A thin trickle of sweat dripped down Hani’s left temple. He stared at Wells and then sighed and sat on the side of the desk and lit a cigarette. “I’ll be glad to have you gone,” he said.
WELLS SLEPT FITFULLY until the morning, when Hani brought in a doctor—or a man in a dirty white coat who said he was a doctor—who poured rubbing alcohol on Wells’s scalp, setting his broken skin on fire, and then taped a gauze pad to the wound. Hani was the only mukhabarat agent Wells saw. He guessed the case was so toxic that no one wanted to be near it. Day turned to evening, and finally Hani returned.
“You leave tonight.”
Wells didn’t argue.
At midnight they put a hood over his head and bundled him into a van. When they pulled it off, he stood on the tarmac of Cairo International, staring at the blinking lights of a Delta 767. Delta ran a flight to New York four times a week.
Hani took Wells’s fake passports and the digital camera and arranged them neatly on the tarmac. He pulled a red plastic canister from the back of the van, splashed gasoline over the pile. He lit a cigarette and dropped it on the pile. The flames danced sideways on the tarmac, and the acrid smell of the camera’s melting battery filled the hot night air.
“Burn, baby, burn,” Wells said in English. “Got any marshmallows?” Hani hadn’t given him food or water since his arrest, a full day ago now. He was unsteady, feverish, his temperature spiking and diving like a Blue Angels pilot showing off for a new girlfriend.
“Marshmallow? What is that?”
Wells poked at the dying fire with his foot. “That wasn’t strictly necessary,” he said. “Can I go now?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice in the matter,” Hani said. “Our American ally. But if you ever come back to Egypt. We have so many accidents in Cairo. I know how I would suffer if Mr. John Wells were hit by a truck.”
“If I ever come back to Egypt, you’ll be the last to know,” Wells said. His voice tore his throat like ground glass. No more talking, in any language. He turned away and stumbled across the tarmac. At the jetway, he made sure to give Hani a wave.
FROM NEW YORK, he flew to D.C., where an army doc met him and stitched him up properly. The doctor told him he needed to spend a day at Walter Reed, but Wells turned him down. He took a cab to the apartment that Shafer had arranged as a crash pad and slept for eighteen hours straight.
When he woke the next morning, his fever was gone. He still had a headache, a dull pounding behind the eyes, but he felt just about human for the first time since the Northern Cemetery. Two messages waited for him on his cell phone, which he’d left in Washington. The first: “John. It’s Anne. Hope you and my friend Tonka are all right. Wherever you are.” She laughed nervously. “Don’t shoot anybody I wouldn’t shoot, okay? And call me sometime.”
The second message was nothing but a few seconds of breathing, followed by a hang-up. Wells wanted to believe he could recognize the fluttering of Exley’s breath. But the line didn’t have a trace, so he had no way to know. He listened twice to Anne’s message and three times to the hang-up and then saved them both.
He showered and shaved and sped to Langley, his headache growing more intense as he approached the front gate. For once, he wanted to talk to Duto. But when he got to Shafer’s office, he found out he wouldn’t have the chance.
“Duto going to see us?” Wells said. “Talk about Alaa Zumari? Tell me what an idiot I am, how I should have gotten the Egyptians involved from the get-go?”
“Nope.”
“Have a full and frank exchange of views?”
“Nope.”
“Because I’ve got a few things to say to him.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“He had to have known the details of Alaa Zumari’s interrogation. Had to. That Zumari gave up Samir Gharib. Why didn’t he tell us? It’s like he’s deliberately inciting us.”
Shafer cocked his head sideways and grunted.
“Are you trying to speak, Ellis? Because that’s not English.”
“Thinking.” He tilted his head to the other side. No other response.
Wells lowered himself onto Shafer’s couch. “You talk too much or not enough,” he muttered. “I have no idea how she”—she being Exley—“survived all those years with you.”
“I could say the same.”
Shafer had only three photographs on his desk: him and his wife, his family together, and him with Exley, standing side by side in front of the polar-bear cage at the Washington zoo. Shafer held up his right hand with the fingers hidden, as if a bear had just chomped them. Exley’s mouth was open in a wide O, a mock-horrified expression. The picture had been taken at least five years before, Exley and Shafer visiting the zoo with their families. A purely platonic trip. And yet Shafer’s face betrayed a depth of emotion for Exley that ran past simple friendship. Did you love her? Wells wondered. Do you still? Do you blame me for her quitting? Or am I just projecting?
Shafer seemed to read Wells’s mind. “You’ll never be free of her as long as you work here.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be.”
“Maybe you don’t.” Shafer turned the picture facedown on his desk.
“Meantime. Setting ghosts aside. I know you’re angry, John, but I think we ought to wait on Duto until we have a better idea of the game he’s playing. Because this whole thing just keeps getting stranger. While you were sunning yourself in Cairo, I was keeping busy.” Shafer explained his meeting with Murphy and then the anonymous letter that Joyner, the inspector general, had gotten.
“You think Murphy was stealing?”
“Yes. But that’s not the strangest part. The letter had twelve PINs. I copied them all.”
“PINs.”
“Every detainee gets a unique prisoner identification number, a ten-digit serial number. Most of the time, the PINs are matched to a name, date of birth, home country—the basics of identity. If detainees aren’t carrying ID when we arrest them, and we can’t figure out who they are, the PIN won’t be matched to any biographical information. In that case it’s called a John Doe PIN and the first three digits are always 001.”
“Did 673 have any of those?”
“No,” Shafer said. “They always knew at least the name of the person they were interrogating. But whether or not we have any biographical details, once a prisoner is assigned a PIN, it’s entered in what’s called the CPR. Stands for Consolidated Prisoner Registry. The worldwide detainee database. And the CPR includes everybody, without exception. If you’re in U.S. custody, whether you’re at Guantánamo or the black sites, you are required to be in it. Even the base in Poland. Which was called the Midnight House, according to Murphy.”
“Zumari said the same.”
“Must have been proud of their ingenuity if they were telling prisoners.” Shafer sat at his desk and tapped keys until a blue screen with a white title appeared: “Consolidated Prisoner Registry—TS/SCI/ BLUE HERON—FOR ACCESS CONSULT OGC—” Office of the General Counsel.
“I got the passcodes two days ago,” Shafer said. “In between explaining to Cairo Station why you were there and why you hadn’t told them. You can imagine.”
“If only I cared.”
Shafer entered the codes. A new screen popped up, a black word on a white background. Query. Beneath it, a space for a name or a PIN. Shafer typed in a ten-digit number—6501740917. A brief pause, and then Alaa Zumari’s name and headshot appeared on-screen. “That’s him, right? Zumari.”
“Yes.”
Shafer flicked to the next screen, which had rows of acronyms and dates. “DTAC—that’s date taken custody. CS, confinement site. Et cetera. You can see, he was arrested in Iraq by something called Task Force 1490. Then a couple of weeks in custody at BLD—that’s Balad.”
“Says BLDIQ SC-HVD.”
“We do love our acronyms. I don’t know for sure but figure it means something like ‘secure custody, high-value detainee.’ Then he’s transferred to 673-1. We can safely assume t
hat’s the Midnight House. Then, a month after that, transferred back to Iraq, held again at Balad. This time not as a high-value detainee. They’d decided he didn’t have anything. And two months after that, they release him. The final note is AT-CAI.”
“Air transfer to Cairo International?”
“Probably. This match what he told you?”
“More or less.”
“And you see, the record is confined to movements and detention sites. Nothing about what he actually said.”
“I get it, Ellis. So how’s this help us?”
“That letter to the inspector general. It had twelve ID numbers. Six of them, they’re like this. Complete, with a reference to 673-1 as a detention site. Four of them, they have some gaps in time. And no mention of 673.”
“And the other two?”
“See for yourself.” Shafer typed in a ten-digit number: 5567208212. This time the screen went blank for several seconds. Then: Record not found. He retyped the code. Same result.
“And this is the other missing PIN.” Shafer typed it in. Record not found.
“Ellis. You’re sure—”
“I’m sure. They went right in my BlackBerry like the others.”
“Maybe those two were fake.” Wells knew he was stretching.
“Ten real and two fake. It’s possible. Sure.”
“Or they were so high-value that—maybe there’s another database.”
Shafer shook his head. “I checked. There’s a couple guys like that, cases where we don’t want to disclose anything about where we caught, where we’re holding them. Even in here. But it’s about four guys. And then you get something like this—” He typed in another number and the screen flashed: Restricted/Eyes Only/SCAP. Contact ODD/NCS—the office of the deputy director for the National Clandestine Service, the new name for the Directorate of Operations. “There’s always a record. Precisely because we don’t want guys to disappear from the system.”
“But two of them did,” Wells said. “How easy is deleting these records?”
“I don’t know yet,” Shafer said. “I’m guessing not very. And probably you’ve got to be very senior.”
“Senior like Vinny. But then why get us involved?”
“Guilty conscience.”
“Good one, Ellis.”
“Truly, I don’t know,” Shafer said. “There’s too many angles we can’t see yet. You’re sure Zumari’s not behind the killings?”
“I’d bet anything. He’s been hiding from the Egyptian police since he got home. And if you’d seen him—he’s not a terrorist.”
“Then it’s all pointing the same way. Inside.”
“Inside meaning somebody who was part of the squad? Or inside meaning bigger, like a conspiracy?”
“I don’t think we know that yet.”
They sat in silence, the only sound the hum of the computers under Shafer’s desk. “So you don’t want to go to Vinny?” Wells said eventually.
“Anything we tell him now isn’t going to come as much of a shock.”
Shafer was right, Wells realized. Even if Duto hadn’t deleted the numbers himself, the letter to the inspector general would have tipped him. He knew much more than he’d told them.
“WE NEED TO GO BACK to the beginning, find out what we can about 673,” Shafer said. He pulled a folder from his safe, handed it to Wells. “These are the individual personnel records for members of the squad. I warn you it’s less than meets the eye.”
Wells flicked through the file. The personnel files hadn’t been put off-limits, because they predated the creation of 673 and weren’t part of its record. They held basic biographical information on the members of the squad—names, unit histories, birthdays, home addresses.
“No obvious pattern,” Wells said. “They’re from all over. Mostly not interrogators.”
“That is the pattern. Only four of the guys have experience handling interrogations. Terreri, the LTC who ran it. Jack Fisher. The lead interrogator, Karp.”
“And my old buddy Jerry Williams.”
“Even those four, they were all over the map. None of them knew each other before 673 was formed. It’s all spare parts.”
“You think we wanted a clean break from other units.”
“Remember the legal situation at the time. Post-Abu Ghraib. Post-Rumsfeld. Pressure to close Guantánamo. The Red Cross accuses us of torturing detainees. Torture. That’s their word. And it’s the Red Cross. Not Amnesty International. Everybody knows the score. This stuff isn’t supposed to happen anymore,” Shafer said.
“But we still need intel.”
“And we think we have to get rough to get it. So, we make this new group, a few old hands and a few new ones. They’ve got a connection to the Pentagon, but nobody’s exactly responsible for it. That was the point. The whole reason for the structure.”
“Maybe so, but these guys, they’re not dumb. They would have wanted legal protection. There’s got to be a finding”—a secret Presidential memo that authorized 673 to operate. “Even if they destroyed the interrogation tapes, or didn’t make any, there’s transcripts.”
“Forget the records,” Shafer said. A note of irritation crept into his voice. “They’re gone. Focus on what we know.” Shafer held up his fingers. “One: Ten guys on the squad. Six are dead, one’s missing. Two: Millions of dollars can’t be accounted for. Murphy and Terreri, the guys who allegedly took the money, are two of the only three to survive. Three: Two detainees have vanished. Their records, anyway. Four: Duto—maybe on his own, maybe on orders from Whitby—stopped the IG from investigating. And then, for some reason, pulled us into this to do our own investigation. Five: According to the FBI, the remaining members of the squad have airtight alibis. Terreri’s been in Afghanistan for a year. Poteat’s in South Korea, and like Brant Murphy told us, he wasn’t part of the squad for long anyway.”
“And Murphy?”
“He was at Langley last week when Wyly and Fisher were killed in California. Our own surveillance tapes prove it.”
“Maybe he outsourced.”
“Doubtful.”
“Doubtful.” Contract killers were popular in the movies. In the real world they were greedy, incompetent, and more often than not police informants.
Wells stared at the ceiling. Everything Shafer had said was true, but he couldn’t see how it fit together. “What about the FBI interviews? Anything yet from them?”
“So far, no.”
“There is one other mystery,” Wells said. “Jerry Williams. We keep assuming he’s dead. What if he’s not? What if he disappeared because he got wind that someone was after 673?”
“There’s another explanation,” Shafer said.
“Not possible,” Wells said. “I know Jerry.”
“You knew Jerry. I asked Murphy about him. He said Jerry was disgruntled, thought he deserved a promotion, hadn’t gotten it—”
“So, he’s stalking his old unit?”
“Deep breath, John.”
Wells nodded. Shafer was right. He liked Williams, but they hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years.
“Either way, you’ve got your next move,” Shafer said.
“Noemie Williams.”
“Beats hanging around here waiting for FBI reports, trying to figure out what Duto’s really up to.”
“Amen to that,” Wells said. “But do me one favor. Next time you talk to him, tell him to make the Egyptians go easy on Zumari if they ever catch him. I’d do it myself, but you know it would be counterproductive.”
“Done. Can I run any other chores, my liege?”
“Mind holding on to Tonka a couple more days?”
“The kids like her. Anyway, I think she’s forgotten all about you. Doesn’t even know who you are anymore.”
“I’m going to pretend I don’t get that analogy.”
13
STARE KIEJKUTY,POLAND. JUNE 2008
Three months left on the tour. As far as Martin Terreri was concerned, it couldn’t end
soon enough. He was done with Poland. Sick of the whole damn country.
Terreri was sick of their living quarters. The Polish government had given his squad two barracks in Stare Kiejkuty, a military intelligence base near the Ukrainian border. The Poles on the base shared a mess hall with Terreri and his men and provided overnight security for the prisoners but otherwise kept their distance. The hands-off attitude was the reason that the United States had chosen to operate here. But the freedom came at a price. Terreri had never felt so isolated. They could leave for day trips, but the Poles required them to return each night, since they hadn’t cleared Polish immigration and officially weren’t even in Poland. And ironically, they lived under harsher conditions than American soldiers almost anywhere else. Bases in Iraq and Afghanistan had the amenities that U.S. troops had come to expect: decent grub, live satellite television, well-equipped gyms. But the Polish army wasn’t much for creature comforts. The showers had two temperatures, scalding and freezing. The food in the mess was sometimes fried, sometimes boiled, always tasteless.
Terreri was sick of the Polish countryside. Not that all the women here were ugly. In Warsaw they were gorgeous, a magic combination of blue-eyed Saxon haughtiness and wide-hipped Slavic sensuality. But the peasant women aged at warp speed. They wore ankle-length dresses to hide their boxy bodies and sat by the side of the roads selling threadbare wool blankets. They had stringy hair and tired, stupid eyes. The men were worse, sallow, with faces like topographic maps and brown teeth from their cheap cigarettes. They rode sideways on diesel-belching tractors, pulling bundles of logs on roads that were more pothole than pavement. No wonder the Russians and the Germans had taken turns beating up on them all these centuries.
Terreri was sick of being alone. He’d promised to e-mail Eileen and the kids every day. He’d even attached a Webcam to his computer for video chats. But the calls, the instant messages, the seeing-without-touching of video, they made him more depressed, reminded him of what he’d left stateside. He almost preferred the old days, when being on tour meant checking in for five minutes once a week.
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