Jo Ann was a sharp woman—overly optimistic and harboring an almost naive idealism at times, but sharp nonetheless—and she seemed to view Duchess’s suspicion as borderline offensive. Reluctantly, she hung up the phone.
It rang a moment later, and Jo Ann lifted her eyebrows as if to say, I told you so.
Snatching up the phone, Duchess heard a switchboard operator say, “I’ve got the ISA rep in Abuja.”
“Put him through,” she replied, then put the receiver to her chest and whispered to Jo Ann, “Fine. You were right.”
Jo Ann picked up her phone, listening in as Duchess began, “Ben, I’ve got Jo Ann on the line with me. You’ve been getting everything you need from my people?”
He chuckled, then spoke in his booming New York accent.
“For the first time in a long time, yes. Thank you for that, ladies. Now I’m calling to return the favor.”
“We’re all ears.”
He continued, “My people are starting to work a remote tap on Malu’s office and cell phones, but it’s going to take time. However, we were able to pull his phone records and I think you’re going to like this: after speaking with Keyamo, Malu only placed one call. Based on the previous transcript, I think it’s safe to say he was reporting the missing payment and declaring he’d cover it himself, possibly with a delay in the transfer.”
Duchess mulled over that comment. “I’d say that’s a reasonable assessment. The question is, who did he report to? We’ve been holding our breath for some Boko Haram connection.”
“That’s the kicker,” Bailey continued. “He didn’t call Boko Haram at all. It was a Gradsek line.”
Jo Ann spoke up then.
“Bailey, our people have found initial evidence that Gradsek has been paying Malu to secure contract approvals.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” the New Yorker quipped, “given this is Nigeria we’re talking about. But Malu notifying Gradsek about the robbery is still an irregularity. The lost payment he’s referencing wasn’t a direct deposit to himself, it was the three hundred grand worth of non-sequential bills that your team rolled up. That means it’s a separate transaction altogether, which is indicative of Malu brokering some agreement between Gradsek and an outside organization.”
Jo Ann said, “We’ve previously tied Keyamo and his bank to terrorist financing. You think Malu is paying Boko Haram?”
“Too soon to say. But if Malu is fronting the missing cash just to keep the wheels turning, it’s something important. I’m not going to sign off on known terrorist involvement by any stretch, and given that Gradsek is focused on the delta while Boko Haram operates on the opposite side of the country, it’s unlikely at best.”
“So we’re dead in the water,” Jo Ann noted.
“Not necessarily. The best thing we have going is the number that Malu dialed to report the theft, which traces to a Gradsek facility. More specifically, it’s a landline to one of their port operations on the coast. Why a landline and not a cell?”
Jo Ann was silent, and Duchess swiftly filled the void.
“Because it’s an unregistered landline at a continually staffed office. If it’s a port operation, that means they may need to alter logistical considerations at the drop of a hat when complications arise.”
Bailey sounded pleased with the deduction. “That’s more or less the size of it, I imagine. Implication: we run down that location, you could determine who else Gradsek is paying and why. It’s too early to rule out Gradsek involvement in the ExxonMobil kidnapping, and with every other JSOC and intelligence outfit scouring Boko Haram, I’d say we just stumbled upon a thread that no one else is following.”
Duchess asked, “Do you have any people near the Gradsek facility that Malu called?”
Bailey gave a weary sigh. “We’re centralized in Abuja, and unfortunately I don’t have the manpower to flex there given our commitments to locating the hostages. But I’ll be able to remotely tap Malu’s communications and pass anything significant along to you, and if you can get your people inside that Gradsek facility, I’d love to be a second set of eyes on anything they find.”
Duchess nodded slowly. The CIA usually prided itself on the careful compartmentalization of intelligence, and this kind of real-time, free-flow information sharing was normally reserved for the final phases of tracking down a high-value terrorist target or rescuing hostages.
Or, in this case, exploiting what little time remained before Project Longwing’s involvement in Nigeria was shut down completely, and losing the presence of a ground team at the heart of a grander conspiracy. Besides, she thought, Bailey had proven remarkably useful so far—and if he could manage a tap on Malu’s phone lines before the Agency could, then she’d need his information as much as he needed hers.
“Done,” she said. “Where is the facility located?”
“The place where this whole thing began—Lagos.”
26
Reilly was sleeping soundly, dreaming of his college days and California coeds, when a slap to the shoulder spurred him to half-consciousness.
He responded by groping beside himself in search of his rifle, mumbling, “What is it? A...a checkpoint, or, like—”
Ian slapped his shoulder again.
“Not a checkpoint. Dude, you’re missing Lagos.”
Reilly sat up, rubbing his eyes as he took in the sight of the media van interior where he’d been peacefully sleeping since...well, at this point, who knew anymore.
He objected, “You fuckers woke me up at four a.m. to start driving.”
“Yeah?” David replied from the passenger seat. “That was about twelve hours ago. Get your fat ass up, we’re almost there.”
Yawning, Reilly stretched and offered, “It’s muscle mass, man. Muscle weighs more than...you know”—another yawn—“fat, and stuff.”
Squinting around the van’s interior, he saw Cancer seated in the back, looking almost absurd in civilian clothes as he stared at Reilly in disgust.
“You better hope one of us needs you to save our life tonight,” Cancer said to the medic, “or I’m going to seriously question why we even bothered bringing you.”
Reilly’s first observation, before he’d even mustered the energy to rise to a knee, was that for a city that existed in perpetual gridlock, he’d never heard so many car horns blaring simultaneously.
Peering out the windshield, he saw sloppy outcroppings of sheet metal and cardboard shading the street-level vendors hawking bead jewelry, shoes, and watches, while every balcony and window above them was brimming with racks of items for sale: clothes, towels, hats, flags. Any vehicle capable of threading the needle between traffic and human beings did so at maximum speed, and the motorized rickshaws were only slightly less terrifying than the motorcycles, most of which had at least one passenger clinging on for dear life.
He yawned again and muttered, “It’s like a shanty town had a baby with Times Square.”
Tolu said from behind the wheel, “Home at last. Getting paid for it, too. God don butta my bread.”