Arthur Kerns
The African Contract
Principal Characters
Hayden Stone, former FBI agent, now CIA operative
Sandra Harrington, CIA operative
Dirk Lange, South African intelligence agent
Colonel Gustave Frederick, CIA official
Jacob, Israeli Mossad agent, an old friend of Hayden Stone
Contessa Lucinda Avoscani, love interest of Hayden Stone
Abdul Wahab, terrorist fugitive from France, married to Lady Beatrice
Dawid van Wartt, Afrikaner, blames the West and US for the end of apartheid and his privileged position
Nabeel Asuty, Egyptian terrorist in Freetown, works for Abdul Wahab
Ambassador Marshall Bunting, US ambassador to South Africa, an avid birder
Patience St. John Smythe, former love interest of Hayden Stone, now in a relationship with Marshall Bunting
Dingane, Abdul Wahab’s major domo in Cape Town
Jonathan Worthington, amputee victim of the blood diamond war
Charles Fleming, CIA station chief in Pretoria, South Africa
Luke Craig, CIA station chief in Freetown, Sierra Leone
Farley Durrell, Sandra’s old boyfriend, a CIA deep cover officer.
M. R. D. Houston, CIA base chief at Cape Town
Bull Rhyton, friend of Van Wartt, former sergeant in South African Army
Elizabeth Kerr, intelligence analyst in Northern Virginia
Map
Chapter One
Corneliu lay prone on the hard red ground using a thorn bush both for shade and concealment. Almost an hour had passed since he’d seen two men in a small Japanese-made ATV come over the western ridge, maneuvering back and forth to avoid the acacia trees, and approach the abandoned boxcar sitting on the railroad siding. That morning he had been wandering the dry savanna scrubland looking for birds to photograph. Last month Uncle Bull Rhyton had given him an old Nikon F camera with a telescopic lens for his twelfth birthday. Corneliu wanted to send pictures to another uncle up in Windhoek who was compiling a book on birds of the desert.
Now Corneliu used the telescopic lens to watch and photograph the two men. He had good close-ups of their faces. At first they walked around the boxcar and kneeled to inspect under the carriage. The shorter man climbed on top and tried to open the roof hatch. It wouldn’t open. Corneliu could have told him that. He and his friend Adam had tried numerous times.
Lying motionless, the sun warmed the back of his bare legs. His father’s green commando sweater became uncomfortable, but he dare not make any unnecessary motion to remove it, for fear of being detected. Like a hunter in a stand waiting for his prey to pass by, Corneliu became aware of his surroundings. He watched ants marching in a line; two nervous meerkats made a brief appearance, and a lone antelope tiptoed by. All this while he watched the two men.
From his left Corneliu detected more movement. A stone’s throw away a Cape cobra slid across the dirt and dry grass, heading in the direction of the boxcar. It stopped, licked the air with its tongue, and then he continued on. Corneliu pointed his camera and took a picture of the speckled, golden-brown snake. The face of a Cape cobra had freckles like his younger brother. A shadow passed overhead. He looked up and spotted a soaring snake eagle.
From behind him, Corneliu felt a presence, then recognized a familiar scent. Without looking, he knew it was Adam, who seconds later crouched next to him. His dark skin glistened in the sun, brown eyes intent on the two men. “Who them?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Corneliu answered. “I think they want to break in.”
“Them take that thing from inside. Maybe?”
Corneliu looked at his friend and nodded. “Where have you been? Haven’t seen you for a week.”
The side door of the boxcar had three heavy padlocks, placed there by Uncle Bull a month ago. That was after he and Adam had broken in. Through the lens Corneliu watched one man, the taller one, go back to the vehicle and pull out a crowbar.
Adam lay flat on the ground. “My mom said your father told her to keep me away from you,” Adam said.
Corneliu raised the camera to see what was going on inside the boxcar. He couldn’t see anything and squinted his tired eyes. Now that he was older, his father didn’t want him to be friends with a Bushman. He’d tolerated it when they were children, but no longer. His father had funny old ways.
“We’re friends anyway. Yes?”
“Maybe.”
Both men jumped out of the boxcar and moved back to the ATV. The taller man took a black instrument from the seat and held it out toward the open door of the boxcar. Corneliu aimed the camera and snapped the last frame of film. Both men looked at something on the instrument, then climbed into the four-wheeler and drove back toward the ridge from where they had come. The ATV stopped, and Corneliu thought he saw the driver talking into a heavy-looking phone. After a moment they continued on.
As Corneliu and Adam stood and stretched, the snake eagle dropped from the sky, caught the cobra, and lifted it with a slow flapping of wings. The snake dangled and twisted from its talons.
“Ms. Kerr.” Elizabeth Kerr’s group chief in the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, who for a change wore a coat and tie, rapped on the open door. Next to him stood a tall, thin Asian-American. “The gentleman from the inspector general’s office is here for the interview.”
Kerr left her computer station, shook the man’s soft hand, and offered him a chair. Her group chief left, closing the door behind him. She had learned about the inquiry yesterday afternoon. In her way of thinking, this interview was three months too late. Nevertheless, here it was.
The thin man began the interview by giving his name and showing her a set of credentials. He gave her a condensed version of why he was there. Another US agency that conducted intelligence had registered a complaint against her working group. Vital information in the hands of her agency was not promptly passed over to them. This is where he paused to take a breath.
“The information in question was … that is, you are the primary source of that information.”
“If you’re talking about the blip I picked up from Africa three months ago, and that I told my immediate superior about, and that he deemed irrelevant due to other higher priority targets, then yes.”
This was almost the last straw for her. Putting up daily with stupid, venal bureaucrats. She had two masters degrees, ten years of experience, and no respect. Worse, she had to commute in Washington, DC, traffic every day, including standing with other workers in the “slug line” in Springfield to hop a ride with a single driver who needed more passengers to get on the HOV lane into the city.
“Did you make your discovery a matter of record?”
“Yes.” Damn right and you know it.
“We’re referring to the memorandum of May 2002 that you filed?”
“And the two subsequent memoranda?”
The man nodded. His demeanor changed. The politeness less visible. “Recount for me what you saw or discovered,” he said. “Quite frankly, I’m not all familiar with what you do, or better, how you do it. I don’t need to know the details of your job, just what you discovered.”