The Prisoner

by Alex Berenson

  “A little.” Wayne had picked up basic phrases in Iraq, but nothing more. “Not this.”

  “He’s speaking of the necessity for brotherhood.”

  “Why I’m here.”

  “Let me wash my face. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  One minute became five, and then fifteen, as the video continued to play. Wayne wondered if the imam was watching him on a hidden camera, waiting to see if he would be stupid enough to rifle through the office. Hardcovers in Arabic and English filled two walls of shelves. The imam seemed particularly interested in nineteenth-century European history.

  He returned a half hour later, freshly showered and wearing a suit. “I was going to let you wait all day, but I need my office back. I fear you’ve wasted your time, Mr. Smith.” His English was precise and cultured.

  “You don’t even know what I want.”

  “Let me guess. You’re with the FBI. You seek my cooperation in the fight against terror.” He put a sarcastic emphasis on seek and cooperation. “Please, go now.”

  “You misunderstand.”

  “I don’t think I do. Would you do this to a rabbi? A loyalty oath.”

  Loyalty oath. Oh, the irony. Wayne realized he was going to have to reveal more than he wanted, and sooner. “My name isn’t Wayne Smith. And I’ve come because I can help you. Not the other way around.”

  The imam folded his arms over his chest, stared at Wayne. “I’m afraid I am confused.”

  “For a man in your position, a true believer, these meetings must be frustrating.”

  “Belief in Allah isn’t a crime.”

  “We always ask. Never tell.”

  “You want to change that?”

  Wayne gave him a single, grave nod, knowing they’d reached the crux. If the imam didn’t have the connections Wayne needed or if he was too nervous to move ahead, fearing a sting, he would throw Wayne out now. Instead, the imam went silent again, looking at cards Wayne couldn’t see. In the tank, as poker players said. And Wayne knew he had a chance.

  A minute passed. More. Behind the imam, the prayer service went on and on.

  “What would you like in return?”

  Wayne shook his head.

  “Nothing. I see. A generous man. Shall I ask your reasons?”

  “They’re my own.”

  “You are a believer.”

  Another shake.

  “What would I do with this information?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  The imam pursed his lips like he was tasting an exotic new food for the first time and couldn’t decide whether he liked it. Sweetbreads? Tell me again what those are?

  “What’s your real name, Mr. Smith? Who do you work for?”

  “For now, better for both of us if you don’t know. It’s what I have for you that matters—”

  The imam’s face tightened.

  “This is the clumsiest sting operation the FBI has ever tried on me. And it’s tried a few. Whoever you are, I don’t believe you have what you say. Why would I believe you? You won’t even tell me your name. You say the information is what matters? Fine. Now go. Now. Before I call the police.”

  The rejection was so humiliating that Wayne felt the imam had actually slapped him. He forced himself to his feet and pushed his way out.

  —

  ONLY IN the parking lot did Wayne see what the imam had done. He had played his hand perfectly. He hadn’t explicitly encouraged Wayne in any way. He hadn’t done anything obvious like patting Wayne down for a wire. He had protected himself. But he’d given the green light, nonetheless, with those final words. You say the information is what matters? Fine.

  Maybe.

  Or maybe Wayne was deluding himself. Maybe he was about to take the insane risk of handing over Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information to someone who had said he didn’t want it. Who wouldn’t know what to do with it. Or worse, who would take it straight to the FBI. No matter that the imam didn’t know his name. The mosque had surveillance cameras all over.

  For two weeks, he mentally replayed the conversation. He wished he could talk to the imam again, but the man would kick him to the door even faster this time. He’d had his chance.

  In the end, more because of the way the imam had looked at him than anything he’d said, Wayne jumped.

  He mailed the mosque a thumb drive that held a single document: a spreadsheet with the names of four Islamic State commanders on the CIA drone kill list. More important, everything the agency knew about them. Their aliases, their addresses, their cars, the mobile phone numbers and email addresses the NSA had linked to them. He had chosen information too valuable for anyone to risk giving up in a sting. And the men who eventually received it would know it was real and accurate.

  The days that followed were the longest of his life. He’d given the imam no way to reach him. He had nothing to do but wait. Each night he wondered whether he would wake to a predawn knock on his front door, a dozen FBI agents standing outside. He hid his tension from his wife, except in bed, where he couldn’t contain himself. Have you been taking something? she said to him. You haven’t been like this in a long time. Since before the kids.

  You don’t like it?

  Can’t you tell I do? I’m surprised, that’s all. It’s like you’re a new man.

  The FBI never knocked. And eleven days after he posted that envelope, the NSA reported that four IS commanders had vanished, their phones and email addresses gone dark. Eureka. What Wayne felt more than anything was not triumph but relief, relief that he had finally given his hate an outlet.

  —

  WAYNE LET another week pass before he called the imam. “It’s Wayne Smith.”

  “Mr. Smith. If you’re still seeking spiritual guidance, mornings are best.”

  “Seven tomorrow, then?” The idea of having this meeting on his way to Langley thrilled him.

  “As you wish.”

  Wayne wondered if the imam would move the meeting to a basement or a park, a place that would make surveillance more difficult. Instead, they met once again in the office. The imam seemed to have decided to pretend nothing unusual was happening. “Nice to see you again. Coffee?” He nodded at the Dunkin’ Donuts Box O’ Joe on his desk.

  Couldn’t even save me a donut, fat man. Wayne poured himself a cup.

  “To give you spiritual advice, I need your name, your real name. And your job.”

  Wayne knew he’d passed the point of no return when he mailed the drive, but revealing himself made the betrayal fresh. The words stuck in his throat until he forced them out in an asthmatic wheeze.

  The imam regarded him almost kindly. “A very senior position. That must be stressful for you.”

  Now that he’d exposed himself, Wayne wanted to cut to the point. He made himself remember that the imam was deliberately blowing smoke, protecting himself. No one could prove he’d ever received the thumb drive, much less passed on its information. He would avoid specifics as long as he could.

  “At times. I was hoping you could help me, give me questions to answer.”

  “I can do that. I think we should meet regularly.”

  “Because of the sensitivities of meeting someone like you, I may need my bosses to know.” Wayne finding the elliptical rhythm now. “They’ll be happy to have us talk.” Indeed, the agency would be thrilled he was cultivating this man, who might know of American supporters of the Islamic State.

  “Your business.”

  “Yes, but I’ll need a cover story, and you’ll need to know what it is, in case anyone asks.”

  “Will someone ask?”

  “I don’t think so, but better to be ready. It’ll be something simple, like we were both at a restaurant and I took your coat by accident and we started talking. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Good.” The imam stoo
d. “Shall we meet next month? I need some time to think about the kind of guidance to offer a man like you.” I’ll find out what the boys in Raqqa want to ask.

  “Next month is fine. Give me your cell number, too.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “For emergencies only.”

  The imam scribbled his number on a card. “See you soon.”

  —

  SO THE MAN who called himself Wayne became a traitor. Over time, his conversations with the imam became more straightforward, though neither man ever precisely acknowledged the truth.

  Wayne worried the Islamic State would burn him by making him give up too much too quickly. But the IS intelligence officers had come out of Saddam’s mukhabarat. They were pros. They recognized his value and let him deliver what he could.

  They did have some quirks. They rarely asked questions about strategy. Either they didn’t think he could answer those or they weren’t interested. They were more focused on tactics, raids, and drone overflights, and of course on traitors within their own ranks. Wayne dutifully answered their questions. Strange to think that being a spy could be as numbing as running one.

  As the months passed, a hollowness overtook him. He didn’t question the morality of his choice, not even after the Islamic State’s atrocities mounted, after it drowned prisoners in cages or encouraged ten-year-olds to shoot them in the head. Not even after its jihadis killed French twenty-somethings listening to music in Paris. Terrorism was always the weapon of the weak against the strong. Let the West taste some of the death that it rained all over the world.

  But he hadn’t realized how terrible a burden the secrecy would be. Everyone in the agency had secrets, of course. But they were shared. He had no one. Not even someone to run him. The imam wasn’t a case officer in any traditional sense, merely a conduit to people Wayne had never seen. He understood better now why the agency promised its spies sign money even if they said they didn’t want it. Anything to bind them to something larger. He had people all around him, yet he felt as lonely as an old drinker whom no one ever saw, living in an apartment crammed with boxes of moth-eaten clothes.

  Yet he knew he couldn’t go back. A confession would bring him no mercy, only a Supermax cell for the rest of his life. Fleeing to his new masters would result in an even more certain death, though at least he wouldn’t have to wait as long. In sending that thumb drive, he had launched himself into space. He would float free until the void took him with its cold or the sun burned him alive.

  On he went. After a while, he stopped worrying anyone would catch him. Even as major operations floundered, the agency never questioned whether it might have a mole. It lacked the imagination, Wayne decided.

  —

  UNTIL NOW. Ellis Shafer had figured out what everyone else had missed. No way would Shafer catch him, not for a while. Too many people knew about the ops that went wrong.

  But Shafer’s words made Wayne see what he’d known for months. The game was almost over. He couldn’t live this way much longer. Plus, though he hated to admit it, his plan had failed. He had gotten frontline operatives killed. But he hadn’t touched the people he most wanted to hurt—the people around him, the desk heads and managers and seventh-floor executives at Langley. The high priests.

  Before time ran out, he needed to rip off their robes and make them pay.

  5

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  WELLS booked a flight to Dulles as soon as Kirkov left him in Hyde Park. Didn’t tell Shafer he was coming. They were overdue anyway. The last couple of years, Wells had seen Shafer only on his way down to the Farm. Shafer habitually dragged Wells to Shirley’s, the run-down Northeast D.C. bar where they had planned their last mission. Wells refused to talk business, so they traded stories about their families and complained about their favorite baseball teams—the Nationals for Shafer, the Red Sox for Wells—like a couple of codgers. The bartender never remembered them. Shirley’s: Where nobody knows your name.

  Shafer had offered to come to North Conway more than once. Wells always said no. Maybe he wanted to keep the agency and his life with Emmie apart. Maybe he wanted to punish Shafer for what Shafer had said at the end of their last mission. Maybe he’d been unfair.

  —

  HE LANDED after dark, cabbed to Shafer’s house. The D.C. suburbs were middle-class no more. Constant federal expansion, and the lobbying and lawyering that came with it, had made them rich. The houses in Shafer’s neighborhood had grown like the government that served their owners. BMWs and Lexuses filled the driveways. Shafer had an old Crown Vic sedan, rusted brown with a cracked rear window. If he kept it much longer, the neighbors would sue him for hurting property values.

  The house’s lights were on, but the Ford wasn’t in the driveway. On the porch, Wells hesitated. If the car wasn’t here, Shafer wasn’t either. Then the door swung open to reveal Shafer’s wife. Rachel was a tall, heavy woman in her late sixties, with soft brown eyes and a round face. For years, she had looked ready for grandchildren. Still didn’t have any.

  She opened her arms, hugged him close. She wore a young woman’s perfume, light and lemony. She led him to the kitchen, put on the kettle. The house spoke of lives lived with purpose and care: the bookshelves filled with well-thumbed hardcovers, the black baby grand piano, the family photos from a dozen countries, the kitchen table rubbed smooth as marble by ten thousand dinners. The Shafers had lived in this house since Ellis’s last foreign posting. They’d been married almost forty years.

  “Sorry the place is such a mess.” The place was anything but. “Ellis told me he’d be late tonight. Didn’t mention you.”

  “He didn’t know.”

  Rachel raised her eyebrows. Trouble ahead? “Planning on staying over, John?” From someone else, the words might have been an accusation. From her, they were merely a question. “I’ll make up the pullout downstairs.”

  “What a great mother you must be.”

  “The kettle boils, you know what to do.” She opened the door to the basement.

  —

  “HOW do you do it?” Wells said when she came back.

  She didn’t ask what he meant.

  “Find someone you love more than yourself, you grab that luck with both hands. I knew I was marrying Ellis by the end of our second date. As what’s-his-name from The Catcher in the Rye—”

  “Holden—”

  “Yes. As Holden Caufield would have said, he wasn’t a phony. Didn’t care about his clothes, his car, just wanted to experience the world. He was so engaged. And smart. Could tell me anything about countries I couldn’t even find on a map.”

  “Anything you wanted to know, plenty you didn’t.”

  “Part of his charm. And I knew he loved me right away. Every time he looked at me, his eyes went soft. I was pretty back then.”

  “You’re pretty now.”

  “He could have told me he wanted to take us to the moon and I would have gone.”

  “Grab that luck.”

  “You’ll find her, John.”

  “You think so?” Wells knew Rachel was wrong, but she was too sweet for him to argue.

  “Maybe you already have and you won’t admit it.”

  “Maybe. So, what’s new?”

  “Not much. I don’t think of myself as starstruck, but it’s strange to think that we know the President. Ellis won’t admit it, but I think it’s gone to his head a little. We’ve been there a few times.”

  There meaning the White House, Wells assumed. “Nobody’s more dangerous than a revolutionary in charge.”

  “Drink your tea. I’ll call him, tell him you’re here.”

  She returned a few minutes later. “Thinks he’ll be home by one. He asked me if you were here about Raqqa and I told him to ask you himself.”

  They drank tea and talked about their kids for an hour before Rachel went to bed.
Wells was still at the kitchen table when Shafer walked in, wired and jittery as a boxer stepping into the ring for the first time. He leaned over, patted Wells’s cheeks.

  “Anne come to her senses, kick you out?”

  “I was never in. How’s Vinny?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Rachel says you’re buds.”

  “Rachel exaggerates.”

  “How many state dinners?”

  Shafer rummaged through the fridge for a beer, popped it, tipped it at Wells. “Cheers, John. I’m not afraid to say I missed you.” Shafer drank, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Wells thought of what Rachel had said: He didn’t care about his clothes or his car.

  “What are you grinning at, John-O?”

  “Even now, you’ve got the manners of an eight-year-old boy.”

  “I can see the column now: Ask a Killer. What brings you to Sodom?”

  That fast, they were back to business.

  “Oleg Kirkov called me.” Wells explained the London trip, how the Bulgarian had played the conversation between the jihadis. Wells expected Shafer to push back, raise the possibility of a false flag.

  But Shafer only nodded. “Anybody else know?”

  “I think only Kirkov and the guy who found it.”

  “We lost two operatives in Raqqa today. Ambushed on an exfil. IS knew exactly where they were going, they never had a chance. Seventh floor had a meeting tonight.”

  “Which you crashed.”

  “Which I crashed. Ludlow wants to blame the Turks. He’s shutting down a bunch of ops in Syria until we sort it out. I spent the night looking at stuff that’s gone wrong lately. Plenty to read. Not just Syria, not just our ops. The Saudis thought they had the ISAP commander”—Islamic State of the Arabian Peninsula—“locked down in Jeddah. He disappeared one night last August, gone ever since. Four months ago, you might remember, the Egyptians hit a Daesh safehouse in Cairo, the place was wired, seventeen Egyptian soldiers and six civvies dead, only two bad guys. We were in on that op, our intel. Problems in Libya and West Africa, too. I haven’t even gotten to those reports yet.”

  “Those hits go bad all the time, Ellis.” Wells found himself playing devil’s advocate without enthusiasm. “Especially when the locals are running them.”