The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  “Did Seaforth tell you what we found in the village?” he asked.

  She nodded. “He sent me a complete report so I could try and help you. I’m sorry about your brother. Truly.”

  “There was a box of blank DVDs there, in a packing box with an address in Pakistan. The name on the address was Mirjan Shah.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What are you asking me?”

  “Were there DVDs made of my brother’s execution?”

  She sipped at her whiskey. “For a while there was a market for execution videos. They were sold on the street in Waziristan, in the tribal parts of western Pakistan that are only loosely under government control. DVDs, showing fallen Muslims and apostates getting their throats cut. Of course, the tapes have to be sent to the people who burn the DVDs, or they have to download them from the web. Mirjan Shah ran such an operation in Pakistan selling these snuff films. I think he saw himself more as a propagandist than a film mogul.”

  Sam wondered if the Magpie knew that each of her words felt like a burn against his skin.

  “This room where he was killed. Describe it,” she said.

  “A red wall behind them, canvas on the floor. Some of the blood on the canvas was blood, but some wasn’t. It was potassium thiocyanate and ferric nitrate. Fake blood.”

  “Mirjan Shah was faking executions there for videos,” she said. “He sold something like eighty different execution videos. It was like a book-of-the-month club. They showed them at extremist schools in Pakistan, for God’s sake.”

  “Why fake?”

  “Because I think he had DVDs to sell and not enough executions to feed his demand.”

  Cut the latex rather than the throat, with the fake blood ready to spurt…hold up a head and not show the face…match the color of the hair…so it could be done. Maybe they faked Danny’s execution because, there, with Mirjan Shah’s equipment in place, faking his death was an actual option. Not a difficult one. It made his skin go cold.

  “You seem to know a lot about Mirjan Shah.”

  “He was one of my assets,” she said evenly. “Clearly he was in touch with someone at your brother’s execution site. Sending them blank DVDs that would be returned to him.”

  “An asset? He was an informant for you?”

  She nodded. “We wanted him to stay in the business of making those fake execution films. He could tell us who was buying them, who was moving them—it gave us a list of terrorist sympathizers. So we gave him the most sophisticated equipment. The artificial heads, the latex skin that could go over the throat for the cut, at just the right thickness and consistency to look realistic…all that came from the CIA. He told his associates he had a friend in Hollywood who had made them for him. That’s how outside experts could be tricked by his videos. Including the one with your brother, I think. Of course he edited true execution videos as well, that extremists sent to him, so we could never be sure if your brother’s was real or not, and Mirjan wasn’t there when they were ‘killed’ to tell us, one way or another.”

  Sam was speechless. No one had ever told him or his family there was a chance Danny’s death was faked.

  Margaret didn’t seem to notice his stunned reaction: “Mirjan, poor fool. He died not long after your brother went missing. Shot to death. Occupational risk. You’d think he’d end up in a video of his own if they’d known he was a CIA asset.”

  “Would they have sent him the missing hard drive from the laptop we found? So he could edit the footage?”

  Her mouth narrowed. “Normally they would just send him the file, burned to a CD. But I suppose they could have. Why?”

  “I’m wondering how many takes there were of that video. Or if the executioners were ever filmed without their masks on.” Sam went to the door and asked Bertrand to bring them another round.

  Bertrand did, and when he left the Magpie spoke again, softly: “You know, we backed Mirjan because he hid a software code on those DVDs, each one unique for each execution video. It sent Langley, without the viewer knowing, their IP address if they watched on a laptop that was connected at that moment to the Internet. It was critical information in those early stages of the war. It gave us extremist locations to monitor, to watch, to send drones to bomb. Too many, almost—we had to narrow it down. And then Mirjan got killed. But before his operation was blown, I thought it interesting that we got signals from two unexpected places. The code indicated they’d watched a DVD Mirjan created of your brother’s ‘death.’ And neither was in Pakistan.”

  “Where?”

  “Moscow and New York. One was in the offices of a private security firm in Moscow. Owned by a married couple who were ex–Russian intel. Husband was KGB, wife was military intel. Now, the Russians were good little dance partners for us in Afghanistan. It’s possible that there’s nothing to this, that one of their people got hold of the DVD and sent it on and that it’s nothing.”

  Another Russian connection. “But a private security firm, not government.”

  “The line between corporations working for the government, and the government, has gotten much blurrier, Sam. Especially in Russia. Most of the billionaires running Russia are ex-KGB. But the DVD could have been found during one of their own counterterrorism operations, sent, and watched. It could be nothing. It was watched, only once, in the offices of Belinsky Global. Sergei Belinsky was a close buddy of the Morozovs, supposedly did dirty jobs for them, killed in a car bombing blamed on the Chechen militants. His wife, Irina Belinskaya, took over for him after she killed every Chechen connected with her husband’s death.”

  A security operative. “And New York?”

  “That was traced to an IP address in a studio in Brooklyn. An artist and art dealer who works in digital media.”

  “Name?”

  “Avril Claybourne. She makes short films that are shown in museums and galleries, as art. Rubbish, if you ask me. But I don’t know art.”

  “Did…did she use footage from my brother’s video in her art?”

  “She did not.” The Magpie sipped at her whiskey. “We checked on her. She makes a lot of money from her garbage, but that’s not a crime.” She set the glass down on the table.

  “Assume I’m right and Danny wasn’t killed. Why would he be kept alive?”

  She was silent. “Maybe…he was an opportunity.”

  “You must have had another asset in the area other than Mirjan Shah. That village seems to have been a way station at the time.”

  She said, “Yes. I had another asset in the area. But I cannot tell you his name.”

  The other informant surely couldn’t still be there or be alive. He tried another tack. “They didn’t let Zalmay talk on the video. Only Danny. Why?”

  “Psychology analysis suggested that either Zalmay was too injured, or they did not care to risk he would say something in Pashto that would be dangerous for the Afghan audience to hear. But…I think that’s a bit silly, don’t you?” She ran a hand through her gray hair. Sam thought: The Magpie is deciding whether or not to share her shiny objects.

  Finally she said, “Did you ever wonder why they were taken?”

  “They worked for a relief agency, a Christian one.”

  “But if the Brothers of the Mountain weren’t religious extremists…but smugglers, why take these two Americans?”

  He gave no answer.

  She tapped a finger against her cheek. “One of them was a CIA operative,” she whispered.

  “That can’t be. The agency doesn’t recruit humanitarian workers.” Sam knew this from the long years of his parents’ work. There had been instances where relief workers had been accused of being CIA agents—falsely—and the entire charity would find its workers expelled from a country. It had happened, prominently, with Save the Children, in Pakistan, and a few other charities. The CIA kept its distance from relief workers, most of whom were not of a temperament for covert work.

  “We had a bonfire with the rule books after Nine-Eleven,” the Magpie said. “You know
that. And to have an Afghan, also fluent in English, on the ground…”

  The shock nearly cut off his breath for a moment. “Zalmay was CIA. Did Danny know?”

  “I have no idea what went on between them out there in that wilderness.”

  He stood up suddenly from the table, furious with her. “You recruited my brother’s best friend. You let him go with my brother into a war zone where they’d be prime targets. You…”

  “Sit down. They were prime targets by virtue of being American relief workers,” she said, coldness in her tone.

  “Maybe they never knew Zalmay was CIA.” Wrong, he thought, they knew. That’s why they didn’t let him talk. So he couldn’t say anything in code to the agency, watching him die. They bound his mouth. They blindfolded him. He’d sat there as if asleep or drugged.

  But if Zalmay was CIA, and Danny was a bystander—then Zalmay was the valuable one, to the Taliban. A greater value in propaganda and bargaining. Danny was no one.

  Yet Danny lived and Zalmay died.

  “I want to see Zalmay’s 201 file. Tell Seaforth to give it to me. Please.” A 201 file was the most complete file on any agency asset or operative.

  “He can’t show it to you.” Slight emphasis on he.

  He stared at her. “You have a copy?”

  “Lots of jewels in my old nest.”

  “What, it’s in your apartment?”

  She looked troubled for a moment, as if she’d said too much.

  Sam gently took her hand and her face blanched in surprise. “Your other contact you had in the Hindu Kush. The one whose name you won’t tell me. Who is he?”

  Her eyes were bright diamonds and he realized she was a little drunk from the whiskey. “I won’t tell you, because a little boy like you will end up dead. We had to work with bad people. He was…bad people.”

  “Please.”

  She shook her head. “What is your brother now, Sam? He could have called you. He could have come forward. He didn’t. So either he’s not alive or he wants nothing to do with you.”

  “I want to hear a reason from him.”

  “There is no reason that will satisfy you,” she said, and he hated that she was right. But instead he said, “Margaret, I won’t know that until I hear it.”

  “God help you,” she said.

  “Do you want more whiskey?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve had enough. Take me back to the beautiful people.”

  14

  Manhattan

  SAM TOOK THE Magpie back to the apartment building. She announced she would return to her son’s party, now that she was appropriately whiskeyed up to deal with her son’s friends. “I need some merriment now,” she’d said in the cab. Sam took her to the floor, got her settled with a fresh drink, and then went down the few floors to Margaret’s own apartment.

  You have a copy? She hadn’t said no. And she hoarded her secrets.

  The lock opened up under his picks and he was inside. The apartment itself was neat, tidy, family photos of the actor son, vintage photos of the Magpie’s husband and parents. Cities across Europe, Russia, and Asia. Margaret stood alone in those.

  He went through the apartment. She had a modified pocket door that had a padlock on it, like something you’d see in an old factory. He knelt before it and it opened, eventually, under his picks. He slid the door open.

  File cabinets, a table with papers in stacks, photos and notes taped to the wall. This was her magpie’s nest. There wasn’t a computer, but there was a typewriter, an old Selectric restored, and a neat stack of typewritten manuscript next to it. Old-school, inconvenient, but unhackable. The Magpie knew that the agency’s eyes, digitally, might be watching her, even in retirement.

  He went to the file cabinets. Unlocked. He looked for a file on Quereshi, Zalmay. There wasn’t one. Neither was there one on Capra, Daniel. He pulled out a file at random to examine. And, stunned, saw it was an original. Not a copy. Everything had been digitized at Langley at some point, and these old paper files were what…to be burned? Serve as backups? Instead she had smuggled them out, like the famous Vasili Mitrokhin had in the KGB in the 1980s, sneaking the Soviet spy agency’s greatest secrets out in his socks and shoes, stuffed down the back of his pants, then hidden in the floorboards of his Moscow home. The Magpie must have done the same.

  He began searching the files stacked by the typewriter, and three files in he found it. Zalmay’s 201 file: his life, through the prism of the CIA. The file wasn’t under his name, but a code name, given him by his handler Margaret: FDJETTY. FD was the CIA cryptonym to indicate he operated in Afghanistan, jetty a randomly chosen word. His family history. His education. A detailed background check of his Afghan parents, whose family had been loyal to Afghanistan’s last king, Zahir, before he was deposed in 1973, and they’d come to the United States. His family checked out, impeccable.

  Then his assignment. He was to make contact with anti-Taliban forces, cultivate informants, relay information back to Margaret. So he would have been looking for sources. Had one of them betrayed him and Danny to the Brothers of the Mountain?

  He had used Danny for cover. Had Danny ever known?

  There was a list of names, code names, cross references to numbered files. FDTHUNDER. FDPTOLEMY. FDCURE. FDGALLEON. The sources Zalmay recruited to feed him, and in turn the Magpie, information in Afghanistan.

  Hands starting to shake, Sam looked up each name in the file cabinets.

  FDTHUNDER, FDCURE, and FDGALLEON were all dead. FDPTOLEMY wasn’t. His real name was Ahmad Anwari, and he was alive, and he was living in the United States.

  The Magpie had known his name but had said, I won’t tell you, because a little boy like you will end up dead.…He was…bad people.

  The Anwari file showed a thickly muscled man, bearded, cruel eyes, a harsh mouth with a knife-scarred lip. He had been extracted from Afghanistan a few years ago, given a new identity here, for services rendered. No details. Now he lived in Fremont, California. His new name was Ahmad Douad. He ran a nursery and greenhouse.

  Ahmad had given a series of statements about his CIA work, and Sam paged through the transcripts until he found what he wanted: They were taken by a group called The Brothers of the Mountain…I heard later that they kept the two aid workers shut up in a village that no one went to…they killed them both. They had Mirjan Shah in Pakistan edit a video for them of the deaths, he sells such things where believers don’t have Internet. Zalmay was my contact and someone told the Brothers Zalmay was CIA. His friend was unlucky, a nobody, not CIA like Zalmay; they beheaded him. I arrived after the executions, about two hours; I was shocked when I saw they had killed Zalmay. I thought they would kill me but Zalmay had not talked or named me as a source. I saw both the bodies. One of the men joked with me that they had to kill Zalmay before the video was made; when his throat was cut he was already dead. I didn’t understand why and he said not to ask. No one would explain this oddity to me. I thought it was that they knew he was CIA, but then they would have announced they were killing a CIA asset in the video. Or they would have kept him and questioned him or sold him to the Taliban. They took the bodies away, I don’t know where. Probably burned them or threw them off a cliff or buried them where they couldn’t be found. No one stayed in that village; all moved on. May I have another cigarette now?

  That was a lie. No mention of a Russian, shot to death. Sam closed his eyes: In his mind’s eye of the video Zalmay was blindfolded and gagged and not moving before they cut his throat and shoved him out of the camera’s frame…

  Sam wrote down Ahmad Douad’s name, address, and phone number. He returned the file to where he’d found it. He headed out into the night.

  Choose, he thought. He could follow the thread of the artist, this Avril Claybourne, who had watched the illicit execution DVD made by Mirjan Shah, or the Ahmad thread. Ahmad had claimed to have had eyes on Sam’s brother’s body—that trumped all. Sam took a cab back to The Last Minute, booking him
self via his phone on the earliest flight out tomorrow morning to San Jose, feeling like he finally held a bit of luck. Even if he’d had to steal it.

  15

  Fremont, California

  SAM’S FLIGHT HAD left New York the next morning at 5:45 a.m., making a stop in Houston for a few sleepy travelers to disembark and be replaced by passengers holding fresh cups of coffee. He arrived in San Jose a few minutes after eleven that morning, local time. He picked up his rental car, plugged in the GPS, and headed for Fremont. He’d studied about the town on the plane, reading articles on his tablet computer—it held a large, diverse population of immigrants: Afghan, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani. Dozens of languages spoken at home. Less than forty percent of the population was native born. There was a section of town known as Little Kabul, which sounded big, but was only a stretch of one street. A few journalists had written about Fremont in the aftermath of the post-9/11 invasion, and come away saying that the Afghan immigrants here were caught in a weird limbo: not yet assimilated, suspicious of outsiders, but trying to become more “American.” Law enforcement kept an eye on the community for signs of radicalization. Among the immigrants were a high percentage of people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—most had, after all, fled in the face of the Soviet invasion and then the violent rise of the Taliban—but not seeking help beyond that of family. Another essayist wrote about Fremont’s widening gap between the far more Americanized children of the immigrants and their parents, caught in a cultural amber. He thought these immigrants were doing far better than those trapped in the unrelenting poverty of the slums outside Islamabad.

  He wondered how Ahmad Anwari, now Douad, fit into this new America. And why the Magpie was so afraid of a gardener.

  The nursery was called Happy Plants. It was large, with a wide variety of shrubs, rosebushes, and trees. A few shoppers wandered through the outdoor aisles, one woman loudly ordering from a list while a nursery assistant loaded two carts with her purchases.