“To put it simply, I saw a blip on the screen. The blip in this instance was an ever-so-slight trace of thermal nuclear energy. A glow. Checking with other measurements and another department, this ‘glow’ could only be fissionable material.” She paused. “I told my boss and he wasn’t interested. We had too many things going on with the World Trade Center incident.”
“What then?”
“I went on with my other tasks but kept on checking the screen for this blip.”
“How often?”
“Daily.”
“Did this thing on the screen move at all?”
“No, it didn’t, but when the energy measurement increased, I informed my boss and followed up with the second memorandum. Two weeks later.”
His eyes widened, and she knew that he had something to chew on. The next question would be why she had waited two weeks to make a written report. She preempted the strike. “Will the other agency, which I presume is the CIA, want to talk with me about this?”
He nodded.
Good. Maybe I can get a job with them.
The man closed his folder. He looked down at the floor. “Your boss tried to lay the blame on you.”
“Figures.”
“No need to worry.” He motioned to get up, and settled down again. “Have you seen this blip lately?”
“This morning. The signal is growing stronger.”
“Where is it, may I ask?”
“In the middle of the Kalahari Desert.”
Colonel Gustave Frederick walked into his seventh-floor office suite and stopped at his assistant’s desk. “Phone John Matterhorn and tell him I’m available anytime this morning.”
He shut the door of his private office, poured himself a cup of coffee, and loosened his tie. Standing at the window, he looked out on Langley Forest. This time of year the leaves blocked the view of the Potomac River. The summer haze hung over the trees, signaling another muggy August day in the Washington area.
This morning, the director’s briefing had gone well until the subject of Iraq came up. Iraq and Saddam Hussein were in the White House’s crosshairs, and the preparation for action was building throughout the Washington establishment. The camp that believed the wise course in the elimination of al Qaeda rested in a protracted campaign in Afghanistan — a policy that Frederick supported — was losing.
This morning Frederick jumped ship. At the meeting the director asked him if he would use his military contacts to assure the agency played a major role in any attack on Iraq. Of course, he agreed with enthusiasm to impress the other senior staff members, but more importantly, it placed him in the eyes of the director as a “team player” and someone who could be relied upon.
He was now in the “inner circle,” someone asked by the director to stay around for a few minutes after a meeting. Today, privately, the director asked him to speak with John Matterhorn about a matter in Africa.
Colonel Frederick graduated Harvard and received his draft notice before his acceptance to law school arrived in the mail. During the Vietnam War, he received his first Bronze Star as a private first class, the second as a lieutenant, and the Silver Star after he had made captain. He had met John in Laos during the war while serving in the special forces.
As a CIA officer John Matterhorn lived in the jungles of Laos and Cambodia running intelligence operations and rescuing downed American flyers. He was good at his work, and Frederick always told John that as a case officer he couldn’t help recruiting everyone he met. He recruited Frederick into the CIA.
A half hour later, Matterhorn arrived, and Frederick went to the door to greet him. The man had never attained high rank, but in the agency doors were open to him and opened for him. Short in stature, he looked neat: gray tweed jacket, checkered shirt, and a wool tie. He and his wife were old Directorate of Operations case officers. They had six children: four were in the CIA, one was a general, and the other a Jesuit in Rome assigned to the Curia. A daughter-in-law was a senate staffer, another an FBI agent.
“Gus. Something is going on in Africa.”
“Tell me.
“Abdul Wahab, the man we believe responsible for the deaths of two young case officers, is in South Africa.”
“So I heard.” Three months before, Frederick’s team had allowed Wahab to escape from the French Riviera. Since then, he’d been keeping tabs on this terrorist’s movements.
“My unit learned that members of a branch of al Qaeda have traveled to Sierra Leone, in western Africa.”
“I see.”
Matterhorn rubbed his hands together. “We’ve been getting a lot of chatter on the ether. Something big is going on in the African theatre. We’ve been so distracted with the Middle East. Our resources and talent are directed there and away from other areas of the world.”
“I agree.”
“Al Qaeda knows that. The anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster is coming up. These people are fixated on dates and spectacles. Something is in the wind in Africa.”
“John. Get to the point?”
“There’s a rumor that another agency with satellites picked up a disturbing blip in southern Africa.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“A signal that can only come from a form of nuclear device.”
Colonel Frederick got up and went to the window. Matterhorn had gone to the director about this intelligence. Had John suggested that he handle the matter? No matter, this information required immediate action. He turned and faced Matterhorn.
“We need to form a task force with office space, personnel, a budget, and so forth. You know the routine. You know the ropes.”
Matterhorn stood.
“Come to me with any problems, any issues,” Frederick said. “If the agency tracking this nuclear emission isn’t cooperative with sharing intelligence, let me know. I’ll pull strings. Meantime, I’ll send someone to Africa to do a little snooping.”
“Let me guess who.”
“Who else? Hayden Stone.”
Chapter Two
The American Embassy’s security floodlights cut through the blackness and illuminated the low waves rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean. A muggy wind blew drizzle from the west. Hayden Stone sat with the embassy’s security chief, Al Goodman, on the covered deck of the guesthouse after a mediocre dinner at one of the two restaurants still open in Monrovia. The mildew-spotted seat of his chair felt clammy, and he brushed rust off his arm from the metal armrest. Everything in the city appeared damp, old, and murky, like the hulking black rock on which the embassy sat.
From his left, beyond the embassy compound, came a long cry that resembled a wounded animal. The wail accompanied a rhythmic banging on a skin drum that began only minutes after they settled down with cold gin and tonics.
“They’re lighting candles on the beach over there,” Goodman said. “Mende people praying to a spirit of some kind.” He leaned forward, listening hard. “Kélèn drums.”
Stone took in the sounds of the rain and the beat of the drums. “The sounds of West Africa,” he said. “At night in Ghana, I’ve been to large gatherings on the beach outside Accra. Drums, bonfires, dances.”
“The locals here say it’s a way to talk with restless souls. Understandable with all the human carnage this place has seen recently.” Goodman sipped his drink. “That beach over there is where former president Doe and his clique were executed by the incoming government.”
They were silent for some minutes.
“How long have you been in Liberia?” Stone asked.
Goodman, the embassy’s RSO, regional security officer, tilted back in his chair and jiggled the ice in his glass. His eyeglasses sat on his forehead, touching his thin black hair. “Been here for over a year, but this is my third tour. First time I came here, the place was alive. American Firestone Rubber Company had a huge presence outside the city. Voice of America was here. Missionaries traveled back and forth from the interior.” He sipped his drink. “Of course, many of you agency folks were about.”