by C. Forsyth
X was picturing Black Death bacterium swimming like salmon through his bloodstream, and continued to shake his head. "No, no, no, no," he kept muttering.
"You'll infect your cellmate, and you'll both begin to experience the symptoms: swollen lymph glands in your armpits, groin and neck, chills, fever. You'll vomit up blood fairly continuously for a while and there'll be blood in your piss as well. You'll cough a good bit and most dramatically, little black dots will appear all over your body. You'll suffer some real delirium, although, as I said, after a few days you'll have to go on faking that in front of the medical staff."
X's distrust of Mr. Jones was quickly blossoming into hatred. The old man delivered this news with obvious relish.
"I suppose it would be too simple to just give us the flu," the identity thief said without any attempt to disguise his bitterness.
Mr. Jones opened a bottle of alcohol and dipped a cotton ball in it.
"We need something that will get you into the special isolation room and keep you there. For obvious reasons, the room has its own ventilation and the shaft leads to precisely where you need to be."
He stepped toward X, with the needle in one hand and the cotton swab in the other. X stepped back.
"Now, don't be a baby," Mr. Jones said. "You know there's no alternative. It's either this or I leave you to the CIA interrogators. You'll be tortured - excuse me, subjected to harsh interrogation techniques - for weeks or months, given rougher and rougher treatment because you refuse to break, since of course, you have nothing to give them.
"Then, your mind and body broken, you'll be deep-sixed and forgotten in some holding center until the War on Terror is over - a few decades from now. Or, you somehow manage to convince someone of who you really are, in which case you go to prison stateside until we have flying cars."
X stared at the rotund, white-bearded man, trying to his make his Santa-like appearance jibe with his heartless words.
"You make a compelling case," he said finally, raising his arm.
"No, no," Mr. Jones said, pushing down his arm, "not there."
X smirked and turned around. "In the butt? Why am I not surprised? How appropriate."
"Bottom of your feet, between your toes, if you don't mind," the elderly spook said. "I'm afraid you'll be searched before the symptoms kick in and we can't have any obvious marks on you."
X sighed and lifted up his right foot, like a horse being shod.
Chapter 14
WELCOME TO THE TEAM
Mr. Jones - whose real name was Arnold Fiorella, by the way - didn't always want to be a spy. Indeed, he attended divinity school with every intention of being ordained a priest. But during the '70s, when the intelligence community was ravaged by the corrupt influence of politicians, all the way up to the White House, he saw the need to restore American spies to the role they'd played in World War II. Back then, the OSS matched wits with Hitler's spymasters, and secret agents were knights without armor, championing the cause of liberty. So he joined the CIA and within a year was recruited by the Committee.
Mr. Jones still considered his current calling God's work. When the second President Bush was chided for using the incendiary word "crusade" to describe the war on Islamofacism, Mr. Jones solemnly told his colleagues the Commander in Chief was right the first time.
"This is a holy war, make no mistake about it," he said in the musty, mahogany-paneled meeting hall in Philadelphia where Committee chiefs had gathered since the Revolution. "A clash of civilizations doesn't begin to cover it. This is Good versus Evil."
Mr. Jones was a vastly talented spymaster. He was especially adept at black flag recruitments - convincing people to surrender their country's secrets to what they believed was a friendly nation. How many Jewish intelligence officers in Argentina had he flipped into double agents by convincing them their handler was Israeli?
Despite his rather broad puritanical streak, he made liberal use of "ladies" as they were called - to lure officials into compromising situations. Photographs of such "honey traps" provided Jones with biographic leverage (known to the uninitiated as blackmail material) to control the subject. Mr. Jones pulled the strings of such hapless souls so deftly that his nickname on the Committee became The Puppet Master and later Geppetto.
* * *
Back in his cell, wearing a few obligatory bruises the spymaster had apologetically applied to his cheek, eyebrow and lower lip, X lay on his bunk. Though he'd feigned a limp when lurching into the cell, there was nothing fake about his mental exhaustion. His eyes were shut, and he said nothing, but his cellmate didn't take the hint.
Asar rambled on effusively, "I knew they couldn't break you! Those infidels know nothing about the strength of spirit Allah confers on his warriors, those who have surrendered to him."
"You bet," X said in English.
Asar laughed heartily. "I know what that means. I heard it in a Tom Cruise movie."
X rolled over on his belly. Was he already beginning to feel ill, or was it his imagination? Surely the microbes couldn't work that fast. Or could the genetically engineered medical miracles do anything their creators wanted?
"I can't wait until they come for me," Asar declared, thumping his chest. "I will spit in their faces, just as you have done. You are my inspiration, Ali. It is an honor to share the company of one such as you."
* * *
FBI agent Traci Kingsmith walked across the prison yard, escorted by a pair of Marines, uncomfortably aware of the stares of prisoners in orange jumpsuits milling about the exercise yard. It was obvious they hadn't seen a woman in a long time, certainly not one without a burqa.
Jesus, is there no prohibition against undressing a woman with your eyes in your culture?
Why she had been excused from her duties in the middle of her lunch break by her boss Mr. Normand and flown halfway around the world she could not imagine. She'd simply been told that it was a matter of national security and she was to pack only necessities. Until she boarded the small jet - a Cessna 560 Citation V - she was not even told by the pilot where they were bound. He and the co-pilot were the only other souls on board and they didn't utter a single word to her except to tell her to buckle her seatbelt before takeoff and unbuckle it after landing.
Now, with her escorts, she strode toward a drab, windowless, flat-roofed cinderblock building in the center of Abd Al-Rahman Prison in Afghanistan. It was one of a dozen squat buildings surrounded by a double line of 12-foot high chain-link fences. Each fence was topped with rusted razor wire.
There were four guard towers, one at each corner of the compound. Machine gun muzzles protruded from the covered platforms. She and her silent escorts approached the two-story building - the only one with windows, albeit tiny ones. Two Marine guards toting M-4 carbine assault rifles stood on either side of a metal door. A hand-painted sign above the entrance identified this as the Administration Building. After Traci's escort gave one of the guards her papers, he pushed a button at the right side of the door and a buzzer sounded so loudly she almost jumped. The door swung open and they were admitted.
They marched down a long, sterile hall lined with closed doors. Then the agent was ushered into a small room that, suspiciously, had nothing but the word "office" on the plaque beside it.
When Traci saw Mr. Jones behind the desk, she was not bewildered, more pissed off, really.
"I might have known you had something to do with this," she snapped. "What agency do you work for?"
Mr. Jones lit his pipe. "Have a seat."
Traci didn't move. "Are you going to answer my question?"
He smiled enigmatically.
"Then I'm out of here," she declared, and turned.
"The only thing I'm at liberty to say is that I have the authority to have you shot before you set foot outside the gates."
He said it calmly and without overt menace, but with enough iron in his tone to leave her no doubt whatsoever that he was speaking the truth. She turned slowly. He gestured to the ch
air, and she sat, her ankles crossed in a ladylike manner with her hands in her lap.
"Congratulations on your capture in Nevada," he said. "Very impressive."
"Thank you," she replied icily.
"I should tell you, however, that the man you took into custody is not Ali Nazeer."
"The hell he isn't."
And so Mr. Jones told her of Nazeer's death, of X's true identity, of the mission, and with every fresh revelation, she shook her head with incredulity.
"Why wasn't I informed that the man we spent hundreds of man hours and millions of dollars pursuing was a fake?" she said. "A two-bit hustler."
"No one in the FBI was informed, nor in the Department of Homeland Security."
"You've got to be joking. We were all on a wild goose chase? Why weren't we in the loop?"
"There are plants in all of those agencies. Muslim Americans - and perhaps even some non-Muslims - who are deep-cover operatives of the Warriors of Allah."
"In the CIA? Homeland Security? Come on!"
"You probably know that 9/11 caught our nation with its pants down. Our intelligence agencies had only a handful of Arabic-speaking agents and we had to go on a recruiting spree. Well, while we were busy catching up, our enemies were busy planting moles. In fact they planted many of their moles years before the attack."
Okay, that makes a crazy kind of sense, she thought.
"Well, wouldn't it be more prudent to use one of our own agents? Why would you want to use an untrained, unscrupulous - to put it mildly - civilian on a sensitive mission like this?"
"As I said, the U.S. Intelligence community is riddled with moles. And how many CIA agents just happen to be dead ringers for Ali Nazeer? When this 'Ali Nazeer' suddenly surfaced a few weeks after the real one was eliminated, well, it presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Particularly since, of course, he's a totally deniable - not to mention disposable - asset."
"What's my role supposed to be?"
"You'll be 'Nazeer's' handler. You know how he thinks better than anyone."
"I know nothing about him," she protested. "I thought he was Ali Nazeer until five minutes ago."
Mr. Jones smiled.
"You captured him. You out-thought him. There's every chance this con artist will bolt the first chance he gets. You have to prevent that."
Traci's role would be to accompany "Ali Nazeer," Asar, and a third man, whose identity had not yet been revealed to her, after their escape, to the mountains where it was believed The Chief's lair lay. Her cover was to be a member of the Jihadist movement.
"But my Arabic," she protested. "My accent is far from perfect."
"Your cover is that you are a Liberian," explained Mr. Jones. "Their official language is English, so your accent will be perfectly fine unless you run into Henry Higgins. You are also familiar with Pashto and Dari, correct?
"Enough to do some translations for the Bureau, but -"
"That's all we need." Mr. Jones raised a hand, silencing her. "Now I want you to meet someone." He pressed an intercom button. "Send in the prisoner."
The door opened, and a Marine shoved in a bearded man in handcuffs and leg irons.
For a moment she thought it was X in eyeglasses. He had a similar small, wiry frame and swarthy complexion. But on closer inspection she realized it was a stranger.
"Harry Assad, meet Special Agent Traci King," Mr. Jones said.
"Excuse me for not shaking hands," the guy said with a little smirk that made Traci decide right off the bat she didn't like him.
Mr. Jones explained, "He's been planted among the inmates under the name Moammar el Shabaz. He'll be moved in with 'Ali Nazeer' today."
"You're Saudi intelligence?" Traci suggested.
"Harry's a Lebanese American in the Defense Intelligence Agency," Mr. Jones informed her. "And, like you, now working for the Committee."
"How do we know he's not a mole?" she said sarcastically. "A Muslim fanatic."
"I happen to be a Christian," Harry responded with obvious irritation.
"Well that's a relief. Hallelujah!"
"Have a seat, Harry," Mr. Jones said with a courteous smile, gesturing to a seat beside Traci. "Harry's a computer whiz. He graduated first in his class at MIT. Made $20 million creating computer games."
"Well that'll come in handy if we run into an army of zombies," she said, using her finger as an imaginary gun to pick off targets. She was liking this less and less.
"We recruited him in 11th grade, and in exchange for a modest sum of start-up capital, he agreed to create programs for us," Jones said. "Some rather nifty ones, I must say - including a virus that's made all of Russia's nuclear missile systems inoperable and some artificial intelligence stuff that would, well, let's just say it would blow your mind."
Traci shrugged.
Mr. Jones opened his mouth to continue his sales pitch, but Harry raised a hand to stay him.
"I sold my company to Microsoft and retired at 23," he said in a somber voice. "But when 9/11 happened, I wanted to do something about it. So I volunteered to be a field agent."
Traci had no snappy comeback to that. Invoking 9/11 was a trump card that had a way of extinguishing debate.
"Harry is an expert marksman. He can match the best of the CIA farm boys shot for shot," said Mr. Jones. "Farm boys" was a euphemism in the intelligence agency for assassins, Traci knew.
"And he has a black belt like you," Mr. Jones went on. "Perhaps you'd like to hold a sparring match some time."
Traci had no interest in Harry's resume, although kicking someone's ass right now held a certain appeal. She had no doubt she could take the little guy.
"So what's the plan, Mr. Smith?"
"Jones."
"Of course."
The spymaster knocked off the friendly host act and got down to business.
"After raiding an Islamist safe house in Berlin, our friends at the BND did some routine neutron bombardment to scan captured documents. They uncovered invisible writing pertaining to The Chief on pages of a Koran," he revealed.
The BND was Germany's intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst; Traci knew that much. It literally meant the Federal News Agency, thus a nickname for their assassins was "cub reporters."
"The Chief has amassed a war chest of approximately $45 billion," Mr. Jones went on. "We believe he intends to use the money to purchase a WMD from Ukraine. Where the funds are hidden, we don't know."
That got Traci's attention, as talk of nukes generally does with law enforcement officers.
"Nuclear material?"
"We don't know what it is. Our Ali Nazeer and Harry here will penetrate The Chief's hideout and execute a computer theft of those funds."
"Is this con man a computer nerd too?"
"Leave the technical stuff to me," Harry boasted. "All 'Ali Nazeer' has to do is get me to a computer terminal in The Chief's headquarters, or near enough to hack in with a laptop. I'll do the rest."
"Glad it's going to be such a cakewalk," Traci said, crossing her arms with a sour expression. "So, what's next?"
Mr. Jones was beaming again, in full Santa Claus mode.
"First we get you some language tapes to brush up on your dialects," he said. "Then we measure you for a burqa."
Chapter 15
THE GREAT ESCAPE
X ought to have been in better spirits now that he knew he faced no 15th century torture. But it was hard to put out of his mind the little fact that within a matter of hours the Black Plague symptoms would kick in. The disease that had wiped out more than a quarter of Europe's population. So it took all his acting talents to remain jovial when he dined with fawning fellow prisoners in the mess hall.
"We heard how bravely you withstood the torture of the Americans, waterboarding and electric shock and other, unthinkable things," a member of his entourage marveled. "Is it true that they put you on the rack?"
X nodded. "It was nothing. I may get one for my mansion."
His peers roared wi
th laughter.
X grinned and took a bite out of a baloney sandwich (the pork-free variety, of course). At least he could eat without discomfort. Right after his tete a tete with Mr. Jones, he'd been wheeled to the office of the prison dentist, where he'd been outfitted with a new filling to replace the one that had been knocked out of his head. X found this random act of kindness on the part of his captors rather bizarre.
He was dragged from his cell for a "torture" session each of the three succeeding days after his initial meeting with Mr. Jones. And the daily two-hour sessions, in which Mr. Jones briefed him on details of the terrorist network he supposedly ran, were somewhat torturous to X. After being forced to repeat back to his mentor intricacies of the Jihadist Brotherhood's chain of command - more mind-numbing than the British monarchy's line of succession - he told Mr. Jones, "Please, don't you have an iron maiden you can shove me in instead of this?"
And of course, he was told about Harry, his new partner in crime.
Back in his cell, he and Asar were trading riddles (Asar seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Arabic ones dating back 1,000 years) when Harry was shoved into their cell.
X greeted the newcomer with exaggerated enthusiasm, embracing him, then clapping his hands on his face and bringing it close to his own.
"Moammar, I thought you were dead," he said excitedly.
"And I you," Harry replied.
X turned. "Asar, this is my friend and ally Moammar. It was he who engineered the destruction of the American consulate in Riyadh."
"I thought that was Al-Qaeda," Asar said, looking puzzled.
"Those rascals try to take credit for everything," X replied without skipping a beat. "No, it was Moammar here and his team, with the aid of Allah. Moammar, I thought you were killed in the firefight by Saudi secret police."
"I escaped in the back of a Red Cross truck that was passing at that very moment," Harry said.