The Shadow Protocol

by Andy McDermott

  “I’d rather be safe.” He dropped lower so she could examine the electrodes.

  “Looks fine,” she said, plugging in the cable. “But if it gives you an electric shock, don’t expect any sympathy.”

  “I trust you not to let that happen. The drug?”

  “Yes, yes. How much would you say he weighs?”

  Without the need for pretense, the correct dose did not take long to calculate. Bianca took out the jet injector. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything. At least,” he added, “that I can remember.”

  “You’re starting to develop quite a smart-arsed sense of humor, did you know that?”

  “Maybe I’m picking it up from you. Okay, give me the shot.”

  She put the nozzle against his neck. “Let’s hope it’s worth—”

  Clack!

  They both whirled at the sound of the lock. The door opened—and Tony entered the cell. His expression was the coldest Bianca had ever seen it. “Morning, guys,” he said, the casual greeting not reflected by his tone. “How’s it going?”

  Bianca was frozen with fear, but Adam simply asked: “How did you know?”

  “Because the system logs everything, and sends out ‘Hey, did you really authorize this?’ warnings if an order’s issued under somebody’s login from a terminal they don’t normally use. If you were going to hack it, you should have waited for Levon to come in. I should probably ask how you got my login in the first place, but that can wait. Right now, what I want to know is: What the hell are you doing?”

  “What I have to,” Adam replied. He looked down at the semi-conscious Qasid. “He knows something about my past. I need to know what.”

  “Harper said to leave him to the interrogators at Guantánamo.”

  “Do you agree with him?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I do or not. If the director of national intelligence gives an order, it gets followed. End of discussion.”

  “But I’ve got to know, Tony!” Adam cried with sudden desperation. “Qasid’s met me before—but I don’t know where, or why. This is the only way I can find out.”

  “Look, I completely understand why you want to do it,” said Tony, with more sympathy, “but this isn’t the way to go about it.”

  “It’s the only choice I had! He’ll be in Cuba by the end of the day.”

  “Where he’ll be interrogated. They’ll find out what he knows.”

  “And how long will that take? A week? A month? A year? Tony, I can find out everything he knows in five minutes! And not just about me—he knows who leaked the secretary of state’s route in Islamabad. Qasid gave it to al-Rais—and a mole gave it to Qasid. I can get the name of that mole right now.”

  Tony seemed conflicted. “If there’s a mole, I can’t deny that we need to know who he is sooner rather than later. But this isn’t the way to go about it.”

  “There isn’t any other way,” Adam insisted. “And I’m willing to take the consequences for it.”

  “But it’s not just about you.” Tony looked at Bianca. “If you drag her into this too …”

  “He didn’t drag me,” said Bianca firmly. “I want to help him.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t said that. I don’t think you realize how serious this is.”

  “No, I do realize,” she replied. “And I’m still willing to help him, because—because he’s had part of his self taken from him. To me, that’s one of the most horrible things that can happen to somebody. I’ve spent my whole career trying to save people from that. This might be the only way to help Adam remember who he really is. Please, Tony. If anyone can really understand what’s happened to him, it’s you.”

  A long silence. “If you do this,” Tony finally said, “or rather, if I let you do this, we could all end up in jail.”

  “If you weren’t going to let us,” Adam pointed out, “you would have arrested us by now.”

  “I still might. But are you absolutely certain Qasid knows the identity of the mole in Pakistan?”

  Adam nodded. “Al-Rais was.”

  Another pause. “Okay,” Tony said, “if there’s actual, actionable intelligence you can get from this, that’s the angle I’ll use to justify it.”

  “You’re letting us do it?” Bianca asked.

  “As head of field ops, I’ve got the authority to make snap decisions critical to a mission’s outcome.”

  “But the mission’s over,” said Adam.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll have a hell of a job spinning it! But if it changes the outcome from ‘near-disaster’ to ‘partial success,’ maybe we’ll get away with it. It’s results that count.”

  “And what if we don’t find the mole?” said Bianca.

  “Well, then we’re all screwed! But if you don’t get any useful intel, I’ll do what I can to make it look like none of this ever took place. If Martin or anyone higher up hears so much as a whisper, though, there’s no way I’ll be able to cover it up.”

  “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” said Adam, with a faint smile.

  Tony looked at his watch. “Okay. You’ve got ten minutes, and then you’re out of here, no matter what. Just don’t forget to give him the Mnemexal after you’re done, okay?” He stabbed a finger at Qasid, who was starting to recover. “I’ll get back on the system and confirm that I authorized you to come in here so it doesn’t get kicked up a level for a security check.” He looked up at the camera, signaling to the guard. The lock clacked. “Ten minutes, no more.”

  “That’s all we’ll need,” said Adam. “Thanks.” Tony nodded, then opened the door. “One thing—what changed your mind?”

  Tony looked back at him. “ ‘Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge,’ said Khalil Gibran. And in this business, we need all the knowledge we can get.”

  Bianca was impressed that he could quote the Lebanese poet. “That’s very philosophical. Especially for this early in the morning.”

  “I’m full of surprises. Now do what you need to do.” He left, closing the door behind him.

  “We’d better get on with it, then,” said Adam.

  “I just hope we’re not making a horrible mistake,” Bianca replied.

  “Me too. Do it.”

  Bianca injected both men, then activated the transfer process, watching the PERSONA’s screen carefully for any signs that the unplanned procedure had gone wrong. There were none. Minutes passed before the flood of electrical impulses began to slow. She made the last checks. The computer told her that everything was normal. She gave Qasid a dose of Mnemexal, then knelt beside her companion. His eyes were shut. “Adam? Did it work? What’s your name?”

  “My name is … Mohammed Nithar Qasid,” said Adam, a Pakistani lilt to his accent.

  “When were you born?”

  “The twelfth of Ramadan, 1407.”

  “What?” she gasped.

  He opened his eyes and smiled crookedly. “Islamic calendar. May tenth, 1987.”

  “God, for a minute there I thought you’d taken on his past life or something.” She unfastened his skullcap. “Come on, we’ve got to pack all this up.”

  Adam didn’t move, an odd expression on his face. “What is it?” she asked.

  His look slowly became one of dawning horror. “I know how Qasid recognized me. He had met me before. In Islamabad, ten months ago.”

  Bianca realized the significance of the date. “That was when the secretary of state was killed, wasn’t it?” He nodded. “What were you doing there? Were you trying to find the mole?”

  He scrambled to his feet, reeling away from her. “No, no—you don’t understand!” he cried, his voice anguished. “I gave the secretary’s route to al-Qaeda! I am the mole!”

  Adam paced back and forth across the Cube, struggling to keep his head above the rising whirlpool of emotion threatening to swallow him. Horror, panic, shame … and guilt.

  And those were only his feelings. Qas
id’s were also trying to pull him under, the terrorist filled with gloating pride at having turned an American agent to the cause. He was caught in a downward spiral, the other man’s triumph worsening his own stress and self-loathing.

  The more he tried to deny it, searching Qasid’s memories for some hint of deception, the more he knew it was true.

  Qasid had met him three times. The first had been a sounding-out mission for the al-Qaeda operative, simply to check if the supposed sympathizer could be trusted. The meeting had been in a small café—with five armed men lurking nearby. At any sign of Pakistani or American security forces, the man calling himself Adam Gray would have been the first to die.

  But there had been none. He seemed genuine.

  Adam relived Qasid’s memories, the vision of his own face disorienting, surreal. Nightmarish. The two men had been brought together by a mutual contact, an al-Qaeda supporter within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He listened to himself explain to Qasid why he was there. His grandfather on his father’s side was Waziri, from Pakistan’s mountainous western regions bordering Afghanistan.

  This family connection was what had brought him to Pakistan, as an intelligence officer—and it had also fueled his disgust at his own country’s actions, as American drones bombed the tribal lands with impunity. The CIA claimed publicly that only terrorists were being killed by the missiles, but he knew, having seen the raw intelligence reports before they were sanitized, that innocent civilians were being murdered.

  Now blood demanded blood.

  Qasid believed him enough not to have him killed, but was still not fully convinced. The American had to provide proof of his sympathies.

  So he did.

  The next time the two men met, this time in a filthy slum house in Sector G-7 of Islamabad, Adam handed over a DVD containing footage of a Reaper drone strike two days previously. The Pakistani government had condemned the attack on a village in South Waziristan, in which the Americans claimed that four al-Qaeda fighters were killed—but the recording made it clear not only that numerous civilians in nearby houses had died in the blast, but also that Pakistani military intelligence officers were working directly with the CIA to guide the attack, picking out targets. The footage was quickly released to Al Jazeera and other news networks. Pakistan and the United States immediately declared the audio portion to be fake, but it still roused popular anger for several days.

  Qasid was pleased—as were his superiors. They wanted more.

  And on the third and final meeting, Adam Gray provided it.

  The memory was as clear as if it had just happened. This time, the two men met in the open, spending barely twenty seconds together. Qasid brought a bag containing fifty thousand US dollars; his contact, a memory stick. “The details of the secretary of state’s visit,” Adam heard himself say as he handed over the little flash drive. “The route, the timing, decoys, security assignments—everything. Make good use of it.”

  “We will,” Qasid replied, giving him the bag in return. “Allah be praised.”

  The American nodded, then walked away.

  The drive contained a full itinerary of the politician’s impending assignation—so comprehensive, in fact, that Qasid at first thought it too good to be true. Was Gray a double agent, trying to draw the al-Qaeda cell into a trap? But the more he checked, the more certain he became that the information was genuine.

  Muqaddim al-Rais himself made the final decision.

  Go.

  The bomb was prepared, over a hundred kilograms of high explosive jacketed by ball bearings and ragged fragments of scrap metal in the trunk of a nondescript Toyota parked near the location of the meeting. Because the secretary of state’s visit to discuss the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons was secret, the roads were not blocked off or cleared of other traffic. This allowed a confederate in a truck to get ahead of the three-vehicle convoy, controlling its speed as it approached the kill zone.

  Qasid was half a kilometer away, watching through binoculars from a high rooftop. Adam felt his nervous anticipation, reliving the terrorist’s growing excitement as he took phone calls from spotters along the route.

  “This is Azim, they’ve just passed me …”

  “Salim here—they just turned right at the junction, like you said they would.”

  “It’s Imran, they’re coming up to me now …”

  The truck deliberately dropped to a crawl, backing the convoy up behind it on the busy street. According to Gray’s information, Sandra Easton would be in the middle car, SUVs driven by undercover agents ahead and behind.

  He shifted his gaze back and forth between the Toyota and the approaching vehicles, the movement shorter each time. Less than a hundred meters to go.

  Fifty. “Get ready, get ready …,” he whispered into his phone’s headset. The operation could not be trusted to radio control. There was a man in the car holding a switch directly wired to the detonators. The first SUV passed the waiting Toyota. “Here she comes … now!”

  He held his breath. Time seemed to freeze, for a moment nothing happening—

  Then the Toyota and the car beside it vanished in a cloud of dust.

  It took over a second for the sound of the explosion to reach Qasid. When it did, it was shockingly loud, a single sharp basso crack that shook the building beneath him. Other noises followed: shattering glass, splintering concrete, the thunderous echoes of the detonation.

  Adam felt Qasid’s surge of exultation overpower his own horror at the sight. The memories kept coming, even though he no longer wanted them. The terrorist looked back through the binoculars. Nothing was visible except swirling dust and smoke.

  Then shapes began to resolve.

  Mangled wreckage. Shredded bodies. Rubble and debris surrounding a crater at the roadside, flames gouting from a severed gas main. More sounds reached him—distant screams of panic and pain. Those people on the street who had not been cut down by the blast started to flee.

  There was nothing left of the Toyota, and the trailing SUV was barely recognizable as a vehicle. The leading four-by-four, which had been moving away from the bomb, lay on its side, ripped open, its occupants spilled out like sardines from a can. The secretary of state’s car had been reduced to burning fragments.

  As had everyone inside.

  We did it!

  “No,” gasped Adam, reeling. He couldn’t stop the flood of images from Qasid’s mind.

  He had been responsible. He had given the information to al-Qaeda. He had betrayed his country.

  The more he tried to deny it, the stronger the memories became, taunting him. It was him. The face, the voice of the man Qasid had met—they were his.

  He was a traitor.

  “No!” It was a cry of pure anguish.

  Panic rose in him. Conflicting thoughts warred in his mind—a desperate urge to escape, to run from the punishment that awaited if the truth was discovered, versus a need to confess to what he had done. He had to turn himself in. He was a security risk, an al-Qaeda sympathizer.

  A traitor.

  He looked around frantically. The exit—

  I have to run.

  His thought, or Qasid’s? He didn’t know. This is my only chance, I have to get out of here before they catch me …

  The door opened. He jumped in alarm. It was Bianca, having returned the PERSONA equipment to the lab. She held something in one hand. The Englishwoman immediately picked up on his fear. “Are you okay?”

  She’s the only other person who knows the truth.

  Qasid. It had to be. It couldn’t be his own mind regarding as a threat the woman who had done nothing but try to help him. It couldn’t!

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m—I’m fine,” he gasped.

  “No you’re not,” she replied, anxious. She gestured toward the couch. “Look, sit down.”

  “No, I’m okay.” He opened the panel concealing the wardrobe. There was a mirror on its back. He looked into it, not even sure who he was going to see staring bac
k. His face, or Qasid’s?

  It was his own, but wide-eyed, brow beaded with sweat. “Really, you don’t look good,” said Bianca.

  He whirled. “Of course I don’t look good! I’ve just found out that I’m—I’m a traitor!”

  “I don’t believe it,” she insisted. “I can’t! There’s got to be some other explanation.”

  “There isn’t,” he said, pacing again. “I remember—Qasid remembers. We met in Islamabad, three times. I gave him a flash drive with all the security details for Sandra Easton’s visit. And they were genuine.”

  Why am I telling her this? She already knows too much! I’ll have to elimin—

  He tried to crush the thought. But it wouldn’t die, writhing and squirming under his mental boot heel. Growing stronger. Fear roiled through his body. What if he couldn’t resist?

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” she protested. He saw that the object she was holding was a jet injector. “If you were really a traitor, why would you join the Persona Project? The entire thing is about finding out people’s deepest secrets!”

  “To get rid of the guilt. That’s why I wanted my memory erased. It’s the only explanation.”

  “No, I don’t accept that.” Bianca moved closer. “It doesn’t fit with your personality.”

  “I don’t have a personality!” he said with a desperate near-laugh. “You said so yourself!”

  “I was wrong. I know you better than that now.”

  Adam pulled away. “You don’t know me at all. How can you? I don’t know me. But now I know what I’ve done. I’ve got to—”

  He broke off abruptly. He had been about to say that he had to turn himself in, but another voice in his mind drowned out the words. I’ve got to get out of here, before they catch me …

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Adam said nothing, staring at her. She’s the only person who knows the truth. The only person who can tell the Americans what I did.

  The only person who can stop me.

  He stepped toward her. Panic faded, replaced by a cold resolution. I have to get out of here. She’s the only witness.