“You don’t seem too thrilled with the custard,” Abby said.
Kealey sat with his dessert untouched, his folded napkin on the table beside the parfait cup. “I’ve never liked mangoes,” he said. “Or cloak-and-dagger routines.”
Abby spooned some of her own serving into her mouth. “I’m sorry in both instances,” she said. “One is a delight to me. The other, unfortunately, a necessity.”
Kealey was silent, thinking. The cafe, Exotique, was run by an expat Frenchman named Gaston who’d seemed to know her well, engaging her in several minutes of familiar small talk before showing them to a small outdoor table set apart from the rest in the small rear garden.
“I don’t know how Interpol operates,” he said quietly. “But an arranged public meeting and code phrase are rigmaroles I’d rather have skipped.”
“And your preferred alternative?”
“You knock on my door at the hotel. We make our introductions. And then we talk,” Kealey said. “It lessens the high intrigue but gets right to the point.”
Abby Liu delicately ate her custard. She was looking at Kealey, but there was something in her gaze…a keen peripheral awareness, which didn’t escape him. “This is Cameroon, not South Africa,” she said. “The clerk at your hotel’s registration desk, the bellhop, or housekeeper could well be a relative of one of the pirates that raid the coastline. Or a member of the gendarmerie that’s in bed with them.”
He was thoughtful a moment. “Beware of prying eyes, that it?”
Abby nodded. “And ears,” she said, barely moving her lips, speaking in a voice as hushed as Kealey’s. “As an American, you’re an instant red flag. Putting aside the affiliation you mentioned, I am a French citizen of Chinese descent. If nothing else, that makes me easy to spot and track. An odd-looking vegetable in the patch, if you will. Our meeting cannot help but draw notice.”
“And you think a crowded market is less conspicuous than, say, your office?”
Her lips tightened at the corners. “Mr. Kealey, I hardly appreciate you making light of my understanding and experience.”
“I’m not…and feel free to drop the ‘mister.’” He paused, motioned vaguely to indicate their surroundings. “This place-”
“Gaston can be trusted.” She’d cut him off. “I prefer we leave it at that for now.”
Kealey nodded, his hunch confirmed. The cafe was an Interpol safe harbor.
“Another point worth bearing in mind,” she said. “I use the term pirates as a convenient reference. But it is a misnomer. Or at the very least an oversimplification. While some groups in this region are wholly mercenary in their motives, others are political extremists or religious militants. Their connections aren’t easily sorted out.”
Kealey gave her words a minute to sink in. “Anything else before we get down to business?”
“You should pretend to enjoy your African fool or risk looking conspicuous.”
“And if I don’t?”
Her eyes suddenly gleamed with humor. “The legal penalty is life imprisonment,” she said. “Also, I might be tempted to eat it rather than let a serving go to waste…and I try to limit my calories.”
Kealey made no comment. Lithe, trim, athletic, Abby Liu had the look of yoga with light weights, and possibly martial arts-he would bet t’ai chi ch’uan. It was hard to imagine the extra calories would be a problem for her.
“All right,” he said, “what do I need to know up top?”
She leaned forward. “Six weeks ago a ship loaded with military equipment was seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden. It was a Ukrainian-flagged vessel, but much of its cargo came aboard in Iran.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What about its destination?”
“The endpoint of record was Egypt.”
Of record. Kealey did not miss the implication. “The last time something like this happened-must be three, four years ago-the Russians went into an uproar and sent battle frigates from the Black Sea after the pirates.”
“Yes.”
“That shipment was legal…arranged by an officially recognized arms merchant and bound for Kenya.”
“Yes.”
“But the cargo you’re telling me about sounds like an altogether different story.”
Abby nodded. “It was going down into Sudan.”
Kealey was silent a moment, thinking. “A Russian-Iranian arms deal with the Sudanese…in flagrant violation of international sanctions.”
“And with the cooperation of certain Egyptian officials.”
He grunted. “I guess it’s obvious why none of the parties involved would want to make a stink.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Obvious, yes. But it is also an open secret that Bashir’s government has its supporters. And that the arms blockade imposed by the United Nations has been porous. As far as Egypt, there are deep ethnic and historical ties.” A pause while she spooned more custard into her mouth. “Of far greater significance is the composition of the shipment, and where it may wind up.”
Kealey looked at her. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
“We believe there are as many as thirty-three Zolfaqar main battle tanks. A dozen ANSAT/Sharaf helicopters. An indefinite number and variety of armaments.”
Kealey dipped his spoon into his custard and idly held it there by the handle. Back in his Agency days, he’d read intelligence reports asserting the Zolfaqars and choppers were reverse engineered from American technology. In the case of the tanks, he’d heard rumors that Iranian forces had captured an M1 Abrams that had crossed the border with Iraq sometime during the 2003 invasion, using its chassis as the basic design for their own MBTs. The choppers were supposedly advanced, muscled-up versions of the Cobra attack birds that had been gifted to the shah before the Islamic takeover.
He fidgeted with the spoon, half twirling it between his thumb and forefinger. May wind up. Given Harper’s reason for urging him off on his junket across the African continent, he had a general hunch who the prospective buyer might be.
Kealey took a careful glance around. Either business was slow at this hour or Gaston was discouraging customers from the garden. A glance through the glass patio doors leading to the cafe’s interior told him it was probably the latter-there were plenty of people at the inside tables. But the only others in the garden besides Abby and himself were a middle-aged white couple in matching white shorts who had the unmistakable look of tourists, and a dark-skinned teenaged girl sipping coffee while watching videos on a notebook computer. He was certain none of them were eavesdropping. Or even within earshot if he kept his voice down.
“How did you find out about the pirate grab?” he said after a while.
“With a grab of our own,” Abby said. “Pirates choose their targets by different means. Years ago they were mainly opportunistic. But they have since extended their tentacles into customs offices around the world.”
Kealey considered that. “If they get a shipping officer on the take, he can tell them where a ship’s going. Give them the route it’s taking to its destination. Even tip them to what’s on a manifest.”
“And if he is in the right position, items not on the manifest,” she said. “Since the nominal buyer was Egypt, the tanks and helicopters were technically legal cargo. We don’t know whether any banned armaments may have been aboard, but it is certainly possible.”
“So you’ve got an inside man working all ends against the middle-someone you nailed and cut a bargain with.” Kealey was nodding. “He gets paid to set up illegal trades by one party, passes that information to the pirates, then sings to your people about it.”
“And in exchange we let him stay out of prison.”
Kealey sat there a minute, recalling Harper’s rundown on Simon Nusairi and his alter ego David Khadir.
“The pirates…Are they connected to our man from Paris, Marseille, and recent parts unknown?” he said.
Abby gave him a look. “I couldn’t tell you with certainty whether there’s a direct line of communication between them, “she replied. “What we know is that our man, as you say, has linkages to many individuals and organizations whose reputations are the definition of nonexemplary. One is Ishmael Mirghani-”