Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (21 page)

Olivia looked back at the map and she rubbed
her eyes, shaking her head because she didn’t believe it herself.
“He’s there with some kind of college program. He’s a senior. He’s
volunteering. He’s teaching kids.” Olivia felt herself falling
apart as she thought about her little brother. She always thought
of him as little. She’d seen him mostly as a kid, and not as much
as a teenager, since she was already off in college or pursuing a
career. She’d had a particularly hard time thinking of him as a
college student. She shook her head again and turned to hide the
tears that were starting to make their way down her cheeks.

Eric turned to Barry and gave him a nod.
Barry was now in charge of the project.

Eric stood up and put a hand on Olivia’s
shoulder. “Come with me. Let’s go grab one of the other conference
rooms. Let’s call—”

“Austin,” Olivia said. “His name’s
Austin.”

“Come on.”

Olivia stood, fishing for her cell phone in
her purse as she did. She couldn’t get used to not having it with
her.

Eric put a hand on her back and guided her
toward the door. “It’s okay. I’m sure he’s fine. Let’s call him
from another room.

Eric guided Olivia into one of the small
conference rooms. They sat down and Olivia dialed Austin’s number.
It took an uncomfortably long time for the phone to work its way
through the connections. It rang a few times and cut over to
voicemail. She looked at the phone and shakily dialed again. Eric
patiently watched. She put the phone back to her ear, waited, let
it ring, and got voicemail again.

Shaking her head, she placed the phone back
in its cradle and looked at Eric. “Voicemail.”

“That’s okay. It’s okay.” He put a hand
across hers. “Listen to me. I know you’re fearing the worst. But
the worst almost never happens. You hear me?”

She nodded, knowing Eric’s argument was
lacking but she had nothing to say about it. “What do I do?”

“Just be calm, Olivia, okay?”

Olivia took a few deep breaths. “It’s my
brother.”

“We don’t know anything yet, right?”

Olivia nodded. “I know.”

“Okay. I understand why you’re worried. I’d
be worried too if my brother wasn’t such a dipshit.”

Olivia laughed through her stress and nodded
again. “I love him.”

“I know. He’s your brother. You have a right
to be worried. When was the last time you talked to him?”

Olivia looked down, and a tear rolled over
her cheek. “Before he left for Uganda.” She started to cry.

Eric leaned over and hugged her.

After a few long minutes, Olivia sniffled up
the last of her tears and sat up straight.

“It’s okay to cry,” Eric told her.

She nodded and gave him half a smile.

“Have you talked to him through email or
Facebook? Anything like that?”

“Yes,” Olivia nodded. “Of course. Maybe a
week ago, he sent me some pictures.”

“Has anyone talked to him in the last few
days?”

“Maybe my dad,” Olivia answered.

“Your dad? Can we call him?”

Olivia picked up the phone and dialed her
father’s number.

On the third ring, Paul Cooper answered,
“Hello?”

“Dad, this is Olivia.”

“Is something wrong?”

Olivia started to cry again.

“What’s wrong?” Paul asked.

Eric gestured for Olivia to give him the
phone. Calmly, he said, “Mr. Cooper, this is Eric Murchison. I’m
Olivia’s supervisor.”

“What’s wrong?” Paul asked. “Is Olivia
okay?”

“It’s okay, Mr. Cooper. Olivia is fine.
Everything is all right here.”

“It’s not all right,” Paul said, getting
impatient. “She’s crying.”

“Yes, listen.” Eric spoke slowly and calmly,
“You know where Olivia works, so you’ll understand there’s a limit
to what I can and can’t say. But I’ll tell you as much as I can,
okay?”

“Alright.”

“Olivia is worried about your son,
Austin.”

“Austin? Why, what happened?” Paul was
clearly concerned.

“Nothing that we know of, Mr. Cooper.” Eric
paused. “As far as we know, there isn’t anything at all wrong.” He
paused again, thinking about what he was going to say next. “Olivia
says that your son is in eastern Uganda this summer, teaching kids,
is that right?”

“Yes,” Paul answered. “That’s right. He’s in
Kapchorwa.”

“We’re investigating some events in eastern
Uganda, and the name of that city came up. Olivia grew very
concerned. That’s why we called you.” Eric nodded at Olivia and
smiled reassuringly. “When was the last time you talked to your
son?”

“Several days ago. Does this have to do with
that Ebola epidemic?”

Eric hesitated before continuing. “We tried
to call him, and we can’t get through.”

“No,” Paul replied, “there’s no service in
Kapchorwa.”

“How do you get hold of him when you need
to?” Eric asked.

A long pause followed. “I don’t know,” Paul
admitted. “Heidi, my wife, has been trying to get through to him.
She’s been worried. Tell me, Mr. Murchison, was she right to
worry?”

On the outside of the Tyvek suit, in a pocket
Najid had constructed from tape and a piece of plastic, his
satellite phone started vibrating. Few people had that number. One
of them was his father, who was too far gone to use a phone without
assistance. One was Dr. Kassis. Rashid was another. The last was
Firas Hakimi. Najid knew what the call was about.

“Speak,” Najid said, raising the phone to his
facemask.

“You know who this is, I trust.” It was the
voice of Hakimi.

“I do,” answered, Najid.

Hakimi said, “Then you know that I am calling
because your friend in Lahore chose to tell me about your bribes
before he left this life.”

“That is unfortunate. Killing him was not
necessary.” Najid was disdainful over Hakimi’s perpetual inability
to face any situation pragmatically. Passion and extremism were the
only things that Hakimi understood.

“It will also be unfortunate for you, Najid.
Did you expect that you could just buy a hundred and eleven
fighters with Western passports and that it would go
unnoticed?”

“I did not.”

Hakimi didn’t like that answer and let his
silence grow ominous before saying, “You have been a generous
supporter and a friend. Explain to me what you have done, before I
decide your fate.”

Najid resisted the urge to tell the upstart
leader of the movement that he was nothing more than a charismatic
puppet, and instead replied, “The questions you ask cannot be
answered on a telephone. I will send an emissary to meet your man
at the usual place. He will have words for only your ears. Please
listen to him before you decide what to do with me. Afterward, I
assure you, I will be at your disposal.”

“And if I wish to hear these words from your
lips?” Hakimi was not happy.

“You cannot get to where I am before the time
comes for me to leave. I can only tell you that what I do, I do to
further our common cause.”

“You are dangerously ambitious for a man who
should be kneeling to serve.”

Najid knew his father’s wealth strengthened
his position and made kneeling to Hakimi unnecessary. “The details
and depth of my service will become clear when you have spoken to
my emissary. He will bring with him the time and place where we can
meet and come to an understanding. I assure you, you will not be
displeased when you know what I have done.”

“It is not for you to decide unilaterally
what our brotherhood will do operationally,” scolded Hakimi.

“All I can say is that an opportunity arose
that required decisive choices and swift action. There was no time
to go through our usual process. If what I have done displeases
you, I will kneel and accept punishment for my transgressions.”

“When can I expect this emissary?” Hakimi
asked.

“He will meet your man tomorrow at noon,”
replied Najid.

“See that he is not late.” Hakimi ended the
call.

Najid put his soon-to-be-disposed-of phone
back in his plastic, makeshift pocket. He looked down the dirt road
and spotted one of his recruits hurrying by. “You.”

Jalal stopped and looked up. “Yes.”

“Come here.”

Jalal hurried over and stood in the dirt at
the bottom of the hospital steps.

“Where are you from?” Najid asked.

Jalal shuffled nervously.

In a soothing voice, Najid asked, “Tell me
where you are from.”

“London, sir.”

Najid eyed the recruit. “Do you have faith in
Allah and our cause?”

“Of course.”

“Can you be trusted?”

“I swear to you that I am the most
trustworthy of your men,” answered Jalal.

“Do you know the name, Firas Hakimi?”

Jalal nervously answered, “Yes. Everyone
knows that name.”

“I have a message that I will tell you. You
will deliver this message personally to him and only to him. Do you
know what he looks like?”

“I have seen pictures.” Jalal puffed up with
pride, “I would be honored to do this.”

“Come up here, and listen to me, then.”

Najid started constructing his lie.

Of course he was bright. The CIA wouldn’t
have had such a hard-on for him if he hadn’t been. He was tall. He
was good looking. He was athletic. Exactly the kind of guy they’d
pick to play James Bond in the movies when Daniel Craig got too
old.

But Mitch Peterson never even thought about
acting. Instead, he’d spent most of his twenties enamored with his
gig as a real spy. Over time his love of his job slowly turned to
disappointment and acceptance as he bounced from one do-nothing
post to another, in one backwater country after another.

Kampala? None of his buddies from
Stanford—now making six and seven figures a year—could even find it
on a map.

So he sat in his second-floor office in a
building that looked way too much like a high school, gazing out
over the embassy wall, watching the sun slowly fall toward the
horizon. The trip down the CIA ladder of un-success had a long way
to go, and was going too slowly. He checked his watch.

Why did Langley have to set up a time for a
call? Why not just call? Why make him wait in his office,
pretending to fulfill the duties of a Cultural Attaché, until
five-thirty p.m. local time? Mitch fantasized about a microfilm
message hidden in a coconut at a dead drop, or a few cryptic words
recorded to audio tape that would disappear in a puff of smoke
after being heard.

Mitch sighed.

The reality of encrypted phone calls and
encrypted emails was so mundane.

He wanted to get out of the office, go for a
run, get cleaned up, and go to dinner with his buddy Lou—the son of
a Ugandan politician—and hit that new club Lou kept talking about.
That was all the excitement his CIA gig in Kampala allowed for,
complete with the risk of catching something from the local party
girls in a country rampant with HIV.

Sure, he’d gone afield from time to time,
chasing down some false alarm about an Al Qaeda something-or-other.
The alarms were rare and always led to nothing but a day or two of
driving on dusty roads in humid air thick enough to swim in.

When the telephone rang forty-five minutes
early, he smiled, thinking it was Langley, early for a nice change.
“Peterson, speaking.”

“This is Art, can I come in?”

Art McConnell, who was technically his
assistant, sat at a desk outside his office, basically fulfilling
all the duties of the Cultural Attaché except those where the
Attaché’s physical presence was required.

“Sure, come in. I’m bored to tears waiting on
my five-thirty call.”

The phone clicked.

Mitch laid his phone in its cradle and
watched Art let himself in. “What’s up?”

A haggard Art McConnell crossed the office
and sat down in one of the two chairs in front of Mitch’s desk. “I
need you to talk to this woman I’ve got on hold.”

“What about?”

“Her kid is in some little town up north of
Mbale, and she can’t get hold of him.”

“Jeez, Art. I don’t handle that stuff unless
the kid is injured or dead. He’s not, is he?”

Art shook his head. “I’m sorry about this,
but this woman is relentless. I’ve been on three calls with her for
the better portion of the past three hours.”

“Where’s she calling from?”

“Denver, Colorado.”

Mitch looked at his watch. “Three hours? What
is Denver, something like nine hours behind us?”

“Yes, I checked.”

Mitch leaned back and threw his feet up on
his desk. “So she must be an early riser.”

“Yeah, and she probably already drank a pot
of coffee because she talks a mile a minute.”

Mitch laughed. “That’s why you handle this
kind of stuff.”

Art shook his head. “I can’t handle this one,
Mitch. She’s demanding to talk with you.”

“Me, personally?”

“She asked for you by name.”

“You told her
my
name
?” Mitch
got a little angry.

“It’s public record, Mitch. She dug around
and found your name. I think she dug up information on half the
staff. She certainly talked to enough of them.”

“Why?”

Art shrugged. “I guess she didn’t know who to
contact initially, and she got bounced around a bit before she
landed on me.”

“Why us?”

“The kid is a college student in some kind of
volunteer program through a university.”

“So we’ve got a record of the kid, right?”
Mitch put his feet on the floor and rolled closer toward the
desk.

“Of course,” replied Art.

“And you called the contact with the
group?”

“Yes. But he’s in Kapchorwa. You know how it
is out in the rural parts of the country. I can’t get through. The
power is probably out or something.”

“So tell her to call back.” There. Problem
solved. That’s why Mitch got to sit in the boss’s chair, with an
office that had an actual door, and a window with a view over
boring rooftops.