The American (9 page)

The general's head whipped around.
“Where did you hear that name?”

“It came up between the deputy director and Kealey,” she said quietly. “In connection with the death of Senator Levy and the bombing of the Kennedy-Warren.”

Hale's eyes were closed, his face pale. Naomi noticed that his hands were gripped tightly around the edge of his seat. For a panicked instant, she thought he might be having a heart attack. Then his breathing eased and his iron grip on the chair loosened.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “It's just been a long time since anyone's brought it up…”

“Who is he, General?” she asked softly.

“Please, call me Peter.” His hand moved to wipe the shocked expression from his face. It seemed like an eternity before he spoke again. “Ryan Kealey became part of my 3rd Special Forces Group just after he left Bosnia, in November of 1995. It was nearly two years before he was sent into the field again. During that time, he was the CO of ODA 304.”

“ODA? What does that mean?” Naomi asked.

“Operational Detachment Alpha. It's Special Forces nomenclature—almost everything in the army has some type of acronym. Anyway, he was honing his skills as a leader, getting the troops ready. Everything was great for a while, I had no trouble with anyone in his company. They were the best I had, even though Kealey bitched all the time because I wouldn't deploy his unit. I wanted him to get his head right, though; that's why I kept him at Bragg. After a while, he came to me with a complaint about one of his sergeants.”

“The sergeant was March?”

Hale nodded. “He was the platoon sergeant. At first, I was a little skeptical, because he couldn't point out what the specific problem was. I mean, Jason March was a hell of an NCO. He didn't have a college degree, otherwise I would have pushed him kicking and screaming into Officer Candidate School. He was a little arrogant, but all leaders have self-confidence…Anyway, I just didn't buy into what Kealey was saying. Even he was embarrassed to bring it up, because it didn't sound like much.”

“What did he say?” Naomi's voice was a gentle probe, almost seductive in cadence and tone.

The general hesitated for a moment. “He said that March never showed any emotion.” He registered Naomi's reaction and recognized it as his own eight years earlier. “I know, I know. It doesn't sound like a serious problem. That's what I thought at the time. But if you think about it, you might understand what that means. For a young soldier in peacetime, the military is not a difficult life. You do what you're told, show a little respect to your superiors, and take some interest in your job. Anyone can do it. As you gain rank, though, the responsibility grows exponentially, while the pay does not. Now you find yourself held accountable for the lives and well-being of the soldiers under your command…With the responsibility comes stress, and with the stress comes the occasional outburst. Anything else is unnatural.”

“Obviously, I've never been in the military, but that doesn't sound like enough,” she said.

“No, you're right. It's not enough. Ryan also told me about the strange expressions that would come over March's face, and about the fact that he lived off base but no one had ever seen his quarters. To be honest, my opinion of Kealey dropped after this little speech. I mean, it sounded paranoid and more than a little unsubstantiated.”

Naomi could see the pain flicker in the man's eyes.

“He was right, though. I should have listened to him. I finally deployed Kealey's unit in the fall of 1997. It was in response to the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dhahran in 1996. If you remember, nineteen U.S. airmen were killed in the attack and Hezbollah claimed responsibility. It took a while, months of gathering intelligence, but we were finally able to pinpoint the architect of the attack: Mohammed Khalil. He had been granted political asylum by Syria, and was shacked up in a house on the Mediterranean coast.

“I needed the best because we only had one shot at it, so I gave Ryan's unit the go-ahead. It's called direct action, a mission that results in the capture or death of enemy combatants. It's usually the last thing SF is called in to do, but it's important. March was in an overwatch position. He was the only one on the squad to have completed the sniper school at Benning, so he was up on the ridge with the next-best marksman in the unit. It was going to send a message, it would have counted for something…March was supposed to take out the car with Khalil inside, and then notify the team on the ground. Instead, he shot the second sniper and fired on the unit as they came down the hill.”

Naomi couldn't believe what she was hearing. “They were all killed?”

“All except the captain. The extraction team, which was the other half of the twelve-man detachment, arrived twenty minutes after they lost radio contact. They didn't know what had gone wrong until later, but they pulled Kealey out with a bad chest wound and a punctured lung. It's a miracle he survived as long as he did. They found a lot of blood at March's position, decided that he would probably bleed out, and that was it.”

“So you just assumed he was dead?”

“There was pressure on us to do it that way. With no witnesses, nobody to dispute our version of events, we avoided a potentially huge problem. Until now, that is.”

“Until now.”

Naomi could hardly see Peter Hale, the dark having eased through the tiny holes in the screened walls, discreetly covering the porch with a black shroud. His disembodied voice reached out to her through the cool night air, along with the gentle chirps of crickets hidden among the long blades of grass.

“If Harper is sending you after him, then I hope you're ready. If you miss him once, he won't give you a second chance. You should count yourself lucky to have Ryan on your side, but remember what you're up against…Whatever happens, don't let March get his hands on you. Believe me, that's the last thing you want.”

She felt a distinct ripple of fear run through her body in response to the general's last words. The fear pushed through her imagined wall of stoicism and touched her deep enough to leave her with a cold feeling that lingered in the pit of her stomach. For Naomi Kharmai, the fear was a new and unwelcome sensation.

Thanking him quietly for the beer and the information, she rose and pushed past the screen door. It squeaked angrily on its rusty hinges as she disappeared out into the empty space beyond the elevated porch.

J
onathan Harper's elegant brownstone was located in DuPont Circle on historic General's Row. The line of town houses had been constructed in the late-1800s and given to former Union army generals in lieu of a pension, the federal government finding itself somewhat short on funds at the time. The buildings had admirably withstood the ravages of time, towering over the narrow street below, just as they had more than a hundred years earlier.

Surprisingly, it was not difficult for Ryan to find a place to park his car on the street. As he walked with Katie up the front steps, he found himself wondering if Harper took advantage of his influence to ensure that the Metro PD kept the curb in front of his home clear of vehicles. Ryan knew that he would do the same if he were in the DDO's position. They were greeted warmly at the door by Julie Harper, a short, slightly overweight woman whom Ryan had known and liked for as long as he had her husband. He introduced the two women and moved gratefully into the warm interior of the house. Jonathan was waiting for them in the dining room.

“Ryan, that face looks terrible.” Turning to Katie, he said, “It must be embarrassing for you to be seen with him.”

Katie smiled and hooked her arm into Ryan's, pulling against him playfully. “Absolutely,” she said. “I've started walking a few steps behind so people won't know we're together.”

Harper laughed as Kealey sent a rueful grin in his direction. “John, this is Katie Donovan. Katie, John Harper. He's the deputy director over at Langley—my boss, in other words.”

Jonathan shook hands with her warmly. “Thank you for coming. Ryan talks about you all the time. It's starting to affect his work, not that he ever did too much in the first place.”

Katie laughed as Julie emerged from the kitchen with the first of several steaming dishes in her arms.

The food was delicious, a light meal of grilled lemon chicken with baked potatoes, a fresh salad, and French bread, all served with cold white wine. The talk across the table became easier and more animated as the night wore on and another bottle of wine was consumed. Long after the meal concluded, the two women wandered off to the living room with Julie clutching a third bottle, giggling softly at a shared joke.

Jonathan laughed as they walked away, shaking his head. “They certainly seem to be getting along.” Kealey smiled in agreement. His host lifted his glass and stood up. “I need to go over a few things with you,” he said. “Let's talk upstairs.”

Ryan followed Harper up to the second-floor study. The walls were paneled in dark mahogany, a large part of the space consumed by an immense desk of burnished wood centered on a fading Persian rug. Taking a seat in one of two comfortable leather armchairs, Jonathan noticed the look on his friend's face and smiled knowingly.

“I know, it's a lot different from the rest of the house,” he said. “I needed at least one room without floral décor and rose-patterned wallpaper. You might have the same problem if you're not careful.”

Ryan laughed. “You might be right about that.”

“She seems like a great girl. I'm glad you brought her.”

“It was the least I could do. She flew in from Maine just to see me after the bombing. It's been four days, though; I think she's starting to get tired of being cooped up in the hotel all day.”

“It's the safest place for her, Ryan. They bumped up the threat level again, you know; we're at red now, a ‘severe' risk of terrorist activity, whatever the hell that means. You should probably just send her home.”

Kealey shrugged. “I like having her around, and I'm worried about her being at the house all alone. Besides, she already called the university and dropped her classes for the semester. I tried to talk her out of it, but she said she needed a break anyway. I can hardly send her back to Maine now.”

“Yeah, well…” All of a sudden, Harper looked uncomfortable. Ryan wondered why, but the other man had already changed the subject. “Listen, I want your opinion on something. What do you think about adding March to the Bureau's list of Most Wanted Terrorists? The idea keeps popping up.”

The younger man shook his head immediately. “You said it yourself, John. That would cause a huge uproar in the media and it probably won't get you any closer to catching him. There's no way you can do that quietly.”

Harper took a sip of wine and nodded thoughtfully. “The president agrees with you.” Ryan looked up sharply and Jonathan continued: “The director was asked—and by that I mean ordered—to appear before the National Security Council two days ago. You can probably guess that it wasn't for a pat on the back.”

“I'll bet.”

Harper shrugged. “To be fair, he wasn't singled out; the top people over at Customs, Homeland Security, and the Bureau got the same kind of chilly reception. Nevertheless, our mandate puts us in the spotlight on this one.”

Ryan thought about that for a second. “I don't see how,” he finally said. “The fact that March managed to sneak himself and 50 pounds of SEMTEX H into the country can hardly be blamed on the Agency.”

“You're missing the point, Ryan. Discovering the link between March, Al-Qaeda, and Iran
did
fall on us, and the consensus on the Hill is that we should have done it a lot sooner. Either way, the NSC advises that we are now the lead agency responsible for tracking down Jason March. Moreover, they want it done quietly.”

“Oh, well, that's all right, then,” Kealey said drily. “I thought they might be asking something difficult.”

Harper ignored the sarcasm. “I've been batting some ideas around with Director Andrews. The only thing we can agree on is that March is the closest thing to a weak link the organization has. After all, he's the only one going back and forth, leaving a trail with every step he takes—”

“Which we haven't been able to pick up on,” Ryan reminded him.

Harper tilted his head slightly, seemingly conceding the point. “That's not entirely true. As far as Senator Levy goes, we still have nothing. You're right about that. The vehicle was rented under a fake name, of course, and the FBI hasn't been able to dredge anything up on the launcher that March dropped in the Haupt Garden. The rain washed away any prints there might have been on the weapon, which is why we didn't get a positive ID right off the bat. We might have something in the bombing, though. I got a call this morning from Virginia. A DEA agent based at the Norfolk office was trying to crack a drugs-for-guns ring being run out of a waterfront bar, of all places. Anyway, his informer sees Michael Shakib's face spread all over CNN and tells the agent that he'd seen Shakib meeting with someone in the bar two weeks earlier. He said he only remembered because they got into an argument, and the owner told them to take it outside.”

“Who was Shakib talking to?”

“Guy by the name of Elgin, Thomas Elgin. He's a piece of shit—his sheet makes for extensive, if unimpressive, reading. Even worse, he's a registered sex offender. Raped a thirteen-year-old girl back in 1990, did ten years in Marion for it. You have to wonder why March would deal with a man like that, directly or indirectly.”

“If you're looking for someone to move explosives into the country, you can't be too picky,” Ryan said.

Harper had noticed the expression that came over Kealey's face when he mentioned the rape part. He was well aware of how Ryan dealt with such people. “March must have been pretty confident. I wonder why he didn't just try to get the explosives here.”

“There's a lot of risk associated with the entire process if you go that route,” Kealey said. “First, you have to find what you're looking for in the quantities you need. If you want C4, the best bet is going to be a military facility or a construction site. Either way, security is going to be tight, and the theft is going to be reported immediately. If you try to buy it through a third party, you could be walking into an ATF sting. On the other hand, port security is almost nonexistent in places like West Africa. Then you only have to worry about U.S. Customs and the Coast Guard on our side of the pond. The risk is confined to one part of the operation. No, I think he definitely had to bring it in.”

“Well, this guy Elgin might be able to tell you more. He's a load-master at the Norfolk International Terminals, working directly with the cargo coming off container vessels. It's the only lead we've got.”

“It sounds weak. What do you mean, ‘tell me more'?”

“It means I want you to go to Virginia,” Harper said. Ryan started to speak, but the other man lifted a hand to stop him. “I know, I know. Let me explain something to you. The president is out of options. The U.N. won't support an air strike, but the public is demanding a response. He's in a tight spot, so he was pretty receptive to new ideas when the director showed him your file. Ryan, the president is scared of Jason March. He's scared of the man's capabilities, his connections, and his willingness to kill Americans. Brenneman wants somebody who can work fast and get results. The logic is flawed; he thinks that if March can be found, then Al-Qaeda's ability to operate will be seriously hindered. He also thinks that March might lead you right down the snake hole. It's unrealistic, I know, but Director Andrews is willing to humor him. They want you to go after him.” Kealey didn't say anything for a moment. His face was empty as Harper waited for a reaction. “Ryan—”

“I remember when you asked me to look at some videotapes, John.”

Now it was Harper's turn to fall silent as he stared into his empty wineglass. He could hear sounds of laughter from the two women downstairs, but it seemed much farther away than the actual distance allowed. “Listen—”

“No, you listen. You know I'll do it—that's why I'm here. We've known each other for a long time, ever since I was in the service and running jobs for your department. That's too long to bullshit each other. You should have told me the way it was from the very start. Barring that…I mean, come on, John. At the very least, you should have known that I would figure it out on my own. What I don't appreciate is you trying to mislead me. I don't ask for much, but I think I deserve better than that.”

“You're right.” A brief pause. “I mean that. I have to deal with a lot of people, Ryan. Most don't have the drive. Everything has to be spoon-fed to them…Sometimes I get caught up in that. I'm sorry.”

Kealey waved away the apology; he didn't want to make a big speech, but the point had to be made. “Don't worry about it. I just want you to be straight with me. That's all I ask.”

That last statement caused a little smile to work its way across Harper's face. “You're looking for straight talk…I want you to work with Naomi Kharmai on this.”

The deputy director was surprised when Kealey did not immediately refuse. “In what capacity?”

“I don't want her waving a gun around, if that's what you're worried about. She's capable, Ryan. Her Arabic is better than yours, and I know you don't have any Farsi. Besides, she's…”—Harper was searching for the right word, but couldn't find it—“a more acceptable representative of the Agency. She might be able to open some doors that are closed to you.”

“That's an interesting way to phrase it.” Ryan was laughing, and Harper couldn't help but join in. “I could be acceptable. Give me a suit and a badge, see what happens.”

“That would be a first,” Harper said. The smile was broad across his face, but it faded with his next words. “There's one other thing, Ryan…Technically, you
are
retired from the Agency. As far as this situation is concerned, you're working as an independent contractor. That's straight from the director.”

“He's covering his bets, huh?” The younger man frowned. “Is this because of…?”

“No,” Harper said. Then he hesitated. “Maybe. Bosnia might have had something to do with it. You know about the bad press we got in connection with the torture of prisoners in Iraq. Andrews is desperate to avoid more of the same.” The other man started to speak, but Jonathan held up a hand. “It's not about him, anyway.
I'm
asking you to do this, and I know that I don't have to convince you, so let's not pretend otherwise.”

Kealey didn't say anything. After what seemed like a very long time, he nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Harper let out a long breath and said, “Great. And thanks, Ryan. I hate to put you in this kind of position, but I really appreciate it. And believe it or not, the director appreciates it, too.”

“I appreciated dinner. Julie's a great cook.” Both men stood and moved toward the door. “One more thing.” Harper turned to look at his guest.

“After this, I'm out. All the way. It's getting serious with Katie, but she wouldn't be able to handle it if I stayed at the Agency. She deserves more, and she's going to be angry enough when she finds out that I'm going to Virginia. Besides, I don't want to push my luck.”

A look of understanding came over the older man's face. He had once served in the field as well, and knew what his friend was talking about. “You've done enough, Ryan. More than enough. I never thought I'd see you settle down, though.”