Myles was about to offer help finding someone else. But the Senator had already ended the phone call.
Eight
The Senator was furious. He pushed the phone across his desk, away from him. ‘You said this guy understood the military,’ he boomed. ‘He should know why some things can’t be said over the phone.’
Susan hadn’t yet learned that the Senator was not to be corrected. ‘I said he gave lectures about the military, Senator.’
‘I read the brief. It said he’d worked closely with Military Intelligence,’ huffed the Senator. ‘Is this what the British call “intelligence”?’ Senator Roosevelt tossed the thin briefing folder in the air.
Papers fluttered down all over the office. Susan tried to read them as she gathered them up. She soon realised the Senator was right and she was wrong.
The Senator put his head in his hands, scratching his scalp through his white hair. ‘Don’t we have any Americans with a long-lost connection to this Juma guy or his Ivy-League wife?’
The words ‘Ivy-League’ were said with a sneer. Susan, a Harvard-alum herself, tried not to take the bait. ‘No, Senator,’ she answered, squarely.
The Senator picked up a photo which had fallen onto the floor. He held it close to his face as he studied it, looking at the man eye-to-eye. ‘So this is Juma,’ he mused. Roosevelt had seen many photos like this when he was chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. It had obviously been taken with a long-distance lens, which meant either spooks or Special Forces. Juma was someone they couldn’t get close to. Sam Roosevelt ignored the man’s muscular physique. He registered the way Juma held his gun, but it was the expression on his face which struck him most: Juma had a recklessness about him, as though he didn’t care about anything. ‘This is the pirate who thinks he can send a bomber to the Big Apple…’
‘Through his wife, Senator — Homeland said the messages sent to the bomber were all from Juma’s wife, not Juma himself.’
‘OK. So Juma — or his wife — sends a bomber to New York. They write ransom demands on little bits of paper and think people will listen because they put the confetti in a bomb. Then the bomb goes off in a different place to where it’s supposed to and the bomber gets caught.’
‘Yes, Senator.’
‘And they still send a text message to his phone? After he’s been caught?’
‘That’s right. Even though their bomb was foiled, they still made the demand.’
The Senator paused and thought. Text messages and a bomb plot which went wrong. It seemed very amateurish. ‘Read me out the text message again.’
Susan checked her paper and read from it. ‘It said: “If you don’t want America to suffer the same fate as Rome, then send a delegation to meet me, and I will set out my terms. I will only talk with Senator Roosevelt. He should bring a representative from his old firm, the Roosevelt Guardians, and the Oxford University historian, Myles Munro. No one else.”’
The Senator absorbed the information again. ‘Who does this pot-chewing pirate from Libya think he is?’
‘Er, it’s called “Qat”, Senator. And he is from Somalia. He’s only been in Libya for a few years.’
The Senator looked confused, a facial expression that demanded an explanation from Susan.
‘Qat, Sir. It’s the drug they chew. Not pot, Senator, Qat.’ Susan smiled quietly to herself.
The Senator let her small victory pass. ‘OK. But why did Juma move from Somalia to Libya?’
Susan had read up on this. ‘In 2009, the Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi tried to develop a navy, so he invited in a whole bunch of Somali pirates,’ she explained. ‘Juma was one of them. Later, Gaddafi paid them to fight for him as mercenaries. But when Gaddafi was killed in 2011, the mercenaries were abandoned. Some left Libya, but many stayed and turned to crime.’
‘Was this guy Juma involved in murdering our Ambassador Stevens and his staff in the Benghazi consulate attack on September 11th, 2012?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Susan replied. ‘He may have been complicit.’
Senator Roosevelt frowned at her — not knowing was bad, and speculating was worse. ‘Just stick with the facts, missy. Do we know whether Juma still leads a bunch of Somali pirates?’
‘More than that, Senator. Juma leads one of the militias which rival the defence forces in the New Libya,’ she explained. ‘Juma’s got many of the Africans who came to Libya to work for the oil firms.’
‘Migrant workers, you mean?’
‘If they can find work. Many try to escape to Europe — every few days a boatload of them sinks in the Mediterranean. And if they make it to Italy they just get sent back. Juma doesn’t need to offer them much to bring them into his gang.’
‘So Juma’s leading a band of slaves, huh?’ Senator Roosevelt nodded to himself. ‘A real modern-day Spartacus…’
‘He’d like to think so, sir. The new authorities in Libya — the guys elected after Gaddafi — have tried to round them up but failed. And no one knows where Juma lives.’
Senator Roosevelt didn’t notice Susan agreeing with his assessment. He began thinking aloud. Susan took it as a good sign — it meant he trusted her. ‘OK, so our first choice is: do we let Juma dictate who’s on our team?’
‘Sir, if we do, we need to handle the media on it,’ insisted Susan. ‘It would mean both negotiating with terrorists and giving in to their first demand before we’d even started.’
‘Agreed.’ Then the Senator waved his hand. ‘But I’ve talked with all sorts of crazies over the years. If we try to send a different team, then he’ll refuse to meet us and do something stupid. For the media, just say it was an old man doing peace talks. Something like that.’
‘OK, Senator.’
‘Next, Juma’s gonna let us bring a Roosevelt Guardian along. But which one should I take?’
Susan nodded. Her expressions made clear that she was very keen to accompany him.
‘I suppose you want to come along.’
‘Yes, Senator. Although I’m from Homeland, I’m on your staff. I could count as a Roosevelt Guardian.’
The Senator pulled a thinking face. Then he smiled like a father about to disappoint. ‘No. I’m sorry. Two reasons. You’re too official — if this goes wrong, it’s got to look like the independent peace mission of a has-been hero.’
‘I could resign from Homeland Security, and just work for you, sir.’
‘If you resign from Homeland then you’re no good to me.’
Susan pretended to ignore the insult. ‘And the second reason, Senator?’
‘You’re a woman.’
Susan tried to hide her astonishment. Could anybody really be that sexist anymore? Then she remembered who she was talking to. Sam Roosevelt had no trouble at all being sexist.
The Senator tried to console her. ‘It’s not me. I know you could do it,’ he said, eyebrows raised. ‘It’s them. The terrorists. They won’t take you seriously.’
Susan didn’t look convinced. The Senator rammed the point home. ‘We’ve got to remember our mission: we’re not going to enlighten them about gender equality. We’re going to stop them killing Americans.’
Susan had to accept the logic. ‘So who will you take?’
The Senator looked at the photographs on his walclass="underline" faded pictures of himself as a young football star, a Marine, a Junior Senator in Iowa where he came close to winning his party’s presidential nomination… Then he settled on a family picture. ‘Dick. I’ll take Dick. He’s become a five-minute hero in New York. If he’s going to inherit my Senate seat he needs foreign affairs experience.’