But the software was spotty. Computers had a hugely difficult time parsing and recognizing human speech, as anyone who’d ever called an airline 800 number knew. And the agency particularly disliked blind searches, which used huge amounts of computing power and generally came up dry. So Dr. Teresa Carter, who oversaw the programs, told Shafer.
“You’re telling me it’s impossible,” Shafer said.
“We can try. But I need to know, will finding this man Daood stop an imminent threat to American civilians or military personnel?”
Shafer hesitated. “I can’t guarantee that.”
“In that case, given the other projects we have queued up, we can’t treat this request as a top priority.”
“A medium priority?”
“It’ll be on the list.” Her voice was cool. “Mr. Shafer, we’re currently tasked on other searches that have a direct probability of saving lives. You may not believe me, but I want to help. If there’s an imminent threat, call me and I’ll push.”
SHAFER HATED being reminded how much the CIA relied on the wizards across the Potomac. The Luddite in him was almost happy to find out that technology wasn’t totally infallible. But he needed a new way to shrink the target pool. He decided to flip the search, look from the inside out instead of the outside in. Specifically, he would assume that Daood was already connected with the agency, that whoever was running the trafficking hadn’t recruited him cold.
If Daood had ever worked for the agency, his real name would be kept in a database at Langley, Shafer knew. Even before they were officially recruited, agents received code names — Sparrow, Gemstone, Medallion. Case reports and files always referred to them by those names. Under normal circumstances, only a handful of people would know an agent’s real name. But all agents also had their names and biographical information sent to Langley and saved. The reason was simple: the CIA mistrusted everyone, even the agents it recruited. Most especially the agents it recruited. If they were suspected of being doubles controlled by their home governments, counterintelligence officers and desk officers at Langley might need to know who they really were. So each regional desk kept a database of biographical information.
But keeping the names at Langley came with its own risks. In 1985, a disgruntled counterintelligence officer named Aldrich Ames had given the real names of the CIA agents in the Soviet Union to the KGB. Several were executed. After the Ames scandal, the agency tightened access to the databases. They were no longer stored at each regional desk. Instead, the Directorate of Security stored them on encrypted hard drives in a vault that could be opened only upon a written finding signed by an assistant deputy director. Once a database was pulled, two 128-digit key codes were required to unlock it.
Given the importance of the databases, Shafer understood the precautions. But they meant that he couldn’t search the databases quietly. Word of the search for Daood would likely leak to Kabul. Shafer didn’t know what the mole would do if he heard.
He did have one other option: the “Kingdom List.” Even inside the CIA, the existence of the Kingdom List remained a closely held secret. It contained the name and basic biographical information of everyone that the agency had ever recruited, active or retired, dead or alive.
The list was stored in a cavern in West Virginia, part of the underground complex where the president would be evacuated if Washington faced a nuclear attack. A written finding from the president, vice president, or national security advisor was required to see the Kingdom List. It could be decoded only in the presence of the agency’s director or most senior deputy director. Theoretically, it provided the ultimate backup in case of a catastrophic nuclear attack on the Langley campus.
In reality, a nuclear attack big enough to destroy Langley would probably destroy all of Washington. In reality, the list served as the last defense against a top-level mole. For example, if the director suspected that an agent in Russia could prove that his deputy was a spy for the FSB, the list would give him a way to contact the agent directly without anyone else inside the CIA knowing.
Shafer wondered whether Duto would give him access to the list. Probably not, especially since they still had no hard proof that the mole existed. But it was worth asking. He called the seventh floor, Duto’s direct line.
“Director’s office.” The voice wasn’t Duto’s.
“Where’s Vinny?”
“This is Joseph Geisler. May I help you?”
“It’s Ellis. I need to talk to Vinny.”
“Ellis who?”
“Ellis Shafer, you nimwit.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know that name.”
Shafer closed his eyes and counted to ten. His doctor had warned him about stress. He was closer to seventy than sixty now, and learning the aging process was just growing up in reverse. Every time he went to the doctor, another pleasure was taken from him. And those were the good trips, the ones where he wasn’t poked and prodded and snipped.
“Sir?”
“Joseph. How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
Shafer had worked for the agency longer than this guy had been alive. He wished he could be happy about that fact. “And how long have you worked for Vinny?”
“I’ve had the honor to be a member of Director Duto’s personal team for three months.”
“Please tell someone who is not in diapers that Ellis Shafer is coming up to see Vinny, and it’s urgent.”
“Sir, the director is in meetings all morning—”
“ELLIS,” DUTO SAID when Shafer walked into his office. Duto’s eyes looked up, but his thumbs didn’t. He had his legs on his desk and was texting away furiously. “You hurt Joe’s feelings, you know.”
“Every month you have more of these guys. What’s next? Food taster?”
Duto didn’t rise to the bait. He rarely did these days. “I’m glad you came by. I was wondering about John. Kabul said he’s disappeared. Left the station one morning and went to Moscow. Funny thing is that no one in Moscow seemed to get the message.”
“Went to Pak to chase a lead. Now he’s back in Afghanistan, at KAF.”
“He’s in Kandahar.”
“Correct.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“Talking to soldiers, shaking hands.” Avoiding that snake pit in Kabul.
“What about his cover?”
“Junk. No one at the Ariana believed it. They told him they knew he was after a mole.”
Finally, Duto stopped texting. “Did they now?”
“They did.”
“And did he get what he was looking for in Pakistan?”
“Progress as promised, Vinny.” Shafer recounted Wells’s trip to Muslim Bagh, leaving out only the way Wells had killed the four men. Duto wouldn’t mind, but Shafer figured that Wells should decide whether to tell that part of the story.
“So now we’re trying to find Daood. We figure he’ll lead us to the mole. Though the theory does have one weak link.”
“What’s that?”
“Aside from that story you initially gave us from the DEA before John went over, we still have no evidence connecting the trafficking with the mole. John and I both think it’s likely. These soldiers making the pickups can’t have found Amadullah on their own. Somebody at a high level has got to be directing all this, somebody who can operate on both sides of the border. But that somebody isn’t necessarily one of ours. We think it is, but thinking it isn’t the same as proving it.”
“Amadullah Thuwani,” Duto said. “Would you believe that two nights ago an SF team raided a farm in Kandahar where a couple Thuwanis were supposed to be living? Guys in their twenties, Amadullah’s nephews. We suspected that one was connected to a bombing on Highway 1 that cooked an MRAP and everybody inside. We helped develop the intel, so JSOC kept Kandahar station informed.” The letters stood for the Joint Special Operations Command, the group that oversaw Delta Force, the Green Berets, and other elite units.
“And what happened?”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“You think so?”
“No.” Thuwani’s men wouldn’t have left without good reason, and operational security on night raids was extremely tight. Someone had tipped them. The mole was real.
“Me neither. Now tell me about Daood. Why you’re so sure he’s one of ours.”
“Our mole is too smart to take a chance on a courier he doesn’t know. He wants somebody he can leverage. Somebody he can own. But at the same time, he wants somebody who doesn’t have an active case officer, because in that case the guy might go running to his CO.”
“What if the mole is actually Daood’s CO?”
“Our guy’s too smart to use anyone who could be connected with him that easily. No, Daood is an occasional.” CIA jargon for a low-grade informant who provided tips but didn’t merit full-time management by a case officer. Since they weren’t officially on the CIA payroll, the agency paid limited attention to them. “I’m afraid Kabul will hear if I start fishing for him. Now that we’re certain the mole’s real, is there any chance I can use the Kingdom List?”
“That’s national emergencies only, and this doesn’t qualify.”
“Meaning you don’t want the White House to know you may have a mole.”
“I’m not debating this.”
“Vinny—”
“Forget it, Ellis.”
Shafer gave up. Duto’s tone brooked no argument.
“Then what do you suggest?”
“What about the DEA?”
“What about them?”
“Maybe he’s in their system, too. Maybe he’s one of these guys who bounces around, us and the feds and the DEA. Soon as we figure out he’s giving us a big bag of nothing, he gets a new daddy.”
Duto’s words gave Shafer an idea. The DEA would be in no hurry to do the agency any favors. But occasionals weren’t protected like real agents. Sometimes their names spread wide. Especially if they were problem children, the type who did business with more than one agency. Shafer stood to leave. “Thanks for all the help, Vinny.”
“Should I ask what you’re doing?”
“What I should have done all along.”
“What’s that?”
I’m giving up on a silicon-flavored miracle. I’m doing my job the old-fashioned way, the right way. I’m calling somebody who can answer my questions. “I’m going home, breaking out the Dewar’s, raising a glass to your health.”
“In that case, make it a double.”
BACK IN HIS OFFICE, Shafer unlocked his safe and pulled out his Rolodex, an antique like him. He had thousands of case officers and station chiefs and desk heads in here, decades of contacts scratched in pen and pencil. Maybe two in five were still active. The rest had retired or quit to work for contractors. Or died. Just in the As, Shafer recognized Henry “Argyle” Aniston, an old-school agency type who’d worn the ugliest sweaters known to man and dropped from a heart attack three months before he was scheduled to retire, and James Appleston, whose prostate cancer had spread to his brain. Shafer thought he’d take the heart attack.
Thousands of names, but nearly all useless for this call. He needed an officer who’d served on the Af-Pak desk in the last decade but hadn’t been a star. The stars had spent their time chasing bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. They wouldn’t have been interested in Daood. Also, he needed somebody gossipy. But not so gossipy that he’d whisper to Kabul that Shafer was poking after an occasional. And he needed somebody who liked him enough to be honest.
Shafer had to get to the Rs before he found someone who might fit. Mark Ryker had retired five years before. If Shafer recalled correctly, he lived somewhere in southwestern Virginia. A lot of agency guys wound up in that area, far enough from Washington to avoid the dangers they’d spent their lives fighting, close enough to feel like they were still part of the world.
Shafer punched in Ryker’s number. To his mild surprise, the phone was picked up after one ring. “This is Mark.”
“Mark. It’s Ellis Shafer.” He heard a sitcom’s canned laughter in the background.
“Ellis. Ellis Shafer.”
He wasn’t quite slurring his words, but his tone was as bright and artificial as the dye for a kid’s birthday cake. Pharmaceutical enhancement for sure. “I’d like to talk to you about something.” Shafer figured he’d need to draw out Ryker. He was wrong.
“Mr. Ellis Shafer wants to talk to me? About something. Must be important. I assume this is a face-to-face business, tête-à-tête, too superclassified for an open line?”
“You are correct.”
“And urgent?”
“Life-and-death.” Shafer vamping now, getting into the spirit.
“Life and death. Death and life. I know about those. All right. Tell you what. Shoot down 81 tonight, and I’ll meet you in Lexington. You know where that is?”
“I can find it.”
“I suppose you can. There’s an Applebee’s there, and I promise you nobody’ll bother us. Say, eight.”
“Eatin’ good in the neighborhood.”
“Are you too fancy for Applebee’s, Ellis?” Pause. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question. I want an answer.”
“No. Sorry.”
“See you at eight then.”
SHAFER CALLED HIS WIFE and told her he probably wouldn’t be home that night. She didn’t ask why, or where he’d be. One of the virtues of being married as long as he had. He got his usual late start and had to fight through the suburban D.C. traffic, but 81 was as beautiful and open as ever, running southwest through the lush Virginia hills. He pulled into the parking lot at 8:05.
The Applebee’s was bright and three-quarters empty and the server was a purty little bleached-blond thing who greeted him too eagerly. “Table for one, sir?” Shafer ignored her and found Ryker sitting alone in a booth. He was drinking a bright green concoction that Shafer would swear was an appletini. Ryker didn’t look good. He was skinny and weirdly tan and his shirt hung loose. Shafer didn’t get it. He hadn’t known Ryker well at Langley, but he remembered the guy as just another Central Asia desk officer. During the 1990s, Pakistan and Afghanistan hadn’t been glamorous posts. The action was elsewhere.
“Mark. Good to see you. It’s been too long.”
“You, too.”
“How’s Lois?” Shafer kept the names of wives in his Rolodex, an old trick.
Ryker laughed low and ugly. Everything about him made sense now. Shafer had better update his index cards. People kept dying. Shafer wondered how he’d do as a widower. Probably no better than Ryker. Maybe worse.
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Why would you? It’s not like we were friends.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“No. Instead let me tell you why I agreed to see you, knowing that you’re going to ask me to give up something classified, something I shouldn’t tell you, or why else would you have driven all the way out here on four hours’ notice?”
“Sure.”
“Because who cares?”
Maybe this isn’t the time, Shafer almost said. But he kept his mouth shut. He needed to know about Daood. Ryker was his best bet. So he flagged a waitress and ordered a Bud Light and popcorn chicken and told Ryker he was looking for a guy who might be an occasional and might have been running drugs, too.
“A hundred guys fit that profile,” Ryker said. “More. You want to tell me why you need this one?”
“No.”
“That’s all you have? You have a name?”
“A first name. Daood. Though I’m not sure how to spell it.”
Ryker sucked down his appletini and licked his lips. “I am. D-A-O-O-D. Last name Maktani. Daood Maktani. Though he prefers to call himself David Miller.” Just that quick, something woke up in Ryker’s face. For the first time all night, he looked to Shafer like a case officer instead of a man waiting for the clock to run out. “Half the desk knew his name. No OPSEC on an asshat like him. One of those guys. Running drugs out of Pakistan the whole damn time. Didn’t even try to hide it, really. The DEA bitched at us for using him, but they used him, too. He was a smart guy and he gave us just enough that we kept him around, but nobody liked him.”
“Tell me about it.”
So Ryker did.
15
KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, AFGHANISTAN
The Drone Home, aka the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Center, occupied a couple acres on the south side of the Kandahar runway. A high-security fence backed with green netting hid hangars and concrete workshops from prying eyes. Inside, Air Force mechanics and CIA engineers and General Dynamics contractors worked on the drones so crucial to the Afghan war. The Predators and Reapers were well-known. Less so the agency’s newest baby, the “Beast of Kandahar.”
The Beast was a miniature single-wing plane that looked like a hobbyist’s model of a B-2 stealth bomber. It didn’t carry weapons. It was designed solely for surveillance, the stealthiest plane ever built. It was invisible to radar or the naked eye from more than a couple hundred yards away. It carried ground-penetrating radar and color cameras sensitive enough to distinguish eye color from a thousand feet up. It had spent hundreds of hours in the air above Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. Neither bin Laden nor the Pakistani military had ever guessed at its presence.
Now the agency was trying to add microphones to the Beast. Picking up voices from an aircraft circling hundreds or thousands of feet in the air was a monumental technical challenge. But the payoff would be just as big. The CIA would hear the other side’s plans in real time. And it would make fewer targeting errors, a euphemism for civilian deaths.
Francesca, who was waiting for his buddy Stan in the parking lot outside the Drone Home, knew all about the Beast. He and Alders did most of their work in the border areas where the drones were busiest. To reduce the chance that he’d be mistaken for a Talib, Francesca carried a transponder. When on, it emitted an electronic signature identifying him as American. He’d been briefed on what to do if the transponder failed. The advice basically boiled down to, Get out of the hot zone as quickly as you can, because you don’t want to be on the incoming end of a Hellfire.
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