But on the bright side, maybe they’d kill her.
“You can’t stop me,” Melissa insisted to Danny. “This is
That was another thing that bothered Nuri — she kept addressing Danny, not him, or at worst both of them.
“They’ll think you’re a spy in the clinic,” said Nuri. “They’ll know you’re American.”
“Of course they’ll know I’m an American. I don’t lie about that. There are a lot of Americans in Sudan.”
“Not a lot,” said Nuri. “And they’re all aid workers.”
“So?” She kept staring at Danny.
“Fine,” said Nuri. “It’s your funeral.”
Chapter 19
Herman Edmund’s schedule was ordinarily too tight for Jonathon Reid to expect an immediate meeting, even on an important matter, and given their conversation the other day, Reid doubted that Edmund would be motivated to make time. So he was surprised when Edmund’s secretary kept him on the telephone when he made the request, and even more surprised to hear the CIA director’s voice rather than hers a few seconds later.
“I was going to call you myself,” Edmund said.
“We need to talk.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“Much earlier.”
“We’ll call it an early lunch, then.”
“We should talk in a very secure place,” said Reid.
Edmund hesitated for the slightest of moments before telling Reid that he had exactly the same idea.
They ate in the director’s dining room, only the two of them.
Reid ordered a cup of yogurt.
“You want to talk about Raven,” said Edmund as soon as the attendant left.
“I do.”
“Jon, it’s an unfortunate situation.”
“I think we both know it’s more than that,” said Reid.
Edmund raised an eyebrow. He pushed back in his chair, nearly reaching the wall. Photographs of all the Agency’s past directors hung in a line above their heads; William Casey glared down above Edmund’s.
“I understand that you’ve been making inquiries,” he said.
“I’ve been discreet.”
“As always,” said Edmund.
“You can’t expect me to put the lives of my people on the line without knowing what they’re being risked for.”
“Come on, Jonathon. That’s bullshit and you know it. People do that every day here. You do it, I do it — it’s the nature of the business.”
“The program is illegal, isn’t it?” said Reid. “There’s no executive order authorizing that Li Han be killed. And that’s the mandated procedure.”
“I never discuss specific orders like that.”
Reid was tempted to repeat Edmund’s line about bullshit back at him, but he didn’t.
“The UAV project is probably borderline as well,” Reid said. “But what I’m truly concerned about is Raven itself.”
“You told me you had located the UAV.”
“Raven is not the aircraft,” said Reid. “I need to know about the software, Herman. I need to know how much of a danger it is.”
“Software is software. It flies the plane.”
“That’s not all it does.”
“In this case, it is.”
“What are the safeguards?”
“I don’t know the technical data. Obviously, I’d be out of my element discussing them. As would you.”
“I want to speak to the people who developed the software and the computer that it runs in,” insisted Reid. “I want them to talk to my experts.”
“Can’t happen.”
“Why not?”
Edmund shook his head. “Can’t.”
A buzzer sounded.
“Come,” said Edmund loudly.
In response, the attendant opened the door and wheeled in a tray with their food. The director had ordered a cheese omelet with home fries.
“I had the chef hold the onions,” said Edmund. “I have meeting with the Secretary of State later. Though on second thought, maybe that would have been a good idea.”
He laughed at his own joke. Reid said nothing until the attendant left. “My fear,” he said then, “is that the program, if it were to get into the wild, would be unstoppable.”
“What do you mean, in the wild?”
“Like a virus. It has that sort of capability.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Jonathon. Your tech people should be able to tell you that.”
Reid rose as Edmund took a bite from his omelet.
“Where are you going?” asked the director.
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Sit down, Jonathon.”
This was exactly the sort of situation Reid had dreaded when he decided to return to the Agency after his retirement. But it was also exactly the reason he had not taken the post of DDO.
“I don’t think we have anything else to talk about,” he said coldly. “If you’re not going to give me full access to the Raven program, anything else either one of us says would be pointless.”
“Jonathon—”
Reid hesitated, half expecting Edmund to change his mind, or perhaps appeal to their long friendship. But the director said nothing else.
“Maybe I’ll be hungry later,” said Reid, pocketing the yogurt before leaving.
Chapter 20
Turk had now been up for an ungodly number of hours, and while his own personal record was in no danger of falling, he was nonetheless feeling the strains of fatigue. With the Whiplash team back in Ethiopia and a Global Hawk now overhead for surveillance, he was no longer needed. Assuming the satellite arrived in a few hours, he could even go home.
Until then he had to stay nearby. So he called Danny and cleared himself to land at the Ethiopian base.
The runway was a long hash mark just off the peak of a ridge in the mountains, a little on the short side, though not a problem for the diminutive Tigershark. But the field wasn’t exactly the smoothest, with an almost wavy pattern running across the tarmac about halfway down, and several dozen poorly patched craters scattered over its length. The Tigershark took a couple of hard bumps as she landed, knocking Turk against his restraints. A funnel of dust followed him down the runway.
