Wells had considered that idea. But going back to Kabul was unappealing. The mole would have his defenses ready, and Wells didn’t have the leverage to break them. The Ariana felt like a trap.
“I think I’m better off staying away. So I’m going to Kandahar, shake some hands, maybe see if I hear anything about drug smuggling.”
“Long shot.”
“I know, but that was half my cover for coming over here anyway. I might as well stick to it. Until you find Daood. Get that big brain in gear, Ellis.”
14
D
aood. Dawood. Daud. Daoud.
Bad enough that Ellis Shafer couldn’t find the courier, didn’t have a hint of who he was. Almost a week after talking to Wells, Shafer couldn’t even be sure how to spell the guy’s first name.
Like many Muslim names, such as Ibrahim and Yusuf, Daood was a Quranic version of a Jewish Biblical name, in this case David. Muslims chose names from a relatively small pool. Their favorites included Abdul, Ali, Hussein, Khalid, and the always popular Muhammad, a name given to tens of millions of Muslims worldwide—and a few unlucky Christians, too. Daood and its variants weren’t quite as popular. Still, Shafer had hundreds of thousands of potential targets.
He wouldn’t be going door-to-door.
AFTER HIS TALK with Wells, Shafer’s first call went to Fort Meade. He asked the NSA to track the e-mail address and phone number that Wells had gotten, and search its e-mail and voice databases for references to men named Daood. But his hope for a dose of technological magic didn’t pan out.
The agency started with an e-mail to Amadullah’s Gmail address. The e-mail looked like a standard account-maintenance message, but opening it would infect the host computer with a virus that would broadcast the IP address of the server connecting the computer to the Internet. The agency could use the virtual address to pin down the computer’s physical location. But the plan was a bust. As far as the NSA could figure, Amadullah never used the Gmail account. As for the cell number, the NSA was already tracing it as part of its surveillance of the Thuwanis.
The broader e-mail and phone searches Shafer had requested also came up dry. The name Daood appeared hundreds of times in the agency’s databases. But after two days of combing through suspect messages, Shafer found nothing that appeared remotely related to trafficking or the Thuwanis. He wasn’t surprised. The CIA officer running this plan would know just how good the United States had become at tracking Internet traffic.
The voice records had their own problems. The NSA’s voice database was spottier than its e-mail counterpart. Nearly all e-mails worldwide passed through a handful of electronic junctions that the United States tapped. But phone companies tried to keep calls inside their own systems to avoid paying interchange fees to other phone companies. A phone call from Islamabad to Peshawar might never leave Pakistan, making it harder to trace. And even if the NSA did have the calls in its databases, finding them in a blind search would be extraordinarily difficult. The agency couldn’t possibly hire enough Arabic and Pashtun speakers to go through all the calls in its databases. It had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on voice recognition programs that listened for obvious words like bomb and martyrdom—as well as more subtle ones like container or antibiotic. The NSA could also query the software to track specific words. Calls pegged as suspicious were passed to human analysts.
But the software was spotty. Computers had a hugely difficult time parsing and recognizing human speech, as anyone who’d ever called an airline 800 number knew. And the agency particularly disliked blind searches, which used huge amounts of computing power and generally came up dry. So Dr. Teresa Carter, who oversaw the programs, told Shafer.
“You’re telling me it’s impossible,” Shafer said.
“We can try. But I need to know, will finding this man Daood stop an imminent threat to American civilians or military personnel?”
Shafer hesitated. “I can’t guarantee that.”
“In that case, given the other projects we have queued up, we can’t treat this request as a top priority.”
“A medium priority?”
“It’ll be on the list.” Her voice was cool. “Mr. Shafer, we’re currently tasked on other searches that have a direct probability of saving lives. You may not believe me, but I want to help. If there’s an imminent threat, call me and I’ll push.”
SHAFER HATED being reminded how much the CIA relied on the wizards across the Potomac. The Luddite in him was almost happy to find out that technology wasn’t totally infallible. But he needed a new way to shrink the target pool. He decided to flip the search, look from the inside out instead of the outside in. Specifically, he would assume that Daood was already connected with the agency, that whoever was running the trafficking hadn’t recruited him cold.
If Daood had ever worked for the agency, his real name would be kept in a database at Langley, Shafer knew. Even before they were officially recruited, agents received code names—Sparrow, Gemstone, Medallion. Case reports and files always referred to them by those names. Under normal circumstances, only a handful of people would know an agent’s real name. But all agents also had their names and biographical information sent to Langley and saved. The reason was simple: the CIA mistrusted everyone, even the agents it recruited. Most especially the agents it recruited. If they were suspected of being doubles controlled by their home governments, counterintelligence officers and desk officers at Langley might need to know who they really were. So each regional desk kept a database of biographical information.
But keeping the names at Langley came with its own risks. In 1985, a disgruntled counterintelligence officer named Aldrich Ames had given the real names of the CIA agents in the Soviet Union to the KGB. Several were executed. After the Ames scandal, the agency tightened access to the databases. They were no longer stored at each regional desk. Instead, the Directorate of Security stored them on encrypted hard drives in a vault that could be opened only upon a written finding signed by an assistant deputy director. Once a database was pulled, two 128-digit key codes were required to unlock it.
Given the importance of the databases, Shafer understood the precautions. But they meant that he couldn’t search the databases quietly. Word of the search for Daood would likely leak to Kabul. Shafer didn’t know what the mole would do if he heard.
He did have one other option: the “Kingdom List.” Even inside the CIA, the existence of the Kingdom List remained a closely held secret. It contained the name and basic biographical information of everyone that the agency had ever recruited, active or retired, dead or alive.
The list was stored in a cavern in West Virginia, part of the underground complex where the president would be evacuated if Washington faced a nuclear attack. A written finding from the president, vice president, or national security advisor was required to see the Kingdom List. It could be decoded only in the presence of the agency’s director or most senior deputy director. Theoretically, it provided the ultimate backup in case of a catastrophic nuclear attack on the Langley campus.
In reality, a nuclear attack big enough to destroy Langley would probably destroy all of Washington. In reality, the list served as the last defense against a top-level mole. For example, if the director suspected that an agent in Russia could prove that his deputy was a spy for the FSB, the list would give him a way to contact the agent directly without anyone else inside the CIA knowing.
Shafer wondered whether Duto would give him access to the list. Probably not, especially since they still had no hard proof that the mole existed. But it was worth asking. He called the seventh floor, Duto’s direct line.
“Director’s office.” The voice wasn’t Duto’s.
“Where’s Vinny?”
“This is Joseph Geisler. May I help you?”
“It’s Ellis. I need to talk to Vinny.”
“Ellis who?”
“Ellis Shafer, you nimwit.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know that name.”
Shafer closed his eyes and counted to ten. His doctor had warned him about stress. He was closer to seventy than sixty now, and learning the aging process was just growing up in reverse. Every time he went to the doctor, another pleasure was taken from him. And those were the good trips, the ones where he wasn’t poked and prodded and snipped.
“Sir?”
“Joseph. How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
Shafer had worked for the agency longer than this guy had been alive. He wished he could be happy about that fact. “And how long have you worked for Vinny?”
“I’ve had the honor to be a member of Director Duto’s personal team for three months.”
“Please tell someone who is not in diapers that Ellis Shafer is coming up to see Vinny, and it’s urgent.”
“Sir, the director is in meetings all morning—”
“ELLIS,” DUTO SAID when Shafer walked into his office. Duto’s eyes looked up, but his thumbs didn’t. He had his legs on his desk and was texting away furiously. “You hurt Joe’s feelings, you know.”
“Every month you have more of these guys. What’s next? Food taster?”
Duto didn’t rise to the bait. He rarely did these days. “I’m glad you came by. I was wondering about John. Kabul said he’s disappeared. Left the station one morning and went to Moscow. Funny thing is that no one in Moscow seemed to get the message.”
“Went to Pak to chase a lead. Now he’s back in Afghanistan, at KAF.”
“He’s in Kandahar.”
“Correct.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“Talking to soldiers, shaking hands.” Avoiding that snake pit in Kabul.
“What about his cover?”
“Junk. No one at the Ariana believed it. They told him they knew he was after a mole.”
Finally, Duto stopped texting. “Did they now?”
“They did.”
“And did he get what he was looking for in Pakistan?”
“Progress as promised, Vinny.” Shafer recounted Wells’s trip to Muslim Bagh, leaving out only the way Wells had killed the four men. Duto wouldn’t mind, but Shafer figured that Wells should decide whether to tell that part of the story.
“So now we’re trying to find Daood. We figure he’ll lead us to the mole. Though the theory does have one weak link.”
“What’s that?”
“Aside from that story you initially gave us from the DEA before John went over, we still have no evidence connecting the trafficking with the mole. John and I both think it’s likely. These soldiers making the pickups can’t have found Amadullah on their own. Somebody at a high level has got to be directing all this, somebody who can operate on both sides of the border. But that somebody isn’t necessarily one of ours. We think it is, but thinking it isn’t the same as proving it.”
“Amadullah Thuwani,” Duto said. “Would you believe that two nights ago an SF team raided a farm in Kandahar where a couple Thuwanis were supposed to be living? Guys in their twenties, Amadullah’s nephews. We suspected that one was connected to a bombing on Highway 1 that cooked an MRAP and everybody inside. We helped develop the intel, so JSOC kept Kandahar station informed.” The letters stood for the Joint Special Operations Command, the group that oversaw Delta Force, the Green Berets, and other elite units.
“And what happened?”
“Special ops had satellite recon for weeks, had their patterns down. Everything. Locked down. And guess what? When we hit, we didn’t find one military-age man on the compound. Not one. Kids and old men only. Which is the reason I know about this. JSOC intel’s chief and our guys in Kandahar can’t figure out how it leaked.”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“You think so?”
“No.” Thuwani’s men wouldn’t have left without good reason, and operational security on night raids was extremely tight. Someone had tipped them. The mole was real.
“Me neither. Now tell me about Daood. Why you’re so sure he’s one of ours.”
“Our mole is too smart to take a chance on a courier he doesn’t know. He wants somebody he can leverage. Somebody he can own. But at the same time, he wants somebody who doesn’t have an active case officer, because in that case the guy might go running to his CO.”
“What if the mole is actually Daood’s CO?”
“Our guy’s too smart to use anyone who could be connected with him that easily. No, Daood is an occasional.” CIA jargon for a low-grade informant who provided tips but didn’t merit full-time management by a case officer. Since they weren’t officially on the CIA payroll, the agency paid limited attention to them. “I’m afraid Kabul will hear if I start fishing for him. Now that we’re certain the mole’s real, is there any chance I can use the Kingdom List?”
“That’s national emergencies only, and this doesn’t qualify.”
“Meaning you don’t want the White House to know you may have a mole.”
“I’m not debating this.”
“Vinny—”
“Forget it, Ellis.”
Shafer gave up. Duto’s tone brooked no argument.
“Then what do you suggest?”
“What about the DEA?”
“What about them?”
“Maybe he’s in their system, too. Maybe he’s one of these guys who bounces around, us and the feds and the DEA. Soon as we figure out he’s giving us a big bag of nothing, he gets a new daddy.”
Duto’s words gave Shafer an idea. The DEA would be in no hurry to do the agency any favors. But occasionals weren’t protected like real agents. Sometimes their names spread wide. Especially if they were problem children, the type who did business with more than one agency. Shafer stood to leave. “Thanks for all the help, Vinny.”
“Should I ask what you’re doing?”
“What I should have done all along.”
“What’s that?”
I’m giving up on a silicon-flavored miracle. I’m doing my job the old-fashioned way, the right way. I’m calling somebody who can answer my questions. “I’m going home, breaking out the Dewar’s, raising a glass to your health.”
“In that case, make it a double.”
BACK IN HIS OFFICE, Shafer unlocked his safe and pulled out his Rolodex, an antique like him. He had thousands of case officers and station chiefs and desk heads in here, decades of contacts scratched in pen and pencil. Maybe two in five were still active. The rest had retired or quit to work for contractors. Or died. Just in the As, Shafer recognized Henry “Argyle” Aniston, an old-school agency type who’d worn the ugliest sweaters known to man and dropped from a heart attack three months before he was scheduled to retire, and James Appleston, whose prostate cancer had spread to his brain. Shafer thought he’d take the heart attack.
Thousands of names, but nearly all useless for this call. He needed an officer who’d served on the Af-Pak desk in the last decade but hadn’t been a star. The stars had spent their time chasing bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. They wouldn’t have been interested in Daood. Also, he needed somebody gossipy. But not so gossipy that he’d whisper to Kabul that Shafer was poking after an occasional. And he needed somebody who liked him enough to be honest.
Shafer had to get to the Rs before he found someone who might fit. Mark Ryker had retired five years before. If Shafer recalled correctly, he lived somewhere in southwestern Virginia. A lot of agency guys wound up in that area, far enough from Washington to avoid the dangers they’d spent their lives fighting, close enough to feel like they were still part of the world.
Shafer punched in Ryker’s number. To his mild surprise, the phone was picked up after one ring. “This is Mark.”
“Mark. It’s Ellis Shafer.” He heard a sitcom’s canned laughter in the background.
“Ellis. Ellis Shafer.”
He wasn’t quite slurring his words, but his tone was as bright and artificial as the dye for a kid’s birthday cake. Pharmaceutical enhancement for sure. “I’d like to talk to you about something.�
�� Shafer figured he’d need to draw out Ryker. He was wrong.
“Mr. Ellis Shafer wants to talk to me? About something. Must be important. I assume this is a face-to-face business, tête-à-tête, too superclassified for an open line?”
“You are correct.”
“And urgent?”
“Life-and-death.” Shafer vamping now, getting into the spirit.
“Life and death. Death and life. I know about those. All right. Tell you what. Shoot down 81 tonight, and I’ll meet you in Lexington. You know where that is?”
“I can find it.”
“I suppose you can. There’s an Applebee’s there, and I promise you nobody’ll bother us. Say, eight.”
“Eatin’ good in the neighborhood.”
“Are you too fancy for Applebee’s, Ellis?” Pause. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question. I want an answer.”
“No. Sorry.”
“See you at eight then.”
SHAFER CALLED HIS WIFE and told her he probably wouldn’t be home that night. She didn’t ask why, or where he’d be. One of the virtues of being married as long as he had. He got his usual late start and had to fight through the suburban D.C. traffic, but 81 was as beautiful and open as ever, running southwest through the lush Virginia hills. He pulled into the parking lot at 8:05.
The Applebee’s was bright and three-quarters empty and the server was a purty little bleached-blond thing who greeted him too eagerly. “Table for one, sir?” Shafer ignored her and found Ryker sitting alone in a booth. He was drinking a bright green concoction that Shafer would swear was an appletini. Ryker didn’t look good. He was skinny and weirdly tan and his shirt hung loose. Shafer didn’t get it. He hadn’t known Ryker well at Langley, but he remembered the guy as just another Central Asia desk officer. During the 1990s, Pakistan and Afghanistan hadn’t been glamorous posts. The action was elsewhere.
“Mark. Good to see you. It’s been too long.”
“You, too.”
The Shadow Patrol Page 18
