Presence of Mine Enemies Page 11
Ron Carter shifted uneasily in his chair, seeming to hesitate for a long moment before replying. “We have grown. . .concerned, over the course of the last couple years. That the BND may itself be compromised by Russian intelligence. Following the re-unification of East and West Germany and the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian services retained a lot of assets in the former Democratic Republic. Former Stasi and otherwise, a whole network of contacts across the now-unified country. The German government has always struggled to filter them out from their security establishment, and we’ve come to believe that their influence in the BND has grown rather than diminished over the years. Agents recruiting agents and the like. I believe mention of this has been made in reports which ended up on your desk.”
It had, the CIA director thought—and he’d taken special note of it. Berlin Station had been his beat, back in the day, running agents into East Germany. He knew the ground well.
“That still doesn’t explain why we had to reach out to DIA resources to run it for us,” he pressed, his eyes never leaving Carter’s face. The analyst had spent time in Air Force intelligence prior to joining the Agency, working first for the Intelligence Directorate before being shanghaied over to the ‘Dark Side.’ The Clandestine Service.
“I don’t know all the details,” Carter replied, still seeming ill at ease with the discussion. “You’d have to speak to Director Kranemeyer to get the full picture. What I know is that we wanted a direct conduit to the Bundeswehr, and following his promotion, General Müller was in a position to provide us with an accurate portrait of the mindset of the Command Council regarding Russian activities in their near-abroad.”
“And now he’s dead,” Lay observed flatly, feeling as if a dark shadow had passed over them. Was it coincidence? “Along with our officer.”
It was hazardous to believe in coincidence in this business—equally so to connect dots where none existed.
“Speaking of Kranemeyer,” he went on after a moment, “where is the director? I haven’t seen him today.”
Carter didn’t look up, studiously shuffling his notes in the folder on his lap. “Kranemeyer? He took the holiday.”
5:11 P.M. Central European Summer Time
The apartment
Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium
Maintaining a cover, it was the hardest thing he had ever done in all his years with the CIA. Staying alive, accomplishing your mission. Trying not to lose yourself in the process. That line between who you were supposed to be, and who you were—so easily blurred.
So hard to reclaim.
“Put her out of your mind, brother. She’s only a distraction to you now,” Harry said, squeezing Reza’s shoulder as he passed behind him, circling around the table until he was facing the college student. He smiled at him, his face betraying none of his inner revulsion. “You'll find far more beautiful women when you reach your destination. Sisters who have joined the struggle, and ghanima alike.”
Ghanima. The spoils of war. Slaves.
“I know,” the young man said, as if trying to convince himself. “I still shouldn’t just. . .leave like that. I should talk with her, try to get her to see—”
“No,” Harry shook his head. Another time with her, and he would spill everything he knew—that much he could read in the kid’s eyes. “It is regrettable that things should come about as they did, but what’s done is done. And it had to be done, you know that.”
“I know, I just—”
“Once you are there, my brother, all this will seem a distant memory—paling in comparison to the joy, the brotherhood you will know among your fellow mujahideen in the Philippines. Trust me on this, it is not something you can understand without actually being there—as soon you will be. I only wish that I could join you there, to be with you in that moment when you first—”
Harry heard his mobile phone vibrate against the table top, his voice breaking off as he reached over, sliding his finger across the screen to reveal a text message. Yassin.
“Is everything all right?” he heard Reza ask, his sudden movement jarring the college student from his own thoughts.
It took Harry a long moment to respond, his eyes focused on Yassin’s text—a cold chill seeming to wash over him in that moment. A premonition of evil.
“Come to the boxing club as soon as you can. We need to talk.”
Chapter 7
9:21 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time
Chandler, Oklahoma
Independence Day. Roy Coftey smiled despite himself, watching a red Chevelle drive by the reviewing stand as the parade began, slowly but surely, to take shape—a smooth-cheeked drum major standing perhaps thirty feet away, high-schoolers in marching uniform shuffling slowly into formation in the July sun. National Guard soldiers in front of them, clustered around a desert-tan Humvee from the armory in Tulsa.
It reminded the senator of the parades he remembered as a kid, through the center of a small town which hadn’t gotten that much bigger in the decades since. Americana.
“It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?” he heard a voice ask—his head coming round to see Bernard Kranemeyer standing there a few feet behind him. No sound having betrayed his arrival. Not bad for a man with one leg. “The good old US of A.”
A faintly ironic smile touched the lips of the Director of the Clandestine Service as he spoke the words, coming forward to stand at Coftey’s side. A pair of dark sunglasses masking eyes the color of anthracite.
And just as unreadable.
“This right here—this is what they tell us we’re defending, Roy,” he continued quietly, his voice not audible more than a few feet away. “That for which we both once volunteered to lay down our lives. Places like this little town. America. A nostalgic vision of a past that never was. The red, white, and blue—fireworks in the park on the Fourth of July. The Star-Spangled Banner, sung by a off-key debutante who's been told she’ll ‘make it big’ some day. The ritual.”
5:34 P.M. Central European Summer Time
The boxing club
Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium
There were moments in an operation when you sensed that everything had begun to fall apart—that the ground had shifted irrevocably beneath you.
A sixth sense warning you of danger. Warning you to run, far and fast. Get away.
That moment was now, Harry thought, forcing his pace to slow as he approached the gym, his eyes flickering from one side of the street to the next.
But running wasn’t an option, not with all that now hung in the balance. There were innocent lives enough on his conscience as it was, enough for a lifetime. Far more than any man should ever have to bear. Any honorable man. . .and perhaps that was the heart of it, wasn’t it?
The choices we make.
Never so clear as in hindsight, the choice already made—the damage, already done. Perhaps it was all a mirage, looking back upon your past—thinking you could have gone any other way. Choice itself, an illusion. Fate, forcing your hand.
Perhaps. . .
He took a final look around the street as he reached the door, looking for any signs of surveillance. Any sign that he might be walking into a trap. Nothing.
Which didn’t mean a thing, as he knew far too well.
Harry pushed open the door of the boxing club, peeling a few euros off the roll in the back pocket of his jeans and handing them to the attendant as he went in.
He’d changed into Western clothes before leaving the apartment—less likely to attract attention in this setting. To be noticed, if something went wrong.
If. Something already had, after all, or he wouldn’t be here.
The locker room they had used for prayers the previous week was at the very back of the building and he made his way toward it, moving like a ghost in the semi-darkness.
The insistent, throbbing sound of the ventilation fans masking the sounds of his movement, a vibrant hum mingled with the sound of men sparring, of gloves impacting sweat-soaked flesh. Cheer
s of exultation, ringing distantly in his ears. So very far away.
His world narrowing to the space just ahead of him, his eyes burning with a fierce intensity as he approached the door to the lockers, putting his hand up against it.
Hesitating only a second before pushing it open. The moment of truth.
“Salaam alaikum, my brother,” he heard Yassin’s voice announce, looking up to see his friend there, in the center of the room, flanked by a half-dozen young men his own age. Just standing there, waiting.
Marwan, a few feet away.
“Wa’ alaikum as-salaam,” he responded, forcing a smile to his face. Every fiber of his body on alert as he met Yassin’s eyes—feeling the boy quail under his gaze. “So. . .who is going to tell me what’s going on here?”
9:26 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time
Chandler, Oklahoma
“There’s nothing wrong with ritual,” Coftey said, gazing at his old friend. They shared a kinship, based in their mutual service of their country—Coftey in Vietnam, Kranemeyer in Iraq, where he’d left the lower half of his right leg.
But he’d never seen him like this before.
“No,” the CIA man went on after a long reflective pause, “nothing wrong with ritual, save what it represents. The empty form of a nation which has lost its way, the jealously-guarded husk of that which has perished long before, quietly and without alarm. It's been true of all the great empires, all through the ages, and we'd be fools to think ourselves any different.”
He smiled again, a bitter edge creeping into his voice. “We've both seen it, you and I, going to war—realizing our nation hadn't followed us there. That for everyone back home, nothing had changed. Your generation was shunned, mine feted—but the end result. . .might as well have been the same. These people out here, they don't understand what's going on out there, half a world away, and they don't care to. It's enough to call everyone who's been there a 'hero' and go on about their lives as if it wasn’t real.”
Plus ça change, Coftey thought, hearing echoes of himself in the former Delta Force sergeant. Their wars, so very different. . .yet so very much the same.
“It isn’t real,” he said after a moment, “not really, not for them.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Kranemeyer shook his head, his eyes still focused upon the marchers. “I didn’t give my leg—all these years of my life—for a ritual, a husk.”
“And yet here we both are, all the same.”
“I’m still here,” Kranemeyer said, pulling his sunglasses off as he turned to face Coftey, his eyes flashing like dark coals of fire, “for one reason, and one reason alone. Not for the flag, not for this country, but because there are still men out there, men just like you and I—doing what we did. And they deserve to know that there’s someone back here who gets it—who’s going to be standing there, ready, when these people decide that a ‘thank you for your service’ entitles them to tell them how to do their jobs.”
“Like they have now,” Coftey observed grimly, looking away out toward the waters of the lake. They’d been down this road together before, plunging them both into the kind of darkness to which he would far rather have not returned. The catastrophe which his change of party affiliation had been intended to avert.
“Like they have now,” Kranemeyer repeated, looking him steadfastly in the face. “So, what’s the plan?”
5:47 P.M.
The boxing club
Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium
“No,” Harry heard himself say, his mind racing as he struggled to process what he’d just been told. To find a way out.
“But Ibrahim, you have to understand—”
“No,” he repeated, his eyes blazing as he turned back on Yassin, “you have to understand. Once the caliphate was established in Sham, that changed everything. And now, as in the days of the Prophet, the faithful have an obligation to rally to its defense, something you cannot do here.”
“The caliphate is in ruins,” Marwan observed flatly, his gaze seeming to pierce Harry through and through. “The time for its defense has come and gone. We—”
“Raqqa has fallen, but those who pledged bayah to its banners still fight on. And we must join them, to lend our strength to their struggle. God has not given us this glimpse of paradise only for it to be taken away, like this.” He paused, his attention shifting once more to Yassin. “Your tickets are already purchased, and I have already reached out to our brothers in Mindanao to be expecting your arrival. There will be no further discussion of this.”
He glanced around at the young men standing around them, knowing in that moment just how hopeless this all was. The mark of any good operator was the ability to stay one step ahead of a rapidly-evolving situation, stay aright even as the ground crumbled from around you. Be careful where you put your feet.
Manipulate the chaos to your will. Control it.
But this was already escalating far beyond his control. And he’d put more than one foot wrong.
“Given time and money—I may be able to secure safe passage for the rest of you to fight beside your brothers,” he said as he met the gaze of the younger men. Lying through his teeth. This had been meant to be a one-off, get them on a plane and leave town. But that wasn’t going to work, not now—and deep down he knew it. “But you and Reza must go now. There can be no—”
“Why?” Marwan demanded, the young Arab’s dark eyes flashing as he cut Harry off. “Why should Yassin—why should any of us—leave, when we can take part in Allah’s struggle right where we are? We can travel anywhere, strike at will. Why would we give all of that up?”
Stay in control, an inner voice warned Harry, recognizing the threat even as it rose. The young wolf, challenging the leader of the pack for dominance.
“What is this truly about?” he demanded, taking a step into the younger man—dangerously close, watching his eyes for any signal of danger. “Is this about your own glory? Are you too good to give your life alongside your brothers, as so many brave mujahideen already have? Are you too proud to die as just another one of the nameless shaheed on the battlefield?”
A telling blow, and it struck home—Marwan flinching before the accusation. “No, that’s not true, that’s—”
“If you are to martyr yourself, you want it to be here, don’t you?” Harry continued, pressing his advantage. “Here where it will make you famous, where your name will be repeated on the lips of every kaffir newshost for weeks to come. Is that what is important to you? Is it?”
“No!” the young man spat in exasperation and anger, turning away from Harry—moving back toward the wall, trying to give himself space as he found his voice.
He turned, his gaze flickering from Harry to his brothers and back again, his finger stabbing out in a gesture of indignation. “Those men you fought beside in Syria—the men who died, do you think anyone here noticed? Do you think anyone cared? No, because the West doesn’t care, not unless it comes to them—to their door. On their streets.”
A low rumbling murmur of approbation rippled through the small group in response to his retort, making it clear. The pack had chosen.
Perhaps it had been a foregone conclusion, from the very beginning. Perhaps he had known better than to think he could handle this so effortlessly. Absolve his sins.
“And just how do you propose to do that?” Harry demanded, his gaze never leaving Marwan. His voice still slightly mocking. Change tactics.
The young man’s dark face flushed with an angry heat, a curse escaping his lips as he half-turned away, his hand slipping into the duffel bag on the footlocker behind him. Coming back out with something in it—a dark, deathly shape Harry recognized all too well.
“With this.”
Gun.
9:50 A.M. Mountain Time
Chandler, Oklahoma
“You don’t have a plan,” Kranemeyer went on after a long, painful moment, staring earnestly into Coftey’s eyes. “Do you, Roy?”
It was an accusation, not a qu
estion. He’d known Kranemeyer long enough to tell the difference.
“I’m doing what I can,” he responded, a sharp, defensive edge creeping into his voice. “The intelligence community has few friends in Washington these days, all the old enemies are coming right back out of the woodwork. The President has never been a fan of the Agency, and now after the firestorm which has embroiled the administration following the debacle in the Sinai, it’s all become personal. You’re being backed into a corner.”
“That much is obvious. The question is, are you in our corner?”
“Of course I am, Barney,” Coftey shot back, swearing softly beneath his breath. This was what D.C. did to people, sooner or later. Sowed suspicion, turned friends and allies upon each other. As inevitable as the rising of the sun. “Always have been—you know that.”
“I know we’re running out of time.”
“I’m working on it, I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s going to be a close thing, that I can promise you. We’re going to have a fight just to—”
His voice broke off suddenly as Kranemeyer shot him a warning look, glancing over his shoulder even as Melody approached the two of them, her blonde hair falling in waves over her bare shoulders as she came across the street.
“I’ll see you later on, Roy,” the CIA man said softly, replacing his sunglasses as he turned away. “At the farm.”
“Who was that?” he heard Melody ask as she came up to him, her hand sliding around his waist. Her voice sounding distant, somehow. Far away.
“A friend,” he replied after a long, hesitant moment. He thought.
5:54 P.M.