The Secret Soldier jw-5

by Alex Berenson

  “Not at five-centimeter resolution.”

  “We’ll degrade them. Anyway, if we’re gonna use him, we should help him.”

  Duto nodded, conceding the point. He’d given in way too easily. Shafer wondered why he’d bothered with this meeting at all. The next sentence provided the answer.

  “Is Wells talking to Abdullah, Ellis?”

  Shafer couldn’t see the percentage in lying. “Not sure, but I think so. The jet that picked him up in New York belonged to the Saudi government. And the DGSE”—the French intelligence service—“say that Abdullah and Miteb were in Nice when he was there. So probably yes.”

  “So Abdullah is actively involved here. The king of Saudi Arabia. What’s Wells doing that his security services can’t?”

  “Maybe Abdullah doesn’t trust the muk anymore. Or maybe Wells is working with them to get inside this camp.”

  “Maybe you should ask your boy for a straight answer.”

  “My boy doesn’t work for us anymore. In case you haven’t noticed.”

  “We’re helping him.”

  “And he’s helping us. And if I push any harder, he’ll go dark.”

  “All right. But you need to understand something, Ellis. Across the river they’re pulling a strat rev on the KSA”—a strategic review on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. “Us, State, NSC”—the National Security Council. “Joint Chiefs sitting in but don’t have a brief. They’re focusing on our relationship with the House of Saud.”

  “I love it when you lift your skirt and show me your access.”

  Once, Duto would have snapped at Shafer’s bait. Now he wore handmade suits and pressed white shirts and pants that stretched his legs and smoothed out his rooster walk. Powerful men walked differently than other people did. They flowed. Or maybe Shafer was projecting. Or jealous. He didn’t flow. He never would. He wondered if Duto dreamed of higher office. Possibly. The senior George Bush had been CIA director, after all.

  “Want to know what they’re going to decide?”

  “Tomorrow’s news today. Inform me, wise one.”

  Again, Duto didn’t bite. “They’re going to decide that the stability of the Kingdom is paramount. That Abdullah is expendable, in other words. Because when it comes to Saudi Arabia, we only care about one thing, Ellis. And it’s not whether they’re making women wear blankets. I’ll spell it out for you. Starts with O, ends with L—”

  “You love these realpolitik lectures. Like you’re the only one who gets it. Having Abdullah standing up to the clerics is what we need long-term. Strategy, not tactics.”

  “You still don’t get it, Ellis. Abdullah isn’t going to be standing up for anything much longer. Prince Saeed called in our ambassador to tell him that.”

  “Saeed’s no friend.”

  “As long as the oil keeps coming, he is. And the betting across the river is that he can manage that place better than Abdullah. The clerics like him. They think he’s on their team. The smart money says the attacks will stop quick once he takes over. And if they don’t, he’ll chop necks until they do. If there are any downstream effects, we’ll manage those.”

  “Downstream effects. Like planes hitting buildings. Tell me something. Why are we pretending to be so sure we know what’s happening here when we have no idea? We don’t know who’s behind these attacks, or what they want, or whether Saeed is speaking for Abdullah or not.”

  “We want a calm, orderly succession; Saeed gives it to us. Everybody wins.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

  “That’s what the review’s going to say. Everyone’s on board. It’s nice.”

  As if the words on a paper in Washington would change the reality in Riyadh. “Tell me again what this has to do with John,” Shafer said. “Who last I checked was in Lebanon, trying to figure out who’s behind four terrorist attacks.”

  “As long as that’s all he’s doing. But it’s in nobody’s interest for him to get involved in Saudi politics. Especially not his own. He gets sucked down in this, we’re not sending a lifeguard.”

  “You think he’ll care?”

  “Just make sure he knows, Ellis.”

  Shafer saluted and walked out. He had only one consolation as he stepped into the elevator that would take him away from the seventh floor. Wells wouldn’t need to be warned he was on his own. He already knew.

  CHAPTER 15

  BEKAA VALLEY

  GRAVEL KICKED UP UNDER THE HONDA’S TIRES AS WELLS RODE west, keeping the bike in third gear at twenty miles an hour, risking a stall to minimize engine noise. He wore dirty green cargo pants and a thick black windbreaker and cheap gray sneakers and four days of beard, camouflage that had gotten him past a checkpoint north of Baalbek. His heart was slow and steady. His hands were loose and relaxed.

  He hadn’t killed anyone in two years. But he expected to kill tonight.

  Under other circumstances, Wells would have preferred to carry out this mission under thick clouds, or even better, rain. But the Bekaa’s dry season was starting. And he and Gaffan risked attracting attention if they stayed much longer. Already the desk clerk at the Palmyra had shown an unwelcome interest in their plans. This morning he’d asked how many more days they expected to stay. Wells worried that Hezbollah would mistake them for Israeli intelligence officers.

  They had another reason to move. Shafer had sent them four sets of photographs of the property that was their top target. Between the second and third, the panel truck had vanished. A week had passed since the bombing in Jeddah. The jihadis seemed to be leaving Lebanon, readying another attack.

  So he and Gaffan were going in, despite the half-moon and cloudless sky. Wells wondered now if they’d miscalculated. The low hills hid him from the barracks and farmhouse. But if the jihadis had posted a sentry higher up, on the flanks of the mountain to the west, Wells’s approach would be obvious. He could only hope they hadn’t bothered. He didn’t like having to hope.

  TWO DAYS BEFORE, AS Wells prowled around the northern Bekaa to look for other potential targets, Gaffan had driven to Beirut and bought a laptop and a satellite dish that would free them from local Internet connections. By midnight they’d received the first batch of overheads from Shafer, along with a message to call on a secure line. Which Wells didn’t have. He called anyway.

  “I have good news and bad news,” Shafer said. “Which first?”

  “The good. And FYI, you’re on Skype. Which may not be your definition of secure.”

  “Fair enough. You got the pictures?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still thinking the most likely candidate is the first place you found?”

  “Yes.”

  “The good news is that our friends from the No Such”—the NSA again—“agree. They found text messages to one of the phone numbers you gave them sent from a cell tower a couple miles from the camp.”

  “What’d the messages say?”

  “Our friends don’t know. The texts are a month old. The database shows they exist, not what they said.”

  “How can they do that?”

  “Don’t know. But the key is, you seem to be looking in the right place.”

  “That is good news. Since we’re going in soon.”

  “Before you do. The bad news.” Shafer paused. “We’re hearing your friend is done. That there’s gonna be a new sheriff in town.”

  “My friend who asked me to take this trip, you mean?” If Shafer wanted to keep Abdullah’s name off the air, Wells wouldn’t argue.

  “Yes. And what you need to know, even more important, people over here aren’t crying over it. They think all those sheriffs are pretty much the same. Long as the gas station stays open. ’Cause you know we like our gas cheap.”

  “What if the new sheriff blew up the old sheriff’s granddaughter?”

  “You’d need good evidence. The kind that would be embarrassing if it went public.”

  “Still looking for that.”

  “There’s your answer.”


  “This is coming from your boss?”

  “His bosses, too. The ones across the river. So if you feel otherwise, if you want to take a position on this, get involved, you’re on your own. Not nudge-and-wink on your own. Really on your own.”

  “I understand.”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger—”

  Wells pushed the red “end call” button on the virtual keypad. The down-the-drain electronic chime of a Skype hang-up didn’t offer the same satisfaction as slamming down a phone, but it was the best he could do.

  After what had happened with the Midnight House, Wells knew he should be immune to the stench of Washington cynicism. And maybe they were right, Duto and the national security adviser and whoever else was making this decision. Maybe Wells was a sucker for thinking Abdullah was different from Saeed. Maybe a stable oil supply was all the United States could expect out of Saudi Arabia.

  Even so, Wells hated the fact that the mandarins in Washington could walk away from a man who had just lost his granddaughter to a terrorist bombing. Abdullah wasn’t Lech Walesa or Nelson Mandela. His top concern was passing power to his son. But at least he was trying to make his nation freer, more tolerant. The United States theoretically wanted him to succeed. But not at the risk of a single barrel of oil.

  The same attitude had led America to leave Saddam Hussein in power in 1990. Once Saddam had been evicted from Kuwait’s oil fields, he was no longer a threat to the United States, whatever his crimes against Iraq’s Shia and Kurds.

  Even after everything he’d seen and done, Wells believed that the United States was generally a force for good. But the truth was that when oil was involved, American principles got fuzzy. So be it. Wells didn’t need Duto to authorize this mission. At least Shafer had given him the courtesy of letting him know where he stood.

  “What’d he say?” Gaffan said. Wells explained.

  “So if we go in, we’re on our own,” Gaffan said.

  “That’s it.”

  “What if Duto, somebody back home, knows something we don’t?”

  “They know plenty we don’t. But none of it’s got anything to do with this.”

  “You’re so sure of yourself, John. It’s not that easy for me. These guys get paid to make the tough calls. Chain of command. I look at you, I think of that line from that television show The People’s Court. Remember it? Judge Wapner. ‘Don’t take the law into your own hands. You take ’em to court.’”

  “The tough calls? Let me tell you Vinny Duto’s priorities, in order. First, more power for Vinny Duto—”

  “Power meaning what?”

  “Meaning face time with the president. Operational control in Afghanistan and everywhere else. A bigger budget. Bigger voice on strategy. Bigger payday when he finally quits to run Lockheed Martin or whatever. Second, keep the lid on the disaster of the day — and if the lid comes off, make it SEP, somebody else’s problem. Third, and this is a long way back, do the right thing.”

  “You’re pretty cynical, John.”

  “I guess so. Arrogant, too. Duto says the same. The saddest part is he might even be right in the short run,” Wells said. “The United States might be better off for a year or two with Saeed running Saudi Arabia. But in the long run, the jihadis will be happy to have him. And Duto knows it, but he doesn’t care.”

  Gaffan rubbed his forehead. Wells thought he was about to back out.

  “I won’t hold it against you, you want to go home. Money’s yours either way.”

  “No. I gave you my word, and I’m in.”

  “A two-man chain of command.”

  “Never been this close to the top.”

  SO GAFFAN WAS STILL on board. But Wells had another problem: Should he caution the king that the United States no longer supported his reign? Even under normal circumstances, telling a foreign government about a secret American policy decision was illegal at best, treason at worst. This situation was even trickier. Abdullah was old and angry. What if he reacted to the warning by going public, denouncing the White House, cutting off Saudi oil? What if he arrested Saeed and gave the throne to Khalid? Plus, Abdullah and Miteb had given Wells millions of dollars. Wells was sure the money hadn’t affected his judgment, but others would surely disagree. Vinny Duto, for example.

  On the other hand, Abdullah deserved to know that someone — almost certainly Saeed — had told the American government that he wouldn’t be king much longer. Wells decided to pass along that part of the message and to advise that Abdullah see the American ambassador in person to prove he wasn’t on his deathbed. Nothing more. With any luck, Abdullah would be smart enough to ask at the meeting if the United States planned to support him. He could judge the ambassador’s response for himself.

  A reasonable compromise, Wells thought. He reached for his handset to call Kowalski, get a message to Miteb.

  ON THE THIRD DAY, Wells stayed in the Palmyra, examining the overheads and planning the attack. Gaffan made another run to Beirut. For seventy-six thousand dollars in cash, he bought a used thirtyone-foot Cranchi from the friendly folks at Chehab Marine. The Cranchi was a speedboat disguised as a pleasure cruiser, with a sharp prow, a narrow white hull, and a spiffy racing stripe. Its cockpit sat four. Belowdecks, it had a cabin where two people could sleep as long as they didn’t mind getting to know each other. Its twin engines had been upgraded to put out two hundred thirty horsepower, enough to get the boat to forty knots on full throttle. Equally important, it had a one-hundred-forty-gallon fuel tank, for a range of three hundred miles, easily enough for Cyprus. The boat would be valuable insurance if they had to leave Lebanon fast. Better safe than sorry, especially since they were spending money that came out of the ground. Wells had gotten into the habit of thinking about prices in terms of oil. The Cranchi ran one thousand barrels, give or take.

  The dealer at Chehab didn’t ask why an American had showed up at his showroom to buy a speedboat with wads of cash in rubber bands. He didn’t ask what Gaffan planned to do with the Cranchi. And he was more than happy to recommend a quiet harbor south of Tripoli where Gaffan could dock the Cranchi, no questions asked. He even sent a driver to pick Gaffan up from the harbor and bring him back to Beirut after Gaffan piloted the Cranchi there. The Lebanese were known for their friendliness, especially to anyone who paid list price.

  Gaffan came back to Baalbek at around ten p.m. An hour later, Shafer sent the overheads with the truck missing. The next morning, the desk clerk got nosy, and Wells realized they needed to move.

  AT NIGHT THE BEKAA showed its teeth. The tourists went back to Beirut and the hash farmers got to work. Hashish was marijuana’s more potent cousin, made from the resin of cannabis plants, nearly pure THC — the active ingredient in marijuana. To make hash, farmers threshed cannabis leaves and stems through wire screens, separating a sticky resin. They dried it into a moist powder and pressed the powder into sweet-smelling bricks and wrapped the bricks in thick blue plastic to keep them fresh.

  During the Lebanese civil war, the Bekaa became the world’s top hash supplier. Lebanese Red was famous in Amsterdam cafés. The government cracked down during the 1990s, but the trade never disappeared entirely. It had surged since 2006, when the Israeli invasion strengthened Hezbollah. Publicly, the group claimed that it didn’t support hash farming, but that it couldn’t stop poor farmers from growing cannabis to survive. In reality, hash was second only to payments from Iran as a source of income for the Party of God.

  Under the watchful eyes of Hezbollah militiamen, the trade ran smoothly. Farmers brought bricks to warehouses in Baalbek and Hermel, receiving three hundred to five hundred dollars per pound. Black-clad soldiers guarded the depots and monitored loads. Growing hash in the valley without Hezbollah’s approval was a crime punishable by death. The hash was hidden in crates of tomatoes and hauled to the coast for shipping to Europe — or flown to Turkey and Cyprus on eight-seat prop planes from the bumpy airfield at Rayak. Some even went south to Israel. The Israeli army and police
hated the fact that their stoners enriched Hezbollah. They ran television ads showing the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, popping out of a bong, an evil genie made of smoke. Still, the trafficking continued.

  The hash trade complicated Wells’s plans. A late-night firefight would make the local farmers twitchy. They’d call Hezbollah’s militia or show up on their own, locked and loaded. To keep the raid quiet, Wells and Gaffan would have to use their silenced pistols on anyone they came across. They couldn’t offer warnings, so they ran a real risk of killing civilians if Wells and the NSA had made a mistake and this farm turned out to be the Lebanese equivalent of a Boy Scout camp.

  A HALF-MILE FROM THE front gate, Wells left the Honda in a ditch and grabbed his gear from the cardboard box on the back of the bike. He slung the AK over his shoulder and tucked a spare magazine and flashlight into a long pocket inside his windbreaker. He threaded the silencer onto the pistol and slipped it into his belt. With the silencer attached, the pistol would be a slow draw, but Wells had no other way to carry it. He tucked wire clippers and plastic handcuffs and a butterfly knife into the top pockets of his cargo pants. The bottom pockets were already stuffed with clothesline and electrical tape. A trainer at the Farm — his name lost to Wells now — had made a mantra of clothesline and electrical tape. They’re civilian items, you can buy and carry them easily, and you can use them one thousand different ways. Make that one thousand and one. The trainer’s nickname, inevitably, had been “one thousand and one.”

  Finally, Wells pulled off his sneakers and replaced them with steeltipped boots Gaffan had picked up in Beirut. Close-quarters fighting was called hand-to-hand, but aside from a knife, a solid pair of boots was the most important weapon within three feet. He walked west along the road, his boots crunching gravel.

  Gaffan was coming in from the south side of the farm, two miles away. The satellite maps revealed a gravel road that ended in a dry streambed. Gaffan should be able to bring the Jeep in most of the way.