THEY WERE IN the corner, as usual, and she was late, as usual. She took the last seat, a glass of wine already poured for her. “To the Sophisticated Ladies,” they all said, glasses raised.
“The Sophisticated Ladies.” Clink.
A somewhat bitter joke. The initials stood for Self-Loathing as well. Did they really hate themselves? Probably not. But Exley could always hear a little voice deep in her head, and she guessed the other four women could too: Your kids don’t even think of you as their real mom anymore. You’re going to be alone the rest of your life. Worst of all, words she knew the others didn’t hear: There’s a pattern in the intercepts. Something is coming, and you’re too dumb to see it.
She needed to stop this second guessing before she shook herself apart. There wasn’t any pattern. She couldn’t analyze information that didn’t exist. That damn voice. Men didn’t hear that voice. Men expected success even when they failed; women awaited failure even after they had succeeded.
Lynette, a slim black woman who was a producer at NBC, caught her eye. “You okay, baby? You look stressed.”
“Just fine.” Exley tried to smile.
“We find Osama yet?” They all knew Exley worked at the agency, though not what she did.
“You’re asking the wrong woman,” Exley said. “I’m just a secretary.”
“I know you run that place.”
“If I ran it, things would be different.” The joke was almost automatic, but Lynette smiled anyway, and after a moment Exley did too.
“That is the truth.” Lynette raised her glass.
THE AGENCY AND the Joint Terrorism Task Force had worked nonstop in the months since the Los Angeles bombings. But the investigators still hadn’t identified the bombers, much less figured out how they had accumulated three tons of ammonium nitrate without anyone noticing. Either they had gotten the stuff through customs or they had built a stash bit by bit while living in America for years. Exley couldn’t decide which prospect was worse. And she worried that the attacks had been designed as a diversion. Even the United States government didn’t have infinite resources. The FBI had put some of its best agents on the bombing case, pulling them from other open investigations. Exley understood the instinct; the families of the dead wanted answers and arrests at any cost. She just hoped that the cost wouldn’t include another attack.
She and Shafer were looking ahead. They had spent the spring and summer poring over the databases the JTTF used to track the movements and communications of every known al Qaeda member, searching for patterns the first-line analysts had missed. So far they hadn’t found much. Over the years the intelligence community had accumulated evidence that al Qaeda had at least one sleeper network somewhere inside the United States. Network X, some people at the agency called it. Two or three cells, between six and twenty agents in all. Put in place before September 11. Al Qaeda’s secret weapon. Waiting for orders to launch a big attack, presumably chemical or biological or radiological. Or nuclear, God forbid. And last month the NSA had picked up an e-mail that indicated that al Qaeda had somehow gotten nuclear material into the United States. But the message was unconfirmed, and no one knew how — or even if — it tied into Network X.
Not that Exley would mention any of this to the Sophisticated Ladies. Much less the early-morning phone call she had gotten two weeks before. She poured herself another glass of wine and decided to try to relax. “Girls,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”
Gretchen, a petite gray-haired woman, leaned in. “So…”
“So?”
“Don’t play dumb with us, Jennifer. How was your date?”
Exley didn’t feel like having this conversation again. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“What?” Gretchen said.
“The five of us, we’re all attractive. All financially stable, all reasonably sane.”
“Speak for yourself,” Lynette said, getting a laugh.
“No, really. And we’re lucky to get, what — two dates a month? Not two each. Two for all five of us.”
“Hey,” said Ann, the lawyer. “I got propositioned just last week at this conference in Atlanta. I mean, he was married, but he did take off his ring before he asked. I thought that was sweet.”
This time the laughter had an edge. The Sophisticated Ladies got plenty of propositions from married men at bars — or, worse, at work. They got invitations to cocktail parties from guys who had never married and were probably closet cases. What they didn’t get were real dates from divorced men their own age. Unless they didn’t want more kids, those guys inevitably wound up with women at least a decade younger.
“Stop stalling,” Gretchen said to Exley. “How was it?”
Normally Exley submitted to these interrogations without much resistance, though privately she wished they would spend less time talking about men. Nothing ever changed, so what was the point? But tonight she had no appetite for Gretchen’s questions. She wanted to sit and drink her wine.
“Must have been good,” Ann said. “You look tired.”
“Leave her alone,” Lynette said. “Least let the lady finish her wine.”
EXLEY HAD MENTALLY replayed the call from Wells a hundred times. She had traced the number — an exchange in Nashville, a cellphone, which meant it could have been made from anywhere. She could easily call a friend at the FBI to find out where. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to take that step.
Nor had she told anyone at the agency, even Shafer, about the call. She feared she would lose control if she did. They would tap her phone, monitor her apartment. After all, Wells was a fugitive. Duto had a couple of his goons searching for Wells in the United States without telling the FBI — even though the agency’s charter specifically prohibited it from operating on American soil. Duto had somehow convinced his general counsel that the CIA could search for Wells under an exception to its charter that allowed limited investigations of internal security breaches.
Exley assumed that the search for Wells was small and basically for show, so that Duto would have his ass covered in case something happened to Wells. She didn’t think Duto seriously considered Wells a threat. In fact, he might be glad to have Wells on the loose. This way Duto would still get credit on the off chance that Wells stopped an attack, while being able to blame Shafer if Wells screwed up or turned up dead. But she couldn’t be sure, since Duto refused to give her or Shafer any details about the search — though he had told her that she needed to tell him if Wells contacted her.
“I want to know personally,” he had said. “You understand, Jennifer?”
Disobeying direct orders from Vinny Duto was a bad idea. But Exley didn’t care. She was certain Wells hadn’t flipped. She wanted to protect him as best she could, save him from being warehoused in a cell somewhere. If he found anything important, he would reach out.
Meanwhile, she wished she knew where he was now, what he was doing, what he thought of the agency’s games. What did he think of the United States, after his years away? And what about her? Did he think of her the way she thought of him? He was a constant presence in her mind, and his call had made her believe that he felt the same, but she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he had reached out to her only because he had no one else. Yet when she’d hung up the phone she’d realized that the call hadn’t surprised her at all; subconsciously, she had expected it.
Her overwhelming desire for Wells confused her. She was basically logical, and yet somehow she had fallen for a man she had seen for all of two weeks in the last ten years, a man who had probably lost his mind somewhere in the hills of Afghanistan. But he hadn’t seemed crazy in the Jeep; his brown eyes had seemed entirely calm. In any case, he wasn’t like anyone else she had ever known.
In her more cynical moments she wondered if she wasn’t lost in an escape fantasy. A strong silent man to take her away. If he happens to be a renegade agent even better. She wished she could tell the Sophisticated Ladies about the situation. They would appreciate the irony. She had always pride
d herself on keeping her feelings out of the office. Women so easily got tagged as weepers who couldn’t be trusted under pressure. Even during her divorce only Shafer had known how badly she was hurting. Now she had thrown away her rules for a man she would probably never see again. If the stakes weren’t so high, she would have laughed at herself.
For the moment she had decided to think of the call as a dream. That way she didn’t have to report it.
A tap from Gretchen shook her out of her reverie. “Come on, Jennifer. Share.”
Fine. She would tell them about her date. “There’s nothing to share. His name’s Charles Li, a cardiologist at Georgetown. Divorced. We went out last week.”
“Where?”
“Olives.”
“Very nice.”
And so very predictable, Exley thought. Olives was an overpriced restaurant on Sixteenth and K with a big-name chef and a fancy wine list. She had to guess that Wells would never take her to Olives.
“So…how it’d go?”
“It went fine. I learned a lot about stents. And Lipitor. You all should have your cholesterol checked. Did you know that heart disease kills more women than any other illness, including breast cancer?”
Lynette shook her head. “That bad, huh?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t get to talk much.”
“You know you have to let them talk about themselves on the first date,” Gretchen said. “Has he called?”
“Oh yeah.” Called, sent flowers, called some more. Dr. Li was persistent. Persistent enough that she had considered giving him another chance, despite his potbelly and comb-over. At least the good doctor was making an effort.
“Well that counts for something—” Gretchen said as Exley’s cellphone rang. She flipped it open.
“Pack a bag for warm weather and get in here.” It was Shafer. Click.
SHE WAS GLAD for the excuse to go. She quickly said her goodbyes and arrived at Langley an hour later to find Shafer sitting on her desk, a suitcase at his feet.
“What took you so long?”
“Ellis. I set a land speed record getting here.”
“I have a special treat. Come on.” He grabbed his suitcase and strutted out of her office, leaving her to follow. Evidently she wasn’t the only one losing her mind.
At the best of times Shafer was an uncertain driver. Tonight he veered from lane to lane, speeding and tailgating, as they headed south, then east on the Beltway, toward Andrews Air Force Base.
“Where are we going, Ellis?”
“You’re an analyst. Analyze the situation.”
She felt herself flush with irritation. Shafer must be nervous. He wasn’t usually so juvenile.
“Ellis. This isn’t a fucking class trip.”
“Temper temper.”
“Fine,” she said. “Looks like we’re headed to Andrews. And you told me to pack for warm weather. I’ll say Gitmo.”
“Guantánamo?” Shafer laughed. “Come on, reporters tour that base. You think we keep anybody important there?”
“Then where?”
“A long way away.”
“Kuwait? Oman?”
“A place that doesn’t exist.”
“Diego Garcia,” she said.
“Well done.”
Diego Garcia was a U.S. naval base on a British island in the Indian Ocean, one thousand miles from the southern tip of India, even farther from Africa. The base wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t exactly well publicized either. The Pentagon always denied holding al Qaeda members there, mainly to soothe British sensibilities. The Pentagon lied, Exley knew; Diego was home to several al Qaeda operatives.
“May I ask why?” she said. “Or do I have to play Twenty Questions again?”
“A month ago we caught somebody in Baghdad. A Pakistani nuclear scientist.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“And?”
“And he’s got some interesting information. I thought we should see him for ourselves.”
THEY SAT IN the upper deck of a C-5 Galaxy at Andrews Air Force Base, a row ahead of two scowling men whose passes identified them only as Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. Below them, a company of Rangers sat in the aircraft’s giant cargo bay, along with pallets loaded high with MREs, ammunition, and even a couple of armored Humvees.
“Can this thing really fly?” Shafer said.
“Scared?”
“I just can’t believe how big it is. Did you know it can carry two M-1 tanks? It’s the biggest bird the air force has.”
“When did you start calling planes ‘birds’?”
“We’re lucky to get to ride in it. They don’t usually take civilians. I had to pull some serious strings.”
“I didn’t think you had too many strings left.”
Shafer leaned toward Exley as the C-5’s engines whined to life. “I don’t,” he said quietly, under the noise of the jets. “Remember that, Jennifer.”
Exley didn’t know what to say. Was Shafer exaggerating, or did he really have problems? The whine became a roar, and a throb of power ran through the plane’s frame. Exley felt the C-5 accelerating slowly, though without windows she couldn’t see the jet move.
Shafer handed her earphones and a little white pill. “How about some vitamin A?”
“Vitamin A?”
“Ambien. See you tomorrow.”
He popped a pill into his mouth. A moment later she followed him down the rabbit hole.
EXLEY’S PHONE RANG and rang; she knew Wells was calling, but she couldn’t answer. An earthquake gripped her bed, lasting longer than any earthquake should, and every time she tried to pick up the phone it jumped away.
Then the phone stopped ringing, and fear gripped her. She’d lost Wells—
She woke up. For a panicked moment she couldn’t figure out where she was. Someone touched her shoulder and she yelped.
“You okay?”
The world came back into focus when she heard Shafer’s voice. “How long was I out?”
Shafer looked at his watch. “Ten hours. Still a ways to go. You missed the movie.”
She needed a few seconds to realize he was joking. She supposed the Ambien hadn’t fully worn off yet. The plane was shaking; that accounted for her dream.
Shafer cocked his head toward her. An expression she couldn’t read crossed his face.
“What?”
“You and Wells look the same when you’re having a nightmare, you know that?”
Exley blinked in her seat. How did Shafer know what Wells looked like when he was dreaming? Was he telling her that he knew about the Jeep? The call? Was he just guessing?
“You’re sleeping with him too?” she said.
Shafer laughed. “I saw him asleep once at Langley, that’s all.”
“Do we have any food on this bird?”
“I saved you dinner.” He handed her an MRE, a sealed brown plastic bag whose label informed her that it contained spaghetti and meatballs. She looked at it doubtfully.
“Not bad. Just make sure you use the heater. And you ought to stretch your legs.”
“Believe it or not I’ve flown before.”
He handed her a sheaf of papers. “Before we land you need to sign this.”
She flicked through them. “A secrecy agreement? Ellis, I have every classification there is.”
“Not for this. No one is graded for this.”
Exley felt her stomach drop again. This time it wasn’t turbulence. She had left the Jefferson a long way behind. “Just what are we doing to this guy?”
FAROUK KHAN WAS having a very bad day. Not that day or night meant much to Farouk anymore; his concept of time had vanished in the weeks since the Special Forces put a hood over his head and took him to an underground cell at Camp Victory. Though Farouk’s passport was fake, his Geiger counter was real enough, and Task Force 121 immediately understood his importance.
Within hours word of his capture reached senior officers
at both the CIA and Centcom — United States Central Command, which runs American military operations across the Middle East. By the time the sun rose the next day in Washington, the White House had been informed. Before noon the president had signed an executive order designating Farouk as a C-1 enemy combatant.
The United States had used the C-1 label only six times since 2001, when it began exempting al Qaeda detainees from the protections that the Geneva Convention offered to traditional prisoners of war. In legal terms, the designation meant that the United States government had determined that Farouk might have knowledge of imminent (Category C), large-scale (Category 1) terrorist attacks. As a result, Farouk would be excepted from both the Geneva rules and the rights that the Supreme Court had required for prisoners held in Guantánamo.
In less legal terms, the designation put Farouk neck deep in shit.
Of course, the United States government did not condone torture, even for prisoners like Farouk. Civilized nations do not torture captives. But torture had been defined rather narrowly in the manual that specified the permissible interrogation techniques for C-1 detainees like Farouk. The manual, called the White Book because of the color of its cover, noted that interrogators should weigh the harm inflicted on detainees against the potential danger from terrorist acts. Thus the White Book said interrogators could do anything that did not cause “severe and permanent” injury. The conjunction was italicized so that the manual’s point would be clear. Severe injuries were allowed, as long as they were not permanent. Similarly, psychotropic drugs were banned only if they produced “severe and permanent” brain injury or mental illness. The same rule applied to sensory deprivation, restrictive confinement, and denial of food and water.
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