Blow the House Down

by Robert Baer

  “Uh-uh,” I told her. “No.” I didn’t know if it was a joke or not—she seemed to be quaking as she said it—but I felt as if I would be violating some primal law of the universe.

  She laughed again, more like a choke really, then rose heavily to her feet and wobbled away from the terrace. By the time I caught up with her, she was halfway across the road, walking toward the ruins.

  “Well,” she said, taking hold of my arm again, “you’re probably right.”

  “It’s not like—”

  “I know, I know,” she said, patting my hand. “It’s not like you don’t want to, but…” She checked her watch. “Anyhow, it would be better if I spent the night in Damascus. Morning flight. Beauty sleep.”

  “There’s one thing,” I said, putting my hand on the small of her back and directing her toward a taxi.

  “There always is.”

  “A favor?”

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re right about David Channing. I’ve got a suspicion something’s not right with him. Can you find out anything about him?”

  I didn’t have all the pieces, but something was gnawing at me about the Channings.

  “Max—”

  “A truth for a truth.”

  “That would be two, and you know I can’t spy on Dad’s business partners.” The effects of the wine seemed to have evaporated as fast as they’d come on. There was nothing unsteady about her now.

  “Just see if you can find out the name of David Channing’s company. The Rolodex, a letter. There’s got to be something lying around. I’ve got a name in mind, but I want you to find it on your own.”

  India looked at me silently, then gave me a tight hug. I had no idea if this last request had registered, but the thought of her leaving made me desperately lonely. I could still feel her in my arms as she got into her taxi. In all this mess, it seemed that she was the only innocent one.

  I watched the taxi round the corner, then headed for my room to pack. Our little lunch had burned Balabakk for me. It was time to move on.

  CHAPTER 30

  Beirut, Lebanon

  THE ALBERGO HOTEL sits in the heart of Ashrafiyah, the old Christian Beirut. It’s one of the hippest boutique hotels in the world. A tiny, discreet lobby. Leather books—real ones. Real antiques in the bar, too. The last time I’d had a drink there, I’d been half afraid to put my glass down for fear I would leave a ring on a buffet that once belonged to a Medici. Like all hip hotels worldwide, the Albergo’s rooms are cramped—the less-is-more aesthetic—but the furnishings and little extras make up for the lack of elbow room.

  The desk clerk standing behind the Louis XVI écritoire was elegantly lean: a black wool suit despite the summer heat, with a straight collar and a bright starched white shirt. When I told her my name was Jacques Dumet, she wrote it down neatly in the vellum ledger. She didn’t ask for my passport, and I didn’t offer her one. My German passport had done all the work it could handle.

  As soon as the clerk gave me my key, I went out and caught a taxi to Hamra to an Internet café. I ordered a beer and logged in.

  Ever since we’d worked on the World Trade Center bombing together, John O’Neill and I had used a kitchen-redecorating chat room to park messages for each other. O’Neill was Captain Crunch. I went by Subzero.

  “Time to replace the counters, Captain Crunch,” I wrote. “Call me ASAP on 011 961 1 33 97 97 or 212 . Subzero.”

  The first was the number of the Albergo; the second, the one the prince said was tied to Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing. I knew O’Neill would immediately trace both. If the prince was right about the New York number, O’Neill’s interest would be piqued enough that he would have to know more.

  O’Neill called three hours later.

  “All right, what is it now? If you’re chained to a radiator in some Hizballah basement, I’ll be sure to send a card at Christmas.”

  “Did you trace that New York number?”

  “Yeah, you already know that.”

  “Whose number was it?”

  “Fuck off. You already know that, too.”

  “It’s not public, is it? Wanna know how I got it?”

  “Okay, you win,” O’Neill said. “How did you get it?”

  “Can’t tell you now, but there’s a lot more, trust me.”

  “Awright, sweetheart, what do you want?”

  Unfortunately, I had to cut another corner. There was no way to say it in code and have him understand me.

  “Tell me about a David Channing. His father, Oliver Channing, used to work for us. His son may own a company in Maine.”

  “Why am I going to do this for you?”

  Again, I didn’t want to say KSM’s name over the phone, but I wasn’t hearing any give in O’Neill’s voice. “You know the guy from Manila you’d love to get your hands on?”

  I was counting on O’Neill connecting the “guy from Manila” with KSM. O’Neill was part of the FBI investigation into KSM when he was plotting to bring down the twelve airplanes in 1994.

  “I got his arrest warrant sitting right on my desk.”

  “Wanna know where he is and what he’s doing?”

  This time I could hear O’Neill sigh.

  “How long you going to be at this number?”

  CHAPTER 31

  EIGHT DAYS LATER, I sat in the darkened bar of the Albergo and watched John O’Neill enter like a vicar walking into a child brothel. He kept reaching into his linen sport coat as if he were going for a gun. He wasn’t, of course, but this was Beirut. The gesture rattled the hotel staff.

  “Someone’s going to call for backup if you do that again,” I said, walking up to him.

  “It’s my cigar case.”

  “Pull it out, then. Kill the suspense. You’re in a smoker’s paradise.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t?”

  “I stopped. Doctor’s orders.”

  “You never took a doctor’s order in your life.”

  “I’m a new person. I want to live to be a hundred.”

  He didn’t look it: bags under his eyes, drawn face. It couldn’t have been jet lag or lack of sleep: O’Neill was an alien out of Men in Black. “You get to sleep when you’re dead,” he liked to say.

  I suggested we pace through the tiny courtyard in front of the hotel as we talked. The Albergo itself was above intrigue, but you never knew if the lobby was wired.

  O’Neill got things started by bitching and moaning about the hoops he’d had to crawl through just to show up: the embassy, the ambassador. In the end, they’d let him into the country only after he swore he would come to the meeting in an armored car, with bodyguards. I could see both cars parked across the street. The bodyguards milled around, hands in their vests.

  “Listen, John—”

  He wheeled on me before I could finish. “Max, what are you up to? Self-immolating? I can’t believe you hooked up with Russians.”

  Russians? The only thing I could think of was that Webber had caught wind of Yuri, turned it into a full-blown counterintelligence investigation, and shoved the whole thing straight up O’Neill’s nose. I didn’t want to distract him with an explanation.

  “I don’t have time for that bullshit. Remember Applied Science Research, the clowns who followed me in New York?”

  “Max, that’s over. They followed you. They got crap. Ancient history.”

  “Did you hear they’re working a case in San Diego?”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Applied Science.”

  “So what?”

  I told O’Neill what India had told me about the two Saudis, about how Webber was intentionally withholding the information from the Bureau. The only thing I left out was my source, and her father.

  “I’m gonna have his balls,” O’Neill said when I finished. The words were right, but nothing else was. There was no punch behind them, none of O’Neill’s usually blustering outrage. Time to worry about
that later, too.

  “Tell me about David Channing.”

  “No, first you tell me why I’m here.”

  “You’re here because I know things you want to know. The same old game.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad is planning to fly an airplane into a refinery—to make money.”

  “Woo-woo,” O’Neill said, twirling his forefinger at his temple.

  “Bin Laden’s going along for the ride.”

  “Double woo-woo.”

  “You’re not listening.”

  “Of course I’m fucking listening. You opened the door to the Woo Woo House, Max, and you heard the inmates screaming, and this is what they had to say. Big. Fucking. Deal. KSM? C’mon. Get real. He’s afraid to set off an M-80.”

  “But what if—”

  “What if nothing! It’s crazy. You’re crazy. The whole fucking Middle East is battier than goddamn Carlsbad Cavern!”

  None of it sounded like O’Neill. Some bad impersonator had climbed inside his skin.

  “Let me finish,” I said. “What if KSM was just a front? Bin Laden, too. What if the people really doing the operation were the same ones who fought in the trenches in Beirut for fifteen years, the same people who truck-bombed the Marines, people who could put together a network and really carry off an operation like this? That scare you?”

  “Yeah, if I were paying eight ninety-five to watch some rinky-dink, Hollywood version of the Great Global Conspiracy. Maybe you checked into the Woo Woo House, too.” He took a long look around the over-planted courtyard and out to the street beyond. “Maybe you’re already there.”

  “What’s the matter, John?” I finally said. “They’re on your ass?”

  He sighed, huffed, reached for his cigar case again, and pulled his hand away in disgust when he realized nothing was in it.

  “None of your damn business.”

  “Want more?”

  “I got more than enough already.”

  I handed him the other phone number the prince had given me, the one in Tehran.

  “Trace it,” I said. “It’s a Pasdaran ops number that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad calls from. I’m pretty sure his real masters are a couple crazies in the Pasdaran, not bin Laden.”

  “Oh, fuck. You’re not still after Buckley’s kidnapper, are you?”

  “That’s how it got started. No more.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, but right now I needed O’Neill. He was my only connection to Washington. If he didn’t believe my story, no one would. And my gut feeling was that the prince and his brother were on to something.

  “Go home and check it out,” I said. “If it’s a good lead, call me and tell me it’s worth pursuing.”

  “Oh, hell,” O’Neill said, staring down at his palm as if I’d just spit in it. “Goddamn hell.”

  “David Channing?”

  “What do you want to know about him?”

  “How he makes money.”

  “Commodities. Oil. Pork rinds. Calls, puts. Hedge funds. He’s deep in debt, though. A guy over at the SEC said they’re about to investigate him. What does he have to do with KSM?”

  “John, I still need one more favor.”

  He looked at me as if I were about to ask to borrow his pecker to screw his girlfriend.

  “A last one. I mean it. Go through Millis’s phone records for the afternoon of June 2, 2000. He was at lunch with me until at least two-thirty. See who he called after he got back.”

  I honestly thought he would say no, just leave. I’d emptied the cookie jar, run out of things to trade. It was down to trust now, the thinnest reed of all. In fact, he did turn to go, but I grabbed him by the arm before he got two steps. My jar wasn’t empty after all.

  “John, I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have to. But I can’t get into Millis’s House numbers. My bet is that if I find out who he called after I saw him, it’ll mesh with something in the intercepts of KSM’s calls.”

  “You have transcripts of KSM’s calls?”

  I nodded.

  “Where are they?”

  “You know the game. I play only if I get to be a player. I give you the transcripts now, and that’s the last I’d hear from you.”

  “With or without them, it might be.”

  I knew what was going through O’Neill’s mind. Even when you think your informant has gone over the edge, you make yourself listen on the outside chance that he comes up with one last piece of the puzzle that unlocks everything. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s a fool’s game, but the best intelligence officers keep playing.

  “Okay, fuck,” he said. Brushing my hand off his jacket. “If I can get my hands on them, how do I get them to you?”

  I gave O’Neill the same e-fax number that Chris Corsini had used.

  “Don’t expect anything soon.” O’Neill said, straightening his cuffs. “Unlike you, I got a daytime job.”

  “Listen,” I told him, “I’m about to connect the dots. I’m not that far away. But—”

  “No, you listen, Max: Stop adding two and two and getting twenty-two, okay? It’ll only get you into more trouble. And stay the hell away from that Russian. Got it?”

  O’Neill grabbed me around the neck, gave me a side hug, and started to walk away.

  “Are we okay?” I called after him. He was more like himself now, but the whole performance was off a beat.

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said without breaking stride.

  “Sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. I’m John Fucking O’Neill.”

  O’Neill was halfway to his armored car when I thought of something else. “Wait,” I called, racing after him. “What about Channing’s company?”

  “BT Trading, whatever that is. Some shell company registered in Maine.”

  Bingo. Here we go.

  I was walking back to the hotel when I noticed an old BMW 316 parked down the street. The plates were gone. Even from a half block away, I could tell it was spray-painted. None of its three occupants were looking in my direction. One had a black vest on. Nothing entirely wrong about the picture, but nothing right about it, either.

  CHAPTER 32

  RECEPTION WOKE ME THE NEXT MORNING. Someone had dropped off a note. The bellboy brought it up.

  Dear Max,

  My brother is in Beirut tomorrow tonight. Let’s meet. I’ll send my car around at eight.

  Prince Al Sabah

  I should have already left Lebanon, satisfied with what the prince had given me. Each minute I stayed was a roll of the dice. But I was intrigued by what the prince’s brother would be bringing from Kuwait, especially if he knew something new about BT Trading. It looked now like it was a good decision.

  The rest of the day I spent on the Albergo’s eighth-floor terrace, trying to come up with a working theory from the bits and pieces I already knew, or thought I knew. Essentially, Frank Beckman retires and starts digging up old contacts to make his fortune. Most are informants he ran during his thirty-two-year career, but one is David Channing, whose father seemed to have a knack for meeting people all over the Middle East, especially on the far ends of the continuum. My guess, and here I was stretching, was that David Channing had taken over Oliver’s networks when the old man died and that he was now Frank’s conduit to those same people. After what India had told me, Webber was likely part of the package, too. That would explain why Webber framed me. Frank realizes I have a photo of Oliver Channing with bin Laden (that KSM took) and decides I have to be discredited and fired, and the photo destroyed. Webber takes care of Frank’s dirty work.

  A lot of question marks remained in the margins. Was the prince correct that an American was working with KSM? If so, was it Channing the younger or (and) Beckman? And if so, had he/they been working with KSM on the investment side back in ’94 when he was plotting to bring down those twelve airplanes? (Frank was just getting his feet wet then in the private sector. This would have been a chance for him to make a big enough bun
dle to launch his business in grand style.)

  I admit believing Frank was involved in bombing twelve passenger airliners was a deeply cynical link in this chain of thought. Christ, I’d known Frank forever. I’d had my ass saved by him. But I couldn’t avoid it. Frank’s frieze, his India-Modigliani, the Tuttle Street mansion—they all sat there at the edge of my memory, gnawing on my score-keeping. So did the fact that Frank had tried to tie me up with a crook like Rousset and everything India had told me about Frank and Lawson and Webber. Moral flaws run through me like the Amazon, but Frank had betrayed me in ways I didn’t expect or deserve.

  When the sun started to set, I borrowed a laptop from the front desk and went back to my room to check e-mail.

  There was the usual spam, an e-mail from the landlord telling me a pipe had broken in my bathroom and that he’d let the plumbers in to fix it. Nothing from Marissa. Worse, nothing from Rikki. I’d been gone so long, under the radar and off the grid so many months, that they both must have figured I’d finally disappeared from their lives for good. Channels of communication were closing down fast. Marissa, I wasn’t worried about. We kept up the usual incivilities of exes. I could disappear for years and not afflict her with my absence. Rikki was something else: I was afraid I might never repair things with her. We’d ended last summer’s visit so well. This summer there wouldn’t be a visit. More necessary losses. Or maybe not so necessary. Maybe that was just my excuse to myself.

  I scrolled down and found a message from the e-fax site. It had to be from O’Neill. I got in the site, typed in my cell phone number, and watched it unlock an Adobe document: eight pages of calls for Millis’s phone from June 1 through June 4, the day Millis was found dead.

  I scanned the sheet until I came to a call made at 13:56 on June 2. It was to Frank Beckman’s home number. Millis must have called Frank minutes after he got back to his office after having lunch with me. The next call to Frank was at 07:32 on June 4, the same day Millis was found with his head blown off in the Breezeway Motel.