MALI BORDER WITH BURKINA FASO
WEDNESDAY, 5:19 A.M. GMT
HOURS SINCE THE COUP: FORTY-NINE
The line of gray trucks sent scattering a flock of vultures feasting on the rotten remains of a bushrat. As the convoy rolled up to the border post, it fell dead silent as the drivers simultaneously cut the engines. The roadblock was no more than two dented oil barrels filled with rocks and a board of exposed two-inch nails laid on the road.
The post commander woke up from a nap in the small guardhouse and, as he emerged, annoyed to be roused, wiped his face with his hand and slipped on a black beret. Another soldier asleep under a tree jumped to attention and snatched his rifle that had been lying in the dust. They circled the half-dozen dark green GAZ-66 off-road trucks with
OKTYABRSKY SUPPORT SERVICES
printed on the side in small white letters.
The commander was excited to see them but didn’t show it. This was the third day in a row that Russian trucks had appeared at the border. The drivers were all Indian, or maybe Arabs? But it
was always the same. After completing a full circle, he approached the driver of the lead vehicle.
“What are you hauling?” he demanded as the other soldier pointed his gun menacingly at the cab.
“Mining equipment,” responded the driver in a thick accent with a bored look on his face.
“Where are your passports and import papers?”
“Right here,” said the driver, handing over a fat roll of CFA francs, the local currency, bound by a rubber band.
He exchanged glances with his partner, then accepted the money and deposited the roll into his breast pocket.
“
Oui.
Everything seems to be in order. On your way.
Bon voyage.
”
The soldier set down his gun, slid the nail board off the road, and rolled one of the barrels out of the way. The trucks roared back to life, belching muddy clouds of smoke into the air.
The two soldiers stood in the middle of the road and watched the convoy rumble away. Once the trucks were out of sight, they lazily replaced the barrel and nail board. The commander took off his beret and returned to the guardhouse. The other sauntered back to his tree, dropped the gun in the dirt, and lay down to return to his nap.
The vultures, abandoning their roadkill, took off into the air and followed the convoy of trucks, high above in wide sweeping circles.
U.S. EMBASSY, BAMAKO
WEDNESDAY, 6:05 A.M. GMT
Judd Ryker and Bull Durham woke early, but Larissa James was already dressed and ready to go by the time they came downstairs.
“We can have coffee at the embassy. The briefers are waiting for you. You are here to hit the ground running, right?” She didn’t bother to look up from her BlackBerry to see them both nod. “The car is ready. Let’s go. Yallah!”
Security at the embassy was tighter than normal. At one hundred yards from the fence was the first perimeter. A contract guard checked the underside of the SUV with a mirror on a long pole. Another inspected under the hood, while a third led sniffing dogs around the vehicle.
Once they were through inspection and the first gate closed behind them, IDs were checked. Then a second gate opened to the compound. Inside were manicured lawns, colorful tropical plants, and men with automatic weapons.
As the party of three passed through the embassy’s main foyer,
Larissa acknowledged the staff with a noble nod but no introduction of the visitors. No explanation. At the end of the lobby, they ascended a set of stairs to an unmarked door.
“You’ll need to remove the batteries from your cell phones.”
“What?”
“Your battery. For security. If you want to bring your cell phone in here, you’ll need to take it out.”
Judd shrugged, then he and Durham removed the cases from the back of their phones. They placed the battery in one suit pocket and the rest of the phone in the other.
Satisfied, Larissa inserted her ID card into a slot next to the door and punched in an eight-digit PIN. The door opened with a release of air.
“This is the secure classified area of the embassy. Americans with top secret clearance only.”
They stepped through the door, leaving Mali behind and entering the sterile inner sanctum of U.S. national security.
“Coffee?”
“Hell yes, Larissa,” answered Judd. “A strong one.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Durham.
“Someone will bring it to you,” said Larissa, now pointing down a long hallway. “At the end is the office of the station chief, Cyrus. Judd, you met him at the hospital in Germany, remember? The defense attaché, Colonel Randy Houston, should be in there, too. It’s the black door. They will give you a briefing. Judd, I’m going to make some phone calls. When you are done with Cyrus and Randy, come back to my office so we can chat and catch up. I want to hear about Jessica and the boys.”
Once they were alone, Durham asked, “You two know each other?”
“We survived a car bomb last time I was in Bamako, eight months ago. I guess that makes us lifelong friends.”
“Yes, it does,” said Durham, in a way that suggested Judd wasn’t the only one with that particular experience.
Judd knocked on the black door. He was greeted stiffly by Colonel Houston, whom Judd recognized from the video briefing. “Dr. Ryker. Welcome back to Mali,” he said, deadpan.
Inside, Cyrus was wedged behind a large desk crammed into a tiny office. Tall piles of papers surrounded him. The office walls were floor-to-ceiling with photographs. Most were satellite pictures of desert camps, shots of crowds of young men, or of mosques with labels of the major towns around Mali: Bamako, Segou, Kidal, Mopti, Gao, and Timbuktu. Cyrus was wearing the same rumpled tan suit from yesterday.
“Gentlemen,” said Cyrus. “Please shut the door, Colonel.”
“Thanks for getting to the office so early to meet with us,” said Judd, trying to break the ice and squeezing himself down into a chair.
“I’m here every day at oh five hundred, Dr. Ryker.”
“Okay, so what can you tell us?” said Judd, shooting a look at Durham.
“We are tracking several active hostiles moving through the northern sector and along the border with Algeria,” said Cyrus, pointing to one of the photos. “The chatter is accelerated and likely indicating some kind of attack on Malian installations, with a nontrivial probability of targeting U.S. interests and
personnel. We have reports that an Ansar al-Sahra cell crossed over from Algeria late last week and is seeking a rendezvous with another element that will provide instructions and explosives for an attack. We’ve got the birds keeping an eye out for new movement, but we expect with a high degree of probability some kind of assault within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Colonel?”
Houston began, “DoD elements in-country have additional monitoring capacity. We have eyes on the border, Dr. Ryker. Russian trucks have been transshipping material up from Nigeria, from the swamps of the Niger Delta, into Burkina Faso, and then across the border into northern Mali, up past Timbuktu. The Russians are disclaiming any official knowledge of this, but quietly they are acknowledging an oil exploration project that they would rather people didn’t know about. They claim they want to keep it low-key to avoid unwanted attention from bandits or terrorists operating in the area. The quantity of goods they are hauling suggests heavy equipment, but this could also be cover. Small arms smuggling is one possibility. Could be anything. Victor Chelenkov has ties to the Russian oil companies as well as the Russian army.”
“What about the coup?” asked Judd. “That’s why we are here.”
“Nothing new since yesterday,” answered Cyrus. “Idrissa has taken charge and is putting his people into place. We do know that Maiga is at the Wangara barracks and he is alive.”
“Let’s not get distracted with complicated local politics. Not today,” broke in Houston. “Idrissa is cooperating. His people are providing intel, and he is ready to countermove Ansar.”
“He is supposedly making progress on the missing Peace Corps volunteer, too,” added Cyrus. “The Malians know how to make contact, so they currently are our best lead for getting the girl back safely.”
“You mean Idrissa is already in direct contact with the kidnappers?” Judd was incredulous, but Cyrus was steely calm.
“I can’t reveal any more than I have already. I’m sure you understand.”
Durham turned to Houston. “Colonel, what is the status of Operation Sand Scorpion? Where are your men who were embedded with the OSS strike teams?”
“The ambassador ordered a no-exceptions withdrawal from all counterterrorism strike forces until further notice, so they are no longer in barracks with the teams. But she understands that we still need eyes and ears if we are going to know what’s happening. So we have left a handful of Special Ops guys in the field. They are on standby in Gao and Timbuktu, just not living with the Malian teams right now or providing advice on their exercises. It might be wise at this critical juncture to consider letting them go back in. At least a temporary lift, until this Ansar thing blows over. For security. We need the Scorpions up and running ASAP.”
“What are you hearing about Diallo?” asked Judd, ignoring the attaché’s suggestion, and turning back to the station chief. “Is he involved with the coup? Is he planning on coming back?”
“We do not know,” replied Cyrus. “Idrissa would like to think that he is asserting himself now and has moved out from under Diallo’s shadow.”
“But Diallo could very well come back,” said Houston. “I’m guessing he may want to return. He’s in London, you know.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” said Judd. “How long have you been the DATT, Colonel?”
“Three years.”
“So you were here when Diallo’s coup attempt failed?”
“Yes, sir. I was the liaison with the Malian military leadership. General Diallo was our primary contact.”
“Diallo was our guy then?”
Houston paused, meeting Judd’s gaze. “Too bad he threw it all away. His mistake. Perhaps he sees the current situation as a chance at redemption.”
“What are the pressure points on Idrissa?” asked Judd, changing the subject again.
“Idrissa is looking for American assurances, and some kind of recognition,” said Cyrus. “I think he’s smart enough to know you won’t say anything in public just yet, but he’s going to want some signal from you on American acknowledgment.”
“Idrissa’s fighting for his life and he’s got Ansar al-Sahra breathing down his neck,” said Houston. “We trained the Malians for just such an encounter. This is his big moment.”
No,
thought Judd.
This
is
my
moment.
“Where are the French on all of this?”
“Active. We are in close contact,” said Cyrus.
“Is there a connection to Niger here? Are they worried about security of their uranium supplies?”
“You will have to ask them,” said Cyrus abruptly. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Um, okay,” said Judd, taken aback by the change in Cyrus’s tone. He turned to Colonel Houston. “After my meeting with Idrissa this morning, I may want to head up north. Can you get me up to Timbuktu if I need to go?”
“Sorry, sir. We have no air assets at this time. Since the coup, they have shut down internal commercial flights. You can drive there in about two days, maybe do it in one day if you really push it. I wouldn’t recommend it, but that’s the only way to get up there right now.”
A knock on the door and in popped a woman’s head. “Gentlemen, the ambassador has asked me to pull our visitors. The palace called and General Idrissa is ready. The ambassador asked if Colonel Durham could take the rest of the briefing from Colonel Houston and Cyrus. She needs Dr. Ryker for five minutes before the convoy leaves.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
On his way out the door, Judd stopped and turned. “Cyrus, I believe we have an old friend in common, Professor BJ van Hollen from Ibadan.”
“I am sorry,” he responded, giving Judd an expressionless stare, “I have never been to Ibadan. I don’t know anyone named van Hollen.”
KITTY HAWK, OUTER BANKS, NORTH CAROLINA
WEDNESDAY, 2:09 A.M. EST
Tucked among the sand dunes and high grasses of the Outer Banks were small holes that were this evening suddenly stirring. There was no wind. The only movement was tiny flippers clawing away the sand. After a moment, several dozen loggerhead baby sea turtles, having squeezed their way out of their spongy shells and wriggled from their underground nest to the surface, began a desperate dash to the sea. Whether they would live for sixty years or sixty seconds was decided by fate, right at that moment. Seagulls, sensing their moment, dove and swooped overhead, squawking in the night.
Resting up on the dune, just behind this struggle of nature, was a modest bungalow, oblivious to the life-and-death action down on the beach. The cottage was entirely dark, except for the soft glow of light in one window up in the top attic room, the master bedroom.
Sitting up in bed, reading glasses low on her nose, scanning her laptop, was Jessica Ryker. She searched the French and Arabic
news websites for information on Mali. She wasn’t finding much. She clicked again to open a program, logged in as EMILYD.
Jessica sipped lemon tea from a mug on her bedside table, then typed brief messages to several addresses, requesting information. She finished her tea, closed the program, and turned back to the news sites.
“I must have missed something,” she mumbled to herself. “Judd, my dear, what are you doing?”
U.S. EMBASSY, BAMAKO
WEDNESDAY, 6:15 A.M. GMT
Judd was escorted back down the hallway to the ambassador’s office. Larissa was on the phone behind her desk with her back to the door. On either side of her were American and Malian flags resting on tall poles.
One wall of her office was a bank of windows, looking out onto the manicured lawns of the embassy compound. Through the fence, off in the distance, Judd could make out a long snake of people waiting for the consulate to open, waiting for the chance to try their luck at the chess game between themselves and a young Foreign Service officer—usually on their first tour overseas and scared to death of making a mistake—shielded by thick plate glass. The Malians were also anxious, arriving at the American fortress with stacks of neatly folded documents, desperately trying to prove the validity of their claims, hoping to make it through, to win that ultimate lottery prize: a U.S. visa. Young boys were walking up and down the visa line, hawking boxes of gum, hard-boiled eggs, car air fresheners, Chinese-made flip-flops.
The other wall of Larissa’s office was a rack of bookshelves, floor-to-ceiling, littered with plaques, statues, and medallions of every shape and size from every ministry and government office in the country. The empty tokens of appreciation of bureaucrats and politicians for a brief meeting with the representative of the president of the United States.
The detritus of diplomacy.
“That’s a lot of courtesy calls, Larissa,” said Judd as she hung up the phone.
“Tell me about it. Every one of those tchotchkes is an hour of my life lost,” she replied. “But that’s the job we all signed up for. Right, Judd?”
“Not me. I didn’t give up the sweet life to be a real diplomat. I’m supposed to be the cleanup guy.”
“That’s right. And we don’t have much time, so let’s get straight to it. Are you ready for Idrissa?”
“I think so. Wasn’t Houston supposed to find soft spots in the junta? Isn’t that why we invest in having a defense attaché who is plugged in so he can reach the generals when we need to?”
“Houston tried. But he hasn’t gotten anywhere. He said that Idrissa has the whole military hierarchy lined up already. If there are any loyalists to Maiga left in the army, they aren’t showing themselves.”
“They will. We just need to give them the opportunity. They will bend to the wind if it blows the other way.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“But I’m worried about what the embassy is telling Idrissa. I mean, what they are
really
telling him. Houston and Cyrus are entirely focused on security. They’re not vaguely interested in
the coup. That’s not our message. Don’t they realize why I’m here?”
“Of course they do. But they are watching their backs. They have to follow our lead. I’ve got chief of mission authority, and they work in my embassy. But you know they have other masters back in Washington with their own agendas. They may even be getting mixed signals from other offices inside State.”
“Come on, Larissa. You know I can’t control all the channels coming out of Washington. I’m just trying to keep the front channel clear.”
“I know, Judd. But they are hedging. That’s how the game works.”
“I’ll deal with State. I need you to help me contain the mixed signals the embassy is sending to Idrissa. I can’t go in there and talk tough, and then have your Colonel Houston give him a wink and tell him not to worry about some Girl Scouts from the State Department. We just can’t have that.”
“I’ll make sure he understands.”
“Houston already asked me to lift the hold on military engagement, for fuck’s sake, Larissa. I’ve been here less than a day and they’re already clamoring to work with Idrissa.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I ignored the request.”
“That won’t be the end of it. These guys aren’t built to go away just because you ignore them. You should know by now that’s not how it works.”
“I know. I’m just going to buy as much time as I can. But I need you to be open with me. I’m going to need your help.”
“You have it, Judd.”
“And what about your station chief?”
“He’s prickly, but he gets the job done.”
“I asked him about any French connection to uranium in Niger, and his face almost fell off.”
“Well, Judd, you stepped on a land mine there. Cyrus was with the Agency in Niger during the run-up to the Iraq war. You remember yellowcake? Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, Dick Cheney? He was smack in the middle of all that.”
“Holy shit. No wonder he’s touchy. What was his role?”
“I don’t really know. But it’s definitely made him wary of visitors from Washington, D.C. You should tread carefully.”
“Good advice. I will.”
“And what about your man? That big fella you brought? Durham?”
“He goes by Bull.”
“Of course he does. Can you trust him?”
“Too early to tell. So far he seems straight up. Doesn’t say much, but he seems efficient.”
“Okay, Judd. And . . .” Larissa paused, looking down at her shoes.
“And?”
“How are
you
, Judd? You holding up okay?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“You . . . you need to be careful.”
“What do you mean, Larissa?”
“It’s more of a hornet’s nest down here than you think. Keep things close hold. Especially now, while everything’s in flux.”
“I’m not getting you.”
“Look, Judd,” she said. Then she stopped, stuck her head out her door, peered up and down the corridor, then closed her office door and stared hard right into his eyes. “I’m going to be straight with you. There are concerns about some of your . . . acquaintances.”
“Mine?”
“I know you have friends here in Mali. We all do. But you need to be careful. Envelopes of money change hands often here in West Africa, as do loyalties. You know that.”
“Of course. I know that.”
“Idrissa will look for anything to undermine you. You can’t give him anything. Don’t underestimate him.”
“I’ll be more careful.”
“All right, then. It’s showtime. Are you ready?”
“I need three minutes and a quiet office before we go,” said Judd.
Larissa leered at him.
“I will be careful.”
Larissa hesitated, then stepped out and closed the door behind her, leaving Judd alone in her office.
Judd sat behind Larissa’s vast desk and removed his cell phone from his jacket pocket and reinstalled the battery. As he waited for the phone to power up, he noticed a small bust on her bookcase of a woman’s head, the kind tourists picked up for a few dollars at the souvenir market in central Bakamo. A small inscription at the bottom read
IN APPRECIATION FOR AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR OUR COMMON FIGHT, FROM GENERAL MAMADOU K. R.
IDRISSA, COMMANDER OF THE SIXTH NORTHERN ZONE
. His irritation was interrupted by an answer on the other line.
“Allo?”
“This is Judd. I’m now in Bamako.”
“Ah,
très bien
. Very good.”
“Do you have anything new, Luc?”
“
Oui.
We have sent word to Mamadou Idrissa that his little game is over. It is
fini
. We understand he was frustrated. But now his time is up.”
“And how did he take that?”
“What do you expect? Idrissa is an arrogant bastard. His big head, it is swelling. For now, he is resisting,” said Luc.
“Well, I’m about to go see him. The car is running. I’ll give him the same message. Maybe it’ll help if he hears from the French and the Americans.”
“Yes. He will feel cornered. But we have to give him a path. It is too early to make an offer, but you have to give him a way out of this. He must see some escape.”
“Agreed. Speaking of escape, what are you hearing of General Diallo?”
“I think you should be telling me.”
The French were indeed paying attention.
“Yes, Luc, I saw him. Clearly, he wants to return home. Diallo definitely sees himself as the statesman to save the day. He thinks he is Mali’s savior. And he thinks Idrissa has given him another chance.”
“Yes. It is an option we will need to consider.”
“Are you encouraging him? He seems to think he has support from Paris already. What kind of signals are you sending?”
“It is far too early for anything like that.”
“Well, I’m not sure Washington is going to be too comfortable with the Diallo option. Replacing one coup plotter with another is not exactly supporting democracy.”
“I understand,” replied Luc. “But we need to keep all options open. Idrissa must not see any doors closed.”
“Are you hearing anything else?” asked Judd.
“Yes. I have the same warnings ringing in my ears that you are receiving, Judd. I am sure of it. My people in Bamako are getting the same stories. We are all hearing the same.”
“Do you believe it?”
“It doesn’t matter what you and I believe. It doesn’t even matter what is real and what is a façade, a mirage in the desert. We just need to control our people. We have to stay in front of this, or it will be lost.”
Lost.
That word hung around in Judd’s head.
“We can’t allow that, Luc.”
“
Absolument
, Judd. Good luck with Idrissa.
Bonne chance.
”