The Counterfeit Agent

by Alex Berenson

  “I must ask, sir. Do you have an existing customer as a reference?”

  So the security precautions were real.

  “I do, but I promised I wouldn’t use her name.” Wells could have mentioned Duke, but he wanted to surprise Singh with the name face-to-face.

  “A moment, sir.” Wells heard a whispered conversation. “If you fax us the identity page from your passport, we’ll schedule a consultation. Is your daughter here?”

  “I wanted to know you could help before I brought her.”

  “That’s fine. She’ll need time to heal, but a day or two shouldn’t matter.”

  “Thank you, Aisha.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll text you our fax number. Dr. Singh looks forward to seeing you.”

  She hung up. Wells wished he had the passport already, but he supposed he could hold them off until morning by saying he’d made a mistake with the fax number. Saudi princes were not known for attention to detail.

  —

  The Aesthetic Beauty Centre rose out of farmland seventy miles west of Bangkok, halfway to the Burmese border. The complex consisted of a two-story office building and two small outbuildings, all clad in expensive-looking coppery glass. A low fence surrounded the grounds, with a guardhouse at the front gate. A small helicopter sat beside the main building, presumably for repeat clients. Wells rated only a chauffeured BMW.

  The gate swung open as the sedan approached. A tall Indian woman waited for Wells. “Asalaam aleikum. I’m Aisha.”

  “Aleikum salaam.”

  The building gleamed inside as well as out. Surgical suites occupied the right side, administration offices the left. An Indian man wearing a white doctor’s jacket waited in a conference room.

  “You speak English, doctor?” Wells expected he’d have an easier time if he and Singh were alone.

  “Of course.”

  “So do I. I’d rather—” Wells nodded to Aisha.

  “I assure you, you may trust Aisha.”

  Wells shook his head.

  “Aisha—”

  She left. Singh snapped open a calfskin briefcase, pulled out a legal pad and pen.

  “Tell me about your daughter, Mr. bin Fahd.”

  “I’d like to hear more about the center.”

  “Of course. I trained at Harvard, medical school and residency. After graduating, I worked in Los Angeles. I then returned to my homeland for eight years to practice in Delhi. I can tell you that I was considered perhaps the top plastic surgeon in India. I had achieved everything I hoped.” Singh spoke with complete confidence. Wells guessed he’d delivered this pitch hundreds of times.

  “But you left.”

  “Six years ago, I decided that the world’s elite deserved cosmetic and reconstructive surgery at the highest level. With absolute privacy. No center like that existed. So I built it. I am one of three full-time physicians here, along with another surgeon and an anesthesiologist. We’re all U.S.-trained. We perform most surgeries ourselves, with arrangements to bring in specialists when necessary. We have eight nurses and a nutritionist. We never have more than five patients on-site, and they don’t see one another unless they specifically request otherwise. We are expensive, but you—or your daughter, in this case—get what you pay for. Our clients are billionaires, politicians, celebrities. From all over. India, of course, but also China, Russia, the Arab world, and our reputation is spreading into Europe. The United States has been harder to crack, but it will come.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Thank you. Now, may we discuss your daughter?”

  Singh radiated self-assurance. The only way to crack him wasn’t to try to trick him but to come straight at him, all at once.

  “My daughter doesn’t exist. And my name’s not Jalal bin Fahd.”

  “Is this a joke?” Singh swept up his briefcase, stood, headed toward the door.

  “Sit down.”

  Singh looked at Wells and sat.

  “I work for the Saudi government. Chasing a man you operated on about four years ago. He went by the name Abraham Duke. His real name is Glenn Mason. Do you know who I mean?”

  Singh shook his head.

  “You’re lying. He had several surgeries. He paid you more than one hundred thousand dollars. You changed the look of his face. His case would have been memorable.”

  “I never discuss my patients.”

  “I have his records, Dr. Singh. And I can tell you that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia believes that Mr. Mason was involved in a plot against His Majesty. You cannot imagine how seriously the Kingdom takes that threat.”

  “This is silly. An effort to intimidate me into talking about a person who may or may not have been a patient. Whatever you’re doing, it’s time for you to leave, Mr. bin Fahd. Or whoever you really are.”

  Wells reached into his pocket, slid a folded piece of paper across the table to Singh. The doctor unfolded it hesitantly. “What is this?”

  “The number for the Saudi embassy in Bangkok. Call them, ask for the diplomatic secretary. He’ll confirm what I’ve said, who I am.”

  “You expect me to believe this is the real number?” But Singh didn’t throw the number away.

  “I expect you to check it and find out it is. I’ll wait.”

  —

  Fifteen minutes later, Singh returned.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Very little. Then I’ll leave and you can get back to putting new faces on drug lords.” Wells handed over one of Mason’s preoperative photos. “Remember him now?”

  “I told you, I can’t talk about my patients.”

  “If you think making an enemy of the Kingdom is bad, wait until the Interior Ministry tells the CIA that you refused to help capture a terrorist. Who happens to be an ex–CIA case officer.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” For the first time, Singh’s voice wavered. “We never ask our clients why they’re here.”

  “That’s fine. All I need is postop photos.”

  Singh laughed. “Look around, sir.” Contempt replaced the doubt in his voice. “Do you imagine the patients who come here want us to keep before-and-after snaps? For our website, perhaps?”

  “What about renderings? Your letter to him mentions renderings.”

  “We delete those at the final postop visit, assuming the healing has gone normally.” Singh pressed his advantage. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. Now, if you don’t mind—”

  “What if the healing doesn’t go normally?”

  “You say you’ve seen Mr. Duke’s records—”

  “But if there’s a product recall, an emergency, even years later. You must be able to reach your patients. A phone number, an email.”

  Singh shook his head.

  “Choice A: Give me those, I’m gone. Never bother you again. And he’ll never know how I got them. Choice B: You get put on a whole bunch of lists you don’t want to be on.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong—”

  “Even so. You think business will improve if The New York Times writes an article about a secret plastic surgery center in Thailand. That the kind of publicity your clients want?”

  —

  Singh picked up his briefcase, stalked out of the room. Wells wasn’t sure who he would see next. The center’s guards? The Thai police? Five minutes later, Aisha walked in.

  “Dr. Singh said you’d asked for this.”

  She gave Wells an envelope. Inside, a single piece of paper with a Thai phone number and an email address.

  “Sorry we couldn’t help you today. Your car is waiting.”

  Wells made the call as soon as they cleared the front gate. Two a.m. in Virginia, but no matter.

  “John?” He didn’t even sound groggy.

  “I have something for you.”

 
“Pictures.”

  “No. The guy’s a ghost.”

  “Shame to spend all that money on surgery and none of your friends can see it.”

  “Isn’t it? But I have an email and phone. Not sure when he’s used them, but they should be live. Are you still in purgatory or can you get them run?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Wells read them off.

  “I’ll see if I can’t get it in before the morning rush.” Meaning sneak the request through now, when a tired sys admin might not question it, or Shafer.

  —

  Back to Bangkok. Shafer didn’t get back to him that night. Or the next morning. Even at NSA, where some of Shafer’s best friends had worked, his juice seemed to be drying up. Wells wondered if he should go to Duto for help. Finally, just before midnight, thirty hours–plus after he’d passed Shafer the number, his phone buzzed.

  “More to come,” Shafer said. “But it’s not too early to book your next flight.”

  “Where?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “Istanbul?”

  “Where else?”

  18

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The United States spent sixty billion dollars a year to spy on friends and enemies, tap phones, intercept emails, peek through windows. It spent six hundred billion more to maintain an arsenal that ranged from insect-sized drones to aircraft carriers. The system had deep flaws. It was secretive, duplicative, inefficient. Yet its sheer size and power guaranteed its effectiveness. No country with a choice would go to war with the United States.

  That was the theory, anyway.

  For years, the intelligence community had promised the President that Iran’s nuclear program represented only a minor threat to the American homeland. CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the best independent think tanks all reached the same conclusion. Tehran wanted nuclear weapons for three reasons. First, to deter an American invasion. Second, to cement Iran’s position as the strongest power in the Gulf, dominating Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Third, to menace Israel. Being able to threaten the Jewish state with extinction would make Iran’s leaders more popular with their own citizens and their Sunni neighbors.

  But the analysts put the odds that Iran would use a bomb against Israel as very low, and against the United States as vanishingly small. Israel had more than a hundred nuclear warheads of its own and wouldn’t hesitate to annihilate Iran in a counterattack. History offered some reassurance. Despite Iran’s bluster, its army had never joined any of the Arab wars against Israel.

  Iran had even less appetite for war with the Great Satan. Tehran had used the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force to bleed the United States military in Iraq and Afghanistan. But since the eighties, Iran had refrained from attacking American civilians directly or even through Hezbollah. The mullahs knew that the United States was too powerful to fight. A nuclear weapon, even a dozen weapons, would not change their calculus.

  The consensus was not universal. Hawks in Congress argued that the United States simply could not trust Iran with a bomb. Even if it didn’t attack America directly, it might use the weapon against Israel and suck the United States into a regional nuclear war. But the United States had just escaped Iraq and Afghanistan, two of the most frustrating conflicts in its history. The President had no appetite for another.

  But at breakfast this morning, he had gotten a call from his National Security Advisor, Donna Green, that made him wonder whether the Chicken Littles were right after all.

  —

  He was digging into his scrambled eggs when his steward appeared with his encrypted iPhone. One of the peculiarities of being President was that he never carried anything. Not even a phone. The Secret Service offered a half-dozen reasons for the policy. He knew the truth. They were afraid of the security risk if he lost it. Not to mention the worldwide embarrassment.

  “Mr. President. Ms. Green asks if you have a moment.”

  Green knew his schedule, and she was too smart to bother him without good reason. He reached for the phone. “Donna.”

  “Sorry to interrupt you, sir. Scott Hebley just called. He’s asking for a Four-H today.”

  The term had nothing to do with state fairs or prize watermelons. It translated to an Oval Office meeting with the DCI, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of National Intelligence—the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

  “He explain why?” No mobile phone was as secure as the hardline network that connected the White House with Langley, the Pentagon, and Fort Meade. Still, they could speak relatively freely. A 4096-bit encryption key protected this conversation. At current processor speeds, a hundred supercomputers would need a hundred years to crack the call.

  “Iran. Beyond that, he said he’d rather discuss it with everyone in person, sir.”

  “Bit dramatic.”

  From anyone else, the President would have demanded a pre-meeting report. But he trusted Hebley, who had wound down the war in Afghanistan with a minimum of fuss. The President would never believe he fully controlled Langley, but at least he could count on Hebley to follow orders. Unlike the previous director. Vinny Duto had been a creature of the National Clandestine Service from the top of his lying head to the tips of his lying toes. The President had looked forward to the day when his spokesman would thank Duto for his service and announce his resignation as DCI. But Duto had seen the end coming, beaten him to the door. He was the Senate’s problem now.

  “Call Cindy. She should be able to open up a block around noon.” Cynthia Stone was the President’s chief scheduler, a hugely important position, given the value of his time.

  “And the Veep?”

  “We’ll hook him in after.” The Vice President liked the sound of his own voice too much for the President’s taste. When he and the President were alone, he kept himself in check, but in bigger groups he couldn’t help himself.

  —

  Stone moved one meeting, lopped fifteen minutes off another, and at 12:03 p.m., Green led the Four Horsemen into the Oval Office. They arranged themselves on the pale yellow couches that faced each other in the center of the room, perpendicular to the President’s desk. The President himself remained seated. These military men had been trained to respect authority, and he liked to remind them of his status as Commander-in-Chief.

  “General Hebley. You asked for this meeting. The floor is yours.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. A little less than twenty-four hours ago, a case officer in Istanbul was contacted by a source we call Mathers. Mathers is our Revolutionary Guard walk-in, the same man who correctly informed us that Iran was targeting a station chief. Mathers now reports that Iran is trying to smuggle radiological material into the United States.”

  Hebley paused. The President nodded: Go on.

  “Mathers reports that the material is aboard a ship that sailed from Dubai more than a week ago. He didn’t know its name, but he did provide a few details about its destination and registry. We’ve focused on several possible candidates, all of which are in the Atlantic Ocean and outside American waters. We have not yet interdicted any of the ships, and, of course, that’s one reason I’m here today.”

  “Do we know the type of material, or what our friends plan to do with it?”

  “The type of material is a mystery, sir. As to what they intend, Mathers referred to this as a practice run.”

  “For—”

  “Mathers reports the Iranian stockpile of highly enriched uranium is significantly larger than our previous estimates. He claims that the Iranian government has solved certain unspecified production problems and has now enriched enough material for ten bombs. Depending on the size of the weapons, that would represent one hundred fifty to three hundred kilograms of highly enriched uranium. Further, Mathers clai
ms that the Iranian government intends to transfer HEU to American soil with the aim of building nuclear weapons in the United States.”

  Not much could shock the people in this room into silence. That last sentence did.

  —

  “For an attack?” the President finally said.

  “Mathers isn’t sure of the intent. But he says his best guess is that Iran wants the weapons here as a deterrent. Without intercontinental ballistic missiles, this would be a low-tech form of mutually assured destruction.”

  “Blackmail,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said.

  “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” Green said.

  Tell me this is a practical joke, the President thought. To get me to pay more attention to foreign policy. But he had learned that even these men, powerful as they were, looked to him for leadership. Leaders didn’t waste time trying to wish away problems.

  “Can we trust this source, General?”

  “That’s the crucial question, Mr. President. The case officer handling him is fairly experienced, speaks good Farsi, has dealt with Iranians for several years. I’ve spoken to him myself, as have other senior members of my staff. He believes Mathers, and he makes a credible case.”

  “Do we have any confirmation from anywhere else?”

  Hebley cleared his throat. “At the moment, we have no independent confirmation.”

  “Not one secondary source inside Iran we can ask?”

  “Our intel into the Guard is limited, sir. And we have even less visibility into the Quds Force, which is the Guard unit that handles these operations. Not even the Israelis have ever cracked Quds. And their communications infrastructure—”

  “Stop telling me what you don’t know, General. Tell me what you do know.”

  “What we know, sir, is that this man claims to be a Rev Guard colonel and has given us limited warnings about two terrorist attacks. It may be that this is what the agency calls a false flag operation, that Mathers is working for another intelligence service that wants to provoke us into attacking Iran. But the countries which would benefit the most from a war are our allies. Our analysts don’t believe that they would risk angering us this way. An internal power struggle within Tehran could also be driving this. Anti-American elements inside the Iranian government could be trying to hoax us into an attack to bolster their position. Finally, it’s possible that our source is real. At the moment, we judge that most likely, though by no means a certainty.”