The Cloud Collector

by Brian Freemantle

  She timed the coffee perfectly with his emergence in the predictable jeans, loafers, and sweatshirt combination. She remained in his robe to drink her coffee before showering, in an equally neat bathroom, and putting on the previous night’s clothes. Irvine was getting up from his workstation when she returned to the living room. ‘I won’t ask if there’s anything new because you wouldn’t tell me if there were, would you?’

  ‘There isn’t, so I don’t have to answer the question.’

  ‘Would you have answered, if there had been?’

  ‘I trusted you last night, didn’t I?’

  That wasn’t an answer but it gave her a way in. ‘Why did you?’

  Irvine shrugged. ‘I just wanted to; wanted to hear your reaction, but you didn’t give one.’

  Legal and ethical uncertainty from someone whose father overstepped boundaries, wondered Sally, conscious of the photographic shrine on the wall? She said, ‘We work in intelligence. The credo is that anything and everything that achieves its objective is acceptable until it goes publicly wrong. Then it becomes contagiously unacceptable. That’s what we have scapegoats for.’

  ‘British hard-assed cynicism!’

  ‘Universal intelligence pragmatism.’

  * * *

  At the diner she ordered lox. Irvine managed four pancakes with maple syrup, insisting his waistline could stand it. Sally said, ‘It looked as if it could this morning,’ and wished she hadn’t when he immediately said, ‘What about tonight?’

  ‘What about it?’ she said, hating the gaucheness.

  ‘Can we have dinner?’

  If she said no, he’d think she was mocking his libido lapse, and if she said yes, he’d take it as an automatic invitation. ‘Let’s talk later, after we know what the day’s going to bring.’

  Sally left Irvine arranging for the Volkswagen to be towed away for repair, but was still back at the embassy compound an hour before her scheduled contact with London. As she approached the adjacent compound apartment block, Nigel Fellowes emerged from the embassy annexe, scrutinizing the previous night’s clothes.

  Sally stopped, returning the scrutiny. ‘You waiting for me?’

  ‘We were getting ready to call the police.’

  ‘I was logged out.’ What game was the resentful bastard playing now!

  ‘But not back in.’

  ‘It’s not a requirement. Neither is your monitoring my movements.’

  ‘We like to know where visitors are. Washington can be a dangerous place.’

  ‘Did you check with London?’

  Fellowes faltered. ‘I was going to, after talking it through with Podmore. Didn’t want to cause you embarrassment if it was a personal matter.’

  It was the sort of juvenile thing the man would have done, Sally thought, maybe had done, despite the denial. ‘London had my number: knew where I was and what I was doing. And it wasn’t a personal matter. So the embarrassment would have been yours, Nigel. And always will be if you confront me. Get back to your cocktails and caviar and stop getting in the way.’

  ‘I will not be spoken to like that!’

  ‘You just have been.’ She let in a pause, indulging herself. ‘And you’ve got another problem.’

  ‘What?’ asked the man uncertainly.

  ‘Your breakfast is all down your tie.’

  * * *

  ‘It’s gone past Johnston’s usual call time.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing,’ Sally told the Director-General. ‘I haven’t had any calls, either.’

  ‘They’ve had hours to question the one we’ve given them, wherever they’ve taken him.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Abu al Hurr. Born in Pakistan, emigrated to Birmingham eight years ago. Already on our watch list: we lost him two years ago.’

  ‘Was he offered the bounty?’

  ‘Some of what we were contributing, as well as witness protection. Wasn’t tempted. He wouldn’t go beyond his original arrest statement, which was that al Aswamy’s set up other attacks, some definitely in the UK and America, all part of a jihad that couldn’t be halted, but he didn’t know anything more than that.’

  ‘Did you sit in on the interrogations?’

  ‘Some of them.’

  ‘What’s your assessment?’

  ‘Fallback disinformation, in the event of failure,’ judged Monkton. ‘He passed a lie detector, so he believes what al Aswamy told him, which is damned clever. He stayed the dedicated jihadist until he was told he was going to America on a rendition flight. Then the act crumbled. If he’d known of a positive target, I believe he would have told us then to avoid being handed over.’

  ‘Our deal is the UK information Fort Meade’s got in exchange for a detainee, whom the CIA’s now got.’

  ‘Which I’m going to remind Johnston if he hasn’t called me within the hour.’

  ‘Let’s hope he listens.’

  ‘Worthwhile dinner last night?’

  Sally’s surprise at the question came with a blip of unease. ‘I think so,’ she managed. As always, Monkton listened without interruption as she detailed Irvine’s Georgetown disclosure.

  ‘Why withhold that?’ Monkton demanded the moment she finished.

  ‘I think it was a personal, not an official, decision.’

  ‘The father?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had no reason for unease, Sally decided.

  ‘Any leverage in that for us?’

  Sally hesitated. ‘Nothing that’s obvious.’

  The momentary pause was from London. ‘You didn’t compromise yourself, getting it?’

  Fellowes! immediately thought Sally. ‘No, not in any way. But I’m moving out of the embassy. There’s no benefit in my being there apart from secure communication, and I don’t need to live there to use that. I’ll get something at the Guest Quarters service flats near the Watergate.’

  The London hesitation was longer this time. ‘You sure that’s a good idea?’

  ‘Very sure.’

  ‘Don’t move out until I make contact with Johnston. I want to be able to speak safely with you the moment I do.’

  It had been an instinctive reaction to leave the embassy accommodations, but upon reflection Sally reassured herself it made every professional sense. The embassy was claustrophobic, limiting even, and the service apartments were much more central. It certainly had nothing whatsoever to do with Jack Irvine; she wasn’t even sure she’d see him that night.

  * * *

  The disorienting psychological sound track played on, despite the man’s medically confirmed unconsciousness: agonized screams, Arabic pleas for mercy, the slamming of metal doors, metal striking metal, all tuned convincingly louder than the supposed outside Karachi-street-language mix of Urdu, Sindhi, and Punjabi. Abu al Hurr lay completely naked where he’d toppled to the cell floor, although turned partially onto his back to keep his mouth and nose free of the overflow pools from the just-completed waterboarding. His heavy beard was flecked by convulsive vomit, and his belly was distended by the water that had been forced into it. He’d fouled himself. His body was still in spasm, his chest shuddering for breath. He was alone, unattended in the concrete-slab cell, which was bare except for the slatted trestle to which he’d been strapped. The porous face-covering and a still-dripping hose still hung from it.

  ‘I’d admit whatever I was fucking asked rather than go through that,’ said the first man.

  ‘You and me both,’ agreed the second.

  Both their rubber suits were draped wetly over a chair in the glass-walled observation chamber from which they’d watched the medical examination. One was Caucasian, the other Hispanic. Neither knew the other’s name nor would ever again share another assignment. Neither had before been to Guantánamo Bay or anywhere else in Cuba, nor would ever again.

  ‘I thought we’d killed him when he stopped breathing,’ said the first.

  ‘It looked to me like the doctor injected something like adrenaline directly into his heart. Can they do
that to someone without killing them?’

  ‘If he’s stopped breathing, his heart isn’t working, is it?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘The instructions were whatever it takes, at any cost, for a quick result. But if the son of a bitch dies, it’ll be our asses,’ warned the first.

  ‘Maybe we should go a little easier next time. But perhaps there won’t be a next time. Now we play the good-cop/bad-cop routine: offer a slice of the bounty, a razor for that facial shit, and whatever new life he wants wherever he wants it.’

  ‘Only an asshole would say no.’

  ‘That’s what the asshole did say every time we stopped drowning him,’ reminded the second man.

  ‘They get normal television down here?’

  ‘I guess. Why?’

  ‘I’m watching that new HBO series about English kings in the Middle Ages. You seen it?’

  The second man shook his head.

  ‘Shit! Did they know how to live! Pussy everywhere, they could do what they liked!’

  ‘Maybe I’ll look at it with you.’

  ‘Has he stopped breathing!’ suddenly demanded the first man, turning more fully towards the observation window.

  ‘Just stopped shaking to get air.’

  ‘Still better call the medics back.’

  ‘I guess.’

  * * *

  ‘You going to give her the computer address or shall I?’ asked Irvine. ‘I could probably explain it better.’

  ‘She gets the address when we get what I asked for, which is all their detainees,’ said Johnston.

  ‘That wasn’t the deal.’

  ‘It’s my deal and she knows it because I reminded her today. So does her asshole boss in London.’

  ‘The fact that it’s England is no guarantee it’s a UK hit. It could simply be a route switch to something back here,’ cautioned Irvine. ‘We screw the Brits, they could screw us right back. We should hold off from all this macho bullshit; they need us, we need them. Let’s stop fucking around!’

  ‘The Brits started it!’ insisted Bradley petulantly. ‘The deal’s on the table: they know what they’ve got to do.’

  Irvine sighed heavily, irritated that Conrad Graham had relegated the meeting to this level. ‘I told you I’m not going to be dragged down by either of you.’

  ‘And neither of us are going to be dragged down by you and a cockamamy operation that didn’t work,’ said Bradley. ‘And don’t waste your time whimpering to your great protector on the top floor. He wants them all, just like we do.’

  * * *

  ‘The embassy switchboard said you weren’t at your extension anymore, that they didn’t have a forwarding number,’ Irvine told Sally when she answered her cell phone.

  ‘I’ve moved out.’

  Irvine hesitated, deciding against asking the obvious question. ‘Hear you had another confrontation with Johnston?’

  ‘Not actually a confrontation,’ qualified Sally. ‘He said he didn’t need to see me when I telephoned. That all he wanted to hear was what time today the other detainees were being flown out. And he refused even to take a call from the Director-General.’

  In his CIA office Irvine physically grimaced. ‘How about tonight?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m still settling in.’

  ‘I think we should meet.’

  She hesitated. ‘You think we should meet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up. I’ve got a car that works and I know the way.’

  * * *

  From Tehran, Vevak’s Hydarnes site came on the Halal Web site with a limited encrypted e-mail routed through Lagos, Nigeria, to a Paris Facebook account from which it was immediately forwarded to an America registration. Burt Singleton watched his embedded Trojan horse pick up the route on the already-known-and-hacked-into Paris site, satisfaction moving through him. Too soon to alert Irvine, he decided, looking up in surprise at Harry Packer’s entry into the room.

  ‘Thought I’d stop by, see how things are going,’ said the liaison director. ‘Don’t seem to be so good, do they?’

  26

  Jack Irvine poured Sally the valpolicella he’d bought on his way home from Langley and popped the cap off the beer he raised in silent toast. ‘There’s a Vietnamese place on the next block, but I want to talk first, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Sally, curious, settling back into her easy chair. If he wanted privacy, it had to be work-related. Sit and listen, hold back from prompting until he’s talked himself out of what he’s geared himself up to say, she determined. But she didn’t have to, because instead of speaking, Irvine handed her a slip of single-line paper.

  ‘“Swordbearer@forevermystery.org.uk,”’ Sally read aloud, and smiled. ‘Thank you. I don’t have to tell you it won’t leak—so I won’t bother.’

  ‘It’s not altruism.’ Irvine paused, smiling in return. ‘Or anything between us, because there isn’t anything between us, is there? Johnston and Bradley are out to wreck Cyber Shepherd to save themselves: manoeuvring as many fuckups as they can onto others to cover their own mistakes. It’s their fight back against my telling them I wasn’t going to be dragged down with either of them for what’s already gone wrong. My mistake. I should have just gone around them, which is what I’m doing from now on.’

  Sally was uncomfortable at the soul-baring, at being let in too close, which was ridiculous because this was what she was in Washington to achieve. ‘They won’t get any other detainees, which is what Johnston demanded again today.’

  Irvine swigged his beer. ‘They probably don’t expect to; maybe even hope London will openly refuse. How’s this for an escape scenario? You guys held out, to pressure your involvement here. Now you hold out again on any further releases if the guy we’ve got doesn’t talk. Bradley losing al Aswamy and Johnston’s inadequacies get buried deeper and deeper under all the recriminations. And the Brits in general and you in person end up the scapegoats for everything that’s gone wrong, and Cyber Shepherd goes on record as a failure.’

  Precisely as his father’s diplomatic miscalculations were officially recorded, Sally recognized. ‘Doesn’t anyone remember what the point and purpose of the whole fucking operation was? Or is?’

  ‘You’re forgetting your own intelligence mantra. It’s become a publicly known—worse, an internationally known—debacle.’

  Sally smiled wryly. ‘And you’re forgetting it was my idea to claim that we had al Aswamy.’

  ‘They won’t,’ predicted Irvine. ‘And I was being gallant.’

  ‘London thinks Abu al Hurr—if you don’t already know, he’s the guy you’ve got—is disinformation,’ disclosed Sally flatly.

  ‘Disinformation!’ Irvine frowned, the beer halfway to his lips.

  ‘He was terrified at being handed over to the CIA. Passed a polygraph test that showed he was telling the truth, that what he’s told us is all al Aswamy ever told him; that’s what the other three have also said under polygraph interrogation, as well.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Spraying in all directions.’ Sally poured herself more wine. Abruptly she declared, ‘But I’m not going to be covered in it to become anyone’s scapegoat.’

  ‘Then we’ll—’ began Irvine, but halted at the competing cell phone and computer alerts. His hand over the mouthpiece but still looking at his computer, he said, ‘I hope you weren’t hungry.’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  * * *

  There was no natural light, but it wasn’t a cell. The walls were simulated wood—the inevitable one-way glassed observation panel distorted to merge into its surroundings—and the chairs were comfortably padded. There was no psychologically disorienting sound track. The polygraph operators had gone, but their machine and its attachments remained, although now pushed to the side of the room. Two interrogators faced Abu al Hurr across the table. Neither wore ties. One had his jacket looped casually over the back of
his seat in staged, casual friendliness. Both were black. Again, neither of the two men had ever worked together, nor would ever again. Both were strangers to Cuba, to which they would never return. Abu al Hurr was in a clean orange jumpsuit. He’d been allowed three hours of sleep from the moment of his recovering consciousness. The only physical indication of his earlier ordeal was hand tremors.

  ‘We want you to know we had no part in what’s happened to you,’ opened the man in the jacket. ‘We’re very sorry that it did, but you’re here with us now, safe. We’re not going to hurt you. We want you to believe that, okay?’

  The Pakistani grunted, head lowered to avoid looking directly at either man. Both waited for more. Nothing came.

  The first man went on, ‘We’re your way out, out of all your problems. We’re responsible for what happens to you now, not the British. In England you were going to go on trial, be jailed for ten, fifteen years, maybe even more. Some slime pit where every day white racists would hurt you more than you got hurt today. You want to think about that—worse even than today?’

  ‘Stop! Don’t want to hear!’

  ‘That’s what we’re talking about,’ broke in the second man, leaning forward over the intervening table. ‘We’re going to stop it all … stop everything. Here’s how we do it. You tell us every single thing al Aswamy told you about the attacks he set up, where and when they’re going to be, and we give you enough money—we’re talking millions here, Abu—to live in luxury for the rest of your life wherever you choose. And to make sure it’s a long and very happy life, we give you a new identity, new everything, and make sure no-one ever finds you.’

  ‘I don’t know any more than I’ve told you! You know I don’t!’ pleaded the man. ‘All he said was that he was going to lead more attacks. He wouldn’t say where.’

  ‘So you asked him!’ seized the first man.

  ‘Course I asked him.’ Al Hurr hesitated as he looked up for the first time. ‘I told him I wanted to go on fighting the jihad against Satan’s people.’