After three blocks Mirghani came to the Al Shamal Islamic Bank and turned inside. Phillips found this somewhat serendipitous, since the Granville’s employee accounts-including his own, since he drew an income from the hotel in addition to his CIA paycheck-were at the same institution. He could therefore find a legit reason for being inside the place while keeping tabs on his mark.
Once inside the bank, Phillips was quick to observe a couple of things that were interesting enough to make him finger the tiny record button on his ID card cam. The first was that there were three men waiting for Mirghani just past the door. All wore traditional Muslim garb and had the wary demeanor of trained bodyguards. The second was that after briefly conferring with them, Mirghani had gone right over to the carpeted area alongside the banking floor, where the officers sat at their desks. A guard had immediately shown him to one of the officers, while the guards who’d met up with him hung back on the banking floor…their watchfulness convincing Phillips his initial impression of them had been accurate.
Phillips found a customer counter that gave him a good vantage of the officer’s desk, parked himself there, and took his DVR phone out of his pocket. He preferred it to the ID card cam for this situation, since he would not have to conspicuously stand facing Mirghani to record his images, but could position himself-and the phone-at different angles while pretending to have a conversation.
Mirghani and the officer wasted no time commencing with their transaction. After a courteous exchange at his desk, the bank officer gave him some papers to fill out and then led him off down a short hall behind the tellers’ stations-Mirghani bringing his attache case with him. Waiting for him to reappear, Phillips put away his phone contraption, took a withdrawal slip from a rack, and began filling it out. The trio of guards just stuck around near the officers’ area, making no attempt to look like anything but what they were.
Phillips, who in contrast to the guards very much wanted to blend into the woodwork, then got on the longest teller’s queue he could find. When he was better than two-thirds of the way to the window and Mirghani still hadn’t reappeared, he glanced down at his withdrawal slip, feigned realizing he’d made an error on it, then went back to the customer counter for a replacement and begun writing out another. That gave him several extra minutes of waiting around without being noticed.
It was all he needed. Less than half an hour after entering the bank, Mirghani and the officer emerged from the hall into which they’d gone off together and shook hands, the officer going back to his desk, Mirghani rejoining his bodyguards with his attache.
As the four men left the bank, Phillips tore up his withdrawal slip, deposited it in a trash receptacle, and trailed them out to the street. Mirghani and his escorts did not return to the bus station but went the opposite way, toward the gold market. As Mirghani and two of the men entered one of the exchanges lined along the sidewalk, a third went on up the street and disappeared around the corner. Phillips remained outside the exchange, his phone in hand.
The third guard returned about ten minutes later in a white minivan, double-parking outside the gold exchange. Shortly afterward, Mirghani left the exchange with the other guards and entered the minivan. Though he was still carrying his attache case, the guards who’d entered the gold exchange with him were now toting a pair of larger metal cases that looked fairly hefty in their grasps. Phillips didn’t think it would take a deductive genius to figure out what was inside them, considering where they’d come from.
He took more videos as the foursome drove off, wishing he’d been in his car so he could stay on them, or that he could phone somebody else to pick them up. But with Bruce Mackenzie likely still out near the airport after being given the shake by Landis, and George Swanson in Port Sudan to meet and greet the new arrivals, there was no one to do it. To say the team in Khartoum was undermanned was putting it mildly; the truth was that Holland had been making do here for years with nothing more than a skeleton crew.
He left the gold market to head back the way he had come, hoofing through the city center toward his parked Saab. He was going to work on a hunch and try to shortcut it back to Bahri. If his instincts proved correct-and he trusted they would-Ishmael Mirghani would be returning there as well.
The thing the CIA man mostly found himself wondering was how long he meant to stick around…and whether it would be possible to keep him from flying the coop.
“Mr. Harner, Ms. Evart, I’m very pleased to welcome you to Sudan on behalf of the Boutros Corporation,” George Swanson said outside the railway station, using not only their aliases but also the cover he’d been given for his drive between Khartoum and Port Sudan.
Abby was shaking his hand. “It’s fine to use my first name,” she said with a wry little smile. “I’ve been Abby to everyone my entire life. Call me anything else, and I might not know who you’re talking to.”
Swanson’s own smile was accompanied by a knowing glance. “Certainly, Abby,” he said. And then nodded to his right. “The parking area’s over there… My vehicle’s the white Jeep Cherokee off the center aisle. If you’d like, we can get some refreshments before hitting the road-”
Feeling stiff and disheveled after the long, cramped train ride from Atbara, Kealey stood beside Abby and looked at him. Behind them, passengers were leaving the station in groups, carrying their bags and bundles from the railroad cars. Some were being greeted by friends and relatives as others haggled over fares with the drivers of beaten-up gypsy cabs outside the station.
“We aren’t driving to Khartoum,” Kealey said. He did not have to turn in Abby’s direction to feel her eyes on him.
Swanson’s face, meanwhile, had become a question mark. “I’m not exactly sure I understand…”
“It’s seven hundred and fifty miles from here to there,” Kealey said. “What does that make the drive time on the local roads? Twelve, fifteen hours?”
“About that, yes,” Swanson replied.
“And a flight from the airport here to Khartoum International? How long would it take?”
“I see what you’re getting at,” Swanson said. “But we’ve made arrangements-”
“How long?”
Swanson hesitated. “An hour or so if we’re able to catch a flight without too much waiting around,” he said. He lowered his voice. “The airport security’s tighter at both ends. That’s the reason Holland decided the roads were our safest bet.”
Kealey shrugged. “He’s probably right. But we’ve killed too much time traveling to worry about what’s safe right now,” he said. “Whatever’s been on the burner in Khartoum has to be reaching a boil. Our papers have to be good enough, because we’re flying in.”
Swanson regarded him steadily for a full thirty seconds, then turned to Abby. “You’re with him on this?”
She frowned. “I suppose,” she said, then cast a prickly look at Kealey. “Although it would have been nice if I’d had a chance to consider it beforehand.”
Kealey kept his eyes on Swanson, saying nothing. Finally the CIA man produced a relenting sigh. “Any idea what I’m supposed to do with the Cherokee?”
Kealey shrugged. “Leave it in the airport parking lot,” he said.
Swanson didn’t bother replying that he could have figured that out all by himself.
CHAPTER 19
KHARTOUM
“Are we able to talk openly?” Kealey asked. “I mean, without prying eyes and ears.”
He was in the station chief’s office at the embassy on Ali Abdel Latif Street, less than an hour after his thankfully uneventful flight from Port Sudan had alighted on the tarmac at Khartoum International.
“I think we can feel at ease,” Holland replied from across his desk. Placing a hush-hush request to Sergeant Sadowski, he had seen to it that his office at the embassy was swept by a suitcase-sized broad spectrum countersurveillance device consisting of radio, audio, infrared, and acoustic correlation scanners. Simply put, the advanced microcomputer-controlled detection suite could detect everything from passive and active microphone bugs in phones and light fixtures to the low-freq oscillations created by the tiny motors in concealed spy cameras. “As much as is possible anywhere these days.”