Arjuna drove through the high-walled security gate and let Ellie out of the car with a warning: ‘I’ll be back at 2300 hours. It’s a party. Don’t antagonise the locals. And don’t run away. There are more CIA agents in Colombo right now than tourists. We will find you.’
She nodded, grateful he was coming back for her. Until she worked out exactly who was following her and why, she had to be more careful. Ellie crossed the external antechamber and walked through the steel doors into the US Embassy. Memory and the sound of music called her to the main ballroom. She searched the crowd for familiar faces. The Australians looked like they had been here for hours. They never could turn down free alcohol.
She pivoted and nearly collided with an old friend.
‘Harper, you’re back.’ Bill Solomon extended his hand. His voice was as hoarse as she remembered, decades of cigarettes briefly interrupted by two surgeries for throat cancer. Solomon was the station chief for the CIA in Sri Lanka, and a lifer in Colombo. His breed of agent was essential for security in high-risk countries, although since Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, all American embassies considered themselves targets. 9/11 hadn’t made the CIA paranoid, simply justified.
‘Bill, you’re still here,’ Ellie smiled sweetly.
He was standing next to a broad Sri Lankan man in a tuxedo, whose thick moustache and corpulence she recognised, and not just because Sri Lankan men of a certain age and social class were all over-fed and redolent of Old Spice.
Solomon had a hard grip and he pulled Ellie towards him. ‘Let me introduce you to Dilshan Perera, the—’
‘Under Secretary for Defence,’ she finished. ‘You look just like your cousin, the President.’
‘Thank you. The President is much better looking,’ Dilshan replied.
‘My boss, Mike Redmond, mentioned that you would be my liaison for the aid negotiations. I just got in this afternoon, but perhaps we could meet later this week?’
‘Excellent. I’m honoured Mike sent you. You still have a reputation and friends in Sri Lanka.’ Dilshan smiled, revealing perfect Western orthodontics. He had been briefed on her last mission here. ‘I’ll ask my office to call you. Bill will have your number, no?’
Solomon nodded. ‘Yes, I know how to find her.’
‘Excellent. I’ll let you two catch up. Dr Harper, it was a pleasure.’ The Under Secretary shook her hand, then joined a current in the crowd that took him to the next circle of diplomats.
‘How’s the Ambassador?’ Ellie asked Solomon, bracing herself.
‘Furious. He got a call from Perera.’ Solomon stood head and shoulders above most of the room and kept monitoring the crowd, but here he stooped and pitched his voice for her ears only. ‘He heard about your little side trip this afternoon. What are you playing at? You could have been killed.’
‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were concerned about me,’ Ellie said.
‘I’m concerned about damage control. If you eat a bullet, I’m the one who has to clean up. You jeopardised our operation here and your role, and now I have to explain to Langley why you didn’t follow protocol. I told Redmond this was a mistake, but he’s getting soft.’ He eyed her as he straightened once more to his full height. ‘Actually, he was always soft on you.’
Her face heated. ‘I wanted to have a look around without a state chaperone. You know how they operate. I’d have been shown the outside of the building and some carefully edited crime scene photos and advised to file a report.’
‘That’s exactly what you should do—file a report. You’re here to help Tenby lock in an aid agreement. The other stuff is just optics. That journalist was living on borrowed time. Tell the family you investigated and found nothing solid, and you’re sorry for their loss.’ He acknowledged someone across the room.
‘Say that a lot, do you?’ Her voice wavered a little. She hated these people.
‘I do, and sometimes I mean it. In this case, Fernando had it coming to her. This is Sri Lanka, not Sweden.’ He dusted pastry flakes from his lapel.
‘Speaking of Scandinavia …’ She needed to get out of this room. Where was Tenby? ‘The Norwegians are worried about what’s happening up north.’
‘Fucking bleeding hearts want us to intervene. Like that would do anything. Sometimes I just want to beat them with my nine-iron.’
‘Maybe that’s why you play alone,’ she said.
‘I prefer to play golf alone. I’m always listening to chatter. When I’m on the green, I want silence.’
She could understand that. Solomon had seen the bomb blasts in the capital. He had identified the bodies of Americans and bagged them for freight as methodically as he sent souvenirs home for his grandchildren. Everyone needed a little silence.
‘The city still on high alert?’ she asked.
‘The city’s been on high alert since 9/11.’
‘And Rajapaksa’s pledge to join our war on terror. Who would have thought he’d become such an enthusiastic and fluent speaker of Bush’s anti-terrorism language?’
‘That’s President Bush. Watch your language, Harper. You’re a guest here. This is my house.’ Solomon was serious. He protected country above countrymen. Terrorism, he had once told her, was simply the same acts of war he had been fighting since Vietnam, just with more deadly tools.
‘Ellie, you made it.’ Tenby joined their circle and pretended not to notice the relief on her face.
‘Yes, she did, by the skin of her teeth.’ Solomon leaned into Tenby. ‘Keep your agent in check and remind her who she works for.’ He raised his glass in mock salute and left them.
‘Christ, that was fast. It usually takes you twenty-four hours to piss off the establishment. You look beautiful, by the way.’ Tenby pulled his collar away from his neck, adjusting the bow tie. ‘Damn suit,’ he muttered.
‘Age is accelerating my superpowers, Tenby.’ She reached up and straightened his tie, her fingertips touching the creeping redness at his neck. His heat rash looked more like a stress rash. Poor old Tenby.
He thanked her and pulled away. ‘Did it ever occur to you that if you played ball with Solomon, he could help you?’
‘He’ll only help me if my interests are aligned with the United States.’
‘Your interests are those of the United States. You should always be aligned with the home country, Ellie. You’re not a free agent, even if all you do now is attend constitutional reform meetings in developing countries. You’re always there as an agent of the United States and your refusal to accept that—well, frankly it’s getting tedious.’
‘“Frankly it’s getting tedious”? That’s the best you can do?’ She ribbed. Diplomats swore like pansies, especially the newly promoted ones whose circles of influence were more politically powerful and more politically correct.
He smirked. ‘Okay, fine, Ellie—it’s fucking annoying. You make it seem like you’re on the side of truth and justice and we’re on the side of the American Way, and somehow those things are opposed to each other.’
‘Tenby, that’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me. Now, can you get me into the Frontal Lobe? I don’t think I’ve got clearance for that anymore. Perhaps without Solomon watching?’
‘You definitely don’t have clearance for that. You’re several steps up from a visiting academic, but several steps down from the inner circle of intelligence. What do you want there?’ he asked apprehensively.
She took the USB device out. ‘It’s encrypted. I’ve tried six programs already. I took it from the smartboard in Ameena Fernando’s office.’
Tenby choked on his drink. ‘You stole evidence from a crime scene?’
‘Correct.’
‘Then yes, I can get you into the Frontal Lobe. We should connect it to one of Scottie’s super-brain computers and see what it can do,’ he suggested.
‘Perfect. Maybe now? This party is painful.’
‘Agreed,’ he said, ditching his drink and leading her across the ballroom, through the kaleidoscope of well-dressed dignitaries. They had almost reached a side door when a woman in gold shimmered into their path.
Her jet-black hair fell like a sheet, straight and shining over one shoulder, plunging with her teasingly low neckline down towards her belly. The perfect dress for Embassy drinks, distracting but diplomatic. She whispered something in Tenby’s ear, and he nodded, allowing himself to be directed towards an elderly gentleman. The man was fringed by heavy-set bodyguards who had surrendered their guns at Security Portal 1 but could still kill with their bare hands.
Tenby coughed and wiped the sweat from his palms on his suit pants. He always was a nervous sweater. ‘Ellie, I’d like to introduce you to the Chinese cultural attaché, Mr Eric Kwan. Mr Kwan, this is—’
‘We’ve met before, Tenner—Tenby.’ Ellie smiled apologetically and warmly at her friend and then spoke to the Chinese diplomat. ‘Mr Kwan, it’s a pleasure to see you again. You’ve been promoted to the diplomatic corps? Or was it a demotion?’
The older man ignored the jibe. ‘What brings you to Sri Lanka, Dr Harper?’ he asked without smiling in return. ‘Not secession agreements this time, it must be hoped.’
‘Mr Kwan and I met at a forum about Tibet, hosted in New Delhi,’ Ellie explained to Tenby. ‘I was presenting on devolution agreements. You know, what does partial autonomy in trade, tourism, law and order et cetera look like?’
‘It looked far too much like secession,’ Kwan replied.
‘Well, as you say, there won’t be any secession agreements here.’ Ellie shrugged, feigning indifference.
‘Then why are you here?’ Kwan asked again.
‘I thought I could write the Sri Lankan government a new constitution. You know, one that sets out the rights of citizens and the responsibilities of the state. Maybe with pictures and diagrams, in case they still don’t get it.’
Arrows, she thought. Arrows might help.
‘Americans, always joking.’ Kwan shook his head. ‘Never listening. Never learning.’
Tenby answered for her. ‘I’m finalising an aid agreement and Ellie has kindly offered to help. Post-conflict nation-building is her expertise for USAID. We’re looking at the whole package that will be needed after the war ends.’
‘Ah yes, thank you, Mr Tenby. Dr Harper called you Tenner?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘An unusual nickname.’
‘An old and defunct nickname,’ Ellie redirected quickly as Tenby flushed. ‘Now we just call him “First Secretary”.’
‘Of course.’ Kwan nodded. ‘Mr Tenby, you’ve reminded me about the three R’s of post-conflict: reconciliation, resettlement and reconstruction. Dr Harper presented a paper on it in New Delhi.’ He looked at Ellie.
‘You flatter me, sir,’ she said.
‘Not intentionally. The People’s Republic takes its responsibility to Sri Lanka seriously. Perhaps between diplomatic parties, you will visit some of the hospitals and schools we are rebuilding. You might learn something.’ Kwan held out his arm and the woman in the gold dress moved forward to take it.
‘I’d like that. Perhaps your assistant will show me around?’ Ellie looked at her.
‘Daughter, actually,’ the woman replied. ‘Su Lin Kwan. I would be delighted to show you our work with rural communities here. As my father says, we could teach the Great White Saviour something about empowering partnerships.’
Ellie smiled. People did like to consider her white when convenient. ‘There’s a fourth R in my paper, Ms Kwan. But the State Department edits my lectures, and in the case of the People’s Republic, you edit all incoming information, too.’
‘With good reason,’ Kwan said. ‘Wrong information can be corruptive.’
‘What’s your fourth R?’ Su Lin asked.
‘The rule of law. Post-conflict reconstruction has to be underpinned by the rule of law.’ Ellie actually believed that. She had just never seen it done effectively. ‘Sri Lanka doesn’t score well on the Rule of Law Index.’
‘If Guantanamo Bay was a country, it wouldn’t score well, either,’ Su Lin replied. ‘You’re so convinced that you know best; that you—and only you—know what countries need to succeed. And yet you lack the self-awareness to acknowledge that all you’re really doing is building puppet democracies, defined by a Western-normative model that protects your imperial interests.’
‘Is what you’re doing any different?’ Ellie asked. It wasn’t a challenge. She wanted to hear this woman’s perspective.
‘No. But we are honest about it,’ Kwan replied for his daughter. ‘Enjoy your trip here, Dr Harper. Sri Lanka is a busy country. How is it you Americans say? Take a number.’ He nodded to indicate that they were excused.
Tenby grabbed Ellie’s hand, muttering under his breath as he took her out the side door, through two corridors and the industrial kitchen. ‘I don’t even want to talk about that.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Ellie protested. ‘That was at least a bit of fun in an otherwise dismal party. I am sorry about the Tenner thing, though. Old habits.’
He waved off her apology as they descended two flights to another corridor. Tenby led her past the rec room where the Special Ops guys were hanging out, waiting for a call.
‘Where’s the armoury?’ she asked. It used to be somewhere around here.
‘Other side, next to the gym. Different security system. Why?’ He took her to a door with a dimly lit panel beside it. ‘I can get you whatever you need.’
‘No, thank you for the gear.’ Two guns and a vest were more than enough.
Tenby inserted a key below the panel, then placed his palm on it and entered a code with his other hand. Finally, he spoke into the monitor: ‘My voice identifies me as Keith Simon Tenby.’
The panel lit up green. A voice crackled through the monitor. ‘I see you’ve brought an old friend, Tenby.’
‘I have, Scottie—an oldie but a goodie.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that. Verify yourself,’ the voice instructed.
Ellie stepped forward and placed her palm on the panel. Her left hand was about to punch in her former security code, an unconscious muscle memory.
‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll bypass the code,’ the voice interrupted her. ‘I just need your voice signature.’
‘My voice identifies me as Ellie Rachel Harper. Date of Birth: 12 January 1977.’
‘Happy Birthday, Ellie,’ the voice said.
‘Thank you, Scottie.’
The panel lit up green again and the reinforced metal door opened.
They entered the intelligence room known as the Frontal Lobe—walls of screens, satellite images, maps, movements of US military personnel, banks of computers. There was a small team of analysts, some on headsets, all working data. Each US embassy had an intelligence room. In some countries, the US had several in different secure locations, all networked to their station office and each other. The Frontal Lobe in Colombo was small but networked to its counterparts in India.
Scott Barnett stood up from his cluttered desk to greet her with a bear hug. He looked older than before, more lines on his face, less ash-blond hair on his head, but the same intelligent eyes and quick smile, and still strong and lean for a man who only left this fortified room to have a smoke.
He sat down again in front of a computer with three screens. Two showed reams of data. The third was Dance India Dance.
‘Complex encrypted data embedded in that one?’ She motioned to the screen.
‘Highly complex. I’ve been taking classes on YouTube.’
She laughed. ‘What else do they have you doing here in Colombo? I thought you’d have asked for a transfer by now,’ she said, taking a seat next to him. ‘Somewhere less prone to malaria and genocide. You deserve it.’
‘And miss all the action in the Thoroughfare?’ Scott replied, pulling up a map on one of his screens.
He took a stylus and drew a line on the screen from the Middle East to Pakistan, around India and Sri Lanka. He threaded the line through the Strait of Malacca and parts of Asia, around to China. Then he drew an X on Sri Lanka.
‘From here, you can watch the movement of a fleet above the water or below it. You can refuel and restock your own fleet to fight it. You can deploy planes and short-range drones. Every colonial and superpower has wanted Sri Lanka, so they can watch all of this.’ He drew a ring around the region. ‘From right here.’ He rested his stylus on the X. ‘That’s why I’m still here,’ he said. ‘And good thing for you that I am, I’m guessing. What can I do for you, Ellie?’
‘Do you think you could decrypt this for me, please, Scottie? Then we can talk Bollywood moves or Sri Lanka’s strategic advantages, your choice.’ She gave him the device.
‘Where did you get a Tardis from? Do I want to know?’
She shook her head. ‘Tardis?’
He inserted it into one of his hard drives. ‘This is high-level data mining technology, with capacity to transport massive amounts of information through space—hence the name.’ He played around with various screens and prompts, each one bringing up a file lock. ‘It’s not a passive storage unit like a USB stick. The Tardis is an active leech with five levels of security and encryption.’
‘Don’t tell me you can’t crack a journalist’s security system.’
‘A journalist?’ He looked dubious. ‘This tech is expensive, and you can’t just buy it at Walmart. You program it, then plug it in, and it automatically, intuitively draws out all the data it finds. And it finds everything, even data that’s heavily protected.’
‘Impressive.’
‘It’s a sophisticated toy. Once it finds what it wants, it transmits the data to an off-site location.’
‘Anywhere off-site?’
‘Anywhere in the world,’ he confirmed. ‘It packages the data, bounces it to a satellite which bounces it to whoever put the Tardis there in the first place. Not many countries have this technology.’ Scott took the Tardis from one hard drive and inserted it into another.
‘Could this belong to a journalist, rather than an agency?’ Tenby asked.
Scott shook his head. ‘Like I said, not many people have the tech. Unless your journalist was aligned to … a state party?’
‘Unlikely,’ Ellie replied. Ameena Fernando attacked all players equally. ‘But I’ll look into it. Next request: can you access local CCTV footage?’
‘I can, although not directly. I tap into the Station and they’re hacked into the local system. I’m just a spectator. What do you want to see?’ He opened up another program.
She pulled out a folded square of paper. ‘I need to know what happened between 0900 and 1200 hours on 9 January 2009. These are the coordinates of the kill zone. I also want footage of the two weeks prior, to see who scoped the kill zone, plus the forty-eight hours after, to see who’s returned to dispose of evidence.’
‘You’re here to investigate that?’ Scott asked. ‘You know who they suspect, right?’
‘I know.’ It was more than a suspicion. It was an accusation from the dead woman’s grave.
‘And Redmond still sent you to investigate it?’
‘She’s here to help me on the aid agreement,’ Tenby interjected. ‘Redmond asked her to make inquiries about the other incident, but as usual, she’s been doing more than that.’
Ellie shrugged. ‘I also need all of Ameena Fernando’s phone records. Let’s look at the last six months for now. And track her location too, please, if you can.’
‘Sure. Anything else?’ Scott asked, bemused.
‘Cross-reference the phone numbers with bank records. I also want you to look at this list of persons of interest.’ She turned the paper over and showed Scott the list.
‘You have POIs already?’ Tenby peered over Scott’s shoulder.
‘Just based on the key exposés the paper ran over the last two years. I need vital stats, phone records, criminal records and known associates of staff, same timeframe.’
‘You suspect her staff?’ Tenby asked. ‘As I understand it, the paper was run by a loyal team of radicals.’
‘I suspect everybody.’
‘Eighty per cent of homicides are committed by someone intimately known to the victim,’ Tenby pointed out. ‘Like a husband or a lover. Are they on your list?’
‘Naturally,’ she replied, not entirely truthfully. Anil Fernando and Sathyan Navaratnam were on the list, but far below others. She would need motive and means to move them up.
‘It’s been a while since you used your investigative skills, Ellie,’ Tenby said. ‘I’m impressed that it’s coming back to you so fast.’
‘I’ve been watching a lot of NCIS.’
‘I’ve often wondered who watches that show,’ Scott mused.
‘Old men in nursing homes and their dutiful daughters. Send everything straight to my inbox, if you can.’
‘Ellie.’ Tenby weighed his words carefully. ‘No offence, but you’re basically a lawyer now, not an intelligence analyst and certainly not a detective …’
‘So?’
‘He’s saying that you attend conferences and make human rights recommendations that no one reads—’
‘I’m not offended by that at all, thank you, Scottie. Please continue to minimise my career.’
‘I’m saying, what does Redmond actually expect you to achieve?’ Tenby tried to appease her before an argument broke out, scratching the rash on his neck.
‘With your help, Tenby, he wants me to make reasonable efforts to find out what happened to the journalist.’ Her voice came out harsher than she had intended with her old friend. ‘Her ex-husband is a high-profile US citizen, he’s asked for help and we’ve got to show we’re taking this kind of thing seriously.’ She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant when she said this kind of thing—the assassination of a journalist, the threat to freedom of the press, or the decline of the rule of law in the region.
‘Okay, okay,’ Tenby placated, his hands raised in the air. ‘I’m allowed to ask, Ellie, so I know how to help you.’
She took a deep breath and turned to Scott. ‘Can you get me the footage or not?’
‘I can—here.’ Scott pulled a flash drive from his computer. ‘I can insult you and illegally download CCTV footage at the same time. It’s yours. Go crazy, detective.’
•
That night in her hotel, Ellie tidied the draft agreements into a pile on the bedside table. She opened up the encrypted laptop Scott had given her, punching in the three codes and placing her hand on the screen to read her biometric data.
She opened up the file of the CCTV footage and located the timeframe of the murder, giving herself a margin of thirty minutes on either side.
Her CIA briefing had showed twelve cameras between Ameena’s house and where she was assassinated. Twelve across only four blocks. Colombo was on high alert for terrorism, but the government watched terrorists and citizens alike.
The second camera at the main junction after Ameena’s house showed her in her silver Mazda, stopping at a cashew vendor’s stall, buying food and then turning left. The third camera showed no trace of the journalist at all.
Ellie checked the footage on all the cameras, flicking back and forth. She had her, and then she lost her. A grainy image of a hand reaching through the window to give cash and receive food. Ellie froze the image and expanded it as far as it could go. She looked at Ameena’s hand, noting something there that had caught the light. A ring perhaps. She tried to zoom in and enlarge, but couldn’t. Scott would have to help her with that. She let the footage continue.
One second, Ameena was there, and then in the next, she wasn’t. Nothing. Ellie checked the time stamp. It was accurate. She checked the footage again and again. Perhaps she had made a mistake.
The footage showed people, but not the person she was looking for.
No silver Mazda, no assassins on motorcycles, no shooting and no dead woman.