In Andrews’s often stated opinion, it had been unprincipled, unsportsmanlike thievery for the Yanks to appropriate Rocky, as iconic to Philadelphia as the Liberty Bell, for their ballpark. Never mind that Stallone the actor hailed from Hell’s Kitchen in New York, Rocky the character was from the tough streets of Kensington, in South Philly. What could the Phillies have done to counter that move? Neither De Niro’s “You talkin’ to me?” line nor Pacino’s “Attica!” had seemed effective rallying cries when his beloved hometown team fell behind by a few runs. With that one low-down coup, he had lamented, it became a fait accompli that the damned Yankees would wind up drinking the victory champagne.
Wishing they had nothing more serious to discuss now than ill-gotten Yankee supremacy, Harper eyed his tumbler and made himself reach for his sandwich, reluctant to seem too anxious for the former. Opposite him, Andrews prepared to take a bite of his dinner, carefully using his knife and fork to fold an ample wad of onions and melted provolone around a slice of steak. Unlike his boss, Harper had never been much of a professional sports fan. As a boy he had envisioned himself in daring exploits on faraway shores, and as a young man he’d gotten to live out his share. He had never felt any of their outcomes turned on rallying cries, although in hindsight he thought it possible he had sometimes partially gotten through on dumb luck.
He wondered why all this was passing through his mind right now. None of it had anything to do with anything, or at least he didn’t think it did. Unless it was to show that when you were in the thick of exceptional situations, there sometimes seemed no discernible way to sequence the cause and effect of how they’d developed or know whether your attempts to seize control of them were anything but self-deceptive, if not altogether delusory. Still, you kept on plugging away; the alternative was a concession Harper did not have it within himself to ever make.
He chewed his sandwich without tasting it, estimating it would be appropriate to start on his whiskey in a minute.
“John, you look like you haven’t slept for a week,” Andrews said.
“Thank you,” Harper said. “Considering it’s been months since I’ve actually gotten a decent night’s shut-eye, I’ll take that as encouragement that I’m holding my own under pressure.”
Andrews gave a small smile. “It’s nice to enjoy the food and atmosphere here after a long day of White House briefings, particularly when they involve Stralen, Fitzgerald, and POTUS all but showing me the door midway through…which you may recall is what they did that day back in April at Camp David,” he said. “I got the sense from your call, though, that you had something urgent to talk about.”
Harper nodded slowly. “I weighed having this conversation over the phone,” he said. “I hate to sound paranoid… A secure line falls within my comfort zone under most circumstances.”
“Don’t sweat it, John. When push comes to shove, I’ll always take a noisy tavern over SCIP encryption. The NSA developed the damn protocols, and who the hell can trust them to keep their ears out of our business?”
Harper chuckled. He supposed paranoia was a professional hazard.
The two men sat without saying anything for a while. Around them the tavern, with its paneled walls and polished horseshoe bar, was becoming jammed with the usual Capitol Hill end-of-the-day office crowd-politicians, lobbyists, aides, secretaries.
“So,” Andrews said, “where do things stand?”
“Ryan Kealey contacted me about an hour ago-he was aboard Hassan al-Saduq’s play boat in Limbe,” Harper said in a low voice. “It was eleven o’clock at night there, and al-Saduq was about to be handed over into the custody of the EU antipiracy task force.”
“From aboard the yacht?”
“That’s correct. Kealey and his team aboard were apparently waiting for a launch.”
“Are there legitimate grounds for holding him?”
“One could make a reasonable argument.” Harper shrugged. “I’m not sure the evidentiary case would persuade a judge, particularly in Cameroon…but it isn’t too important. Saduq gave Kealey whatever he could of importance. I’ll have a complete report on your desk in the morning.”
“This sounds positive.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t ask to meet here just to tell me about it.”
“No.”
“So I gather there’s a negative you haven’t mentioned yet.”
“More than one.” Harper picked up his whiskey, took a long swallow, felt the smooth warmth spread from his throat to his chest. Then he put down the tumbler, leaned slightly forward, and spoke in a voice only Andrews could have heard over the hubbub of the crowd and the rhythmic pop music thumping from the juke. “Cullen White and the leader of the Darfur People’s Army met with Saduq approximately forty-eight hours ago. They’d flown from Khartoum to his ranch in Quaila…White apparently as a money courier.”
Andrews heard his fork clink against the rim of his plate and realized he’d almost dropped it. “Goddamn,” he said, glancing quickly around to make sure no one was in earshot. “This links him right up to that captured boatful of Russian and Libyan hardware.”
Harper nodded. “White and whoever put him on the ground in Sudan,” he said, his voice hushed. “I won’t say the name of the person I suspect that is. Won’t even whisper it. But I don’t really think it’s necessary.”
“No, not at all-we know whose protege he’s always been.” Andrews was shaking his head. “Okay, let’s have the rest.”
“Kealey wasn’t able to keep the deal from getting done,” he said. “The Somali Blackbeard made off with the payment. He’s an up-and-comer on the scene, and Kealey and the EU task force people are convinced he means to keep his end of the bargain…meaning we’ve got the equivalent of two tactical tank and fighter helo squadrons and an unknown amount of ordnance about to fall into unknown hands in Sudan.” He paused, seeing the question on the DCI’s face. “For purposes equally unknown.”
Andrews frowned. “John, we can’t target our spy birds in on their movement without State and the DOD getting wind of it.”
“And the DIA by extension,” Harper said. The ten-ton gorilla in the room. “If we’re going to track them, it will have to be done old school. From the ground. You mentioned the scene at Camp David, and you and I might as well be right there now in that truck, discussing Ryan Kealey being our man. We need to put him and a member of his team in Sudan, and there isn’t any time to waste.”
Several seconds elapsed. Andrews massaged his temples, his dinner no longer commanding a sliver of attention. “Our problem is that this isn’t April anymore. The way the rhetoric’s heated up, we’re lucky our existing embassy staff in Khartoum hasn’t already been told to pack their luggage.”
Harper sighed. “Speaking of which…our man there’s Seth Holland,” Harper said. “He’s experienced and can provide support. But he’ll have to work around the chief of mission, Walter Reynolds.”
Andrews gave a nod of tacit acknowledgment. Reynolds and Brynn Fitzgerald had a long-standing friendship, and putting him in the loop would be potentially no less compromising than a request to jog the orbit of a Keyhole sat.
“I’ve got no doubts about Holland,” he said. “But it comes back around to what I told you about the difficulty of getting anyone into the country.”
Harper had some more of his whiskey but deliberately refrained from emptying the tumbler. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered what Julie-and Allison Dearborn-would think of both his impulse to slug it down and his calculated moderation in the presence of his boss. Wasn’t that supposed to be the telltale sign of a problem? “The intended route for the Russki shipment was through Egypt,” he said. “That obviously doesn’t happen without full Egyptian complicity…from the president down to Mukhabarat al-Amma. ”
Andrews nodded, the concentration on his face signaling that he’d again immediately registered Harper’s unspoken communication. Mukhabarat al-Amma was Egypt’s name for its General Intelligence Service, a rough equivalent to the CIA. The agencies had been involved in numerous cooperative efforts, several ongoing, to keep tabs on several antigovernment factions with ties to Hamas and other militant Islamists. Over the past year alone intel provided by the CIA had thwarted a major terrorist bombing in Cairo and a conspiracy against President Mubarak’s life.