SIX MONTHS LATER
Josh Duffy stood in the afternoon heat, perspiration on his forehead, painfully aware that there were dozens of sets of eyes on him.
He felt like a gazelle being watched over by a pack of lions.
He tried to push the anxiety away, to concentrate on what he was doing with all his effort, because he knew the pressure was on, and he had to get this right.
He loomed over the large charcoal grill, ignoring the heat, sweat draining into his eyes now as he flipped the hamburgers as fast as he could.
He’d only been able to fit twenty-four patties over the heat, which meant he had another two dozen waiting in the wings.
And time was short, because the kids were hungry, to say nothing of the parents.
Nearly two dozen children, including both of his, splashed in the swimming pool at the center of the lush courtyard of a three-story apartment building. Parents and other embassy staff sat around at picnic tables, drinking beer and wine and hard seltzers, laughing and talking, most people keeping at least one eye on their kids while they enjoyed themselves.
The Iris Gardens was an apartment complex in the Cantonments neighborhood of Accra, the capital of Ghana, less than a quarter mile away from the rear wall of the U.S. embassy compound.
The Iris Gardens looked a lot like a higher-end garden apartment complex in Florida, except for a few differences. For starters, two armed local guards sat in a hardened shack at the front gate, eight-foot-high fences rimmed the perimeter, security cameras captured all angles of the exterior of the facility, and the ground-floor windows had steel bars across them.
A police car patrolled regularly, as well.
Twenty-six embassy families lived here at the Iris Gardens, and most of them were in attendance today at the weekly Sunday afternoon cookout.
Ambassador Jennifer Dunnigan often made an appearance though she didn’t live here, but she was back in Washington till Monday. The deputy chief of mission was in attendance with his family, as was the political chief, while the gunnery sergeant in charge of the seven-man Marine Security Guard force at the embassy stood by the pool monitoring his three-year-old twins as they played.
All the DS agents in Accra at the moment were here; a couple of single guys from CIA had dropped by, as had several local Ghanaian embassy employees, including the Foreign Service National Investigator for Diplomatic Security, a forty-three-year-old ex–local police captain named Benjamin Manu.
Josh wore swim trunks, a U.S. Army T-shirt, a Casio G-Shock watch, and wraparound Oakleys. His sandy brown hair was cut military short, though this had been his own decision and nothing mandated by DS.
In his swim trunks his prosthesis was exposed to everyone here at the cookout, and this was something he wouldn’t have dared to do on his last contracting job. Here, in contrast, everyone knew about his injury, and no one really cared.
Josh also had the benefit of not being the only agent in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security with a prosthetic leg.
The amputation made life tougher, for sure. He’d have to fly to Italy or Germany in a month or two to see a doctor to get the leg recalibrated again, but he’d already decided he’d turn that outing into a short family trip to salvage something positive from what otherwise would have been an annoying negative.
He and Nichole had decided they had enough money for a few days in an Airbnb outside the city center, as long as they took the metro and ate at budget restaurants or at street stands. Maybe they’d take the kids to a couple of parks to play and, if they could swing it, a museum, and although the towns around the medical facilities in Landstuhl, Germany, and Sigonella in Sicily weren’t exciting like Paris or Milan or Munich, they would still have a great time.
Josh threw cheese on the burgers, tossed the next round of buns on the toaster rack, then took a quick moment to look across the pool at Nichole. She was deep in conversation with an African American Foreign Service Officer; Josh had been introduced to so many people in the week he’d been in country he couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Nikki had a hard seltzer in her hand, and her sunglasses were up on her blond hair; he caught her flashing her eyes towards the pool to check on Huck, who was punching a beach ball back and forth in the air with some older boys.
Josh took it all in and thought that this might have been the most perfect moment in his life.
A Hispanic-looking man in his late forties, a couple inches shorter than Josh and wearing a Hawaiian shirt, khakis, and flip-flops, stepped up to him. “I need a sitrep on the smash burgers, Duff.”
“Cheese is melting now. I’ll have enough for the kids in about two minutes. Another ten minutes for the rest of us.”
Diplomatic Security Regional Security Officer Jay Costa shouted to a muscular man in his twenties standing shirtless next to the pool, tattoos on his upper arms, chest, and back, and his hair even shorter than Josh’s. “Hey, Gunny! Rally the kids and get their butts in their seats; the new guy’s grilling skills are about ready for inspection.”
The gunnery sergeant immediately got to work emptying the pool of dependents, and the kids made their way to their towels and then, eventually, to their parents at the picnic tables, waiting to be served.
DS Special Agent Chad Larsen and his fourteen-year-old son Kyle stepped up to the big grill, ready to help. Larsen was blond-haired and bearded, his son nearly his height of five-ten, and together with Costa and Benjamin Manu, they began dressing the cheeseburgers with pickles and ketchup and delivering them to the tables while Josh slapped another twenty-four patties down on the heat.
Twenty minutes later he took a load off and sat in front of a paper plate with a hamburger, potato salad, and a bottle of Club Lager, a local brew he’d already come to love in his short time here. Virtually every one of the fifty or so embassy personnel or dependents had already consumed their meals, and Josh breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t screwed up, because he’d never cooked for so many people in his life.
Nichole was across from him; like most of the others she’d already finished her lunch, and now she sat with Huck on her knee, a plastic cup of ice water in front of her.
Mandy ran up to her and whispered into her ear, but Duff could easily hear her. “Mom, is that lady pregnant?”
Nichole and Josh both looked around. On the far side of the pool a woman leaned over a garbage can, holding her stomach, and her face looked white as a sheet.
“No, sweetie, I think she just ate something that didn’t agree with her.”
Mandy kept watching her a moment, then was distracted when two other kids ran over and asked her if she wanted to see a lizard. Together all three ran off across the courtyard.
The woman looked like she was having dry heaves, and Nichole started to get up to go check on her, but Jay Costa spoke up from the next table over. “I’ll check her out, get her to the doctor if she needs it.” He climbed out of his seat and jogged over to the woman. They talked a moment, and then he helped her inside her apartment.
Josh watched the entire scene in silence, but when she was gone, he said, “I really hope that wasn’t my cooking.”
Nichole laughed. “No. That’s Kathy from Commerce. She went up north a few days ago, caught a stomach bug. I heard her telling someone she was sure it wasn’t malaria, but she also said the mosquitoes were biting, so…who knows?”
Josh said, “Why did Mandy ask if she was pregnant?”
“I told her that I was sick a lot when I was pregnant with her and said that I threw up some. Now every time some woman has a stomachache she asks me if she’s pregnant.”
Josh laughed. “As long as she doesn’t do it in front of the woman.”
“Believe me,” Nichole said, “that has been stressed to her.”
The cookout broke up around three; families went back to their units, while Josh, Nichole, and a dozen other adults stayed behind to clean up.
A half hour later, Josh and Nichole made their way back to their second-floor unit, then sat on their balcony looking out over the courtyard. Beyond the perimeter walls of the Iris Gardens, the traffic was light this Sunday afternoon, aided greatly by the fact that this was a quiet residential neighborhood.
Josh cracked open another beer as he looked out over the little stretch of the city that he could see from his balcony.
His kids loved their school, their new friends, and their young nanny, Portia. His wife was challenged and engaged in her job as a political officer here in the nation of over thirty million, and so far Josh got along great with his cohorts in the embassy’s Diplomatic Security Office.
Nichole put her arm around him.
He said, “And to think, four years ago we had nothing.”
Nichole shook her head now. “Don’t say that. We had each other. We had Mandy and Huck.” She thought a moment. “We had our spaghetti nights.”
Josh sipped. “Yeah. I just mean…this feels nice.”
His wife nodded and said, “It’s nice now, but in a few days you and I will be damn busy.”
He nodded at this. “Will be nice to get out of the capital and see the countryside, though.”
“We won’t see much,” she said. “This is going to be a whirlwind trip. My eyes will be on my iPad keeping things on track, and your eyes will be on Ambassador Dunnigan’s ass.”
“I’m not going to have my eyes on—”
“You told me yourself your position in her security detail is the rear of the diamond. Where does the rear of the diamond stand?”
Nichole had made this joke before about his security work. Regularly, in fact.
Josh played along. “I stand behind the principal.”
“Where you can look at her butt.”
“I’m a trained professional, babe.”
“Sure, dude.” After a moment in silence, Nichole turned to him. He could see the sudden seriousness on her face. “You’re keeping something from me. You were up last night again. Three a.m.”
He looked back out to the street. “Sorry, didn’t think I woke you.”
“That’s not the issue, and you know it.”
Josh took another swig of beer. “I know.”
“You’re having the nightmares still.”
Defensively, he said, “Sometimes. Not that often.”
“Is it Mexico?”
Josh looked off, out over the complex, past the front gate and the guards there, and into the haze over the city in the warm afternoon. “They’re just dreams.”
“Are you going to be ready to travel this week? We’re talking about real security work.”
“I’m fine with that. One hundred percent.”
She looked at him with a worried gaze. Finally, she said, “I still think you need to get some help with this.”
“We’ve been through this a hundred times, Nik. Some shrink diagnoses me with anything more than PTSD, they say I’m depressed or whatever, then my career is toast. I promise you, it’s getting better, it’s not affecting my work, and it’s just stupid nightmares.”
“You’re right,” Nichole conceded. “We have been through this a hundred times.” With a sigh, she added, “And still…nothing ever seems to change.”
She kissed him, rose, and went back into the apartment.
Hajj Zahedi felt unclean for what he was about to do, which was an unusual sensation for him, because he’d been a ruthless killer all of his adult life and didn’t spend much time battling moral discomfort.
But tonight was different. It felt wrong to be walking into this West African hotel nightclub, filled with infidels, alcohol, and debauchery, but he was at least pleased to see that the space was expansive and dark, and a three-piece band sat on a low riser in the corner playing soft Western music that would serve to drown out his delicate conversation to come.
Scanning around the support columns in the room, he found the man he was looking for sitting at a table in the back corner by velvet curtains.
The tables nearby had several occupants: Black men in local attire or business suits, and Asian men in suits, as well. A couple of Zahedi’s own men were here, sitting at the bar and doing a fair job of fitting into the foreign environment.
Zahedi himself wore a gray sharkskin suit he’d had tailored in Milan a year before and only brought out for special occasions, such as tonight. He needed to fit in as a traveling businessman here in Sierra Leone, and this meant he could hardly wear his military uniform, his combat gear, or even the long white robes he liked to don on those few occasions when he was back home in Tehran.
He made his way past the groups of men; to his pleasure he was ignored by his own pair of security officers as they sipped tea and watched the band, and more pleasure that the four Black men barely glanced his way, but he felt a little displeasure in the fact that three white men sitting in casual attire looked him up and down warily.
These infidels showed no respect, but Zahedi had expected nothing more, and he knew he just had to deal with them.
Colonel Hajj Zahedi was a field commander in Unit 400, an action arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force. He’d been here in Africa, on and off, for over two years, and in that time he’d had a few meetings like this one tonight.
Working with infidels was simply part of his job.
As was working with Sunnis, and that was the reason he was here. The Iranians were Shia. The Muslims of West Africa were, with only a very few exceptions, Sunni, but the Iranians had been liaising with various extremist groups on the continent for some time.
The man at the corner table stood as he arrived and gave a slight bow. The Asian was some five years younger than Hajj Zahedi, and there was an intensity and a vibrance in his eyes that Zahedi remembered from the last time they’d met, years ago in Mali.
“Mr. Kang,” the Iranian said as he shook the smaller man’s hand, and then they sat down as the little band began playing something new. A saxophone over a synthesizer, with a woman singing and playing an acoustic guitar; the song was soft and melodic, but Zahedi didn’t recognize it.
Kang drank white wine. A teapot and cup were also on the table; the Iranian assumed it had been ordered for him, but he turned around and motioned to a bartender to come to him.
Kang sat in silence while the man approached, and when he arrived, Zahedi spoke to him in fluent English.
“Double Knob Creek. Neat.”
The bartender nodded. “On the way, sir.”
Turning back to the Chinese man, Zahedi saw the incredulous look. Kang said, “I thought you could not partake in—”
“I’m in cover. Makes no sense for me to be drinking tea.” He leaned forward a little more. “Don’t assume things.”
“I won’t. It has been some time since we’ve seen each other. I had forgotten the lengths to which you go to maintain your cover. I must say I respect this greatly.”
Zahedi wasn’t here for the compliments. “Why are we in Freetown, in a cursed hotel? This meeting could have happened anywhere.” He added, “What is wrong with you?”
Kang answered with the utmost calm. “My nation is aware of all Western intelligence operatives in Sierra Leone. We find Freetown a safe place to do business, even if our business is two thousand kilometers away, as it is in this case.” When Zahedi didn’t seem convinced, Kang said, “This hotel is Chinese owned. We control the cameras, the access, the clientele. And most of the people in this room work for me, in some capacity.”
Zahedi nodded; now it all made sense. He glanced around, looking for his damnable alcohol. A pair of young and attractive women made eye contact from the bar. They were prostitutes, Zahedi realized quickly, and he looked away.
He was absolutely surrounded by debauchery.
Debauchery in the form of his glass of bourbon arrived; he made eye contact with Kang as he took a healthy sip.
May Allah forgive him.
Kang said, “Your forces? They are ready?”
Zahedi nodded. “They will all be in country by Wednesday. Nigerians, mostly. Sunnis, of course, but they do our bidding when we support them well, pay off their commanders, promise them either plunder or paradise.”
“Two hundred men?”
“I said one to two hundred,” Zahedi clarified. “The true number is closer to one hundred. But the quantity isn’t as important as the fervency.”
Kang did not hide his displeasure. Skeptically, he said, “Tell me about their fervency.”
“Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam Wal-Muslimin. Experienced. Ruthless.”
Kang knew JNIM were the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims. They’d formed in 2017 when four smaller West African extremist groups joined forces, following the Al Qaeda role model.
“And you are certain you have control of them?” he asked.
“I give them weapons, training, support. Of course I control them. Without the backing of my nation they would still be in the slums of Lagos or Abuja, in the dusty Sahel outside the villages of Burkina Faso.” Zahedi smiled. “They will sow the discord we both seek inside Ghana.”
“How will you move them?” Kang asked.
“We will bring them south and west. I had considered transporting them through Togo and then by sea, but the overland routes have been scouted and are safe.”
Kang nodded, pleased.
The Chinese intelligence officer said, “My mercenary leader will have his own force, already in country and spread around the key areas we’ve identified. When the local rebels begin moving on the capital, he and his shock troops will make them appear to be a much more formidable group than they actually are.”
“Your South African knows nothing about me, correct?”
“As we have agreed. The involvement of your proxy force will come as a surprise, but he won’t know you are working for me and, by that point in the operation, he will be committed to moving forward. Everyone will help one another when the time comes, whether or not everyone would be agreeable to working with one another in advance.”
Zahedi nodded. “Your nation and my nation do not work well together, especially here in Africa. Our aims are not the same. We want to destabilize, to cause Islam to flourish in the region and Western influence to recede.
“You people…you are all businessmen. No ideology other than money. Gold. Diamonds. Oil.”
Kang said, “Only regime change in Ghana will stabilize business for us in that nation. And if this business model works for us, as I am sure it will, then I assure you we would like to replicate this. Your pockets of influence will grow across the continent, and together we can push the West away, and my nation’s influence will grow, as well.”
Zahedi took another drink. He wouldn’t allow himself to realize that he liked the feel of the hard liquor going down his throat; he just told himself he was suffering for his work. Finally he said, “I understand the relationship, and I will provide you with what we have agreed upon.”
He rose from the table, turned, and left the bar, ignoring the music and the security men looking his way as he did so.