they’re all based here in London. It’s hard to keep track with our limited resources, but we do the best we can. Most of the ties are incidental: family relations, for example. Anything involving a financial transaction gets kicked over to Scotland Yard, MI5, and MI6. Unfortunately, they’re a little less generous when it comes time to reciprocate, but that’s understandable. This is their country, after all.”
Mills nodded along, neatly concealing his vague amusement. He’d long ago noticed Kharmai’s peculiar lapses when it came to her own national identity.
She set the file to one side, then selected another, much heavier folder. “This one came courtesy of the Ministry of Defense. It’s a compilation of all the voiceprints they have on file at Whitehall, arranged in numerical order and based on cell phone intercepts here in the U.K. This is only a sample, of course. They’ve been fine-tuning the system, but they face the same problem we do in terms of geographical limitations. For us, the towers are based in Fort Meade, which confines the intercepts to the metro area. Here it’s the M41 to the west and the A10 to the east.” She was referring to the main roads that circled the city. “All in all, it’s a seven-mile radius, or about twenty-five square miles, total, with the MoD as the epicenter.”
“Okay. Do we have an idea of the daily take?”
“More than an idea, sir.” Her smile was almost coy; she was on steady ground now, sure of herself and what she was saying. “Don’t forget, I know a lot of people over there. Right now, they’re picking off between two and three hundred transmissions a day.”
He was surprised. “That many?”
Naomi shrugged. “Most of it’s worthless. They’ve talked about pulling some of the keywords to narrow the scope. The NSA is playing around with the same idea, but the towers on the roof at Whitehall are much, much smaller, which limits both the range and the amount of traffic they can handle.”
“Will they give us access to their database?”
“If we can come up with a good reason. We’ll still need some search parameters, though. They have thousands of intercepts on file.”
“What about going the other way? If you had a recording, for example, could you run it through the system to look for a match?”
“Of course. In fact, that’s the easiest way, but it still takes some time.”
“What kind of time are we talking about? Hours or days?”
She considered the question. “Again, you’re better off if you have someplace to start, like age or gender. Ninety percent of the flagged intercepts are male voices, anyway, but everything helps. Maybe a couple of days, if you were starting with nothing.” She tilted her head and frowned. “Sir, what’s going on? If this is about the Iraqi prime minister, we can send it to the top of the list. If there’s a match on file, you’ll cut down on a lot of your wait time. I think I can guarantee cooperation on the British end. The default position in a situation like this is to share everything.”
His smile was fading fast. “What makes you think that—”
“Sir, give me some credit. You ask me to bring you our watch list and this”—she held up the voiceprint folder—“which is worthless without the recordings, but you already knew that.” She paused for a moment. “They found something in Baghdad, didn’t they? A tape?”
He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, it’s a tape. But they didn’t find it. We found it, here in London.”
That surprised her; it was standard practice to work with MI5 on such occasions. The Agency rarely took things into its own hands on friendly soil. “And?”
Mills exhaled slowly and leaned back in his chair, debating his options. It was a tough call. If he brought her in all the way, he might end up losing her back to Langley. Naomi was a valuable part of his team, but if the recording gave them something to work with, she would probably use it to push her own self-interests.
He knew that she wasn’t happy at the embassy. After what she’d managed to pull off the previous year, she would have expected a bump in the CTC, maybe to section chief. From what he had seen of her work, Emmett Mills was inclined to agree. He made his decision.
“Okay, Naomi, here’s the deal. The final casualty list for the bombing at the Babylon Hotel was released two days ago. You know about al-Maliki?”
She nodded. The Iraqi prime minister had sustained serious injuries and was still listed in critical condition at an undisclosed location. The press had engaged in wild speculation, of course, one news agency going so far as to air an in-depth profile of al-Maliki’s potential successors. The hysteria was beginning to die down, though, as it now appeared he was going to pull through.
Mills continued. “We had to wait for the list to see who was missing. The hotel manager was killed in the blast, along with most of the prime minister’s security detail. He was careful in that respect; the bodyguards were screened beforehand, so the survivors were cleared in a hurry. The gate guards were cleared as well. They were rotated on a daily basis, but in that case, the interrogations did yield some useful information. In the first week of September, a crew was brought in to repair electrical problems on the second and third floors of the hotel. The
work took ten days to complete. During that time, the assistant manager, Rashid Amin al-Umari, spoke to each of the shift leaders, asking them to pass the vehicles through without a security check.”
“That’s interesting.” Naomi leaned forward in her seat. “That’s very interesting. Let me guess. Rashid has dropped off the face of the earth.”
Mills aimed a finger at her. “Exactly. We can’t find him anywhere, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying. The Iraqi Police Service raided his house in Baghdad yesterday, and”—he handed her a glossy 8 x 10—“this morning we sent a team into this residence in Knightsbridge.”
Naomi accepted the photograph and studied it briefly. She was looking at a large home with carefully kept gardens and a beautiful stone façade. “How does a hotel manager afford a house like this?”
“Inheritance,” Mills replied. “It belonged to his father, but al-Umari lived there until three months ago.”
“Belonged to his father?”
“Karim al-Umari died during a U.S. airstrike over Baghdad in 2003. His wife—Rashid’s mother—was also killed in the blast, as was his baby sister. Since the elder al-Umari had connections that went right to the top of the Baath regime, the bombing of his personal residence wasn’t quite seen as…accidental. Rashid gave an interview to Al-Jazeera a few weeks after he buried his family, in which he made some fairly candid remarks about his feelings toward the United States.”
Naomi took a few seconds to interpret that last remark; Mills was known to favor the British trait of understatement. “Well, that explains his motivation, I guess. But why that hotel in particular?”
“Because the prime minister frequently stayed there if he had an early appointment the next day. In this case, al-Maliki was scheduled to leave for Paris at seven a.m., so to avoid the traffic moving in and out of the Green Zone, he booked an entire floor at the Babylon for himself and his aides. The summit was scheduled a month or so in advance. Al-Maliki’s plans to attend were public knowledge, so the bombers made a decision based on precedent, which obviously turned out to be right. They had plenty of time to set up an electrical malfunction, which al-Umari used to get them into the building.”
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