Andrew Britton - The Exile

“And then?”

“That depends on whether or not I can identify him. Maybe seeing his face again will jog something loose. If I can pick him out, I’ll pass the name up the line, along with a detailed report. If I can’t…Well, we’ll just have to see. Either way, I’m going to send these recordings to Langley. They’ll run the video through the facial recognition software. Also, if the man’s name is anywhere on file, they’ll find it.”

“But you’re sure-”

“It’s in there somewhere,” Holland said, anticipating the question. As he stared at the small pile of disks, he knew they contained the information he had been seeking all day. It was strange to be that close and yet still not know. “ He’s in there somewhere. I’ve never been more certain of anything. And once we find out who he is, we’ll have some answers.”

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA

Jonathan Harper sat in the corner booth of the small bar and fought the temptation to stare at the door. He had ordered food, but he had no appetite. He had ordered a drink, but it remained untouched, as he did not want the alcohol to affect his judgment, to lower his guard. He had never been more conflicted.

Part of him-a very big part-wanted the man he was waiting for to make an appearance, as that was the whole reason he had traveled 8,000 miles to the South African capital. Another part of him wanted to get up and leave before he was forced to confront his old friend, a term he used-at least these days-with more than a little uncertainty. He’d been wrestling with this inner conflict for the past seventy-two hours at the very least. Much of that time had been spent debating the pros and cons of traveling to Pretoria, but even now, with the decision made, he still wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing. His apprehension was only natural, he knew, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear, and the moment of truth was fast approaching.

It had been almost a year since he had last seen Ryan Kealey, but he could remember their last meeting with crystal clarity, if only because of what it had led to. At Harper’s request, they had met at a restaurant in downtown Washington. It was three months after an operation in Pakistan that had ended with the recovery of a senior U.S. official and the death of Amari Saifi, an Algerian terrorist who, with the help of a former Pakistani general, had struck at the heart of the U.S. government.

Brynn Fitzgerald, still acting secretary of state at the time, had been kidnapped after a bloody attack on her motorcade that left 18 people dead. One had been the head of her security detail. The other had been Lee Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and a college friend, who’d caught a bullet between her eyes.

It had taken Kealey and his team four days to track Fitzgerald down, and then they had moved in to extract her, assisted by a team of 24 Special Forces soldiers and some heavy support from the air.

The mission was successful, but Fitzgerald’s rescue had not been without serious cost. Kealey was gravely wounded in the rescue attempt, and a fellow operative, Naomi Kharmai, died as an indirect result of the operation. She was killed-or presumably killed, as her body was never recovered-by Javier Machado, a retired CIA case officer with extraordinary connections throughout Europe and Southeast Asia. Machado had offered to help Kealey find Fitzgerald in exchange for a favor, but when the favor had proved too costly, Kealey had improvised, and Kharmai had paid the ultimate price.

Over the past couple of months Harper had realized that was still accruing unwanted interest. For he’d become increasingly convinced it was Patterson’s death that had sent Fitzgerald down the slippery slope of illogic into the place where fools like Stralen thrived.

At any rate, once the smoke cleared, an in-depth investigation-headed by the FBI and supported behind the scenes by the CIA-was launched into Kharmai’s death, but not in time to bring any closure to the matter. The one person who might have been able to provide some meaningful answers, Machado, had already disappeared without a trace, abandoning his home in Spain, his wife, and his surviving daughter in the process. Kealey, after a lengthy convalescence, had disappeared in turn, and that was when the bodies began to pile up. An Arab fundamentalist in Paris, a money launderer in Antwerp, a smuggler in Karachi…It was the start of a series of killings that, over the course of the next several months, were to work their way across much of Machado’s former territory. Presumably, the trail ended with Machado himself, although his body-like that of Naomi Kharmai-was never recovered.

This missing link did not affect the way Harper viewed the outcome. He knew Ryan Kealey better than anyone else, and there was no doubt in his mind that he had managed to track the Spaniard down. To the deputy director’s way of thinking, the absence of a body only served as additional proof that Kealey had managed to locate-and eliminate-his primary target. Harper had never been more certain of anything.

He caught himself staring at the door again. Giving in to his jangling nerves, he lifted his scotch, drank half of it down, and thought back to the last time he had seen the younger man. It was three months after Naomi’s death, a month before the killings began.

Toward the end of October a private ceremony was held at the White House, the purpose of which was to posthumously award Naomi Kharmai the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civil award in the country. Kealey refused to attend the ceremony, though he reluctantly agreed to meet Harper in the city later that day. When he finally arrived at the agreed upon restaurant, more than an hour late, Harper was shocked by his appearance. The bullet that nearly killed him had stripped at least thirty pounds from his already lean frame, leaving him looking more like the walking dead than one of the country’s top counterterrorism agents. They ordered food, though Kealey left his meal untouched as Harper brought him up to speed on recent developments in the ongoing investigation.

Javier Machado was still missing, but one of his associates had turned up in Paris, a Hezbollah lieutenant by the name of Yassir Rabbani. As Harper described the circumstances, he waited for the inevitable volley of questions, but Kealey simply sat there listening. Later Harper would recall that the only time he had really reacted was at the mention of Rabbani’s name, which he’d filed away with a slow, steady blink of his eyes. After another twenty minutes of awkward, one-sided conversation, they parted ways at the door.

And that was it. The last time Harper had seen him. Less than a month later Rabbani was dead, soon to be followed by the smuggler, the money launderer, and eventually, Machado himself. The dominoes falling one by one by one…

A gust of cold air brought Harper back to the present now. He looked up as the door was pulled open, but a young woman’s indignant shriek of feigned offense, followed by a burst of drunken laughter, quickly dispelled his interest. He took another sip of his scotch and tried to relax. It was an impossible task; there was too much to think about. Too much to anticipate. Harper knew that the younger man wasn’t happy with the way Naomi had been pulled into the previous assignment, and as an extension, he felt sure that Kealey blamed him, at least in part, for what had happened to her. Or for what he thought had happened to her, anyway.

But not as much as he blamed himself. There could be no doubt of that. It was precisely as Harper had told Allison Dearborn. As long as Harper had known him, Ryan Kealey had made a habit of taking too much on his shoulders, including the welfare of the people he worked with. In Naomi’s case, the fact that they had been far more than coworkers served only to compound the guilt Kealey had felt in the wake of her death. At least, that had been Harper’s impression during their final hour or two in Washington. Now, more than a year later, Ryan Kealey was essentially a stranger to him, and the deputy director had to rely on Allison’s profile to guide him, if not tell him what to expect when the younger man finally showed up, assuming he even did.