“We’re on our way, Molly. Crossing the Atlantic. How’s it going?”
“Fine. Prester John file is done. I’m setting up the internet surveillance program, but nothing has come up so far that relates to the mission.”
“Great, Molly.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t really have a handle on the folks who hired me.”
“You told me about the Newport meeting.”
“Yes, but those characters could have been bit players for all I know. Dumb not to vet the people at the meeting.”
“Yeah, pretty dumb. No problem. I’ll start files on all the names you gave me.”
“That would put my mind at ease. I’ll let you know when we get to Kabul.”
After they said their good-byes, Sutherland turned to her computer. She compiled bios on the Newport group. Nothing popped up to catch her attention. There was one name on the meeting list that she didn’t check out. Matt Hawkins.
Sutherland already knew everything there was to know about Hawkins. She had opened a file the day she met him in Trask’s office, adding to it every step of his life since he’d left the navy, returned to college and established a new career. She had watched electronically from afar, only rarely corresponding with him. Her fault mostly. She was aware that she had a crush on Hawkins. My god, she thought, what female wouldn’t be attracted to him? Sutherland knew Hawkins liked her, but probably more like a kid sister. She was comfortable with that arrangement, with its implicit bond of trust. It was why she had answered his IM. And the reason she took on this nutty assignment.
Although she had to admit that her heart had skipped a beat when she saw his face during the teleconference, and she was pleased to hear him praise her skill as an investigator. Out of idle curiosity, she called up the Hawkins file and clicked on the transcript of the navy hearing after the ambush in Afghanistan. She read down to the tense exchange between Hawkins and the lead officer:
Q. Lieutenant Hawkins, could you tell the board who, besides yourself, knew about the operation?
A. The only one who knew the specifics was Commander Kelly. My men were aware of the nature of the operation, but not the name of the target.
Q. So you and Commander Kelly were the only individuals in the chain of command who knew that the target was a drug runner known as Abrahim Noor Kahn.
A. Sorry. My brain is still fuzzy. There was one contact outside the chain of command. I consulted with a CIA agent.
Q. Can you give us his name?
A. I would have to get his permission before I did that.
Q. Unfortunately, that’s not practical with our schedule.
A. I understand. For the time being, I’ll use his code name. Southie.
Q. What was the nature of your discussions with Southie?
A. I asked him what he knew about the warlord. He said the target was a protected asset.
Q. An informer, in other words.
A. Yes sir. That was my understanding.
Q. Did you at any time tell Southie of your plans to arrest the warlord?
A. No. I told him only that Abrahim was a person of interest in connection with an ambush a few weeks earlier.
Q. What was Southie’s response?
A. He advised me to look elsewhere. We checked out his leads, but they were dead ends. We pursued our mission plans.
Q. So you disregarded his advice?
A. Abrahim may have had some intelligence value, but I was convinced that the target was responsible for American deaths and could be a potential danger in the future.
Q. Have you considered that if you had called off your mission, it might not have cost the lives of three men and several injured, including yourself?
A. In every operation, you weigh the possible casualties with the outcome if the mission is not carried out. You do your best to insure the safety of your men.
Q. It was your testimony earlier that you did everything by the book, and that your mission must have been compromised. Yet you say no one knew the details of the operation. How could it then have been compromised?
A. I don’t know, sir. I just don’t know.
Sutherland found the rest of the testimony hard to read. The board took turns demolishing Matt’s theory that dark, unknown forces had doomed the operation. Without explicitly saying so, their questions seemed to suggest that it was Matt’s fault the mission went awry. Matt was still feeling guilt about his leadership. The outburst that ended his career and led to a less than honorable discharge was inevitable given his precarious mental state.
She had read the transcript before, but except for her friend’s flashes of anger, it seemed straightforward. Hawkins was on the defensive, visibly frustrated with the board’s unwillingness to look further into the ambush. She sat back in her chair and stared out the window.
Something was out of kilter. In reading the transcript before, she had concentrated on Hawkins and his anguished testimony rather than the facts presented at the hearing. She had the feeling she had missed something.
Sutherland glanced at her wall clock. She had to run into town for art supplies and her painting class. She snapped the cover down on her computer and pushed back from the desk. She’d get back to the hearing later. Maybe a few hours slapping paint on canvas would clear her mind.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The panicked call came in a few hours after Professor Saleem had contacted his cousin to tell him about Hawkins.
“Events are moving faster than I expected,” Mohamed said. “You must come home.”
Saleem was standing in the history department hallway outside his classroom, phone close to his ear, after excusing himself from his pupils.
“Are you mad? I can’t come home. I have classes to teach. What is so important that you must drag me away from my duties to my students?”
“Your duty to your country and the intelligence service you are sworn to obey.”
“I thought I was fulfilling those duties with my service here at the university.”
“Saleem, this is not negotiable!”
The professor had never heard his normally self-possessed cousin on the verge of hysteria.
Saleem asked Mohamed to hold on for a moment and went back into the room to dismiss his class early. When he was alone in his classroom he sat at his desk and said, “I can talk now. Please tell me what has happened. What is your situation like?”
The interlude gave his cousin a chance to settle down. “It is like trying to control a tiger with a leash made of thread. The lure of treasure had diverted our friends as we hoped. I have delayed them to this point with excuses of government bureaucracy. But now they want to move ahead immediately with a mercenary operation to secure the treasure. I can’t help but think it has something to do with Hawkins.”
“You said before that they were not ready to mount an operation,” the professor said. “You said it would take them a while and keep them occupied while we worked on the Grand Plan. That it would keep them from hanging the Prophet’s Necklace around the neck of the United States.”
“True. That was what I thought until I talked to the Doctor and told him about Hawkins. He said he wants to move right away. He also said that the designer of the necklace is a mercenary named Marzak who had been hired to lead the expedition as soon as he finished putting the strands in place. It seems that he is at last free.”
“If this operation slips out of our grasp it would be extremely dangerous,” the professor said, trying to keep alarm from elevating his voice.