Bloodmoney

by David Ignatius

  Marx beckoned for the interrogator to follow her out of the room once more. This time the conversation lasted nearly thirty minutes, and then Marx called Hoffman back in Washington to get his approval for what she wanted to do. Hoffman had to consult someone, and then there was another long call. Then a Support officer from the station was summoned to put together simple disguises for Marx and the interrogator, Sam; wigs and glasses and makeup.

  They sent in more food and water for Sabah while he was waiting. When they returned to the living room, the interrogator removed Sabah’s blindfold. The captive put his head in his hands. He didn’t want to look at them at first, as if that might be taboo.

  This time it was Marx who spoke first.

  “I want to apologize, Mr. Sabah. I was here before during the interrogation, but you could not see me. We are sorry for the difficulty we have caused you. There were some things that we didn’t understand, but now they are clear. Please accept our regrets for any pain or inconvenience.”

  “My apology, too, sir,” said Sam in the most contrite voice he could muster. “I sincerely regret my behavior. I should not have hit you.”

  “Now we need your help, Mr. Sabah,” continued Marx. “I know that’s a lot to ask, after what we put you through, but I hope that you will be willing to cooperate with us. We would also like to offer you financial compensation for the injury we have done to you, if you are prepared to sign a release. But we can talk about that later.”

  Sabah had been rubbing his eyes after the blindfold was removed, like a mole emerging from his hole in the ground and adjusting to the light. Now he looked at them warily, especially at Marx. He had not realized there was a woman present during the earlier interrogation.

  “Who are you, please?” he asked Marx.

  “I am an American intelligence officer. So is my colleague here. My name is Edith Halsey and this is Mr. Samuel Potter. You can call the U.S. Embassy and ask for the regional security officer. He will vouch for us.”

  She handed him a piece of paper with her new alias and a telephone number at the embassy written on it. He put it in the pocket of his blue jeans.

  “What do you want from me?” asked Sabah. “This is very confusing.”

  “It’s been confusing for us, too, if that’s any consolation. But I think now we understand it better. The man who contacted you, who called himself George and gave himself the code name Perihelion, is not an American at all. We think that he is a Pakistani Muslim and a very dangerous person.”

  “That is impossible. He said he was an American. He spoke of the earlier work. He hated the jihadists. He was working against them.”

  “It’s called a ‘false flag,’ Mr. Sabah. A man from one country pretends to be from another, to get cooperation. Israelis pretend to be Americans. Americans pretend to be Canadians. It’s part of the game.”

  “I don’t like it. It’s lying.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Sabah. But lying is the game.”

  The Lebanese-Belgian shook his head. It was too much to absorb in one evening.

  “How could George know all the details of your programs, if he wasn’t one of you?”

  “We don’t know. That’s one reason we need your help.”

  “I’m not sure. I need to think. After all this…” He gestured to the room and, by extension, to the events of the last several hours.

  “We don’t have time for you to think about it, Mr. Sabah. This man is responsible for the deaths of some brave Americans, and he will kill more people if we do not find him. We can’t wait.”

  Sabah was shaking his head.

  “I do not know. C’est trop. This is dangerous for me, too.”

  “Let me show you something,” said Marx. She removed a piece of paper from a folder and handed it to him. It was a copy of the list of four bank account routing numbers that Malik had given her in Islamabad.

  Sabah studied the paper. This was a code that he understood well. He handed it back.

  “I know what this is. I obtained this wire-transfer information for George. This was his most recent request. Is this a trick?”

  “No. Not a trick. We know you were helping him, but we want to believe that you made a mistake. I want to show you something else.”

  She passed a second sheet to him. This was the transcript of the call between Sabah and his contact, shorn of its Pakistani ISI tailings. He looked at this one for a long while, and then put his head in his hands.

  “Haram,” he muttered, using the Arabic word that in Lebanon connotes wrongdoing, for Christians and Muslims alike.

  Marx spoke now with a harder tone in her voice.

  “I hope you can see now why it is so important that you help us, Mr. Sabah. These documents connect you with a man who is a terrorist. If you do not work with us, we will have to assume that you are working against us. You would not be happy with that situation, I’m certain.”

  Sabah sighed. He knew that he was caught, more tightly now than before when he had been hooded.

  “So I do not have a choice,” he said.

  “No. Not really. There is only one good answer for you.”

  “I will do what I can,” he said glumly. “What is it that you want?”

  “We want you to help us catch him.”

  “You mean that I am the cheese, and he is the mouse?”

  “Yes, that’s the idea,” said Marx. “But this man is no mouse. He is somewhere between a rat and a snake. He has a motive, and he wants to kill, and right now you are the only chance we’ve got. I hope that makes you feel better, knowing that you are important.”

  “It does not make me feel better,” said Sabah. “Nothing will make me feel better until I am rid of all of you.”

  They took a break. Everyone was tired. Sabah’s contact records and datebook were in his laptop computer at home. They needed the computer, and every digit of email and phone information it contained about the man who had posed as George. Sophie Marx would take Sabah to his apartment, where they could retrieve the computer files.

  But right now the dog Émile was barking annoyingly in the hallway and Sabah went to check what was wrong.

  32

  STUDIO CITY, CALIFORNIA

  Jeff Gertz had a two-part rule for dealing with trouble. It dated back to when he worked for the Counterterrorism Center traveling to Iraq and Afghanistan: First, always have a plan for what to do if something bad happens; and second, always be the first to move when danger strikes. Don’t wait for others to run for shelter when a mortar round comes in, or to open fire at a hostile checkpoint, because by then it will be too late: Have a plan, move first. The threat in this case wasn’t shrapnel or bullets, but it was deadly nonetheless. Gertz had one other rule. It was the cardinal precept of the rational man: Save yourself first, and worry about the others later.

  The morning Cyril Hoffman called him to report that someone had tried to kill Sophie Marx in Islamabad, Gertz understood that the structure he had built was collapsing. He didn’t know how or why Sophie Marx had been targeted, or even what she had been doing in Pakistan, but it was clear that every outpost of his network was vulnerable. It wasn’t a matter of physical danger; he was deft enough to stay alive. His problem was more mundane: He needed to clean up the mess before it created an open scandal that would lead to his political and legal ruin.

  He cursed Sophie Marx for her disloyalty and, more, for being smarter and tougher than he had expected. But he couldn’t afford the luxury of personal animosity now.

  Gertz called Ted Yazdi at the White House. There was no answer on the STU-5, so he sent a message to Yazdi’s BlackBerry and got a quick, ostentatious message: In Oval. Can’t Talk. Gertz responded: We have trouble. Must see you in DC soonest to explain. After five minutes, the White House chief of staff sent back his answer: Meet me at ten tonight. Same place in Bethesda. Don’t do anything stupid.

  Gertz called the Burbank airport and alerted the crew of the Gulfstream that he would be leaving in an hour for Dulles. T
hen he had his secretary send out a book cable to everyone in the system, saying that he would be holding an emergency staff meeting in twenty minutes. Overseas personnel could watch on secure videoconference.

  That left just enough time to call back Hoffman at Langley. When they had spoken earlier that morning about Sophie Marx, Gertz had been angry and flustered, but now that he’d had some time to digest the news he was cold as a stone.

  “We’re shutting it down,” he told Hoffman. “Fire sale. Everything must go. It will take about a week. Then, bye-bye birdie. Finita la commedia, as you opera buffs would say.”

  “Isn’t that a bit rash, Jeffrey? We don’t know how serious the damage is yet.”

  “Yes, we do. We know there’s a leak. We know the boat is going to sink. It may take a week or a month or a year to go under, but we know how the story ends. You and Miss Priss can do what you want, but I’m not sticking around.”

  “What do your chums in the White House think about your liquidation plans? They seemed rather enthusiastic about this business enterprise.”

  “They don’t know yet. I see them tonight. But they’ll agree when I tell them the alternatives. They’ll love me for it.”

  “Everyone loves you, Jeff. Always. We’re just never sure what you’re doing.”

  Gertz ignored the rebuke. He didn’t have time to joust with Hoffman. The staff meeting was in ten minutes.

  “Here’s what I need from Headquarters. Number one, silence. This organization never existed. It doesn’t exist now. So that will make it easy when it doesn’t exist in the future. Do we agree on that? No statements, no briefings, no IG reports. Deaf and dumb.”

  “We will be silent as lambs. What’s number two?”

  “I may need help with relocation, severance, all of that. We have some decent people. I want them taken care of. Otherwise, they’ll talk.”

  “I thought you had arranged all of that, dear boy. Weren’t you supposed to be self-funding?”

  “Nobody’s perfect. And it appears that my funding mechanism isn’t quite as airtight as I thought. Contamination problem. It could even involve fraud, the lawyers tell me. I put the Brits on the case a few days ago. Serious Fraud Office. They love catching rich Americans who have been gaming the system.”

  “Oh, do they, now?” Hoffman chortled. “It really is sauve qui peut, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the Gertz family motto, Mr. Hoffman. Along with, ‘Don’t get caught.’”

  “You are an unpleasant man,” replied Hoffman.

  “So what?” he said.

  “I have one piece of advice for you in this self-demolition exercise: Don’t leave any loose ends. They have a way of catching up with one, or should I say, with you.”

  “I won’t. Speaking of which, where’s my faithful employee, Miss Marx? I take it she works for Headquarters now. What’s she doing?”

  “Well, that’s just it. She’s looking for loose ends. Clever girl, Brave, too.”

  “She won’t find any. But if she can figure out how this mess happened, more power to her.”

  “That’s very generous of you, old boy. And unless I’m mistaken, she’s well on her way.”

  “This is a fun conversation, Mr. Hoffman, but I’ve got to go. I have a staff meeting and then a flight to D.C. Give the director a kiss on the bum for me, eh? That’s your specialty.”

  “You are a most unpleasant man,” Hoffman said emphatically as he hung up the phone.

  The double doors of the conference room on the third floor were open wide, but the staff trickled in single file, as if it were a TSA security line at the airport. People were mostly silent. They looked tired and on edge; many of them had been sleeping at the homes of friends of relatives for the past week; they had been taking the bus or borrowing vehicles from neighbors, instead of driving themselves to work in their own cars. Most of them had stopped using credit cards. The rumor mill had it that anything with a digital address, even in alias, was insecure, so people tried to protect themselves. Some had even sent their children away.

  They were scared, plain and simple. Their boss, who was supposed to explain it all to them, had been away on unexplained travel, and when he was in the office, he was short-tempered and distracted. People didn’t want any false assurances of security, they just needed to know what was going on.

  The room was nearly full when Gertz arrived. He made a circular motion with his finger to the video technician, to the get the camera rolling for the secure videoconference. He waved to friends and coworkers and shook a few hands as he made his way to the podium. They were nervous, everyone fearing some new disaster, but the boss was smiling, so most of them smiled back. He had worn a tie to the office that morning, but had taken it off before the meeting. In his open-necked shirt he looked, if not quite relaxed, at least less uptight than in recent days.

  When he reached the podium he tapped the microphone once, to make sure that it was on, and then started speaking.

  “Ladies and gents, I want to share some good news,” he began. There was a flutter in the room. The people who knew Gertz best didn’t react at all; they understood that he was just clearing his throat.

  “I want to report that we are taking decisive steps to protect our people, here and overseas. I know how difficult this period has been for everyone, and it would be wrong to ask you to live with continued uncertainty. That would not be fair to any of you, not after how hard you have worked.”

  That brought nodding of heads and some exhalations of relief. One woman who worked in Support actually said, “Amen.” But Gertz was still priming the pump.

  “Your security and safety have to come first. That’s my point. I have been looking for a way to do that, while at the same time continuing The Hit Parade’s mission and normal operating tempo. I am sorry to say that it cannot be done. You can’t maximize two variables at once, as my economics teachers told me in college. The variable I have decided to maximize is your security.”

  Gertz paused, and people looked at each other, wondering what he was telling them, beneath all the fluff. But he was getting around to it.

  “What that means, unfortunately, is that we are going to have to close down our operations, and we must do it in a hurry.”

  Now there were groans, and someone in the back muttered, “No way.”

  “Nobody hates this more than me, folks. This is my baby, and I have lived and sweated every minute of our time together. But we are losing people, with many more at risk, and I cannot rule out the possibility that our most secure procedures and systems may have been compromised. That puts everybody in jeopardy. We can’t live like that. Am I right? Tell me if you disagree.”

  The docile souls up front who had been following along on cue nodded their assent once more. Of course he was right. He was the leader. He had the big heart.

  “I had asked Sophie Marx, our chief of counterintelligence, to lead our effort to identify the security problem that has led to the deaths of your colleagues. Perhaps that was unwise on my part. As some of you cautioned me at the time, she is a relatively junior officer without much management experience. In any event, she has failed to make progress, and during this time The Hit Parade’s risk profile has actually increased. She made an unauthorized trip to Pakistan, at a time when such travel was forbidden, and she was attacked, unsuccessfully. I blame myself for this poor choice of personnel. She has been relieved of duty, pending a more detailed investigation.”

  Marx had aroused so much envy with her rapid rise that people nodded in support for her firing, too, especially some of the women in the office, who might have been expected to back up one of their own. In bad times, every organization needs a villain on whom to blame bad events, and Gertz had given them one.

  “We are going to have to move quickly now, and with good discipline. A retreat under fire is the hardest maneuver in warfare, as our ex-military colleagues know. So here is what we will have to do over the next few days:

  “First, our cover company,
The Hit Parade LLP, will declare bankruptcy the day after tomorrow. I asked the legal team to begin preparing the papers last week, as a contingency. Now they will be filed. We are a small company and very privately held, so that shouldn’t generate too many ripples. In the meantime, we need to get all the secure paperwork and computers out of here. My deputy, Steve Rossetti, will coordinate this rapid movement with the associate deputy director’s office at Headquarters. Some of you will have to stay late tonight and tomorrow to get everything bundled and on the trucks. Again, I leave the details to Steve.”

  Gertz turned to face the video monitor and the foreign staff. He was like an actor that way. He knew how to cheat to the camera, to establish an intimacy with his audience that was palpable, if also false.

  “May I say to our brothers and sisters overseas, who have been taking the biggest risks without complaining or panicking: I want all of you home within a week. We will close all the foreign offices as quickly as we can. If you can’t find a tenant for your office space or apartment, just leave it. We’ll clean that up later. We will be bringing everyone home under false documentation. I want you to contact your nearest embassy or consulate and ask for the senior CIA officer. They will get you documentation and cash.

  “No alias credit cards, please, no draws on your existing banks and if you haven’t already left your current residences and offices, do so now, when this briefing ends. No bullshit, folks, there are no heroes in this movie. These movements will be coordinated by Tommy Arden in Support.

  “Now let me come back to where I started, which is the good news. Everyone will be taken care of. There will be jobs in the system for anyone who wants them. You are all under cover, and I remind you that the secrecy agreements you signed are absolute, permanent and enforceable by U.S. criminal courts. Those who prefer to retire will get generous termination and relocation assistance. There will also be special ‘hazardous duty’ bonuses for everyone on the staff. They will be substantial. God knows, you have earned them. Okay? Tommy Arden will be setting up a special HR ‘help desk’ to take care of the details.”