THE EXILE

ANDREW BRITTON

KENSINGTON BOOKS

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 1

CAMP HADITH, WEST DARFUR

APRIL

To the untrained eye, the inhabitants of Camp Hadith might have seemed like any group of refugees the world over—a cluster of lost souls bound by poverty, persecution, and a complete lack of hope. To the untrained eye, they might have seemed tragically the same. But in reality their squalid existence was one of the few things they had in common.

They comprised a strange demographic made up of black Christians from the south, African Muslims from the north, and poor Arabs from the slums outside Khartoum. They came from a multitude of tribes, which was arguably more important than their religious differences given the lack of a single national identity in Africa’s largest country. They were Dinka, Masalit, and Fur. They were Berti, Bargo, and Beni Jarrar. But while sharing only the terrible circumstances that had thrust them together, they could all agree on this: were it not for the woman—the American nurse—their life in the camp would have been a living hell.

As it stood, they endured a daily struggle for survival despite the woman’s devotion to them and their unrelenting plight, which was apparent to all. Situated one kilometer east of the paved road from Al-Geneina to Nyala—the capital city of South Darfur—the temporary settlement consisted of nothing more than three hundred hastily constructed shelters. Most were crudely composed of clothes, rugs, and plastic trash bags draped over a rough framework of interwoven branches. A few lucky families—those who had arrived in the early stages of the camp’s development—had access to sturdy canvas tents supplied by USAID, also known as the United States Agency for International Development; UNICEF; or Médicins Sans Frontières, the Paris-based organization better known as Doctors Without Borders.

Surrounding the entire camp was a two-and-a-half-meter fence as crude and impermanent as the tents it was meant to secure. Covered by black tarpaulin sheets, its wooden poles were spaced at three-meter intervals and thrust two meters into the sodden earth to provide a reasonably stable frame for the makeshift barrier. The fence, in turn, was topped by a single strand of barbed wire that ran the length of the perimeter. Beyond it there was nothing but the road and the sun-scrubbed landscape, which stretched for miles in every direction.

The hospital, the only permanent structure to be found within the flimsy tarpaulin fence, rose like an island from the sweeping sea of tents. It was a sprawling, one-story structure of reddish brown mud bricks, each of which had been forged by a careful pair of hands before being laid out to bake in the harsh African sun. The humble building was topped by a roof of corrugated tin, its windows sealed with clear plastic, which provided some protection against the tiny winged predators whose flights could be as lethal as that of any stealth assassins in that part of the world.

Both the flies and the mosquitoes could kill a healthy aid worker with a single bite or sting, especially when the rains came in late July. For the vast majority of Camp Hadith’s residents, the risk was far greater. Unless caught at an early stage, malaria was a virtual death sentence in the internally displaced persons camps—the young and the very old being at highest risk. African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, could be added to the long list of rampant scourges that included measles, tuberculosis, and the worst killer of all, the HIV retrovirus, which had held the continent in its iron grip for decades.

And, of course, there was the poverty and ignorance. The terrible, persistent unavailability of basic health care, education, and nutrition, which flung open the doors to every opportunistic strain of disease emerging from the steppes and woodlands to the north.

Never far from the nurse’s mind, the many dangers that plagued the camp accounted for her sense of profound sorrow as she quietly made her way down the narrow aisle separating the hospital’s forty beds. She always felt this way when she stopped to consider the magnitude of what the African people had suffered. Of what they still suffered on an hourly and daily basis. Lily Durant had been in West Darfur for just six months, but during that time she had come to see the true depth of hardship that her patients endured. Not to understand it, but to see it in front of her, around her, everywhere.

For Lily, that was an important distinction. She wanted to help these people, but she didn’t claim to identify with them. Nor did she pretend to understand what they were going through. Her refusal to do so wasn’t a matter of Western arrogance—in fact, it was the complete opposite. In Lily’s eyes, the situation was simple. She was there to help. Not to judge, not to empathize, not to intellectualize. But to help. Nothing more, nothing less.

Reaching the end of the aisle now, she heard a small noise to her right. As she turned toward the sound to check it out, she moved quickly to the side of the bed and knelt by the hard mattress. Her calves and thighs immediately screamed out in protest, as if to remind her that she’d been on her feet for the past twenty hours. But Lily ignored the pain and focused on the patient lying before her.

She leaned forward, her fingers brushing against the mosquito net that covered the squirming figure.

“Hello, Limya. Badai lo cadai?” she whispered, asking the sick girl if she needed anything in the Zaghawa tribal dialect. It was one of many local phrases Lily had made it a personal imperative to master. While it was nearly impossible to absorb all the languages of the camp, she had found that even a few key phrases could help bridge the cultural and linguistic divide.

Do you need anything? And they all did. More than any one person could give. But nothing was worse than nothing, and that was the sum total of indifference.

Lily felt she’d waited a long time before the patient replied. Then, without warning, the girl let out a short, high-pitched squeal that sent a shiver of alarm through Lily’s body. She grasped blindly for the girl’s fragile hand through the mosquito netting. When she found it, she squeezed it gently in an attempt to reassure her. Only then did Lily realize that the girl was dreaming, caught up in the tangled web of her own terrible past.

She continued to squirm and cry out for a few minutes longer. After what seemed like an eternity, the moaning began to subside. Then it stopped altogether.

Once Lily was finally sure that the girl was asleep, she closed her eyes and permitted herself a deep, weary sigh. She was mentally and physically exhausted and knew that the strain was starting to show. Even as she acknowledged the truth of this, though, she silently rebuked herself for being so weak. What business did she have complaining about her minor aches and pains when the people in this very room had lost so much? The sleeping girl whose hand she even now continued to hold was a perfect example of the terrible things taking place in the region.

Only sixteen, Limya Sanoasi had lost her mother, father, and two younger brothers one week earlier, when their village was razed by the government-backed Janjaweed militiamen who terrorized the non-Arab population of Darfur. Their methods were notorious. Rape, torture, and murder were all considered acceptable tools of war—and since they had the support of the country’s ruling party, they were virtually unstoppable.

Lily freed her hand carefully, doing her best not to wake the girl. Then she got to her feet and started back down the aisle in her foam-bottomed clogs, heading for the building’s single entrance. As she passed each bed—all of them were occupied—Lily silently thanked God for the relative security of the camp and its perimeter fence, however symbolic the protection offered by the thin tarpaulin walls might be. The Janjaweed had attacked the IDP camps before, but such incidents were rare, as they typically resulted in a diplomatic outcry against the regime of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president. Even al-Bashir—a man who topped Parade magazine’s annual list of the world’s ten worst dictators in 2006 and three years later was charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court—had little interest in stirring up serious trouble with the UN or the United States.

At least, that was the general assumption. Personally, Lily wasn’t so sure. Less than a month earlier, the United States had levied harsh sanctions against the North African country, adding to the heavy restrictions already in place as a result of the ICC’s indictment. The punitive measures had touched the highest levels of the Sudanese government, most noticeably in the case of the defense minister, whose U.S. accounts had been frozen.

Al-Bashir had responded to the ICC arrest warrant through polite, if evasive, diplomatic channels—a public fight with its 109 member nations was the furthest thing from what he wanted or needed. But the United States, a nonmember still trying to dig its way out from the global ill will generated by its Iraqi conflict, was another story…and a convenient target for his chest-thumping wrath.

Months after the new sanctions were imposed, he’d given a fiery speech condemning them. And while he’d stopped short of threatening outright retribution, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was on the verge of striking back at the world’s lone superpower and sending out an indirect, albeit powerful, message to the ICC—namely, his intention of submitting to foreign justice was nil. He was not going down without a fight and had cast himself in the convenient, familiar role of a victim forced to retaliate against the imperial American bully.

The question, in the big picture, was how, and when, the first blow would come.

Lily Durant’s recent experiences at Camp Hadith, however, had given her a more close-up perspective. For Lily the focus narrowed down to a little refugee camp in the middle of an African nowhere, a teenage girl caught in the throes of her fever dreams, and her fear that the inexorable madness of attack and reprisal would come, rolling them into the ground.

The cold air of the desert night seeped in through the open door and clawed at the exposed flesh of the commander’s face and throat. He stood inside the darkened compound and watched as his men gathered on the hard-packed dirt of the parade ground in front of his office. The building was pitch-black, but the lights of the compound were ablaze, rendering him invisible to those milling about in the open area. They were laughing, joking, and slapping each other’s shoulders. They were full of life, and watching them, the commander could not help but smile himself. He could feel their excitement, and it reminded him of the first time he had embarked on a similar venture—the first time he had successfully probed the fragile constraints of his own moral character.

He could not fully relate to these men, as they were not real soldiers in his mind, but a disparate collection of animals bound loosely by the promise of separate rewards.

Now he watched as they checked and rechecked their weapons, an assortment of small arms procured from every possible source: Kalashnikovs from Ukraine, PP-19 submachine guns taken out of Afghanistan, and Belgian-made FAL rifles left over from the bloody civil wars in Liberia and Mozambique. A few carried AR-15s, the civilian version of the U.S. Army’s M16. Their favored tools, however, were not the battered firearms they carried, but the knives, hatchets, and machetes that hung from their belt loops.

Just as they carried a variety of arms, the men wore a wide range of clothing. A few had desert fatigues of the sort used by the U.S. military, a uniform that carried a certain level of prestige in the mixed unit. The rest wore police uniforms, tracksuits, or T-shirts and jeans. Like the inhabitants of the camp they were planning to strike, they were bound only by exigencies. His mercenaries, with their uneven training and wild temperament, accepting a slight degree of discipline in exchange for the promise of combat and treasure. The dedicated and more practiced mujahideen sharing their desire for earthly plunder, but seeking to pad their material bounty with the eternal gratifications of Heaven.

A patchwork force, yes. Still, the commander knew how to keep them primed and motivated as they prepared for action, knew what heady elixir was drunk by his ragtag coalition of zealots, godless infidels, and outlaws, whose dutiful prayers were only to assure they reaped the rewards of the destruction they were about to deal out. He’d savored its taste many times—and welcomed it.

They were bound now by anticipation. Anticipation for the work they would soon carry out with brutal, unrelenting purpose. Anticipation for the job he had given them, for the blood they were about to spill…and for the rewards that were sure to follow.

Their raucous laughter poured into the night and over the dark buildings like a rippling black tide.

The commander did his best to maintain a stoic bearing as he watched them, although he shared their contagious enthusiasm. The façade was necessary to preserve the fragile balance of power that existed in the small garrison. He held control over life and death in his hands, and there were few limits to what he could do. In the space of a five-minute telephone call, he could seal the fate of 100 Masalit villagers. With nothing more than a polite suggestion, a whispered word to the major in charge in Nyala, he could condemn a dozen Dinka children to death by fire. It was the ultimate authority, and he had never used it sparingly. In that respect, at least, this night’s work would be no different from all the rest.

A sudden noise pierced the commander’s thoughts, and he stepped through the open door into the cold night air, where the sound of approaching diesel engines was more pronounced. He shivered as he waited impatiently, his broad face twisting into a frown. As bad as it was during the day, the desert was even less accommodating at night.

Fortunately, he did not have to wait long. Less than a minute after he stepped out of the building, the trucks rolled into view and stopped next to the parade ground, a cloud of dust rising into the air, mixing with the stench of diesel fumes, cigarette smoke, and unwashed bodies. There was a loud babble of voices, and the keyed-up men began moving toward the vehicles.

The commander’s car, a borrowed white Mercedes-Benz, was already waiting in front of his office. The driver was behind the wheel, his engine idling. The commander walked over, opened the door, and slid into the rear seat. He shut the door and shivered with pleasure when he felt the warm air churning out of the vents. He gave a signal to his driver, and the car rolled forward, the trucks following in convoy.

As the small line of vehicles left the main gate forty seconds later, the commander pulled a satellite phone from the deep right pocket of his field jacket, dialed a number from memory, and lifted the phone to his ear. Two rings later a man answered.

“We’re on the move. Turn off the phones, and send the plane.”

At first, Lily didn’t understand why she was awake. She lay still for a long moment, wondering what could have possibly roused her from her much-needed sleep. She was conscious of the frigid air on her face, the warmth of her sleeping bag, and the mosquito netting that was draped less than a foot over her head. The camp was surprisingly quiet, except for the distant sound of an infant’s cries. Everything was just as it should be, yet something had pulled her from the deepest sleep she’d had in a month…and that itself was unusual.

She lay there for several minutes, listening in her stillness. But while she heard nothing out of the ordinary, she could not shake the sense of lingering dread.

She tugged her arms out of her sleeping bag, flopped onto her left side, and pressed a button on her wristwatch—a sturdy Alpina her uncle had given her as a going-away present. The LED display told her it was just after 4:00 a.m., which meant she had been out for three hours. After making her rounds in the hospital, she’d walked straight back to her tent, which was located less than 100 feet from the building’s main entrance. She could have had a bed inside the hospital, like the camp’s doctor and the two other nurses, but had chosen instead to sleep in a tent, not wanting to take away from the refugees the already scant space inside the building.

Lily turned onto her stomach, covered her head with her pillow, and tried to drown out the thoughts buzzing through her mind. Literally buzzing like a hornet’s nest. There was so much to worry about. As always, the chronic lack of food and supplies, and now the troubling height and weight data from the feeding center. Earlier that evening she had learned that Faisel, a one-year-old boy from the nearby village of Sirba, was still losing weight despite extra rations of milk and close personal attention from the camp’s medical staff. Given his current rate of decline, Lily feared he would not see the end of the week, and she still didn’t know how she would explain his death to his parents. Two weeks earlier they’d lost his older sister, their only daughter, to dysentery. How were they supposed to understand it? What words of comfort would she find? Did a vocabulary even exist that could mitigate the sort of pain and grief she believed was in store for them?

These were the types of thoughts she could not block out no matter how hard she tried. And meanwhile the buzzing in her ears wouldn’t stop, making her back so stiff, it ached from tension…keeping her awake, wide awake, on her narrow, springy cot inside the darkened tent.

And then, suddenly, she realized that the buzzing wasn’t some kind of weird internal manifestation of nerves and fatigue, after all. When the awareness hit her, she instinctively rejected it, as the alternative just wasn’t possible. The camps were supposed to be safe ground. She had been told as much the day she arrived. But the noise didn’t fade. Instead, it grew steadily louder.

Struggling to suppress her rising unease, Lily climbed out of her sleeping bag, pulled on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a thick woolen sweater, and threw back the flaps of her tent. Easing her way through the narrow opening, she got to her feet and looked around in disbelief. She immediately realized that her earlier dread was completely justified. Dozens of refugees were struggling out of their makeshift shelters, and they were all staring upward, eyes wide with fear.

She tracked her own gaze in the direction they were looking and saw the plane at once, a black, slow-moving fleck against the starlit sky. For a second, she allowed herself to believe it was just a transport plane—a small Cessna ferrying aid workers back to Abéché, perhaps. Or a medical-supply flight making the daily run to Al-Geneina. Even as she considered these possibilities, though, she could hear—and sense—the panic rising around her.

The refugees had no room in their psyches for denial. It had been scoured from their inner landscapes by hard experience, leaving them with a keen, stark acceptance of reality. They knew what kind of plane this was. More to the point, they knew what was coming, and they had reacted with incredible speed. Hundreds were pouring out of their makeshift shelters, and some were already running toward the rear of the camp, their children and a few meager possessions caught up in their arms.

Frozen with dread and horror, Lily saw Beckett, the camp’s doctor, stumble out of the building, a backpack slung over his right shoulder. As he looked up at the plane circling overhead, he did a slow, strange kind of pirouette, his mouth agape. Then his eyes came back to ground level, and he looked around wildly. For a second Lily didn’t understand what he was doing. Then, as she looked on in sheer disbelief, he took off running, sprinting ahead of the steady stream of people running for the back side of the camp. The two nurses were just a few steps behind him.

“Hey!” she screamed, fighting to be heard over the general panic. “Hey, where are you going?”

She chased after the three fleeing aid workers, but there were too many people moving in the same direction, and she couldn’t break through the crowd. The screams were deafening: parents shouting for their children to hurry, children howling for parents they had lost in the crowd, and Lily’s own cries of outrage, all directed at the fleeing Americans. “Where are you going?” she shouted again. “Where are you…What are you doing? Come back!”

But she was wasting her breath—they had already moved out of earshot. Lily swore in an undertone, then turned and started toward the hospital, dodging the few people in her way. No one was moving in this direction. She could not believe what she had just seen. Beckett and the two nurses had abandoned their patients without a moment’s hesitation. The full measure of their cowardice was staggering, but the worst part was that they knew the consequences of their actions. By running, they were leaving the refugees behind to be slaughtered.

The first bomb hit when she was 10 feet from the building’s entrance. Even though she had been waiting for it, the impact still came as a shock and nearly threw her off her feet. A cloud of flames erupted somewhere off to her left, and she turned in time to see a pair of bodies hurled into the air. The sound came a split second later, a hollow boom that reverberated in her chest, and she heard the screams rise into the smoke-filled air as she sprinted the last few feet, flinging herself through the open door and into the hospital.

Once inside, she steadied herself and looked around desperately, trying to impose a measure of sense on the chaotic scene. Some of the patients had tried to flee, but most did not have the strength. The moment they’d climbed out of bed, they had collapsed to the floor…and that was where they were lying now. A number of them were completely motionless, while others were writhing around and crying out for help.

She went to the nearest, an elderly Fur man trying to claw his way free of the mosquito netting wrapped round his body. She quickly pulled it away from his flailing limbs, murmuring words of reassurance the whole time. Then she lifted him off the floor, shocked as always by how easy it was. All skin and bones, he couldn’t have weighed more than 80 pounds.

Gently getting him onto the empty bed, Lily moved on to the next person. As she attended to each patient, she was all too aware of the terrible, earsplitting sounds outside—the crump of the falling bombs was loud enough to cover the screams of the wounded, but she could still hear their cries in the short, ominous gaps between concussive blasts. And despite the horror of the aerial assault, she knew that the worst was yet to come. When the bombs stopped falling, the Janjaweed would move in, burning everything in their path, killing anyone left alive.

Part of her knew that her efforts were futile—that everything she was doing to help these people would be wasted in the end. But even as these thoughts entered her mind, she kept working steadily. She didn’t know for how long. Five minutes, ten, time was a measureless thing for her, distilled to a charged, frantic now.

Lost as she was in what she was doing, it took Lily a while to realize that something had changed. She stopped and looked up, listening hard. A quiet, quavering voice to her left startled her back to an awareness of her situation, and she turned to the person who’d spoken the words.

Limya Sanoasi was sitting upright in her bed, her small hands folded in her lap. Her broken left leg, one of the many injuries she’d sustained in the recent raid on her village, was hidden beneath a threadbare blanket. The blanket was still smooth and tucked in at the corners. Lily was struck by the fact that she hadn’t even tried to run.

“It’s the bombs,” Limya repeated in English. Her solemn face was unnaturally calm; only her voice hinted at the true level of fear she was feeling. “That is what you are listening for.”

“They’ve stopped,” Lily whispered.

“Yes. The plane is gone, but the men will follow. You must go now.”

Lily stared back at the girl for a long moment, intensely aware of the sounds outside the building. She could hear the militiamen’s laughter and occasional bursts of gunfire mingled with the blood-curdling screams of the refugees who hadn’t escaped in time.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she finally said. She did her best to sound calm and assured, but her eyes slipped away when she spoke again. “Al-Bashir is afraid of my country, Limya. He is afraid of our army. They won’t hurt you if I stand in their way, I promise. They wouldn’t dare to—”

“You’re wrong,” the girl said. Her voice was quiet but certain, and Lily felt a sudden tremor of doubt. “They will kill you. They will kill everyone, and there is nothing more you can do. You should leave now.”

Lily didn’t shift her gaze from the girl, but her eyes glazed over as she struggled to take sane, logical stock of her choices—or some approximation of it amid the fundamentally insane circumstances confronting her. On one level, she felt a primitive, almost overpowering urge to run, and she hated herself for it. At the same time, what more could she do?

Fair enough question, she thought. She had stayed behind at this crucial moment, stayed true to her principles, and she had tried to help them. Wasn’t that enough? Could she really stop what was going to happen here? Even delay it? Or would she just be another lamb to the slaughter?

Limya seemed to sense what was running through her head. “Go,” she repeated. Her voice was little more than a whisper, her brown eyes damp, wide, and imploring. “Please.”

Lily Durant cast one last desperate glance at the door, but she had already made her decision.

“I can’t,” she said quietly. She locked eyes with the girl again, and this time her gaze was steady. “I won’t leave you.”

A look of profound sadness crossed the teenager’s face. She closed her eyes, lowered her head, and murmured a few words in Zaghawa. At that moment the first of several figures appeared in the door, blocking the last remaining route of escape. When she heard them enter, Lily took a deep breath, stood, and turned to face them. She had just set her feet when the first one reached her on the run.

She didn’t see the punch coming. It simply arrived, landing high on her right cheek, splitting the skin to the bone. Stunned by the sheer force of the blow, she stumbled back and raised her hands in self-defense. But it was no use; they were just too strong.

The beating that followed was both methodical and completely merciless. They slapped her face, pulled her hair, and tore the clothes from her body. She felt a pair of hands groping her bare breasts and pried them loose with all her strength, or tried getting them off her, crying out in rage and revulsion. Then they wrestled her to the floor—five of them, six, maybe more than that crowding over and around her, mobbing her, too many of them to fight. Somewhere in the distance she could hear Limya and a few others begging them to stop, but the assault continued, their fists raining down from above, their boots pounding relentlessly into her ribs. Even as the world seemed to fade around her, she forced herself to stay conscious. For what, she didn’t know. But some stubborn inner voice told her to keep fighting.

She turned onto her right side and tightened into a ball, trying to make herself a smaller target. That only seemed to enrage them further. A particularly vicious kick to the base of her spine caused her back to arch, and her arms and legs sprung open, as if of their own accord. Her assailants were quick to take advantage. One man dropped down on top of her, pinning her splayed arms and legs to the floor, and the others moved in on either side to await their turn.

At that moment a single shot penetrated the chaos. The hands moved away, and the men holding her down jumped up and stepped aside. They backed off slowly, and she managed to scramble away in turn, her feet kicking wildly at empty air, splinters from the rough wooden floor digging into the heels of her hands. She slid back until she hit a wall, but it wasn’t far enough, and she kept pushing against it like a trapped, helpless creature surrounded by a feral pack, irrationally willing her body to sink into the solid material.

It took her a moment to realize that someone had followed the militiamen into the hospital. He was standing before her now, and even through the swelling around her eyes, she could recognize that his uniform was that of a lieutenant colonel in the Sudanese army. He murmured something over his right shoulder, and another man stepped forward, lifted a digital camera to eye level, and pointed the lens down at her face. When he was satisfied that it was recording properly, he said a few words in Arabic to the officer, who replied with a grunt.

Lily had folded her arms over her exposed breasts the instant she saw the camera, but the officer didn’t seem to notice. He was holding a small square of glossy paper in his right hand. He stared at the paper for a long moment, as if committing its contents to memory. As her mind slowly adjusted to the unexpected turn of events, Lily realized he was looking at a photograph. His eyes moved to her battered, tear-streaked face, and he studied her carefully.

“You are Lilith Durant?”

She was still struggling to catch her breath. When she could speak, she said, “Yes.”

“The niece of the American president?”

For a second Lily did not think she had heard correctly. But then the full weight of the words hit her, and in that instant she knew why they had attacked the camp.

Somehow, they had learned who she really was. She had done everything in her power to keep a low profile, but it was now clear that somewhere along the line, she—or somebody close to her—had made a critical mistake. It was the only possible explanation, and the officer’s words were enough to verify her worst fears. They had come for her, and in doing so, they had been willing to destroy anything and everyone that stood in their way.

Everything that had just happened to the camp, the destruction that swept over it, killing so many of the refugees, leaving those innocent men, women, and children massacred…she had brought it all down on them.

All of it, all of it, was her damned fault.

She closed her eyes in anguish, crushed by her sudden revelation. She felt dizzy, sick with guilt, but she couldn’t change what had happened, and it wouldn’t help to dwell on it. The only thing she could do now was try to save as many lives as possible, starting with the people in the surrounding beds.

She took a second to collect herself and then opened her eyes. The commander was watching her closely.

“Please,” she whispered through bloodied lips. “Let it end here. With me.”

The commander didn’t react, but he had spoken in fluent English before, and Lily knew he could understand.

“You don’t have to do this,” she pressed. “These people are not a threat to you. The camp is destroyed, and the people who ran will not come back. You’ve made your point—”

“And what do you believe that to be?” His eyes were fixed on her. “Look at me carefully, Ms. Durant. Is mine the face of a master or follower?”

Lily stared in confused silence, her mind groping for a response. When it didn’t find one, she simply shook her head in futility. “You’ve got what you came for. You have me. Please, just let the rest of them live. Please.”

The colonel seemed to consider her request for a long moment, and Lily felt a tiny spark of hope.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” The colonel held out his hand, palm up, and Lily watched in despair as a second man stepped forward to hand over a large black pistol. The colonel hefted it in his hand as he smiled down at her. “But don’t worry. Those you came to help won’t be without you for long.”

He extended the pistol at arm’s length, and Lily closed her eyes, found herself counting down. She didn’t know why, maybe just to give herself something to focus on besides the pounding of her heart.

The last thing Lily Durant heard was a young girl’s scream of rage and despair. Then her world ceased to exist.

CHAPTER 2

CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND

The sky was still dark over central Maryland as the Bell 206B Jet-Ranger cut a fast, steady path north, sweeping over the gentle rise of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Although the helicopter had room for four passengers, just one was on board for the short hop from Langley, Virginia, to Camp David, in the northernmost reaches of Catoctin Mountain Park. He had buckled in just twenty minutes earlier, but checking his watch, the sole passenger saw that he was already close to his final destination. The private retreat of every U.S. president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was just 70 miles from the White House, and not much farther from the passenger’s point of embarkation. When he realized how close they were to touching down, he swore softly under his breath. Everything was moving too fast, and the worst was still to come.

Normally, he would have been gratified by the short travel time, as it wasn’t the usual state of things. As the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Jonathan Harper was used to working on the fly, whether it was in the backseat of a government car or in the air, on one of the Agency’s executive jets. On this occasion, however, he could not bring himself to focus on the upcoming meeting. It wasn’t even the lack of useful information on hand, although that certainly wasn’t helping matters. Simply stated, he was still trying to wrap his mind around the news he had been given just one hour earlier.

The call had come in on his secure telephone at two minutes past midnight. Fifteen minutes later he had stumbled out of his three-story town house on Embassy Row to meet the black Lincoln Town Car that was already idling at the curb. His driver had taken him straight to Agency headquarters outside Langley, where the Jet-Ranger’s twin rotors were already turning. In his hurry to get in the air, Harper had not had the opportunity to fully absorb what he’d been told by the night duty officer trotting along with him on the tarmac.

The news could not have been worse. The refugee camp at which the president’s niece had been working in Darfur had been burned to the ground, a fact that satellite imagery had confirmed just five minutes earlier. They had heard from at least one reliable witness that Lily Durant had been killed in the attack. That particular fact had yet to be verified, though there was little doubt in Harper’s mind that it was true.

The deputy director of operations at Langley had called Harper personally to relay the first piece of information—and although it wasn’t much, Harper was grateful for it. The SATINT seemed only to confirm their worst fears, but at least it was something to work with. More to the point, it was hard intel. Harper couldn’t abide conjecture for one simple reason…. He couldn’t afford to. The nation’s intelligence apparatus was fueled by information, and given the stakes, that information had to be rock solid each and every time. That partly accounted for Harper’s dread of the upcoming meeting. He had almost no information to work with, which meant he was about to be put in the uncomfortable position of being briefed by his own superiors.

His own personal ignorance, however, wasn’t Harper’s primary concern. What really worried him was the emotional element involved in this particular situation. He had served the current president for nearly six years, and Harper knew him to be a smart, careful, methodical man. A man who had never let his power—or his anger—influence his ability to analyze and solve a given problem. He didn’t always come up with the right answers, but to his credit he never lost sight of the overall picture, or the core awareness that millions of people were affected by every decision he made. Still, Harper couldn’t help but wonder if the president would be able to maintain that sense of proportion given the tragic circumstances, and felt uneasy when he considered the possible consequences if he could not.

A voice in his ear jolted Jonathan Harper back to the present. It was the pilot informing him that they were three minutes out. Harper keyed his mic and acknowledged the words, then settled back in his seat. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying in vain to clear his mind, knowing that he would need a clear head for the upcoming meeting.

A few minutes later the helicopter touched down with a slight jolt, the skids settling onto the rain-drenched tarmac. Harper waited until the pilot gave him the all clear. Then he unbuckled his harness, removed his headset, and reached for the door.

It was a short ride from the helipad to Aspen Lodge, the presidential cabin on the east side of the compound. As the black Tahoe threaded its way along the steep mountain road, a Secret Service agent behind the wheel, Harper stared out the rain-streaked window. This was his first time visiting the presidential retreat, and despite the troubling thoughts swirling through his mind, he found himself absorbed in the passing scenery. He had always been interested in history. In fact, he had minored in that particular subject at Boston College some twenty-two years earlier, and it was hard not to feel the weight of it here.

After passing the camp commander’s quarters, they turned onto a secondary road and immediately hit a checkpoint. Harper displayed his ID to the marine sergeant standing post, and the sentry proceeded to call in the information. They were cleared through a moment later.

Without being asked, the driver hit a button and the window whirred up. Then the Tahoe lurched forward, the tires slipping for a moment on the damp road. A mile or so later the road curved gently to the left, and Aspen Lodge came into view.

Harper’s first thought was that the presidential cabin didn’t look like much. The brightly-lit exterior was constructed of rough-hewn planks painted a monotonous shade of gray. A single fieldstone chimney jutted from the black shingle roof, and the building itself was dwarfed by the surrounding oak, maple, and hickory trees. In front of the cabin, a grassy slope led down to a modest pond fringed by cattails and irises. On the whole, the building looked like it could belong to anyone with a little money and a need to get away from it all. The only sign that it might be something more was the Secret Service agents posted in front of the two main entrances, as well as the dark shapes Harper had seen moving through the trees on the approach to the building.

Harper knew that the retreat was guarded year-round by approximately 100 soldiers and sailors, the bulk of whom were drawn from the ranks of the navy and the marines. As he opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle, he found himself wondering if they knew what had transpired in Darfur less than eight hours earlier. Looking up at the members of the president’s detail, he took note of the hard edge to their usual fixed expressions and decided that these individuals, at least, had been made aware of the situation. Even from 30 feet away, Harper could sense their anger and frustration. A person close to the president had died on their watch, and they had been unable to stop it from happening. Of course, it was absurd to think they could have prevented it, and on some level, they would know that as well. At the same time, Harper was quietly impressed by their demeanor. In his eyes, the fact that they were taking it so personally was a testament to their commitment and professionalism.

A tall figure was coming down the steps at a brisk pace, his features blotted out by the light at his back. As he drew closer, his face came into focus, and Harper recognized him at once. Joshua McCabe was the assistant director of the Office of Protective Research, one of the senior figures in the U.S. Secret Service. Harper had worked with him several years earlier to prevent an attempt on the president’s life. The CIA—and one man in particular—had been instrumental in preventing the assassination, and to his credit, McCabe had never forgotten the Agency’s crucial role in averting that near catastrophe. Thanks to him, Harper had more access to the president than most of the cabinet. More importantly, McCabe was able to provide insight as to the president’s general mood, as well as his stance on various issues. Harper supposed that accounted for why he felt relieved beyond measure to see him coming down the steps.

“Josh, it’s good to see you.” Harper extended a hand. “I just wish it was under different circumstances.”

“Same here,” McCabe replied as they shook. “We need to get inside. They’re waiting.”

Normally, Harper would have been taken aback by the assistant director’s curt tone. Looking at the other man’s face, though, he could see that McCabe was merely trying to tell him something. He realized that his fears regarding the president’s mind-set were probably completely justified. That was about the only thing that could have shaken McCabe to this extent.

“Who’s in there?” he asked.

“Andrews and Stralen are meeting with the POTUS right now. Thayer was—”

“Stralen?” Harper frowned. Joel Stralen was the recently appointed director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a close personal friend of the president. He was also a very vocal opponent of the CIA, which he considered to be a rival agency. Harper could almost understand the man’s mind-set, as to some extent, every government agency was in constant competition for a larger chunk of the federal budget, but that didn’t make his animosity any less tiresome or easier to bear. “Where did he land from?”

“I have no idea. He arrived fifteen minutes ago, and he went straight in.” They were 20 feet from the main entrance and walking as slowly as they possibly could. “Are you aware of the timeline?”

Harper nodded, but in truth, he hadn’t really considered it until now. The attack on the camp in West Darfur had taken place eight hours earlier, at 2:00 a.m. Darfur time. Sudan was eight hours ahead of Washington. The first report hadn’t come into the U.S. embassy in Khartoum until six o’clock in the morning local time, and it had taken another forty minutes for someone to verify that the president’s niece was, indeed, based at the camp that had been targeted. Harper checked his watch and saw that it was half past one. That meant that the president had heard the news less than…

Jesus. Harper shook his head as the time frame came together in his mind. The president had known for just over an hour. Not much longer than he had known himself. No wonder McCabe was worried.

“Yeah,” Harper said. “I know the timeline.” They were 15 feet from the main entrance, and he made an effort to slow his pace even more. “Any word on Lily Durant?”

McCabe shook his head slowly. “Nothing new. You know how we found out, right?”

Harper nodded. He had been brought up to speed by the night duty officer out at Langley even as they’d raced toward the airstrip. It had started, he knew, with a panicked call from Greg Beckett, the UNICEF doctor assigned to Camp Hadith, to the U.S. embassy in Khartoum. Harper had yet to see the transcript, but he knew most of what had been said between Beckett and the chief of mission, who had taken the call personally. Beckett had run when the attack began, but he had seen the entire thing unfold from a distance. About an hour after the raiders had left, he had ventured back into the camp with two other aid workers.

Inside the hospital, they had discovered the remains of 40 people, including Lily Durant. It had taken an hour from that point for the phones to come back on, at which time Beckett had placed his frantic call to the embassy.

“Have we been able to verify what Beckett said? I mean, has anyone actually seen her body?”

“Not yet. It’s going to take a few hours to get people out to the scene, but we have no reason to doubt what he told us.”

Harper took a second to think that over. “Does the president know? I mean, does he really know?”

McCabe suddenly stopped walking. Harper was caught off guard, but he stopped, turned, and stepped back to face the assistant director.

“I think he does,” McCabe said. He seemed to hesitate, but he had already said too much, and there was no point in stopping now. “He’s not taking it well, John. They were very close.”

Harper took a moment to absorb this unwelcome news. It was just as he’d feared, and he only hoped he wasn’t too late to reverse the slide. The world was a complicated place, and it was hard enough for a president to calmly process those complexities when weighing a response to brute aggression. When emotion entered the equation, it inevitably blew the whole damn thing to pieces. And Harper did not want to be in the position of having to stop President David Brenneman from making a potentially catastrophic decision based on nothing more than the rawest of passions.

“How did they find her?” he mused aloud. Whoever the hell they might be. “Did the leak spring from her end, or ours?”

McCabe shrugged uneasily. “That is obviously what we need to figure out. When Lily decided to go over there, the president tried to talk her out of it. And when he couldn’t, he made an effort to distance himself so there wouldn’t be tracks anyone could follow. I guess he was trying to protect her…and to be fair, it worked for a long time.”

“Until now,” Harper murmured.

“Right,” McCabe said. “Until now.”

His voice was strained, but Harper thought it was something more than the normal stress of the situation. Was it possible he had known Durant personally? It would certainly explain the casual way in which he had used her first name.

“Maybe it was intentional, and maybe it wasn’t,” McCabe was saying, “but someone gave her away, and the regime in Khartoum took advantage—”

Harper interrupted. “How do we know that?”

“I didn’t say we know anything. But someone sent armed units in after her, and al-Bashir has been waving his sword for months. There’s no doubt he’s capable.”

“Capable isn’t the same as responsible. What I’m hearing is speculation, Josh, and that’s fine as a springboard. But it’s way too soon to draw conclusions. We need to take a step back and—”

“Hey,” McCabe broke in, spreading his arms wide, “you’ll get no argument from me. I agree with you, and I am not the man you need to convince.” He lowered his voice and took a step forward. “POTUS needs to hear it from you, and he needs to hear it now. He’s too close to the whole thing, and Stralen isn’t helping matters at all. He’s been adding fuel to the fire ever since he arrived.”

Harper nodded slowly. “Where are they?”

McCabe shook his head grimly as they started to climb the steps. Clearly, he wasn’t anxious to go back in there. “I’ll show you,” he said.

Harper followed the assistant director through the front door, ignoring the two agents sheltering beneath the eaves. The entrance hall was dark, as though the building itself were in mourning, but Harper still managed to catch sight of his reflection in a circular, gilt-framed mirror hanging over a mahogany side table. Fortunately, McCabe took that moment to confer with an agent standing nearby, and Harper turned to the mirror to check his appearance more thoroughly. His navy Brooks Brothers suit was slightly rumpled and damp at the shoulders; his tie poorly knotted. His graying brown hair was plastered to his head, and there was a slight nick on his throat where he had cut himself shaving. Minor imperfections, he decided. For the most part, he looked as respectable as anyone could at half past one in the morning.

McCabe waved him forward, and they continued down a long, dimly lit hall leading to a single door at the end. An uncomfortable-looking agent stood outside the living room, and as they approached, Harper could hear elevated voices beyond the plain wooden door.

They stopped just short of the door, and once again McCabe murmured something to the man standing post. Turning back to Harper, the assistant director grimaced and lifted his eyebrows in a silent question. Harper straightened his tie and nodded once, indicating that he was ready.

McCabe leaned forward and tapped on the door. There was a brief silence, and then a voice called out for Harper to enter.

CHAPTER 3

CAMP DAVID

Like the rest of the building, the living room was draped in shadow. Harper thought that during the day, the picture windows on the east wall would have provided a spectacular view of the Monocacy Valley. Now, at this early hour, they offered nothing more than a hazy reflection of the room itself. A large fieldstone fireplace dominated the southwest corner of the room, the chimney towering up to the open second floor, and framed photographs of former presidents occupied every inch of the beige walls. The carpet was government issue, gray and sturdy, and the mismatched furniture looked as if it might have been purchased at a yard sale.

Harper was dimly aware of all of this, but for the most part, his attention was fixed on the three other men in the room—and on one man in particular.

Robert Andrews, the director of Central Intelligence and Harper’s immediate boss, was seated on a red leather love seat facing the fireplace. He was a heavyset man with dark, curly hair, dressed in his standard Ralph Lauren suit. He nodded curtly as his deputy crossed the room toward the seating area. The man seated to his left, Harper saw, was General Joel Stralen. In his early fifties, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency was wiry and tan, with a sparse fringe of iron gray hair, thin lips, and deep-set eyes. He was wearing his customary blue USAF service dress uniform, though his jacket was slung over the back of his chair. Harper returned Andrews’s strained, silent greeting but ignored Stralen, who was staring at him with undisguised contempt. Instead, he began moving toward the man standing in front of the large windows.

On any given day David Brenneman looked at least a decade younger than his fifty-five years. However, the news he had just received had aged him in a way the rigors of the office had never managed to do. His silver-brown hair was disheveled, his eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, and his mouth had set in a tight, angry line.

As Harper approached, he was acutely aware of the president’s stance. Dressed in a navy tracksuit bearing the insignia of his alma mater, Georgetown University, he stood with his feet apart and his hands curled into useless fists by his sides, like a fighter who’d been sucker punched bracing for a second blow.

Harper could only imagine what he was feeling at that moment. David Brenneman was arguably the single most powerful person in the world, and yet, for all that, he had just taken a hit to the gut from which he would probably never recover. Worse still, there was nothing he could do to make it right, despite the enormous resources at his disposal. Harper couldn’t have articulated why, but the tracksuit made him look all the more exposed. Brenneman was the president, yes. But this morning he was first and foremost a man reeling from grief.

Harper stopped a few feet away and forced himself to meet Brenneman’s eyes.

“Sir,” he began awkwardly, “I’m truly sorry for your loss. Believe me, we will do everything in our power to find the people who are responsible, and when we do, there is nothing to stop us from—”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

At first Harper didn’t know where the words had come from. Then he turned to face the man who had snapped out the question. Stralen had jumped out of his chair and was staring at him with a mixed expression of irritation and disbelief.

“Excuse me?” Harper said.

“You heard. What are you talking about?” said Stralen. “We already know who did the deed. It was one man, and we know exactly where to find him. The only question is what we’re going to do about it.”

Harper let his gaze drift from Stralen to his immediate superior. Andrews was shaking his head slowly, almost imperceptibly, his gaze fixed on some distant corner of the room. Clearly, he wasn’t about to stand up to his counterpart at the DIA. Harper wondered how long he had been able to withstand the blunt force of the general’s rhetoric, or if he had even tried.

“Sir, with all due respect, it’s too early to draw any conclusions about—”

“That’s bullshit,” Stralen said. “You know damn well that Bashir was behind this. It’s payback for the sanctions we slapped on them last month. What else could it be?”

Harper frowned. “I don’t think that’s likely. Bashir may be dangerous, but he isn’t certifiably insane. Why would he do this? What could he possibly hope to gain?”

Stralen was already shaking his head. “Who knows?” he snapped. “A world court’s issued a warrant for him—and backed him into a corner. When he tried to attend Zuma’s swearing-in conference as president of South Africa, Bashir was warned to stay home. Even those corrupt bastards in Uganda reluctantly washed their hands of him through diplomatic channels. As signatories to the ICC they’d have had to arrest him if he showed at their regional conference.”

“How’s any of that lead him to an act of retribution against us?” Harper asked.

“I don’t know how his mind connects the dots. Or even what dots they connect. But it’s a moot point, anyway. There are witnesses.” Stralen pounded his right hand into his left to emphasize the point. “The camp’s doctor, Beckett, the man who reported the attack in the first place. He ran when the bombs started to fall, but he didn’t run far. He saw the whole thing from a distance, and he swears that he saw a man in army uniform getting out of a white Mercedes. Besides, there was a plane. If there was no government authorization, where did the plane come from?”

“I don’t know,” Harper said carefully.

Stralen narrowed his eyes. “Are you telling me you don’t think the Sudanese government has a hand in this?”

“I think it might bear some level of culpability.”

Stralen narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean, ‘some level’?”

“I mean Bashir provides funds and training for the Janjaweed through the army,” Harper explained. “But he does not direct ongoing operations in Darfur. He leaves that to his generals. There is a good chance he wasn’t even aware of this particular attack, much less who was stationed at the camp.”

“You can’t be serious.” Stralen looked at Andrews, then back to Harper, as though searching for an explanation. “Do you really expect us to believe that this was a mistake? Some kind of coincidence?”

“No, of course not. That is not what I’m implying. I’m simply saying that Bashir might not have authorized it,” Harper asserted.

“And what about the plane? Let’s not forget that bombs were dropped,” said Stralen.

“I haven’t.” Harper sighed. “But a lot of ordnance and combat equipment is floating around out there on the black market. And across the region. Tanks, attack boats—”

“I repeat, Harper. This was a bomber. An F-7N, according to our real-time infrared satellite data. What does that tell you?”

Harper didn’t answer. Acquired from Iran back in the late nineties, the Chinese-built warplanes were known to have been used in Sudan’s bombing campaigns against rebel ground troops during its last civil war. Which in his mind still proved nothing.

He turned toward the president; the last thing he wanted here was a spitting contest. “Sir, I know it must seem pretty clear-cut from where you’re standing. But I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence Omar al-Bashir ordered the attack, and I don’t think we’ve established motive. He knows the consequences for himself and his government. To go after you personally, and in this way, would be an incredibly stupid thing to do at a time when he’s already under siege. Bashir is a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid. It would be an act of sheer lunacy for him to authorize your niece’s murder.”

Harper paused, painfully aware that it was the first time those words had been spoken aloud. For a long moment the president didn’t respond, his red eyes fixed on some random point on the far wall. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously low.

“There’s that plane, John. Let’s not dance around it. And those men were wearing army uniforms,” he said. “Bashir controls the army. It’s one thing for them to raid a local village with impunity. But they’re still undeniably on a leash…a long one, maybe, but a leash nonetheless. Say what you will, they don’t lift a finger against us unless he tells them to.”

Harper was momentarily shaken by the quiet rage he heard in the president’s voice—as well as the utter conviction. But he did his best to set it aside, knowing that he couldn’t stop now. Someone had to bring the man back from the brink, and it was clear that he was the only person still willing to try.

“Yes, but that just supports my point, sir. Even if they destroyed the whole camp, some of the refugees were bound to escape. There were going to be witnesses either way, so why would Bashir make the government’s role in the attack so blatantly evident? Why would he allow the trail to lead right back to his doorstep?”

“To send a message,” Stralen said. “Isn’t that obvious? He claimed he was going to do as much when the State Department issued the sanctions last month.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time he spouted inflammatory rhetoric,” Harper pointed out, “and not once in twenty years has he lifted a finger to do even half of what he threatens. What would make things different this time?” The deputy director shook his head and looked back at the president. “Sir, again, I’m not saying Bashir didn’t have a hand in this. Plain and simple, I’m trying to point out that we need to have all the facts, look into every possibility, before you decide on a course of action.”

“And what happens in the meantime?” Stralen asked quietly.

Harper reluctantly turned his attention back to the air force general.

“You want us to sit on our hands while Bashir sits in Khartoum, laughing about what he’s done?” Stralen said, not giving an inch. “About what he’s gotten away with? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“What are you suggesting?” Harper asked, meeting the other man’s cold blue eyes. He knew he had crossed a line, but he couldn’t back down. Andrews had already done that, and someone had to stop this conversation before it escalated to a far more dangerous level. “What do you propose we do instead, General?”

“What I propose,” Stralen growled, “is that we send in a two-or three-man Delta team to verify his position, and then we drop a JDAM right on top of the bastard’s head. What I suggest is that we take him out, once and for all.”

There was complete silence in the room. Harper stared at the newly appointed head of the DIA for a long moment and couldn’t help but wonder if the man understood the full gravity of what he was saying. Then he turned to look at the president. “Sir, please tell me you are not seriously considering this.”

Brenneman had turned to face the window, but his shoulders were tense, his hands still curled into fists at his sides. He did not respond, giving Harper no idea what he was thinking. “Sir,” Harper said, trying again, “I implore you to look at the larger picture. Omar al-Bashir may be a ruthless dictator, but he is still a head of state, the president of the largest country in Africa.”

“He’s also a wanted man according to the ICC,” Brenneman said.

“And we’ve consistently opposed the court’s authority on the basis of its determinations shackling our political and military policies…and creating a global standard of justice that may conflict with our own. It would be hypocritical to use the indictment as an excuse to go after Bashir.” Harper gave that a moment to sink in. “We all need to remember that while Bashir stays within his own sovereign borders, he has practical immunity from any indictment. We can’t legally send forces across those borders to arrest him. And we can’t just assassinate him.”

“So he gets away with it,” Brenneman murmured. He was still facing the window. “Is that right? Is that what you’re proposing?”

For a few seconds Harper wasn’t sure how to respond. It was suddenly apparent that the president hadn’t really heard a word he’d said, and for one simple reason—he didn’t want to. He was lost in his own private world of pain and grief, and for the time being, he was looking for one thing alone…a way to lash out. In that respect, Stralen was giving him exactly what he wanted, someone to blame and punish for his niece’s death.

Harper could see the appeal. Any human being with a beating heart would be tempted by the lure of immediate vengeance. But that didn’t make it sane or right.

“Mr. President.” It was Andrews who had spoken now, and Harper turned toward him in mild surprise. This was the first time the director had made his presence known since his deputy had entered the room. “With all due respect, Jonathan is right. We can decide Bashir is accountable, but we can’t take him out. The international community would never stand for it.”

“Who cares what they’re willing to stand for?” Stralen said. He fixed his counterpart at the CIA with an angry, accusing stare. “That isn’t the issue here, and for a change our primary concern shouldn’t be world opinion.” He shifted his attention to Harper. “As for your remarks about the ICC…I don’t give a damn about that organization. The indictment is fine with me but should have no bearing on our actions one way or another.”

“Okay, forget the ICC,” Harper said. “With all due respect, General Stralen…are you aware Sudan has an estimated oil reserve of two hundred billion barrels in its very large chunk of the Muglad Basin? And that Russia has made monumental financial and material investments in the Sudanese oil industry? The deals Putin has cut with Khartoum…specifically exercising his political clout through Slavneft—”

Stralen speared him with his gaze. “Don’t lecture me. I know all about Slavneft.”

Harper looked back at Stralen without blinking and went on with slow deliberation. “Then I assume you’re aware it is not only Russia’s seventh or eighth largest oil firm but is wholly state owned,” he said. “I’m sure you also realize the Russians, via Slavneft, have spent something in excess of two hundred million dollars to develop the Abyei petroleum fields in south-central Sudan as part of an umbrella trade agreement—I think it’s fair to use the term alliance—that requires Sudan to subsidize a large chunk of that investment with the purchase of Russian military hardware. Given what you know, I probably don’t have to add that Sudan set an earlier precedent for this relationship with China, which now drills as much of a sixth to a quarter of its total oil supply from fields in the western part of the country. That’s about two hundred thousand barrels every day of the week. The exchange there has involved weapons, too. Primarily small arms, though there were separate arrangements for the sale of Chinese attack aircraft and pilot training to Sudan. And assurances that Beijing would massage the United Nations Security Council in all matters relating to Bashir’s regime, including his genocidal slaughter of the Dinka tribe—”

“Enough.” Brenneman had turned away from the window without warning. “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear any more.”

Everyone in the room fell silent. His anguish was plain for all to see. If Harper had to guess, he would have said that the president’s grief was surpassed only by his barely suppressed rage.

“Sir, I understand that you’re upset,” Harper continued quickly. All he could think about was cutting off Stralen before he could do any more damage. “My apologies if this is repetitious…but going after Bashir directly would be a huge mistake. There’s no stressing that enough. It is not a viable or responsible course of—”

“Upset?” The president stared at him with a blank, uncomprehending gaze. The deputy director instantly realized that he had missed something in Brenneman’s tone of voice moments ago and, in doing so, had made a monumental error in judgment. Before he could take it back, though, Brenneman continued in a voice tinged with the wrong kind of amusement. “My niece has just been murdered by a pack of savages in a third-world country, and you think I’m upset? That’s very perceptive of you, John. Thank you for shedding some light on the situation.”

“Sir, I…”

The president held up a hand to stop him, then shifted his gaze to a far corner of the room, his face fixed in a tight expression of barely suppressed fury. “That will be all for now, John. Would you step outside, please? Josh will come and find you if we need anything else.”

Harper opened his mouth to respond, hoping to repair the damage, but nothing came out, and he could see that Brenneman would not tolerate any further argument. He shot a quick glance at his boss and saw that Andrews was studying him with a mixed expression of frustration, sympathy…and, perhaps worst of all, futility. He didn’t have to look at Stralen to know he would see something very contrary to that in the general’s eyes.

Harper knew when he was beaten. With a sinking feeling, he acknowledged the president’s order in silence. Then he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door gently behind him.

It was still raining when Jonathan Harper stepped outside a few moments later—a warm, soft rain that seemed to drift out of nowhere. He walked past the agents standing post, down the steps, and continued on the drive, unconsciously trying to put some distance between himself and the president’s cabin. Tilting his head back, he looked up at the empty black sky and closed his eyes. His head was buzzing, and he was completely unaware of the inclement weather, even though the rain was dripping down his face and his suit coat was already soaked through.

Harper was stunned to the core by what had just taken place. He had been advising David Brenneman for nearly six years, and in all that time he had never seen the man behave in such an irrational way. That’s very perceptive of you, John. Thank you for shedding some light on the situation. Harper regretted his verbal miscue, but it probably hadn’t worsened matters so much as exposed their already dire nature. Brenneman was allowing his grief and anger to cloud his judgment, and Stralen’s provocative statements—none of which were based on confirmed facts—were only making things worse.

Harper had lost track of how long he had been standing there when he heard voices behind him. He turned to see Director Andrews walking down the steps, followed closely by Joshua McCabe. The two men paused at the top of the drive to shake hands, and even from a distance, Harper could see that they were both subdued, their shoulders slumped beneath a shared, invisible burden. As he looked on, McCabe turned to go back into the cabin. Then the director lifted a hand in his deputy’s direction and pointed toward the Tahoe parked nearby. A minute later they were both seated inside the large truck.

Harper was tempted to apologize for the damage he had caused, but decided it would be better to let the other man breach the awkward silence.

The director pulled a linen handkerchief from his inner jacket pocket and used it to methodically wipe the rain from his face. When he finally spoke, he did so quietly and without turning to face his subordinate.

“You didn’t help us in there, John,” he said. “You didn’t help us at all. You did your homework, and I thought it might have been enough to get through to Brenneman. But it would’ve been better if you’d quit while you were ahead and given him some time to mull things over. By pushing it, you went and played right into Stralen’s hands. Made him seem almost reasonable. Now, thanks to you, we’re on the defensive.”

Harper bit his tongue, though he was sorely tempted to remind the other man of his own meager contribution to the heated argument inside the building. Instead, he simply agreed quietly.

Andrews acknowledged the words with a short nod, though judging by the testy look on his face, he could tell that his deputy’s apology was less than sincere. “Look, I think I managed to talk him down a bit,” he continued. “At least for the time being. Of course, Stralen is a problem for us, and he’s not going away. He’s probably still in there trying to undo everything I just said.”

“He doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about,” Harper snapped, his demeanor of feigned calm slipping away with the mere mention of the other man. “I can’t believe he doesn’t understand the consequences that come with killing a head of state, especially when you don’t have ironclad proof to justify direct action. In this day and age, it just isn’t done.”

Andrews shook his head wearily. “Don’t sell Stralen short, John. He’s a very smart man who understands more than you might think. And he has a great deal of power at his fingertips. You would be wise to remember that. More to the point, he has the president’s ear. He can’t be discounted simply because you don’t like or agree with him.”

“That isn’t the issue, Bob. The man is beyond dangerous. You heard what he was saying in there. I send out a warning flare about getting into a pissing contest with Russian and China, and he does his best to shoot it right down.” Harper shook his head. “Normally, the president would never consider something so crazy. He just doesn’t want to listen to reason right now…. He’s too wrapped up in what happened to his niece. Too emotionally invested.”

The director didn’t seem to hear. His mouth was pursed into a sullen frown; his dark eyes locked on the seat in front of him.

“What is it?” Harper said. “Jesus Christ, you weren’t even paying attention.”

Andrews shook his head. “Wrong,” he said. “I’ve registered every word out of your mouth.”

“Then you’re keeping something from me, Bob, because you normally don’t go blank like you did a minute ago.”

Andrews sat in silence for a long moment, that expression of brooding dismay again dropping over his features like a curtain. Finally he let out a deep, heavy sigh.

“The secretary of state is this close to jumping on board with Stralen,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger slightly apart.

Harper stared at him, incredulous. “Brynn Fitzgerald?” he said. “Do you know this for a fact?”

“It’s my informed read,” Andrews said. “I spoke with her before heading over here. Actually, she called me after speaking to the president.”

“You’ve got to be mistaken. She’s one of the most reasonable people in Washington. How could she suddenly be that knee-jerk?”

“I don’t know,” Andrews said. “Loyalty to the president? Or maybe the residual effect of having been taken hostage in Pakistan…and watching one of her good friends cold-bloodedly shot to death in the process. Whatever explains it, we’re seeing a lot of clouded judgment around us.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s take this thing a step at a time, John. It isn’t as if we have a choice, anyway. You have to remember that the president’s had only an hour or so to soak it all in. Besides, I think I managed to talk some sense into him. At least for now. Needless to say, we’re going to have to watch this closely. If he decides to do something drastic, it’s going to come back on us, whether we were involved or not. That is just the way it goes, and I have no intention of letting the Agency take the fall for something Stralen talked him into doing.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Harper replied, relieved to see that Andrews had recovered some of his mettle. He was going to need it if the general wasn’t content to let things lie, and Harper had a bad feeling that the director was right. Stralen was probably still in there pleading his case to the president. “So how do you want to handle this?”

The director thought for a moment. “In my opinion, the best way to defuse the situation is to give Brenneman the man who carried out the actual attack. An eye for an eye, so to speak.”

“I agree. And given his current pickle with the World Court, I feel pretty confident that Bashir will hand him over without too much of a fight. After all, that would be the best way to prove that he had nothing to do with the raid…and a chance for a little diplomatic quid pro quo.”

“You think he’d push for us to make overtures to the ICC?”

“Bashir would want something in return for his cooperation.” Harper shrugged. “I’m sure he’d have no shortage of bargaining chips.”

Andrews looked skeptical. “Do you really believe that he’s innocent of this? Because I have to say, John, it doesn’t seem likely, and you didn’t exactly convince the president, either.”

“I just don’t see how doing something this brutal and direct would benefit the regime in Khartoum,” Harper reasoned. “Bashir wouldn’t see it, either. He knows how to work the international community. Remember his pilgrimage to Mecca? This is with the ICC warrant pinned to his back. And if that wasn’t defiant enough, he attends the Arab Union summit in Qatar after saying his devout prayers. Complains that the ICC’s decisions are biased against Africans. I mean, can you picture it? He’s a fugitive from justice, and there you have Kaddafi holding his hand in a gesture of brotherhood, calling the ICC a terrorist body. Meanwhile, the UN secretary-general’s squirming with embarrassment at the dais.”

Andrews sighed. “I remember that junket. He can be like Saddam in his heyday.”

“That’s exactly my point, Bob. He knows what he can get away with, and the murder of the president’s niece does not fall into that category. Of course, he’ll deny it, anyway—I’m surprised he hasn’t done so already. But Bashir will have to understand he needs to deliver the goods…the man who actually carried out the attack. That is the person we need to get our hands on. That is the person who can stop this from going any further than it already has.”

“And what if you’re wrong?” Andrews asked quietly. “Or if Bashir decides not to play along for some reason? What then?”

Harper mused over the questions for a moment, but the answers were already clear. “If it gets to that stage, we’ll have no choice but to find the man ourselves. Otherwise, Stralen will have exactly what he needs to pressure the president into making a bad decision. Omar al-Bashir may be a devil, but he’s the devil we know, and we have no idea who might be waiting in the wings to take his place.”

Andrews paused to let that sink in. “I’m not arguing, John. But do you have any idea how difficult it would be to pick one man out of Sudan? We don’t even have a name, let alone a face. If Bashir doesn’t give him up, who is capable of going in there to find him?”

“I would have thought that was obvious.”

Andrews finally shifted in his seat to look at his subordinate. His gaze was steady and flat, completely unreadable. “I thought he was out.”

“He is out. He was out the last couple of times we needed him, too, but that didn’t stop him from coming back. If we’re forced to get involved on a deeper level, I’d rather have him running point than anyone else. Besides, he’s already over there.”

“In Africa?”

“Right,” Harper said. “He’s been working with Blackwater for the last couple of months.”

“Private security?” Andrews seemed surprised by this. “Is it one of our operations?”

The Departments of Defense and State regularly contracted out security work, including the safeguarding of foreign leaders and dignitaries overseas, to independent outfits through various governmental agencies, including the Bureau of Diplomatic Security—which technically fell under the purview of the DOS.

Harper shrugged. “I think it’s direct between Blackwater and the government of South Africa, though we might have been consulted,” he said. “Last I heard, he was running one of their mobile security units.”

The director frowned, clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of bringing Ryan Kealey back into the fold. “You think you can talk him into it? The last time he did something for us, it nearly got him killed. Not to mention the other part.”

Harper nodded briskly. “He’ll get on board, one way or another.” He sounded more confident than he probably should have, but he didn’t want to give the director a chance to change his mind. What Harper hadn’t said was that Andrews was right. Everything rested on what he had so tactfully described as the other part. The death of Naomi Kharmai, and its lingering effect on him. It was potentially the single greatest obstacle to drawing Kealey back into the fold, and Harper knew that when the time came, he would have to approach with the utmost care. To that end, he’d already arranged for a meeting in Baltimore with someone who could be of immense help.

Of course, the hope was that it wouldn’t come down to getting Kealey involved, but somehow, Harper already knew that it would. The only question was how long the president would be able to stand up to Stralen, and what disastrous course of action might result from that uncomfortable union.