The Exile

by Andrew Britton

  The deputy director of operations at Langley had called Harper personally to relay the first piece of information—and although it wasn’t much, Harper was grateful for it. The SATINT seemed only to confirm their worst fears, but at least it was something to work with. More to the point, it was hard intel. Harper couldn’t abide conjecture for one simple reason…. He couldn’t afford to. The nation’s intelligence apparatus was fueled by information, and given the stakes, that information had to be rock solid each and every time. That partly accounted for Harper’s dread of the upcoming meeting. He had almost no information to work with, which meant he was about to be put in the uncomfortable position of being briefed by his own superiors.

  His own personal ignorance, however, wasn’t Harper’s primary concern. What really worried him was the emotional element involved in this particular situation. He had served the current president for nearly six years, and Harper knew him to be a smart, careful, methodical man. A man who had never let his power—or his anger—influence his ability to analyze and solve a given problem. He didn’t always come up with the right answers, but to his credit he never lost sight of the overall picture, or the core awareness that millions of people were affected by every decision he made. Still, Harper couldn’t help but wonder if the president would be able to maintain that sense of proportion given the tragic circumstances, and felt uneasy when he considered the possible consequences if he could not.

  A voice in his ear jolted Jonathan Harper back to the present. It was the pilot informing him that they were three minutes out. Harper keyed his mic and acknowledged the words, then settled back in his seat. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying in vain to clear his mind, knowing that he would need a clear head for the upcoming meeting.

  A few minutes later the helicopter touched down with a slight jolt, the skids settling onto the rain-drenched tarmac. Harper waited until the pilot gave him the all clear. Then he unbuckled his harness, removed his headset, and reached for the door.

  It was a short ride from the helipad to Aspen Lodge, the presidential cabin on the east side of the compound. As the black Tahoe threaded its way along the steep mountain road, a Secret Service agent behind the wheel, Harper stared out the rain-streaked window. This was his first time visiting the presidential retreat, and despite the troubling thoughts swirling through his mind, he found himself absorbed in the passing scenery. He had always been interested in history. In fact, he had minored in that particular subject at Boston College some twenty-two years earlier, and it was hard not to feel the weight of it here.

  After passing the camp commander’s quarters, they turned onto a secondary road and immediately hit a checkpoint. Harper displayed his ID to the marine sergeant standing post, and the sentry proceeded to call in the information. They were cleared through a moment later.

  Without being asked, the driver hit a button and the window whirred up. Then the Tahoe lurched forward, the tires slipping for a moment on the damp road. A mile or so later the road curved gently to the left, and Aspen Lodge came into view.

  Harper’s first thought was that the presidential cabin didn’t look like much. The brightly-lit exterior was constructed of rough-hewn planks painted a monotonous shade of gray. A single fieldstone chimney jutted from the black shingle roof, and the building itself was dwarfed by the surrounding oak, maple, and hickory trees. In front of the cabin, a grassy slope led down to a modest pond fringed by cattails and irises. On the whole, the building looked like it could belong to anyone with a little money and a need to get away from it all. The only sign that it might be something more was the Secret Service agents posted in front of the two main entrances, as well as the dark shapes Harper had seen moving through the trees on the approach to the building.

  Harper knew that the retreat was guarded year-round by approximately 100 soldiers and sailors, the bulk of whom were drawn from the ranks of the navy and the marines. As he opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle, he found himself wondering if they knew what had transpired in Darfur less than eight hours earlier. Looking up at the members of the president’s detail, he took note of the hard edge to their usual fixed expressions and decided that these individuals, at least, had been made aware of the situation. Even from 30 feet away, Harper could sense their anger and frustration. A person close to the president had died on their watch, and they had been unable to stop it from happening. Of course, it was absurd to think they could have prevented it, and on some level, they would know that as well. At the same time, Harper was quietly impressed by their demeanor. In his eyes, the fact that they were taking it so personally was a testament to their commitment and professionalism.

  A tall figure was coming down the steps at a brisk pace, his features blotted out by the light at his back. As he drew closer, his face came into focus, and Harper recognized him at once. Joshua McCabe was the assistant director of the Office of Protective Research, one of the senior figures in the U.S. Secret Service. Harper had worked with him several years earlier to prevent an attempt on the president’s life. The CIA—and one man in particular—had been instrumental in preventing the assassination, and to his credit, McCabe had never forgotten the Agency’s crucial role in averting that near catastrophe. Thanks to him, Harper had more access to the president than most of the cabinet. More importantly, McCabe was able to provide insight as to the president’s general mood, as well as his stance on various issues. Harper supposed that accounted for why he felt relieved beyond measure to see him coming down the steps.

  “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.

  McCabe leaned forward and tapped on the door. There was a brief silence, and then a voice called out for Harper to enter.

  CHAPTER 3

  CAMP DAVID

  Like the rest of the building, the living room was draped in shadow. Harper thought that during the day, the picture windows on the east wall would have provided a spectacular view of the Monocacy Valley. Now, at this early hour, they offered nothing more than a hazy reflection of the room itself. A large fieldstone fireplace dominated the southwest corner of the room, the chimney towering up to the open second floor, and framed photographs of former presidents occupied every inch of the beige walls. The carpet was government issue, gray and sturdy, and the mismatched furniture looked as if it might have been purchased at a yard sale.

  Harper was dimly aware of all of this, but for the most part, his attention was fixed on the three other men in the room—and on one man in particular.

  Robert Andrews, the director of Central Intelligence and Harper’s immediate boss, was seated on a red leather love seat facing the fireplace. He was a heavyset man with dark, curly hair, dressed in his standard Ralph Lauren suit. He nodded curtly as his deputy crossed the room toward the seating area. The man seated to his left, Harper saw, was General Joel Stralen. In his early fifties, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency was wiry and tan, with a sparse fringe of iron gray hair, thin lips, and deep-set eyes. He was wearing his customary blue USAF service dress uniform, though his jacket was slung over the back of his chair. Harper returned Andrews’s strained, silent greeting but ignored Stralen, who was staring at him with undisguised contempt. Instead, he began moving toward the man standing in front of the large windows.

  On any given day David Brenneman looked at least a decade younger than his fifty-five years. However, the news he had just received had aged him in a way the rigors of the office had never managed to do. His silver-brown hair was disheveled, his eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, and his mouth had set in a tight, angry line.

  As Harper approached, he was acutely aware of the president’s stance. Dressed in a navy tracksuit bearing the insignia of his alma mater, Georgetown University, he stood with his feet apart and his hands curled into useless fists by his sides, like a fighter who’d been sucker punched bracing for a second blow.

  Harper could only imagine what he was feeling at that moment. David Brenneman was arguably the single most powerful person in the world, and yet, for all that, he had just taken a hit to the gut from which he would probably never recover. Worse still, there was nothing he could do to make it right, despite the enormous resources at his disposal. Harper couldn’t have articulated why, but the tracksuit made him look all the more exposed. Brenneman was the president, yes. But this morning he was first and foremost a man reeling from grief.

  Harper stopped a few feet away and forced himself to meet Brenneman’s eyes.

  �
�Sir,” he began awkwardly, “I’m truly sorry for your loss. Believe me, we will do everything in our power to find the people who are responsible, and when we do, there is nothing to stop us from—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  At first Harper didn’t know where the words had come from. Then he turned to face the man who had snapped out the question. Stralen had jumped out of his chair and was staring at him with a mixed expression of irritation and disbelief.

  “Excuse me?” Harper said.

  “You heard. What are you talking about?” said Stralen. “We already know who did the deed. It was one man, and we know exactly where to find him. The only question is what we’re going to do about it.”

  Harper let his gaze drift from Stralen to his immediate superior. Andrews was shaking his head slowly, almost imperceptibly, his gaze fixed on some distant corner of the room. Clearly, he wasn’t about to stand up to his counterpart at the DIA. Harper wondered how long he had been able to withstand the blunt force of the general’s rhetoric, or if he had even tried.

  “Sir, with all due respect, it’s too early to draw any conclusions about—”

  “That’s bullshit,” Stralen said. “You know damn well that Bashir was behind this. It’s payback for the sanctions we slapped on them last month. What else could it be?”

  Harper frowned. “I don’t think that’s likely. Bashir may be dangerous, but he isn’t certifiably insane. Why would he do this? What could he possibly hope to gain?”

  Stralen was already shaking his head. “Who knows?” he snapped. “A world court’s issued a warrant for him—and backed him into a corner. When he tried to attend Zuma’s swearing-in conference as president of South Africa, Bashir was warned to stay home. Even those corrupt bastards in Uganda reluctantly washed their hands of him through diplomatic channels. As signatories to the ICC they’d have had to arrest him if he showed at their regional conference.”