The tribesmen whispered among themselves. Then one skinny kid spoke in a high, shrill voice. He told Akil that he and his fellow tribesmen were all under the age of twenty, and were simply trying to recover land and property that had previously belonged to their families. They had no beef with NATO, he said, and were not the men responsible for shelling the base.
“Bullshit,” the major said. “I suppose their property includes the uranium mines, yes? Who do they consider the enemy?”
“The NTC and the Arab radicals who overthrew Gaddafi.”
“Who supplies them with guns and ammunition?”
“The Iranians,” the man said to Akil, who translated his words into English.
“See?” Ostrowski said, turning to Crocker. “What did I tell you?”
Crocker: “Ask him if there are any Iranians over the border in Niger.”
The young man nodded and held up the fingers on one hand.
Ostrowski: “Ask the little man if he knows the name of the Iranian in charge.”
Akil said, “He doesn’t know the man’s full name. They call him Colonel D.”
Crocker stepped closer to the prisoner. “Is Colonel D a short man with a badly scarred face and hooded eyes?”
After Akil translated, the young tribesmen nodded.
“Colonel D is the alias of Farhed Alizadeh of the Qods Force,” Crocker stated.
Akil: “Isn’t he the guy you saw when we raided the Contessa? The one who escaped?”
“That’s him.”
They flew out on the same RCAF CC-130 early the next morning, accompanied by the four surviving prisoners and two Polish guards. Back in Tripoli, Sandra said she was returning to Germany in two days and hoped not to return to Libya anytime soon.
“We’ll always have Toummo,” Akil said, paraphrasing a line from Casablanca.
Sandra shook her head and smiled.
Crocker had a lot on his mind, including the news about Farhed Alizadeh, which he wanted to report to Remington. But Holly came first.
As soon as he and his men returned to the guesthouse, he called the embassy. Knocking out the rhythm to “Lonely Boy,” the Black Keys song playing in the living room, he waited for Leo Debray to get on the line.
“So tell me, Leo,” Crocker asked, “where is she staying?”
“Holly?”
“Who else?”
“Holly’s not here yet,” Debray answered in an official tone of voice.
“Why? What happened?”
“Nothing happened, really. She and Brian never arrived.”
Crocker sensed something wrong. “What do you mean, they never arrived? I thought they were supposed to land here this morning. Was the flight delayed again?”
“I don’t know.”
He felt his blood pressure rocket up. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean the flight did land earlier today, and they weren’t on it. Why, we don’t know. We’ve tried to contact them but don’t know where they are. We haven’t heard from them since last night.”
He felt like he’d been kicked in the balls. Trying to breathe normally, he said, “You’re telling me my wife is missing?”
“I’m sorry to report that’s more or less correct.”
He wanted to say that things like this weren’t supposed to happen to American officials traveling overseas. Instead he looked out the window and asked, “Holly doesn’t have a cell phone with her?”
“She has one but isn’t answering. We’ve left numerous messages but so far have received no calls back.”
“What about Brian?”
“Same thing.”
“And the last place you heard from them was Sirte?”
“That’s correct. Last night, like I told you.”
“You don’t have any people there who can check on them?”
“Not in Sirte.”
“How come?”
“Because the city was almost completely destroyed during the war.”
Chapter Nine
Act like a man of thought. Think like a man of action.
—Thomas Mann
The sky was pitch black by the time the NATO helicopter landed at the airport in Sirte, which was some 280 miles southeast of Tripoli. The town of seventy-five thousand was the birthplace of Muammar Gaddafi and the place where he had been captured and killed on October 20 of the preceding year. The airport and terminal still showed signs of the recent fighting: damaged and pockmarked buildings, the rusting carcass of a tank with slogans painted on it in white, pickup trucks with mounted antiaircraft guns and .50-caliber guns in back, their barrels pointed at the sky but covered with tarps.
Leo Debray had called ahead and arranged for a NATO rep to meet Crocker in the terminal. Since it was a personal matter, he had decided not to bring any members of his team.