Coup d’État Read online

  For Charlie.

  You make me proud every day.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable help:

  At the Aaron Priest Agency: Aaron Priest, Nicole Kenealy James, Frances Jalet-Miller, Lisa Erbach Vance, Lucy Childs Baker, Arleen Priest, and John Richmond. At ICM, Nick Harris. Thanks to all of you, especially Nicole, for your hard work, patience, and friendship.

  Thank you to all the wonderful folks at St. Martin’s Press: Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, George Witte, Matthew Baldacci, John Murphy, Jeanne Marie Hudson, Nancy Trypuc, Anne Marie Tallberg, Judy Sisko, Kathleen Conn, Ann Day, Loren Jaggers, Stephanie Davis, and everyone I haven’t mentioned but who work hard every day on my behalf. A special thanks to Keith Kahla, my editor at St. Martin’s Press, for brilliant editing and a wonderful sense of humor. Heartfelt appreciation to everyone at Macmillan Audio, including Mary Beth Roche, Laura Wilson, Robert Allen, Brant Janeway, and Stephanie Hargadon. Thanks to Peter Hermann for his terrific narration.

  Stephen Coonts, Vince Flynn, and David Morrell, three great American authors whose kindness to me is so very much appreciated. Edward Luttwak, author of the nonfiction book Coup d’État, the source for many ideas and the epigraph by Gabriel Naudé.

  Mitt and Ann Romney, two people whose humility, kindness, and selflessness inspire me and many, many others, thank you.

  Marc Gillinov and the amazing doctors, nurses, and staff of the Cleveland Clinic.

  To my best friend, my little sister, Nellie Coes Edwards, sorry for eating the Twinkie. For their support, friendship, and patience, my business partners Carson Biederman and Bob Crowley. Special thanks to David and Mercedes Dullum, Chuck and Lisa Farber, Gary Foster, Melinda Maguire Harnett, Lee Van Alen Manigault, Teddy Marks, Patrick Mastan, Alex and Kelly Mijailovic, Darren Moore, Mike Murphy, Brian Shortsleeve, Ed Stackler, and Jim Windhorst.

  Lifetime achievement award to Brian and Linda Bowman, who have done so much for me, the best parents-in-law any guy could ever hope for, especially a gun-toting, honky-tonk, whiskey-drinkin’ card shark like me.

  To my wonderful children: Esmé, the future first female president of the United States and currently the most brilliant and beautiful princess known to Upland Road; Oscar, the actual gun-toting one, a soccer and hockey genius whose eyelashes already have the girls swooning; Teddy, whose piano playing, killer looks, sense of humor, and bravery amaze me, the one who, if you haven’t met him yet, I encourage you to be nice to, because someday we will all be working for him; and Charlie, who this book is dedicated to, my handsome, cool, brilliant, all-sport athlete and inventor, whose kind heart and gentle soul provide nothing but warmth to everyone around him. Thank you all for your love and support, it’s what I live for and it’s why I write.

  To my wife, Shannon, my wonderful Irish beauty, who keeps me humble (or tries to, anyway), while at the same time making me feel like a king, thank you, sweetheart.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Epilogue

  Also by Ben Coes

  About the author

  Copyright

  The thunderbolt falls before the noise of it is heard in the skies, prayers are said before the bell is rung for them; he receives the blow that thinks he himself is giving it, he suffers who never expected it, and he dies that looked upon himself to be the most secure; all is done in the night and obscurity, amongst storms and confusion.

  —GABRIEL NAUDÉ

  Prologue

  JINNAH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  KARACHI, PAKISTAN

  ONE YEAR AGO

  With every plane descending from the sky at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport, the enormous crowd gathered behind the high barbed-wire fence at the airport’s perimeter became fanatical, screaming and shouting at the top of their lungs.

  CNN estimated the crowd to be more than 800,000; Al Jazeera, which had several reporters and cameramen on the scene, estimated the crowd to be at least 1.5 million.

  They had begun gathering at the airport the night before, after the polls closed. Already, more than a hundred Pakistanis had died from the heat and more than a dozen had been trampled to death.

  Each arriving plane led to a frenzied, almost panicked roar from the crowd. It didn’t matter where the plane was arriving from; every thobe-clad man and burqa-clad woman gathered in the scorching afternoon sun knew that sooner or later one of the planes would be the one. Every few minutes, as a PIA, Air Arabia, Etihad, Iran Air, or another airline’s jet began its descent, the crowd began screaming and waving small makeshift white flags with a black dot in the middle.

  In the distant azure, a white jumbo jet appeared.

  Inside the chartered Airbus A321, the rows of seats were mostly empty. The first six rows had exactly one person per row, all Pakistani, all male. They were part of a security detail and wore military uniforms. In the overhead compartments, automatic weapons were stored. As the plane descended, each man moved to the window at the end of the row and tried to get a glimpse of the crowd they knew would be waiting.

  A few rows behind the security detail, more men were dispersed. They were all campaign staff members. There were a dozen men, mostly in suits, a few in ties. Some of them chatted quietly, while others typed on laptops. Several pored over newspapers.

  More than twenty-five rows back, separated by row after row of empty seats, two m
en sat quietly across the aisle from each other in the last row. Both men were dressed in bishts. The man on the left, Atta El-Khayab, had on a dark blue bisht with white piping. His beard was flecked with gray. His eyes darted about nervously, belied somewhat by the infectious smile on his wrinkled, kindly face. The other man, in the aisle seat of the right-hand row, wore a plain white bisht. On the chest was a black circle the size of a tennis ball; similar to the flags being waved by the waiting Pakistanis on the ground below. This man also had a beard, though his was completely white. He was taller than his companion, his dark skin deeply creased and covered in hideous black moles. His blind eyes were covered by large black-lens glasses. He did not smile. This man was Omar El-Khayab.

  “We’re going to land soon,” said Atta. He reached his hand across the aisle and patted the back of El-Khayab’s hand. “I’m told there will be a crowd.”

  El-Khayab took his right hand and moved it on top of his brother’s hand, gently patting it. But he said nothing.

  “It’s been a long flight, Omar,” said Atta.

  “Tell me, Atta, will you miss Paris?” asked El-Khayab quietly. El-Khayab reached up and removed his glasses. Beneath, the sight was grotesque. The eyeballs were balls of murky green and rolled around in the sockets like fish eyes. The skin around both sockets was badly scarred despite the more than sixty years since the accident, the fire, that had destroyed Omar El-Khayab’s vision forever.

  “Yes, I will,” said Atta, looking away from his brother’s face and trying to smile. “I’ll miss the food. But I’m happy to go, Imam.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Will you miss Paris, Omar?”

  “No.” He reached his hand up and stroked his white beard. “The French are a vile filth. But I will miss the madrasa. I will miss the boys. I will miss the moment.”

  “The moment?”

  “There is a moment when it happens,” said El-Khayab. “When the education of a young boy truly begins.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is a moment when a boy accepts jihad for the first time. When Allah turns a young boy’s blood into an angry fever. I cannot see it in their eyes, of course, but I’ve learned to recognize it in their voices. Once it happens, there is nothing that can bring them back. It’s unstoppable. That moment, for me, is like nirvana. That is what I will miss the most.”

  The plane arced left as the rumble of the landing gear being lowered could be heard.

  “But instead of a few hundred boys, brother, you now have a nation of more than two hundred million,” said Atta. “You have been elected president of Pakistan!”

  A smile creased El-Khayab’s lips. He nodded his head up and down while stroking his beard.

  “Yes,” said El-Khayab calmly. “Allah works in wondrous ways, does he not?”

  1

  HARDWICK’S CAFÉ AND BISTRO

  JAMISON CENTRE

  MACQUARIE, AUSTRALIA

  Josiah Glynn walked briskly through the air-conditioned suburban mall, calmly surveying the shops, restaurants, and people. Jamison Centre was a dump. Out-of-the-way, tired, lousy, lower-middle-class shops; half-empty, badly lit restaurants. The only people he saw ambling about the musty-smelling, windowless mall were blue hairs, too old to remember what good food tasted like.

  That was the point though. Out of the way.

  Glynn felt a patch of cold sweat beneath his armpits, but less than he had anticipated. Certainly less than he had envisioned when he got dressed that morning. Despite his precautions, or perhaps because of them, he was nervous. He breathed deeply. He was fifteen minutes late, but that was intentional.

  “These fuckers can wait,” he whispered to himself as he ambled casually past a shoe store. Glynn knew it was false bravado, but he needed the bravado, the confidence, to get him through the next ten minutes.

  The drive to Jamison Centre from the Customs and Border Protection Service had taken three hours. If he’d driven straight there, it should have taken fifteen minutes. But Glynn had taken a slow, circuitous, out-of-the-way route through the far-flung suburbs of Canberra. A random route. The entire drive, he’d kept one eye glued to the rearview mirror, looking for anyone who might be following him. As far as he could tell, no one was.

  Glynn’s job was to oversee quality assurance for Australia’s Customs and Border Protection Service’s e-commerce site, where Australian citizens could apply online for passport renewals. Glynn tested the servers and databases, running various checks on the site to get rid of bugs, broken links, algorhythmic anomalies, and other malfunctioning lines of code. Because he spent all of his working hours in the bowels of the Customs’ databases and IT infrastructure, Glynn also had access to any and all information about people coming into or out of Australia.

  As he strode toward the bench directly in front of Hardwick’s Café, he heard the faint ding-dong of his iPhone telling him he had a text message.

  P4 not logged out. where are you jg? MM

  Glynn’s supervisor, Megan McGillicuddy, looking for him. He tapped her a quick text:

  Forgot. pls sign off for me. CU in am. sorry!

  God, how he despised Megan. If all went according to plan, in approximately ten minutes he would never have to speak to the bloated, cantankerous sow ever again.

  He stepped to the empty bench and sat down. He scanned the crowd at Hardwick’s. He saw only senior citizens and a single woman with stringy red hair, stuffing a burger into her mouth.

  Then, standing in the checkout line of a pharmacy across the way, he noticed someone staring at him. A white-haired man. Or was it blond? They made eye contact. The man paid and exited the small storefront. In his left hand, he carried a large paper shopping bag. He walked casually across the mall and sat down on the bench.

  “Mr. Glynn,” the man said. “I’m Youssef.”

  Up close, Glynn saw that he had a mop of bottle-dyed blond hair and olive-toned skin.

  “You don’t look Arab,” said Glynn. “Well, I suppose your skin does.”

  “Shut the fuck up. It doesn’t matter what I look like. You’ll never see me again. Do you have the information?”

  “Yes, but can we talk? Why do you need the information?”

  Youssef looked at Glynn, incredulous that he would be asking questions. His casual, laid-back manner turned venomous.

  “Stop asking questions,” he said slowly and menacingly. “To your left, past my shoulder: do you see the two men sitting at the Thai restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one with the red baseball hat has a silenced handgun aimed at your skull right at this very moment. Can you see it?”

  Glynn looked over. He caught the sight of a silencer, aimed at his head.

  “So tell me the information,” continued Youssef, a threat in his soft voice. “I am more than happy to pay you, Mr. Glynn. I don’t care about the money. But if you ask me any more questions, or if you ever speak of this transaction, you will die a quick and bloody death. I can’t guarantee that it will be painful but if I could, I’d make it really fucking painful. It’s up to you whether you die right here, right fucking now, or live to spend some of that beautiful money sitting in the bag at my fucking feet.”

  Glynn gasped.

  “Sorry,” Glynn muttered, his eyes darting about. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Calm down and relay the information. When you have done so, I will stand up and walk away. I will leave behind this bag. Inside, there is a million gorgeous dollars with Josiah Glynn’s name written all over it.”

  “Dewey Andreas entered Australia February twelfth, almost exactly one year ago,” said Glynn.

  “Port of entry?” demanded Youssef.

  “Melbourne. That’s in Victoria, in the south, on the coast.”

  “I know where the fuck it is, jackhole. Purpose of visit?”

  “He listed tourist. But he didn’t fill in the return-by date.”

  “The return-by date?”

  “He didn’t s
ay when he was leaving Australia,” explained Glynn. “And we have no record of him leaving.”

  “Is that all you have? That’s worthless dogshit.”

  “There’s more,” Glynn whispered conspiratorially. “After three months, he filed a work permit at the Cairns Customs office.”

  “Where’s Cairns?”

  “It’s in the northern part of Queensland. Way up on the coast.”

  “Is that it?”

  “There’s something else. He was required to list his job on the form. He’s working at a station.”

  “‘Station’?”

  “Ranch. He works on a ranch.”

  “What’s the name of the ranch?”

  “He didn’t write it down. He’s not required to.”

  Glynn felt his heart pounding like a snare drum, the palms of his hands sweating.

  Youssef stood up, stared hatefully down at Glynn, and then, as if by magic, his face transformed itself into a warm smile that nearly made Glynn forget about it all.

  “Not bad, Mr. Glynn. I feel as if my money has been well spent today. Remember my warning.” He nodded at the Thai restaurant. Then he held his index finger up against his temple, pretending it was a gun.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Good luck to you,” said Youssef. He turned and walked away from the bench.

  Glynn eyed the green and red paper shopping bag sitting on the linoleum floor next to him. He reached for the bag, opened it up, and stared down at the bricks of cash stacked inside.

  “You too.”

  But Youssef was already gone.

  2

  SEMBLER STATION

  COOKTOWN, AUSTRALIA

  The stallion kicked up clouds of dust as he galloped along the dry country path. Deravelle’s muscles rippled across his broad haunches, the line between shoulder blade and hip straight despite the weight now on his back; a worn leather saddle, on top of that a large man, who leaned forward on the horse’s sinewy incline. After more than an hour at a gallop, the rider eased up and pulled back on the horse’s reins. Deravelle slowed. The rider let the big horse catch his breath at a slow trot. Soon, the horse’s rapid, heavy exhale was the only sound that could be heard across the plain.