Rapp nodded in the gloom around him. The Saudis’ facial recognition had finally tagged him. He imagined that they were kicking up a lot of political dust over their two dead GID operatives and maybe even Bashir Isa, who he assumed was in the same condition.

Kennedy would be between a rock and a hard place, but still reluctant to have detailed discussions over potentially compromised electronics. What better solution than to send his Marine friend—Mike Nash—in person.

Dangerous, but worth the risk. He needed an update on Kennedy’s situation and to let her know that Ward was attempting to track their mole through Muhammad Singh’s phones. If there was a better way to accomplish that update, he couldn’t think of it. Nash was a very old and competent friend, and Uganda was still a country where you could get lost.

WHY DON’T WE SET UP A GET-TOGETHER HERE?

HAPPY TO. HOW ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE DAY TO EAT OUT?

He had to think about that for a second before connecting the reference to a café in Franschhoek that made an amazing chicken dish every Thursday.

FINE.

WILL SEND DETAILS IN THE MORNING. GOOD LUCK.

The chat room disappeared and all records of it would be deleted. The entire exchange had lasted less than a minute.

Rapp shut down the computer and exited the shack, finding Nicholas Ward leaning against a railing out front.

“Interested in what’s going on with your phones?” he asked. “My assistant, Sara, will have had them for at least twenty-four hours now.”

One of Coleman’s men had couriered them to the United States and delivered them to her house disguised as a FedEx contractor.

“You can get to her without anyone knowing?”

“Technology’s kind of my thing, Mitch. And your mole wouldn’t have any reason to know about the back channels I keep with her.”

Giving Ward access to a computer was like giving Osama bin Laden a bomb-making kit, but there wasn’t much choice at this point. Rapp needed whatever information the man’s assistant had been able to come up with in order to pass it on to Nash and, ultimately, Kennedy.

He motioned to the still-open door behind him. “Go ahead.”

“Can I come up?”

Rapp didn’t respond to Ward’s shout, focusing on getting his teeth through the piece of meat in his mouth. They were limiting the movement of people—and thus supplies—in and out of the camp. That meant living off the land to the greatest degree possible. He could identify very few components of the salad in front of him and suspected that the protein was something recently shot by Charlie Wicker.

“Yeah! Come on!” he said when he finally managed to swallow.