SEVENTY-SEVEN
EIGHT DAYS LATER
Palm Jebel Ali is one of two man-made archipelagos in the shapes of palm trees in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At the far tip of Frond J, a finger-shaped island that juts out to the north, a large mansion sits at the end of the street. It is gated and guarded at all times, but on this day there was even more of a security presence than before.
The homeowner was about to become the ruler of Dubai, after all, and until he moved into the palace, this home would be treated as such.
Sultan al-Habsi took the call about the death of his father at three p.m. this afternoon, some six hours earlier. He knew it had been a long time coming, but still, the Omani doctors had promised him they did everything in their power to keep him alive.
But Sultan was barely listening to this. Two days earlier, he’d met with his father in the hospital, and through sickening wheezes and long bouts of gasping for breath, al-Habsi the father told his son that, even though his mission in Germany had ended in failure, he would make him crown prince of Dubai upon his death.
But he would not become the ruler of the UAE. There were six royal families in the UAE, each one representing one of the Emirates, and, in a move that al-Habsi took as a brutal insult, his father had gone to the executive council of the nation and suggested that the ruler of Abu Dhabi take his place in overall charge of the Emirates.
And so it was decided.
Sultan al-Habsi would be the leader of his royal house, the leader of his emirate, but he would not be the leader of his nation.
He’d been thinking about this betrayal as he ate his dinner alone this evening, and not about his father’s death earlier in the day.
He’d also been thinking about Berlin. The Germans had displayed proof that Mirza had been disavowed by Iran, and even though the bodies of the other terrorists revealed them to be former Quds fighters, the story being taken as fact was that they were all illegal immigrants in Germany, and there Mirza had recruited and brainwashed them, feigning to be a representative of Quds Force.
The drones from Turkey were shown to have been purchased and then reconfigured using money Mirza embezzled from the trucking firm where he worked, and al-Habsi knew without a doubt that this was disinformation by the Germans, because he himself had been the one who purchased the weapons and shipped them from Turkey.
The Germans were in full cover-up mode, this was clear, which told al-Habsi that either they or the Americans, or possibly even both nations, had discovered that the entire operation was orchestrated by outsiders, not Iran.
America couldn’t touch him, so they were covering their own asses by covering his ass.
Still, Sultan wasn’t taking unnecessary chances. The previous day Rudolf Spangler had been stabbed in the back in Athens as he walked from his taxi to his hotel. His wallet was stolen, and the SIA operative who stole it then tossed it into the Ilisos River.
Spangler probably would have held his tongue, but al-Habsi had determined it better to be safe than sorry.
Al-Habsi sipped his tea and looked out over the black water of the nighttime Persian Gulf a moment, and then one of his attendants entered the room. “Sir. Matthew Hanley from the CIA is on the line for you.”
Hanley had al-Habsi’s cell phone number; they’d worked together often enough over the years, but the call, for some reason, came in on the landline of the house.
Al-Habsi wondered if he was going to get some sort of a lecture, an admonishment about his actions, and he even wondered if Hanley was going to try to strong-arm him into a lopsided relationship, to blackmail the crown prince into providing more intelligence, to leverage what Hanley knew about Berlin into some capital.
But al-Habsi couldn’t be sure if Matt Hanley knew anything at all about what had happened.
He threw his napkin on the table, walked over to his desk by the window, and picked up the phone. He stood behind the desk, facing the night, still looking out over the water at the lights of the Palm Hotel across the bay as the call was put through to this line.
A helicopter came in over the water from the north and landed expertly on the rooftop helipad of the hotel. The side door immediately opened, just visible to al-Habsi in the distance.
He spoke into the phone. “Matthew? How are you, my friend?”
“I am excellent. Never better, in fact.”
The Emirati was surprised by the levity in the normally dour man’s voice. He smiled. Either he’d been wrong and the Americans actually knew nothing about his involvement, or else Hanley was a good actor.
The new ruler of Dubai said, “Good. So sorry about all the troubles your nation had in Europe last week. I pray there will not be further attacks. How can I be of service this evening?”
As he said this he watched the helicopter. It wasn’t shutting down; its rotor was still spinning as fast as when it landed.
There was a pause on the line, and Hanley did not respond.
“Matthew?”
Finally, Hanley spoke. “Ah, sorry. You asked how you could help me?”
“I did.”
“You could help me . . . Sultan . . . by standing very still.”
It was a million-to-one chance that al-Habsi had been looking at exactly the right place when the muzzle flash of a sniper rifle sparked in the darkened cabin of the helicopter three hundred meters distant, but he did see the flash of light. This, along with Hanley’s strange request, would have led the newly minted ruler of Dubai to dive for cover if he’d had another moment to think about it.
But he did not. He said nothing, he did not move a muscle, he only stood there until the 6.5-millimeter Creedmoor round shattered the window in front of him, struck him just above his heart, and sent him tumbling back over the top of his desk, where he ended up in a heap on the floor.
He’d served as ruler of his emirate for a touch over six hours.
Three hundred meters away, the door to the helicopter closed, the aircraft climbed back into the sky, and then it dove for the deck and began heading north at top speed, low over the water.
Matt Hanley discarded the burner phone in a garbage can in the parking lot of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The call had been untraceable, but Hanley knew he wouldn’t need the phone anymore.
He was late to a meeting with the director, but he was glad he’d been able to fix al-Habsi to his desk by the big window for Violator to take the shot.
A pretty good day, so far, if he said so himself.
He’d met with the director upon his return to Langley, but he was confident he’d smoothed over the majority of the issues regarding Berlin. Interest had already seemed to move on, as the Germans were energized to prove that Iran wasn’t, as a nation, responsible for the actions of Mirza and his men.
Today, Hanley expected, he’d be receiving a commendation for helping to protect the U.S. ambassador.
He was let into the director’s office ten minutes later, and the heavyset man with a bad comb-over made clear immediately that this was not, in fact, about giving Hanley a fucking medal.
“Sit,” he said. There was no handshake. Hanley did as instructed, and then the director sat in front of him.
“Tell me why you went to Europe.”
“I . . . told you last week, and that was the truth. Is there a problem?”
“Tell me again.”
“I wanted to follow up some leads on the Haz Mirza investigation after the attack. I thought my presence there, as quickly as possible and without worry about normal channels and such, would facilitate a quick understanding of the event.”
The director nodded. “Fascinating.” Then he shook his head. “One hundred percent balderdash, but fascinating nonetheless.”
“Sir?”
“I’ve had an in-house investigation done. The Gulfstream you flew to Germany was tasked to fly from DCA to Berlin over an hour before the attack on the embassy. The intelligence from the UAE came in eleven minutes, thirty-four seconds before you took off. You were on your way to DCA, you were almost there to board a plane to Berlin, when Sultan al-Habsi tipped you off.
“You are going to look me in the face again and tell me you didn’t know about the attack beforehand?”
Hanley deflated. “No, sir. I did not know about the first attack, specifically. But I did know an attack was coming.”
“One of your secret initiatives?”
Hanley went for a joke. A Hail Mary. “They wouldn’t be secret initiatives if I told you about them, now would they?”
The Hail Mary was tipped out of bounds in the end zone. “The investigation also revealed that you have been conducting intelligence operations on the United Arab Emirates. Do I have that right?”
Hanley knew there was no answer that would save his career. If there had been, no matter how outrageous the lie, he would have told it with a poker face.
But instead, he told the truth. “I uncovered a plot by the SIA to goad the United States into war. It wasn’t something I could sit on, despite current U.S. foreign policy with regard to the UAE.”
“The SIA. The organization that gave us General Vahid Rajavi on a platter? The organization that warned us of the first Mirza cell attack on the embassy?”
“Yes, but they did this not to help us but to hurt us. The first act was to incite Iran. The second act was to establish their credibility before Haz Mirza’s second attack, which was partially conceived and, I feel certain, fully funded by Sultan al-Habsi himself.”
“The new ruler of Dubai? The man we trained from a college student into the deputy directorship of the intelligence shop of one of our closest allies? Do you have any fucking clue what you are saying?”
“Yes. I do. It’s called ‘the truth.’”
The director bit his lip. “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
The Bible verse John 8:32 was etched into the wall to the left of the main entrance at Langley, just inside the lobby and seven floors below where Hanley stood now. But Hanley didn’t think the director was quoting scripture for benign reasons.
And he was right.
The director said, “I’m going to set you free, Matthew. You will be reassigned. Effective immediately. Obviously we will give you a few days to get your affairs in order here in Washington, but there is an urgent need of someone of your . . . caliber, at one of our foreign stations.”
Fuck, thought Matt Hanley, but he didn’t say this out loud. He did, however, ask the obvious question. “Where am I being sent, sir?”
The fat man sniffed, then looked around left and right, as if he were thinking this over. Hanley didn’t buy it. Finally he said, “I’m wondering if, in all your travels that come with all your derring-do, you might have had occasion to visit the lovely city of Port Moresby. It’s in Papua New Guinea. I confess I have not been there myself. To be honest, I had to look it up on a globe. Sort of the ass end of planet Earth. You should fit in quite well.”
This was the exact threat Hanley had used on Berlin Chief of Station McCormick. Kevin had ratted on Hanley to the director, this much was obvious.
Hanley said, “Let me guess. I will be the assistant station director of logistics?”
The director made an astonished face, but only for an instant, because it was another put-on. “Oh, dear heavens, no. You will be the chief of station.” The big man’s face darkened. “The biggest fish in the smallest, dirtiest little backwater shit creek I could find for you.”
Matt Hanley wanted to stand up and tell the director to shove the New Guinea assignment up his fat ass, but he didn’t. He had hit speed bumps like this in his career. No, not like this, he had to admit. He’d never fallen nearly so far. But the U.S. intelligence community was a game you had to be in to play. He’d take the hit, and he’d take the shit.
“I will happily serve my country in whatever capacity you ask, Mr. Director.”
“Good. Now, get out of my office. I have a meeting on the books now to speak with a woman about a promotion.”
Hanley stepped out into the anteroom of the director’s seventh-floor corner office. There, seated on a plush sofa with a tablet computer in her hand, was Suzanne Brewer. She seemed as surprised to see Hanley as he was to see her.
The administrative assistant took a call at her desk, and then she looked to Brewer. “The director will see you now, ma’am.”
Brewer stood.
Hanley was gobsmacked. “Et tu, Brewer?”
Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “What’s this all about, Matt?”
“It’s very simple. I’m going down, and you’re going up.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.” He was somewhat heartened to see that she seemed to have no clue that any of this had been in the works.
He patted her on the shoulder, then leaned in as if he were giving her a hug. But when his mouth reached her ear, he whispered, “Congratulations. But just remember. Poison Apple hurts you just as much as it hurts me.”
He was warning her to keep her mouth shut.
She nodded; she still appeared to be in a state of momentary shock, but then her head seemed to clear.
“I’m sorry, Matt. Is there anything I can do?”
This didn’t sound sincere, but Hanley answered it anyway, forcing a little smile. “I guess maybe you could sign the order to upgrade the cafeteria at Port Moresby station.”
He left Brewer with a confused look on her face, and he completely missed the knowing smile that she brandished as soon as he was out of sight.