The Counterfeit Agent

by Alex Berenson

  “But he didn’t tell you who.”

  “Like I said, he insisted he didn’t know.”

  “It would have to be privately run, though.”

  “If it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t us, who else could it be?” Duto paused. “And you’re asking because you think maybe this is the same people?”

  “Just guessing.”

  “And nobody put it together because who’s going to connect anti-Iran assassinations from three years ago with an op that starts with hits on two Israeli embassies. Not bad. See, your boyfriend gets lost, you put that big brain in gear.”

  “Heng dikh oyf a tsikershtrikl, vestu hobn a zisn toyt.” A Yiddish curse Shafer hadn’t heard since his childhood: Hang yourself with a sugar rope, you’ll have a sweet death.

  “I love it when you go ethnic on me, Ellis—”

  —

  Shafer didn’t expect trouble getting a look at the files on the Iranian assassinations. As Duto had said, no one had connected them with the current crop of killings. He called Dave Hikett, the guy who had told him what had happened on the Kara Six. They’d served together in Warsaw in the late eighties. Hikett was now the deputy director of Counterproliferation, which theoretically oversaw the agency’s efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, but in reality spent most of its time stuck in turf battles with the Pakistani, Iranian, and North Korean desks. A couple months before, Hikett had told Shafer he was sick of the infighting, ready to retire. Hikett, Lucy Joyner, a couple guys in the DST—Shafer could count his real friends inside on one hand. Live too long, no one comes to your funeral.

  “Ellis.”

  “Dave. Question for you—”

  “Now’s not a good time, Ellis. Lot going on. Call you back.”

  “Dave—”

  But Hikett was gone.

  Everyone at Langley consented to being monitored on the house phones as a condition of employment. The unwritten rule was that the agency listened only for good reason. But Hikett had as much as told Shafer he was under surveillance.

  Shafer wondered how much trouble he might be in. Plenty. He talked to Duto and Wells on burners, but those wouldn’t matter if they had his office bugged. He had revealed classified information to Duto twice today. The fact that Duto was a United States senator and former DCI would save Shafer from criminal prosecution, but not from losing his job, his pension, any connection with this place.

  He had to admit Carcetti had warned him.

  Shafer picked up the phone to call Hikett again, then stopped himself. He would only get the man in more trouble. Hikett lived on the Hill, a divorcé with two cats and a girlfriend Shafer had never met and suspected might not exist. Maybe he’d go by tonight and they’d figure out some place in Southeast to meet, somewhere where they’d stand out but the agency’s internal security guys would stand out even more. Or maybe Hikett just wanted to retire with his pension intact, and, even more important, his clearance, so he could work for Booz Allen for a couple hundred grand a year. In that case, he wouldn’t call at all.

  Shafer believed in this lead. Hikett’s files would have police work and intel tips from a half-dozen countries. Forensic evidence. Maybe Mason had even let a surveillance camera take his photo. But Shafer wouldn’t be getting a look at those files tonight.

  Shafer had tacked into headwinds for most of his career. This was different. He had assumed that Hebley and his inner circle had fallen hard for this Rev Guard source. It happened. Somebody walked in with great intelligence and was right a couple times, the questions just melted away.

  Now for the first time, Shafer wondered whether someone on the seventh floor was actively aiding the conspiracy. A senior CIA official steering the United States into war. The idea was implausible at best. But no longer impossible.

  If he couldn’t get a look at Hikett’s files, he’d find the answer somewhere else. He had the clues already. He just needed to see them. He put his face in his palms and closed his eyes and tried to see.

  23

  ISTANBUL

  Two days now.

  Or maybe not. Maybe one and a half. Maybe three. Time was elastic. Wells had no windows, no way of telling day from night. He could hear the faint hum of highway traffic through his bricked-up cell, but he didn’t recognize any pattern in the noise. The knockout drug hadn’t fully cleared yet. Smog pickled his mind, and his stomach felt tight and tender, like he’d swallowed a half-dozen golf balls. He suspected he’d been hit with a near-fatal dose of Rohypnol.

  James Thompson would have appreciated the irony. Thompson, his old buddy from Dadaab. Now serving thirty-two years in a max-security federal prison in North Carolina for kidnapping and fraud. With his sentence shortened for good behavior, he’d be paroled at about sixty-five. Wells would have locked him up for life, but the decision hadn’t been his.

  He expected his own sentence to be shorter but harsher. A few more days as an unperson in this unplace. A bullet in the back of the head. Then what? Probably they’d carve up his corpse, throw it in a trunk, dump it in the Black Sea. They weren’t sentimental, these people. Even through his haze he understood that much.

  Good news was that his foot wasn’t broken. The swelling was coming down. He’d tested it, found it bore his weight. In another day or two, he expected to be able to run on it. If he could just get free.

  —

  At first he had thought his kidnappers let him live because they wanted to know who was helping him. He’d readied himself for torture. An episode in Beijing years before had shown Wells how much punishment rough guys could inflict even without electricity or knives or any other depravity. Pain broke everyone, and it broke most people quickly. Ironically, the best way to fight was not to imagine the agony ending, but instead to slow time, break it into the smallest fractions possible. A second. Then another. Anyone could stay quiet for a single second.

  Sooner or later, that illusion crumbled. Getting a break from the agony became absolutely necessary. Wells planned to give up the tiniest fragments possible, lying along the way, forcing the torturers to unscramble the mess. He didn’t look forward to this game. It would end with his death. Along the way, the pain would be impossible to imagine, even as it happened. Yet he wasn’t exactly afraid, either. He would make them sweat for every bit of him.

  Now Wells wondered if they planned to torture him at all. They’d stuffed him in a crude cell, eight feet square, twelve feet high. The room smelled faintly of tobacco. Maybe his guards were holed up nearby and smoking. Maybe the place had once been a cigarette warehouse. Turkey still exported cigarettes all over the world. A sixty-watt bulb on the ceiling provided the only light, and it never went off.

  They had cuffed Wells’s right hand to a post in the wall with a four-foot chain. His toilet was a bucket. A surveillance camera was mounted over the door, a cheap fish-eye lens available at any electronics store, its red light steady.

  Still, they were feeding him, a basket of pita bread and a liter of water twice a day. His legs were free. The cell was unheated, but they’d given him a blanket. He even had fresh underwear and shorts. Basic comforts, to create the illusion they cared about him, so he wouldn’t resist.

  He hadn’t seen Mason or the woman who had drugged him. The only people who’d come into the cell were two guards. He always asked them the same questions: Where am I? When can I see Mason? They never answered. In other words, his captors were basically ignoring him. Not in a we’re-isolating-you-to-soften-you-up way. In a we’re-busy-and-don’t-have-time-for-you way.

  The realization didn’t improve his mood. The only reason that they wouldn’t bother to ask him questions was if they already had the answers. They knew who he was, they knew he was working with Shafer, and probably Duto, too. And they knew he hadn’t found enough to stop them. Again, Wells wondered why they hadn’t shot him. If they didn’t need information, most likely they were holding him as l
everage, a way to slow down Shafer and Duto. But they had to know that he would never ask Shafer to keep quiet. If they ordered him to do that, Wells would tell them to put him down like a dog instead.

  Wells looked around the cell, noticing pipes on the ceiling he hadn’t seen before, flecked white paint and rusted iron. Maybe his body was finally breaking down the sedative. Minute by minute he felt sharper, more perceptive. He examined the room’s bricks for cracks or crevices, found none. The chain that held him was padlocked to a ring in the wall. He tugged on it, testing it. But it had been hammered in and had no give. He leaned against the wall and listened for anything that would give him the rhythm of the city. Distant diesel engines, what might have been a foghorn, a long, eerie sound. No voices.

  He turned his attention to the handcuff, but the guards had locked it tight around his wrist. Theoretically, with enough motivation, a prisoner could “deglove” a cuff, using the metal itself to tear away flesh until he could pull it over the bones of his hand. But Wells couldn’t believe anyone had ever managed a real-world degloving, even if the alternative was dying in a locked cell. He imagined his wrist bloody and raw as he tore the cuff into his bones.

  Did he have any tools at all? The bucket. Blue plastic, with a plastic handle, the kind kids used at the beach. His toilet. His captors emptied it every morning. Wells looked at it, wondered—

  The door opened. Glenn Mason.

  Medium height, his arms middle-aged and slack. His face strange. Wide and puffy, like someone had inflated a balloon under his skin. Like he’d overdosed on human growth hormone. Barry Bonds syndrome. His nose squarer and flatter than it had been. His eyes smaller in his face. Even his ears different. Wells saw why the face-recognition software had failed.

  Mason wore a T-shirt, jeans, boots, and a Taser strapped on his belt. He stepped inside the cell but left the door open. “The famous John Wells. You can call me Duke.”

  Duke. His fake name at the clinic.

  “Aesthetic Beauty did you right.”

  “You want me to admit it, John? Sure. Isn’t this where you tell me I can’t get away with it? That if I just tell you who’s behind all this, maybe you can cut me a deal?”

  Wells lifted his cuffed right hand. “Not sure I’m in a position to make ultimatums.”

  “Love to know how you found me in Thailand.”

  “Luck. And a lot of time in Patpong.”

  “I figured. Speaking of. I made that run strictly to shake you out. See how many guys you had with you. Didn’t think you could be stupid enough to follow me alone down that hill. I guess the folks at Langley who always said you were lucky, a cowboy, they were right?”

  “You have nothing better to do than trash talk?”

  Mason put a smartphone on the ground, kicked it gently to Wells.

  “Turn it on.”

  Wells did. On the home screen, a picture of Evan. Sitting on the bench in his San Diego State uniform, hands on his knees, leaning forward, desperate to get in the game. No.

  “Taken two days ago. At Colorado State.”

  How had they found him? Heather had given Evan his stepfather’s last name when he was only five. Very few people knew that Wells had ever been married, much less that he’d had a son.

  “Played ten minutes, five points and an assist. Good-looking kid. Not surprising, your ex is pretty hot.”

  This man, suffocating Wells with his own powerlessness, torture worse than any waterboarding. Making a joke of threatening his son. Wells wanted to tear the chain from the wall and throttle the man until his eyes bulged dead from his reconditioned face. But now more than ever he had to control his temper. Keep Mason happy. Make him believe his plan had worked. So he could get out of here. Then he would kill the man and everyone helping him. Burn their houses, salt their land, a plague of locusts. All of it.

  “Leave them alone.” His voice even. “Whatever you want.”

  Mason dug another phone from his pocket, held it up. The burner Wells used to call Shafer. The phone he’d been carrying when Mason’s team caught him.

  “Your friend Shafer has called you a bunch of times. You need to talk to him, tell him you were wrong. Figure out what’s new on his side.”

  “Glenn—”

  “Duke.”

  “Duke. I don’t want to argue, but he won’t buy it. It’ll make him more suspicious.”

  “What, then?”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Two, two and a half days.”

  Afternoon in Istanbul, morning in D.C. A chance for Wells to get some sense of day and night. “I’ll tell him I thought I was close, but it was a trap, you guys set me up. I took off, a car hit me, knocked me out. I had no ID, and I just got let out of the hospital. I’m still after you, but you’ve gone to ground and the phone we used to track you isn’t working and you obviously know I’m here, so I have to start again.”

  Mason hesitated. Like he wanted to clear the new plan with his boss. But didn’t want to have to tell Wells he wasn’t in charge. Again Wells thought of the woman who’d knocked him out. That cool, commanding voice.

  “Okay. Tell him they took you to Kasımpasa hospital.”

  “Kasımpasa.”

  “And find out what he knows. If he has anything more.”

  “He’ll probably want to check back tomorrow. You okay with that?”

  “Tomorrow’s tomorrow. Send back that phone.”

  Wells slid back the smartphone as Mason unlocked the burner, cued Shafer’s number. Wells didn’t ask how he’d beaten the passcode. Whoever was running this could afford a good tech team.

  “You push the green button, do your thing. I see you try to call anyone else, I Tase you, take the phone. Then we kill your kid. I hear you tell Shafer anything but what we agreed on, I Tase you, take the phone. Then we kill your kid. You with me?”

  Wells nodded. Mason unbelted the Taser, kicked the burner across the cell. Wells reached for it. Rehearsed what he’d say. This call he’d play completely straight. Buy time to figure a way out.

  He pushed the button. One ring, then voice mail. Wells nearly hung up. Shafer always answered this phone. But maybe he was one step ahead, maybe he realized that Wells might be calling under duress and they would be better off not talking.

  “Ellis. Sorry I haven’t called. Been stuck in the hospital. Mason set me up, I didn’t get the picture, a car took me. I was unconscious for a whole day, they held me for observation for one more. But I’m out now, and I need to talk. Call me.”

  He hung up. The message seemed lame to him, but Mason seemed pleased. He waved his fingers, come hither. Wells tossed him the phone. “He’ll call back in not too long.”

  “He knows you’re alive, he won’t freak, do anything stupid. You do the same.” Mason stepped into the hallway. “Like those drunk-driving public-service announcements. The life you save may be Evan’s.”

  This guy couldn’t lay off. His girlfriend had told Wells he didn’t talk much, but maybe he’d dropped that persona, too, when he’d gotten his new face.

  “See you soon.” Mason shut the door, leaving Wells by himself, nothing but his self-hatred for company.

  Anne had been more right than she knew. How could he have imagined that being married or having kids was compatible with this life? Especially now that he didn’t work for the agency. He didn’t have the protections of a regular CIA officer. Or even an off-the-books operative, a so-called NOC, under nonofficial cover. The NOCs ran mostly on their own, but when missions went bad, at least they knew the agency would try to help. Not Wells. Shafer or Duto wouldn’t come for him. He would get out of this mess on his own or die. Either way, he would leave Anne behind, let her find a man who could love her as she deserved.

  Then what? He didn’t know. If Mason and his people could make the connection, anyone could. Between him and Evan, Wells couldn�
��t see any solution to the problem. Maybe there was no solution. But before he could do anything about it, he had an even more basic problem to solve.

  Escape.

  24

  ISTANBUL

  Snatch-and-grab

  Of a foreign national.

  In a megalopolis.

  Without the permission

  Of the host country.

  Brian Taylor ran the sentences through his mind, an International Criminal Court haiku. Officially, the agency planned to “detain” Reza. No one wanted to say kidnap, abduct, or imprison. Extraordinary rendition was even worse, a phrase bagged and burned years before.

  The risks of the plan were hard to overstate. What if they had to take Reza off a crowded street? How many Turks would see? How quickly would the police show? A clean grab wouldn’t end the potential for disaster. Reza might refuse to work with the agency afterward. Or the Iranians might be watching. Then Reza would be worse than dead after the agency kicked him loose.

  Taylor wanted to object. Reza was his asset. But the choice wasn’t his anymore. The agency could no longer tolerate Reza’s anonymity. It had to know who he was, where he’d grown up, gone to school, why he had decided to betray his country, his history with the Guard, the names of his bosses. All the questions he had refused to answer.

  It had to know if he was real.

  And if Reza became so angry that he refused to talk? Even with Guantánamo off the table, the CIA had plenty of leverage. It could tell Reza that it would slip his name and photo to the Iranians if he didn’t cooperate. The Guard’s revenge would be swift and brutal, whether or not Reza worked for it.

  —

  But again Reza had confounded them. Since his late-night meeting with Taylor, he had vanished. Three SOG teams were searching. Martha Hunt had told Langley they were wasting their time. Istanbul was as big as New York City, and no one had an idea where Reza might be. The operatives should stay close to the consulate, wait for Reza to call. But they were bored with their hotel rooms. They wanted to feel useful.