Nuri needed to gear up to go into Duka. The first thing he needed was better bling. An arms dealer could get away with shabby clothes, but lacking gold was beyond suspicious. At a minimum, he needed at least a fancy wristwatch. Transportation was critical as well.
Most of all, he needed American dollars.
Which was a problem. The CIA had temporarily closed its station in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. The nearest officer was in Eritrea somewhere.
“Use the cash the existing operation has,” said Reid. “I’m sure they have plenty.”
Reid seemed grouchy, probably because of the hour. D.C. was eight hours behind eastern Africa, which made it close to two in the morning there.
“I’m not getting a lot of cooperation,” said Nuri.
“Shoot them if they don’t cooperate.”
It didn’t sound like a joke.
“Get back to me if there’s still a problem,” said Reid before hanging up.
Melissa had gone to rest in her quarters, one of the smaller huts farthest up on the hillside — not a coincidence, Nuri thought, as she had undoubtedly chosen it for the pseudo status its location would provide.
From a distance, all of the buildings looked as if they had been there for ages. But up close it was obvious they were recent additions — the painted exterior walls were made from pressboard, relatively rare in this part of Africa.
Even rarer was the door on Melissa’s hut, all metal. Nuri knocked on it.
“What?” she snapped from inside.
“You awake?”
“I’m awake,” she said, pulling open the door. Her right arm was in a sling.
“Can we talk?”
Melissa pushed the door open and let him in. There was a sleeping bag on the floor. A computer and some communications gear sat opposite it, pushed up against the wall. The only other furniture was a small metal footlocker. A pair of AK-47s sat on top, with loaded magazines piled at the side. A small, battery-powered lantern near the head of the sleeping bag lit the room.
“I need some cash,” Nuri said.
“And?”
“I need money.”
“Why do you think I have money?” snapped Melissa, sitting down on the sleeping bag. She pushed back to the wall, spreading her legs in front of her. She was wearing black fatigues.
“Look, I just got off the line with my boss,” said Nuri. “He told me I should shoot you if you didn’t cooperate. And he was serious.”
“Give me a break.”
“I know you got a stash of money,” he said. “Nobody works in Africa, especially out here, without bribe money. Piles of it.”
“Why do you need money?”
“I’m going into Duka and nose around. I have a cover as an arms dealer.”
“I have a few thousand, that’s all.”
“It’s a start.”
“I go with the money.”
Nuri shook his head. “Ain’t gonna work.”
“It has to.”
“Nope. Come on. I have a cover here I’ve established. I go in with an American girl — I’d be dead.”
“You don’t exactly look like you belong,” said Melissa. “You’re the wrong color.”
“I’m from Eritrea,” said Nuri. His cover story wasn’t that far from the truth, if you went back two generations. “I’m an Italian. Don’t make a face — it worked for months. I can speak most of the tribal languages, including Nubian, as well as Arabic.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You want Lango or Madi?”
“Nobody speaks Lango up here,” said Melissa.
“No shit. That wasn’t my point.”
“Look, we can work together,” she told him. “We don’t have to be enemies.”
“Just give me the cash.”
“You’re stuck if I don’t. There are no cash machines outside of the capital, which is too far for you to go, right? And Eritrea isn’t going to help. Because there’s one person in Eritrea, and you can never get ahold of him. And the embassy is useless.”
“I can call Washington,” he told her. “And have you ordered back home.”
“Look, there’s no need for us to spit at each other,” she told him. “Let’s work together.”
Nuri frowned.
“You can’t cut me out,” she told him. “Tell your boss I want to be involved.”
“My boss?”
“Colonel Freah.”
“Danny’s not my boss. He commands the military people.”
“And what are you?”
“I’m Agency, just like you. We work as a team.”
“Who’s in charge of the operation?”
“We both are.”
“There has to be
“You going to tell me how to run my operation now?”
“I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m sorry.” She shifted against the wall. “Let me go into town with you.”
“So the guys in the truck can recognize you?”
“They never got close enough to see me. It was dark.”
“What part of the company do you work for?”
Melissa didn’t answer.
“How long have you been covert? Or are you a tech geek who found her way over to the action side?”
“I’m not going to play games,” Melissa said. “I work for Harker — talk to him.”
“Look, give me the money,” he told her. “I need to go in right away. You’re in no shape right now. You should have taken more morphine. At least you’d get some rest.”
“You’re a doctor now?”
“Are you?”
“I trained as a nurse.”
Nuri put up his hands. She had an answer for everything.
Finally, Melissa went over to the footlocker and opened it. She hunched over it, counting money out.
“This ought to be enough,” she told him, handing over a wad of hundred-dollar bills.
Nuri started to count it.
“There are fifty,” she told him. “Five thousand.”
“That may not do it.”
“It’ll have to.” She slammed the top down with her right hand, pulling it halfway out of the sling.
“You should get your arm fixed.”
“It’ll be fine. You go and scout. OK. But I want to go on the mission.”
“If there is a mission, that’ll be up to Danny.”
“I thought he wasn’t your boss.”
“He’s not. But he’s more objective than I am.”
Boston managed to patch up Melissa’s motorcycle well enough for Nuri to ride it across the border into
