The Golden Hour (3 page)

FOGGY BOTTOM, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

ONE YEAR LATER

MONDAY, 9:55 A.M. EST

“This is three-one-four, we are two minutes out.”

The security officer in the front seat was holding his right ear and talking into his left wrist. The aide sitting next to Judd was, as he’d been doing for most of the past four hours, tapping feverishly with his thumbs on his BlackBerry.

As the black Suburban crossed over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, returning Judd to the District of Columbia, his dreams of a lazy day of white sand and Carolina barbecue were long gone. Instead, he was reprising all the questions he should have asked Landon Parker that day twelve months ago.
If I
only knew then . . .

•   •   •

He had been so surprised and thrilled at being asked, that he hadn’t even considered asking about staff or a budget. It was just plain naïve not to consider how a new office, much less one led by an outside academic parachuting in, would be received by the
existing system. All bureaucracies were turf obsessed, he knew. But he was shocked at the particularly virulent, dog-eat-dog subculture of the United States Foreign Service.

Maybe it was all the tours locked in the fishbowl of an embassy fortress in a faraway dangerous place. Perhaps it was the cocktail of hyperambition, natural human pettiness, and living just on the edge of Washington power. Being within reach of those with true influence can make it feel so far away. And even more desirable. Or possibly, Judd thought, it was just a spectacular irony that those tasked to build friends for America around the world would treat each other with such disdain.

The result for Judd Ryker was a beautiful oak-paneled office with a view of the Lincoln Memorial, a mandate to help the United States government respond more quickly to evolving crises around the world, and no means whatsoever to get this task done. Who would want some new guy with his charts and data sticking his nose into their business? No one.

In his first few weeks on the job, shooting had erupted in the Solomon Islands, an unstable archipelago in the South Pacific. Judd had been completely iced out. He’d even had solid new data on the causes of conflict in small island nations. Neither the Pacific team nor the Australia office director would even answer his calls.

A month later, riots broke out in Kenya after a disputed election, and this time the Assistant Secretary for Africa, William Rogerson, had wholly cut him out. He’d only heard about Task Force Kenya after it had already met and decided the course of action for U.S. policy. “Sorry, the meeting must have been moved. Didn’t my assistant tell your assistant?” was the halfhearted reply.

But then it happened again, without even the pretense of a disingenuous excuse. Judd confronted Rogerson over being excluded from a Nigeria meeting. This time, the response was blunt: “Young man, when people get out of their lane, they usually get lost. Or run over.”

—

Judd’s frustration grew. He began to regret taking the job.
How can I speed up response times if I’m ignored?

Judd turned to counsel outside the government. BJ van Hollen advised patience and perseverance. “These things take time,” his mentor scolded him. “You know this.”

His wife Jessica also encouraged him to build new allies and find ways to circumvent obstructers. “You are still learning your way around the building. Still figuring out how to play the game. Wait for your moment,” she suggested.

But with each new failure, Judd’s doubts grew. He even began to wonder,
Did Landon Parker
set me up to fail?

Impossible to know. At best, Judd began to understand that his office was a mere experiment, that
he
was an experiment. A lab rat.

•   •   •

As the driver pulled up to the security barriers in front of State headquarters, Judd fished his ID card out of his briefcase and held it up for the diplomatic security officer leaning into the vehicle window.

Judd ducked his head and slid the ID chain over his neck.
Back in Washington.
A second officer stood at attention in the
guardhouse, patiently waiting for a signal. A third officer slowly circled the car with a sniffing German shepherd on a leash.

“Thank you, sir.” And then, “Lower the barrier!”

“Lowering the barrier!” Down came the metal barricade with a squeal and a hollow thunk.

After being waved through the front security gates, the car roared for fifty yards, then endured the same procedure again at the entrance to the underground garage. ID check. “Thank you, sir. Lower the barrier!” “Lowering the barrier!” Squeal, thunk, roar, and then down into the subterranea of the concrete government building.

At the bottom of the ramp, Judd’s head bobbed to the right, then to the left, as the Suburban swung two sharp corners. His head came forward as the vehicle screeched to a halt in front of a set of Plexiglas revolving doors.

Before Judd could reach for the handle, the door opened and the officer was holding Judd’s go bag. There was still one more security check before entry into the building was complete. Judd swiped his ID card against a keypad and fingered a six-digit PIN. A little light shined green and a loud clack told him it was time to push through the door.

Vacation over.

•   •   •

When Judd arrived at his office, his assistant, Serena, was standing in the doorway holding a folder. Above her head read a small sign:
CRISIS REACTION UNIT, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
.

“Task Force Mali is ready, over at the Operations Center. They are waiting for you.” Serena was all business.

“Good to see you, too. Anything I need to read first?”

“No.” Serena was now actively blocking the doorway. Her short, slight frame was more than matched by the serious look on her face and her no-nonsense jet-black business suit, just a shade or two darker than her skin.

“No other messages?”

“It’s four minutes after ten already, Dr. Ryker. They are waiting for you at Ops.” She handed over the file and gently pushed him down the hallway.

As he walked toward the Operations Center, he opened the file, and the corners of his mouth curled slowly into a faint smile. The folder contained a single piece of paper, almost entirely blank, except: “LJ call T+5.”

Judd locked his BlackBerry in a small locker built into the wall next to the security booth. He flashed his ID badge to a uniformed guard at the door and pushed hard on the thick glass door, which gave way with a whoosh of rushing air.

“Thank you, sir. Task Force Mali and Bamako videoconference is Room G.”

The State Operations Center was the twenty-four-hour beehive that kept headquarters in touch with America’s 305 embassies and diplomatic outposts around the world. It looked like a cross between an air traffic control center and a small trading floor. Young foreign service officers and security specialists sat at terminals with headsets. The walls were lined with large screens,
blinking maps, and clocks that flashed the hour of major cities in every global time zone.

Off to one side were several doors that led to highly secure conference rooms. Judd found Room G and pushed open the door.

The scene was much like the one during his fateful seminar for Landon Parker twelve months earlier. There were about a dozen suits sitting around the wood conference table, with younger suits in chairs ringing the outside.

Up on the large screen was a familiar face, Ambassador Larissa James. She was flanked on either side by two men, one in military uniform and one in a rumpled tan suit: the defense attaché and the CIA station chief.

Judd slipped into one of two empty seats at the head of the table.

“Good morning, everybody. I assume we’re waiting for Bill Rogerson. What’s his ETA?”

“Assistant Secretary Rogerson is not here, sir,” said a young staffer sitting along the back.

“Where is he? When is he expected?”

“Away. I have no location and no ETA for the Assistant Secretary. You are chairing the task force, Dr. Ryker,” the staffer said, adding definitively, “Mr. Parker’s orders.”

“Okay, fine.”
Lucky break.
“Let’s get started. Bamako is plus four hours, everyone, which is fourteen hundred hours GMT.” Judd nodded to the screen. “Good afternoon, Bamako. We’ve got the task force here. For Ambassador James’s sake, and my own,
let’s make quick introductions. I’m Judd Ryker, S/CRU, State Crisis Reaction Unit.”

Around the room it went, each in quick succession, announcing a name and an acronym, representing some corner of the State Department bureaucracy and the proliferation of issues and offices. There were reps for the offices of West Africa, North Africa, democracy, human rights, political-military, counterterrorism, economics, regional security, African Union, and consular affairs. Each two-person team, reflecting the strict hierarchy of government, had the more senior person at the table and one staffer, the “plus-one,” sitting in the outside ring, at the ready to whisper a detail or pass a critical fact sheet.

The more experienced of those at the table sat with no paper in front of them, the blank table space a sign of supreme confidence of their grasp of the issues at hand. A single crib sheet was still allowable but, Judd had quickly learned, an unmistakable sign of weakness to the others. The thick binders of papers, stuffed with background, spreadsheets, and maps ready at a moment’s notice to answer a question—or, better, to trump a rival—were strictly the purview of the outer ring.

They were all, of course, present on short notice in order to hear an update from the embassy and to provide input to U.S. policy during a time of crisis and decision making. Or, more to the point, to ensure their offices weren’t cut out of any decisions that impinged on their respective boss’s turf.

Just as the staccato of letters finished and the last person had laid their claim to be in the room, Judd impatiently turned back to the screen. “Ambassador James, what is the situation?”

“Thank you, and good morning, everybody. We’ve got conflicting reports, but we’re fairly confident we have a coup unfolding here in Bamako, which probably took place in the early hours of this morning, local time. We think before dawn, roughly four a.m. The television and radio stations are all off the air, the army’s on the streets setting up roadblocks around the palace at Koulouba and along the airport road.”

Yep, classic signs,
thought Judd.
It’s a coup.

“Thus far, the city is calm and we have no reports of violence in the capital or other major towns,” continued the ambassador. “I can’t get anyone on their cell phones in President Maiga’s office. The foreign minister is in Beijing this week, so I haven’t been able to reach him, either. Colonel Randy Houston, here, is our defense attaché. Colonel Houston?”

“Thank you, ma’am,” responded the military uniform sitting to her right. “At thirteen hundred hours Bamako time, about an hour ago, the regional security officer and I visually confirmed roadblocks around the city. The roadblocks on the highways leading to the palace and to main army barracks at Wangara are both manned by elite presidential guard, the Bérets Rouges or Red Berets. The road to the airport is also confirmed closed. The troops on the airport road are, however, black-hatted Gendarmerie, the equivalent of the U.S. National Guard. We aren’t sure what this means, but it does suggest a highly coordinated military effort. This is not just the action of one rogue army unit.”

“What about the rest of the military? Where are they?”

“We have private unconfirmed reports that Malian army regulars are on the streets in Kidal, Mopti, Gao, and Timbuktu. We
have been unable to reach any of our contacts in the Ministry of Defense by phone. We do have Special Forces officers embedded with the Scorpions. At least one of those units is reported to be AWOL.”

“Excuse me, Colonel, the Scorpions?”

“Mali’s counterterrorism strike teams. The Scorpions are a new weapon in the global war on terror. We trained and equipped them over the past eighteen months and now have advisors embedded inside each of the units. They are the tip of the spear of our fight against al-Qaeda in this part of the world.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” said the ambassador, turning back to face the camera. “Any other questions from Washington?”

“The airport. Is it open?”

“An Ethiopian Airlines flight reportedly landed about three hours ago without incident, but the military has now closed it until further notice. All other arrivals have been diverted to Dakar in neighboring Senegal. Air France has canceled its flight in from Paris tonight. British Airways has done the same from London.”

“What about American citizens?”

“All official Americans in Bamako have been accounted for,” replied Ambassador James. “There are eighty-five Peace Corps volunteers in-country and we will assess their status over the next twenty-four hours. An estimated five hundred private American citizens are also here, but we have no reports of attacks and no reason they are likely to be targeted. Consular Affairs has issued an alert to all AmCits to stay inside. We will also recommend deferring all but essential travel until the situation is clarified.”

“Thank you, Ambassador,” said Judd. “Do we know who is responsible?”

“At this point, we do not,” replied the ambassador. “Mali has a long history of coups and countercoups. The last known attempt was early last year when the then–army Chief of Staff, General Oumar Diallo, tried to arrest President Maiga. Diallo was easily thwarted by Maiga’s Red Beret presidential guard, but he escaped to Senegal and then made his way to Europe. Diallo lives in exile in Paris.”

The rumpled tan suit, so far completely silent and motionless, mechanically turned his head and whispered into Ambassador James’s ear.

“I’m sorry. I mean London,” she corrected herself. “Diallo is, we believe, in exile in London.”

“Is there any indication that General Diallo may be back in Mali today?” asked Judd.

“None yet, but we are checking,” she replied.

The CIA station chief whispered again in her ear. The ambassador nodded slightly, then added, “The current army Chief of Staff is General Mamadou Idrissa. He is supposed to be on leave at his home village up in Dogon Country, near the border with Burkina Faso. But we have unconfirmed reports that he was sighted in Bamako last night. We are checking on this, too.”