The Invisible (Ryan Kealey)

by Andrew Britton

  There it was. Kealey sat back, stunned by the extent of the man’s knowledge. He was too surprised to even be angry. Who could have known that? he wondered distractedly. He began running through the names in his head, but he could only come up with one. Other than Harper, who could have known? But why would Harper reveal that information, especially to Machado, who was supposed to be out of the loop? It didn’t make sense….

  “I know you are anxious to put the Agency behind you,” Machado continued gently, “and believe me, I want to help you do that. By finishing your assignment as fast as possible, you will only be helping yourself. Besides, what I said about Marissa was not a lie. She will, in fact, be very useful if you choose to bring her along. There are several reasons I want her with you, one of them being your record. You have a reputation for getting the job done, and I know that once you give me your word, you will do everything in your power to bring her back safely. As I mentioned earlier, her welfare is my only concern.”

  Kealey considered these words, dimly aware of a phone ringing off in the distance. “Assuming I accept your offer, what happens to Naomi?”

  “She can stay here, of course. Or she can return to Langley. But if she stays, we will look after her well. You have my word. My wife is a former nurse, and she’s very capable. Anything she needs, she gets. No exceptions.”

  Kealey sat back, thinking it over. His thoughts kept drifting back to Naomi’s thousand-yard stare, the look she’d given him at the Sofitel Madrid. She was clearly into something, but that could be overcome. He knew how important her work was to her, and he honestly believed that in the end, it might prove to be her salvation, if she could find a way past the day’s events.

  On the other hand, if he sent her back to Langley in her current state, there was a good chance she would be forced out immediately, no questions asked. He simply couldn’t do that to her, even though a small part of him was saying that might be the best thing.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “I agree to your terms. But I want Naomi to stay here.”

  Machado leaned back and let out a long, unsteady sigh; clearly, he was vastly relieved by Kealey’s decision to accept his proposal. “You’ll have to talk to her,” he cautioned. “She might not take it well. You leaving her behind, I mean.”

  “That’s the understatement of the year,” Kealey said, “but don’t worry. I’ll give her a reason to go along with it.”

  “Good.” Machado stood, as did Kealey, and offered his hand. Kealey accepted it reluctantly, still wondering what he was getting himself into. “I appreciate this more than you know. I’m sure my contact in Lahore will prove to be a valuable resource in finding Mengal. Just one other thing…”

  “What?”

  “This arrangement stays strictly between us,” Machado said quietly. There was a hint of menace beneath his words, nothing pronounced, nothing overt, but just enough to trigger Kealey’s internal alarm. “Not a word to Jonathan Harper. Not a word to my daughter…not a word to anyone. Make up any story you like, but it stays between us. ¿Entiende?”

  Kealey was about to reply when he sensed movement behind him. Turning, he found himself face-to-face with Marissa Pétain. She was staring at each of them in turn, a slight frown on her face, but Kealey didn’t notice. His eyes were drawn to the bulky satellite phone in her right hand.

  “It’s Director Harper,” she announced, breaking the awkward silence. She thrust out the phone, and Kealey accepted it without a word. He walked into the kitchen, feeling their eyes on his back the whole way. Then he closed the door behind him and lifted the phone to his ear.

  “Yeah, I’m here, John. What do you have? Anything new on Mengal?”

  “Plenty,” the deputy DCI replied grimly, “but you’re not going to like a word of it.”

  CHAPTER 23

  CARTAGENA

  Twenty minutes later, Kealey ended his conversation with Harper. He lowered the phone and stood there for a moment, thinking it through. Then he opened the door to the living room. Finding it empty, he walked past the couch and looked through the French doors, which were still open to the cool night air. Marissa Pétain was seated alone at the garden table. She was absently toying with the stem of her wineglass, apparently deep in thought. Kealey thought about leaving her to it, but she deserved to know what had been said, and he had questions of his own. Questions that couldn’t wait until morning. Walking back to the kitchen, he popped the top off a fresh bottle of beer and went out to join her.

  The evening air was cool on his face and arms, the slight breeze scented with flowers and fresh-cut grass. As he approached, she looked up quickly, clearly startled. When she saw it was him, she nearly came out of her seat. “Well?” she demanded. “What’s happening?”

  Kealey took a seat and placed the sat phone on the table. Then he started to explain, beginning with Benazir Mengal.

  The analysts in the Operations Directorate had worked with their counterparts at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center to build a complete profile of the former Pakistani general. What they had dug up was of considerable concern. His long-term association with Inter-Services Intelligence was a problem all by itself. To dissuade any one person from gaining too much power, military officers were never assigned to ISI for more than three years in their entire career. This standard had been put into place by Pervez Musharraf himself, but exceptions had clearly been made for Mengal, who’d spent nearly ten consecutive years as the head of Joint Intelligence North (JIN), the ISI section responsible for the disputed areas of Jammu and Kashmir. In that role, Mengal had worked closely with Kashmiri rebels—secretly, of course—in an attempt to track Indian troop movements, as well as to keep the conflict bubbling at a low boil.

  And that was only the hard evidence. The rumors were equally insightful. According to a Pakistani major captured by Indian forces during the Kargil war, Mengal was personally responsible for the murder of a dozen Kashmiri rebels who’d been working as double agents for India’s Special Frontier Force, an outfit created in 1959 with the assistance of the CIA. According to the major, who had narrowly survived the interrogation methods used by his captors, Benazir Mengal harbored no ill will toward the men he had killed in that incident; in fact, he’d been seen joking around with them prior to the executions. The way the Pakistani major had described it, Mengal was a man who had no special allegiance to his men or even to his country; he did what he did simply because he was extremely good at it.

  Pétain listened carefully to Kealey’s recitation, then leaned back in her chair. She blinked a few times, then pursed her lips thoughtfully, as though processing the information. Kealey watched her carefully, but he couldn’t detect a hint of fear or hesitation, two things that would have caused him to reconsider his plans. She was simply thinking things through.

  “That’s an interesting point of view,” she finally said, “but it begs the obvious question. If Mengal has no allegiance to anyone but himself, why is he mixed up in all of this? Why did he break Amari Saifi out of prison, and why did he orchestrate the abduction of Secretary Fitzgerald?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Kealey replied. “But remember, this is just one man’s opinion, and he shared it under duress. It may be the closest thing we have to a psychological profile, but it’s far from conclusive. The only person who can really answer those questions is Mengal himself.”

  “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to ask him. Has the DO had any luck in tracking down his known associates?”

  “Yes. In fact, they’ve come up with an interesting theory. You know that the FBI flew an Evidence Recovery Team into Rawalpindi a couple of days ago, right?”

  Pétain nodded. “They were sent in to start an extraterritorial investigation.”

  “Exactly. They’ve already completed a preliminary report, based on what they found in the remains of the vehicles, as well as their interviews with some of the witnesses. It was standard fare, for the most part, but they d
id construct a possible scenario that caught the Agency’s interest. Apparently, a senior investigator with the NTSB accompanied the Bureau team to Pakistan.” The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent federal agency tasked with investigating civil aviation accidents in the Unites States, as well as major accidents involving other modes of transportation. “Based on his initial assessment, the vehicle carrying Brynn Fitzgerald sustained damage severe enough to ensure serious injuries to all its occupants. As we already know, Fitzgerald’s driver was killed in the attack, as was her detail leader.”

  “So, the investigator is saying that Fitzgerald was seriously injured in the attack?”

  “He’s saying it’s possible, even likely. According to people who witnessed the ambush, Fitzgerald was carried away from the wreckage of her Suburban by two of her assailants. Not dragged, not escorted, but carried, indicating she may have been too hurt to walk on her own.”

  “So where does this leave us?”

  “Obviously, they were trying to keep Fitzgerald alive,” Kealey pointed out. “Otherwise, they would have shot her like they did Patterson. And if she was hurt in the attack…”

  “Mengal would need to find someone to treat her,” Pétain concluded. Her eyes widened in realization. “And he has plenty of connections. He would know the right man to turn to. A licensed doctor on his payroll, maybe, or a medic who used to serve under him.”

  “Exactly, and now we have a starting point. There’s a man in Lahore who knows Benazir Mengal personally. If anyone can point us in the right direction, it’s him.”

  Pétain frowned and stared at him warily. She was unsure of the story he was feeding her, Kealey realized. “Where did this ‘man in Lahore’ come from? I thought the Agency didn’t have any reliable assets in Pakistan.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, but Harper managed to dig someone up. I didn’t push him on it.”

  Pétain seemed to accept this explanation, much to Kealey’s relief. Harper had given him a list of possible candidates to check up on, including names and probable locations. All of them were based in Pakistan, and the majority of Mengal’s associates were located in Islamabad and the outlying area. As Pétain had just suggested, many of them were military-trained medics who’d once served under Mengal, but with Javier Machado’s offer of assistance, Kealey now had a more probable lead. As Machado had instructed, Kealey hadn’t mentioned anything about their arrangement to the deputy DCI. Harper had ordered him to take Kharmai and leave Pétain behind, but Kealey was going to do the exact opposite. He and Pétain would be able to fly once they recovered the passports they’d left at the Sofitel Madrid. One of the operatives tasked with watching Ghafour in Madrid had been instructed to drop off the documents in the morning, then catch a flight back to the States. Kealey and Pétain would be going in a very different direction, and now was as good a time as any to tell her.

  When he was done explaining it, she nodded her agreement. He was surprised at first by her willingness to accept his story at face value, but then he remembered that she had no reason to doubt him. After all, she knew nothing about the accord he had struck with her father.

  “So what time are we leaving?” she asked.

  “We have to wait for the courier, but once he arrives, we’ll head straight for the airport and catch the first flight out. I don’t want to waste any time.”

  “Fair enough.” She fell silent for a moment, examining her empty glass. She pointed at his beer, which he’d almost finished. “Would you like another? It’s early yet.”

  “Sure,” Kealey said. As she stood up and went inside to fetch the drinks, he began working through a list of questions in his mind. He didn’t know what Machado’s angle was, but at the moment, Marissa Pétain was his best chance to figure it out.

  They were on their fourth drink, and Kealey could see that it was starting to catch up to her. Over the last two hours, the conversation had been gradually shifting course, drifting away from work to more personal matters. He had been careful not to rush it, as he didn’t want to seem too eager to change the subject. As far as he could tell, he had navigated the waters well. She was responding readily, and she wasn’t acting overly defensive. At the same time, Pétain was not the open book he had thought she would be. She seemed reluctant to talk about her family, especially her father. Kealey couldn’t help but think this was strange, given that she’d followed his career path so closely. There was something in her past, he kept thinking. There’s got to be something there….

  She had just finished talking about her first assignment with the Operations Directorate, a surveillance op in Mexico City, when she suddenly paused and shifted uneasily in her seat. Sensing she was about to bring up something important, Kealey set down his beer and gave her his full attention.

  “Ryan, I just want you to know…” She trailed off, fidgeting absently with a thin silver bracelet around her left wrist.

  “Know what?”

  “That I’m sorry about what happened today.” She lowered her eyes, but it was a gesture of contrition, nothing more. She wasn’t upset in the least. “I only meant to wound him. I didn’t mean for it to turn out the way it did. What Kharmai had to do was…Well, that was because of me. I know apologizing doesn’t change it. I know I can’t even begin to make it right for her, but I don’t know what else to say. I should tell her myself, I know, and I will, but I just…”

  Kealey didn’t fill the silence right away, as her words seemed to leave something out. Then it hit him: she hadn’t expressed the slightest remorse for killing Kamil Ghafour.

  Of course, it could be argued that she wasn’t responsible for the man’s death, since Ghafour might have lived with immediate medical attention. But Pétain had pulled the trigger, and as far as Kealey could tell, it didn’t seem to be bothering her at all. It wasn’t natural, and he felt a spark of concern; any way he cut it, he had to work with her for the foreseeable future, and he had to have some idea of her mindset.

  “She went through something similar last year,” Kealey found himself saying. “Naomi, I mean. She never really got over it. Truthfully, she shouldn’t even be here.”

  “Maybe,” Pétain said quietly, “but that was then, so I can’t really speak to it. This is now, and I’m responsible.”

  Kealey looked up at the new tone in her voice. She avoided his gaze, looking into the trees. It was a long time before she spoke again.

  “I didn’t follow my father into the Agency, you know. I’m sure you must be thinking that, but it isn’t true.”

  “So what was it? What made you join?”

  Pétain pinched her full lower lip between her teeth, obviously wishing she could take back the words. But she had already said too much, and she seemed to know it. “It was my sister. I joined because of her.”

  “Your sister?” Kealey had looked at most of the photographs on display in the house. He hadn’t seen any depicting a second daughter, and Machado hadn’t mentioned her, either. Or if he had, it had been in an abstract kind of way. This was news to him, and his instincts were already telling him it was relevant. He leaned forward unconsciously, waiting for the rest of it.

  “Her name was Caroline,” Pétain continued awkwardly. “She was older than me by eighteen months. I was seventeen when she was recruited by the Operations Directorate. That was in the spring of ’98.”

  Which made Marissa Pétain twenty-eight years old. Kealey would have pegged her as a few years younger than that, but her age made sense, given the fact that she had initially run the teams in Madrid. The Clandestine Service seemed to be getting younger every year, he thought wryly.

  “She was an amazing person,” Pétain was saying. Her eyes were misting over, but her voice was steady. “She would do anything for a friend, but she wasn’t naïve. She was strong and independent. Smart, too. Incredibly smart, actually, but that was her way. She was just…really good at everything she tried. Really good.” She let out a short, bitter laugh. “I know people always sa
y that when somebody dies, but in Caroline’s case, it was completely true. She studied political science at Georgetown, and after she graduated, the first thing she did was apply to the Agency. When she told us she’d been accepted to train at the Farm, my father was so fucking proud….”

  She choked on the last two words, then paused to wipe her sleeve across her eyes. Kealey was tempted to give her an out, but knew that he couldn’t. He needed to hear the rest, no matter how difficult it was for her. He waited uncomfortably until she’d composed herself, and when she resumed speaking, her voice was low and strangely detached.

  “It happened in Colombia, when she was on her first assignment. By the late nineties, the Medellín cartel had begun to fragment, along with its chief rival, the Cali cartel, and a number of organizations were rising up to take their place. The North Valley cartel was one of the bigger threats, and a number of American agencies—including the DEA and the CIA—were concerned by their lack of knowledge in that department. So the decision was made to send someone in on the lower end of things, just to get an idea of what they were up to.”

  She fell silent for a minute, lost in her own little world. “I suppose the NVC felt it had something to prove,” she mused. “After all, it was the first real attempt to infiltrate the organization, so they had to make a statement, if only to dissuade another attempt. From their point of view, it probably made perfect business sense.”