“Where we got the information is irrelevant. Just answer the question. Did you meet with members of the Yemeni intelligence service on February seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth, 2000?”
“I decline to answer.”
“On what grounds?”
“It’s classified.”
Croge interjected. “Speaking on behalf of the agency, I can assure you, Mr. Ferris, that Miss Callum, Agent Sackowitz and I all have proper security clearances. We are authorized to receive this information.”
“Sorry. I’ve never seen any of you before today. I want it in writing from my boss, Ed Hoffman, chief of the Near East Division. Otherwise, no way.”
Croge looked fatigued. Callum looked furious. The FBI agent looked bored. “Just continue with the questions,” said Croge. “I’ll call the fourth floor in a minute.”
“In the course of interrogation of Sa-mir Na-kib on the aforementioned days, did you witness the beating of the prisoner?”
“I decline to answer.”
“Why?”
“Same reason. It’s classified. It would be a violation of law for me to answer without proper verification of your clearances by my superior.”
“Did you witness members of the security service threaten the prisoner, Sa-mir Na-kib, with a cricket bat, and then hit him with the bat? In the head?”
“Classified. Classified.”
“Did you at any point attempt to stop the members of the Yemeni Mouk-ha-ba-rat from these activities, as required under U.S. Executive Order 12333 and other relevant agency internal orders?”
“Classified. Classified. Classified.”
Callum looked at Ferris with a black dart of pure hatred in her eyes. To her, he was one of the bad ones; one of the men who had taken away her promotions, held her back from advancement, taken risks that caused trouble for everyone else, made messes they expected other people to clean up.
“Mr. Ferris, I reject your reason for declining to answer. I am fully authorized to receive this information. You are insulting me and the Office of the Inspector General in questioning my clearances, and you are stalling. In addition to being in potential violation of U.S. criminal statutes, you are arrogant, and I’m going to make sure you pay for it.”
Ferris looked at her and smiled for the first time since he had entered the room. He had gotten to her. He had ruffled her lawyer’s confidence. That was worth something. “Just get Ed Hoffman,” said Ferris. “Show me written authorization from my boss that I am allowed to discuss these matters, and then I’ll talk to you. Maybe.”
THEY ADJOURNED the session a short while later. They were getting nowhere, and Croge was worried that Ferris might actually be right about needing written authorization to discuss details of liaison activities, which were among the agency’s most closely guarded secrets. They gave Ferris a temporary badge. When he had left Headquarters, Ferris called Hoffman and asked him to meet him at the Starbucks in the McLean Shopping Center.
24
WASHINGTON
STARBUCKS WAS NEARLY DESERTED in late morning. The only person nearby was a frizzy-haired student typing on her PowerBook and listening to music on her iPod. Ferris was sitting in a dark corner eating an oversized banana-nut muffin in the hope that all those calories would make him feel better. Hoffman ordered an almond Frappuccino and was slurping it through a fat straw when he sat down beside Ferris.
“Well, at least I know now what this is about,” said Ferris. “It’s my wife, Gretchen. I told her once about some bad stuff that happened in Sanaa when we were interrogating an Al Qaeda prisoner, and how I didn’t do anything to stop it and the guy eventually died. Now she’s using it to squeeze me because I want a divorce. Believe it or not, that’s what this is about.”
“I’m impressed,” said Hoffman, putting aside his drink. “She must really love you. But that doesn’t alter the fact that you are in some serious shit.”
“You don’t mean they take this nonsense seriously?”
“Unfortunately, yes. My spy in the IG’s Office says their informant—your charming wife, presumably—has a lot of political juice. Friends in high places, clout with the White House. So when the informant passed along the information, the IG’s Office had to pursue it. My spy says they don’t think it’s much of a case. If you wanted to prosecute all the guys who’ve sat in on nasty interrogations, half the DO would go down. But they have no choice, unless their informant recants. I talked to my lawyer, Mark Sheehan, by the way. He has all the clearances, and the General Counsel’s Office says it’s fine for you to talk to him. In fact, I think the GC wants this to go away. He knows it doesn’t smell right and that it’s trouble. Sheehan will see you this afternoon, at five or six. I forget which. I told him we need you bad on something and we can’t waste time with all the legal crap. We need to move.”
Ferris thought a moment, over the sucking noise of Hoffman draining his Frappuccino. “So if the informant withdraws the complaint, the IG’s Office would drop the investigation? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yeah. Maybe. Ask Sheehan. That’s the sort of stuff he’s good at. The thing is, they can’t prosecute without witnesses. And if nobody talks, they don’t have diddly. I mean, God knows, the Yemenis aren’t going to talk. They killed the guy. And the victim isn’t going to talk, because he’s extremely dead. So what have they got, actually, at the end of the day? Fuck-all. So keep cool in Kabul. This is a case without witnesses. Did you tell anybody else about this, other than your wife?”
“No. I put a note in the file to the effect that this guy had died after interrogation. That’s what they must have found. But I didn’t put in any details. I didn’t even tell you. At least, I hope I didn’t.”
“No way,” said Hoffman. “If you had, I would have had to report it. Now get out of here. Go see Sheehan. A good lawyer can fix anything. I need you back in Amman. The clock is ticking.”
MARK SHEEHAN’S office was in a fancy building on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was like entering another universe. A secretary sat Ferris down in a waiting room that could have received royalty. He was early—it turned out that the appointment was for six, not five, but that didn’t matter to Ferris. They had comfy chairs and glossy magazines and there were real paintings on the wall, rather than lame prints like the ones at the agency. Sheehan over the years had become a guardian angel for case officers in trouble. He was one of the top criminal lawyers in the city, and he made a very good living representing corporate malefactors who probably deserved to go to jail. But Sheehan was an ex-Marine, and it made him angry to see good CIA officers being hounded by congressional committees and showboating lawyers and anybody else who felt like taking a whack at them. So he represented DO clients pro bono. Ferris relaxed in the temporary embrace of a white-shoe law firm. The secretary brought him coffee in a china cup and saucer, and then a Diet Coke and some cookies, and eventually they summoned him to meet Sheehan.
Ferris went through his story carefully. He described Gretchen’s role at the Justice Department, and his suspicion that she’d played a role in drafting the DOJ interrogation policy. He also recounted, in grim detail, the three-day process of interrogation in an underground prison in Sanaa—the threats, the tools they had used, the spurt of blood from the head, the puddle of blood on the floor. He painted it the best way he could; he hadn’t known they would use the cricket bat; he hadn’t realized how seriously hurt the man was. But the basic fact was inescapable: The man had been tortured to death.
“Was any other American citizen present when the prisoner was beaten?” asked Sheehan. When Ferris said he had been the only person there from the station, the lawyer seemed relieved. That meant the only available “witness”—indirectly—was his wife, Gretchen Ferris. And her testimony could be impeached.
“What should I do?” asked Ferris.
“It would be nice if your wife changed her story. If she called back whoever she talked to and said that she wasn’t so sure now. That would make things easier
for everyone, including her.”
“Look, I know what she wants. She wants me to call off the divorce. But I’m not going to do that.”
“Understood,” said Sheehan. “But maybe there’s something she doesn’t want. I’m not giving you any advice, obviously. But sometimes an informant realizes that it’s not in her best interest to pursue a matter.”
“Her best interest,” repeated Ferris. That was certainly a concept Gretchen understood.
FERRIS WAITED until nine that night and then called Gretchen’s apartment. He made the call standing in an alley outside her building. When she answered, he cut the connection and went upstairs and rang the doorbell. She had the door chained and didn’t let him in at first. Ferris thought she might have another man with her, but it wasn’t that; she was doing her makeup.
“What a surprise,” she said, unbolting the chain. “Have you come to your senses?”
She was wearing a long black sweater over the skirt and blouse she’d worn to work. From the inflection in her voice, Ferris suspected she’d already had her martini. She was trying to ruin him. He had to remember that as he looked at the beautiful woman who stared up at him with her lips parted ever so slightly.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said. “You’re trying to destroy me. But it won’t work.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Roger. How could I destroy a big, strong CIA man who isn’t afraid of anybody? You must be having delusions. It’s you who is trying to destroy me, by demanding a divorce.”
“I met today with the inspector general, and after that I hired a good lawyer. I know what’s going on, and it won’t work. There’s no evidence, no witnesses, just your word against mine. And you are an angry soon-to-be-ex-wife, so nobody’s going to believe you. I never told you anything about Yemen. I will swear that in court. You made it up to get revenge. The case is a loser. The problem is, I don’t have time to go through all the legal maneuvers. So I want you to withdraw the compliant. Say you were mistaken. Say you’re sorry. Just make it go away. And then we’re even.”
Her laughter was forced and slightly drunken. “That’s absurd. You really are pathetic, Roger.”
“Make it go away,” Ferris repeated. “This is no joke.” His voice was cold and unyielding, and for a moment she was taken aback. But she recovered quickly, and named her price.
“I’m not going to lift a finger to help a man who is trying to divorce me. The only one who can solve your problems is you. It’s in your hands…darling. As a wife, I could not possibly testify against my husband. But as a soon-to-be-ex-wife, as you so coldly put it, that’s a different story. So you have to decide.”
“No. That’s my decision.”
“No, what?”
“No to your blackmail. I won’t stay married to you so I can beat a bullshit rap about something you think you heard me say. If I agreed, then the next time you were angry, you’d invent something else. Anyway, I’m not here to ask you for anything. I’m here to tell you something.”
“What’s that, tough guy?” She said it tauntingly, but there was an undertone of uncertainty.
“Unless you withdraw your complaint immediately, I am going to take action to defend myself.”
She laughed again, even more unconvincingly. “How’s that? By recruiting one of your ridiculous CIA agents to come after me? I’m petrified.”
“I’m going to defend myself by telling the truth. I’m going to say that I asked you for a divorce, and you went into a jealous rage and invented a false story. And then I am going to show them—and by that I mean show your employer as well as mine—that you are an unreliable person. An untrustworthy person.”
She looked at him and then shook her head. “You’ve lost your mind, Roger. I know these people. The people on the White House staff are my friends. I am part of their world. They’re not going to believe the word of someone like you from the CIA, which they hate, against someone like me, who’s their friend. It will never happen.
“It won’t be my word against yours. I have records. Letters. Pictures. Documents. I can take you out.”
This explicit threat, rather than frightening Gretchen, seemed to enrage her, summoning a contempt for him that had been there all along. “You don’t have the balls for this, Roger. You’re too polite. I know you. You’re not a killer.”
“Try me. I put up with your tantrums and sexual demands, and I let you have your way. But this is different. I am fighting for my life. If you don’t back off, I will destroy you. I mean it. Watch me.”
He turned and walked out the door. She called after him, and then began cursing—screaming his name and joining it with vile obscenities. People down the hall began to open their doors. But it was too late for Gretchen. The elevator door had closed and Ferris was on his way out of the building.
FERRIS WENT to his mother’s house in the mountains, where he had taken the precaution of storing his private files when he went overseas. She tried to soothe him, realizing that something was wrong, but he was in another world. He gathered his material and began to sift it—papers, old e-mails he’d saved on discs, digital photographs that he had never printed, handwritten letters. He locked himself in his old bedroom and spent nearly a whole day going through this record of his life with Gretchen, deciding what would be useful to him now. He narrowed a big pile down to a smaller pile, and then sifted the items, one by one.
She had cheated on her college loans. That was probably his best weapon. Ferris had helped, and sent her an e-mail confirming that it was done. And she’d pulled a fast one in law school, crediting far more hours to her supposed campus job than was warranted. She had bragged about that in an e-mail, too. That was really Gretchen’s problem. She had trusted too much in Ferris’s decency. She had lied about drug use, too, in her interviews with the Justice Department. Ferris could prove that, as well, because she had sent him an e-mail asking for advice when she first applied for a job. Ferris told her, jokingly, to tell the truth and say she’d never used drugs. So she lied, and it worked, and she was so relieved and grateful that when it was over, she sent Ferris a gushy e-mail. The FBI would enjoy that.
Finally, there were her taxes. In the year before they got married, when she was still filing separately, she’d had an unusually large tax bill. She had been desperate to pad her expenses, so she had gathered up all her charges for lunches and dinners and pretended they were business meals and entertainment. She’d even included a trip they had taken to the Virgin Islands that Christmas. Ferris had kept copies of the receipts. Gretchen had been wrong about him. He had kept some ammunition from the first.
FERRIS’S MOTHER could see that he was preoccupied, searching through his old files. And she didn’t bother him until he had finally finished, well past midnight. But when he was done, she brought him downstairs in the kitchen and made him a cup of tea. It was early December; the leaves were down across the Shenandoah Valley and the winter winds were rattling the windows of her big, empty house.
“A man from the FBI came by,” she said. “Or at least he said he was from the FBI. He showed me some kind of badge.”
“Oh? What did he want?”
“He said he was updating your security clearances. He wanted to know if we had any family files. Old records, letters, that sort of thing. From your father’s family.”
“No kidding. That’s strange. Did you give him anything?”
“A few papers for him to copy. I didn’t have much to give. I let him rummage around for an hour or so. They did that before, when you first joined the agency. And they did it with your father, so many times. So I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Did he find anything he didn’t like?”
“No. He seemed quite happy when he left. He said everything was in order, and not to worry. The update was fine.”
Ferris shrugged. Hoffman must have sent the security man when Ferris joined Mincemeat Park. It didn’t matter. He had no secrets. And right now he had bigger things to worry about. He said goo
d-night to his mother and caught a few hours’ sleep before heading back to the city.
FERRIS COPIED two sets of the records. One he left with his attorney, the other he took with him to Gretchen’s apartment. She had a beaten look from the moment she opened the door. There were deep circles under her eyes, and Ferris suspected she hadn’t slept much since he had last seen her. She knew that he had the leverage. What she had never imagined was that he would use it.
Ferris laid the material out on the floor, item by item. He explained what each one was, in case she had forgotten, but it was obvious that she hadn’t. He said that a copy of the same file was already with his lawyer, who had instructions to deliver it to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department at ten the next morning unless he heard from Ferris to the contrary. He had expected her to defend herself when he laid out the evidence—to claim it was all lies, or denounce his perfidy in keeping these personal records for so many years. He had thought there might be tears, too. But she remained silent, shaking her head occasionally. When he finished, she turned to him.
“I loved you,” she said. “But I don’t love you now. Not after this. Go away. I have to think.” She walked to her bedroom and closed the door. Ferris picked up the papers and let himself out of the apartment.
Early the next morning, the Inspector General’s Office received a call from a lawyer acting on behalf of Gretchen Ferris. The attorney said that Mrs. Ferris had discovered additional information concerning her husband. She was not prepared to testify against Mr. Ferris and was withdrawing the allegation that he had violated any laws or federal regulations as a CIA employee. Gretchen’s attorney then telephoned Sheehan and recounted the conversation with the IG. He said that Mrs. Ferris had also instructed him that she was prepared to grant her husband a divorce.
Ferris felt empty in victory. He knew he had violated a trust. She had tried to hurt him but it had been for love; he had tried to hurt her back for his own protection, and that had broken the spell. Once love was gone, there was no more reason for Gretchen to care. She wasn’t one for fighting lost causes, and she would be besieged with suitors soon enough. She was a prize, and she knew it. Ferris had counted on her rationality, but he hadn’t realized how quickly it could turn.
Body of Lies Page 22
