“Yes, Major, I promise you that it’s extremely damn serious. Four of our people have been killed and more on the way if we don’t get a handle on this soon. What’s your ops plan?”
“The ID we have been given on the target is Joseph Sabah. Correct? For security, we are just going to call him Harry from here on. Okay?”
Marx nodded.
Major Kirby pointed to the lower right quadrant of the Brussels map, southeast of the city center. He spoke the place names very carefully, not wanting to botch them.
“Harry lives here, on Avenue…George…Bergmann. His apartment is a few blocks east of a big park called Bois…de…la…Cambre. Did I say that right?”
“Sort of,” answered Marx. “Nobody would mistake you for a Belgian.”
“Thank you,” said Major Kirby. “Okay, Harry has a dog, a little yapper dog. What is it, Sergeant?”
“A miniature poodle, sir.”
“Right. So every evening when Harry gets home from his job at this SWIFT place south of the city in, lemme look…La…Hulpe, he takes this dog out for a walk to do his business in the park, in this Bois…de…la…Cambre.”
“You can just call it the park, Major, that’s fine,” said Marx.
“Roger that. Harry walked his dog last night, and we were able to get one of our friends to access the surveillance cameras in the park. He took the dog there every night for the last week, same route, pretty much. So, gents and lady, we are going to assume that he goes to the park every freaking night, and that when he gets home from work tonight he will take little bowser on that same route for his evening walk.”
“And we will be waiting in the park?” asked Marx.
“Not exactly ‘we,’ ma’am, if that includes you. ‘We’ will be there, meaning me and my two JSOC brothers, plus Ted and Luis from the station. But you, meaning you, will be at the safe house where we are going to interrogate this clown, assuming we do this right.”
“Okay, but I’m good luck. You said so yourself.”
“We’ll just have to live with that. Let’s finish our pre-op. Ma’am, you may want to get some rest. There’s a bedroom down the hall.” He looked at the other four men.
“Okay, brothers. De oppressso liber.”
“Why did you say that?” asked Marx.
“Special Forces motto. Liberate the oppressed.”
“Oh,” said Marx. “Nice.”
A voice piped up from the side of the room. It was one of the two other soldiers, who hadn’t spoken yet.
“IYAAYAS,” he said, speaking the letters quickly.
“What the hell does that mean?” queried Marx.
“Unofficial shooters’ motto, ma’am,” said the soldier. “‘If you ain’t ammo, you ain’t shit.’”
“Please, gentlemen,” she said. “Grow up.”
The armored Mercedes returned to the Citadines at noon and transported Sophie Marx to a house in a leafy suburb south of Brussels, on the way to Waterloo. A member of the station was already there, preparing the room where the interrogation would take place. He had closed the blinds and the curtains and was moving furniture around, trying to make it look like Grandma’s living room. The very word “interrogation” seemed to make him squeamish. He had been told to bring food for the “suspect” and the interrogators, as well as several cans of dog food.
Marx went upstairs to call Hoffman, but he didn’t answer his phone. She rang Perkins again, and when he didn’t pick up, either, she gave up trying. She knew she should call Gertz, but she didn’t know what she would say to him, and if he ordered her home, she would refuse. So the best course, she decided, was to take another nap.
At 6:10, the surveillance team at SWIFT’s headquarters on Avenue Adele in La Hulpe, south of the city, reported to the team in the Citadines that they had spotted “Harry” leaving work.
“Showtime,” said Major Kirby. Two of the five men in the apartment had already set off, but the remaining three now departed and walked to the Metro station on Avenue Louise. They were carrying sports bags, marked with the symbols of Adidas and Nike, which contained their weapons: Three Heckler & Koch Mark 23 semiautomatic pistols with suppressors, the special operator’s weapon of choice.
The three traveled by subway to Schuman station, melding into the wave of homeward-bound commuters; they found the Brussels railway line, which they took to the Watermael junction. They exited the station and walked west a half mile into the park, where they stationed themselves at the agreed watch posts.
The park cut a deep, green elliptical swath in the southern tier of the city. It was a smaller version of Paris’s Bois de Boulogne: woods and meadows, with sandy paths bordering a kidney-shaped pond in the center of the park.
Joseph Sabah was driving north toward home in his gray Peugeot, meanwhile. He parked in the garage of his apartment building, changed out of his suit into a pair of blue jeans and hugged his dog, Émile, who had greeted his master’s return by racing around in a circle in the living room of the apartment. The dog was now standing in the kitchen next to the leash, waiting for his walk.
Sabah fastened the leash to Émile’s collar and descended the stairs to the street. It was still light outside, the sky illuminated on this summer day as if by a low-watt bulb. The dog couldn’t wait to do his business; he dropped a turd a block from home. Sabah scooped it up in a plastic bag and continued on toward the park; he was carrying a second bag for later in the journey.
They walked along Avenue George Bergmann, the dog sniffing a few of his fellows along the way, and crossed into the park on the Avenue de l’Orée. The dog knew the route. He pulled Sabah south toward the pond on their left, stopping every few seconds when he encountered a new smell. Sabah tugged ineffectually at his leash.
Major Kirby was sitting on a bench along the Avenue de Flores, just inside the park. He saw “Harry” enter and spoke into the microphone in his sleeve to his colleagues, who were arrayed at other looking posts. It was light, and people were out strolling, so it wasn’t easy to conceal their movements. It was so much easier to grab people in the dark.
The team slowly converged toward Sabah, two ahead of him, three behind. He was so slow, stopping and starting with the dog. The idea was to take him on his way back home, when it was darker, but it was still the soft half-light of a summer evening. The trees seemed to enfold the space; amid the green, the noise of the city fell away. You could hear birds calling to each other as they settled down for the night.
Sabah was crossing a wide expanse of grass now, entirely open, which took him to the northern edge of the pond. The dog relieved himself a second time; he was tired and ready to head home. Sabah took out his second bag and gingerly scooped up the droppings. The dog was tugging on the leash now, pulling his master homeward. They cut an arc across the lawn toward a path through the woods that would take them out via the Avenue Victoria.
“Now,” said Kirby into his sleeve. “Close on him.”
Two members of the team entered the wooded path and traversed it seventy yards to the end, where they waited. There were a few people along the path; Kirby had hoped it would be empty by that hour, but they had to work with what they had.
Sabah entered the canopy of trees, the two plastic bags swinging from his hand. Kirby and the other following members of the team were coming up behind. They were on either side of him now, keeping pace. Sabah looked at them, blankly at first, but then more anxiously as they matched his steps. They were in the middle of the wooded area. Kirby looked ahead and behind. He saw only two Belgians, sitting on benches, tired from their walks. This was their best chance.
“Go,” he said. The two men astride Sabah continued to flank him, but now the two at the far end moved rapidly toward them. Sabah was looking anxiously, left and right and ahead, and the dog was barking. One of Kirby’s men in the forward team bumped Sabah as he passed, jabbing him with a needle.
Sabah cried out and the dog yammered, but a moment later the target’s body was crumpling and the two
men astride quickly converged to prop him up, pulling his arms over their shoulders and putting a cloth to his mouth so he couldn’t make any more noise. One of the Belgians looked up for a moment. But the team kept going, as if helping a friend home. The dog’s yelps ended suddenly, thanks to another needle, and one of Kirby’s men picked him up and cradled him in his arms.
Kirby called for the driver who had been idling just outside the park to meet them at the Avenue Victoria where it curved toward Franklin Roosevelt. His van was marked with the insignia of the Belgian Croix-Rouge.
The driver was there waiting, clad in the yellow vest of an emergency worker, when they emerged from the grove of trees: two men supporting a sagging body between them; a third carrying a small, furry animal. The door of the van was open, and the group quickly entered. Several passersby stopped to watch, in the curious way people do when they see something unusual happening, but they didn’t attempt to intervene. The van pulled away. Fifty yards up the road, another car picked up the other two members of the team, and in an instant they were off, heading south on the N5 toward Waterloo.
31
WATERLOO, BELGIUM
It was a tidy locale for a messy endeavor: The house was on a quiet street near a suburban golf club. The residence had a wrought-iron fence, a plush, spongy lawn and ivy growing up the brick façade. The Brussels station kept a tenant there normally, so that the place wouldn’t look empty and suspicious, but the tenant had been temporarily evicted so that this respectable Flemish address could momentarily serve as a “black site,” where an undocumented and certainly illegal event could be handled discreetly.
Kirby’s team had hooded the prisoner, as much to protect their identities as to frighten him. He had revived on the way, thanks to an antidote that counteracted the effects of the tranquilizer. His first query in the van was about his dog, and he seemed very happy when the curly-haired poodle was placed in his lap, even though little Émile was still out cold. He asked a few more frantic questions—where he was, who had taken him, what he had done—but Major Kirby had been instructed not to talk to him, and Sabah eventually gave up.
The ersatz Croix-Rouge van pulled into the driveway around eight p.m. The garage door cranked up to receive them, and the hooded man was gingerly removed from the vehicle and trundled indoors to the living room, where the hood was exchanged for a blindfold and he was offered food and drink.
The interrogator, who called himself “Sam,” sat across from Sabah. He had flown in that day from the big CIA station in Paris. Sophie Marx sat in the next chair, a notebook on her lap.
Sam turned on a tape recorder. His voice was deep and insistent. He spoke stiff French, with a noticeable accent.
“Nous sommes prets a commencer, Monsieur Sabah. Si vous coopérez et vous nous donnez des informations correctes, ce sera un processus très simple, et vous serriez libre. Mais si vous résistez ou mentez, vous serriez en grand difficulté, je vous assure. Vous vous merderiez!”
He paused, to let the gravity of his words sink in, but Sabah was smiling.
“You are American!” the prisoner said in English. “I am not so frightened now. I thought you might be Al-Qaeda.”
Sabah’s smile widened incongruously below the blindfold. He looked genuinely relieved to have been abducted by Americans.
The interrogator looked at Sophie Marx. She shrugged: She didn’t understand it, either.
“We are nobody,” said the interrogator, speaking now in English. “The question is: Who are you?”
“My name is Joseph Sabah. I work at SWIFT, in the data processing center. But you know that, of course. I am your man.”
Marx opened her hands, palms up, as if to say, I don’t get it.
“We have some questions for you, Mr. Sabah,” continued the interrogator. “Are you ready to talk with us now?”
“Yes, of course. Why not? Can I take off this blindfold?”
The interrogator slapped Sabah across the cheek, almost knocking him from the chair. His cheek reddened immediately as blood rushed to the skin.
“No questions from you, Mr. Sabah, just answers. Got that?”
“Yes, okay, sorry.” He was sniffling away tears.
“How long have you worked at SWIFT?”
“Eleven years. No, twelve years.”
“In that time, has anyone from outside SWIFT ever asked you for help in accessing wire-transfer records?”
“Yes, of course. Twice.”
The interrogator looked at Marx again. She gave another shrug, then rolled her finger as if to say, Let’s keep going.
“The first time was, I don’t know, it was several years after September 11, maybe in 2005. There was a group of us at SWIFT. It was official. Secret, yes, but the management had agreed to help trace the money of Al-Qaeda. But you know this.”
Sam looked to Marx for guidance. She motioned that he should join her outside the room. Sabah waited, mute in his blindfold, while they conferred. They returned a minute later.
“We know about the Terrorist Surveillance Program,” said the interrogator. “The Treasury Department organized it. It was in the newspapers. But it was stopped. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, that was the first time I was asked for help on wire transfers. It was very official, no problem. I was not important in that. They needed someone who spoke Arabic. I had a security clearance from SWIFT, so I was okay. I processed some requests, so I was cleared into the program.”
Marx held up two fingers. Sam nodded.
“What about the second time? When did that begin?”
“About a year ago. I do not have the exact date, but I can get it for you.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Okay, but you know. One of your people contacted me. His name was George. He said that you, America, were starting the program again but this time it had to be very secret. I could not talk about it with anyone at SWIFT. My contact said that he would give me account numbers and ask me to trace any transfers from them. That was it. I probably did twenty or thirty in the last year, maybe more.”
“How did you know he was an American?”
“He said so. He had an American name. He was calling from an American cell phone number, “seven-oh-three,” in Virginia, I think. And he knew about the earlier program. He said he had been a consultant before. He knew the names and procedures. That was how I was sure that he must be telling me the truth.”
“Did you meet him?”
“Only once, in the beginning. After that we spoke by telephone or sent emails.”
The interrogator shook his head. “You’re a fucking liar,” he said.
Sam looked like he was about to hit the prisoner again, but Marx raised her arm for him to stop and motioned that they should leave the room and confer again.
This time they took a little longer. When the interrogator returned, his tone was softer.
“I’m sorry for what I said before, Mr. Sabah. There was no need for me to swear at you. I apologize.”
“Thank you, sir. I am not an enemy. Please do not treat me like one.”
“Let’s go back to the man who was your contact the second time. Where did you meet him?”
“In a hotel in Brussels. The Conrad, I think. It was on Avenue Louise.”
“What did he look like, this man?”
“I did not see very well. It was dark in the room, and he was wearing sunglasses. I know you do that, you people, for disguise. I understand. His first name was George and his last name was very American, like George Washington or something. I forget. I assumed that was not his real name.”
“Did he have an accent, this ‘George’ who you met in the hotel?”
“Yes, a little. He might have been from Britain originally, or India. I don’t know. Everyone is from somewhere. That’s what I thought.”
“Is it possible that he was from Pakistan?”
“I suppose so. I am from Lebanon myself but I don’t call myself Lebanese. I say that I am a Belgian. He
said he was an American. And he knew things that only an American who was part of the secret program before would know.”
“Things like what?”
“He knew procedures, code names, techniques, all of the little details. They were things that it would be impossible to know unless you had been part of the program. That was how I knew he was okay.”
“Are you a Muslim, Mr. Sabah?”
“Pas de tout. I am a Maronite Catholic. My family fought against the Muslims in Lebanon. We hate the Muslims. That was one of the things that I talked about with the American man when we first met in the hotel. He said that he hated the Muslims, too, and all the terrible things that they had done. He made fun of the suicide bombers. That was another bond between us. He knew about my family, the village we were from in the Metn District. He knew all that. That was another reason I knew he must have been sent from the CIA, because he had all this information.”
“When George called you after that, where would he be calling from?”
“Different places. Paris, London, Amsterdam. He traveled a lot. He had a Swiss cell phone, too, not just the American one. Different numbers. He was a technical man. He went to conferences. That was one of the things that made me trust him. We talked about science when we first met.”
Marx was scribbling frantically on a page of her notebook as Sabah talked. She tore off the sheet and handed it to Sam. The interrogator read it and looked curiously at Marx, wondering if she really wanted him to ask those questions, but she nodded emphatically.
“Who is Perihilion, Mr. Sabah?”
The prisoner’s jaw dropped in surprise.
“That is the code name of the man we have been talking about, sir, George. He used that name when he called me, so that I would know it was him.”
“And who is Aphelion?”
“That is me, my code name. But you know that, of course. That is what I do not understand. Why are you putting me in a blindfold and asking me these questions when it is your operation we are talking about?”
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