Mitch looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get on this call. Close the door, please.”
Art smiled, nodded, and quietly pulled the door shut as he stepped out.
Mitch picked up his secure phone, navigated the procedure for establishing a secure connection, and found out he was the first one on the call. He breathed a sigh and leaned back in his chair, wondering what the call was about. Before his imagination went too far adrift, the line clicked.
“Hello?” Mitch asked.
“Hello,” replied his boss, back in Langley—or wherever Jerry Hamilton was. “It’s just us on the call.”
“What’s up?”
Jerry said, “We’ve picked up some information concerning a Najid Almasi. He associates with some naughty Arab boys that like to posture and blow things up.”
“Which ones?” Mitch asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Jerry. “He’s been in and out of the fringes of whatever group is in the headlines for the past decade.”
“Almasi. The name is familiar,” said Mitch.
“His father is in the oil business. Shitloads of money. The name comes up from time to time, but we haven’t established a firm link, so you may have seen it in a report somewhere. The old man is dying. He’s been dying for a couple of years now. Some kind of cancer, and the son—Najid—has been taking over control of the family business. I’ve sent over the details in a secure file.”
“Gotcha.” Mitch logged into his computer.
“We think Najid has ambitions. He’s some kind of jihadist up-and-comer.”
Mitch smiled, thinking of what tended to happen to guys who rose to the top of those org charts. “Big dreams.”
“Yes. We’ve picked up some information concerning Najid that we’re trying to piece together. He’s shifting money out of stocks and into hard assets. He’s shorting airline stocks—”
“Airline stocks?” That sort of activity always raised the curiosity of intelligence types.
“He’s gone long on pharma companies, weapons manufacturers, and other crazy shit, all on margin. He bought all the bullets in the warehouse from a Pakistani manufacturer.”
“Their stuff is shit, you know that, right?” Mitch said, “He doesn’t have high standards.”
“It’s about logistics, not quality.”
Mitch got lost, which wasn’t common. “Logistics? What do you mean?”
“He’s having them shipped to the family compound on the Red Sea, paying a premium to get them there in a hurry.”
“What else?” Mitch asked.
“Food.”
“What do you mean?”
Jerry said, “He bribed the crew of an aid ship to Somalia, or some such place, and diverted it to the same place the bullets are going.”
Mitch thought about that for a moment. “He converted his assets, then placed his bets on long and short positions on margin? He starts building up the biggest doomsday hoard at the family compound. Got it. How much money did he bet on his stock plays?”
“Tens of millions on bets that shouldn’t have any hope of paying off.”
“Something is definitely up. Maybe he’s just scared shitless over the Ebola threat,” Mitch said.
Jerry moved right on. “We have reason to believe he’s in Uganda now.”
“Here?” Mitch sat up straight in his seat. “Where? Do we know?” He didn’t expect an exact answer on that, but he got one.
“Some little town near the Kenyan border. Kapchorwa.”
Mitch paused. “Kapchorwa? You’re kidding me.”
Suddenly concerned, Jerry asked, “What do you know about Kapchorwa?”
“Nothing, really,” said Mitch. “I just got off the phone with some mother whose son is in Kapchorwa, and she’s freaked out about not hearing from him, with all of these Ebola rumors.”
“What’s the situation with the rumors there? Have there been any confirmed cases in Uganda yet? Or more specifically in the Kapchorwa district?”
Mitch continued. “Nothing official yet, but the rumors have been going around all week about cases in Mbale, which is a couple hours south of Kapchorwa. Some WHO teams have been sent to the area, but there’s a bit of an uproar because no one’s heard from them. At least one of the doctors is an American, so the Ambassador has been involved in meetings on and off about it all day.”
“What’s your gut tell you on this one? Is there an Ebola outbreak in eastern Uganda?”
Mitch thought about that for a moment before answering. “With Sudan to the north, and Congo both south and east of us, we’re in the general vicinity of historical Ebola outbreaks. So that part isn’t out of the question at all. But there’s a lot of fear, and of course a ton of disinformation about it. You know there are religious groups here convincing people that faith in God will protect them from Ebola or that Ebola is a hoax?”
“You’re kidding me,” mumbled Jerry.
“No, real deal. Then there’s the social stigma. Nobody wants his peers to shun him because he’s tainted with Ebola. There’s a lot of reason here to hide it. So taking all of those factors together, it could be here, or it couldn’t. The only way to know for sure is to get confirmation from a doctor who has seen it himself. So far, we don’t have that.”
“Mitch—” That was unusual, they never used one another’s names on these calls. “Information has come to us through the ambassador’s office that another WHO team is assembling to go to that part of the country. Get yourself included. See if you can convince them to get on the road tonight, if you’re able. Fly, if possible. Bring some security if you can. Be discreet, but do it. If this Najid character is up in Kapchorwa, and he thinks there’s an Ebola outbreak underway, he’s only there for one reason.”
“You think he wants to collect samples so he can weaponize it?” Mitch hoped the answer was no. Was it possible that could be done?
“That’s the fear.”
Mitch asked, “Do these guys have the resources for that kind of work?”
“I doubt it, but you never know, right? We need to find out,” Jerry reckoned.
Mitch rubbed his face without even thinking about it, and thought about the right way to say what he was going to say next. “If I find Najid in Kapchorwa, what do you want me to do?”
“Learn what you can. If he’s there, you may find out whether he’s a shadowy knucklehead who keeps bad company and makes bad choices, or whether he’s an aspiring player. If he’s a player, he’s a well-funded, potentially dangerous enemy.”
“I understand.”
“Call in the cavalry if you need to. I’m trying to get approval to send a team your way.”
“Already?” That surprised Mitch. “You’re that serious about this?”
“Don’t get too excited. I may not be able to get it approved. I’ll send you their information if I get it arranged. Listen, this is a top priority—urgent.”
“I understand.”
“Keep me in the loop,” said Jerry.
“I will.” Mitch hung up the phone.
Chapter 55
The Land Rovers and two more vehicles taken from the dead doctors up the road were headed east, loaded with young jihadists. Salim, wondering what had happened to Jalal, was with several dozen others using empty waste buckets and any other container they could find to douse every structure in Kapchorwa with diesel. On that point, the rooster man was explicit. Every structure would burn—the houses, the storage sheds, the pile of bodies behind the hospital, and the buildings housing the sick townsfolk.
It was with a sick stomach that Salim thought about all those dying people. It was with tremendous guilt that he thought about Austin. What was Austin doing in the middle of Africa? Austin, the same guy who’d been so patient in helping him with his Algebra homework when they’d been freshmen at Thunder Ridge High School, even when the rest of their friends teased him for being the only Indian in the world who had difficulty with mathematics. As if every brown-skinned person in the world was from India. They just couldn’t accept that his family was from Pakistan.