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  Of course, this might be a wild-goose chase. The rest of the aircraft could be hundreds of miles away by now.

  “Sorry that took so long,” said Danny, finally coming over. “I wanted to make sure we have some more people and gear in case you can’t work out a deal.”

  “How long before it gets here?” asked Nuri.

  “It’s en route. It may be a while.”

  Nuri walked to the driver’s side door. “I’ll drive.”

  “Hold up,” said Danny.

  “What?”

  “I thought we were taking Melissa.”

  “She’s not here, that’s her problem.”

  “What is it with you and her, Nuri?” said Danny. “What do you have against her?”

  “She’s not telling us the whole story,” said Nuri. “And I don’t trust her.”

  * * *

  “You have to keep the Whiplash people cut out of the picture.”

  Harker was practically shouting. Melissa started to raise her right arm to rub her forehead, but a shock of pain stopped her. Sugar probably had been right — she almost certainly had torn a ligament.

  “Look, the only way to get the UAV back is with their help,” Melissa told her boss.

  “That’s not a question — get it back.”

  “Then I have to work with them. You sent them.”

  “I didn’t send them. The director sent them. Not the same thing.”

  She glanced at her watch. She was ten minutes late. Nuri would have a fit.

  Hell, he’d probably left without her. It would be just like him.

  “I have to go,” she told Harker.

  “Melissa. Get this done. Take out Mao Man. If you—”

  She killed the line, turned off the phone, and shoved the sat phone back into the safe box in her footlocker. Her other phone was already in her pocket.

  Melissa locked up everything, then paused at the door. She didn’t have a mirror; all she could do was glance down at her clothes.

  Frumpy. But that was the best she was going to manage. She pulled open the door, locked it behind her, and started down toward the Mercedes. No one was standing near it, and her first thought was that she wasn’t late at all. Then she realized that both Danny and Nuri were inside.

  She started to run.

  * * *

  “About time you got here,” said Nuri as she pulled open the door. He started the car and put it in gear, not waiting for her to buckle her seat belt.

  “Gonna be a long drive folks,” said Danny. “Let’s all relax. Where you from?”

  “San Francisco,” Melissa said.

  Nuri felt his cheeks burning as the two began a trivial conversation about their backgrounds.

  The problem was that she was good-looking. If she’d been ugly — or better, if she’d been a guy — Danny would have played it entirely straight. He’d have kept her at arm’s length, trusted everything Nuri said. She’d be back at the base, or even in Alexandria, where she couldn’t screw anything up.

  Granted, she might be useful at the clinic. Maybe.

  Nuri’s foul mood settled over him as he drove. About two miles from the border, he went off the main road to bypass the guards at the main crossing, using a trail he’d spotted from the satellite photos. It was clearly well traveled — though dirt, it was hard packed, and even doing fifty, the Mercedes raised little dust. Within an hour, they were approaching Duka.

  “We’re going to switch, right?” asked Danny. “I’m your driver.”

  “Right,” said Nuri, feeling a little foolish. He took his foot off the gas and coasted to a stop. “Thanks. I forgot.”

  Chapter 21

  Washington, D.C.

  If the Agency was running a deeply dangerous and illegal operation, how far would it go to keep the secret to itself?

  The ends of the earth, and beyond.

  The first step from the director’s dining room felt like liberation to Reid; he knew what he had to do, and there was power in that certainty.

  But with every step that followed, doubt crept in, then paranoia.

  Would Edmund order he be detained? Or even killed?

  It was a ridiculous idea, Reid told himself. Even if they hadn’t been friends, Edmund would never do such a thing. Nor would any director. He was sure of it.

  And yet, he couldn’t seem to shake the paranoia. It intensified as the day went on, until it began to feel like a hood over his head, furrowing his vision and pushing him physically closer to the ground. Reid spent the afternoon in Room 4, studying more of the data, reviewing everything that might be even tangentially related to Raven.

  That alone would have stoked his fears — the more he learned about the class of programs, the more he realized Raven was potentially unstoppable. “Killer viruses,” declared a paper written by an Australian researcher. The man foresaw a cyber war that would paralyze the world inside of five minutes.

  A little past 4:00 P.M. the phone system alerted Reid to a call from the Senate Office Building. Thinking it was Breanna’s husband or his staff looking for her, he took the call, and found himself talking to a member of Senator Claus Gunter’s staff.

  “Mr. Reid, can you hold for the senator?” asked the secretary.

  Reid hesitated for a moment. Gunter was a member of the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee, but Reid barely knew him.

  But of course he had to be polite. “Surely.”

  “Jonathon, how are you?” said Gunter, coming on the line.

  “I’m fine, Senator. Yourself?”

  “Very good, very good. I wanted to speak to you in confidence. Is that possible?”

  “I’m at your disposal, Senator,” said Reid.

  “You know, between you and I, George Napoli is retiring from the DIA in a few months,” said Gunter.

  “I hadn’t heard that.” Napoli was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

  “In some quarters, your name has been raised,” said Gunter.

  Reid realized immediately what was going on — he was being bought off. He wondered — did Gunter know about the operation, or was Edmund using him?

  Surely the latter.

  “Interesting,” said Reid.

  “Is that the sort of post… you’d be interested in?”

  “I hadn’t really given the matter any thought,” said Reid. It was best to be noncommittal — it might draw more information from Gunter. “I hadn’t known it was even coming open.”

  “Well it is. And a lot of people think highly of you. On both sides of the aisle. I believe the President could be persuaded,” said Gunter.

  “It is an interesting opportunity,” said Reid. “Who— Are there people putting my name forward?”

  “I’ve heard in several places,” said Gunter, so breezily it was clearly a lie.

  “I don’t know if I would have support,” said Reid. “I don’t know the members of the Intelligence Committee very well.”

  “This will go through my committee, Defense,” said Gunter.

  “I see. But even inside the CIA there might be people opposed.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about a problem from that quarter. Perhaps we should have lunch.”

  “I’d love to,” said Reid. It was a lie, of course; he’d sooner lay down across traffic on the Beltway. “When were you thinking?”

  “I’ll have my secretary check the schedule and give you some dates.”

  Reid’s first reaction as he put the phone down was relief: Edmund clearly had decided to try to buy him off. This meant his paranoia was completely unjustified — you didn’t try to kill someone you were bribing.

  But once contracted, paranoia is a difficult disease to shake. He began thinking that it could every easily be a ploy to make him drop his guard. And the more he told himself that he was being ridiculous, even silly, the more the idea stuck.

  He finally decided that he had to talk to the President as soon as possible, if only to retain his own sanity.

  * * *

&
nbsp; Even a longtime friend like Jonathon Reid couldn’t just show up at the White House and expect the President to see him. Christine Mary Todd was far too busy for that. Most evenings she spent away from the White House, at receptions or in meetings. And getting a formal appointment without giving the reason to the chief of staff could take days, if not weeks.

  Getting in to see her husband, on the other hand, was far less onerous.

  At precisely five after five Reid left his office to go to his car. He took a deep breath before stepping out of the elevator, assuring himself there was no reason to be so paranoid, and that if there was a reason, he would face his fate with equanimity and honor.

  There was an unexpected thrill in that — a sense of the old excitement he had felt as a field officer so many years before.

  But he had an old man’s heart now. Just walking to the car nearly exhausted him.

  As Reid put his key into the ignition, he thought how easy it would be to attach a bomb to the wires, how quickly he would go.

  There was no bomb; there was no plot; there was nothing but his paranoia. As far as he could tell, he wasn’t followed from the lot, nor on the local roads as he wended his way across town.

  But his caution didn’t fade. Reid drove to the Metro and crisscrossed his way around the capital, changing trains willy-nilly amid the rush-hour throng.

  He came up at the Mall and walked to the Smithsonian. Inside, he found one of the few pay phones left in the city, and called Daniel Todd’s private cell phone.

  “Danny, this is Jon, how are you?”

  “Jon — I almost didn’t answer. Where are you?”

  “Knocking around in the city — it’s a long story. What are you doing?”

  “At the moment I was heading for dinner,” said Todd.

  “After dinner?”

  “Probably watch the Nationals on the tube. They’re playing the Mets. I’d love to see them win.”

  “You’re going to the game?”

  “Too late for that. I’m staying in to watch.”

  “Want some company?”

  “You’re stooping to baseball?”

  “Yes.”

  “Game’s on at seven. I’ll leave word.”

  Chapter 22

  Duka

  It had been two weeks since Milos Kimko had drunk his last vodka, but the taste lingered in his mouth, teasing his cracked lips and stuffed nose. He longed for a drink, but there were none to be had, which was a fortunate thing for a man struggling to break the habit.

  The locals all chewed khat, an ugly tasting weed that supposedly mimicked amphetamines. Kimko thought it made them crazy and wouldn’t go near it. The homemade alchoholic concoctions, brewed in repugnant stills, were even worse. He therefore had a reasonable shot at staying sober long enough for it to take.

  Africa was not exactly a punishment for the career SVR officer, much less a rehabilitation clinic. It was more a symbol of his diminishment. Milos Kimko had once been a bright star in the Russian secret service, a master of over a dozen languages, an accomplished thief and a persuader of men, a large number of whom were still in the SVR’s employ as spies. For several years he’d headed the service’s Egyptian operation, and at the time had contacts throughout the Middle East. He had even helped, behind the scenes, negotiate several of the secret pacts with Iran that Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin had used to outmaneuver the U.S. and its allies during the Clinton administration.

  But that had been his high point. Instead of the assignment in Moscow he coveted, he was rotated into Western Europe, and from there, inexplicably, to South America. He could blame drinking for his downfall, but that was a lie; the drinking was a consolation, not a reason. He never knew whether he had inadvertently crossed someone or if one of his bosses had coveted his wife. Both, probably.

  Petra had been gone five years now, a distant memory.

  Kimko smiled at the server as she brought his tea. He sniffed it first — you couldn’t be too careful here — then took a sip. As he set down the cup, a short African with a scruffy beard entered the café.

  Girma, the man he had come to see.

  Kimko rose to get his attention, then sat back down. Girma sauntered over.

  “Well, my friend, you are looking well this morning,” said Girma in Arabic.

  “And you.”

  Girma sat. He headed the local faction of rebels known in English as Sudan First, and had a reputation as slightly unbalanced. The waitress rushed over with a pot of fresh tea brewed especially for him. It was a local concoction, sprinkled heavily with khat.

  “The weather is pleasant this morning,” said Kimko.

  The two men chatted about the weather for a few minutes, wary lions sizing each other up. The full name of Girma’s group translated as “Sudan the Almighty First Liberation.” Its beliefs varied according to the person and, as near as Kimko could tell from his two days here, the hour. But it was larger and somewhat richer than the other group, Meur-tse Meur-tskk. The leader of Meur-tse Meur-tskk, an improbable French-loving African named Gerard, was even crazier than Girma, spending most of his time staring into the distance. So Kimko knew that if he wanted information, Girma and Sudan First were the ones to deal with.

  He had heard rumors in the south that the Brothers were trying to forge an alliance with Girma, but had so far not put enough money on the table to cement it. That was the problem with true believers — they failed to see that corruption was the easiest way to a man’s soul.

  “Did the commotion last night wake you?” asked Kimko after Girma had his second cup of tea.

  “The commotion?”

  “The Americans attacked one of the buildings outside town.” Kimko wasn’t sure if Girma was faking ignorance or if it was genuine. “Near the train yard. I assume it was an attack on your rivals, Meurtre Musique.”

  “Meurtre Musique are our friends,” said Girma carefully. He studied his tea before placing it down. “Why do you say they were attacked?”

  “There was an Osprey in the air last night. I happened to be awake and went there for a look. There had been an explosion, but otherwise I saw nothing important. The children told me this morning it had once been a warehouse for rice.”

  “The rice warehouse.” Girma shook his head. “That isn’t Meurtre Musique’s. Why would they take our building?”

  “It’s your building?”

  “All of Duka is ours.”

  “Who were the Americans attacking?” asked Kimko.

  “The Americans are not here. You are obsessed with Americans.”

  Kimko let the comment pass.

  “There was a robbery last night, that is one bad thing that happened,” said Girma. “I know of that — and when I catch the thief, his hand will be cut off.”

  “Where was the robbery?” asked Kimko.

  “The clinic.”

  Kimko nodded.

  “Meurtre Musique is jealous. They cannot be trusted,” said Girma darkly.

  “Jealous?”

  “They have opened their own clinic.”

  “I see.”

  “For a long time we have lived side by side, but now I see — they can’t be trusted.”

  “What was stolen?”

  “Wires for the computers.”

  “Wires?”

  “To tie something up. They aren’t even smart enough to take the computers. Imbeciles.”

  Kimko sipped his tea. The theft of computer wires was even more interesting, if perplexing, than an attack on a warehouse.

  “If the Americans were to attack someone,” said Girma finally, “it would be the Brothers.”

  “The Brothers? They’re here?”

  “Yes, the government chased them from the mines to the south. They haven’t contacted us, but of course we know everything that goes on in the city.”

  Except for the most obvious things like Osprey attacks in the middle of the night, thought Kimko.

  “I expect they will talk of an alliance again,” said
Girma. “They are always anxious for one.”

  “I wonder,” said Kimko, “if there might not be a way to talk to them.”

  “Why would you talk to them? They have no power here.”

  “Of course not. You are the power,” said Kimko. “Still, it might be useful.”

  “To sell them weapons?”

  “Perhaps.” Kimko saw the slight pout on Girma’s face. “Of course, if I made a sale, I would pay a commission to whoever helped make that possible. A nice commission.”

  “Hmmmm.” Girma drained his tea and poured a fresh cup. “A meeting could be arranged.”

  “Good.”

  Girma rose. “Come with me.”

  “Now?”

  “I believe I know where they are. There is no sense waiting, is there?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Chapter 23

  Duka

  Danny let Nuri do the talking when they arrived at the clinic, hanging back and watching Marie Bloom. People who worked with NGAs — nongovernmental agencies — were always an odd mix, and for Danny at least, hard to read. Both Nuri and Melissa had assured him that she was a volunteer, not a British agent. Naiveté and religious devotion had brought her here, Nuri assured him, in a way that made it sound several times more dangerous than warfare.

  The two boxes of medicines were accepted almost greedily. Bloom didn’t ask many questions of Melissa, whom Nuri claimed he had recruited while getting the supplies. Melissa said that she worked for WHO, the World Health Organization, and was due in Khartoum in three days. A colleague would pick her up in forty-eight hours and give her a ride.

  As she was talking, one of the children who was waiting with his mother ran over and grabbed her leg, apparently playing a game of hide and seek with another kid. Melissa bent down and smiled at him, asking in Arabic what his name was.

  Watching, Danny once more thought of Jemma, though this time in a much kinder way. She had always had a soft spot for kids, before and especially after they learned they couldn’t have one.