by Lisa Harris
“So you think she’s willing to have her father forcibly taken from his home and flown to Turkey based on the assurances of President Evren’s chief of staff?”
Ben nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what I think.”
“Mustafa must be a very persuasive man,” Jennifer said.
“Well, another aspect of Kamila’s personality is that she tends to believe what people tell her.”
Ben looked down at his feet for a moment. “I’m sure that’s why she thinks I’m in love with her. I told her I was in love with her, and that’s all it took. She believes me.”
I had a feeling Jennifer probably didn’t know Ben had professed his love for Kamila, and when she heard it, it shook her up pretty good.
Her body language gave her away.
She immediately shifted her weight in the armchair to the other side, crossing her legs in the opposite direction from Ben’s posture. Seconds later, she moved her arm away from where it was resting next to him and placed it in her lap.
If Ben took notice of her actions, he gave no indication of it.
Perhaps it would have been a good idea for him to do so.
When Ben finished giving us his insight into the Imam, I told him I’d see him at the briefing tomorrow, and then I excused myself by saying I needed to go call my wife.
As I was pulling the door to the study closed, I heard Ben tell Jennifer, “I don’t think Titus needs to call his wife. I think he just wants to give us some time alone.”
He was partially right. I did want to give them some time alone, but I also wanted to clean up Millie’s kitchen before she got back to The Meadows.
However, as soon as I closed the study door, I heard voices in the kitchen, and I suddenly realized Millie and Arkady were back from attending their friend’s funeral already.
When I walked in the kitchen, I saw Millie replacing the lid on the fat pig cookie jar.
She didn’t look very happy.
“I’m telling you, Arkady,” she said, shaking her head, “that man doesn’t know how to control himself.”
“Am I interrupting something?” I asked.
Millie pointed her finger at me. “You let Frank Benson eat up all my chocolate chip cookies, didn’t you?”
“Well . . . uh . . . he . . .”
“No, don’t try to defend him. I know that man is a glutton.”
I didn’t defend him.
Nor did I mention the part I played in emptying the fat pig’s belly.
Chapter Sixteen
Friday, June 21
I arrived at CIA headquarters at twelve-thirty, and after going through security, I headed over to the restricted elevators—special key card access only—which would take me down to the basement of the Old Headquarters Building, where the Ops Center was located.
The Ops Center was where the day-to-day activities of the Agency took place. It was made up of six Real Time Management (RTM) Centers.
Each RTM Center was identified alphabetically and had a control room—imagine wall-to-wall television monitors surrounding a dozen consoles manned by some serious-looking people—plus a conference room, a break room, and a few administrative offices.
The text we received from Carlton after breakfast informed us our briefing was to take place in RTM Center D, Conference Room D.
As a Middle East operative, most of my briefings took place in Centers B or C; I seldom had an occasion to be in RTM Center D, which was normally reserved for interagency joint operations or for those rare occasions when congressional committee members or White House staff were invited to be present for an operational briefing.
Since Operation Crescent Moon was an interagency joint operation, I assumed that was the reason the briefing was scheduled to take place in RTM Center D. I couldn’t think of any reason why members of a congressional committee or someone from the President’s office would be involved in the operation.
Seconds after I got inside the elevator, I spotted Ben headed my way, and I held the elevator doors open for him.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I’m glad I caught you.”
“Why? Did something happen? Has our briefing been cancelled?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “nothing’s happened. I just wanted to talk to you a minute before our briefing starts.”
I punched the down button. “About what?”
“About Jennifer and me. I’m telling you, Titus. I think she might be the one. I could hardly sleep last night just imagining what it might be like spending the rest of my life with her.”
I smiled. “Yeah, the two of you do seem pretty compatible.”
“We’re compatible all right,” he said, as the elevator reached the bottom floor, “but the circumstances right now are making it really difficult for us. I’m not sure our relationship can survive this.”
After we got off the elevator and started walking toward Corridor D, I said, “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
Mitchell pointed down the hallway. “Let’s see if anyone’s in the break room. If it’s empty, I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.”
Each of the RTM Centers had its own employee lounge, and usually, there were at least a couple of people inside, but when Ben and I walked into Center D’s lounge, we found the place empty.
I glanced down at my watch. “This can’t take long, Ben. You know Douglas always starts his briefings on time.”
“I can give it to you in a couple of sentences.”
Ben took more than a couple of sentences to tell me about the conversation he and Jennifer had after I left Carlton’s study. It all boiled down to the fact she was disappointed with Ben for telling Kamila he was in love with her.
She thought it was extremely cruel of him.
Ben ran his fingers through his hair. “She said I didn’t realize what effect those words had on a woman. I tried to explain I just said them to Kamila as part of my assignment to get her to trust me, but Jennifer felt I could have gotten her to trust me some other way.”
“Was she right?”
“Yeah, maybe. I just don’t get why she was so upset about it.”
“She might think if you said those words to one woman and didn’t mean them, you might say them to another woman and not mean them either. A woman like her, for example.”
Ben thought for a second. “That could be it, but I have feelings for Jennifer, so if I said, ‘I love you,’ to her, I’d really mean it.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“I don’t know, Titus. Until this operation’s over, I don’t believe our relationship has a chance.”
“I think you might be overreacting.”
“No, I’m not overreacting. In fact, I feel like she’s avoiding me right now. When I called her this morning to ask her to meet me for lunch, she said it might be better for us to wait and see each other at the briefing.”
“The two of you shouldn’t be seen in public together right now. She was probably just practicing good tradecraft.”
“Do you really think that’s it?”
“I couldn’t say for sure, Ben, but I hope you won’t let your feelings for Jennifer get in the way of your assignment tonight. This operation depends on Kamila getting us into Camp Tamal, and if she thinks you have a thing for Jennifer, she might just call the whole thing off. I’d say you need to show Kamila plenty of affection tonight.”
“That’s gonna be hard to do in front of Jennifer.”
“You’re a professional, Ben. I’ve seen you do harder things than being affectionate with someone you didn’t like. What about last year when the Zeta drug cartel kidnapped you? You survived that, didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “Just barely, and this will be a lot harder.”
I glanced down at my watch. “We should go. It’s nearly one o’clock.”
As Ben got up from the table, he asked, “What about you, Titus? How hard is it gonna be for you to be affectionate toward Jennifer when you’re in love with N
ikki?”
I’d already asked myself the same question.
“Piece of cake. I’m a professional.”
Although all RTM Centers had a conference room, Conference Room D was larger and contained more comfortable furnishings than the other conference rooms in the Ops Center.
It wasn’t hard to guess why. The suits on the seventh floor wanted to make sure any guests invited to observe an Agency briefing were impressed with the facilities.
Even so, the basic setup was still the same as in all the other RTM conference rooms. The focal point of the room was an extra-wide wooden conference table that seated twenty people. Behind the table, around the room’s perimeter, were chairs for support staff—personnel who weren’t assigned to the operation but who were essential to the briefing, nevertheless.
The room also contained a couple of computer consoles, several high-definition screens for video conferencing and presentations, and a variety of other technical equipment.
In most conference rooms, there was a refreshment cart in an open area at the front of the room. Today, in Conference Room D, instead of a stainless steel cart with a few snacks, there was a buffet table full of sandwiches, veggie trays, desserts, and beverages.
When Ben and I walked in the room, Frank was standing at the buffet table filling his plate. The moment he saw us he nodded but quickly went back to the task at hand. Jennifer was also at the buffet table, but she just had a bottle of water in her hand.
Ben walked over to speak to her while I headed over to the conference table where it looked like Carlton was about to start the meeting.
He was in the center seat on the left-hand side of the table—the power seat in Agency hierarchy—and seated on his right was a well-dressed man in a black suit texting on his cell phone.
I recognized the man immediately.
He was Noah Armstrong, the President’s National Security Advisor.
Seated behind him were several people I didn’t recognize, but I figured they were members of Armstrong’s entourage and probably worked under him at the White House.
I’d never met Armstrong, although I’d seen him on television plenty of times.
Whether he was being interviewed by a news anchor or on one of the Sunday talk shows, every time I saw him, I always thought the same thing—here was a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Armstrong and Carlton appeared to be ignoring each other, which wasn’t too surprising since I figured my boss wasn’t exactly pleased to have Armstrong at his operational briefing on Crescent Moon.
Not that he had anything against Armstrong personally.
It was simply a matter of how Carlton approached a briefing.
First, he was obsessive about organization; he always planned everything down to the very last detail. Second, he disliked having someone show up unexpectedly and disrupt his well-organized plans.
Since I hadn’t heard anything about the President being informed about our operation, I suspected the FBI Director must have included a summary of Crescent Moon in the official President Daily Briefing (PDB), and that inclusion had caused concern over at the White House—enough concern that Noah Armstrong himself had been sent over to CIA headquarters to sit in on our briefing.
My briefing had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting.
The seating arrangement in a briefing room was one of those unspoken rules everyone followed, but no one talked about. I was pretty sure it had been that way from day one at the Agency.
Those in charge of the briefing always sat on the left side of the table, and those who weren’t in charge sat on the right side. Thus, I sat down on the right side of the conference table in the center seat directly across from Carlton.
A few seconds after I settled myself into a plush leather chair—an upgrade from the worn upholstered chairs in the other conference rooms—Ben and Jennifer joined me.
As they sat down next to me, I couldn’t tell if she was still upset with Ben or not—the only expression I saw on her face was one of amazement when she saw Noah Armstrong across from her.
Ben showed no reaction to Armstrong whatsoever, but then I realized he could actually be acquainted with the man, since Armstrong and Senator Mitchell hobnobbed with the same people.
Carlton appeared to be waiting for Frank to take his seat before starting the meeting. The moment Frank realized this, he walked over and sat down in the empty chair to Carlton’s left.
Since Frank hadn’t finished eating yet, he brought his plate from the buffet table with him, placing it on the table next to a neat stack of papers, which I assumed Carlton had brought to the meeting with him.
The half-eaten plate of food drew a disapproving look from Carlton, who stared down at it for a second or two before carefully moving his pile of documents closer to a spot in front of him.
Frank seemed oblivious to Carlton’s subtle maneuver.
Perhaps that was because he was too busy munching on a carrot stick while pulling his electronic tablet out of his pocket.
Finally, Carlton looked around the room and said, “I’d like to welcome everyone to our interagency briefing on Operation Crescent Moon. I’m Douglas Carlton, Middle East Division head at the CIA, and it’s a privilege for me to be hosting this briefing today at Agency headquarters on behalf of both the CIA and the FBI.”
He gestured at Frank. “On my left is Frank Benson, Director of the Counterterrorism Division at the FBI and the interagency co-director of Operation Crescent Moon. Frank will be updating us on the latest intel on this operation shortly.”
Frank looked up from his tablet and nodded.
“But first,” Carlton said, turning to his right, “I’d like to welcome Noah Armstrong, the President’s National Security Advisor. On behalf of everyone here at the Agency, thank you for coming over to Langley today, Noah. We’re looking forward to getting your input on the operation.”
Carlton was just blowing smoke.
I knew he wasn’t looking forward to having Armstrong give us his input on the operation.
Whenever anyone outside the intelligence community, especially someone who didn’t have a background in intelligence, got involved in an operation, the results were usually disastrous.
And, from what I knew about Armstrong, he had no background in intelligence.
Sure, he was the President’s National Security Advisor, but before the President appointed him to that position, he was a partner in a high-profile law firm in the D.C. area, where he represented American clients doing business overseas.
I figured that meant he knew something about international relations, but next to nothing about intelligence.
Armstrong laid aside his cell phone and nodded at Carlton. “Thank you, Douglas. I appreciate the nice welcome, but I doubt if I’ll have much to contribute to the briefing. The President just asked me to drop by today and convey his concerns after he read the highlights of the operation in his daily briefing this morning.”
I thought for sure Carlton would follow up Armstrong’s statement by asking him what the President’s concerns might be, but instead, he gestured across the table and said, “Next, I’d like to introduce our operational team for Crescent Moon.”
After introducing us, Carlton gave a brief synopsis of how the joint operation came about due to Ben’s involvement with Kamila Hanim at the Benchmark Rehab Center.
Then, he pulled the top sheet from his stack of documents and read off the timeline of events that occurred from the moment Ben got access to Kamila’s cell phone to when Kamila met with the NTI cell leader, Hasan Nazim, to plan the Imam’s kidnapping.
Since I was fairly certain everyone in the room was aware of these details, except for Armstrong and his staff, I figured Carlton’s recitation was strictly for their benefit.
Even so, while he was speaking, all of us on the operational team gave our boss our full attention.
Frank, on the other hand, used the opportunity to finish his lunch.
Thus, a few
minutes later, when Carlton called on Frank to update everyone on the status of the operation, he quickly wiped his mouth with his napkin, pushed aside his plate, and picked up his tablet.
After briefly glancing down at his screen, he looked across the table and said, “I wish I had some good news to give the members of our operational team, but I don’t.”
Chapter Seventeen
Frank explained that he and Douglas had hoped to receive some actionable intel about the NTI cell from an asset he had in the Turkish community, but when he met with Enzo—a code name given to the asset by the Bureau—Enzo had nothing for him.
“Enzo said he’d heard rumors about a big operation being in the works, but he couldn’t give me any details,” Frank said. “When I asked him to tell me the rumors, he said he’d heard something about a chartered plane and a bundling operation being carried about by an NTI cell, but he wasn’t aware of the specifics.”
When Armstrong motioned at Frank and asked him to clarify what he meant by a bundling operation, he said, “That’s a term Turkish intelligence uses to refer to a kidnapping. Bundling is a common practice the secret police use to bring dissidents back to their home country to stand trial for inciting violence when they’re living abroad.”
Carlton said, “Frank is convinced Enzo was telling him the truth when he said he didn’t know any specifics about the rumors he was hearing. But even though we didn’t get any new intel, just the fact there’s been talk of a chartered flight and a kidnapping in the works means the intel we’ve received about the NTI cell using Kamila to help them kidnap the Imam appears to be on track.”
“That’s right,” Frank said. “On the other hand, we still don’t have enough evidence to make any arrests, so our only recourse is to go ahead with the protocols we’ve developed for Crescent Moon and hope we can prevent the kidnapping from taking place.”
