The Secret Soldier jw-5

by Alex Berenson

  NOW HE LOOKED DOWN to Ridge, who was pale, eyes closed, an unhealthy shine on his cheeks. “Ridge.”

  “What now?”

  “You want out, I’ll get you home. Get-out-of-jail-free card. No DEA or anything.”

  “You can do that?”

  Wells nodded.

  “Man,” Ridge said for the second time. “Who are you?”

  “I have friends.”

  “The original original gangster.”

  “You want it or not?”

  “Maybe.” He looked Wells over. “What, I’m supposed to say thanks? After you kidnapped me, bashed my head in? You’re a real humanitarian.” Ridge closed his eyes. Wells decided to do the same.

  “JOHN,” GAFFAN SAID. “READY?”

  Wells scrambled up beside Gaffan. “Where are we?”

  “About three minutes from Unity Hall. So how do I play this?”

  “Show them your ID and tell them as little as possible. Tell them to call the embassy if you have to, the JCF”—Jamaica Constabulary Force. “They won’t want to.”

  “If they ask where we’re going?”

  “Tell them you can’t say.”

  At the gatehouse, the guard was a small dark-skinned man who wore a blue shirt with a seven-pointed star. “Yes?”

  Gaffan flashed his badge.

  “Let me see that,” the guard said. Gaffan handed his badge and ID over. Wells followed.

  “This is Jamaica. Not America.”

  “The man we want, he’s a U.S. citizen.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “No name, no pass.”

  “Call our embassy.”

  “Tell me his name or I call the constables myself—”

  Wells leaned across the seat. “His name’s Mark Edward. Drives a Toyota with a big spoiler on the back. Celica.”

  The guard nodded. “That one a cheap bastard. Gwaan, then. You know where to find him?”

  “End of the second row on the left.”

  “Exactly wrong. Right and then left. House one-forty-three.”

  The barrier rose, and they rolled ahead. “His son’s first name and his middle name,” Gaffan said. “Nice guess.”

  “Looks like he should have tipped the guards better at Christmas.”

  THE HOUSES AT UNITY Hall were a mix of brick mansions on narrow lots and semi-attached town houses. Robinson’s was one of the latter. His Celica sat in the driveway in front, black, a spoiler jutting off the back deck. A pink flamingo and three dwarfs in Rasta hats graced the concrete front landing. Gaffan drove past, dropped Wells in front of the house. He walked ahead and rang the doorbell. A chime inside boomed.

  “Who is it?”

  Wells rang again, heard a man stepping slowly down the stairs in the front hall. He unholstered his pistol, held it low by his side.

  “Yes? Who’s there?” The voice was raspy and low. He’d heard it a few days before, on the phone in Janice’s house in Vienna. But not in person. Until now, Wells and Keith Robinson had never met.

  “Keith.”

  “You have the wrong address.”

  “Keith. It’s John Wells. It’s over.”

  CHAPTER 4

  RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

  THE AMERICAN EMBASSY COMPOUND IN SAUDI ARABIA WAS A FOR tress within a fortress, the most heavily guarded building in Riyadh’s high-walled Diplomatic Quarter. The Saudi government had built the zone in the 1980s, on a low mesa on the western edge of Riyadh. Unsmiling Saudi soldiers in armored personnel carriers guarded its gates, subjecting vehicles to inspection by explosives-sniffing dogs. Trucks and SUVs faced undercarriage examinations with long-handled mirrors, the bomb-squad version of the reflectors that dentists used to see inside their patients’ mouths. Drivers who grumbled about the searches found themselves forced to turn off their engines — and their air-conditioning. With summer afternoons in Riyadh topping one hundred twenty degrees, complaints were rare.

  Behind the walls, the quarter stretched three square miles. It should have been a pleasant place, especially compared to the rest of Riyadh. The Saudi government had spent a billion dollars on the district, hoping it would attract executives at multinational companies, and even wealthy Saudis. The quarter was subject to the same strict Islamic laws as the rest of the Kingdom, but it had coffee shops, parks, even a riding club. Date palms lined its boulevards. Its central square had won an award for fusing traditional Islamic architecture with modern design. In 1988, a local magazine had bragged that with its picnics and bicycling children, the zone could be mistaken for Geneva or Washington.

  No more. The hassles at the checkpoints had driven Saudis out of the zone, but they hadn’t reassured Americans and Europeans. Following attacks on other Western compounds, multinational companies had shrunk their staffs in the Kingdom to a minimum. The quarter felt besieged, its avenues empty, gardens run-down. It had turned into Paris in 1940, with the Wehrmacht approaching. Anyone with a choice had left. The remaining expats huddled in houses with thick steel doors and barred windows, in case a band of suicide attackers penetrated the checkpoints.

  The American embassy was the ultimate target, of course. The embassy occupied six acres near the quarter’s western edge, on the oddly named Collector Road M — though its location was no longer disclosed on the State Department’s website, as though that omission might stop terrorists from finding it. It had opened in 1986, at a ceremony presided over by then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush.

  At the time, Osama bin Laden was just another young Saudi heading to Afghanistan to fight jihad. Still, the attacks on American embassies in Pakistan and Iran in 1979 had made the State Department aware of the Islamic terror threat. The new embassy in Riyadh had been built to withstand a sustained attack. Its concrete exterior walls were a foot thick. The embassy itself was a modern castle, built around a courtyard, with few exterior windows.

  Security had been tightened further since September 11. Today, visitors parked outside the compound and then passed through explosive detectors at a marine-staffed checkpoint. Besides M-4 carbines, the marine guards toted shotguns, their fat barrels projecting immediate menace. Without exception, the guards had seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were ready for war.

  AMBASSADOR GRAHAM KURLAND HOPED they’d never have to use their skills.

  Kurland and his wife, Barbara, lived inside the embassy compound in a mansion formally called Quincy House. The name referred to the USS Quincy, the cruiser where Franklin Delano Roosevelt had met Abdul-Aziz, the first Saudi king, in February 1945.

  The king had never seen a wheelchair until he met Roosevelt, who used one because of his polio-damaged legs. Abdul-Aziz, who was severely overweight, found the contraption fascinating. Roosevelt gave the king his spare chair, cementing the partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia. That was the legend, anyway.

  In fact, chair or no chair, the two countries had good reason to ally as World War II ended. By 1945, vast oil deposits had been found under the sands of the Kingdom’s Eastern Province. Having seen oil’s strategic importance during the war, neither Roosevelt nor the king wanted the oil to fall into Soviet paws. And the Saudis were predisposed to trust the United States, which had avoided the Middle East empire-building of France and Britain.

  To commemorate the fateful meeting, a model of the Quincy sat in the lobby of the ambassador’s residence. And the United States and Saudi Arabia had stuck to their bargain. Even after the formation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the Saudis tried to keep oil cheap. In return, the United States made sure that Iran and Iraq never seriously threatened the Kingdom.

  But recently the partnership had frayed. Blaming bin Laden for the problems was the easy answer, Ambassador Kurland thought. But bin Laden spoke for millions of Saudis who felt they were living under a dictatorship disguised as a monarchy.

  Now the terrorists had struck again. The dead in the Khozama bombing included an American,
David Landie, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. The day before the bombing, Landie had interviewed Kurland at Quincy House. The embassy’s public-relations officer had warned Kurland to stick to his talking points. Even so, Kurland was happy to talk to an American journalist. Few visited Riyadh anymore, aside from a couple stalwarts from The New York Times.

  Landie was researching an article about the success, or lack thereof, of the camps where the Saudis “re-educated” former Guantánamo detainees. The camps had gained a reputation as a joke, since so many ex-Gitmo prisoners had returned to terrorism. Now, instead of waiting to see whether Landie quoted him accurately, Kurland had the grim task of helping repatriate what was left of his body. Kurland wondered if the Khozama bombers included any ex-prisoners. He suspected that Landie’s family would not appreciate the irony.

  THE PHONE ON THE bedside table trilled. “Yes.”

  “Mr. Ambassador.” The voice belonged to Clint Rana, the career foreign service officer who served as Kurland’s personal aide and translator. “Dwayne Maggs would like to meet this morning. Says it’s urgent.” Maggs was deputy chief of the CIA station in Saudi Arabia, as cool as they came. Kurland couldn’t remember Maggs using the word urgent before. He checked his Rolex: 8:15.

  “Tell him nine. Thank you, Clint.”

  Kurland looked through his bedroom’s bulletproof windows to the embassy’s tennis court. His wife was practicing forehands with Roberto, a cook who doubled as her trainer. Roberto favored 70s-style headbands that showed off his long hair, and tight white shorts that showed off his other good qualities. Kurland wasn’t worried. He and Barbara had been married longer than Roberto had been alive. As he watched, Barbara banged a line drive into the net and grunted, “Gosh dang.”

  Kurland couldn’t hear the words, but after thirty-six years, he knew. He gingerly made his way down the back staircase, wincing with each step. He’d torn his left ACL skiing five years before. The knee had never fully recovered. Now the first slivers of arthritis had come to his hips, scouts of what would no doubt be an occupying army. Getting old stank. The poets could dress it up all they liked, but the reality was simple: Getting old stank. Though it came with a few compensations, Kurland thought, like knowing what your wife would murmur when she shanked a forehand.

  And here she was, in a blue skirt and white top, tall and longlimbed. She still looked exactly like the sophomore he’d seen at his spring formal at the University of Illinois. Well, not exactly. But close.

  “Morning, darling.”

  “Morning, dear.”

  “You looked great.”

  “Not how I felt.” She mimed a couple of forehands. “Practice, practice.”

  “Well, you looked great.”

  “Roberto looked great. As he always does.”

  “Quién es más macho,” Kurland murmured.

  “Are we finished for the morning, Mrs. Kurland?” Roberto shouted.

  “Indeed we are, Roberto.”

  “May I?” Kurland took her racket. “Make sure to tell him to wear tighter shorts tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  “Do you think he gets the joke?”

  “I think. I’m not sure.”

  They walked side by side to the white wicker table at the edge of the court. A jug of ice water and a pot of steaming coffee awaited. Kurland pulled back a chair for his wife and poured water for her and coffee for himself. From the table he could just see the gun emplacements atop the walls around the court. At the moment, they were unmanned.

  “Another day in paradise.”

  “Amen to that.” She raised her water glass in a mock toast. “Anything new?”

  “They broke up another cell last night.” In the wake of the attacks, the classified cables had been even more disturbing than usual. Saudi police had arrested a four-person cell planning an assault on an Aramco compound in Dhahran, home to the foreign engineers who maintained the Saudi oil fields.

  “Isn’t that good news?”

  “Barbara. There’s something we need to talk about.”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “You don’t know what I’m going to say.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “I don’t want you to leave. I want you to consider leaving.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  He sipped his coffee. He’d known she would say no, but he had to keep trying. “It’s for your safety.”

  “I’ve never felt safer. Every time I turn around, I see a marine. And Joshua himself couldn’t bring down these walls.”

  “It seems like overkill, but it’s not. Trust me.”

  “When my book’s done, I’ll think about it.” His wife was writing a novel set in Riyadh and centered on the lives of rich Saudi women. Her second book. “These ladies, the chance to talk to them, it’s once in a lifetime.” A couple times a month, a black-clad ghost arrived at Quincy House to chat with Barbara. Once the women were inside, their burqas came off, revealing the fanciest designer clothes Kurland had ever seen. He wondered if they intentionally wasted money on Chanel skirts and Dior jackets to spite the regime that made them cover themselves.

  “That’s at least a year away.”

  “Problem solved, then.” She drained her water glass and stood. “I’ve got to wash before I start to smell like one of those camels.” Months before, Kurland and Barbara had visited a ranch where King Abdullah kept hundreds of prize camels. At the king’s urging, Kurland had sat on one. He’d encouraged his wife to do the same. She still hadn’t forgiven him.

  She kissed his bald head and walked off. He watched her go, amazed, as always, that he still loved her so much after so many years.

  HIS GOOD FEELING LASTED only until he arrived in his office on the embassy’s top floor, where Dwayne Maggs waited. Maggs, who didn’t speak Arabic, had gotten the job after an extraordinary tour as a CIA security officer in Pakistan. Kurland didn’t know exactly what Maggs had done, and Maggs wouldn’t say. But it had turned him into a legend. Maggs and his team were half the reason that Kurland hadn’t insisted that Barbara leave. The other half being that he hated fighting with her.

  “This came in this morning,” Maggs said, handing over a flashcoded cable.

  Beneath the usual security warnings, the cable explained that the National Security Agency had intercepted calls and e-mails between Al Qaeda’s lieutenants in Pakistan — now called AQM, short for Al Qaeda Main — and the group’s cells in Saudi Arabia, called AQAP, for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. An attachment detailed the messages, leaving Kurland wishing for a dictionary that translated NSA and CIA lingo to English.

  02:23:01 GST: TM from mobile phone +92-91-XXX–XXX [Peshawar,PAK] to +966-54-XXX–XXXX [Jeddah, KSA]: ????

  02:25:37 GST: TM from mobile phone +966-54-XXX–XXXX tomobile phone +92-91-XXX–XXX: La. La.

  03:01:18 GST: IM from XXXXXXX12@gmail.com [IP address,Karachi, PAK] to XXXXXXXXLION@gmail.com [IP address, Riyadh,KSA]: What is this?

  03:14:56 GST: IM from XXXXXXXXLION@gmail.com toXXXXXXX12@gmail.com: Inshallah. [God’s will.]

  And so on, for three more pages. Kurland read the attachment twice, didn’t get it. These crazy kids, with their IMs and their TMs and their suicide bombs. “Explain,” he said to Maggs.

  “TM, that’s text message. IM, that’s instant message. The bracketed information is the location of the phone or computer where the messages were sent. NSA redacts the precise location, if we have it, and the exact phone number or e-mail address, for OPSEC.”

  “Operational security,” Kurland said, glad to be able to play along at last. “Dwayne, I spent the last thirty years building houses for hicks.” In fact, Kurland had run one of the largest residential construction companies in the Midwest. “Help me out here. Isn’t there always traffic like this before these attacks?”

  “Yes, sir. But the timing, these e-mails, they’re all after the attacks. Not before. These guys, what you have to remember about them, sir, the dumb ones are dead. We’ve k
illed them. The weak ones, they’ve surrendered. The ones who are left, they’re tough. And smart. They’re hiding up there in the mountains, and they know the risk they run every time they pick up a phone. They know we’re on them, and they don’t make these calls lightly. And look, they’re not taking credit or congratulating each other. They’re asking what happened. It looks like AQM—”

  “Al Qaeda Main—”

  “Right. The guys closest to bin Laden. I’ll try to keep the acronyms to a minimum, sir. Bottom line, looks like they didn’t have a clue this was coming. And the ones here, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, they didn’t know, either. One message, they say they didn’t. The other, they keep their options open, like they’re waiting to see if maybe they can get credit even though they didn’t do it.”

  “Is it possible they would hide their involvement? Make these calls to trick us?”

  “Possible. But that hasn’t been their style the last few years. And given the risk of making these calls, they’d need a good reason to play that game.”

  “I see.”

  “There’s something else. As you can see from these intercepts, we have these guys pinned tight. If they do manage to get an op going, we usually hear about it pretty damn quick. We don’t always have enough intel to stop it, but we at least know it’s coming. This time, nothing.”

  “So add it all up; you’re telling me this wasn’t Al Qaeda.”

  “I had to bet, I’d say no.”

  “Who was it, then?”

  “I wouldn’t even venture to guess. When I get any intel, you’ll be the first to know. But right now we don’t have anything.”

  “I understand,” Kurland said. Though he didn’t, not entirely. The United States spent fifty billion dollars a year on intelligence. He didn’t expect all his questions to be answered right away, but he would have liked some idea what was happening.