Wahab shook his head slowly. “They are now enjoying Paradise. No?”
Nabeel looked down at his feet.
“And in Monrovia, the snake made a mistake and bit the wrong man. Then you send four of your men to kill him and that ends badly. And Mr. Stone lives on. He appears too much for you.”
Wahab watched Nabeel stiffen as he walked up to his Jaguar, took out his handkerchief, and wiped down the front bumper where Nabeel had sat. “I have a complicated task before me. This task, if accomplished, will far surpass Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 glorious victory. Our world will cheer our work, and they will write poems that will be recited for centuries.” Wahab laughed to himself. If he continued on this vein, the rich, poetic Arabic language he was speaking would soon take him off in irrelevant directions.
He cleared his throat and brought himself back to business. “I need assistance from competent people to carry out this mission.”
“You need not worry about me, Wahab.” Nabeel smirked.
“I do when you murder your lovers. The ones you tell too much in the heat of passion. While smoking hashish. Especially when those lovers are Afrikaners.”
Nabeel froze. His body appeared to shrink within his suit. The eyes pleaded.
“Yes, I know what goes on in Freetown,” Wahab said in a low tone. “Now go back there. Await orders, and come up with a sound plan to kill Hayden Stone. Rather, come up with a number of plans. Contact me before you do anything.”
Elizabeth Kerr knocked on the door twice, and then stepped from the quiet corridor into a noisy room filled with people in motion. Twenty-four hours before, top officials on the seventh floor at CIA headquarters had given their imprimatur to form this ad hoc working group to address the problem in Namibia. The group’s team leader, John Matterhorn, an older man with thinning brown hair and wire-rimmed eyeglasses, came up to her.
“Good to see you, Elizabeth. Come with me. We’ll find a corner and talk a bit.”
She knew John and his wife, who was also a CIA case officer. Kerr’s family and his were old friends. He had recommended Elizabeth to an acquaintance for employment at NIMA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency located in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. Another case of Washington beltway networking in the intelligence community.
“I got the word to report here this morning,” she said, looking around at the controlled turmoil. Some of the staff chattered happily as they lugged computers and pushed file cabinets around the room. Others slowly arranged desks and chairs, pausing at times to assess their fellow workers. Elizabeth surmised the happy ones were glad to be assigned to the group; the others looked as if they wished they were back at their old jobs.
“Bit hectic for now,” John said. “But in a day or so, things will be running smoothly. Always does.” Pushing two chairs together, he motioned for her to sit. “You’re responsible for all this.” He waved his hand. “Good work on finding that nuclear thermal source. The director is very, very interested in this project.”
“John. One problem. I can’t be here all the time. My organization insists that we keep monitoring the target from our location. Anything we pick up will be transmitted or carried here.”
He pushed his glasses back on his nose. She knew what he was thinking. Her people would not allow CIA to have control of their equipment or their sources and methods. Agencies in Washington, DC, didn’t survive lending their techniques to other agencies, even for a short term. Rarely were they returned.
“I understand. In that case you’ll be travelling back and forth a lot. I want you to know the success of this program rests a great deal on your shoulders. Any new developments out there in the Kalahari?”
Elizabeth opened her briefcase. “Here are some photos you’ll find interesting. They were taken about two weeks ago, ten o’clock in the morning Namibia time.” John studied the overhead photographs taken of a boxcar sitting on a railroad siding in the desert. Two figures stood nearby next to an ATV. He flipped through the pictures quickly, stopping to closely examine one in particular.
“Is this their helicopter?” Without waiting for an answer, he asked, “French make?”
“It’s an older Aerospatiale SA 330. Called a Puma.” She pointed. “See, they stowed the ATV in it.”
“How many people, all together?”
“We saw four men standing around the helicopter. Two drove in an ATV to the site but didn’t stay at the boxcar for long. They took some readings with what we think was a Geiger counter and hurried off.”
John pointed to a spot some distance from the boxcar. “Who are these two figures over there?”
She paged through the photographs John held and pulled one out. “Here’s a closer shot. Two young men or boys were watching from behind a bush. Appeared to be hiding. Afterward, they walked toward the nearby town of Bruin Karas.”
“Which direction did the helicopter take?”
“North toward Angola. That’s when … we lost our window.” Kerr hesitated. “The satellite had to be switched to a target in Iraq.”
“You’re kidding! Who the hell ordered that?”
“A request from you people. The CIA.”
“I see. Any idea who the four were?”
“All four were male,” Kerr said. “Caucasian or light skinned. Dressed European fashion. That’s all.”
John sat back, silent. Elizabeth thought she saw his mind working. This would be the first time she had seen him engaged professionally. In the past they had been together only socially for dinners or at the Tuckahoe Tennis Club.
He picked up the stack of photos and snapped through the sheets while he talked. “This is some form of nuclear device. Large, not suitcase size, which we all worry about.” He paused at one photo showing the two men at the boxcar. “South Africa had a nuclear weapons program a while back when they controlled Namibia.” He restacked the photographs on the desk. “Lord knows how many of these things are floating around the world.”
“I’ll get a cable out to the chief of station in Luanda. Don’t know how good our Angolan sources are, but we’ll try to come up with their identities. Did you get any markings or numbers on the that helicopter?”
She handed him a sheet of paper.
“Good. We’ll get this out right away.” He looked around the room. “That is once we get the computers up and running. Namibia is another story. That’s a one-case officer post, and she’s back stateside for surgery. The COS in Embassy Pretoria is covering that post, which may work to our benefit.”
The noise level increased in the room as people jostled one another, avoiding bumping into the incoming office furniture. John suggested they go to the ground-floor cafeteria between the new and old office buildings and have a cup of coffee.
Seated in the glass-enclosed dining area, Elizabeth Kerr let her coffee cool and looked around. Even though it was between normal breakfast and lunch hours, the spacious area was busy, attesting to the fact that the CIA operated around the clock and on irregular shifts. Outside the windows, she saw the lawn sculpture in the open courtyard. The artist had placed a lengthy coded message on the four copper plates. The artwork had been the subject of numerous articles in magazines and the Washington Post. “Anyone break that cipher out there?” She pointed.
John shook his head. “Break the Kryptos? Not that I know,” he said without looking, his mind apparently on something else.
She felt her cup and decided it cool enough to sip. John took his time to say something he seemed hesitant to say.
Finally, he said, “Afghanistan is sucking up a lot of our resources. We’re having success there, but not for long, I’m afraid.” He looked at her. “The White House wants to go into Iraq. We’ve begun redirecting our resources.”