Andrew Britton: The Exile

“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.