Kealey was nodding in the affirmative. “I guess the easiest way would have been for the ship to pull into Port Sudan via the Red Sea, off-load its cargo, then rail it east to Khartoum. That entire route’s controlled by Omar al-Bashir, so his forces could’ve kept a tight lid on things. You figure from there the tanks and choppers might have been divvied into small groups, warehoused at stopover points, and then slowly integrated into Sudanese army units. The biggest hurdle would have been surveillance by Israeli patrol boats out of Eilat before the ships reached harbor.” He paused. “Israel wouldn’t inter-cede unless the consignment got it really edgy-but it would have damn well made sure intel satellites were keeping tabs on its composition and movement from the docks.”
Abby considered that. “The fact is, Kealey, all of this has become moot, hasn’t it? The shipment never made it to Egypt. And if it’s going to Mirghani’s opposition forces, there’s the double obstacle of needing to slip it past Bashir’s security. Even if the Scorpion band made a transfer along their water route and moved the materiel from the Ukrainian vessel to some rusty barge or barges, no amount of bribes could have gotten it past Bashir’s harbor agents in Port Sudan. They simply wouldn’t bring it that far north.”
“That’s right,” he said. “But any way you cut it, a haul of this magnitude would be tough to keep under wraps. It’s what I meant about the delivery needing to get done before too long. The seizure took place in the Gulf of Aden, down near Yemen. I think we need to be looking at the quickest and likeliest routes into Sudan from there.”
Abby reached for her sat phone and keyed up a map. “So what do you think? If the merchandise is coming in from the south, does it travel up by land from Ethiopia or Eritrea?”
“Eritrea would be my pick,” Kealey said. “It’s actually just right. The bribes are cheaper and tracking the shipment’s harder. You can barge the merch to Massawa, then probably rail or truck it west to the border on the old nomad trails, where the outposts are lightly manned…except maybe at Kassala.” He thought for a moment. “The territorial line with Eritrea runs, what, something like two hundred kilometers?”
“Closer to three,” Abby said, studying the map.
“That’s a lot of barren terrain unless you’re an archeologist,” Kealey said. “And if you do get noticed, there are going to be fewer hands held out.”
Abby tapped a key to zoom in on Sudan. “The railway at Kassala has stops to the southwest in Shobak and Gederef. It runs from coast to coast, with spurs into South Darfur, and north into Port Sudan, Khartoum, and Egypt.”
“In other words it can take you almost anywhere in the country.”
She was nodding. “Did Saduq have any idea where the munitions are being brought? Or what they’re to be used for?”
“I don’t think he knows or wants to know,” Kealey said, shaking his head. “I suppose I could push him harder to be positive. But I wouldn’t want to make you upset at me again.”
Abby did not look amused. “What’s next? If we can’t learn the shipment’s destination, the best we can do is try and have it interdicted while it’s being smuggled over the border into Sudan-”
“No,” Kealey said. “You’re wrong.”
“How is that?”
“We can find out where the arms are headed from Ishmael Mirghani. We need to find out. Because that’s the first step toward finding out his objective.”
“Kealey…how do you plan to go about that?”
He adjusted himself in the aisle, still crouching beside Abby. “Saduq told me two men brought him the cash for tonight’s handoff. They flew it from Khartoum to his home in Darfur. One of them was Mirghani. The other was an American named Cullen White.”
She gave him a perceptive look. “You sound like you know a bit about him.”
“I can give you the full lowdown later,” Kealey said. “The important thing for you to know now is that he’s an operator. Former CIA, smart, and connected.”
“Connected to whom?”
“Long story…and like I told you, it can wait,” Kealey said. “You’ve been at this game awhile, Abby. It was you who gave John Harper the dossier on Simon Nusairi…aka David Khadir. You know as well as I do that it’s always about following the money. And White having brought it to Saduq is big.”
“It tells us he’s bankrolling Mirghani,” she agreed. “Or that whoever’s behind him is doing it, since he doesn’t sound like the sort who’d have that kind of funding in his piggy bank.”
Kealey nodded, his brow creased in thought. “Here’s what we need to consider right now. Barre is going to tell Mirghani we’ve got Saduq…that’s if he hasn’t already…and then Mirghani will relay the news to White. But for all he knows, this was strictly an antipiracy raid, and our interest was on the shipment and the people who stole it. He might wonder if it goes beyond that, but there’ll be no proof, nothing concrete. He’ll be on the alert, though. And he’ll pass the word about what happened along to his backer.”
“Do you think that will stop whatever they plan to do with the armaments?”
“No,” Kealey said. “My guess would be the exact opposite. If anything, their plans could be stepped up. They’re in too deep to quit based on White’s suspicions. Because they don’t know who we are, won’t know I’m involved, won’t know the scope of our operation…”
Abby held up her hand to interrupt him. “Before you get too far ahead of yourself, you might want to consider that I don’t know its scope, either-or my role in it going forward,” she said. “Yes, I shared some information about Khadir with John Harper. But if your Mr. White’s connections are the sort I think they might be…Interpol will not become involved in an investigation of your internal government affairs. Particularly, if I may be frank, if it leads to its highest offices-”
Kealey was shaking his head, his features suddenly darkening. “What if it isn’t really that complicated?” he said. “If it leads back to a massacre at a refugee camp in Darfur six months ago, and an innocent young woman that somebody had raped, beaten, and murdered so they could dangle her dead body in front of someone like bait on a hook? What if I told you that’s the only reason I’m involved?”
Abby stared at him for a long minute, her expression bordering on astonishment, looking completely taken off guard by the intensity in his eyes, the emphatic emotion in his voice. She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it, at a loss for words. Finally she seemed to distill all the questions inside her to a single brief, almost preposterously bland sentence.
“What do you intend to do next?” she said.
Kealey looked at her. “First bring this yacht ashore and dump Saduq somewhere your people can keep him out of sight and sound for a while,” he said. “Then contact Harper and have him get the two of us into Sudan.”
CHAPTER 17
WASHINGTON, D.C..ASWAN, EGYPT. KHARTOUM
It was six o’clock in the evening in Washington, D.C., when the waiter arrived at the small corner table Harper had reserved for his dinner with Robert Andrews at the crowded Dubliner Pub on North Capitol Street. He’d ordered a Jameson’s on the rocks and a corned beef sandwich as an afterthought; the food would help preserve the appearance that he had an appetite for something that was both solid and did not have an alcoholic proof measure.
Andrews, who’d arrived shortly after Harper, had gotten a Philly cheesesteak and a Sam Adams. The DCI was a native Philadelphian and seemed to relish being identified with the city. He’d also played college baseball and secretly harbored a dream that he’d be drafted by his hometown team. After a World Series game he’d attended at Yankee Stadium in 2009, he had been thrown into a weeklong funk because the New York Yankees rallied late to defeat his beloved Phillies. What had added insult to injury was that some wiseass in the control booth had put a clip from the movie Rocky Balboa up on the Diamond Vision screen to pump up the local fans. It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. In jumbo high-definition, no less.