MARCH
CRYSTAL CITY, VIRGINIA
In late March, the mysterious export company Global Enterprises moves to a larger space in the same office complex to accommodate its growing staff. The day before the move, Henry Arroyo receives a memorandum that is not merely classified “Top Secret.” It also carries the additional and more exclusive designation of “SCI LEVEL Majestic.” This is the highest possible “Sensitive Compartmented Information” category, indicating the most limited possible distribution list. It did not extend outside four offices in the DIA. It did not go to the White House.
The memo, which is sourced to RIMSHOT, the official code name for double agent Assam Baah, now officially Colonel Baah of the Islamic State Army, describes an unusual gathering of ISA leadership. The gathering is now referred to in this exclusive U.S. intelligence group as the Tunisia Summit. Such in-person gatherings of the ISA high command are rare, the classified memorandum says. ISA leaders are loathe to assemble many of their highest-echelon members physically in one place. But the meeting was considered critical. The summit was held to develop plans for ISA for the next five years. The reason, according to RIMSHOT, was ISA believed it was on the cusp of becoming the preeminent Islamist group in northern and eastern Africa. The supreme commander of ISA, Sheikh Ahmed Kamil, a man so secretive the American government did not possess a reliable photo of him, was in attendance. With him were the twenty-five top figures in the ISA command. Among them was Colonel Assam Baah.
The meeting was distinguished, according to the memorandum, by a growing rift inside the Islamic State Army. On one side were those who believed the organization needed to use discipline and physical intimidation to ensure the African population followed sharia law. These tactics, which mirrored what ISIS had used in Iraq and elsewhere, were designed to separate the devout and obedient from the suspect and unholy. Only by practicing and enforcing strict sharia law about women, technology, and other influences of the infidel could ISA be pure.
On the other side were those who believed that discipline over civilians could come later. This group argued that it was more important to win the confidence of the population by establishing security and ensuring prosperity. On the African continent itself, ISA should demonstrate its strength by acts of terror that had symbolic meaning but limited casualties of Africans, particularly Muslims. Repetitious acts of violence began to lose meaning, created fear, and ultimately suggested ISA was a chaotic force, not a source of strength. Such acts should be left for European and North American soil.
Though the memorandum didn’t say so explicitly, Colonel Baah was clearly an advocate for the newer go-slow strategy.
Arroyo ponders the memo. RIMSHOT—this man Assam Baah—for whom they had arranged and then sacrificed so much, was dangerous. He was too reckless, too headstrong, for his own good. It would be safer if he were willing to blend in, to avoid being part of some argument inside ISA that could win him enemies. Arroyo wishes he would keep a lower profile.
But he trusts the intelligence. It is Baah’s recklessness that makes Arroyo believe him. It is also what makes Arroyo worry. Ultimately, Baah will be hard to control. The man clearly has his own agenda.
Then again, Arroyo thinks, it’s true of everyone, isn’t it?
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Seven weeks after the meeting in Randi Brooks’s apartment, she and Rena are invited to the annual banquet for Roberta Alton, a Wall Street Journal reporter killed in Iraq while saving a child. The annual fund-raiser in her name isn’t famous, but it has become a popular evening among people in politics and media, largely because it still captures some sense of the professional comity that was once the aspiration of the White House correspondents’ dinner.
Heading to his table, Rena notices Will Gordon, editor of the Tribune, who motions him to the side of the room.
“May I abandon you for a minute?” Rena asks Vic Madison and her father, who are accompanying him tonight.
“Go,” Vic says with a smile. “And I’ll see if Dad can identify anyone famous here.”
“I hope not,” Rollie Madison says.
Rena and Gordon lean against the side wall of the ballroom. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since the meeting at Brooks’s apartment.
“If another organization ever gets this story, our bargain is off,” Gordon says.
The editor, Rena thinks, is having regrets. Rena likes this man, but he doesn’t like this moment.
“I know that won’t happen because you or anyone else in that room gave someone a tip,” he says to Gordon, in what sounds like a warning. “That includes Jill Bishop. You are vouching for her, too.”
The two men stare at each other, something rising up between them where once there was goodwill.
“I’m trying to level with you,” Gordon says.
Rena takes a long breath and says, “Will, you didn’t make this choice because you were tricked into it. You did it because you understand. You were over there when this war began.”
“I remember,” Gordon says.
“Then you know it wasn’t a bargain. You’re not doing the president some favor. This is the right thing. Don’t second-guess it. It’s not just some news story.”
“Nothing we publish is just some news story,” Gordon says.
The man is a true believer. Rena will grant him that. Rena doesn’t move his dark eyes from the editor’s, and Gordon doesn’t lazily half close his eyes, a habit Rena notices he uses for many purposes, including to change the subject.
Then Rena can feel whatever has risen up between them begin to shrink again.
“Matt Alabama says I can trust you.”
“Does he?” says Gordon.
“You wouldn’t make him a liar?”
A smile forms at the corners of Gordon’s mouth.
“Matt is many things, but not that.”
Rena holds out a hand, and Gordon takes it.
And after another moment, the two men look away from each other and into the room. There are clusters of friends and acquaintances talking, and in the center two scrums of people are spontaneously organizing themselves, almost like human whirlpools. One surrounds Senator Dick Bakke, who three weeks ago announced his candidacy for president, despite the controversies about his emails during the Oosay investigation. That seems a forgotten moment now. The emails will resurface during the campaign, Rena knows, and when they do, the question will be not what they reveal about Bakke’s character, but how well he can deflect them. The ultimate test in any campaign now is not what you have done but how well you survive it.
The other cluster surrounds David Traynor, who is expected to announce his own candidacy for president next week. Rena had finally told Brooks he didn’t like the man enough to take his money. They had turned Traynor down. Someone else would scrub his life for him.
Oddsmakers have the race in both parties a dead heat. No fewer than eight people are considered possible nominees, the most open and unpredictable race in years. Everyone knows polls eighteen months before election day are meaningless. Nonetheless, the Tribune published another today.
Rena has little doubt the race a year and a half from now will still be a dead heat. The country is split down the middle. And his political mentors and friends who try to occupy the center, for whom Rena and Brooks sometimes do work, are now often shot at by both sides.
Secretary of Defense Daniel Shane is talking to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Shane has announced he will be leaving the Nash administration in June and is still mulling a run for president himself as a moderate Democrat. No one gives him much of a chance.
Now Rena sees another circle forming around someone who has just entered the room. At the center of it he can see Wendy Upton, the senator from Arizona who behind the scenes did as much to control the chaotic Oosay Committee as anyone. Next to her, catching Rena’s eye a moment and nodding, is Senator Llewellyn Burke.
Rena hears Gordon clear his throat, and he turns.
“Goodbye, Peter.”
Rena nods and watches Gordon make his way toward the scrum of people around Bakke.
Rena would bet on Bakke, too, if he had to. People are tired of Nash, and rarely did the same party keep the White House more than eight years in a row. Bakke represents something new in Rena’s party, much of which Rena disagrees with. But he fears Bakke also represents the future. Rena’s job is not to fight history. A whole industry exists in Washington for that—raising funds, making promises, and vilifying the other side. Rena’s job is to understand what will happen and why, and perhaps, in his own way, ensure that great deceptions aren’t perpetrated along the way.
He had failed to do that here. Not only was the truth about Oosay a secret—one Diane Howell had resigned to protect; she was now headed to Harvard—but Rena could never look into Adam O’Dowd’s death either, for doing so would raise questions he and Randi had just helped bury.
He wanders back to Vic and her father. She looks tan and natural in a cream blouse and yellow skirt, which are more casual than the semiformal gowns most women are wearing tonight. She looks fabulous without trying.
Rena had called her to apologize and ask for another chance the night after they had gathered in Brooks’s apartment—the night they had hidden the secret of Oosay.
He remembered her answer, which had not come until after what seemed to Rena an excruciatingly long silence. “Aside from the fact that you never say anything, you live in the wrong part of the country, and you cannot tell me anything about what you do, I’ll give you another chance,” she’d said. “But you’re on the clock, boy.”
“I would be a moron not to take that chance,” he’d answered.
“Well, you’re not a moron. But you do have some bad moments.”
Rena had imagined her expression on the other end of the phone, those smoke-gray eyes looking hurt and affectionate, a grudging smile forming beneath her freckled nose.
He smiled and Nelson, the cat she’d given him, nuzzled his face and purred.
Through the phone, Rena could hear Vic laugh.