“Air Force? He’s a pilot?”
“No, he was with the original Whiplash. Danny Freah. He’s a colonel.”
It all fit together for Nuri. Breanna Stockard — a very nice woman, though in his opinion a fish out of water as a manager, far too laid back — was recreating her past glory by surrounding herself with fellow Dreamland alums. Even the name of the project, Whiplash, was the same.
He clamped his mouth shut. There was no sense complaining.
They cleared security quickly. Nuri shivered slightly as they descended — the closed-in stairwell reminded him of the labyrinth beneath the Coliseum.
“Jonathon, good morning,” said Breanna Stockard, who was waiting just beyond the nano wall as they came in. “Mr. Lupo, good to see you again.”
“You can call me Nuri.”
“Nuri, this is Danny Freah. Colonel, Nuri Abaajmed Lupo. He’s been overseas for a while. Still jet- lagged?”
“I’m over it,” said Nuri. Danny was younger than he’d expected.
Ray Rubeo was standing in the corner, arms crossed. “Mr. Lupo, good morning,” he said.
“Hey, Doc.”
“I trust the gear is working satisfactorily?”
“You might make the bulletproof vest thicker.”
“Resistant. It’s resistant, not bulletproof,” said Rubeo in his world-weary voice. “Any thicker and you wouldn’t be able to wear it beneath your clothes.”
“You should work on it.”
Rubeo frowned. “I have a few things to attend to,” he told Breanna. “Text me if you need me.”
“I thought we would begin with an informal briefing on the situation in the Sudan for Colonel Freah,” said Reid after the scientist left. “And then Ms. Stockard and I will expound on what we see as the next step, both for the project, and for Whiplash.”
“Sure,” said Nuri.
“Why don’t we go inside?” suggested Breanna. “We’ll be more comfortable.”
“The Sudan is the incarnation of hell on earth,” started Reid. He’d prepared a brief PowerPoint, which the computer system presented on the cube at the center of the room. “The country has been in and out of revolt forever. The various factions have different grievances and aims. Our interests are not directly tied up in any of them. We were drawn there because of an arms selling network known as Jasmine.”
Some part of Sudan or another had been involved in civil war since before the country gained independence in 1956. The wars had various causes, though the outcome was uniform: the majority of the people suffered, while a few tribal and religious leaders managed to eke out a marginally better existence. Darfur, in the west, had occupied the world’s attention in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Now things were flaring in the eastern borderlands with Ethiopia. The Sudanese government was dominated by Arab-speaking Muslims; the rebels were a mixture of different tribes and ethnic groups. Arabic was their common language; many of the elite and even a number of peasants could manage reasonable English.
Reid turned his attention to the arms dealers who made much of the bloodshed possible. He noted that Jasmine, like many of its brethren, was a loose association of people who moved things around the world, mostly from Africa to Europe. He mentioned the aluminum tubes, and their possible connection to nuclear weapons. Finally he came to Luo’s assassination, a professional job that suggested the game Jasmine was involved in had very high stakes.
Nuri, not necessarily convinced of this, wondered if Reid knew something about the assassin he didn’t. Meg Leary was a pro, which meant that whoever hired her had a reasonably decent amount of money. Nuri thought it was a rival trying to move in, even though he hadn’t seen any evidence of this yet. But it could also be a government.
Had the U.S. hired her? That made no sense to him, but he had to admit it might be a possibility. Reid surely would have told him, or at least hinted more strongly.
Maybe Luo double-crossed the Iranians, who were the source of most of the money the rebels had in the Sudan. Or maybe the Israelis didn’t like him for some reason. They tended to do their own assassinations, but weren’t above outsourcing when it was convenient.
“Luo’s assassination brings us back to square one,” said Reid. “We want to take another look at the rebel groups in the Sudan, and possibly find another way into Jasmine.”
“Why not track the murderer?” asked Danny Freah.
Nuri smiled. He knew he was going to resent working with anyone, but at least this fellow thought like he did.
“That’s impractical,” said Reid. “She’s a professional. It’s unlikely she’ll yield much information.”
“You’re protecting her?” said Danny.
“She wasn’t working for us, Colonel. We don’t know who she was working for. Nuri has some theories.”
Nuri shrugged. “I would have preferred to do it that way, too,” he told Danny. “But it didn’t work out.”
“So what happens now?” Danny asked.
Nuri turned to Reid.
“Originally, Mr. Lupo was able to work in Ethiopia.”
“That won’t work anymore,” said Nuri. “Jasmine used a cafe in Addis Abba. I bugged the place. But unfortunately, the owner was arrested a few days later and the cafe was closed down. The smugglers are staying out of there for the most part, because the government’s cracking down.”
“So we’ll have to work directly in the Sudan,” said Reid. “And given the situation there, Nuri could use some protection and backup.”
“Which is where Whiplash comes in,” said Danny.
“That’s exactly the way it’s supposed to work,” said Breanna.
She looked over at Nuri and could tell he was apprehensive. She couldn’t blame him. He’d never worked with Danny and didn’t know what to expect.
“Do you think you can bug the rebels in the Sudan?” she asked him.
“Yeah, of course,” said Nuri. “I’ve already checked the area out.”
He had been through the area earlier. He’d also worked a little with the simulator, which presented 3-D models and conjured situations to practice infiltrating an area. But Nuri had found that real life, at least in the Sudan villages, was much too messy for the computers to model correctly. He’d already decided he wouldn’t bother trying to model the next mission there.
“What’s the goal here?” asked Danny. “How much is it to test MY-PID, this computer thing, and how much to find out what these Jasmine people were doing with the aluminum tubes?”
“Actually, to find out who got the tubes and what they’re doing with them,” said Nuri. “Jasmine was just the conduit.”
“I’d say, Colonel, that the tubes are much more important than the technology at this point,” said Reid. “It’s there to help, nothing more. If the tubes are being used to process nuclear material, that’s an extremely serious situation.”
“Who the hell would process the material in the Sudan?” said Danny.
“That’s exactly what we want to find out,” answered Reid.
“Relatively painless, wasn’t it?” asked Reid as they drove back to the administration building.
“I guess.”
“I think you and the colonel will get along fine.”
“He thinks he’s in charge,” said Nuri.
“Keep your ego in check, Nuri.”
Nuri frowned and reached for his coffee. It was still warm.
“Do you want some time off?” Reid asked.
“I don’t need it.”
“Good. You’re booked on a flight out to Paris tomorrow night. You can connect from the there to Egypt.”
“Fine.”
