“No!” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“You gonna stop me? You can’t even get dressed.” He walked around the room, ripping sketches of Stone from the wall. Jackie trailed behind him, pleading. He reached for a drawing of Stone saving Jackie and she grabbed his arm, screeching something at him, but he didn’t listen.
“Ain’t gonna happen, baby. He’s not going to save you now. No one can.” He shredded the drawing, the pieces fluttering to the floor. Jackie got down on her hands and knees and crawled around collecting them.
He watched her, thinking about how he could snap her neck and end the drama in seconds, but he was a pro and professionals knew better than to act in rage. It was so soon after the kidnapping that it would be very tricky to eliminate her now without arousing suspicions. There had to be an option he wasn’t seeing at the moment, something clever, something worthy of him.
She collapsed on the floor, sobbing, turning her shredded masterpieces into papier-mâché. The bitch wasn’t going anywhere for now. To be on the safe side, he yanked the phone cord from the wall. He needed to make some calls, but he could use the bedroom phone and his new cell. A refreshing nap might open up the right possibility, something the Agency and the life insurance company would never question.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Statements extracted under torture are totally unreliable, sometimes concocted by the interrogators themselves, the victim merely signing them…. Inevitably, the victim admits whatever he is asked to admit. A lie enters the stream of intelligence as the truth.
—Sunday Herald [Glasgow], October 16, 2005, as reported by Neil Mackay
In one video played to jurors last week [in the California terrorism trail], Umer Hayat admitted visiting several terrorist training camps…. But his account sometimes bordered on the fantastic, with tales of a thousand terrorists wearing masks “like Ninja Turtle” as they practiced twirling curved swords, firing automatic weapons and pole-vaulting rivers in an immense underground compound—a description that roughly tracks the Ninja Turtles television show.
—Associated Press, March 11, 2006, as reported by Don Thompson
Camp Raven, The Green Zone, Baghdad
Stuffing her mouth with a granola bar, Camille stumbled from her trailer and toward the bunker that housed the ops center. The day shift had come on a few minutes ago and she could count on a steaming pot of fresh coffee. She needed it; she had slept for three hours and felt a wreck. Activity in the ops center had dropped to the usual daytime lull. Most of the monitors were dark and those that were on were rerunning footage from last night’s action, the morning crew fighting vicariously. She grabbed her mug and yelled to anyone who was listening. “Who made the coffee today?”
“Curatalo—brace yourself.”
“Great. I was afraid it was Iggy’s troubled water.” She dumped coffee into her cup, leaving room for more cream than usual. Without bothering to stir, she sipped some down, then headed to Iggy’s office. He seemed to live there, typically working nights and well into the morning. She guessed he had to slip away to shower and sleep midday before things geared up for the evening’s operations, but she suspected he often went for days without leaving the ops center.
Iggy looked up from a satellite image on his computer. “You get any shut-eye?”
“Not much, but I’m sure it was more than you did. It’s hard not to worry about Hunter. Anything new?”
“Yeah, AegeanA picked up a short conversation between Joe Chronister and a guy named Larry Ashland, some kind of a supervisor in Rubicon. They discussed taking Stone to a black site in the Ukraine.” Iggy smacked his lips as he shook his head.
“I take it there’s something you don’t like?”
“A lot. Joe initiated the call from his home phone on an unsecured line. Even though he openly referred to Stone, he used the current code name for the Ukrainian shithole—a program he knows I’ve been read into.” Iggy made eye contract with Camille. “I’ve worked with Joe on at least a dozen projects and you can say a lot of things about the SOB, but his tradecraft is clean.”
“He knows we’re listening.” Camille shoved some papers aside and set her coffee cup on Iggy’s desk.
“Oh, yeah. He knows all right and that means we’ve got a leak a little closer to us than we thought. AegeanA has a wire to his cell. It’s state of the art encryption, but you know what kind of code breakers the Brits are. Not a single call in or out. They did whatever magic they do and checked his records. He uses it constantly, except today.” Iggy put his hands on the top of his head and chin and twisted. His neck popped. “I figure he wasn’t sure if we were sophisticated enough to get through the cell’s encryption, so he placed the call to Ashland on the open line, to make sure we were listening. He wanted to make damn sure we heard what he had to say.”
“He wants me out of his hair,” Camille said. “At least he didn’t hire a sniper.”
“You’re too high profile. Everyone knows you’re in a showdown with Rubicon. Anything happens to you right now, it calls more attention to Rubicon and whatever the hell SHANGRI-LA and BALI HAI are.”
“We knew we had a mole problem.” Camille sipped some coffee. “Any idea who it could be? Who around here knew about the jailbreak sigint?”
“Could be anyone on duty in the ops center last night. I made a reference to it in front of your team when you got back.” Iggy sighed. “Doesn’t narrow it much.”
“Then let’s play along. He wants to throw me off track and send me to Ukraine, then as far as everyone’s concerned, I’m gearing up to intercept a plane there tomorrow. In the interim, do whatever it takes to find out where and what those code names could mean—talk to our green badgers inside the Agency if you have to. We’ve got spies on the inside at the CIA. Let’s use them.”
“Agreed. And I really think you should—”
Someone knocked at the door and both turned toward it. “Yeah. Come in.”
“Sorry to interrupt you, sir, ma’am.” An aide stood in the doorway. “I’ve got Kimo from the main gate on the line. He’s got a barefoot woman in a bathrobe. She won’t say who she is, but says her husband is going to kill her. She’s insisting on talking to Ms. Black.”
Camille reached toward the aide’s radio. “Kimo’s the big Hawaiian guy, right?” The aide nodded. Camille squeezed the button. “Howzit, Kimo? Can you let me talk to the lady?”
“For sure, Ms. Black.”
“Hi, this is Camille Black. How can I help you?”
“I didn’t know where else to go,” the woman’s voice said. “You said you’d help me. I’m Jackie Nelson.”
Iggy and Camille looked at each other, then she turned to the aide and said, “Send GENGHIS to the gate immediately and have him escort her to my trailer. Tell him to stay with her until I arrive. He’s to let no one else in except me.”
Camille jogged up to her trailer with Iggy. An operator she knew only as BEAR stood on the steps, an M4 in hand.
“Where’s GENGHIS?” Camille said.
“No one’s seen him since last night, ma’am,” BEAR said as he stepped aside to let them enter.
“Find him,” Iggy said as he stepped into the trailer.
Jackie Nelson sat in the black leather armchair, staring into space. Her hair was stringy, uncombed and her eyes were red and puffy, but her face wasn’t quite as sunken as when Camille had last seen the woman in her apartment. Still, sitting there barefoot with filthy feet and in a bathrobe, the woman looked deranged.
“Hi, Jackie. This is my good friend Iggy. He might be able to help us.”
Iggy extended his artificial hand. She reached out, touched it lightly, then pulled her hand back.
Camille continued, “Looks like you left home in a hurry.”
“He was going to kill me. He always said he would if I left him and I told him I was leaving.” She rubbed her hands together as she sat down. “There’s something about him. I know he could do it.”
Iggy smiled. “You’v
e got Joe’s number all right.”
Camille shot him a stern glance.
“Who’s Joe?” Jackie said. Her arms were crossed and she slumped in the chair.
“Don’t worry about it now,” Camille said. “You’re safe here. I’ll get you some clothes in a few minutes.” Camille held herself back. Camille was afraid that, if she pushed too fast, she would never get anything useful from her.
“I’m so sorry I look like this, but I had to get away. He was in the bedroom. I couldn’t get to my clothes.”
“Smart move,” Iggy said. “He would’ve popped you.”
Jackie’s bloodshot eyes grew wide. “You know Brian, don’t you?”
“Brian and I go way back.” Iggy nodded. “He can be quite a charmer when he wants to, but you don’t fuck with him. He’s a mean son of a bitch.”
“His name isn’t Brian, is it?” Tears ran down her face. Jackie looked up and took a deep breath. “This is going to sound crazy and I know I already look crazy, but I’m pretty sure Brian’s a spy.”
“We both know him as Joe Chronister,” Camille said. “He’s been a CIA case officer since Vietnam.”
“I knew it. It was all a lie,” Jackie said over and over, crying as she rocked herself. “I married some fake person.” She cried harder.
Camille and Iggy volleyed glances. Iggy shrugged his shoulders and Camille rolled her eyes at him as she got up to retrieve a box of tissues. She handed it to Jackie and put her hand on her shoulder while they waited for her to calm down. As far as Camille was concerned, emotions were obstacles to be controlled and defeated, not something to be processed. Her own feelings made her uncomfortable and other people’s were worse. She poured a glass of water, then handed it to Jackie, then she sat down on the couch beside Iggy.
The tears seemed to slow and Jackie grew quiet except for snorting sounds. She wiped her cheeks and nose with a tissue. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bother you, but I know he was going to do it. Ray couldn’t save me, he said. No one could.”
“Who’s Ray?” Iggy said.
“Ray—that’s what he called himself. I don’t know his real name. You were looking for him when you dropped by the apartment. Ray rescued me.”
“His real name is Hunter Stone. Why did your husband say Hunter couldn’t save you?”
“He told me Ray, uh, Hunter wasn’t coming back.” Jackie’s voice cracked. She started to cry again.
“Everything’s going to be okay. You don’t need to cry. You’re safe here and we’re going to save Hunter. I promise,” Camille said, keeping her words slow and steady as if she were trying to talk a jumper off a window ledge.
Jackie bowed her head, wiped away tears, then blew her nose. “Sorry.”
“We need to know everything he said about Hunter. Everything, even if it doesn’t seem very important to you.”
Jackie nodded. “Brian, uh, Joe said he was taking Ray to his favorite place tomorrow. He said something about taking the gloves off for a man-to-man talk.”
“Where the hell is that?” Iggy said.
“He’s been working on some big project for the last couple of years. I know that’s what he meant.” She blew her nose into an already soaked tissue. “He wouldn’t tell me a thing. He disappears for days, sometimes weeks at a time. That’s how I knew he wasn’t really an oil exec. He kept going to the same place, but there’s no oil there.”
Iggy held up his prosthetic hand. “Hold on a minute. I thought you said he wouldn’t tell you where he was going.”
“He wouldn’t. I figured it out from the dirt on his shoes when he got home. I’m a forensic soil scientist.” She sniffed loudly, sucking the phlegm back into her sinuses. It grossed Camille out even more than the constant nose blowing. “I don’t know what his project is about, but whatever it is, I have absolutely no doubt it’s somewhere near Zarafshan, Uzbekistan.”
“You can be that specific?” Camille said.
“Only because I analyzed a zillion samples from the Muruntau gold deposits there for a summer job when I was in grad school. I was bored out of my mind and I used to study the micro flora. I discovered a new member of the Terfeziaceae family—a desert truffle—on the roots of a…You don’t want to hear all of this, do you?”
“I’ve heard enough to believe you know what you’re talking about,” Camille said, smiling to reassure her. “Did your husband ever mention SHANGRI-LA or BALI HAI?”
Jackie knit her eyebrows and stared into the room for a few moments. “You know, he did. One time when he came back from Uzbekistan and I asked him where he had been, he said he’d been to SHANGRI-LA. I thought he was just being his usual asshole self.”
Camille and Iggy finished the interview and Camille gave Jackie a towel and some fresh clothes. She showed her into the trailer’s bathroom so she could freshen up.
Iggy looked at Camille and sighed. “You were great with her. But please don’t make me ever go through another interrogation like that again. I’d rather take a cattle prod to some guy’s cajones. I don’t know how therapists can stand it. Hell, a full day of that touchy-feely stuff and I’d fry my own nuts.”
Camille laughed. “Use my computer and get some overheads of Zarafshan. There’s an old KGB prison in the mountains north of there, near all the gold mines. You won’t be able to see the prison—it’s constructed inside an abandoned mineshaft.” Camille walked to the sink and filled a coffee carafe with water, then poured it into her Braun coffeemaker. She wasn’t about to go to Central Asia undercaffeinated.
“How the hell do you know all of that?”
“I was there on one of my first jobs with my dad—old Soviet days. The name was gora-something. You’ll have to check with the spooks. I totally forgot about it. It was an Agency contract to take out one of their own before the KGB softened him up to much.” Camille shoveled coffee into the filter, spilling some on the stainless-steel counter.
“You don’t have to make it strong just for me.”
“You can water it down.” She wiped up the grinds. “The KGB prison was built inside a mountain in an old gold mine that dated back to tsarist days before they started open pit mines in the region. It was an impossible job to get to anyone in there.”
“Right. Your father didn’t know the word impossible. How’d Charlie pull it off?”
“It wasn’t his usual surgical work. We used the air vents. There was no other way. He felt horrible about it. I was thirteen, a kid on my first real mission behind the Iron Curtain. I just thought it was cool.”
“You probably put a lot of poor bastards out of their misery.” Iggy turned the computer on. “So the Agency’s running an old KGB prison in Uzbekistan—one more hellhole under new management. I bet the Rubicon tie-in is that they’ve used those guys instead of Halliburton to renovate it for them. You know I don’t have any qualms about doing whatever we have to do to keep our country safe, but why the hell do we have to use the same goddamn facilities the KGB did their dirty work in? I fought those monsters for years. We were the good guys, taking down the Evil Empire. It gets to me to know our guys are using the same electrodes, the same tubs…”
“You don’t think we need to do it?” Camille turned on the coffeemaker, then retrieved cream from the fridge.
“I’m not saying that at all. The tangos aren’t playing by any rules. You have to get rough with them if you want to find out anything.”
“Seems to me like most of what you get that way is junk. The poor bastards say anything to make it stop.”
“You know, Camille, interrogation is an art. The real masters can extract pure information. The problem is anybody can torture someone. Not everyone who can cut open a head is a brain surgeon. You get the jerk-offs who get off on it and the idiots who’ll keep going cause they don’t know how to evaluate the detainee’s potential. Sometimes the torturers themselves make up shit. But then there are real masters. They’re the ones who know when to quit.”
“Not to change the subject, but I don’t want to
think any more than I have to about what they’re doing to Hunter.” Camille leaned against the counter while she waited on the coffeemaker. “GENGHIS and I need to get moving as soon as we nail down a plan. I’d like to bring in some serious hardware and some top operators from our Afghan shop.”
“You know you can’t do that. You have to have a light footprint. Find the nearest airstrip and take your best shots. The middle of the desert, they won’t be running security quite as tight as elsewhere.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Camille pointed toward the bathroom. “Any suggestions on what to do with her?”
“That lady needs help—serious help. Joe’s really fucked her. You know he’s been widowed twice, don’t you? I don’t remember the details. Don’t have to.”
“He would’ve gotten away with it again. I’d like to nail his ass.”
“Accidents happen.” Iggy typed, using all the fingers on his left hand and hunting and pecking with his right. “We have to police our own. I hate it, but sometimes, it’s the only justice. All I need is one more story I can’t tell.”
“You’re saying we should take out Joe in some kind of vigilante justice?”
“It’s been done before.”
“I’m ready to grab him and see if we can extract specifics about where he’s taking Hunter.”
“He’s not the type who’ll break quickly.”
“The voice of experience?” As soon as she got the words out, she wished she hadn’t asked. Iggy was a good man and she liked to believe in good men.
“You don’t want to know, do you?”
Camille pulled a box of corn flakes from the cupboard that Pete had recently stocked. “I guess we can fly her on a Hawk to Amman or Kuwait City and send her off to the States from there.”
“Hell, Joe’s got his hands so full, you could have a press conference send-off from the Baghdad airport and he wouldn’t know it. Send some boys with her on Route Irish to Baghdad International or if you’re feeling generous, a bird could drop her off there.” Iggy entered something into the computer. “This is weird. I’m using our account to order Ikonos images and they’re showing all satellite pictures for Uzbekistan are unavailable. I’ve tried several dates including one three years from now and nothing’s working.”
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