Then, finally, Wells understood.
25
ISLAMABAD. AUGUST 2008
The video had been shot with what looked like a pinhole, through-the-wall camera. The image quality wasn’t great. But it was good enough.
On-screen, Jawaruddin bin Zari stood beside another man, tall, in his early fifties, in a neatly tailored suit. A trimmed black beard framed his face. Maggs knew him immediately. They’d met once before, at the embassy. Abdul-Aziz Tafiq, head of the ISI. Arguably the most powerful man in Pakistan.
Maggs wondered if the video had been spliced or faked. The NSA’s techs would have to check. But to his eyes it seemed authentic. Given the risks of the meeting—for both men—whatever had brought them together must have been crucial, an issue that could only be resolved face-to-face.
The terrorist and the security chief were in what looked like an empty office. No window or desk or phone, just a table and a couple of chairs. An on-screen clock recorded the date and time: 14 Dec. 2007, 6:23 p.m.
“Salaam alekeim.”
“Alekeim salaam,” Tafiq said. “My friend, you asked to see me. Here I am.”
“I wanted to be sure this message came from you.”
“It does.” Tafiq paused. “So? Can you?”
“How many bombs have I set over the years?”
“You missed the general.”
“That was more complicated. And Pervez is fortunate.”
“This won’t be easy. Her car will be armored. Police in front and behind.”
“Leave it to me. She’ll hardly be moving. Those streets. And she can’t help herself. Waves to the crowds like the woman she is. As long as I have the route.”
“You’ll have it.”
“And the details of her security. Whatever you can give me.”
“Done. She cannot survive.”
“OH , MAN,”MAGGS SAID to Armstrong, who’d been translating the conversation from Pashto. “You’re sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
Only one she counted in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto. And she hadn’t survived. No. She’d been assassinated on December 27, 2007, in Rawalpindi, after a rally for her political party, the Pakistan Peoples Party. Another chance for peace in Pakistan destroyed by violence. The killer, or killers, were never caught.
A murder condoned—not just condoned but set in motion—by the chief of the ISI.
ON-SCREEN, bin Zari put a friendly hand on Tafiq’s arm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She won’t.”
“And your men?”
“Whoever you like. With connections or no.”
Meaning, Maggs presumed, that bin Zari was asking Tafiq to decide whether the assassins would be known members of Islamic terrorist groups or sleepers unknown to any intelligence agency.
“No connections,” Tafiq said. “But make sure they’re expendable. In case there’s pressure from the Americans and we must find them.”
“Done,” bin Zari said. “As for the money—”
“You should do it for free. You hate her more than we do.”
“As for the money.”
“Half tomorrow. The rest when it’s over.”
“Done.”
The two Pakistanis leaned in, hugged. And the screen went black.
26
Your wife killed herself,” Wells said. “So you killed everyone else.” “Someone finally gets it.”
Wells looked around, seeing the room for the first time, eleven feet square, the ceiling barely seven feet high and mottled with brownish stains. A light fixture poked like a pimple from the beige stucco wall behind the bed. Callar must have sat in rooms like this for weeks on end, in San Francisco and New Orleans and Los Angeles, plotting his mad revenge.
Wells ran a hand over his face and came away with a thin trail of perspiration and blood. Callar watched him with flickering eyes.
“Nice, isn’t it?”
“I’ve seen less depressing torture chambers. Really.”
“It does have HBO.”
“You stay here when you killed Ken Karp?”
Callar shook his head. “Down the street. Believe it or not, this is a step up. No bedbugs. Who’s your buddy, John? Didn’t do you much good in the fight.”
“I’m Ellis Shafer. Why don’t you tell us what happened?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Fair enough,” Shafer said. “Stop me when I make a mistake. You didn’t know exactly what happened over there. But it was bad. Hard on your wife. And she wouldn’t quit. You asked her to come home, but she wouldn’t.”
“She wouldn’t even take her second leave.”
“Finally, the tour ended. Rachel came back to California. Got even more depressed. Wasn’t working. You couldn’t help her. She wouldn’t talk to you about it. She was the doctor, you were the nurse.”
“I couldn’t even get her out of bed. She lay there all day. Every day. A couple weeks before she died, I called her folks, asked them to come down from L.A. Didn’t tell them exactly what was wrong, but they knew it had to be something serious or I wouldn’t have called. She’d only seen them once since she had her breakdown in med school. A few minutes before they got to the house, I told her they were coming. She didn’t say a word, just got dressed, put on makeup,” Callar said. “They got to the house and she put on this act, went out to lunch, told them she was fine. She came home and told me if I ever did anything like that again, she’d leave me on the spot. She said her life was her life, she didn’t want anyone to know what was happening, and especially not her parents.”
“Not a healthy attitude. Especially for a mental-health professional.”
“I could have tried to have her committed involuntarily. In California we call it a fifty-one fifty. But she would have run rings around the cops. Probably would have wound up having me committed instead.”
“But you still loved her.”
“More than anything. You know, I wanted her from the first moment I saw her in the emergency room. It really was like that. And it never went away. The way she held herself, the way she could look at a patient, a sick one, a real crazy, size him up, put him at ease right away, just putting a hand on his shoulder.”
“A real crazy,” Wells said.
“Outside the hospital, she was funny. Smarter than I was. I guess we were never really partners, and maybe I should have minded, but I didn’t. My whole life, people been telling me what to do, and it never bothered me.”
“Rachel say what happened over in Poland?”
“Around the edges. She told me she thought that Murphy and the colonel were skimming. And something bad happened at the end. But I didn’t know what. She never said.”
“Then she sent you to Phoenix. Did you know what she planned to do?”
“I wasn’t sure.” Callar ducked his head to his shoulder, wiping at the blood trickling down his face. “No, that’s not true. I knew. But I hoped I was wrong. Anyway, like I told you, she never listened to me.”
“And when you got home, she was dead.”
“That’s right.”
“She leave a note?”
“She said she was sorry. That I’d be better off without her. That she failed.”
“She say how?”
“No. ‘I failed.’ That was it. And these twelve numbers. All ten digits long.”
“Did you know what they were?”
“I thought they were those ‘prisoner identification numbers.’ She’d mentioned them.”
“So, you hid the note from the cops,” Shafer said. “And a couple weeks later, you sent the letter accusing Murphy and Terreri of skimming. And for good measure, you accused the squad of torture.”
“Pretty much. I wanted a real investigation. There were enough details in the letter. I figured someone would have to look into it.”
“But you were wrong.”
“I figured somebody would call the house. Ask to talk to her. They didn’t know she was dead at that point. And when they found out,
I figured it might make them wonder even more about the letter. But after a couple of months, I realized nobody cared.”
“You decided on your own action.”
Callar grinned. Blood dripped off his chin and onto the dark blue blanket beneath him. Wells wondered if the owners of the Budget Motor Inn had chosen the color because it hid bloodstains.
“Do you remember where you got the idea?”Shafer said.
“Indeed I do. She had one picture of the squad. Taken close to the end. Except for her, they all looked happy, believe it or not. Smiling, arms around each other. Wearing these cowboy hats. She was off to one side. She was smiling, too, but I knew she was faking it. The way she was holding herself, with her arms folded. I looked at that picture. Looked at it and looked at it. And kept imagining Rachel not being in it. And then I found out that those two Rangers had died in Afghanistan. And I imagined them not being in it, either.” Callar looked at Wells. “Remember that movie Back to the Future, when we were kids?”
“Sure.”
“So in that movie, Michael J. Fox, he’s got this picture of his family. And when he goes back to 1950-whatever and messes up the way his mom and dad are supposed to meet, the people in the picture, they start to vanish. Because he’s screwed up his own birth, see? And one day I saw the same thing happening to Rachel and the Rangers in the 673 picture. I mean, I didn’t imagine it. I saw it. I knew what I had to do. I just saw that picture entirely blank. It only seemed right.”
“You have the photo with you?”
“In my backpack.”
Wells rummaged through, found it. The members of 673 stood in front of an anonymous concrete barracks. Everyone but Callar wore cowboy hats. In the center, Murphy and Terreri held up a painted wooden sign that read, “Task Force 673, Stare Kiejkuty:The Midnight House.” Callar was in the group but not of it. Her smile was pained, her face tilted slightly away from the camera, as if she was looking at something the others had missed. A ghost on the edge of the frame.
“Why not just go after Terreri? Or Terreri and Murphy?”
“I blamed all of them. I didn’t know exactly who did what, but I knew everybody was dirty. It wasn’t my job to make distinctions.”
“It was your job to kill them,” Shafer said. “With an assist from whoever killed those Rangers.”
“That’s right.” Now that he wasn’t talking about Rachel, Callar’s voice was flat, remorseless.
“What about that posting on the jihadi Web site after Wyly and Fisher were killed? The one that said it was revenge for the way we treat detainees?”
“I knew at some point you guys would put the murders together. I was hoping to jump in front, misdirect you.”
“You figured out how to post it in Arabic?”
“I had time, the last few months. It wasn’t that tough. Lot of cutting and pasting.”
“The banality of evil,” Shafer said. “We could discuss the morality of collective punishment with you, but there wouldn’t be much point.”
“No, there wouldn’t.”
“What about the fact that your wife killed herself?”Wells said. “I don’t like Brant Murphy, either. But he didn’t hurt your wife. And you said she had a breakdown in medical school. Maybe this would have happened no matter what.”
A growl escaped from Callar’s ruined mouth. “Easy,” Shafer said. Callar tugged at his cuffs. Wells imagined the steel shearing, as if Callar’s anger could bestow superhuman powers. But nothing happened, and finally Callar gave up.
“Nobody hurt her?”he said. He spat at Wells. Then laughed, a high screech that bounced around the room, wrapping around Wells like a spiderweb of madness. “They broke her. She went there as a doctor. She came back as a torturer. That’s how she saw it. They made her see what she was capable of. Don’t you see, that’s why she posed for that picture? That’s why she saved it. To remind herself that she was no better than anyone else. That she was worse. She was a doctor.”
“They took her will to live,” Shafer said.
“That’s right. She had that breakdown fifteen years ago, but she was copacetic for a long time. So, don’t put this on her. Not on her.”
Wells wondered, Did she know how much you loved her? Though maybe it didn’t matter. Either way, she’d killed herself.
“Ever done anything like this before, Steve?”Shafer said.
“Anything like this? You mean, murder? No. This is a first.”
“You’re a natural.”
“It’s not that hard. If you can handle a gun. The tough part is not getting caught. Especially in this case, a bunch of different cities. But I was careful. I had money saved up, and Rachel left more. I quit work and figured out where everybody lived, and I cased them out. I drove everywhere, bought different cars in every city, stayed in motels like this. But now that you know it was me, you’ll find the traces.”
“How come you didn’t start with Terreri and Murphy?”
“By the time I figured out what I wanted to do, Terreri was over in Afghanistan. And Murphy, I figured if I hit a guy high up in the agency, somebody would put it together. The way I did it, I got a long way before anybody figured out what was happening.”
“Tell us about the first murder.”
“That was Karp. He was the easiest. Bad habits. Left him vulnerable.”
“How’d you get to Jerry?”
“Lucky for me, he was drinking pretty hard. I set up on the street with a twelve-pack around the corner from that bar he liked. Took a couple days, but sure enough he came by. I asked him if he wanted a beer. I’d met him in the bar, so his guard was down. He had about five. I offered to drive him home. I’d bought this old Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows. He got in the front and I went in back and blew off his head. Drove the body out to the swamp and dumped him.”
Wells stood, looked around the room for something sharp, something heavy.
“Please do,” Callar said. “You’d be doing me a favor.”
“Sit down, John.” Shafer patted his arm. “Sit.”
Wells sat.
“But you didn’t think it through,” Shafer said. “You left the CO and the XO. And now they’re defended.”
“I would have gotten to Murphy if you hadn’t found me.” Callar lay on his back, spoke to the ceiling. “Any more questions, gents? Or is this where you call those FBI cyborgs and turn me in?”
“You’re sure you don’t know what happened at the end over there? Or the specific intel they got?”
“You’re going to have to ask Murphy and the colonel.” Callar sat up again. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to uncuff me, give me a minute with that Beretta of mine? One round would do. Spare us all the indignity of a trial.”
“Maybe we need some indignity,” Wells said.
Shafer stood. “Maybe. Step into my office, Mr. Wells.”
UNDER THE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS of the bathroom, Shafer outlined his plan.
“You’re insane,” Wells said.
“Then let’s call the FBI, be done with it. Like we should have already. Whitby will drop Callar in some rathole and that’ll be the end of it. We’ll never know what happened in Poland. We’ll have no leverage at all. This is our best shot.”
“Duto didn’t ask us to figure out what happened over there, Ellis. He asked us to figure out who was killing the squad. Which we have.”
“Somebody needs to know who those detainees were, what happened to them. If only to tell their families. Somebody needs to find out what was going on at the Midnight House. What we did. Even if there aren’t going to be any trials.”
“What if Murphy won’t bite? Would you really go through with it?”
The look in Shafer’s eyes was answer enough.
AN HOUR LATER, Wells parked his Subaru in the driveway of the vacant house in Kings Park West where he had spotted Callar’s Tercel. He unholstered his pistol, tucked it under the seat.
He walked down the driveway and along the road toward Brant Murphy’s house. He was wearing
only a T-shirt and jeans and holding his hands at his shoulders. As he reached the property line of the house, still fifty feet from the front door, a spotlight from the van caught him. He stopped walking, raised his arms over his head. The guards stepped out of the van, hands on their holsters.
“John Wells?”
“Yes.”
“Down on the pavement.”
Wells dropped to his knees. The guard stepped closer.
“Lie down.”
“I need to talk to Brant.”
“Lie down, Mr. Wells. That’s an order.”
Wells lay down, prone, arms above his head like he was a kid playing at Superman. He was tired of having strangers point guns at him. But then nobody had made him come over here.
The guard stopped six feet away. He had shiny black eyes and a long narrow chin and a halo from the spotlight behind him. He reminded Wells of a Jesuit priest in a seventeenth-century Spanish painting.
“What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to Brant.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“I’ve got no gun,” Wells said. “If I’d wanted to hurt him, believe me, this isn’t how I’d go about it. I’ve got a message for him, and it’s urgent. Frisk me and tell him I’m here to see him. Please.”
The guard glanced up at the house. “Stand up and raise your shirt.” Wells did. “Over to the van. Slowly. When you get there, put your hands against the passenger door.”
At the van, the guard frisked Wells, slowly and expertly, squeezing his legs, working down from thigh to ankle and then back up. Wells hoped the guard wouldn’t go too high. He was still throbbing from Callar’s knee.
“Sit down.”
“Tell him his life is at risk,” Wells said. “And that he shouldn’t call anyone until he talks to me.”
The guard walked up the driveway.
TWO MINUTES LATER, Murphy emerged, holding a flashlight. The guard stood beside him, his pistol trained on Wells’s chest.
The Midnight House Page 31