But it wasn’t. His mother had died, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Until now.
Huddled in the dark, Kharon tried to clear his mind of the memories. He put his head down on his knees, eyes closed. He believed in science, not God, but even he felt the moment as something like a prayer—let it stop.
When it didn’t, he thought of Ray Rubeo.
He saw Rubeo’s thin face, his ascetic frame. He saw the sneer in his eyes — Kharon loathed that sneer.
I will do you in.
Whatever it takes. I will ruin you.
It took a half hour for the storm to pass. Grit covered everything outside.
Kharon, back to himself, put the drives in the jeep and headed back to the city.
He called Fezzan and told him to have the car waiting near the Red Sand Hotel, a place where they had stayed before.
“You want to drive north tonight?” asked Fezzan. Clearly, he didn’t want to.
“That would be ideal.” Driving at night through the desert did entail some risk, but in Kharon’s experience it wasn’t much more than during the day.
“There are many reporters in town,” said the Libyan idly. “They are all talking about going to al-Hayat tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“The commission investigating the bombing accident will be there. They have experts coming along. Americans and French.”
“Americans? Who?”
“I can ask. It didn’t come up.”
“Interesting,” said Kharon.
“Should I get rooms?”
“I don’t know that al-Hayat would be of any interest to me.”
“Most reporters are going. If you want people to think you are a reporter—”
“Thank you, Ahmed. When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.”
“Just a suggestion.”
Of course he was right. There was no sense being pigheaded — this was an opportunity.
“Get the rooms,” Kharon told Fezzan. “Two of them. Make sure you get a good rate.”
“I’ll be in the bar when you get back,” said Fezzan.
Like a good Muslim, thought Kharon, hanging up.
3
Danny Freah rubbed his tired eyes, trying to clear the fatigue away. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go to Africa,” he told Rubeo. “Nobody can guarantee your safety.”
“People go back and forth between Libya all the time. Westerners generally aren’t harmed.” Rubeo rocked back and forth, as if he was having a hard time keeping himself contained in the small office. Danny couldn’t remember seeing the scientist more animated. “I don’t really need your permission, Colonel.”
“I don’t know about that. I am in charge of Whiplash,” said Danny.
“Really, Colonel, you have no rank to pull over me. If you’re not going to help me, I’ll go on my own. I have Jons, and other people to call on. Really, Colonel, I have given this some thought. I need to see the crash site and the environs if I’m to figure out what happened.”
“All right, listen. Give me a little time. I’ll figure something out, something that gives you some protection. Beyond your own team,” Danny added. “It won’t be until tomorrow at the earliest. I’ll have to arrange an escort.”
“I think it would be better to travel without the UN people.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. We’ll have more of our people here tomorrow,” Danny said. “Right now, it’s just me and Boston.”
“I don’t need an entourage.”
“Two troopers and an Osprey to get you around quickly. You can’t argue with that.”
Rubeo looked as if he could, but he pressed his lips together and said nothing. Danny half expected him to ask for the Osprey now, but he had a ready answer — he had loaned both to the UN commission investigating the bomb strike.
“Do you really think you’re the best one to go?” he asked Rubeo. “You have a dozen people over here looking into the incident—”
“Two dozen,” corrected Rubeo. “Plus the team that was here to begin with. But yes, I do think it’s a good use of my time. If one of your people had been involved in an accident or something similar, you’d want to investigate firsthand, wouldn’t you?”
“I guess.”
“I’m sure you would.”
Conceding, Danny leaned back in the seat and changed the subject.
“You know, Doc, I think sometimes accidents like this — and even blue-on-blue incidents…” He stumbled for the right words. “These things are terrible, but you know, you have to put them in perspective.”
“I’m trying to,” said Rubeo, rising to leave.
4
The black scorches on the walls looked as if they had been painted on, a kind of postmodern expressionism as interpreted by the god of fire.
The rubble in front of them was less poetic. What had once been a row of houses was now flattened stone, wood, and scraps of material too charred to recognize. The stench of death still hung in the air. The government could not have arranged a better scene if they had staged it.
Kharon was amazed at the damage the missiles had done. He had seen the results of the war firsthand before, but everything else paled compared to this.
The government said sixteen people had been killed and another twenty wounded. If anything, the number seemed miraculously low.
He curled his arms around his chest, suddenly cold. The slightest, very slightest, hint of grief poked at the very edge of his conscience. But it was more a rumor of remorse, less actual guilt or regret than an unease. It was easily ignored.
Two dozen reporters, most of them Western freelancers, had been admitted to the area by the government troops in anticipation of the special UN investigation commission’s arrival. Kharon’s phony credentials were more than enough to get him past the guards. They hadn’t even bothered to search him, though he had thought it prudent to leave his weapon back with Fezzan in the truck at the edge of town.
He’d seen a few of the reporters in Tripoli. He nodded at anyone who said hello, but kept to himself as much as possible. There was always the possibility that someone might start asking too many questions about his credentials. If necessary, he could mention the German and the Australian Web sites which he had legitimately sold stories to, but anyone who really dug would come up with questions.
Even a simple one could be devastating: What did you do before Libya?
When he first arrived in Libya, he was surprised at how few of the reporters actually spoke Arabic. He was also surprised at how little they knew of the actual conflict. And he was stunned at how lazy most of them actually were. Not that they weren’t willing to risk their lives — that, most had no trouble with. But nearly all settled for the first answer they got. And most would sooner walk barefoot in the desert than question the simple dichotomy they had arrived with: rebels good, government bad.
This story, at least, promised to make things a little more complicated.
The government had posted “facilitators” at different spots around the ruins. While their function was essentially that of press agents, Kharon suspected that they were high-ranking officers in the army or other government officials, well-trusted and dependable. He listened as one detailed the lives of the three people who had been killed in the building a few yards away. The man, a middle-aged Libyan, handed out glossy photos of the dead bodies with an enthusiasm that would have seemed more appropriate at a movie preview.
The government’s interior minister was overseeing the press briefing, preening for the cameras as he talked about how the civilians were going about their everyday lives when the American plane struck.