Veder wanted to give the Iranians credit for the ingenuity, but he was angry that his security chief had made him give up his predawn jogs in Rizal Park. He was traveling with a second bodyguard now, too, and switching vehicles every day. He regarded the exercise as silly. No matter. In a couple weeks, the threat would fade, and he could get back to running.
—
Motorcycles were the best way to beat Manila’s traffic jams, at least during the dry season. So Veder wasn’t surprised when one rolled slowly past his window, a big bike. The driver and passenger were dressed identically in full leather and black helmets with mirrored visors.
The bike stopped beside the driver’s window, rose on its springs as the driver dropped his feet to the cracked asphalt. The passenger reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a piece of steel almost three feet long. He slapped it against the Suburban’s front and back driver’s-side doors so that it extended about a foot on either side of the seam between them. Isaiah Thorpe, Veder’s driver, popped the door locks, tried to shove open the door. Thorpe was too late. The rod was attached magnetically to both doors, jamming them in place.
Veder banged against his door, trying to force it open, doing nothing but bruising his shoulder. No. He needed to go the other way, out the opposite door. And even as he processed this thought, the motorcycle passenger reached again into his bag and came out with another piece of metal. This one about the size of a dinner plate, perfectly circular, at least an inch thick. He ripped off a thin plastic backing and pressed it against the window.
“Oh, shit—” Thorpe said. He was a wiry, tough-as-nails ex-Ranger from south Alabama. Veder had never heard him curse before. A single word rang in Veder’s mind. Away. He swung his legs, kicked himself off the window like a swimmer making a turn. On the other side of the glass, the motorcycle rolled off, accelerating through traffic. Neither the driver nor the passenger had raised their visors or spoken a word. Not Allahu Akbar, not Die CIA, nothing. Not a single wasted moment. The rod had locked them in, and the plate would blow them up.
Thorpe worked to pull his carbine with his right hand while frantically trying to lower the window with his left. But the plate was attached firmly and its bulk kept the window jammed closed. “Shoot across me,” Thorpe yelled to Steve Clark, the second guard in the Tahoe. “Shoot!” But Clark was leaning away from Thorpe, opening his door—
Veder scrabbled across the backseat, reaching for the passenger door, trying to get out or at least get the bulk of the SUV between him and the bomb. Too late.
An avalanche caught Veder, doubled him up, threw him down a rabbit hole covered in the softest white fur he could imagine. He wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t conscious, either, and though he couldn’t remember what had happened, he knew what would happen next. Like time was running backward. Then the avalanche ended and he landed in the backseat. The rabbit fur was gone and the pain seeped in, not all at once, but steadily rising.
He couldn’t hear anything, not even a hum. A thousand colors clouded his vision, a cable feed that had gone funny. Somehow he pulled himself up, looked at the driver’s seat. Thorpe didn’t have a head anymore, it was gone, replaced with a smear of brain and blood on the windshield like half-mixed baby food. Weirdly enough, the rest of his corpse was still vertical in his seat, apparently undamaged from the neck down.
Veder looked for Clark, but Clark wasn’t moving, either, he was slumped against the front passenger door with a metal arrowhead spiking from his temple. No, Veder said, or thought he did; he wasn’t sure if he could speak anymore.
But he was still alive. He knew that. He didn’t know why the men had put the bomb on the front window instead of his own, but they had. So he was still alive. Dense white smoke filled the passenger compartment. He was sure he was coughing, though he couldn’t hear himself. Out. Before the Suburban burned up. Then the rear passenger door swung open. A hand reached down, looped under his shoulder, pulled until his head and neck were free. A miracle. Life.
Thank you, Veder tried to say, wanted to say. Then the man stopped pulling and Veder could see he was wearing a motorcycle jacket and a helmet with a mirrored visor. The miracle was no miracle at all. The man reached under his jacket, came out with a pistol. Veder tried to pull himself away, but he had no strength left, not even to beg—
The man leaned in close so only Veder could see him and lifted his visor. And Veder saw himself looking at a familiar face, but he couldn’t think of the name. He wanted so much to remember. If he could only think of it, he was sure he could connect with this man, an American, not just an American, a case officer. Veder’s mind circled the name, another moment or two and he’d have it, he could change the man’s mind—
Veder felt the touch of steel against his temple—
South America—
He remembered all at once, that apartment in Lima on the day before the World Trade Center burned, Glenn, Glenn Mason—
He thought he’d spoken aloud. But the man shook his head, a single firm shake. Veder felt overwhelming regret. He’d been so sure—
He knew his last hope had vanished into the unsmiling face above. Veder could argue no more with his death. He closed his eyes even before his killer pulled the trigger.
PART
TWO
12
ARLINGTON
This time Duto’s guard waved Shafer through, no ID check. Inside, Duto had dropped his great man posturing. He sat at his kitchen table, bathrobe loose on his shoulders over a thready V-neck T-shirt. Instead of whiskey, he sipped milk from a half-gallon jug. Shafer wondered if Duto had an ulcer. For the first time, he seemed old to Shafer. Shafer hated thinking of him that way. Duto was younger than he was. If Duto was old, what was Shafer?
He was pleased to see Duto put down the milk, sit up straight, slip on his commander’s mask. “Where’s your buddy?” On cue, the front door creaked open. Twelve quiet seconds later, Wells joined them. His hands were loose at his sides and he looked curiously around Duto’s kitchen like he’d never seen appliances before. Tactical readiness. Or maybe just looking for a glass. He opened a cupboard, found one, swiped for the jug.
“Careful,” Shafer said. “Vinny drinks straight from it.”
“Whatever he has, I’m sure we’ve already caught.” Wells poured himself a glass. “What happened?”
“All I know, the alert came through about fifteen minutes after I got off the phone with him.” Shafer looked at Duto. “Attack in Manila. Worldwide lockdown.”
“I called the station. Veder’s office. Nobody answered.”
“I think it was already done. The alert said forty minutes prior. Bomb in his SUV.”
“Guards, too?”
“Dead at the scene. I checked at the TOC”—the Tactical Operations Center—“before I left. No new cables, but local TV in Manila had live feeds. The SUV was shredded. Witnesses saying two motorcycles, each with a rider and passenger. Whole show over in less than thirty seconds. Somebody had a cell-phone video, but all it showed was a motorcycle cutting through stopped cars. Back of a rider in a leather jacket. They’ll get other video, but I don’t think it’ll show much. A pro job.”
“By definition, anybody who kills a station chief and two bodyguards is a professional,” Wells said.
“Nobody’s taken responsibility yet.”
“What are we doing?” Duto said.
“FBI is waking a forensic team up. They’ll be in the air before dawn. And we’ve moving a SOG team from Mindanao to Manila.” SOG stood for Special Operations Group, the CIA’s paramilitary arm, mostly ex–Special Forces soldiers.
“There’s going to be Olympian-quality ass-covering on this one. Why didn’t we take the warning more seriously, et cetera. Tricky part is, what does Hebley tell the FBI?”
“Maybe he keeps it inside the tent, claims that disclosing it would jeopardize an ongoing op,” Shafer said.
Duto shook his head at the suggestion. “Too many people know already. They can’t make it disappear. So they admit it, but they emphasize it was vague, unspecific, untraceable.”
“That’s what you would do.”
“Yes.”
“Love that three of our guys aren’t even cold and you’re more worried about where the blame is going than finding out who killed them.”
“I am telling you that Hebley will smell the reputational risk and act accordingly. You can choose to pretend otherwise and blunder into some avoidable political trap. Like you’ve done your whole career. Only now you don’t have me to bail you out, Ellis.”
—
Shafer couldn’t believe that a couple minutes before he’d felt sympathy for Duto. “James Veder would still be alive if you’d pushed your guys harder yesterday. If you’d gotten us a name.”
Duto shrugged: I tried.
“This make sense to either of you?” Wells said. “If the Iranians are really so close to a bomb, why poke us now? Why not keep their heads down until it’s done?”
“They don’t know they have a leak,” Duto said. “They don’t know we know they’re behind this—”
“If they’re behind this—” Shafer said.
“And maybe they’re done already. Maybe they’ve got a nuke on a shelf in a cave somewhere.”
Shafer wanted to believe Duto was wrong. CIA, DIA, MI6, the counterproliferation guys at the International Atomic Energy Agency, everybody said the Iranians were years from a bomb. But the estimates could be wrong both ways. The agency might have been so worried about giving Iran’s scientists too much credit that it hadn’t given them enough.
“And this is their coming-out party?” Wells said. “Prod us, dare us to respond?”
“Not like they’re going to take out an ad on Jazeera.”
“A giant mushroom cloud,” Shafer said. “We’re in the club. But they haven’t run a test.” Meaning an underground nuclear test. The United States had installed sensors in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iraq to detect the shock waves an explosion would produce.
“Can they be confused with earthquakes?” Wells said.
“I don’t think so. It’s a very distinct signature. I’ll check in the morning.”
“Maybe they’re so confident—” Duto said.
“I don’t care how confident they are. They need to be sure, and that means a test.”
“What are the other options? False flag is the most obvious.” Meaning that another intelligence service had both invented the Revolutionary Guard double agent and carried out Veder’s assassination, with the aim of making the United States blame Iran.
“From who? Who gains if we attack Iran?” The crucial question. But none of the answers made sense.
“The Israelis,” Duto said. “And they love motorcycle bombs.”
“Can’t see them bombing two of their own embassies to build this guy’s legend.”
“They didn’t exactly level them.”
“And kill a station chief. We’ve had their back for fifty years. They wouldn’t risk that. Especially since they know they might convince us to attack Iran anyway.”
“Who, then?”
“The Russians or the Chinese might kill a station chief if they thought they could get away with it—”
“That’s a stretch—”
“I know it’s a stretch, Vinny. But, again, why? Moscow, Beijing, they don’t mind an Iranian nuke. They can manage Iran easier than we can. At least they think so.”
“Maybe they changed their minds. Maybe they’ve decided they can’t trust Iran.”
“Then why not just come on board with sanctions, help us put pressure on Tehran?”
“So as not to piss the Iranians off,” Duto said. “Look publicly like they’ve abandoned their ally.”
“They could whisper to the White House, Go ahead, do what you have to do, we won’t stop you—in fact, we’ll help you target. Much easier than taking the risk of killing one of our station chiefs. No.”
“No,” Duto said. “I don’t suppose we think MI6 or any of the Europeans are possibles.”
“What about the Saudis,” Wells said. “They’d love to see us hit Iran, and I can’t see them shedding too many tears over one station chief.”
“But they’re like Israel. They wouldn’t risk the blowback if we found out.”
“We keep tripping over the same rock,” Shafer said. “Allies don’t kill allies. Let’s go the other way. From the bottom. Glenn Mason.”
“Somebody—the Iranians, for the sake of argument—hires him,” Wells said. “He puts together a team. Attacks two Israeli embassies. Then settles his score with Veder. On the Rev Guard dime. And Iranians didn’t mind?”
“Maybe it was part of the deal. They wanted to kill a station chief, he wouldn’t work for them unless they let him pick the target.”
“Okay, but what’s he been doing the last three years?” Wells said. “The Iranians were so sure they’d have a bomb by now that they decided to hire Mason back then?”
In the dining room, Duto’s grandfather clock chimed three times, sweet and sober.
“We can’t solve this in your kitchen,” Shafer said. “Too many moving parts. The seventh floor needs to know this is more than chasing down some Iranian cell. They need Mason’s name so they can focus on him. Where he’s been. Where he’s getting his money.”
“And if you’re telling them that—” Duto said.
“We tell them how we got onto this. You, your buddy Juan Pablo Montoya.”
“Enjoying this, Ellis? You wonder why people don’t like you—”
“I know why people don’t like me. I just don’t care. I don’t draw my entire identity from a crowd of ass-kissers.”
“Do what you have to do.” Duto smiled. “You may not get the reaction you expect.” He turned to Wells. “What about you? You going in, too? They’ll love to see you.”
“If we can find her name, I’m going to look for the woman.”
“What woman?” Duto and Shafer said simultaneously.
“The one who caused the trouble between Mason and Veder.”
—
At home, Shafer found his wife asleep, snoring lightly, a new habit. She used old-style face cream, the gloppy white stuff, masking her cheeks. Not that she needed it, as far as Shafer was concerned. The mirror gave him no relief. But when he looked at her, he saw her true youth smiling under her skin. He kissed her ear and she sighed in her sleep. He lay on the covers beside her and waited for the morning.
He arrived at Langley at seven a.m. The bad news had spread overnight. Three dead, no suspects, the threat still out there. In the elevators, men and women nodded grimly at one another, no easy greetings today.
Shafer’s phone rang as he reached his desk. Lucy Joyner. “What did you get me into?”
“We almost saved him. Truth.”
“I’m making those files go away. And your note.”
“Before you do, one more favor.”
“Ellis—”
“It’ll only take a second. Please.”
She didn’t answer.
“I need the SUFC reports for Glenn Mason from ’98 through 2001.” Case officers had to report what the agency inelegantly called serious unauthorized foreign contacts, a term that essentially translated into relationships with foreign nationals. Mason had almost certainly filed an SUFC on the Peruvian woman he’d dated.
“They weren’t digitized in his personnel file?”
“Didn’t see them.”
“I’ll take a look.”
“You’re the best.” Shafer hung up before she could change her mind. He tried not to notice the tremble in his fingers as he punched in his next call.
“General Hebley’s office.” A woman’s voice, calm, effici
ent, slightly cold. A nurse who specialized in blood draws.
“It’s Ellis Shafer. I need to talk to the director. It’s urgent. About today’s attack.”
“Ellis who?”
“Special Assistant Deputy Director Ellis Shafer.” Duto had given him the title just before he left. Shafer had figured out the acronym, decided to let Duto have his little joke. He wished he hadn’t.
“Spell your last name?”
“S-H-A-F-E-R.” He resisted the urge to throw in a T after the F. In the background, he heard a man say, “Kyra!”
“I’ll get him the message.”
“Thanks—”
She was gone. Shafer waited an hour before calling again.
This time she was curt. “I have passed along the message—”
“Please tell him it’s time-sensitive—”
“Yes, Mr. Shafer.”
Shafer knew he couldn’t call again. While he waited, he read up on the Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian nuclear program. The idea that the Guard would have used Glenn Mason was not as odd as it first seemed. The Guard’s Quds Force, which handled foreign espionage and operations, had a history of using non-Iranians for politically sensitive jobs. As far back as 1984, Iran had used the Lebanese Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah to bomb the American embassy in Beirut. If Mason had somehow come to the Guard’s attention, its commanders might have seen him as a perfect way to attack the agency. We’ll use this traitor, show you that you’re rotten from the inside out.
Shafer’s phone rang, a blocked inside number. He grabbed for it.
“General—”
“This is Jess Bunshaft. I understand you have some information for us.”
Bunshaft was one of Hebley’s mid-level assistants.
“I can come up—”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll be in your office in five minutes.”
Click. The seventh floor was making a habit of hanging up on him.
The Counterfeit Agent Page 16
