The Counterfeit Agent

by Alex Berenson

  “If his heart is in the West, if he’d like to leave the regime behind, come to a place where he can live more freely, even get married, maybe we can get him out.”

  “It’s impossible.” Reza’s voice was low and angry, the sound of a man who hated himself for his own hope.

  “Nothing’s impossible. Of course, for that we’d need his real name. And yours.”

  “I will ask. Now leave it alone, Mr. Case Officer.” He thumbed the starter. The Suzuki came to life.

  Taylor knew he’d pushed Reza to the limit. “Wait.”

  “What now?”

  “In all this you haven’t given me the details on the ship. Do you have a name?”

  “No. I know it left Dubai seven or eight days ago.”

  “What flag?”

  “Pakistan. It started in Karachi. Bound for the East Coast. I don’t know where exactly. Not New York. The security there is stricter.”

  “Who knows about the package?”

  “Probably only the captain, but I don’t think he knows what it is. They bribed him. Probably he thinks it’s drugs.”

  “Is this like the size of a container? A trunk?”

  “Smaller. A small suitcase, a backpack. Lightly radioactive, maybe shielded.”

  “If it’s out of Dubai, not your operation, how do you know any of this?”

  “We had two choices, Dubai or Istanbul. They decided to use Dubai the first time. I don’t know why, but they said they will come back to Istanbul soon. It’s a test run, like I told you.”

  “Just so there’s no mistake. You’re telling me that Iran plans to bring highly enriched uranium into the United States?”

  “There’s no mistake.” Now that the conversation had moved off his personal life, Reza had his sneer back. “Smuggle the components one by one, build the bombs in America.”

  “Bombs.”

  “Did you think we needed ten bombs for Tel Aviv?”

  —

  They stood side by side. An oddly powerful desire to kiss Reza swept Taylor. He had never wanted to lock lips with another man before, so he could only assume that he was grateful to the Iranian for revealing that the United States faced nuclear blackmail, or worse. Fortunately, the feeling passed quickly.

  “These bombs. Does Iran plan to use them?”

  “I don’t think so. My guess, we see them as a way to make sure you never invade. Put a few in different cities, tell your President. You attack us, we attack you.”

  “Don’t they understand we’ll see it as war?”

  “Look at it as they do. You invade Iraq. Hang Saddam. Bomb people everywhere with drones. The mullahs expect you’ll kill them, too, if you can. This way, they have an answer.”

  “We’ll find those bombs and then we’ll destroy the people who put them there. Not regime change. Regime erase.” Taylor knew he sounded like a parody. He was trying to reassure himself.

  “The bombs, imagine, they hide them in those lockers you have all over—”

  “Self-storage.”

  “Yes. They don’t even have to have anyone watching them, they can have remote triggers, mobile phones. Say you find three, or four. Can you know you’ve found them all?”

  The nightmare scenario.

  “Reza, you have to come in.”

  “Find the boat.”

  “We’ll get your friend for you. Whatever it takes.”

  Reza grabbed Taylor’s motorcycle helmet, stuffed it between his legs. “I told you not to say anything more about that.” Before Taylor could protest, he rolled off.

  Taylor could only watch as the motorcycle swung onto the road, disappeared into the night.

  Best agent ever. And worst.

  17

  BANGKOK

  The voice in Wells’s ear was manicured as a polo lawn. Thank you for calling the Aesthetic Beauty Centre. To proceed in English, press one. Arabic, press two. Chinese—

  Wells pressed one.

  You have reached the Aesthetic Beauty Centre, located near Bangkok, Thailand. Our surgeons and staff are renowned for discretion, skill, and service. As a reminder, all new clients must have referrals from existing customers. Please leave your name and telephone number and someone will call you back. You may also email us at concierge@abcbeautiful.com—

  Wells clicked off, called back, pressed two when the language options came up. The message was the same in Arabic. “Asalaam aleikum. My name is Jalal. I am calling for Dr. Rajiv Singh about a possible surgery for my daughter. The matter is urgent. Please call me on my mobile.” All this in Arabic. Wells left a number with a Saudi prefix, 966, and hung up.

  —

  Finding Aesthetic Beauty had taken Wells ten days. Halfway through his flight to Seoul, he realized his plan to try to find Mason through plastic surgeons was worse than a long shot. No doctor would tell a random stranger about his patients. Wells was left with his original idea, casing bars and nightclubs in Phuket, looking for a bouncer or bar girl who knew Mason.

  But Phuket took longer to search than he’d expected. The island had six hundred thousand residents scattered across dozens of villages and towns. Its tourist offerings ranged from high-end gated resorts for wealthy families to the infamous Patong Beach. Patong’s sex trade wasn’t confined to a few alleys. Its red-light district stretched along a four-lane road for what felt like miles. Every night, the sun dipped into the sea. Neon signs for Singha and Heineken flickered on. Cover bands struck their first chords. And swarms of sunburned farangs poured from hostels and hotels, ready to feed.

  During the day, the bars were empty, leaving Wells no choice but to join the herd. He handed out photocopied pictures of Mason to hundreds of bartenders, bouncers, madams, and prostitutes. He expected sharp questions—Why are you looking for this man? Instead, the Thais he asked seemed to see the search as a joke. They gave him answers straight from The Hangover Part II. The movie was hugely popular in Thailand. Check the elevator! Come back with Alan, I tell you! Where you monkey? When Wells pressed on: He steal your money? Screw wife?

  The whores ignored his questions entirely: Phuket no place for trouble. Worry tomorrow, come with me tonight. From one bar girl whose head barely reached Wells’s chest: Big handsome, I give half-price, then we do twice!

  By the end of his second night, Wells realized he should just call himself a private investigator. Insurance companies and divorce lawyers regularly sent detectives to Phuket after disability claimants and badly behaved husbands. The locals were happy to cooperate, for the right price. Wells made more photocopies, this time with “REWARD: $2,500” above Mason’s forehead. He would have made the figure higher, but he didn’t want the search to stand out to the police officers who sometimes appeared at the bars.

  After an exhausting week, Wells had visited every club and disco on Phuket. He heard “In the Air Tonight” at least twice a night—not surprising, given the demographics of the men around him. Phuket had lost its status as a destination for hip young backpackers decades before. The bars were filled with guys in their thirties and forties, many past fifty. They were mostly European and Russian, not American, but it seemed Miami Vice had been a global phenomenon after all.

  Wells found the bars grim and unsexy, even when the girls were beautiful. Especially when they were beautiful. Farangs in Thailand offered a long list of self-serving excuses for what they were doing. Among the most popular were that Thai men also frequented prostitutes and that Buddhism didn’t frown on prostitution. The arguments weren’t entirely wrong. Compared to the hard-edged desperation of red-light districts in European cities like Amsterdam, the sex trade in Phuket wasn’t hopeless. Its ubiquity lessened its stigma. Prostitutes here didn’t view themselves as fallen women, and they were much less likely to be abused or murdered than American streetwalkers. They earned decent livings, and they did sometimes escape the bars entirely by marrying
their clients. But the farangs ignored the incredible imbalance in wealth that drove the trade. No Thai teenager dreamed of moving to Phuket to sell herself to men two or three times her age. The women came from poor villages in northern Thailand, hoping to make enough money to support their families. They had only a few years to do so before younger girls replaced them. And though they were encouraged to use condoms and regularly tested for HIV, about one in fifty still became infected. Many more wound up with other sexually transmitted diseases. Once they aged out of the bars, they had little chance for marriage or legitimate jobs.

  Wells returned to his hotel each night exhausted and depressed. No matter what time he got home, he set his alarm to wake him for the fajr, the first of the day’s five Muslim prayers. He turned west toward Mecca, closed his eyes, murmured the Arabic phrases that had comforted him since those first days in Afghanistan when he’d learned about Islam. When he was done with his own devotions, he prayed for the whores, that Allah grant them the most important of all His gifts, the ability to endure.

  As for the men, Wells tried to ignore them. He wanted to feel sorry for them, especially the ones who believed they could buy something more than sex, who had flown halfway around the world chasing a cheap replica of love. But even the least of them were predators. On his fifth night, at one of Patong’s sleaziest bars, Wells saw two forty-something men standing at a cocktail table with a Thai girl who was seventeen at most. One of the guys was skinny, with greasy skin and a slicked-back widow’s peak. His buddy was stout, a rugby player gone to seed. The girl wore a neon-green dress. When she stepped away to get them fresh beers, Wells saw her clubfoot limp.

  Wells had finished handing out photocopies and turned to leave when the music cut out and he overheard the fat one say, Every hole and back again, Spence. One last night ’fore we go home to those frigid bitches.

  The big guy raised a hand and the two men fist-pumped over the table. Wells knew that changing their minds would be a long shot at best. Still he bought three shots of vodka, settled himself between them. “Gentlemen. How are you this fine night?”

  The greaser’s eyes were loose, floating on a sea of alcohol. The fat one had the satisfied dull face of a Soviet commissar presiding at a mock trial. Even before they replied, Wells realized he had no chance. However long they’d been here, they’d seen and done too much. Ping-pong shows. Flaming banana shows. Live couple shows. One girl, two girls, three girls. Maybe even a boy or two. A lifetime of depravity in a few days. They’d drained the sensation from every act. Except pain.

  “Not bad,” the big one said. “Not at all.” His accent was English.

  He grinned. His teeth belonged on a more handsome face. Cosmetic dentistry had arrived in the United Kingdom. Better late than never.

  “Couldn’t help hearing your plans for this young lady.”

  “When we’ve done with her, she won’t limp no more.”

  The words tore Wells. He knew he should walk away. He knew he wouldn’t.

  “Humanitarians.” He slid each man a shot glass. “I like that.”

  “Looking to watch, then?” The chubby one leaned toward his friend. “What do you think?”

  “Wants to pay for it, why not, then—”

  The music came up. They leaned in close to hear each other. Perfect.

  “Drink to it.” The fat one reached for a shot.

  “Hold off. Those are for the headache.” Wells put his arms around the men’s shoulders.

  “No touching, aye—”

  “What headache?”

  Wells snaked his hands into their hair and crushed their foreheads together like a cymbalist trying to impress the hottest cheerleader in school. Strength declined more slowly than reflex speed. Even now, Wells benched three hundred pounds, curled seventy-five. He had the advantage of surprise. They had the disadvantage of alcohol. They hardly flinched as their skulls crunched, the sound dull and dangerous as brick hitting pavement. The skinny one buckled to the floor, no muscle tone. The rugby player was tougher. His eyes rolled half into his head as he slumped onto the table.

  “That headache.”

  The guy tried to stand. Failed. He swiped at the table, toppled down. The girl stared at Wells, lips parted. He pressed baht notes into her hand. She reached for him, but he shook his head, walked into the humid night.

  —

  By his ninth night in Phuket, Wells decided he was wasting time. The search was breathtakingly inefficient. He needed more clues, or FBI task-force-sized help, or both. He’d called Shafer twice for advice, ways to narrow the search. But Shafer had nothing to offer. When Wells asked how the investigation in Manila was going, Shafer answered. They’ve got me so deep in the meat locker I think I’ve frozen solid. He sounded terrible, like a losing coach just waiting for the season to end.

  Wells decided to give himself one more night and then try something new. Maybe Hong Kong, chase what had happened to Mason on that last tour. But a little after midnight, at a narrow bar in an alley off Patpong, his persistence paid off. A bartender looked over the sheet, touched a finger to Mason’s photocopied face. “I know.”

  “He’s here?”

  The bartender shook his head. “Other side of bay. Has house.” He was twenty-five or so, with full hips and wide lips that gave him an oddly froglike look.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I from there.”

  “Tell me how to find it, the reward’s yours.”

  “Too busy now. Come back tomorrow. Noon.” Before Wells could argue, the man turned away to pour shots for five ghost-pale Russians.

  Wells worried the bartender wouldn’t show. But when Wells arrived a half hour before noon, he was waiting. He led Wells past lumps of vomit congealing in the sun to an Internet café.

  “I’m John.”

  “Prateep. You American.”

  “Yes. New Hampshire.” The words made Wells think of Anne. He’d missed her the last few days, wondered what she would make of this awful scene.

  “Like Phuket?”

  “It’s all right.

  “Other islands better. Phuket good for money, no more.”

  The world’s epitaph. Wells slid pictures of Mason across the table. Prateep held them close, like he was failing an eye exam. “Last night look more like him.”

  Wells understood. In the bar’s low light, Prateep had focused on the contours of Mason’s face. Now the details confused him. “That’s an old picture. He had surgery for his eyes, nose. Everything.”

  Prateep stacked the photos on the tabletop, pushed them to Wells. “What his name?”

  “His real name is Glenn Mason. I think he has a new name now.”

  “Call himself Duke.”

  “Duck?”

  “D-U-K-E. Rent house on my island. Quiet. No trouble.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Six months, maybe. How you know him?”

  “Friend of a friend.”

  “This man, he never let anyone take his picture. Don’t bother anyone. Quiet. Why you want him?”

  “Just to talk.”

  Prateep leaned back, receded into himself as big men sometimes did. Wells didn’t press.

  “Ten thousand, I tell you how to find him.”

  “Too much.”

  Prateep’s face hardened. Ten thousand dollars was cheap if the guy really knew where Mason lived. “Twenty-five hundred now, rest after I get back.”

  “All now.”

  “How about I show you the cash, prove I have it? You come to the island, show me where he lives, you can have it all at once.”

  —

  Four hours later, an open-canopied speedboat stopped beside a crude wooden dock that extended off a narrow white beach.

  “Koh Pu,” the pilot said.

  He wore a floppy hat and the biggest sung
lasses Wells had ever seen, almost goggles. They didn’t affect his navigational skills. He had steered them expertly from the port town of Krabi, ten miles north.

  Wells handed him one hundred dollars. “Until five-thirty.” Two hours.

  “You not here then, I come back tomorrow. Too much coral here. Dangerous in the dark.”

  Koh Pu was only thirty miles east of Phuket across the waters of Phang Nga Bay. But reaching it required a hundred-mile drive around the bay followed by a boat ride. After spending days on planes to get to Phuket, most Western tourists had no appetite for more travel. As a result, Koh Pu had no condo complexes or concrete-walled fortresses, and certainly no neon-signed brothels. Lushly forested hills rose into a perfect blue sky. A warm breeze ran off the bay’s emerald waters. For the first time since landing in Thailand, Wells could imagine why backpackers a generation ago had seen these beaches as heaven on earth. Call someplace paradise, kiss it good-bye . . . At this moment, a developer was no doubt considering how many hotels he could build here, how much a hydrofoil from Phuket would cost.

  Prateep stepped onto the sand. “Beautiful, yes?”

  On the trip from Phuket, Prateep had explained that Koh Pu had two small resorts with barely a dozen beds each, along with a handful of villas owned by wealthy Thais from Bangkok and several hundred permanent residents. The island’s isolation was curse as well as blessing. During the rainy season, few tourists came. Residents survived through fishing and rubber farming. Prateep’s family owned the island’s only bar outside the resorts. Prateep had worked there before plunging into Phuket’s lucrative muck.

  Fifty meters up, they reached the island’s main road, a single lane of packed dirt. Prateep turned north.

  They walked past tin-roofed houses with goat pens and fenced vegetable gardens. After a few hundred meters, Prateep turned east onto a narrow side road that rose up a steep hill. His feet sank into the loose red dirt. With each step he puffed heavily, a truck in low gear. The breeze turned, coming from the north, bringing with it a low sweet scent of a flower Wells didn’t recognize. They passed two tin-roofed homes on garage-sized plots cut from the forest.