The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller

by Andrew Britton

  “Enjoy? I don’t know. It’s all so seat-of-the-pants I think I’m afraid to pull out. You develop a feel for something that makes you responsible for it.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “There is no formula,” Kealey said as the propellers revved overhead. “That fact turns you into a control freak.” The cabin shook, and he had to raise his voice to be heard. “The intelligence services have written enough white papers about different scenarios to fill the Grand Canyon. But in all that, there are no magic bullets. Every situation is different. And the more that agents are trained to rely on them, the greater the danger to the country.”

  “You’re saying we need loose cannons?”

  “I prefer to call us vigilantes for the American way,” Kealey laughed.

  “Speaking of assets, I know that Astrida Valigorsky is head of integrated intelligence services. What was that you asked for earlier—the APHID?”

  Kealey smiled. “An asset.”

  Rayhan waited for the rest. It didn’t come. Kealey did not strike her as the kind of man to play games or withhold information unless it was necessary. This was obviously beyond her security level. She let it drop. She studied Kealey. He seemed distracted. He snapped out of it when the four powerful turbines began to roar in turn.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked. It was a fair question, she felt; her life was at risk, too.

  “Missions, even impromptu ones like this, should have a little prep time,” he said. “There was a time when I’d spend the flight studying maps of the region, memorizing phone numbers of contacts.”

  “Will you not?”

  “I’ll make sure I know Rabat, but this is a highly fluid situation,” he said. “We could end up miles from there, and we don’t have time to learn the entire coastline up and down.” He wiggled his phone. “Electronics. Uplinks. We’re forced to rely on that now. Not like my Uncle Largo, eyeballing a target until it was part of his DNA.”

  The two fell silent as the big plane taxied and rose with a roar that was far greater than its labored angle of ascent. The bank of the plane was more noticeable, as even the tightly lashed objects shifted and caused Rayhan to start. Once they were airborne, they found they were not as isolated as Kealey had hoped.

  “Good evening,” said a slender, balding man. Kealey made him out to be about forty, from Philadelphia judging by his accent. The man gripped a free sling with his left hand while he offered his right. “Representative Tim Thomson from Pennsylvania.”

  “I’m Ryan,” Kealey said, accepting his hand. “This is Rayhan.”

  Thomson turned to her, smiled, offered his hand. “A pleasure.” There was something unctuous in just that word, even more so in his leering smile. But it was business before pleasure and he turned back to Kealey. “We’re with the House Committee on Homeland Security, Border and Maritime. I’ve seen you somewhere.”

  “I’ve been around,” Kealey said.

  “In what capacity?”

  “All kinds.”

  Thomson smiled back thinly. “Spooks.”

  “And you haven’t even had your first swallow from the flask in your pocket,” Kealey said.

  “Oh, we’re all friends here or we wouldn’t be here,” Thomson said. He put his hand up and leaned hard against the padded fuselage to keep from falling to one side or the other. “I admire you folks. You’re what we call ‘executors.’ You go out and do the things we all just talk about.” He regarded Rayhan. “That’s not the same as executioners. Though I guess sometimes you have to be that.”

  Kealey looked at him. How did a man so tactless succeed in public office? Or maybe that was the trick: he disguised bullying as advocacy. “So, Congressman. Is there anything I can do for you other than suffer in near silence?”

  The blow didn’t even graze the man. “No, Ryan. I just wanted to see if I could place you. I like to know what’s going on in our end of the business.” The congressman’s eyes shifted back to Rayhan. “Iranian?”

  She replied, “American.”

  “By birth?”

  “By choice.”

  He smiled. “Well done.” Thomson acted as though he were congratulating a competitive skater.

  In less than a minute, Kealey had already grown to hate that practiced politician’s smile. He was surprised General Clarke, who met with them and testified before them regularly, had not already murdered one of these guys.

  “Enjoy your flight,” the congressman said.

  “The rest of it, we will,” Kealey said, smiling as though he had steel wool tucked in his cheeks.

  Thomson looked at him, still smiling. “I wouldn’t push that too far, Ryan. I know people who can throw people like you to the wolves out there.”

  “And how does that help the nation we both love and serve?” Kealey asked.

  “My e-blasts do more to influence our future than anything you’ve ever achieved,” he replied.

  Kealey wanted to say, “I just saved New York,” but this job was about results, not ego. He just flipped the man a dismissive salute to end the conversation.

  Thomson walked unsteadily back to his sling. When he disappeared behind the jeep to the right, it was as though air had returned to the bay.

  “And they call us heartless,” Kealey said.

  “What an unpleasant man,” Rayhan agreed. “He threatened you.”

  “Worse than that, he didn’t feel a thing. Not the stone wall we threw against his questions, not your parries—which were beautiful, by the way—and not the last jab. Nothing. These guys are like automatons. They just move as close as they can get toward the center of power. Hit a roadblock and they turn till they can find a way around or muster other bullies to form a committee and push through. That’s our official government in action.”

  “Official?”

  “We’re the real government, Rayhan,” Kealey said. “You and I and everyone in the trenches are the people who do the work. Without us, without the so-called functionaries, everything stops. We don’t want to be President or speaker of the house or senator. We are generally apolitical people who want to see the country succeed and grow as a whole. Not in demographic pieces or along ethnic lines. As America. It’s the same in the Middle East. We the People get along fine. We see our neighbors hurting, we help.” He nodded in the direction Congressman Thomson had gone. “It’s these idiots who make a mess of things. You asked why I continue to fight? Because if I don’t, if you don’t—who will?”

  Rayhan started as the plane bounced. She settled quickly.

  “You’re getting good at frill-less travel,” Kealey said.

  “I have to, if I’m going to be a spook,” she replied.

  The benefits and drawbacks of travel by cargo plane are the same: if you don’t have reading material, a laptop, or a tablet, there’s nothing to do but sleep and talk. Despite the ground they’d covered, it was still a little early and adrenaline was still a little high for a nap.

  “I’ve told you a little about me,” Kealey said. “How did you become a nuclear physicist working for American intelligence?”

  “Better you should ask how I became a nuclear physicist,” she laughed.

  “Okay. How did you?”

  “Every parent in Iran wants their son or daughter to become a doctor,” she said. “That is the way to ensure respect and employment. But I was never as interested in how people work as how everything works. I didn’t dissect frogs, I dissected my audiocassette player—with a high school friend who was alarmed that I had a tape of singer Michael Jackson. That was not permitted. She reported me to our teacher, who informed the authorities. After two months of harrowing observation, of midnight visits, of harassment and threats, my family bought our way to Egypt, then to London.”

  “What did your father do?”

  “He was a combat medic, but after the war he became a news reporter for television. His public face is one reason they let us leave. He had always covered stories the government approved of, so it would ha
ve been difficult to prosecute him. The sad thing is, my mother and my older sister have not been happy in London. They are very modest, very traditional women who do not leave home without a head covering. As a result, they are always viewed with suspicion.” Her eyes drifted toward the jeep. “As I was even without it.”

  “What is your father doing now?”

  “He publishes several newspapers that cater to expatriates from Iran and its neighbors.”

  “What about the leap from London to Washington?” Kealey asked.

  “I was recruited by the DNI when I posted a flyer about giving Farsi lessons at university,” she said. “They made me a very handsome offer and agreed to pay for the rest of my education. That lifted a big burden from my father.”

  “How did he feel about your working for U.S. intelligence?”

  She made a face. “He doesn’t know. They know I work for the government, but I have not told him in what capacity. Tehran has eyes and ears in every Iranian community abroad. I do not want them to find things out from my family.”

  Kealey was taking it all in uncritically. The DNI would have vetted her but it would have been unlawful to keep watching her; a lot of nationals found themselves growing nostalgic as they grew older and found themselves drawn back into the interests and causes of their homeland—especially if they had friends abroad. Kealey did not fixate on that but was always aware of it in his dealings with foreign-born intelligence workers.

  As the plane crossed the Atlantic, he was literally rocked to sleep in a cabin lit only by a few small halogen lights set along the top of the wall. At some point—about four hours later, according to his watch—a member of the flight crew came back to tell him there was a call for him in the cockpit.

  “From the general,” the young radio officer said.

  Kealey slipped from his harness, noticed that Rayhan was asleep, and followed the man to the flight deck. It was a sleek, very modern environment. There were two big trapezoidal windows ahead, two more on the sides, and a pair of rectangular windows overhead. There was very little that wasn’t electronic. The displays were all glowing green, as were all the digital buttons and lettering.

  Kealey greeted the crew and sat at the station facing the starboard side, behind the copilot. He slipped on the headset and adjusted the microphone.

  “Ryan here.”

  “It’s Clarke,” he said. “You secure?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve got a dead John Doe in Salé, Morocco. He was found not far from where the lead apron was stolen. INTERPOL got ahold of the crime scene dossier. The images match an Iranian drifter named Qassam, who’s showed up at a couple of trouble spots over the last few years. According to the manager at the inn where he was murdered, he checked in that day. About the time that container ship was docking.”

  A drifter was an agent who rarely went home, which made him extremely difficult to spot: eyes on the embassies and intelligence agencies was how most agents were noticed and eventually ID’d as such.

  “Had he made a pickup?” Kealey asked.

  “Hotel manager says he had a guy help him bring a parcel of some kind to his room.”

  “And it isn’t there now.”

  “It is not.”

  “So much for the container ship,” Kealey said. “Salé’s a stronghold for radical Muslims. We lose it there, it’ll be a nightmare of a shell game trying to find it.”

  “I agree,” Clarke said. “In the meantime, we have no idea what Iran’s going to do. If they have assets in the area, we don’t know them.”

  “If they had assets in the area, the agent wouldn’t have been flying solo,” Kealey said. “There’s always the chance someone will offer it back to them, for a price.”

  “If that’s our best-case scenario, we’re in trouble,” Clarke said.

  “At least it buys us a little time. Flight from Tehran to Rabat takes about seven hours, an hour less than it is from D.C. They probably needed a little more ramping up than we did—I’m guessing someone will just be getting to the scene of the murder when we land. How are we getting from Rota to Morocco?”

  “We’ve rented you a boat—you’ll be able to make landfall wherever you want. It’ll also give you a place to stay while you’re there.”

  “Good. I’ll be on the ECP as soon as we land.”

  The Encrypted Cell Phone was standard CIA issue, using 1024-bit RSA key encryption and 256-bit random key encryption that changed twice every second. The RSA stood for Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, the inventors of the process.

  Kealey returned to his sling. He had an idea he needed to mull over. He hadn’t bothered telling Clarke about it because the intelligence chief wasn’t going to like it. But that was the risk he took by sending Kealey into the field with a Farsi speaker.

  Rayhan was still asleep, and Kealey joined her after a half hour of mulling pros and cons.

  The pros won, even though they were vastly outweighed by the cons.

  CHAPTER 9

  SALÉ, MOROCCO

  Mohammed spent the night in his van.

  Though Salé is the sister city to Rabat, it has not advanced in the way the capital has. The buildings are old, the streets cobbled, the alleys impassable by modern conveyances. Three centuries ago, the city’s economy was driven by pirates who not only dealt in goods but slaves—white as well as black. To a large extent, piracy still drove the city’s cash flow. Coupled with radical Islamists, Mohammed knew he could not be in a better place. The key was not to be found by Iranians or anyone else before then.

  He drove to the beach along the river and, spotting a boathouse, parked among a pile of rotting fishing boats within view of the place. The boats were small, not much larger than canoes, and judging from the rot revealed by his headlights, they looked as if they’d been there for at least a half century. Two of them sat prow to prow and formed a pyramid that would protect him from being seen except along the river. He had noted that there were no footprints in the sand and, feeling sufficiently isolated, used his hands to dig a shallow grave for his companion. He found a tattered old sail to use as a shroud and, stripping Aden’s body, lay his companion to rest beneath the stars while murmuring a heartfelt prayer. With reluctance, he took his tire iron and applied it to the man’s face, averting his gaze the entire time. Then he covered the hole. Then he went back to the van and against his best efforts to remain vigilant, fell asleep for several hours. He was tired—he recognized it as the exhaustion of effort, not illness—and awoke with a guilty start as the sun rose through his windshield.

  His mind was clearer now, not just from the rest but from the time his new circumstances had to settle in. He was no longer shocked by what had happened but resolute. He poured water from a plastic bottle into his eyes, rubbed it over his face, then looked back along the waterfront. The sunlight glared off the window of the boathouse so he couldn’t see inside. But there was a motorbike that had not been there the night before. It was a new Vespa, a two-seater with the kind of elegance that suggested the owner made money from more than fishing or renting boats. Mohammed started the engine and drove over.

  A young man came out to greet him. Dressed in a white shirt and jeans, he was swarthy and had a wary look. His beard was short-cropped, like his hair. He stood in the doorway, one hand still inside—on a firearm, no doubt. Mohammed emerged with his hands raised slightly above his waist. He was glad to see the man’s caution: he would not have to waste time. He had come to the right place.

  There was no need to speak. The young man nodded once, turned to go inside, and Mohammed followed. There was, indeed, a shotgun leaning against the wall, the stock resting in an empty metal water basin on an old wooden stand.

  “Tea?” the young man asked.

  “Please.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Not since lunch, yesterday.”

  That told the young man a great deal. It had been a busy night for the newcomer. He hadn’t wanted to—or didn’t dare to—stop at
one of the city’s countless cafés. He hadn’t abandoned his vehicle, so he probably didn’t need passage; the waterways were more heavily policed than the roadways here.

  He needed information.

  “Sit.” The young man gestured to a small card table.

  The newcomer sat—with a view toward the van. So there was something in it. Had he come to sell stolen property?

  “I am Hassan,” the young man told him.

  “My name is Mohammed.”

  “Is there something I can do for you, Mohammed?”

  Mohammed looked around. The trappings here were old, spare. He saw a row of wooden chairs along the back wall that looked, oddly, as though they were bolted to the floor. There was a potbelly stove in the corner—that was where the water was being heated—and he saw a closet with a vented generator. He didn’t have electricity here, but he had a smart phone on a small desk. When the man left each night, whatever command center this was reverted to being an old shack.

  “It was built by my grandfather,” Hassan said, watching Mohammed’s eyes. “He was a fisherman. Not a very good one. But he managed to make a living.”

  “How?”

  “God is generous to the pious man, and the river offered many opportunities.”

  The young man poured tea, set out bread and honey.

  “Praise be to God for his kindness—and to you for yours,” Mohammed said.

  The young man sat across the table—after adjusting the chair and placing himself between Mohammed and the van. The visitor suddenly felt naked. The move and now Hassan’s steady look were brutally purposeful.

  “What are you trying to move?” Hassan asked.

  Mohammed chewed a mouthful of bread. He took out his entire bankroll and lay it on the table. Hassan didn’t have to touch it. The smallest bill was visible. The man wasn’t trying to deceive—or insult—him by placing the largest on top.

  “I am not sure how much is there,” Mohammed said. “But it is all I have. That, and the vehicle.”

  Hassan grinned. “I have been offered much in the past. Never everything.”