The cubicle, in a drab room labeled AFRICA ISSUE on the third floor of the old CIA headquarters building, was unusually neat for an analyst work space. Most of the cramped desks were littered with papers, the half walls covered with worn maps, stolen street signs, pilfered campaign posters, and other detritus from undercover field visits.
The analysts, the academic teams working for the Agency’s Directorate of Intelligence, always lived slightly in the shadow of the other side of the CIA house, the operatives working for the National Clandestine Service. Most of the newer analysts, some barely out of college, competed with bravado to acquire unique souvenirs—a sword bought off the streets of Khartoum, a battlefield talisman used by a Congolese rebel, a hand-painted barber’s sign snatched from the inner slums of Kumasi—to prove their mettle. It was a game, mainly for the rookies, dismissed by the older salty CIA professionals as the youthful follies of intelligence community tourism.
This analyst’s cubicle, however, was different. It was spotless. The papers and maps perfectly stacked and aligned with the edge of the desk, any coffee stains immediately wiped clean. The occupant of this particular cubicle, a man named Sunday, was also immaculate. His Afro cut tight, his wide face carefully clean-shaven except for a perfectly trimmed short goatee. The only concession to his personal life, a small formal photo of his parents, first-generation immigrants from Nigeria.
Sunday had no time for childish contests. Not that he wasn’t fiercely competitive. He had inherited from his father an intense drive to adapt to his surroundings and find unconventional ways to get ahead. His father had been a northern Nigerian working in the southeast, a Muslim working in a zone dominated by Christians. When the secessionist Biafran War exploded, Sunday’s father knew trouble was coming and fled by boat to neighboring Cameroon. He had then managed, by ways that Sunday was never told, to get to Chad, then Tunisia, Paris, London, and eventually he joined a distant cousin in southern California.
When Sunday was born, he inherited his father’s instinct for adaptation and survival, hidden among his genes. Only later, as a young man, did he exhibit his dad’s patriotic passion for their family’s adopted nation.
From his mother, Sunday received two birthrights: a tight emotional bond with Nigerian culture and an obsession with cleanliness. His mother cooked traditional Hausa foods—goat stew or okra-and-pumpkin soup were his favorites—at least once a week. She also graciously hosted an unending parade of Nigerian visitors in their suburban Los Angeles home, an occasion that often was accompanied by a feast of a whole roasted lamb.
This combination of cunning, patriotism, and meticulousness, paired with links to a foreign culture, made Sunday an ideal recruit for the Central Intelligence Agency. It was only natural that he became a scholar of politics and the motivations of organized violence. In hindsight, it was almost inevitable that one day Sunday would fall under the wing of Professor BJ van Hollen. That eventually he would use his gifts to help the United States of America better understand what was happening in a faraway corner of the globe. That was what had brought him to this tidy cubicle.
But unlike his Africa Issue colleagues, Sunday had little time for silly competitions over weapons or street signs. Like many Americans working undercover, Sunday really had two jobs. His day job was as a Directorate of Intelligence analyst, currently assigned to a special task force on piracy in Somalia. Yet Sunday was also working covertly for the supersecret Purple Cell, an autonomous operational unit within the National Clandestine Service run by Jessica Ryker. That, too, was thanks to BJ van Hollen.
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Someone on an upper floor of the CIA was convinced that Iran was using criminal gangs in Somalia to fund violent extremist cells, and Sunday’s current assignment was to hunt for financial fingerprints. He scanned the screen on his classified computer, running an algorithm that was trying to discern a pattern in banking transactions between Tehran and the informal hawala banks in Somalia. It was looking like another all-nighter.
“Hey, S-Man, who’s this?” a voice shouted from behind Sunday. He spun around to find an overweight colleague, holding a stuffed moose head with a wide-brimmed safari hat. Before Sunday could reply, Glen answered, “Moose-eveny . . . Get it?”
Glen roared with laughter.
Sunday smiled politely, “President Museveni from Uganda. Ay. I get it.”
“Museveni, Moose-eveny!”
“Did you steal the president’s hat?”
“I bought it off a coffee farmer in Kampala. Moose-eveny! I love it! I’m going to hang him up by the front door. Hey, Sunday, you want half my muffin?”
“No thanks,” said Sunday, turning back to his computer.
Glen occupied a faraway cubicle, but he always seemed to be hanging around this side of the office with his snacks. This morning he was brandishing an extra-large dark-chocolate muffin. “Okay, more for me,” Glen said.
He ripped off the muffin top and shoved it into his mouth. “So . . . you find anything yet?” Glen asked while still chewing.