The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson

  “They’re voluntary. Nobody has to answer.”

  “Of course,” Shafer said. With very limited exceptions, the CIA couldn’t operate on American soil, so compliance with the letters was voluntary. They were requests, not warrants. But in the post-9/11 era, big companies didn’t want to get sideways with Langley, so they usually found ways to give the agency the information it asked for.

  “Anyway, this is a totally legitimate use,” Exley said. Shafer’s comment stung. She didn’t usually think of herself as the type to trample the Fourth Amendment.

  “We’re fishing, Jennifer. We have zero evidence on any of these people. No judge on earth would give us a warrant.” Shafer pointed at the list. “Even if it turns out that Jerry Bright, whoever he is, loses ten grand a week in Vegas, it proves nothing.”

  “So you don’t think we should send the letters?”

  “I didn’t say that. If Jerry Bright is losing ten grand a week, I want to know where the money’s coming from. When you have no clues, you’ve got to fish.”

  “But maybe you’re wrong. Maybe our mole’s not a gambler or drinker or any of it. Maybe he’s a true believer.”

  “In the cult of Kim Jong Il? He wants to move North Korea toward its glorious future?”

  “Point taken,” Exley said. “He’s not doing it for love. But what if he’s in Seoul? In that case, none of this will get us anywhere.”

  “You know what, Jennifer? You’re right. Let’s forget the whole thing, take the afternoon off.”

  “That’s not what I mean—”

  “Seoul’s been a well-run station for a long time. I think he’s here, not there. And I think that John had it right that night we met Tyson. I think our mole is working for somebody else, not North Korea.”

  Exley flinched as Shafer mentioned Wells. For a few minutes, she’d let herself forget the raid. Now she thought of him, wearing the bulletproof vest he insisted on in lieu of the Kevlar plates he said were too heavy.

  “So this mole is in it for the money? You think he needs money, Ellis?”

  “Not exactly. The money’s how he keeps score.”

  “If he’s spending it, it’ll leave a trail.”

  “He can hide it. He can put it in his wife’s name, his parents, set up a trust.”

  “Whatever name he puts it in, if he’s spending, then we can see it. He’ll have something. A vacation house on the Chesapeake.”

  “If you say so.” Shafer sighed, the sound he made when he thought Exley had missed an obvious point. Exley hated that sigh. “Suppose he got a million bucks over the last decade. That would be a big haul, as much as Ames. But over ten years, it’s only a hundred grand a year.”

  “Maybe you don’t think so, but a hundred grand a year is a lot of money, Ellis. Especially tax-free.”

  “If wifey’s a lobbyist, say, she’s making more than that. A lot more. And he’ll have the nice car and the house on the Chesapeake anyway.”

  “What if his wife doesn’t work?”

  “Then it would be more obvious, sure.”

  “She doesn‘t, Ellis. I’m sure of it. He’s divorced or his wife doesn’t work.”

  “Or maybe she works eighty hours a week and the marriage is dead and he’s blowing the money on hookers. He feels emasculated, so he’s getting her back.”

  “I don’t think so. The marriage is broken, but they’re not divorced.”

  “A completely unfounded, wild-ass guess.”

  “As opposed to everything you’ve just said?” Exley looked at her list. “Okay. We’re looking for a man forty to fifty-five, maybe divorced, maybe in an unhappy marriage. He may have a DUI or a public intoxication on his record, but that’s not a requirement. Money that he can’t explain is a bonus.”

  “Also a high IQ, but at least one spotty personnel evaluation. That’s the pattern. Doesn’t mean it’s right in this case, but it’s worked in the past. And put in the two guys who failed their polys. That’s an automatic red flag.”

  “Minor deception doesn’t mean you failed.”

  “It does to me.”

  Exley checked off names. “I’m going to count peeing in public as intoxication—”

  “Good call.”

  “Looks like at least ten guys make the cut. Edmund Cerys, Laurence Condon—”

  “I know Condon,” Shafer said. “It’s not him.”

  “Now we’re not even sticking with our own made-up rules?”

  “Fine. Leave Condon on. But it’s not him.”

  “Edmund Cerys. Laurence Condon. Tobias Eyen. Robert Ford. Joe Leonhardt. Danny Minaya. Keith Robinson. James Russo. Phil Waterton. Brad Zonick. Besides Condon, anybody ring a bell?”

  Shafer shook his head.

  “So I guess ...” Exley fell silent. “Now what? Let me guess. Continuing this highly scientific process, we throw darts to decide which of our suspects did it.”

  “Try again.”

  “Property records, financial disclosure forms, divorce records. We ask around, try to figure out who has a bad marriage, who’s a closet drinker. We get Tyson to authorize the national security letters for them and everyone else on the list.”

  “Correct. Toodle-oo.” Shafer grabbed his file and walked out, looking altogether too pleased with himself for Exley’s taste.

  “Toodle-oo yourself, you ass.”

  “And say hi to John for me,” Shafer called from the corridor. “He’s fine, you know.”

  She decided not to rise to the bait. In his own childish way, Shafer was trying to make her feel better. She looked down again at the names. She wasn’t sure Shafer’s theories made sense. Maybe the mole was highly successful, a genius who spied just for the thrill. But at least they were moving. And almost certainly they were coming at the search from a different angle than Tyson’s people.

  She picked up the phone and dialed Tyson’s office.

  “George? It’s Jennifer Exley. I need help with some names.... Yes. Ten in all.”

  15

  THE CAVE ENTRANCE WAS A BLACK MOUTH in the side of the mountain, seven feet wide, nearly as tall. Handmade bricks lined the opening, evidence that guerrillas had turned the space inside into a semipermanent refuge. Wells wondered when the bricks had been laid. The Afghans had been defending these mountains for a long, long time. Some of their underground networks had been built not after the Soviet occupation in 1979 but the British invasion of 1838.

  Until he went in, Wells couldn’t know if the cave was a cul-de-sac used for weapons storage or a deeper link to a tunnel network. Either way he’d be blindly chasing an armed and desperate guerrilla. Prudence dictated that Wells lob in a couple canisters of CS and hope that whoever was inside came out on his own.

  Then Wells thought of Greg Hackett, his life dribbling away through the tourniquet on his leg. The soldier in the cave might be the one who’d taken Hackett down. Prudence was another word for fear.

  Wells set his M4 neatly against a rock. Inside the cave’s narrow passages, the rifle would be a hindrance. He would depend instead on his Makarov and his knives. He grabbed his headlamp from his belt, clicked it to be sure it was working, strapped it to his helmet. He stepped toward the cave—then stopped as he heard someone yelling his name. Gaffan.

  “John! You all right?” Gaffan said. “Looked like you went down hard.”

  As if in answer, Wells’s right shoulder began to ache, a dull pain that Wells knew would worsen. But he could still use the arm, and that was enough.

  “Keep watch here. Clean up anyone who sticks his head out. I’m going in.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “We’ll be in each other’s way. You cover me on the way in. Then stay here.”

  “You’re the boss, sir.”

  Wells didn’t bother to wonder if Gaffan was being sarcastic. He darted across the mouth of the cave and flattened himself against the jagged rocks beside it. As Gaffan positioned himself on the other side of the entrance, Wells peeked inside. He reached for his headlamp, the
n reconsidered. Not yet. Light would give away his position. Instead he stared into the darkness. Slowly his eyes adjusted enough for him to understand what he was seeing.

  The guerrillas had shaped the cave into a tunnel that sloped into the mountain. Rough brick covered parts of its walls, but the ceiling was untouched stone. Wells half-expected to see flint-tipped arrows on the ground, charcoal drawings of men hunting woolly mammoths on the walls.

  But this cave had no drawings, and no arrows. A thousand generations of human cleverness had replaced them with deadlier tools. AK-47 rifles lay beside used RPG launch tubes. Aside from the weapons, the space was empty as far as Wells could see. The darkness took over about thirty yards in.

  An acrid whiff of the CS gas Wells had fired floated out of the cave, faint but enough to make his nostrils burn. Wells had never thought he’d wish for a faceful of CS. But now he did. The fact that the gas had dispersed so quickly meant that the passage ran deep into the mountain. Not what he wanted.

  Across the entrance, Gaffan stood ready. Wells held up three fingers, two, one—

  And stepped inside. If someone was watching the entrance Wells was most vulnerable at this moment, his silhouette visible against the sky. He took two steps forward, dove behind an empty crate, and waited. But no shots came. He pushed the crate aside and crawled into the mountain.

  INCH BY INCH the rock womb darkened. Soon Wells couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He straightened up slowly. Before he could stand, his helmet bumped the ceiling, sending a jolt down his neck and into his damaged shoulder. The passageway had shrunk. The ceiling here was lower, no more than five feet. Wells wondered how much smaller it would get.

  He leaned back against the wall and tried to orient himself. When he looked back the way he’d come, he could see a pinprick of light—or more accurately, a slightly paler shade of black. The outside world was at most a hundred yards off, but it seemed much farther away. Wells’s pulse quickened. Twice in college he’d gone spelunking. But those had been afternoon trips into the White Mountains with a half-dozen friends and a guide, not excursions into the heart of darkness.

  Don’t be dramatic, Wells told himself. If he needed light, he had his headlamp, and a flashlight too, a tiny Maglite hooked to his belt. He closed his eyes and thought back to his days playing linebacker in college, watching the quarterback’s eyes, knowing where the ball was going even before the receivers did, stepping in front of the errant pass and in a few seconds turning the game inside out, the big men on the other team trying to reverse course, all that momentum heading the wrong way as Wells cruised down the sideline to the end zone. Six times in four years he’d returned interceptions for touchdowns. Wells opened his eyes and found that his heart had slowed to its usual pace, forty-eight beats a minute. His fear was gone and he knew he’d be calm for as long as he needed.

  The good news was this cave ought to be easy to navigate. The men who used it wanted shelter, not excitement. Its most dangerous passages should be walled off. And knowing that he might have to fight underground, Wells had come prepared with two special pens. One marked rocks with a fluorescence visible in the dark from hundreds of feet. The other gave off a glow visible under a special ultraviolet light he carried. If the tunnel got complicated, Wells would use the pens to mark his return path.

  Besides the pens, Wells carried glowsticks and two high-intensity flash-bang grenades, concussive bombs designed to stun rather than kill. The flash-bangs, a more powerful version of the ones that police carried, had two big advantages over standard high-explosive grenades. They kicked up less shrapnel, and they wouldn’t collapse the roof of the tunnel and trap Wells inside the mountain.

  Wells also carried an expandable rubber-coated titanium baton, the caver’s equivalent of a blind man’s cane. But he hadn’t bothered with more traditional spelunking equipment, like climbing gear or rope. He had already decided he would turn back if he reached a passage he couldn’t navigate with his hands.

  The air in the cave was cool, almost clammy, but surprisingly fresh. The tear gas was gone. Ventilation shafts must connect the cave to the surface, Wells thought. In the distance, water trickled faintly, an underground spring. Air, water ... if they had food down here, guerrillas could hide in these tunnels indefinitely. As long as they didn’t go crazy.

  Then, somewhere in the distance, Wells heard a hacking cough that started and stopped like a sputtering engine. The sound of a man who was torn between the need for silence and the even more powerful instinct to force out every molecule of tear gas inside him. The coughing went on a few seconds more, then stopped for good. But Wells had heard enough to know he was on the right track.

  Baton in hand, Wells edged forward, deeper into the darkness. Rushing would only hurt him now. Either this passage led to a much larger network of tunnels, in which case he couldn’t possibly catch the man ahead of him, or it dead-ended and his enemy was waiting. In that case, silence, not speed, was his most important ally.

  Meanwhile, Wells would keep his headlamp dark and hope to sense changes in the layout of the tunnel without seeing them. He would trust his balance, try to handle the curves of the tunnel the same way he felt 1-95 under his bike at 125 miles an hour. Of course, he might wind up crawling into a crevasse. But if the man ahead of him was preparing a trap, silence and darkness would be Wells’s best hope.

  The passage twisted right. Wells touched the baton against its walls and ceiling to be sure it hadn’t forked somehow, then edged forward again. A few yards farther on, the tunnel tightened and dropped steeply. Wells tucked his knife sideways into his mouth, his teeth clenched around the rubber handle, and crawled forward inch by inch. He was glad he’d chosen the thin bulletproof vest. A flak jacket would have been uncomfortably tight. The passage here was four feet wide, not quite as high, just big enough to give him space to turn around and crawl back out if he needed to. But if it became much tighter, he would no longer have that option. Had he missed a fork somehow? Was he lost already?

  Wells reached for his headlamp—and again pulled his hand away. The ceiling and walls here were still smooth, proof they’d been bored out over the years. He had to trust he was on course. He began to crawl again. He’d never been anywhere so dark. Unmoored from light, his eyes made their own world. White flashes and red streaks darted through the blackness like fish. Wells took a chance and lit up his watch, cupping his hand over the glowing dial. 2130. He’d been in here barely twenty minutes. He would have guessed hours.

  Already the T-shirt under his bulletproof vest was damp with sweat. A maddening rivulet of sweat trickled down his nose. He wiped it off twice and then gave up. The burn in his right shoulder worsened steadily. Wells wondered whether the injury would betray him in close combat.

  Every couple of minutes, Wells stopped to listen. But he heard only a distant trickle of water. Then he lost even that comfort. Silence and darkness entombed him.

  Crawl. Wait. Listen. Nothing.

  Crawl. Wait. Listen. Nothing.

  Crawl. Wait. Listen. Something.

  A scraping in the distance, the sound of a man moving. After a few moments, the noise stopped. Wells crawled on, faster now, but doubly careful to move in silence. At last the tunnel flattened. When Wells stopped again, he felt that the air had changed, freshened somehow. Which meant that ahead of him this tunnel opened up into some kind of cave. And there he’d find his quarry.

  Wells moved forward, confident now. His adrenaline surged, a natural high stronger than any drug, strengthening and focusing him. The burn in his shoulder faded. Far better to be the hunter than the hunted.

  Yard by yard, the tunnel widened out. Again Wells heard scraping. He unholstered his Makarov.

  Then he saw the light—a hundred yards ahead, maybe less. Wells raised a hand to shield his eyes, which had grown used to the darkness. A flashlight, shining down the tunnel toward him, though the beam didn’t reach him directly because of the curve of the tunnel. Wells flattened himself against the
rocks and waited. If he’d been seen, the shooting would start soon enough.

  But instead of shots, he heard a voice. No, voices. Two men, speaking a language Wells didn’t immediately recognize. Not Arabic or Pashto. Certainly not English. The words were muffled, but the men seemed to be arguing. The light snapped off, on again, off again. Then a word rang clearly through the darkness. “Pogibshiy.” Russian for “lost.”

  Wells realized he’d caught an incredible break. These men weren’t Taliban guerrillas. They were Russian, hard as that was to believe. And they were confused. They’d reached a junction, and they didn’t know which path to take. One probably wanted to give up, crawl out and take his chances with the Special Forces. The other wanted to push on and risk getting lost forever. Or maybe just sit tight, wait, and come out in a day or two. But the first man feared that the SF would dynamite the cave entrance and again they’d be stuck.

  Because they couldn’t agree, they’d given away their position with their fighting. A stupid mistake, born of fear.

  Now that he knew that he faced two men, prudence—that word again—dictated that Wells turn around, crawl out, and wait. In a space as confined as this, they could easily overpower him even if he surprised them. But what if they didn’t come out? What if they went deeper into the cave? They would either find another path out or die in here. Either way, Wells would lose the chance to interrogate them.

  And Wells wasn’t willing to lose that chance. He needed to know who’d sent them. The Talibs, brutal as they were, were fighting for their God and their country. These Russians were nothing more than mercenaries, killing American soldiers for money.

  Forget prudence.

  WELLS CRAWLED FORWARD, Makarov in his hand, flash-bang grenades on his hip. He’d left the baton behind. It was useless to him. He moved fast now, as fast as he could. Which wasn’t all that fast. The tightness of the tunnel restricted him to a crablike scuttle. But he figured he’d reach the end of the passage in less than a minute, and then—