The Exile (29 page)

“I have to remind you about Cullen White,” Kealey said, looking at Abby. “The man is calculating, and quick on his feet. Once he hears about Saduq being in custody, he's going to put two and two together.”

“He can't possibly know you're involved.”

“He doesn't have to,” Kealey said. “All he does have to do is get a whiff that something about the raid on Saduq's yacht—or his being held out of sight—deviated from what's SOP with Interpol or the EU task force. I think that's already happened, and I'm pretty sure the same thought must have crossed John Harper's mind more than once. I guarantee White won't be waiting around for the sky to fall on his head. Whatever he's been working on, we can expect he'll very quickly start looking at contingencies. And that means ways to shift into high gear.” He shook his head. “This holdup is about the last thing we needed. Doesn't matter if we were stuck with it from the get-go…I wish I'd at least seen it coming.”

Her features serious, Abby sat beside Kealey in private thought as the train clanked along over obsolete wooden railroad ties, the blackness outside its windows no more uniform than the sandy landscape visible by day. Around her, passengers rustled in their sleep amid heaps of shabby-looking baggage and loosely packed cartons.

“We're in far from an ideal spot. I won't quibble with you there,” she said at length. And then hesitated, still looking contemplative. “Ryan, this probably doesn't need stating, but we're very different. I don't
work
like you. I'm used to careful planning, gathering of evidence, adherence to rules and process….”

“And you're wondering what happens when we do reach Khartoum,” Kealey said.

She simply looked at him, and he all at once recognized something in her expression that he had not seen there before, a kind of vulnerability that caught him off guard.

“I wish I could tell you,” he said, whispering now. “But I won't lie, Abby. I have no idea beyond what I said in Limbe. We're going after Ishmael Mirghani. We came into the game late…and I get the feeling that we're close to being out of time. All I know is we're at the stage where we'll have to wing it again, and it means we'll have to hit the ground running—”

“And do whatever's necessary,” she said, finishing the sentence.

Kealey gave her a long glance, studying her face, and was surprised to find himself wishing he could say something to relieve the unsettled look that continued lingering over it.

But he could not give that much of himself. Try as he might, he could not. And instead he turned away from her, his eyes returning to the window and the black emptiness into which it seemed he'd been staring for an unendurable eternity.

 

Jacoby Phillips had spent almost an hour tailing Ishmael Mirghani through Khartoum in his ten-year-old blue Saab SPG, having picked him up when he'd exited his suburban home in the northern section of Bahri, leaving a short while after the man who had once introduced himself to the American chargé d'affaires as James Landis slipped out a back entrance and then turned onto a side street from the rear garden.

Phillips had watched Landis hasten down the street from Mirghani's yard, then climb into a waiting Ford Escort, which had promptly driven off toward the highway, heading in the general direction of the Kober Bridge, or Armed Forces Bridge—which, he'd realized, was the most direct route to the airport. Although Landis was not Phillips's assignment, the CIA agent had taken a video capture of him entering the black sedan with his DVR cell phone, making sure to get a close-up shot of its plates. He'd then relayed the encrypted file to his colleague Bruce Mackenzie, whose job
was
to stay on Landis, using the Agency's secure Intelink-SCI wireless intranet, and continued cooping about a half block from Mirghani's house.

After about ten minutes Mirghani emerged from his front door, carrying a hard-shell briefcase, strode a few blocks to the bus station, and got on the express shuttle to the downtown area. Staying close to him, Phillips slowed down as he boarded, and then eased along three car lengths behind the bus, following it past the Kober Bridge, which Landis's vehicle had taken, and then over the old Blue Nile suspension bridge for the short ride across the river.

 

Mackenzie had spotted the black Escort within minutes of receiving Phillips's e-mail and video attachment, having waited just a few blocks away from Mirghani's home, outside an area of landscaped trees and lawn along the riverside. The CIA agents had known it was just a matter of time before one, the other, or both of their birds flew the coop, and their assumption had been that they would do so separately. It would have been a source of intensely curious attention had the Muslim radical and his unlikely Western visitor left there together at the peak of U.S.-Sudanese relations; for them to do so now in plain sight was incomprehensible.

In fact, Mackenzie had thought, the same could be said about their relationship,
period.
Whatever link had formed between those two could mean nothing but trouble.

As he'd borne west from Mirghani's neighborhood, the Escort had gotten on the highway belting the Nile and then swung onto the Kober Bridge's wide concrete span. Mackenzie, driving a Honda, had followed it past Al Salaam Park and then the Burrii Cemetery to the traffic circle, where it had turned right onto Buri Road toward the turnoff to the airport.

Moments after the Escort made the turn, however, its driver unexpectedly hit his left signal, slowed, and then pulled onto the shoulder of the two-lane access road and came to a complete halt with his flashers on. Caught by surprise two cars behind it, Mackenzie saw no recourse but to continue straight ahead toward the airport. What else was he supposed to do? Stop behind the Escort? Of course, that was out of the question and just underscored the realization that anything
besides
driving on past the car would have been an outrageous giveaway. But what the hell had happened? There'd been no sign that the Escort was having car trouble. No sign it had gotten a flat tire. And he had been careful to stay far enough behind so that Landis and his driver would not suspect they had anybody on them.

Mackenzie sighed in disgust and resignation. Whatever reason the Escort had for stopping, the real problem was that there was nobody available to take his place on its ass; Phillips was the only other man on the job, and his gig was to stay with Mirghani. He figured the least conspicuous thing he could do now would be to go on to the security checkpoint up ahead, show his diplomatic ID to the guards, then turn toward the arrivals terminal as if he was picking someone up there and simply leave the airport through an alternate route. The only excuse they would have for busting his chops would be that he wasn't in a car with official plates, but he had a registration certificate to show this was his personal vehicle…which happened to be the absolute truth.

As he approached the checkpoint, Mackenzie reached across the dash to get his documents out of the glove box, simultaneously glancing into his rearview mirror just to see what was up with the Escort.

And then his eyebrows lifted in surprise. Landis's car had doubled back around the way it had come after making a U-turn on the access road. And its blinkers were no longer flashing.

Mackenzie cursed aloud behind the steering wheel. What in fucking hell was going on? All he could figure was that Landis had decided to return to Mirghani's home for some reason—unless, of course, he'd actually, and inexplicably, realized he was being followed in spite of every precaution Mackenzie had taken. It was hard to imagine…though he couldn't think of a third explanation that held the slightest bit of water.

He tapped his brakes, slowing for one of the guards as he left his booth at the lowered barriers. Mackenzie's preferred explanation for what had occurred would be that Landis
had
in fact returned to his point of origin for a reason having nothing to do with his being followed…and obviously so, since it would mean he hadn't caught on to it and would allow Phillips to resume keeping a lookout on him—perhaps even long enough for Mackenzie to get back on the job.

A minute after passing through the checkpoint under the leery eyeballs of the security guards, he reached for his sat phone and punched in Phillips's number, hoping the Escort had reappeared at Mirghani's place.

The word from his partner, unfortunately, wasn't close to what he'd wanted to hear.

“Bruce, what's up?” Phillips asked, answering his sat phone.

Mackenzie gave him an aggravated, profanity-laced rundown of what had happened on the airport road and asked if the Escort had gone back across the river to Bahri.

“No,” Phillips said. “Or not to Mirghani's, anyway. He's already left. I'm behind him on the Blue Nile, near the southbound exit ramp.”

“Shit on ice,” Mackenzie said. “How am I supposed to fucking break this to Holland?”

“Any way you want…as long as you do it,” Phillips said. “It's one thing if Landis knows somebody's on him. There are candidates galore—for all he knows, it could be the Sudanese. But if he realizes it's
us,
or even suspects it, we could have bigger problems.”

Mackenzie grunted in his ear. “Okay, got you,” he said.

“Another thought,” Phillips said. He'd left the bridge and gotten onto El Geish Avenue, the main thoroughfare into the middle of Khartoum. “You might want to run some traces on the Escort and see what turns up. You got that vid I sent, right?”

“Yeah,” Mackenzie said. “I did.”

“We have the car's plate numbers, then,” Phillips said. “You never know, they might lead to something.”

“Or someone,” Mackenzie said. He sighed. “Guess I ought to abort the tail.”

“May as well, unless you intend on hanging around the arrivals or departures terminal all day and hoping your man eventually crosses your path, which sounds like a crapshoot to me. Even if he heads back to the airport and you're lucky and wind up in the right place…if he made you once, he'll be on the lookout for you again.”

Mackenzie expelled another breath. “I'm heading toward the exit now,” he said. “Goddamn, Jake, where's this leave us?”

Phillips looked out his windshield. The road here in the city proper was already crowded with
bakassi,
or unlicensed minibuses run by private operators, and he had to be careful not to lose the bus he'd been shadowing as they weaved in and out of the lanes between them. “With Mirghani, for the moment,” he said. “Look, traffic's getting heavy and I want to stay on the ball. I'll be in touch later. Out.”

“Out,” Mackenzie said. He signed off, then turned toward Ebed Khatim Street on the western side of the airport. “And fuck Landis and his whore of a mother, assuming the scumbag
has
a mother,” he added into the silence of the car.

 

“We should be in the clear, Bakri,” Cullen White told the driver, glancing at his wristwatch. “But let's make it quick now. I don't want to miss my flight.”

The man behind the wheel nodded and then pulled out from the parking area on the University of Juba campus, near Africa Street. From there an access road led directly to the airport, approaching it from the east rather than the north, where White had been when he'd noticed the Honda behind him.

He had always considered his photographic memory as much a curse as a gift. Once he saw a face or heard a name, he would not forget it. He never needed directions to a location—or around it—after paying it even the briefest visit. He'd always learned easily in school, not just because he could remember the contents of what he read, but because he could call to mind how the words had appeared on the page or computer screen. In a flash, he could go back to the experience of making love to a woman decades before—the sensations he'd felt, the look in her eyes, the sounds and whispers of their mounting pleasure. He was equally able to savor the taste of revenge long after it had been taken on an enemy.

These were some of the blessings.

The curse was remembering—no,
reliving
—in totality his mistakes, his failures, and the pain of embarrassment, dishonor, and ostracism. He understood the value of taking one's lessons from the past. But having to carry it with him like some sort of ghost whose essence dwelled within his very cellular material—that was too often an unwanted burden.

Today, however, White was not about to complain about his eidetic memory. Were it not for the vivid accuracy of his memory, he might not have recognized the gray Honda sedan that had been following him from the greenbelt across the Blue Nile near the entrance to the Kober Bridge. Recognized the car or its driver. For he had seen both for no more than two or three seconds weeks ago, when he had been entering the U.S. embassy in Khartoum for a sit-down with Walter Reynolds. As he'd turned from the street to the embassy steps, the car had been swinging from the avenue in front into the curb cut on his right, which in turn led to the ramp that went down to the facility's underground parking garage.

There had been nothing exceptional about that moment. Nothing he could quantify about why it was imprinted on his synapses. But when he'd noticed the car behind him today, he had recognized it—its plate number, its minor dents, the fact that only three of its four tires were whitewalls, and that the all-black tire also had a slightly different type of hub. He couldn't explain why he remembered. It was just that way for him.

The man in the Honda was a worker at the embassy. His nominal post wasn't of any importance. As far as White was concerned, it only mattered that he had been put on his tail—and that he was almost certainly a CIA plant within the embassy staff. The question was…what did it mean in the broad scope of things?

The press had attributed the Limbe raid on Hassan al-Saduq's yacht to an Interpol-EU antipiracy operation. It had directed its questions and criticisms about the arms merchant's unexplained, and seemingly extrajudicial, disappearance while in custody at the investigative task force and the Cameroonian authorities. The coverage about the motive behind the attack, and its legality, centered on civil liberties issues.