As we both know, I told you he might. “Don’t know anyone by that name.”
“He says he works for the Central Intelligence Agency. And you do, too.”
Wayne wondered why the imam was acting so strangely. Had Shafer rattled him, made him think maybe Wayne was using him instead of the other way around? Hard to believe, considering how much information Wayne had passed. But, then, Wayne knew firsthand that Shafer was an expert provocateur.
The situation was even trickier because Murak was acting as if this room might be wired. Wayne could hardly launch into a full-throated defense of his own betrayals. No, habibi, I am a traitor. Truly. Think of all the missions I’ve compromised.
“Maybe I do. Maybe I’ve been trying to recruit you for the CIA. In that case, I failed, as we both know.”
“He said the CIA videotaped our meetings.”
Wayne’s heart hopped against his ribs like it wanted to make a break for Mexico. No wonder Murak was spooked. “Nonsense.”
“He knew we’d met recently.”
“Months ago, yes—”
“But—”
Wayne put a finger to his lips. The imam was about to make his first real mistake by confirming the off-the-books meetings to anyone who might be listening. If anyone was. Wayne was sure there was no surveillance.
Almost sure.
Finally, the imam saw. “Yes, months ago. But this man Shafer threatened me. He said I had to keep working for the agency—which I don’t—or he would tell my congregants. He said we needed to formalize our relationship. He brought in a contract for me to sign.”
Wayne wanted to laugh at the brazenness of Shafer’s scam. The agency didn’t even use written contracts anymore. “What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That we don’t have any relationship. That we met in a car accident, you told me you worked for the State Department. I made him leave. Nasty little man.”
“I’m sorry, Imam.”
“This Shafer, he spoke the truth? You work for the CIA?”
“On behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency, I apologize. We don’t blackmail religious leaders. Mr. Shafer acted inappropriately. I will make sure he’s disciplined.” Ideally, Soviet-style, with a bullet to the back of the head.
“What’s your real name?”
They both knew the imam knew, of course. But he would ask, under these circumstances. And Wayne would answer.
“Walter Crompond.”
Strange to say it aloud. A freedom in taking back his own name. In bringing the pieces of himself together. Walter Crompond. Princeton graduate, husband, father, CIA officer. As American as a Form 1040. And traitor.
“You need to leave, Walter. You and Shafer, you profane this mosque with your lies.”
Crompond nodded, beckoned the imam to follow. All this, and he hadn’t passed along what he’d come to say. Shafer had made them both paranoid, yet Crompond would bet he didn’t know anything.
In the hallway, Crompond leaned close. “Somewhere we can be sure no one’s listening.”
The imam led Crompond outside, along the side wall of the mosque, to a door with a combination lock. He spun it open. Inside, a closet-sized room, empty but for five pairs of men’s shoes, as well as a few hats and umbrellas.
“Lost and found. From the services.”
A smart choice. If the NSA or FBI were listening in this room, then nowhere was safe. Crompond and the imam might as well turn themselves in. “People leave shoes?”
“Mainly, they grab other people’s, then the ones who go later realize the mistake.”
“They take shoes by accident?”
“We have three thousand worshippers on Fridays . . . Is this what you came to me to talk about, Walter?”
A flush rose in Crompond’s cheeks. “Sorry. Shafer doesn’t know anything. He was guessing. Trying to make you think we were taping. If he had anything, he wouldn’t be here. He’d pick you up at your house in the middle of the night, bring you to Langley. He’d tell you to come clean or spend your life in jail. He wouldn’t be by himself either.”
Murak nodded.
“You still haven’t asked why I wanted to see you.” Crompond handed the imam a piece of paper on which he’d inked a Paris address. “Antoine Martin lives here.”
“An apartment building.”
“With a doorman. He doesn’t have half as much security as our director, but he’s no fool. An armored limousine picks him up every morning—a driver, two bodyguards. I’m only guessing, but probably the police watch the building at least part-time and have a response team on call. I don’t know if he varies his routes to the office, your people will have to figure that out.” Wayne realized he was talking too much, a residue of his nervousness.
The imam pocketed the card.
“As for the church, it’s called Notre-Dame—”
“Notre-Dame—”
“Not the famous one. There’s a bunch of churches with that name in Paris. This one is Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle. It’s in the Second Arrondissement. The Right Bank.”
“Bonne-Nouvelle.”
“Yes. I checked it out online. Couldn’t ask for better.”
“Why do you smile?”
“Bonne-Nouvelle means Good News. The Annunciation. When the angel Gabriel told Mary she was going to have a son even though she was a virgin. Fitting, no? We’ll have an announcement of our own.”
The poetry—if poetry was the word—seemed to be lost on the imam. “You’re sure that’s the place.”
“His family has used it a long time. His grandfather was married there, his father, his brother—”
“All right.”
“What about the stuff? Are you close? How much do you have?”
The imam didn’t answer. Finally, Crompond realized. “Need-to-know basis, huh? And I don’t need to know.”
The imam nodded like a judge about to pronounce sentence. Just another infidel. Crompond doubted they’d see each other again. So be it. No one outside this room would understand, but in his own mind he’d benefited from their arrangement as much as the jihadis.
“If this man Shafer comes back—”
“Send him away, and tell me. It’s best if he thinks you haven’t talked to me. Or at least can’t be sure. If he knows you have, then sooner or later I’ll have to confront him about what he did to you. If I don’t, it’ll look suspicious. I’d rather not have that conversation. But if I do have to have it, I’ll let you know.”
“He seemed so sure of himself.”
“I’m telling you he doesn’t have anything, and even if they come down on me, they can’t prove I went through you. And I’ll never tell them.”
“You have a family, too, Walter.”
Is that a threat? Of course.
The imam extended a hand and, in the lost-and-found closet at the Islamic Center of Northern Virginia, Walter Crompond shook it. “Aren’t you going to try to convert me? At least give me an Insh’allah or a hamdilillah?”
The imam looked at Crompond as if from a thousand feet away. “I can’t convert you, Walter. I can teach you the words, but Allah opens your heart. Do you want me to teach you the words?”
Crompond opened the door and stepped into the sunlight. He didn’t look back as he walked. He’d cleared Earth orbit, another stage left behind on his journey to the center of the universe.
—
HE KNEW he ought to go straight to Langley, but he found himself driving toward Shafer’s house, rage in his blood. At least John Wells put himself on the line. Shafer . . . Shafer was content to sit home, lying and meddling.
Worst of all, he knew better. He wasn’t an agency drone. He knew how the CIA had behaved over the years. He knew that what Crompond wanted was just. Yet he insisted on interfering. Simply to prove his own cleverness.
Crompo
nd rolled slowly past Shafer’s gray house. The old Ford wasn’t in the driveway. Shafer must already be at work. Crompond kept a pistol under his front seat. Just in case. He turned the corner, pulled over. He reached down, felt its grip. Solid and comforting as life.
He could walk to Shafer’s front door, ring the doorbell, shoot whoever opened the door. Shafer’s wife, no doubt. How long would he need? Ten seconds? Fifteen?
The thought made Crompond’s fingers twitch. Let Shafer’s phone ring. Let him speed home, find the police cruisers outside, the house taped off, cops canvassing the neighbors. He would know even before the detectives told him.
Crompond would shoot her in the chest, give Shafer that small courtesy, the chance to see her face one last time unspoiled, touch her cheek.
Then he saw the woman across the street. Pretty, a redhead, fortyish, pushing a stroller. A double-wide. Twins. Courtesy of some fertility doctor, no doubt. The pistol was still under the seat, but she was looking at Crompond like she could read his mind. She saw him looking back, didn’t smile. He let go of the pistol like it was on fire, gave her a halfhearted wave, and eased away from the curb.
Lesson learned. No shooting anyone. Not today. He didn’t have a silencer, and neighborhoods like this had stay-at-home moms, cameras where they wouldn’t be noticed. The police would find him quick. And his arrest would destroy his bigger plans, the plans that really mattered. Shafer’s wife was nothing.
First things first. Let the imam give Martin’s address to his French friends. Let them move.
He’d handle Shafer if he saw the chance. He turned on the radio, low, found an adult contemporary station to play him some Taylor Swift, drove the speed limit to Langley. He rolled into the campus, smiling and cool. No need to rush. No need to panic. Soon enough, he’d make his announcement.
17
THE CASTLE
LOCKDOWN gave Wells the chance to learn every inch of Samir Khalili’s cell. The Florida-shaped crack in the back wall’s concrete. The rust-brown stain in the floor that looked like blood, except when it didn’t. The barely visible deformations in the bars, as if the cell’s previous occupants had tugged the steel until their hands shed skin. Not because they believed they could escape but so they remembered they hadn’t given up.
Wells understood.
Since the fight, the guards had run the block more nastily. They brought in oversized speakers and blasted ’80s hair metal bands like Def Leppard when the jihadis tried to pray. They threatened to sic their Dobermans on prisoners who spoke Arabic after curfew. They turned off the heat, then cranked it far too high.
The crackdown didn’t surprise Wells. The jihadis might be their meal ticket, but the guards sympathized with their fellow Bulgarians. And they obviously knew what he’d done during the fight. They treated him more harshly than anyone else. For the first week of lockdown, they allowed him only one meal and latrine visit a day. They came to his cell four or five times a night and made him stand at attention, shivering in his thin uniform.
Not so long ago, Wells had been imprisoned in an aircraft carrier, its brig far belowdecks. That cell had been cleaner, but here he could watch the sky lighten and darken. He’d take the trade. Still, he hated losing these precious days, especially since he didn’t know what was happening at Langley. The warden obviously planned to leave the lockdown in place long enough that no one would question the reality of the reprimand, much less the fight that had sparked it. But as a second week passed, and a third, Wells wondered if the brawl had been worth the trouble, the lost time.
Finally, exactly twenty-one days after the fight, he heard booted footsteps echoing along the cellblock. He came to the bars, found himself looking at the angry pimpled face of the commanding guard. Wells hadn’t seen him since that first night.
“Boss went soft on you throat slitters. Says you get time to pray this week.” The commander unlocked Wells’s cell, slid open the gate. “If it was my choice, you’d be praying for me to stop beating your head in.”
“Glad it’s not up to you.”
The commander’s mouth became a slit.
“Stand in the doorway. Grab the bars on either side and spread your feet.”
Wells knew he shouldn’t have talked back. Arguing would only anger the commander further. Wells squeezed his hands around the bars. The guard popped his baton, whacked him once in the ribs, twice—
“You have kids? Hope so—” He dug low and came up between Wells’s legs. An underhand strike. Sun fire. Agony. Wells gasped, staggered, the weight of his body hanging from his arms.
“Might be tough now.”
Wells could only moan. Scale of one to ten, what’s your pain level? Ten. Billion. Slowly, the pain faded enough for him to stand upright. The guard stepped close.
“You broke a bone in Gruv’s neck. Lucky he can walk.”
Wells didn’t speak, sure that the wrong answer would earn another beating.
“A rat, that one. Nasty with a knife. Maybe I’m not so mad you taught him a lesson. But do anything like it again, I’ll slit your throat. Don’t forget it.”
“Yes.”
“Now come, dirty Arab, play with your brothers.” The commander smirked. “I meant pray.”
Wells tried to walk. Gravity was more powerful than he remembered. He went to his knees. Somehow, he forced himself to his feet and staggered for the prayer room, walking bowlegged, clownish. Maybe he wasn’t a masochist. Maybe he was only a fool.
—
WITH ITS calm white walls, the prayer room felt like a hospital. The other jihadis half carried him to the back wall. He slumped down. Hani sat beside him, looked at him with respect and worry both.
“What did they do to you?”
Wells ran his hands up his thighs, gingerly touched himself, wished he hadn’t. He’d be pissing blood for a week. He needed an ice bath and Vicodin more than anything, but asking for those would only earn him another blow. He wouldn’t know if the shot had done any permanent harm until a real doctor looked at him and he wouldn’t have that chance until he left this place.
He stayed very still as he listened to the prayers. “Can we help?” Hani said.
“You were right about that guard.”
“They’re animals.”
“They think the same of us.”
“Someone hits you between the legs, now you’re a philosopher?” Hani squeezed Wells’s hand. “I didn’t have the chance to say it properly before. Thank you. That big one, he would have—”
“The knife came to me, I threw it.”
“They hate you more than me. They know you’re dangerous.”
“I thought I was a philosopher.”
“In Afghanistan, did you kill?”
“Everyone killed.”
“Americans?”
“Nam.” The truth, for Samir Khalili and Wells both. “Think they’ll ever let us into the yard again? I want my chance at the big one.”
“Not a good idea right now. Unless you can knock him down with your swollen balls.”
“I like that idea.”
“But I hope you heal fast. I hear the kaffirs have a price on us both,” Hani said. “Five thousand euros.”
“Only five?”
“For a thousand, those pigs would cut their own mothers in half.”
“Doesn’t matter. Unless the guards open the gates for them, they can’t get to us and we can’t get to them.”
“Truly, I’m surprised they even let us have this meeting.”
“Maybe the Americans said they had to let us pray once a week.”
“Maybe.”
The prayers washed over them. Wells didn’t want to push, but he worried that once this session ended, he wouldn’t see Hani for another week or longer.
“Tell me, Hani. I’ve thought about it a lot in the cell.”
“Wh
at’s that?”
“The Islamic State has more men than we ever did. Especially in Europe. How come you haven’t been able to make a big attack like September 11?”
“Back to this? You’re obsessed. You were lucky that day, that’s all.”
“Allah smiled on us.” Did I just say that? No, Samir Khalili did.
“Maybe you didn’t notice living with the goats in the mountains all these years, but everywhere has more security. Not just jets. It’s hard to surprise them.”
“Is that it? Or is it that your leaders are all in Raqqa? The brothers in Europe only look for easy targets. Nightclubs to shoot up. One week they dance, the next they come back with an AK. What good is that?”
“That guard scrambled your mind, too. I shouldn’t say this—”
“Then don’t.” Wells was taking a chance, playing back. But Hani liked to brag.
“Under their noses in Paris—”
Wells willed Hani to go on. He didn’t. Wells would have to risk pressing once more. “What, you have a big man there?”
Hani raised his eyebrows. A painkiller better than Vicodin. An actual lead.
“Let me guess. A cousin of yours. Snuck in from Syria a few years ago, before anyone ever heard of the Islamic State. Married himself to a French girl, who had convinced herself Arabs are the best lovers. Did she take the hijab or does he keep her locked in a closet so he’s the only one who sees her?”
“Not my cousin.”
“Or maybe one of those Algerians whose parents were dumb enough to think the French were serious about making them citizens? With those silly names, half French and half Arab, which makes them nothing at all, Jacques Hamidou, whatever.” Still, Hani didn’t answer. “Don’t tell me, then.”
“Call him Abu Najma.” Father of Najma. The name meant star in Arabic.
“Such an original nickname.” Every Islamic State fighter seemed to have a nom de guerre that started with Abu—the Arabic word for father. “Abu Najma, Abu Bakr—”
“Fine. Call him the Puma.”
Puma. Wells had won another clue for the NSA databases. If Hani hadn’t made up the nickname Puma on the spot for his own obscure reasons. If Wells beat whatever the Bulgarian convicts had planned for him and escaped. If the mole hadn’t already shot up the seventh floor by then. He wondered for a moment if he should break cover to pass the aliases to Shafer.
The Prisoner Page 25
