The American Mission

by Matthew Palmer

Genres: War & Military; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

Global headlines come to life as intrigue and international politics collide in the Congo in this electrifying debut thriller from Matthew Palmer.

After a devastating experience in Darfur strips Alex Baines, former rising star of the State Department, of his security clearances, he is faced with two choices: spend the rest of his career in visa-stamping limbo or move to the private sector. On the verge of resigning, he receives a call from his old mentor with an incredible opportunity to start over, restoring both his security clearances and his reputation.

The job isn't quite what Alex imagined it to be when he finds a shady U.S.-based mining company everywhere he turns.

As violence in the political climate escalates, Alex struggles to balance the best interests of the United States with the fate of the Congo and its people. His loyalties are put to the test as he races to determine the right course of action.

Release date: June 26, 2014

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 432

Sample

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***

Copyright © 2014 by Matthew Palmer 

Prologue

May 7, 2006

Darfur

 

Death came on horseback.

From the air-conditioned comfort of the brigadier’s trailer, Alex Baines could just make out the black smudge clinging to the horizon like a storm cloud. Through binoculars, the picture was clearer. Ranks of horsemen clustered together, their iron lances glinting in the sun. Except for the AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders, it was a scene straight out of the fourteenth century.

The Janjaweed militiamen were massing for what Alex could only assume was an imminent assault on the Riad refugee camp. He focused his attention on the one man with the power to prevent a massacre.

“General, I beg you, please defend this camp. Your peacekeepers are the only thing standing between these people and mass slaughter.”

Arush Singh of the Indian Army’s First Gorkha Rifles looked at Alex with heavy, owlish eyes and sipped his omnipresent cup of tea. As always, the creases on his khaki uniform were sharp and crisp.

“Quite out of the question, I’m afraid,” Singh said, his upper-crust accent betraying his years of schooling at Cambridge and Sandhurst. “My mandate is limited to self-defense. I don’t have the authority to shoot at the Janjaweed unless they start shooting at my men, something I very much doubt they will do.”

“That is an extremely narrow reading of your authorities. There are half a dozen UN Security Council resolutions that identify Camp Riad by name as a designated safe area. We have the responsibility to protect the people who came here on that basis and with our explicit guarantee of security.”

“Riad is officially a safe area. Unfortunately, however, the one resolution that specifically established my command provides a much more limited mandate. We are authorized to use lethal force only in self- defense. You know the resolution, Mr. Baines, and the reason for it. It is not an oversight or an accident. The mandate was carefully negotiated among the members of the Security Council. It’s high politics, and there’s nothing a simple military man can do about it.”

The problem, Alex knew, was China. Beijing was allied to the Sudanese government in Khartoum and skeptical of the UN mission in Darfur. The Chinese were hungry for access to Sudan’s vast oil reserves. Rather than veto the resolution that created UNFIS—the UN deployment in Sudan—and face international outrage, Beijing had quietly neutered the mission in tedious negotiations in New York over the scope of the mandate. That was the way things worked in the UN sys- tem, and it was why, despite deploying a six-hundred-man force of Bangladeshi and Uruguayan infantry, UNFIS was something of a paper tiger.

“We’ve checked this carefully with the lawyers in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations back at headquarters,” Singh continued. “They are quite clear on this point.”

“The lawyers aren’t here,” Alex insisted. “We are. What happens next is on us, and we can’t pass that responsibility back to New York.” There was a sharp edge to his voice. Dark tendrils of anger and fear clawed at his heart. He knew that he was losing the argument, and the consequences of losing were too terrible to contemplate.

“Our first priority now has to be the safety of the international staff,” Singh said. “We are here to help deliver aid and assistance, not to fight a war with the Janjaweed. The situation has grown too dangerous. We need to prepare for evacuation.”

“We have a responsibility to the refugees who put their faith in us.

The Zaghawa could have f led to the mountains when reports of a Janjaweed attack first surfaced two weeks ago. They stayed because I asked them to, because I promised that we could protect them.”

“You really shouldn’t have done that,” Singh sighed, sipping his tea.

 

When Alex opened the door to the trailer, the blast of heat hit him with an almost physical force. The cloud on the horizon had grown larger. Pulling the binoculars from his pocket, he surveyed the scene. A large man on a white horse rode across the front of the Janjaweed ranks. It was too far for Alex to see the rider’s face clearly, but he would have bet a sizable sum that it was Muhammed Al-Nour. Even by the standards of the Janjaweed, Al-Nour was a murdering thug with a well-deserved reputation for brutality.

Most of the camp’s ten thousand residents were members of the Zaghawa tribe. Arab Janjaweed militia had been battling the African Zaghawa for the better part of two decades. It was an unequal struggle teetering on the edge of genocide.

Pocketing the binoculars, Alex knew what he had to do next. He had to tell the Zaghawa elders that they were going to die.

As much as he would have liked to deny his own responsibility for what was about to happen, he knew that he could not. Washington had been afraid that a mass exodus from the camp would undermine the credibility of international efforts in Darfur and lead to a growing drumbeat of support for military intervention in Sudan. Moreover, the intelligence community was flatly contradicting the desert nomads’ predictions of a Janjaweed attack. The government’s multibillion-dollar reconnaissance satellites saw nothing that would substantiate their story. The CIA’s best analysts dismissed the reports as groundless.

The State Department had instructed Alex to persuade the Zaghawa leadership to keep their people in Camp Riad. In Alex’s six months in the camp, the elders had come to trust him. And when he advised them to stay, they listened to him.

Alex made his way through the squalid encampment toward the makeshift shelter where the tribal council met.

The elders were waiting.

Daoud Tirijani, de facto head of all of the Zaghawa tribesmen in the camp, stepped forward to greet him. He was a tall, thin man who looked to be in his late sixties. His sun-wrinkled skin served as testament to a harsh life in the desert. His robes were caked with the thick yellow dust that blew ceaselessly through the camp and settled in a gritty film over everything and everyone. A cloth shesh was wrapped around his head and neck, leaving only Daoud’s face exposed to the elements. Fatima, the tribesman’s principal wife, stood behind him holding one of his fifteen grandchildren. A girl. Alex bowed his head briefly in wordless apology but then looked the Zaghawa elder straight in the eye.

“I’m sorry, Daoud.”

The tribesman nodded. His expression did not change.

“The Janjaweed are going to come,” Alex continued. “General Singh will not fight. There may still be time for you to lead your people to the hills.”

Daoud shook his head. “It is too late for that.”

In a gesture of extraordinary generosity, Daoud reached out and clasped his forearm. Alex reciprocated, locking eyes with the Chief. For the Zaghawa, this was a mark of respect. Daoud was acknowledging that Alex had done all that he could. Somehow, this made him feel even worse.

“You are a great man, Daoud, a true leader. It has been a privilege to be your friend.”

The ground began to rumble under their feet. The Janjaweed were coming.

Daoud turned and barked orders in Zaghawa too quickly for Alex to follow. The small knot of elders dispersed, returning to the subclans they were charged with leading through this crisis.

Fatima walked up to Alex and handed her granddaughter to him. For a moment, he resisted the responsibility, overwhelmed by what it was Fatima was asking of him and ashamed of his reluctance to accept it. Then he took the girl. He did not know what else he could do.

“Her name is Anah,” she said.

Daoud’s granddaughter was stick thin. She could not have been more than six years old. She clung fiercely to Alex and did not cry. Anah was a brave girl.

Wordlessly, Fatima turned away and walked to stand beside her husband.

 

A Janjaweed charge is a fearsome thing to see. The militiamen preferred the intimacy of the spear and sword to the impersonal killing power of automatic rifles. Nearly a hundred riders on stout horses rode through the center of the camp like an armored fist. Their leveled lances cut down scores of camp residents as they tried to f lee. Alex saw one of the elders, a man he knew well, decapitated by a strike from a machete. There was nowhere to hide. The only hope for the camp residents was to stay alive long enough for the Janjaweed to sate their bloodlust.

A few peacekeepers in powder blue helmets stood and watched the slaughter. They carried their rifles slung harmlessly over their shoulders. The Janjaweed gave them a wide berth.

A few of the Zaghawa men tried to fight back, but they lacked training, experience, and weapons. Some tried to hide. Most tried to flee.

Alex saw two Janjaweed ride in parallel through the center of the camp with a chain suspended between their saddles, catching refugees around the knees and ankles, and sending them crashing to the ground. From behind a stack of crates stenciled with Australian f lags, Daoud stepped out in front of one of the riders, holding a length of iron pipe. Dodging the tip of the Janjaweed’s lance, he swung the heavy pipe in an arc that caught the rider on the shoulder and dumped him from the saddle. The militiaman fell hard and Daoud raised the pipe like a spear. Before he could deliver the blow, an Arab riding a white horse and wearing a black Bedouin-style headdress rode up behind him and stabbed Daoud in the neck with a curved sword. Alex recognized him from his picture in the CIA bio. It was Al-Nour.

The horse reared. The animal was so white that it seemed almost translucent in the desert sun. The muscles and veins under its skin were clearly visible. Alex recalled the passage from Revelation: I looked and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named death, and hell was following close behind.

With a speed and grace that belied his size, Al-Nour jumped from his horse and wrapped a length of cord around Daoud’s ankles. Re- mounting, the Janjaweed leader dragged Daoud’s body down the main road of the camp. As he rode past, Al-Nour looked at Alex and Anah with a sneer playing on his lips. He pointed his bloody blade at Alex’s head but did not lift it to strike.

Alex held on tightly to Anah. He did not dare put her down. Even as he kept her safe, however, he drew strength from her. Anah had been entrusted to him. Here in the shadow of death, the survival of this one small creature was his sole responsibility.

Slowly and carefully, Alex made his way through the maze of crude shelters, moving in the direction of the trailers that housed the international staff. He whispered reassurances to Anah in English. It did not matter if she understood the words.

The killing became less efficient as the riders broke up into smaller groups and spread out through the vast camp. A few stopped murdering long enough to rape.

Alex was light-headed and dizzy. His vision narrowed to the point where he felt he was looking at the world through a long tube. Anah grew heavy in his arms as she clung to him with her face pressed tightly against his shoulder.

He had nearly reached the trailers when the cavalry arrived. A small armada of helicopters appeared in the sky over Camp Riad, and for a moment Alex dared to hope that the Janjaweed would be pushed back. The deadly Cobra gunships stayed silent, however, and circled above in lazy figure eights as four massive U.S. Marine Corps Sea Knights set down near the trailers. The blast from the Sea Knights’ twin rotors sent sand and shelter material f lying in every direction. Even be- fore the helicopters had settled on their landing gear, efficient Marine rifle squads had dismounted and secured the perimeter. They did nothing to challenge the Janjaweed.

Alex assessed that the one Marine carrying a BlackBerry rather than a rifle was the mission commander. When he got closer, Alex could see the oak-leaf insignia of a lieutenant colonel and a name tag over his breast pocket that read Harrow.

“Colonel Harrow, I’m Alex Baines with the State Department. This is a UN safe area, and the Janjaweed militia are in violation of multiple Security Council resolutions. Between your Marines and the UN peace- keeping contingent, there’s more than enough strength to push the Janjaweed back and save what’s left of this camp.”

“I reckon you might be right about that, sir,” the colonel replied in a soft Georgian drawl. “But it’s not in my orders. This is a NEO, a non- combatant evacuation. My orders are to get you and the UN civilian staff out of here.”

“The international staff will all fit on one Sea Knight,” Alex insisted. “You can evacuate at least a hundred Zaghawa on the other helicopters. We should start with the sick, the injured, and the children.”

“No can do, sir. Not in my orders. Besides, we can’t have refugees swarming the helos looking for a way out. It’s too dangerous. I need to ask you to get on board now, please.”

Alex felt the blood pounding in his temples. He fought to control his anger and failed. Without thought, he lashed out with a fist, catching the Marine colonel on the jaw and knocking him to the ground. Two young Marines stepped in quickly to defend their commander. One grunt grabbed Alex’s free arm and twisted it behind his back. The other reached for Anah but stopped short when he saw the savage look in Alex’s eyes.

Harrow rose from the ground and held up his hand. “It’s okay. Let him go. In truth, I don’t really blame him. But get this man on one of the birds. If he resists, you can restrain him . . . gently.” A trickle of blood ran down Harrow’s chin from his newly split lip.

“Get your shoulder into it next time,” he said, before turning to greet General Singh.

Alex’s guards escorted him to the door of one of the helicopters. A Marine sergeant supervising the boarding stopped him. He looked at Anah and then at Alex. “I’m sorry, sir. No locals on the helos. Colonel’s orders. Internationals only, sir.”

“She’s my daughter,” Alex replied, shouting over the noise. Even as he said it, he realized it was true.

The Marine clearly did not believe that the underfed African girl in the dirty gray shawl was Alex’s child.

“Uh, do you have any identification papers for her, sir, a passport or something?”

“Her passport is in my travel bag in my trailer on the other side of the camp. Do you think we should stop there on the way out and pick it up?”

The Marine shook his head. He had real problems to deal with. Refugee paperwork was not his concern. He gestured for Alex and Anah to board.

When all of the international staff was on board, the Sea Knights rose with surprising agility from the desert surface. Two of the helicopters were f lying empty.

Through the window, Alex had a perfect view of the chaos and carnage in the camp. A line of shiny white UN vehicles was pulling out onto the main road to El Genaina, carrying the well-armed peacekeepers to safety.

 

Three Years Later

1

June 12, 2009

Conakry

 

Check this one out. Twenty-two years old. Absolutely stunning. Says she wants to go to Disney World, but she has a one-way ticket to New York. Why do they always say that they’re going to Disney World? You’d think they’d just won the Super Bowl or something.”

Hamilton Scott, Alex’s partner on the visa line at the U.S. Embassy in Conakry, Guinea, leaned around the narrow partition that separated their interview booths, dangling an application for a tourist visa. The woman in the visa photo clipped to the upper corner bore a striking resemblance to the supermodel Naomi Campbell.

It was admittedly unprofessional, but Alex understood what Ham was doing. Visa-line work could be excruciatingly monotonous, and in a third-world hellhole like Conakry, the applicants would say or do just about anything to gain entrance to the United States. The vice consuls often resorted to black humor or informal games like Visa Applicant Bingo as a way to keep themselves sane.

“Do you think she’d sleep with me for a visa?” Ham asked with mock seriousness.

“Twenty-two? Isn’t she a little old for you, Ham?”

“Ordinarily, yes. But this girl’s exceptional. And there’s no way she qualifies as a tourist.”

“Qualify” was a kind of code word in visa work. The law said that anyone applying for a visa to the United States had to prove that he or she was not secretly intending to emigrate. The challenge for the applicants was demonstrating that they had strong and compelling reasons to come back after visiting the U.S. In practice, this meant money. Rich people were “qualified” for visas. Poor people struggled to overcome the supposition that they were economic migrants. In the euphemistic language of government, they were “unqualified.”

Ham turned back to the applicant and explained to Ms. Hadja Malabo that, sadly, she lacked the qualifications for an American visa and should consider reapplying when her “situation” had changed. Ham’s French was f lawless, a consequence of four years at a boarding school in Switzerland. He was polite but, Alex thought, somewhat brusque in rejecting Ms. Malabo’s application.

Ham leaned back around the partition.

“I’m almost through my stack, only four or five left. How you doing?”

Alex looked at the pile of application packages still in front of him.

There were at least twenty left. He and Ham were the only two inter- viewing officers at post, which meant about fifty nonimmigrant visa interviews a day for each of them. Ham made his decisions with a brutal efficiency. Alex took more time with each applicant. Most would come away empty-handed, but he wanted to give each person who came into his interview booth the sense that they had had a chance to make their case and that the consul had at least given them a fair shot. For most Guineans, their brief moment with a consular officer was as close as they were going to get to the United States.

“I still have a few to go,” Alex admitted.

“Give me some of yours.” Ham reached over and took nearly half of the stack out of Alex’s in-box. “If we can finish in less than an hour, we can grab a sandwich and a beer at Harry’s bar. My treat. Gotta meet with the Ambassador after lunch to talk over the report on human trafficking I did for him last week.” Ham paused for a moment. “I’m sorry, Alex,” he said carefully. “You know I don’t mean to rub that in.”

The Ambassador had been giving Ham increasingly significant reporting responsibilities, something relatively rare for a first-tour Vice Consul but understandable given that Ham’s full name was Hamilton Wendell Scott III and that both I and II had been ambassadors in half a dozen countries. Ham was just punching his consular ticket in a hard- ship post, something all junior officers had to do, before heading off for the salons and soirees of Western Europe and a diplomatic career with an unlimited upside. No doubt, Ham’s father considered his son’s stint in Conakry a “character-building” experience. He could bore future generations of American diplomats with war stories about life on the visa line in Guinea when he was ambassador to Sweden or Hungary or some such place.

For Alex, however, stamping passports looked like a permanent fixture of the next thirty years of his career. There wasn’t much else a Foreign Service Officer who had lost his security clearances was good for. The contrast between Ham’s upward trajectory and the flat, featureless plain that represented Alex’s career prospects could not have been any starker. Both knew it, and both generally avoided talking about it.

Having crossed the invisible line, however, Ham seemed deter- mined to charge forward.

“Have you given any more thought to the Centrex offer, Alex?” he asked with characteristic directness.

“I’ve written two letters,” Alex replied, setting the passport he had picked up back on top of the pile. “One accepting the job and one turning it down. I’ve almost sent each one of them at least five times.”

“It’s a good job. Centrex Resources is a top-f light firm with global reach. Oil and gas is a big business in Africa now, and you’d be doing real policy work for them.”

“It’s a great opportunity,” Alex agreed. “In truth, I’m not quite certain why they reached out to me like that. I didn’t apply. It’s tempting. But my appeal is pending with Diplomatic Security, and I’m hoping that they’ll agree to restore my clearances.” After a brief pause, he added, “This time.”

“Alex, DS is like the Gestapo. They don’t own up to their mistakes. And without clearances, processing visa applications is about all you’ll be able to do in the Service. Head of government relations for the Africa division at a company like Centrex is just another kind of diplomacy. I think you should jump at it.”

Ham’s assessment of the odds DS would restore Alex’s clearances was unsparing but almost certainly accurate.

Alex remembered vividly the look of satisfaction on the face of the low-level agent who had informed him that the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security had decided that—as a result of both his evident issues of mental instability and his failure to seek treatment through authorized channels—Alex’s access to information would be restricted to “Sensitive But Unclassified.” In other words, he could use the depart- mental phone book and read the press guidance, but that was about it. For an ambitious young political officer, it was a professional death sentence.

What had really burned Alex was that the sanctimonious prick with an army-regulation haircut had been reading to him from Alex’s medical file, including notes from his therapy sessions with Dr. Branch. The agent refused to explain how he had acquired the confidential records. Alex had told no one that he was seeing a shrink, and he had paid his bills in cash to avoid leaving a paper trail with the insurance company. Going to the State Department’s doctors wasn’t really an option either. Foreign Service Officers with Top Secret security clearances knew that their access to information could be “suspended indefinitely” if they sought counseling for mental or emotional trauma.

“February fifth,” the agent read, “patient presents with nightmares, headaches, and trouble concentrating. Occasional panic attacks and difficulty with emotional control. Preliminary diagnosis of post- traumatic stress disorder related to service in Darfur. Prescribed Lexapro at thirty milligrams daily.”

There were things that Alex had told Dr. Branch that he had never told anyone else. That this officious little martinet was somehow privy to this private information was infuriating.

“March thirteenth,” the agent continued, “patient reports that the nightmares are increasing in both frequency and intensity. Vivid images of violence in Darfur coupled with feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Maybe a side effect of current medication; possible root issues with patient’s loss of his father at an impressionable age. Recommend switching to Zoloft, beginning with twenty milligrams daily and step- ping up to fifty depending on patient response.”

The agent had read a few more entries, but it was cruelty without purpose. The judgment had already been delivered from on high. Diplomatic Security had decreed Alex Baines a dangerous risk to the safe- guarding of classified information. The interview was just checking a box. At the end, the agent had handed Alex a form for him to sign, acknowledging that he had been informed that he was no longer allowed to either access or produce classified information. He instructed Alex to keep a copy for his personal files.

Maybe they were right not to trust him, Alex reasoned. Sometimes he didn’t even trust himself. It had been nearly three years since the sack of Camp Riad, but not a day went by that he didn’t think about it. Closing his eyes, he could see Janjaweed militia on horseback riding at full tilt through the crowded refugee camp, automatic rifles slung over their backs and polished black lances in their hands. He could hear the wet smack of a spearhead being driven clean through a human body, the incessant buzzing of f lies, and, above all, the rhythmic cadence of helicopter blades beating the dry desert air.

“Alex, you still with me?” Ham asked. “You looked like you went to Bermuda for a moment there.”

“No, not Bermuda.” Not by a long shot. “Just thinking about what you said. It makes a lot of sense, but it’s still a damn difficult thing to do. I know it’s a bit corny, but this is an honorable profession. It’s about ideas and ideals. Centrex is about maximizing shareholder profit.”

Rather than laughing at him as Alex had half expected, Ham nodded thoughtfully. Under his somewhat more cynical exterior, the son and grandson of American ambassadors believed the same thing.

“Have you asked Anah what she thinks?”

Alex brightened at the mention of his daughter.

“She’s not thinking about much these days except summer vacation. She can hardly wait.”

“Maine again?”

“She wouldn’t miss it.”

One of the challenges of raising children in the Foreign Service was that the constant moving around the globe made it hard for kids to develop a sense of belonging. They grew up as rootless “third-culture kids” who did not look on the United States as home. Many families tried to compensate for this with regular visits to someplace in America that the kids could think of as theirs. For Alex and Anah, it was Alex’s mother’s house in Brunswick. Alex could get only a few weeks off from work, but Anah typically stayed in Maine for the entire summer. She loved the beach and the tide pools and the dark pine forests. Most of all, however, she loved that there was so much family. Alex suspected that it reminded her on some level of the big, sprawling tribal family she had come from. Anah had a score of cousins in and around Brunswick who were her constant companions for the summer months. They had embraced the black girl from Sudan as family without reservation.

The youngest of three, Alex was the only one who had left Brunswick and the first in his family to finish college. His brother had done a year at the University of Maine in Orono in forestry before dropping out and going to work for the paper company. His sister worked part- time at a coffee shop and full-time as the wife of a lobsterman. Their father had been a mechanic at the naval air station where he had worked on the P-3 Orions that patrolled the Atlantic coast looking for Soviet submarines. A longtime smoker, he had died of throat cancer when Alex was twelve.

Reluctantly, Alex and Ham turned back to the stacks of passports in front of them. The application on the top of Alex’s pile belonged to an elderly man with the unwieldy name Rafiou Alfa Ismael Pascal Gushein. In Guinea, having six or seven names with a mishmash of tribal, Is- lamic, and French roots was not at all unusual. Gushein entered the interview booth with a young man who introduced himself in French as the applicant’s nephew. His uncle, he explained, spoke neither English nor French, only the tribal Soussou language.

Alex sat on a bar stool behind two inches of bulletproof glass. A narrow slit allowed him to pass documents back and forth with the applicant. The glass wall established a psychological as well as a physical barrier between the consular officer and the applicant that was utterly intentional. It made it easier for the officers to say no.

Alex appraised Mr. Gushein while he f lipped quickly through the passport. The applicant looked considerably older than his sixty-four years with his snow white hair and deeply lined face, but he stood tall and straight in the booth, and looked Alex right in the eye with an easy confidence. Alex pegged him for a village elder or headman. Someone used to automatic respect.

The passport was old and worn, but unused. A series of stamped dates on the back page indicated that Mr. Gushein had app