Holland was able to subtract five names right off the bat, simply because they had come in after the unknown subject had already left the building, and another nineteen because the men in question were either too old or young to fit the unsub’s description. Another four could go because they were not Caucasian, leaving Holland with a grand total of sixty-three names. These he ran through the database at Langley, which he was able to access remotely via his desktop computer. Fifteen minutes after submitting the query, he received the reply. None of the names were flagged, at least in the Agency’s records, which made it unlikely that he had encountered those people on the job. In other words, the list was useless, a dead end.
Undaunted by this temporary setback, Holland next placed a call to the public affairs officer, the man in charge of the Public Diplomacy Office. This was another long shot, since the man had only five full-time employees, but Holland wanted to be thorough. As expected, the answer came back in the negative. The PAO had not received any visitors that afternoon, and neither had any member of his staff. Subsequent calls to the Political/Economic Section and the Information Resources Center also failed to pan out. By this time Holland was starting to wonder if he had missed something, and he could no longer deny his rising consternation.
After two hours of trawling, he decided to take a break in the hope that a short rest would jar his memory. After asking his secretary to hold his calls, he kicked off his shoes, lay down on the couch in his office, closed his eyes, and let his mind drift back to the encounter. He allowed the images to unreel of their own accord, trying to focus on what he had seen. And exactly what had he seen? There was nothing to distinguish the man from a thousand others. A million others, maybe. A tall, lean, dark-haired man in his mid- to late thirties, wearing steel-framed spectacles, a navy sport coat, gray slacks, and carrying a rucksack of the army surplus variety. There was nothing unusual about that picture…
Holland’s eyes abruptly sprang open. No, nothing wrong with the picture…except for that rucksack. Because that doesn’t fit at all, does it?
He tossed his legs over the side of the couch, then jumped up like a jack-in-the-box as the realization grabbed hold of him. That sack damned well was unusual. The more he thought about it, the greater his certainty. Why would a man dressed in business casual attire be lugging a military-style pack? It didn’t jibe. Which led Holland to wonder…If he hadn’t been carrying it all along, where would he get it?
The answer was obvious. The embassy was filled with marines, all of whom had ready access to that kind of equipment.
But why would one of them hand over his pack? And more importantly, what had been inside when he did?
With these questions blowing through his mind, Holland picked up his phone and called Post One on the ground floor. He asked for the detachment commander but was informed that he had just gone off duty. Holland left a message with the corporal in charge, asking the commander to get back to him ASAP. That had been two hours earlier, and he had not heard a word since.
Rubbing his eyes wearily, Holland stood and walked over to one of his windows. He stood there for a moment and studied the view. The sky was a rich, deep shade of magenta, the color fading quickly to coal black, and dusk had thrown long shadows over the inner walls of the courtyard. Below his window, he could make out a dark figure huddled against the rapidly encroaching cold. There was the flare of a match as the figure lit a cigarette. Then a second figure approached. Another flare, another cigarette. Coworkers, Holland assumed, sharing some watercooler gossip at the end of their shift. He envied them that camaraderie, the kind that could only exist between equals. Holland had no direct equal in the embassy, and since his work was not for public dissemination, there was no one he felt comfortable conversing with. It made for a very lonely posting. To make matters worse, he still had eight months to go in his current assignment.
It would have been much easier to bear if his wife had accompanied him, but she had flatly refused. Her decision to stay in Miami had stung him deeply, and he had unwisely lashed out at the time, calling her selfish and stubborn, as well as a few other things that did not bear repeating. Those accusations had let to a bitter argument that he deeply regretted. Like any job that involved long deployments and time apart, intelligence work was hard on families. The divorce rates in the ranks of the CIA were incredibly high, somewhere in the region of six to seven percent in the Operations Directorate alone, and Holland had no desire to add to those depressing statistics. Besides, he could see now that she had been right all along. North Africa-and Sudan in particular-was no place for Western women and children. What had happened to Lily Durant in Camp Hadith was proof enough of that.
Aside from Jake, their five-year-old son, Jen was the one good, stable thing in his life, and he had no intention of letting her slip away. He had made that promise to himself on the flight over, and he had not forgotten it. He only hoped that she knew how sorry he was. He’d apologized several times over the phone, and she had seemed accepting enough, but it was always hard to tell with her. Her birthday was coming up, though, and if she was harboring any lingering resentment, Holland figured the right gift would get rid of it once and for all. He’d seen a solid gold necklace on his last trip into the city center, and that had potential, assuming it was the genuine article…
He stopped himself and nearly laughed aloud at his own naivete. In the backstabbing, greed-driven souqs of Khartoum, that would be quite an assumption, and buying into it could only end one way: with one very happy shopkeeper and one very pissed-off wife.
The phone on his desk chirped, snapping him back to the present. Turning away from the window, he crossed the room in three quick strides and snatched it up. “Holland.”
“Mr. Holland? This is Sergeant Sadowski. I was told you wanted to speak.”
Holland closed his eyes and clenched a victorious fist in front of his chest. “Yes, Sergeant, that’s right. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, and I’m sorry to interrupt your downtime… I know you don’t get much of it.”
“Not a problem, sir. What can I do for you?”
The CIA officer took note of the man’s voice. It was calm, cool, and slightly curious, which presented him with a problem. Clearly, Sadowski had no idea who he really was, and judging by his clipped tone, he wasn’t eager to do any favors for a mid-level budget manager.
Technically, the man’s ignorance was good news. This was how it was supposed to be. The identity of the CIA’s station chief was a closely held secret in any embassy. Normally, it would have come as a relief to know that his cover had withstood intense scrutiny from within, but the secrecy wouldn’t help him here. He needed answers, but he had almost no leverage with which to extract them. Holland instinctively knew that he might have to make a professional sacrifice to get them, and if that was the case, he might be getting back to Jen and Jake much sooner than he had anticipated.
And that, he silently acknowledged, would not be a bad thing at all. “Sergeant Sadowski, I understand that you were on duty in Post One this afternoon. From zero six hundred to fourteen hundred hours. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right.”
Holland noted the wariness in the other man’s voice. “Between, let’s say, twelve hundred hours and the end of your shift, did you have any visitors? Anyone outside your chain of command?”
There was a tense pause, and the station chief knew he had pushed it too far. “Mr. Holland, I’m afraid I can’t divulge that information. And frankly, I don’t see how it concerns you.”