The Counterfeit Agent

by Alex Berenson

  Reza was disappointed. He liked playing with Taylor. Reza wondered, too, whether Salome planned to kill him when the job was done. She was a client, and his clients had a habit of discarding him after he’d satisfied their needs. He understood very well the risk he presented to her. He had thought of telling her that he’d left a letter with a friend that was to be opened only in the event of his death. But he had no friends he trusted well enough. Salome probably knew as much.

  He supposed as a last resort he could leave the letter in his apartment. Then decided, what’s the use? If he died, the property manager would eventually unlock his door. Maybe the manager would find the letter, if Salome’s agents hadn’t already broken in and taken it. Maybe the manager would view it as something other than the mad ramblings of a dead man, bring it to the local police station. Even then, what would the gendarmes do? How would their investigation help him? He couldn’t beat these people who bombed embassies and killed CIA men. He would hope that Salome would trust in his discretion. Anyway, he would be satisfied whatever happened. The last two years had been the most interesting of his life. If he had to trade them for empty decades watching movies alone, so be it.

  “So if I’m not to meet him, what happens next?”

  “First we need to let them find the material.”

  “On the ship?” Reza didn’t know why he was surprised. Of course Salome would make sure his third tip was as accurate as his first two. He saw where the game was leading, a stepped series of provocations, each more threatening to America than the previous. The sequence had to have one more. He couldn’t imagine what that would be. A threat to assassinate the President?

  She put a hand on Reza’s arm. “Duke and I need to talk.” The words spoken in a way that made Reza wonder what Duke had done wrong. “I’ll call you. Until then, keep your routine.”

  —

  “Tell me what you know about Thailand,” she said to Duke as soon as Reza was gone.

  “My caretaker called. Somebody broke into my house. A Westerner, probably American. I don’t know how he found me, but I think he took some papers. Surgery records.”

  “Photos?”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  She let that hang.

  “I called Singh,” Duke said. “The doctor. He told me the guy approached them. At this point, he was trying to pass himself as Saudi. He had some kind of contact at the KSA embassy in Bangkok who vouched for him. Didn’t matter. Singh told him to get lost.”

  “The same man? Went as American and then Saudi?”

  Suddenly the pieces fit together. Duke knew who was chasing them. Not a happy thought. “This leak started with Eddie, right? Who knew Montoya. Who knows Vinny Duto from Colombia. Know who else knows Duto?” Duke paused. “John Wells.”

  She didn’t look as surprised as he expected. He wondered again about her connections inside Langley. “Wells. The retired one who used to work with Duto?”

  “He’s trouble, Salome. He’s kept his profile down since the thing in Times Square, but he won’t be scared of this. He likes it messy.”

  “Duto can’t help him anymore.”

  “Senators have a tiny bit of pull.”

  “So could John Wells have found you through Aesthetic Beauty?”

  “I told you, Singh said—”

  “Of course Singh said that.”

  Duke saw she was right. Singh couldn’t deny someone had come looking for Duke. The fact that Duke was calling him out of the blue proved Duke knew that much. But Singh would insist he hadn’t told Wells anything, even if he had.

  “I didn’t use my real name, I paid cash, they don’t keep pictures.”

  “You sure?”

  “As sure as I can be without looking at their hard drives.”

  “Do they have current contacts for you?”

  “A mobile number and an email address.”

  “The phone—”

  “In my luggage at safe house three. I’ll destroy it.”

  “Let’s assume Wells knows your real name, too. Maybe Eddie told Montoya, or maybe they figured it out for themselves.” Salome stared at him. Duke wondered if she knew the truth about his link to Veder, why he’d insisted on targeting the man. No matter. They couldn’t go back.

  “Maybe he does.”

  “Which means Shafer and Duto do, too. Maybe they’re already trying to convince the agency Glenn Mason is involved.” Saying it like there was no maybe at all.

  “It doesn’t matter. Glenn Mason is dead. And I haven’t used that name in four years. Never.”

  “A solid defense. As long as you stay dead.”

  Not much he could say to that. He didn’t exactly trust her, but he knew he was in for the duration. Far too late for him to give himself up. He’d killed a station chief. He’d wind up with a needle in his arm.

  “Let’s assume John Wells has tracked you to Istanbul. The famous John Wells.” Her voice was airy. Almost sarcastic. “What then. What shall we do with him?”

  PART

  THREE

  20

  ISTANBUL

  Wells skipped the cab line at Atatürk Airport. He walked outside the terminal until he spotted a black Toyota compact with a scrape on its bumper and a plastic sign dangling from its mirror. “TAXI,” red letters on a white background. The kind of sign that could be pulled down in a moment if the police passed by. A fiftyish man in a blue jacket sat behind the wheel. He smiled as he lowered his window, revealing a mouthful of cracked brown teeth. Wells leaned in, looked for a meter, didn’t find one. Good.

  “I want to hire you for the day.”

  The driver raised his caterpillar-sized eyebrows. “Six hundred lira, good price. Plus petrol. My English good, I learn in UK, show you around, tour guide.”

  Six hundred Turkish lira equaled about three hundred dollars. Hardly cheap for this jalopy, but no matter. “No tour guide.”

  “Okay, five hundred fifty.”

  “I may want you to follow someone.”

  “Chase?”

  “Follow. Not too fast.”

  “Chase who?”

  “Whoever.”

  “For chase one thousand lira. Still plus petrol. To catch, three thousand.”

  “Long as the jokes are free.” Wells stowed his bag in back, folded himself into the seat beside the cabbie. It was covered with the mats of wooden beads that taxi drivers inexplicably liked. He wrenched his seat back, wedged his knees under the dash.

  “Big man.”

  “Small car.” The space around his feet was littered with candy wrappers and a water bottle filled with a pale yellow liquid that wasn’t Gatorade. “Ever clean this thing?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Wells gave the cabbie five one-hundred-lira notes. “This to start.” About two hundred fifty dollars, more than the guy would make in a week. The driver tucked the bills in his shirt pocket like he couldn’t be bothered to count them. He put the Toyota in gear and they merged into the airport traffic.

  “This is, what, a one-liter engine?”

  “One-point-four.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry about catching anyone.” Wells wondered if he could push his legs through the floor, help with acceleration like Fred Flintstone. As an answer, the cabbie downshifted, gunned the engine. The Toyota responded with a surprising burst. Again the cabbie waggled his eyebrows. He seemed inordinately proud of them.

  “What your name?”

  “Roger.” Wells didn’t return the question, but he had a feeling the guy wouldn’t take the hint.

  “I am Kemal. Popular name. For Atatürk.” Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the general who had founded modern Turkey.

  “Nice.” Wells closed his eyes, hoping to catch up on the sleep he’d missed in Phuket.

  “No, too popular. His name all over. This airport, ever
ywhere.”

  “I’m going to find out a lot about you, aren’t I?”

  —

  Wells wished he had backup. But back in Thailand, Shafer and Duto had told him that asking the seventh floor for help would be pointless. Another piece of intel had arrived from the Istanbul source. The agency was still confirming it, but Hebley considered it serious enough that he had briefed the President and the National Security Advisor. He was calling it a “direct threat to CONUS.” Continental United States.

  “What is it?” Wells said.

  “They’re holding it tight,” Shafer said.

  “Inside guys who aren’t inside anymore. Worse than tits on a bull.”

  “John—”

  “Stop pretending you’re pulling your weight.”

  “Get a photo,” Duto said. “Don’t have to bring him in, don’t even have to talk to him. Just a good-quality photo.”

  “I got you the surgery. A phone.”

  “Seventh floor won’t even consider the possibility he’s alive without a photo.”

  “They can have Bangkok station send someone to the plastic-surgery place. Singh will confirm Mason was there.”

  “Forget it, John. They aren’t interested.”

  “How’s a photo change that?”

  “Because it’s easy to understand. It’s not a weird theory about some screwy ex–ops officer who changed his identity and is playing dead. And we don’t even know who he’s working for, but this one doctor in the middle of Thailand might confirm it. You think Hebley wants to hear that craziness? You think the President does? This decision is hard enough. He wants concrete choices. He doesn’t want to have to guess at the facts. Takes something real to break through that mind-set. A photo’s real. I can shove it at them, say, Lookee here, Mason’s alive, Mason’s in Istanbul, we need to figure out why. Even a general can understand that. Even a reporter can understand that.”

  Wells could hardly argue Duto’s authority on how the White House worked.

  “You get the picture, John?”

  “Fine.”

  “So get the picture. Call me when you have something not completely useless.”

  Wells hung up. So he’d have no help in Istanbul. Not unless he brought it himself. He stayed in touch with a couple operators but he trusted only one for a job this sensitive, an ex-Delta named Brett Gaffan. And Gaffan was out of pocket, on his honeymoon. He’d married a twenty-four-year-old named Svetlana, ignoring his buddies’ warnings that Russian women were the female equivalent of avalanches: beautiful, destructive, and best viewed from a safe distance.

  As a rule, Wells didn’t mind operating alone. But here he was caught among Mason, the agency, maybe the Iranian government. Once again he found himself in the uncomfortable position of playing detective in a country where he had no police powers. Plus he didn’t speak the language. Having somebody to watch his six would have been nice.

  Kemal the cabbie would have to do.

  At least Wells had a fix on Mason’s phone, and presumably his safe house. It was in Nisantası, northeast of Taksim Square. Istanbul’s cosmopolitan elite and foreign executives favored the neighborhood, whose narrow streets were lined with boutiques like Louis Vuitton and Chanel. Turkey’s government promoted a strict brand of Islam, but most of the country’s wealthy remained less observant, and happily lapped up brands that advertised luxury and sex.

  —

  Thanks to Shafer, or maybe Duto, the NSA had finally come through on Mason’s phone. Mason had been careful with it, using it only three times since Singh gave Wells the number. Even so, the NSA had triangulated it to a couple hundred meters in Nisantası. To get closer, Wells would use a handheld sniffer he’d gotten from the agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology. His final freebie before Duto left.

  Essentially, the sniffer worked as a homing device, tracking the handset by spoofing the signals from a local cellular tower. As long as the target phone was on, it could be tracked. Best of all, the DST geeks assured him it should work almost everywhere in the world without new software. Telecom companies wanted customers to have access to one another’s networks when they traveled internationally, so they used standardized software and routing systems. The sniffer could find a phone in Buenos Aires as easily as Los Angeles.

  —

  Istanbul’s afternoon traffic gave Kemal time to tell Wells his life story. The cabbie had learned English in Manchester, where he was studying to be an electrical engineer. Back home, he’d worked for the national power company, TEK.

  “After nineteen years, they fire me. Wife take daughters back to Izmir. Divorce.”

  Wells grunted.

  “Too much raki. You know raki?” He tipped an imaginary bottle to his mouth. “Like whiskey.”

  “You still drink?”

  “Oh, yes.” Kemal said the words almost proudly. “Why stop now?”

  “Excellent point.”

  “What about you, Roger? You have wife?”

  Wells wondered what answer would shut Kemal up quickest. “Yes. We’re very happy.”

  That did the trick.

  Light snow coated the sidewalks as they turned onto Tesvikiye, a boulevard that gave its name to one of the richest parts of Nisantası. Mason’s safe house was somewhere in here. “Where now?”

  “Just drive.”

  Kemal piloted the Toyota through the narrow one-way lanes that dominated Tesvikiye. The area sloped steeply toward the Bosphorus. Midrise apartment buildings were packed together, and surveillance cameras common. Wells wondered why Mason had picked the area. Maybe Mason had his main safe house in a cheaper neighborhood, and this was simply an expensive backup. Considering the resources Mason seemed to have, the idea wasn’t far-fetched.

  Wells realized that finding the handset might be harder than he’d hoped. Dozens of apartment buildings fell within the target area, hundreds of apartments. Mason would have to turn on his phone for several minutes for Wells to have a chance.

  Half an hour later, they had exhausted every street in Tesvikiye and were driving slowly along Abdu Ipekçi, which abutted the park on the neighborhood’s western edge. A car pulled out from the curb in front of them, leaving an open spot. “Take it.”

  Kemal looked sulkily at Wells, then pulled in.

  “The man you look for, you have picture?”

  “An old one.”

  “Quite a pickle.”

  “You really were in England.”

  “I call cousins. Give them picture, we watch.”

  Wells feared Kemal’s cousins would stick out in this fancy nabe even more than he did. “Let’s give it time.”

  As if on cue, a fast electronic beeping sounded from the backseat. The sniffer was designed so it could pass for a phone and be used in public without attracting attention. The top of its screen showed the mobile number it was tracking. In the center, a white dot indicated its current location. A red dot—now in the upper-right corner—showed the target handset’s location. In the United States, a street grid would have been programmed in. Here the rest of the screen was blank.

  Wells grabbed the Toyota’s keys, in case Kemal was thinking about leaving. He pulled on a baseball cap, the cheapest cover possible, and stepped into the dark. He wasn’t planning to break into Mason’s apartment. Not yet, anyway. Find the guy, then hire a professional photographer for long-lens surveillance shots. Duto and Shafer wanted pictures, Wells would get them a yearbook’s worth.

  Wells walked up the hill, turned right. The screen blanked out, then came back. Either the hills were blocking the target signal or the device didn’t work internationally as seamlessly as the DST claimed. With no grid and no scale, Wells couldn’t tell exactly how far away Mason’s handset was.

  He turned left, edging past two women wearing fur coats more suitable for Moscow. He carried the screen close to his jacke
t, like a guy trying to watch the playoffs at a wedding. Nothing about this job had been easy. But he was close now. He made another right, onto a two-block street, too small and narrow to attract high-end retailers. According to the device in his hand, Mason was somewhere on this street. Wells was close. So close—

  The dots disappeared. The screen went black.

  The phone number went, too. The snooper hadn’t lost the signal this time. Mason had finished his call, turned off the handset. Showing decent discipline. Still, the street was short enough for Wells to see every target building. When the phone came back on, Wells should find him.

  Wells was slightly surprised that Mason was using an old phone so much. But even the most security-crazed operative needed one permanent number for people who needed to reach him quickly and with certainty. With this new operation coming together, he was rushing, getting sloppy.

  —

  Back at the Toyota, Kemal sipped a half-liter bottle of clear liquid.

  “Raki.” He offered it to Wells.

  Wells shook his head. Kemal took another hit from the bottle and turned up the radio, premillennial Britney Spears.

  “Can’t imagine why your wife left you.”

  “She likes this even more than me. Oops I did it again.”

  Wells would never understand why the world loved the trashiest parts of American culture the most. Kemal took a long pull off the bottle. His throat thumped like a fish on a line. Great. A drunk wheelman.

  “Don’t suppose you know where I can find a pistol. A nice nine-millimeter?”

  “Gun? No, no.”

  “You’re not that innocent, Kemal.”

  As an answer, Kemal took another slug.

  “Now what?”

  Wells was famished. He hadn’t eaten since Dubai, twelve hours before. “Dinner.”

  Kemal steered them to Cumhuriyet, a broad avenue at the edge of Nisantası, and much less fancy. They chose a one-room restaurant, pressed-wood walls and plastic chairs, almost a cafeteria. The lamb was cooked to tasteless gray-brown pellets. Wells devoured his plate, ordered another. Kemal claimed he wasn’t hungry, but Wells made him choke down a kebab to sop up the raki.