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Liam and Noa look at her. Bruce is doing his job, which is looking around the room, at the open doorway, and the two windows looking out to the rear yard.
A faintclickand a male voice says, “Pease here.”
“Harlan, this is Hannah Abrams.”
“Good morning, Director. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“How goes the A-22 project?”
No answer.
“Harlan, this is a secure line. Don’t worry.”
The general says, “We’re a bit behind, but nothing we can’t make up later on.”
“When’s the next test flight scheduled?”
“In two days,” he says. “Director, what’s this all about?”
“Don’t hate me because I’m asking, because I’m asking,” Hannah says. “I need you to bump up that test flight to today, preferably in a few hours.”
“Director …”
“And to make it worse, I need to have an observer on board, and your destination is whatever facility we might be able to use in South Africa, as close as possible to Johannesburg.”
She senses the general isn’t talking right now because he’s building up to an explosion of anger and arguments. She quickly says, “Harlan, you and your team have done incredible work with minimal funding and technical support, and this isn’t a request. I hope I don’t have to go into the details of how the Agency owns two-thirds of your black budget for this project, and if I decide to cancel our share before Congress finds out and gets pissed at being kept in the dark, well, what can you do with one-third of an aircraft?”
His voice sounds like he’s being strangled by someone. “It won’t be much of a flight test.”
“If you can get my man in South Africa soonest, then I’ll consider it a successful test, Harlan,” she says. “His name is Liam Grey and he works directly for me.”
The air is dead on the other side. She feels sorry for the general, who has done a lot with minimal budgeting and not enough staff. He says, “All right. Tell him where to go.”
“I won’t forget this, Harlan,” she says. “In the meantime, I’m going through the Agency’s budget next week, and I’m going to try to squeeze out another ten million dollars in additional funding for the A-22. How does that sound?”
“Director,” he says, “that sounds great,” but Hannah still feels like she’s defeated an honorable man, and it wasn’t a fair fight, since the Agency does own two-thirds of this highly classified, black aircraft.
She’s about to say thank you once more, when she hears him hanging up on his end.
Fine.
Hannah replaces the handset and says, “It’s done. I’ll give you directions to the base, Liam, and we’ll arrange transport.”
Liam says, “Do I have time to pack? Arrange some gear?”
The director shakes her head. “Only what we can scrounge from my closets. You see, Liam, if you haul ass from here in the next few minutes, you’ll be in South Africa in just over two hours.”
CHAPTER 86
THIS MORNING MICHAEL Balantic is tracking Liam Grey, the rogue CIA operative, and the search isn’t going well. His vehicle of choice today is a burgundy Mercedes-Benz SL with Maryland license plates, and he’s temporarily parked in a lot next to the Coppa Enoteca restaurant on Prospect Street NW in the District of Columbia.
It’s busy, with lots of foot traffic, and he only has five minutes or so before he has to move his surveillance to another tracking location, back to Liam’s condo. After that, to a Starbucks barista he dated six months ago.
Not that Liam is in this restaurant or any other restaurant within walking distance, but from the comfort of this Mercedes, Michael is keeping watch on the Georgetown home of CIA Director Hannah Abrams. On the dashboard of his luxury vehicle is a video display that looks like it’s showing a GPS-sourced map of the District of Columbia to anyone passing by and peeking in.
But the eyeglasses he’s wearing have special lenses, so Michael sees something entirely different: a drone-eyed view of the CIA director’s home on O Street NW in Georgetown, a two-story brick house with black shutters, gated driveway, and a two-car garage with a breezeway connecting it to the house.
The feed from the drone is holding steady. It’s one of the latestblack budget drones from General Atomics designed to look like a sparrow. At the moment it’s resting on the branch of a maple tree across the street from the director’s home. There’s not too many bells and whistles packed into the tiny package, but the thermal imaging tells him there are five people inside.
