Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  Anaïs Brunet leaned back in her chair at the head of the table, hands folded in her lap as the analyst brought the images up on the big screen.

  It was a railway bridge, she realized—a high viaduct above a fertile valley. “Where is this?”

  “It’s the bridge over the Oise River Valley—the LGV Nord line.”

  The high-speed line between Brussels and Paris. Brunet closed her eyes, forcing herself to take a deep breath. The scope of the envisioned carnage only too clear.

  “So this is what they intended to do with the materials acquired from Lahcen,” she observed, trading a look with Gauthier.

  “It would appear to have at least been the beginnings of a targets list, yes,” the analyst replied. “And this would be a difficult one to defend against. Hard to attack, given the pace of traffic on the line—but harder to defend against. Short of posting gendarmes on every bridge in the country, setting up cameras. . .”

  “Make it public,” Brunet announced suddenly, looking up from the notes in front of her.

  “What?”

  “Let’s go public with the plot—headline it on every news program in the country. Let them know what we know. Force them to recalculate—buy us time.”

  “There are risks to that approach, Anaïs,” Gauthier cautioned. “What if they believe the information came from one of their own? We could be jeopardizing LYSANDER even further—he’s already under suspicion, according to Armand.”

  “Everything comes with risks, Lucien,” Brunet retorted, a steely edge in her voice. “The raids have been no secret and even so, they can’t pin this on LYSANDER, because he didn’t know about this. If he had, he would have told us, non?”

  10:24 A.M.

  Parc de Champagne

  Reims, France

  It was the eyes, Harry thought. Not the hands. It was ever the eyes that signaled the moment your opponent would strike.

  He bent forward, shifting his weight easily from one foot to the other. His eyes never leaving Driss’ face, the rhythmic sound of the basketball against the pavement—dribbled back and forth between the young Moroccan’s hands—drumming in his ears.

  There. He saw the flicker in those dark orbs, felt—rather than saw—the hands shift right. But the eyes said “left.”

  He shifted left as Driss moved, the ball a blur as Harry’s hand flicked out, making contact with the surface of the spinning orb.

  It wasn’t a solid strike, just enough to send Driss recoiling back, surprise in the younger man’s eyes as he clawed to keep control of the ball, pulling it back and up—snapping off a quick, panicked shot over Harry’s head.

  It hit the backboard, too hard, caroming off uselessly to one side, a laugh escaping Driss’ lips as it fell to the pavement.

  “Good one, habibi—thought I had you there for a second.”

  Harry shook his head, bent forward, his hands on his knees—struggling to catch his breath, The pain from his side reawakened by the exertion. He had to push through this.

  “It’s been too long,” he replied, smiling through the pain as he straightened—glancing over at the young man. “I haven’t played since I was a kid, back in Bonn. I was decent, then, but that’s been a long time.”

  “With your height, I’m sure,” Driss observed, stooping to scoop up the ball—holding it up with a challenge in his eyes. “Re-match?”

  Another shake of the head, Harry’s hand pressed against his side as he retrieved his phone from the back pocket of his jeans, checking the time. “Sorry, brother—another time, maybe. Reza should be here soon. Then we can start sorting out what’s happened—who he’s heard from, who’s been swept up.”

  “Nothing from Aryn?”

  “No,” Harry replied. Neither of them mentioned Yassin—an unspoken fear hanging there in the air between them. He’d been wounded, that much they both knew. Since then. . .nothing.

  That meant that his young friend was either dead or taken–and it was hard to know which of the two he considered preferable.

  Dead, most likely. One less life he would himself have to take, at the end of this road.

  Or so he kept telling himself.

  He knew already how hard that was going to be, he thought—turning away to glance out through the trees surrounding the court as Driss pulled out his own phone, another of the cheap burners they’d bought the previous night.

  The dangers surrounding him in this, the farther he went along. The peril of no longer being able to disassociate himself from the role—one life blurring into another until all was lost. Until–

  A curse from Driss got his attention and he looked over to see the young man focused on his phone.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, walking over to peer over his friend’s shoulder, seeing a French news headline at the top of the screen. “Brussels Raids Uncover Train Plot.”

  Well that was fast. Some detached part of himself admired the speed at which the Belgian (French?) intelligence services were moving. Barely twenty-four hours from intelligence collection to its dissemination across the media. Just as he’d hoped.

  “It had to be my laptop,” he said slowly, as if just then realizing the truth. “I’d deleted the browser history. . .but they must have found a way to restore it. I wasn’t careful enough, may Allah forgive me.”

  “There was no way you could have known,” Driss responded, looking back at him. “No way any of us could have known, have–”

  “That’s not good enough,” Harry spat, his face twisted into a grimace. “We have to anticipate them, brother, or we’ll all end up in a dark cell somewhere. Our mission over. There’s no use trying to hit the bridges now—they’ll be watching them too closely–we’ll have to come up with something else. We–”

  His voice broke off suddenly as he saw a familiar figure walking toward them through the trees. Reza.

  And behind him. . .the form of a woman.

  9:38 A.M. British Summer Time

  Embassy of the Russian Federation

  Kensington Palace Gardens, London

  “I’m concerned, Valeriy Antonovich. What you are proposing is reasonable—protocol, even, and yet. . .”

  The stacks of paperwork on Dmitri Litvinov’s desk were undiminished from his arrival hours before—reports which should have been filed with Moscow an hour before, his official summary of the Roth recruitment still existing as only a blank document on the screen of his computer. A half-eaten beigel seeking refuge beneath a five-page report on drilling in the North Sea.

  He ran a hand through the graying stubble of his close-cropped hair, replaying once again his conversation with the rezident. Like he’d been doing for hours, ever since the meeting ended. Hoping against hope that he had. . .what was the expression for it here in the West. . .“sold it.”

  How typical of the West. Of the entire world, these days. Buying and selling. Things. People. Lies.

  Like he’d sold his very self, so many years before.

  Such a contrast to the values he’d once believed in—the common ownership of property, the universal brotherhood of man. Ideals he once would have given his life for.

  But there had been no brotherhood. Not then, anymore than now. And the worker was ever the servant of his “betters”–it made no difference whether they wore a business suit or a Party uniform.

  It was simply how the world was. And now, his very life depended on his abilities as a salesman.

  “Roth may be bitter, but he is also wary. He clearly knows the risks of what he’s doing. Bringing in another officer to run him at this critical juncture. . .I am concerned that this could break down whatever level of trust I’ve been able to establish.”

  “You feel that this could jeopardize the success of the recruitment?”

  “Da, I do.”

  It had been a long moment before Kudrin had responded—an agonizingly lengthy pause as he waited, praying his emotions did not betray themselves on his face.

  Then: “Very well, Dmitri Pavlovich. We’ll
do this your way—for now.”

  Time. It was all he could have asked for—just long enough to get the information the British needed, to prove himself to Greer.

  If Kudrin did not suspect him. If.

  He retrieved the beigel from its hiding place with a deft movement, cramming it into his mouth as he shuffled the papers into order. There was nothing to be done except go about his daily life as he always had. . .somehow.

  And await Greer’s signal to begin the next phase.

  10:42 A.M. Central European Summer Time

  Parc de Champagne

  Reims, France

  “So you’ve heard nothing from Aryn or Marwan?” Harry asked, resting back on his haunches as he looked up into Reza’s eyes—watching as the college student shook his head. “What about Mohammed and the others?”

  They’d all been instructed to check in if anything happened—leaving brief messages in the Drafts folder of the e-mail address Harry had set up. No details—just brief, innocuous messages, their first initial in the subject line.

  And there had been nothing. It was almost more than he dared hope, and yet. . .he couldn’t help but think that nearly half the cell might well have been taken out by the raids.

  Thrown into Belgian jail cells on suspicion of terrorism—taken out of circulation, at least for the time being. Long enough.

  “No,” Reza responded, his gaze seeming to shift nervously between Harry and Driss, “not a word. Once I got your message, I left the city immediately.”

  “Except you didn’t,” Harry observed pointedly, a low menace in his voice as he rose to his feet—his eyes locking with Reza’s, his meaning only too clear. He felt the college student shrink away him, nearly colliding with the veiled figure of the woman sheltering in his shadow. “I’d ask you what you were thinking, but it’s all too clear—you weren’t. Not with your brain.”

  “But Ibrahim, I–”

  “Our brothers have been scattered to the winds,” Harry continued, cutting him off, “Yassin is wounded and missing or dead—yet more of the faithful have been thrown into prison, and all you can think of is endangering us all still more for the sake of your woman.”

  Reza flushed hotly, his eyes flashing as his voice rose in angry retort. “I didn’t want to leave her to be taken by the police. Tortured for information about us. If you think–”

  His voice broke off suddenly, as if Harry’s words had just sunk in. The color seeming to drain from his swarthy, youthful face, his voice trembling. “Yassin is. . .dead?”

  “We don’t know,” Harry responded coldly, glancing from Reza to his woman. “We don’t know anything. And now we need to find a place to lay low. . .with a woman.”

  11:17 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  “. . .they’re still eight klicks out from the objective, and Krahling’s reporting heavy resistance,” the analyst said, looking up from his workstation. “Estimate platoon-strength, maybe more—forty to fifty fighters. The Afghans are taking casualties.”

  Kranemeyer shook his head, casting a critical glance at the screens mounted on the walls above them, streaming footage from an RQ-4 Global Hawk in orbit high above Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province.

  The mission planning had been simple, a fairly straight-forward raid on a compound north of Jalalabad believed to be acting as the headquarters for a regional Khorasan field commander.

  American SF acting as advisors to the ANA troops providing the muscle for the operation, Josiah Krahling and another CIA paramilitary tasked with SE—site exploitation. Capture or kill the commander. . .scarf up any and all available intel.

  It was as clear-cut as operations in Afghanistan got, over a decade and a half into a war with no endgame yet in sight.

  Except it was all going sideways, the DCS thought, like so very many operations before it, the Afghan force bogged down in heavy fighting well short of their objective.

  Everything and everyone of value was going to be gone by the time they got to the compound. If they got to the compound, he corrected himself, an increasingly dour look spreading across his saturnine countenance.

  “I’ll be in my office,” Kranemeyer said after a moment. “Keep me updated.”

  The noise of the operations center without faded away as he closed the door of his office, his eyes falling on the framed photograph sitting, as ever, on the edge of his desk. Seven men posed, arms around each other’s shoulders, on a ridgeline somewhere in northern Afghanistan, in the early months of the war.

  Every face but his was blacked out, but he remembered each one as well as if it were his own. Brothers.

  He sank into the leather of his desk chair, eyes still on the photograph—memories of those days filling his mind. Things had seemed so. . .simple back then, in the wake of that dark September morning. So righteous.

  So many years later, it was hard to remember what that had felt like.

  The phone on his desk rang just then, breaking in upon his thoughts with its discordant clatter.

  “Kranemeyer,” he answered shortly, sitting up straighter in his chair as he recognized Coftey’s voice on the other end of the line, his face darkening. “This isn’t a good time, Roy.”

  4:23 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  Place Poelart

  Brussels, Belgium

  Ash-gray clouds traversed the heavens above, carrying the threat of rain as Armand Césaire crossed the street, casting a critical glance up at the extensive scaffolding spiderwebbing the facade of the massive building on his left.

  As it had for so very many years, he observed ironically. An edifice larger than St. Peter’s in Rome, the Palais de Justice had been under renovation for nearly as long as this. . .“war on terror” had been going on. So long that, a few years prior, the scaffolding itself had proven to be in need of renovation.

  No end in sight, for either the renovation—or the war. And the latter was why he was here.

  He waited for a light tan sedan to pass before crossing the street once more, his objective ahead. The familiar sight of the Infantry Memorial, a granite column towering into the afternoon sky, dwarfing the pedestrians passing by—a collection of bronze figures at its base representing the fallen of the Great War, haggard, yet stalwart Belgian infantrymen gathered under the sheltering wings of an angel.

  Césaire paused beneath their shadow, looking up into each war-weary visage. Wondering if they could have known that it was all a lie.

  That there would be no end to war.

  A figure materialized at his side, startling him even though he’d expected it. “So,” the young man began, “what was their answer?”

  The intelligence officer turned, looking LYSANDER in the face. “You know their answer.”

  11:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time

  The Russell Senate Office Building

  Washington, D.C.

  “Is it ever?” Coftey asked ironically, looking out the window of his office, toward the white dome of the Capitol building, glistening in the noonday sun. “But I’m afraid this can’t wait. There’s going to be a congressional investigation into the Sinai incident, Barney. Public hearings, on the Hill. Live on C-Span.”

  He heard an exasperated curse from his old friend and shook his head. “And it gets better. I’ve seen the subpoena list, just within the last hour. Your name is on it. You’re going to be required to testify.”

  This time there was only silence on the other end of the line, a long, deadly silence. He could almost hear the gears turning in Kranemeyer’s head as the man went through his options, considering and rejecting each one of them in turn.

  Then, “What can you do about this?”

  As expected.

  “Not a thing,” the senator replied reluctantly, returning to his desk. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”

  “This is all coming from HPSCI,” he continued, referencing the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, “with Antonio T
amariz leading the charge. He’s out for blood, Barney.”

  He leaned back into his desk chair, conjuring up an image of the Arizona congressman. Short and wiry, with a full head of jet-black hair, as of yet untouched by age. Still in his early forties, and already in politics for over a decade and a half, Tamariz had used his position as HPSCI chairman to run point for the President earlier in the year, driving the intel bill through the House and all the way to the Senate where it had died. . .thanks to Coftey’s own change of allegiance.

  Except this was Washington, where bad bills never stayed dead. And this one was already back, in no small part thanks to the Agency’s blunders in the Sinai.

  “You can’t reach Tamariz,” Kranemeyer said after another long silence. “I know that. But what about his opposite number—the ranking member?”

  “Hank Imler?” Coftey shook his head, suppressing a wry laugh. Nothing about this was particularly funny. “If Tony wants to take down the intelligence community, Hank sees this as an equally good chance to take a President he despises and nail him to the wall in front of the whole country. They both want this, if for entirely different reasons. And they’re not going to entertain any suggestion of stopping.”

  “This isn’t about politics. It can’t be.” The exasperation was clear in Kranemeyer’s voice, exasperation and barely-repressed fury.

  “It is for them.” The senator shrugged, only too aware of the stakes. And the fact that his own hands were tied. “It’s the people’s House, Barney. Don’t look for reason in it. Just prepare to go in front of the cameras.”

  4:31 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  Place Poelart

  Brussels, Belgium

  “That’s an easy decision for them,” LYSANDER observed, a trace of bitterness in his voice. “They’re not having to deal with him.”