The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller (30 page)

General Fletcher Clarke hung up the phone. The plastic receiver felt so light as it settled in the cradle. He remembered when those things had heft, substance worthy of the gravitas they often carried.

“General, would you like us to leave?”

Allison’s voice startled Clarke, though the question was a lifeline. How had she known he wanted to be alone? His silence? His expression? Or was it just the tight set of his mouth? He relaxed it as soon as he realized he was pressing his lips together.

“No—” he said. But that was tentative. “No,” he said more firmly.

Clarke had thought that having Largo Kealey in the office would be a steadying influence. The general had faced life-or-death situations many times in many contexts, starting with his earliest battlefield command in Vietnam. But added to zero intelligence coming from the naval blockade or from the satellites turned on the region, and the absence of actionable words or phrases being picked up on cell phones or emails by the listening posts in Rota, there was the added concern of neither Kealey nor Rayhan answering the phones. Worse, the signal division could not track the phones; they had been disabled.

The only news he’d received was no news: that the Citation forced down by the Air Force looked clean. He had been trying to relay that information to the only eyes he had on the ground in the region.

Now he didn’t have that. His concern for the two was secondary to not having any idea where the suitcase bomb had gone. He was staring at the phone without realizing it when Largo spoke. Clarke turned to the computer and looked at the map. It showed the new radius of operations provided by Homeland Security. It included the last known whereabouts of the device within a crushed teardrop shape, showing all the places the bomb could have reached by now using various modes of transportation. It was about 80 percent larger than it had been ten minutes before and there were no hot spots, potential hiding places, which would be pulsing with a red dot. Not a one. The bomb was lost somewhere within a space of approximately 110,000 square miles. The only good news is that as the radius expanded over the next hour or so, only Madrid would be added to Lisbon as a potential target. It was the belief of everyone working on this project that the terrorists would hold off for something that would make a much stronger statement.

“You have family, General?” Largo asked.

Clarke answered the question automatically, like he did at so many receptions and parties over the years. “We have two daughters and one grandchild,” he said. But the question hadn’t been casual.

“What do your daughters call you?”

Clarke replied, “Dad.”

Allison started to rise. “I think we
should
probably go—”

Largo waved her down. “What does everyone else call you?”

Clarke frowned with impatience. “Where’s this going?”

“My age buys me your indulgence,” Largo added. “At least another few seconds.”

Allison was also bewildered but said nothing. Now she was curious to see how this would play out.

“The girls call me ‘General,’ ” Clarke said.

“What’s the difference between ‘dad’ and ‘general’?”

“There are plenty—”

“One big one,” Largo said. “Kids think you’re never right. Soldiers pray you’re never wrong.”

The hint of a smile crossed the general’s face. “Okay. Never heard that one.”

“Wild Bill Donovan himself told me that,” Largo said with a chuckle. “That was before his OSS had manuals and guidelines and white papers. He sent us out there with one basic rule: I’m the only one who can see the big picture. You just do what I tell you and hope I’m right.” Largo leaned forward and rested on his knees. “I never expected miracles from my commanders, only orders. You’ve got the big picture to worry about. Give everyone you know an order, including me. Anything. Let me work on this.”

Clarke looked at Allison, who shrugged. He considered the request for a moment, then pressed the intercom on his plastic phone. “Gentry?”

“Sir?”

“Take Captain Kealey to Streaming Intel,” the general said. “Set him up with Juan August.”

“Yes, sir.”

Clarke turned to his computer. “August is one of our best tech people. Allison, you can go with if you want.”

“Thank you.” Largo rose slowly on uncooperative knees. “What should we do?”

“You want an order?” Clarke asked. “Find your nephew.”

 

 

Juan August was twenty years old, the youngest civilian employee at the DNI. He had been recruited after winning a local science competition during his senior year in high school: he had outfitted a helium-filled balloon with an anemometer, a small remote-controlled valve, and a packet of flour below the valve. He trained a high-definition video camera on the balloon. The valve released the helium at a rate that held the balloon steady just above the window of the principal’s office—a window that vibrated faintly from the sounds within. That same valve rained a fine mist of flour past the pane. The camera recorded the powder patterns stirred very slightly by the window’s vibrations, while a computer program factored out atmospheric movement recorded by the anemometer. That left only the vibration-caused motion of the powder, which the computer translated to audio. August knew which teachers the principal was planning to let go before they achieved tenure. He proudly played that recording at the science fair. The principal was not impressed, even if the judges were.

Reading about the school’s threat of seeking criminal charges, Gentry said it was either keep a full-time eye on the boy or see him arrested. August was given a full scholarship to the National Intelligence University at the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center in the compound while he worked part-time in Streaming Intelligence. He was searched daily for data storage devices . . . and balloons.

Streaming Intelligence was the brain center of the DNI. It was an area where data from other intelligence groups, both national and international, was stored, sorted, and compared. Most of the system was automated, but someone had to be on duty in case the program detected something that suggested a cause for alarm—like a name on a no-fly list showing up on facial recognition software in Lower Manhattan’s Ring of Steel video surveillance system. When that occurred, the technician had to make sure all appropriate analysts received the alert, even if it was three in the morning.

From Gentry’s description of his achievement, the young man—whose mother was Latina, father of English ancestry—was hardly what Largo had been expecting. He was not a slacker but a polite, alert, clean-cut kid with a soft voice and a look that was what they used to call “gosh-wow”: he clearly could not believe his good fortune at being here.

Gentry introduced Largo and Allison, told them all that there was no need to be secretive about the item Kealey was searching for, and left. August offered Largo his swivel chair. Largo offered it to Allison, who told Largo to take it. He did and proceeded to tell the young man who they were looking for. August leaned over the keypad.

“The general is right,” he said. “Both cells shut down in Tangier. The TAC-X tracking device is also done for.”

“How could you not have longer-life batteries?” Largo asked.

“We do. The devices were killed.”

August didn’t realize that he could have chosen a better word. Largo let it pass.

The young man brought up a summary box of intel from the region. “Okay. We’re all still processing data from the attack on the control tower—no one has claimed responsibility, the airport is closed, and the last jet to leave was forced down in Spain, nothing suspicious found. It is being held for further examination. It is owned by a Saudi charter jet company . . . the pilot says he diverted from the flight plan for fear of another rocket attack.”

“He’s probably lying, but that’s not our problem,” Largo said. “Do we have some kind of Google map view of the airport, something that may show my nephew and Ms. Jafari?”

“As soon as the cell phones shut down, anything showing the region was recorded, stored, and searched for possible causation,” August said. “Nothing came up.”

“Can you bring up those images?”

August typed. They were fuzzy green pictures that were smudged with a tester of smoke from the burning control tower. The images grew fuzzier with higher magnification, became less fuzzy with computer enhancement, but were still unhelpful at revealing significant details. Largo leaned closer.

“Can you enlarge this?” he asked, pointing to a spot in the parking lot.

August zoomed in. “What do you want to see there?”

“This figure on the right of the car,” he said, pointing. “There’s a bright line—can you punch that up?”

August hit a few keys. Largo nodded.

“That’s Ms. Jafari,” he said.

“How do you know that?” Allison asked.

“The silver fringe on her coat—I saw that yesterday morning.”

“That is brilliant!” August said. He began typing.

“What are you doing?” Largo asked.

“Passing the information along—that we found her.”

Largo lay a hand heavily across those of the young man. “Hold on. Let’s see what else we’ve got here before we confuse the matter with help.”

Allison grinned and August stopped. He became attentive. Independent action was obviously something he stifled in order to work here.

“If that’s Ms. Jafari, then we can assume this is my nephew,” Largo said, pointing to the passenger’s side. “There wasn’t a third person on the mission, so we don’t know who’s getting out of the backseat of the car or who the other two are. But the phones died right before this, correct?”

“Within seconds.”

“Our people wouldn’t have let that happen, so we have to assume the guy in the back was responsible for that. Question is, was he waiting for them or was he with them?”

August scanned the footage backwards. The smoke was thicker, the movements were blurred, but there were clearly three figures moving toward the car: Kealey, Rayhan, and their mystery man.

“So he was with them, probably working with them because it doesn’t look like they’ve got guns on him,” Largo said. “Not someone they just picked up, either, because our two aren’t really with him. Looks like they’re talking to each other.”

“Ryan doesn’t trust outsiders,” Allison added. “If he’s that close to them, he’s been around them long enough for Ryan to know him.”

“But not to anticipate that the third wheel would have two confederates waiting,” Largo said.”

The five people left the frame. August pulled the image back, saw them all get into a car. The smoke made the details indecipherable, and the car heading toward the exit did not help them at all.

Kealey looked at the time stamp. “We know they were alive about ninety minutes ago. Probably taken somewhere for questioning.”

“Or murder.”

“If Ryan thought that, he would have made a stand in the parking lot,” Largo said.

“How do you know?” Allison asked.

“Explosion, authorities minutes away, security on alert—that would have been the time to make a move. If he knew where the target was, he’d have sacrificed himself to keep Ms. Jafari on the trail—or vice versa.”

“So what can we do to find him?” Allison asked.

“Nothing,” Largo replied.

“Should I try and follow the car?” August asked.

“Negative. Ryan’s on his own. Perhaps the people who took him have intel he wants. If that’s the case, Ryan will find a way to let us know. No, we have a more important project to work on. I assume all our resources are looking for this terrorist.”

“I’ve only been here six months, but I’ve never seen virtually all eyes turned on a single project,” he said. “You see this number?” He pointed to a small bar graph scrolling right to left in the lower right corner of the screen. “That’s the DAF—data attention factor—this thing is getting from every part of Homeland Security. It’s ninety-one percent. That’s the upper limit of satellite, human intelligence, electronic intelligence, and every other resource that can be turned on this region, on this project.”

“Why is it so difficult?” Allison asked.

“Because it’s completely off the radar,” he said. “We had no personnel in Morocco watching, other than the two agents. Secretary Carlson didn’t send anyone in because protocol, going back to before we got Osama bin Laden, says you watch with as few eyes as possible to keep from alerting the quarry.”

That sounded to Largo like the university talking. But he agreed with that. It was how he tracked the damn nuke in the first place.

“So Ryan will be the scapegoat if this doesn’t work out,” Allison said.

“Hazard of the business and the least of our worries,” Largo said. “We didn’t count on someone else getting involved—”

“The intel that’s coming together on that theoretical third party may be following up on the murder of an Iranian in Rabat,” August said. “I saw an alert about forty-five minutes ago. Police in Morocco did an autopsy on a dead man they found on a beach. He died of radiation poisoning but they found
mellawach
crumbs in his beard—Yemeni bread. The Iranian’s blood was also on his hands.”

“So an agent from Tehran kills the Yemeni, gets on the trail of another Yemeni who stole the device, and runs into Kealey,” Largo said.

“Wouldn’t he have mentioned that to the general?” Allison asked.

“Tough call,” Largo answered. “The higher-ups here might have ordered him shot or arrested—again, more attention on the chase. Possible leaks to the press by Iran, headlines. Ryan must have felt the guy was value-added.”

“There was a university professor, a scientist murdered shortly after the car bomb in Fès,” August said. “That could have been Mr. Kealey.”

“How was it done?” Largo asked.

“A leatherworker’s awl. Back of the neck.”