But Islam seemed particularly pointless, a mash-up of Judaism and Christianity, with some desert hocus-pocus on top. At least Christians had Jesus to run interference for their sins. But the faith seemed to give Wells comfort, and Allah knew he needed all the comfort he could find.
—
A ONE-STORY office building was tucked behind the mosque. Islamic Center Administrative Offices, a sign read. The place was empty, everyone at prayers. The bruiser tugged him into a conference room embellished with expensive Arabic calligraphy, one of the few types of art that devout Muslims permitted themselves, along with black-and-white photos of Mecca’s Grand Mosque, the holiest site in all of Islam.
“Sit.”
“I have to take a piss.”
“Not in our bathrooms.”
“Come on, this is bush league.” Though not one one-thousandth as bad as the indignities Wells had just suffered. The Kabul chief of station had passed Shafer the capture reports:
PRISONER REFUSED TO DISCUSS MEDICAL CONDITION BUT SHOWED SYMPTOMS OF CONCUSSION, POSSIBLY RELATED TO FLASHBANG GRENADE USED IN CAPTURE. UPON ARRIVAL AT BAGRAM, PRISONER ALSO SHOWED SIGNS OF SEVERE GASTRIC DISTRESS BUT REFUSED REHYDRATION TUBE, CLAIMING IT WAS POISON; MEDICAL PERSONNEL FORCIBLY INTUBATED PRISONER.
He’d refused the feeding tube. Though he must have known how badly he needed it. Crazy. Except Samir Khalili would have done the same. Not for the first time, Shafer glimpsed how Wells had survived so long undercover and why he believed he could convince the Islamic State commanders of his bona fides. But what a price he paid:
AFTER STABILIZATION AND INITIAL INTERROGATION, PRISONER WAS PLACED UNDER TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR OBSERVATION.
Twenty-four-hour observation being bureaucratic code for Just try to sleep—
INTERROGATION WAS UNPRODUCTIVE. PRISONER REFUSED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS, AND ALL EFFORTS AT OUTREACH, INCLUDING OFFERS OF A QURAN AND POTENTIAL FAMILY CONTACT.
BASED ON MATERIAL FOUND WITH PRISONER AT TIME OF CAPTURE (SEE APPENDIX B), PRISONER RECLASSIFIED AS EXTREMELY HIGH-VALUE. UPON RECOMMENDATION OF KABUL COS, PRISONER WAS PREPARED FOR TRANSFER TO ALLIED FACILITY FOR FURTHER PROCESSING . . .
Prisoner, prisoner, prisoner. The reports avoided a name or even a number for Wells, another way to dehumanize him.
Now Wells was in Bulgaria, facing new indignities. Shafer would live with a full bladder.
—
HE AND THE GUARD passed a half hour in silence before the conference room door swung open to reveal Aziz Murak. Murak wore a long white thobe, the flowing gown Saudis traditionally wore. He was a tall man with a round, second-trimester-pregnant belly. Shafer figured he’d ease in, try for background first.
“I didn’t know you were Saudi, Imam.”
“I’m not. Egyptian.”
“The thobe—”
“Many years ago, before I came to America, I spent two years in Mecca. Learning Islamic law at the Umm al-Qura University.”
“I thought that was only for Saudis.” Shafer had no idea, but as long as Murak was feeling chatty, he’d press.
“They allowed in a few of us outsiders every year. Quite an experience, being a poor Egyptian in Saudi Arabia back then.”
“They didn’t mind you dressing like them?”
“As long as we didn’t wear the gutra. I grew to like the traditional Saudi dress. Surprisingly cool in the heat.”
“Are those pictures from back then? Mecca must have been very different.”
“It wasn’t as crowded.” Murak glanced at the pictures and all at once seemed to remember that he hadn’t invited Shafer. “You come to my mosque on a Friday afternoon. Bother my brothers, interrupt prayers.”
“I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Your name, please.”
Shafer slid his agency identification across the table.
“Ellis Shafer, Central Intelligence Agency. Am I meant to be impressed?” Murak flicked the identification back. “Unless you’re here to tell me you know of a threat to my mosque, you’d better go.”
“Are you pretending you don’t know why I’m here?”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Then get rid of this side of beef so we can talk man-to-man.”
“I don’t have anything to talk about. Except the lawsuit that the Islamic Center will file if you harass me. I don’t do business with the American government. I’ve told the FBI that I want nothing to do with them. I say the same to you.”
“Say whatever you like.”
“You think I don’t know my rights?”
“You don’t need to put on a show for me. James Jones sent me.”
Murak shook his head in apparent uncertainty. “Is that the one who works for the State Department?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Come on, Imam, he hit your car.” Though Crompond had claimed in his reports that he hadn’t seen Murak in months. Murak might not remember Jones’s name, despite the fender bender.
“You know about that? Then you know it was a scrape. Years ago.” The imam flapped his hand to show Shafer how minor the accident had been. “What does any of this matter?”
“You’re going to make me say it in front of him?” Shafer nodded at the guard.
“He knows better than to trust a little old Jew,” Murak muttered under his breath in Arabic, provoking a laugh from the guard. Shafer didn’t need a translator to understand.
“I understand it’s embarrassing to talk about, but we need to formalize our relationship.” Shafer had tucked an envelope into his jacket for just this moment. He pulled it out now, tore it open, unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. Throughout the Cold War, the CIA had tried to make its foreign agents sign contracts. This protects both sides . . . The biggest lie ever told. Though Soviet and Eastern bloc agents, who were used to bureaucracy, had agreed surprisingly often. The agency had largely given up the practice after September 11, but the contracts could still be a useful prop.
“What is this?” Murak’s confusion seemed genuine.
“Can’t have you off the books anymore. Too sensitive.”
“Is that what this man Jones tells you? That I work for you?”
“Why do you think I’m here? And I know you two meet all the time—”
“Another lie.”
“You think we don’t have video?” Shafer pushed one step further. “You think we can’t hear you? Maybe you think you’ve been clever, you’ve tricked him into passing you information, not given any of your own . . . Please. Don’t you know how this works? You think you can fool the Central Intelligence Agency?”
“Are you threatening me? With what? A leak? You tell my congregation I work for you if I don’t sign this?”
“Call it what you like.”
“I thought Jews were supposed to be smart. You tell me that if I don’t work for you, you’ll tell the world I do? Enough. This center, it’s peaceful, and I want it to stay that way. You leave.” He said something in Arabic. The guard stood, moved toward Shafer.
“Can’t get away from this, Imam.” Shafer handed Murak his card. “When you’re ready, you call me.”
“Why wouldn’t I just call him?”
The better question is, why are you so willing to believe Walter Crompond, a/k/a James Jones, works for the CIA when a minute ago you barely seemed to remember him? And that he supposedly told you he works for the State Department. And that he reported he never did more than make a soft approach to you that went nowhere.
But Shafer had pushed Murak enough. Especially since Murak’s guard was now edging closer. “Go ahead. Call whoever you like. It was a pleasure meeting you—”
“Come back here again, I’ll call the police myself, make sure you’re arrested.”
Shafer pushed himself from the table. If this meeting didn’t provoke Murak into calling Crompond, nothing would
. “Oh, Sheikh. And here I was, hoping for some kind of interfaith understanding.”
He walked out, feeling he’d lit a fuse. He hoped it wouldn’t blow up in his face.
16
LANGLEY
FRANCE’S CIA was called the DGSE, the general directorate for external security. It reported to the Ministry of Defense. But its leaders were rarely career spies. They were mostly former ambassadors who had spent their careers at France’s Foreign Ministry.
In the United States, officers rarely shifted from State to CIA, or vice versa. But France had practical reasons to let diplomats run its spy agency. The French had long made economic interests the cornerstone of their foreign policy. Throughout its history, the DGSE had specialized in corporate espionage. It set honey traps for American executives and broke into Paris hotel rooms to steal laptops. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs helped French companies win contracts with unsavory regimes all over the world. The two agencies worked hand in glove in a way the CIA and State Department rarely did. In other words, French diplomats already acted more like spies than their American counterparts.
At the same time, most senior French bureaucrats came through a handful of elite universities in Paris, notably the Sciences Po and the École Nationale d’Administration. France’s foreign policy community was small enough for personal relationships to overcome institutional rivalries in a way impossible in Washington.
But the fact that the DGSE’s top officers didn’t have hard-core espionage experience had hurt France in the new age of Islamist terror. For too long, the Parisian elite imagined French opposition to American foreign policy would save them from the jihadis. For too long, they believed in realpolitik and French exceptionalism. While most Americans supported Israel against the Palestinians, many French felt the opposite.
Those distinctions had carried weight with old-school Arab nationalists, who focused their anger on the United States and Israel rather than France and the rest of Europe. But to the new breed of jihadis, the French were no different than other kaffirs. In fact, many Muslims disliked France more than the United States because France was so avowedly secular. Wearing a burqa was more acceptable in New York than in Paris. Yet France had the largest Muslim community in Europe, mostly from the North African countries that it had once ruled. Nearly seven million French citizens were Muslim, ten percent of the population, compared to only one percent of Americans. Most were under thirty.
Slow economic growth meant that those young Muslims had little chance at decent jobs. They were isolated, unhappy, unemployed, and looking for meaning. Many found it in radical Islam. Thousands traveled to Syria to fight for the Islamic State. Many had now returned. Not everyone who came back was a budding terrorist. Daesh’s savagery had turned some against the group. But those who remained loyal now had the training and experience to carry out deadly assaults. They were supported by thousands more—even tens of thousands—who had not traveled to Syria but secretly sympathized.
So France faced a threat of Islamic terror more serious than any other Western country, even the United States. Along with the November 2015 massacre in Paris and the Bastille Day 2016 truck attack in Nice, dozens of smaller attacks had hit France.
The DGSE had struggled to catch up. The agency had dithered for years whether to build a new headquarters big enough to house both its senior staff and its operational arm, the Action Division. For now, the two groups worked from complexes several kilometers apart, not exactly a model of efficiency. And though the agency—and its counterpart the DGSI, the French equivalent of the FBI—had added hundreds of new officers, they still had only a couple of thousand frontline agents in all. Even with help from the Paris police, they couldn’t begin to track every potential jihadi. Worse, many potential terrorists lived in Belgium or Germany, where European rules meant the DGSE could work only with difficulty. The agency’s technical division had solid surveillance capabilities within France, but nothing like the worldwide data collection that the National Security Agency provided to the CIA.
Most important, at least from Wayne’s point of view, the DGSE provided only limited protection for its officers, even the most senior. Wayne knew just how much security they had, because Western intelligence services traded tips on what the United States called force protection. The DGSE’s director traveled with just two bodyguards and a driver, a tiny detail by CIA standards. The agency regularly urged the French to tighten up. Extend the perimeter around DGSE headquarters in northeastern Paris. Add chase cars for its director’s limousine. Use helicopters whenever possible. You can’t protect anyone if you and your people aren’t safe. You need to see that you’re the ultimate target.
The French brushed aside the suggestions. The DGSE’s reluctance partly resulted from manpower and cost concerns. But attitude played a role, too. Yes, we have risk, its director had said. So does everyone who gets on the Métro. All those people checking in at CDG every day. Why should we be in a bubble? Why should I ride in a helicopter like a superhero? Anyway, a low profile is the best defense. A pessimist might call the view fatalism. An optimist, bravery.
The director’s name was Antoine Martin. He’d run the DGSE for almost three years. Before taking over, he had served as France’s ambassador to Russia. Wayne had met him in Iraq, where he’d been the undersecretary of the French mission during Wayne’s final tour. Wayne remembered him as a good guy, clear-eyed about American failures but not too dogmatic, knowing the CIA’s officers were stuck with policies set ten thousand kilometers away. Like many French spies and diplomats, Martin looked professorial, not soldierly. He was trim and narrow-shouldered, with rimless glasses that emphasized the intelligence in his blue eyes. He carried himself with an aristocrat’s casual confidence. Wayne vaguely remembered hearing that his father had been a grandee in the French Foreign Ministry, too.
Now Wayne was going to give Martin’s address to the imam so the Islamic State could kill him. And his family, if necessary. Martin had a wife and three teenage sons.
Wayne wished he cared. But he didn’t. Can’t make an omelette without breaking some oeufs . . .
—
THE CIA had the mobile numbers of the top officers at the DGSE and other European spy agencies. No NSA voodoo necessary. In an age of coordinated terror attacks, the world’s top intelligence officers needed to be able to reach each other without delay.
But the information sharing didn’t extend to home addresses, and Wayne worried that asking the seventh-floor admins to contact Paris for Martin’s might seem odd. We forgot your birthday present this year! I want to mail your present personally. A nice California red. Alternatively, Wayne could have asked the NSA to locate a batch of French phone numbers and thrown in Martin’s. Odds were, no one would have noticed. But Wayne didn’t want to take the risk. Not with Shafer nosing around.
He found a more subtle way. The agency didn’t have home addresses of its senior counterparts, but it did keep a database of the names of their spouses and children, an easy way to break transatlantic conversational ice. How’s Isabelle? Martin’s sons were Simon, Remi, and Damien.
Martin didn’t have a Facebook page. Neither did his wife. But the boys did, all three. Two had Twitter accounts, which they had thoughtfully created in their real names. Wayne supposed he understood the mistake. Martin was the most common last name in France. And French news agencies had never publicly named his children. Martin must have figured his kids could use the Internet because no one would connect them to him.
He hadn’t counted on having to worry about Wayne.
Now all Wayne needed was a single home photo with embedded geolocation information. He found it on Remi’s Twitter account, a picture of the family bulldog raising his leg beside the front door. Caption: Attendez, Rousseau! Yes, the Martins had named their dog after an Enlightenment intellectual. How very . . . French. Wayne’s golden retriever was named Pinkie.
A few hour
s googling, and checking French baptismal, wedding, and funeral records at ancestry.com, provided the rest of the information Wayne needed. The agency’s researchers could have answered his questions, but, again, he preferred to leave no trace. He was pleased to find his memory correct. Martin came from a family of diplomats. His father had served as the French ambassador to Cambodia. And for as many generations as Wayne could trace, the Martins had held their religious ceremonies at the same Paris church.
Perfect.
—
NOW WAYNE was seeing the imam once again. He had decided on an official meeting this time rather than pushing his luck with another accidental bumping-into at the mall. Glad you called, James, the imam told him. I need to ask you something. His tone suggested that the something wasn’t good.
They agreed to meet the next morning, 7 a.m. at the Islamic Center. If Wayne slept, he didn’t remember. After hours staring at the ceiling, as his wife snored quietly beside him, he gave up. He spent the rest of the night rereading A Bright Shining Lie, blanketing himself in his government’s sins. In the morning, he drove straight to the mosque. A countersurveillance run would look odd, considering he was visiting on official business.
The mosque guard led him to a conference room next to the imam’s office. The man himself showed a few minutes later. “James.” His tone suggested Wayne had announced he was writing a book called Prophet Muhammad: World’s Biggest Loser.
“Imam. Good to see you.”
“You told me you work at the State Department.”
No small talk today. “And I do.”
“Your friend Ellis Shafer visited a few days ago.”
The Prisoner Page 24
