by Gordon Kent
“Sir!” The voice was female, every word coated with the thick syrup of the Deep South. He knew who it was before he turned around. “You’re about the fastest walker I ever tried to follow!”
She was middle-aged, somewhat overweight, brilliant. She was also, in the absence of an assistant (the post was supposed to have been filled weeks before—some screwup) the closest thing he had to a right hand. Her name was Rhonda (after a fifties movie star) Hope Stillman, and she used all three because she was Southern. She had a hefty frontage and tiny ankles, and she gave off emanations of a demure and muted womanliness—Mother Earth with a Georgia accent.
“Mrs Stillman,” he said.
“Captain, you are a walker!” Presumably, she liked him, too. She had been there for thirteen years, counted as a kind of senior eminence among the analysts. Now, she wanted to take him aside and tell him that people were feeling overworked, and could he lay back a little and relax just the teeniest bit the deadline for the Green Book review? Could he?
She made him smile. She was so serious and yet so nice. Like a shop steward without attitude. He said, “Send me what you have in mind and we’ll talk about it.” He suspected she had been a cheerleader. Still was, in a sense. He said, “But if you can do something about the mid-afternoon gabfests when the coffee truck comes around, I’d appreciate it.”
“People need their recreation.”
“Not forty minutes of it on my time. See what you can do.”
He passed on along the line of cubicles, came to Sergeant Swaricki’s, put his head in and said hello and would have passed on, but Swaricki said, “They’re on your computer.”
Alan remembered in time. “Oh, the references on the CIA operation.”
“Yessir.” Swaricki was in his late thirties, one of the Marine Corps’ tactical intel specialists, rotating through on a shore tour. He didn’t think a lot of paperwork, had at first been irritated by the Green Book review, then had come around when he began to see it as clearing the crap out of a complex system. He was about six feet, lean, big-handed, like a basketball player from those long-gone days when six feet was tall and the pros wore short shorts and neat haircuts. Now he said, “Problem with one reference.”
“You couldn’t find it?” That would be odd, and bad for Clyde Partlow.
“Found it, sir, but no headers or footers. Can’t tell much about it that way.”
Craik wasn’t sure he saw the problem; what he thought he wanted would be in the text, not the frame. Still, because he respected Swaricki, he said, “Why?”
“You read it, you’ll see.”
Craik moved into the cubicle and stationed himself behind the Marine. “Bring it up here and show me.”
Swaricki brought up a document that was almost entirely blank. Two-thirds of the way down the screen it said, “after twenty-five minutes, subject alluded to individual named Mohad al-Hack and told this interrogator particular individual is financier for al-Qaeda.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, you get this—” Swaricki scrolled up to what would have been the beginning of the document if there had been one. After a space, it said, “8 A. M. in the morning. Subject sleep-deprivationed previous 24. This interrogator entered the space and”. Three inches below that, it said, “broke for lunch and”, and another four inches down, “decided not to break for dinner and”. Swaricki scrolled to the end of the document, which said, “subject’s condition not conducive to further interrogation, so called [deleted] to [deleted] subject back to his [deleted] and ended interrogation for then. Instructed [deleted] to continue with [deleted].”
“Not real helpful,” Craik said.
“Fucking disgrace, excuse me, sir. They got no more business referring to this pile of shit than I got playing on the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
Craik read the scattered words again and said, “What do you make of it?” He thought he knew, but he wanted the Marine’s opinion.
“Torture, sir. Sleep deprivation followed by something worse. ‘Condition not conducive to blank’—that’s torture.” Swaricki said it with disgust. He was a rigidly moral, maybe self-righteous man, a Roman Catholic who might as easily have been a priest, the type not unknown in the military.
“Depends on what ‘blank’ means, doesn’t it?”
“I read ‘blank’ to mean ‘further interrogation.’”
“Could mean ‘persuasion’ or ‘a liking for jelly beans.’”
“‘Called blank to blank subject back to his blank’—‘called guards to carry subject back to his cell.’”
The Marines had their rules. If it wasn’t in the Code of Military Justice or the Geneva Conventions, they were against it. The Marines had enough trouble in Iraq as it was. Still, he said, “That’s one reading, Sergeant. But not the only one.”
“Why all the deletions? He’s describing what he did, is why. Brass can’t allow that. Deleted it. Cleaned it up.”
“Then why leave the little that’s there?”
“You can’t put one sentence in the middle of a page, which is the sentence they needed for the reference, and cut everything else. See, the stuff they left in gives it a sort of reality. Authentication. Like, ‘This really happened and this is the straight skinny.’”
Alan looked at it again, then took the mouse and scrolled up to where the header should have been. Above that was nothing but the reference, a date-time group that showed that the report dated from the very end of 2001. “Damned early,” he said.
“Afghanistan.”
Alan nodded. “December Oh-One’s damned early for torture, too, if that’s what’s in there. There weren’t any findings on torture until a littler later.” He leaned back against a desk that stood at right angles to the computer table. “Anyway, that’s a different story. This thing—” he stabbed a finger toward the screen—“may be about torture and maybe it’s not. But it’s a lousy reference to support an operation. Print me out a copy of it and I’ll take it with me.”
“Mostly blank paper,” Swaricki grumbled.
“Yeah, but not entirely. Maybe there’s enough words to take it another step.”
7
London was just as wet as Scotland, without the vistas or the fish. Piat didn’t know London very well—to him, it was a city he flew through, not a city he flew to. But it met his criteria—far enough from Mull to be foreign and secure, close enough to save money and time.
He landed them at a small tourist hotel off Russell Square. It was simple and spare and didn’t cost much by London standards. They were in their rooms as soon as the concierge let them—noon—and out the door again. Irene looked like a certain kind of American tourist. Piat looked like another. Hackbutt looked like a refugee. The three of them were incongruous together and that worried Piat. Hackbutt looked so odd that he was going to be memorable—too tall, too scraggly, too ill dressed. And he looked odder for having Irene and Piat in tow.
Irene hadn’t wanted to come. She was going to lose two days of work. Piat thought she was complaining too much—maybe was setting herself up to be able to back out of the art show and say it was his and Hackbutt’s fault. He’d insisted she be there. He knew that Hackbutt wouldn’t go along with everything unless she was there. Hackbutt had to be transformed.
The process was a simple one, and one that Piat had used before. First, dress Hackbutt like a human being. Then take him shopping for real—once he wouldn’t stick out like a clown from a circus. And in between times, try to get him to make small talk on some subject other than birds.
Spitalfields had a sporting goods store that catered to a twenty-something clientele of up-and-comers who did things like rock climbing and mountain biking. In thirty minutes, Piat piled the counter with three shirts (colors chosen by Irene, neutral, microfiber, expensive), a single pair of hard-wearing hiking trousers with a minimum of cargo-pockets, a Gore-Tex windbreaker. Shoes were a problem.
Hackbutt didn’t resist the shirts or the trousers, but he wasn’t really interes
ted until Irene started moving him through the shoes. He had on his feet a pair of “running” shoes so ancient that the nylon mesh fabric had ripped away, and the logo, the most prominent part of the design, was unrecognizable. The rubber internals had broken down and the shoes didn’t sit right on his feet. Their color was somewhere between that of mud and that of pigeon blood. Even Hackbutt recognized that his shoes were disgusting. Piat suspected that they were the only pair he owned.
Hackbutt, suddenly enthusiastic, cruised the racks of waiting shoes and boots with an air of childlike wonder. Irene prattled at him, fussed while he tried boots on, chided him when he was attracted by colored laces. But in the end, it was Piat who made the choice for a pair of Vasque shoes, built like running shoes but with heavier, leather uppers. Hackbutt was so delighted that he put them on immediately. Piat threw his old shoes into the box as soon as he paid and tossed the box in the first dumpster they passed when they left.
Hackbutt walked through Spitalfields with his eyes on his new shoes. “They’re so comfortable!” he said. For the third time.
Irene smiled. “That was easier than I expected,” she said quietly.
“That was the easy part,” answered Piat.
* * *
The contact report was on Craik’s computer when he got to his office in the morning. With it, however, was a note from Swaricki that the Marine hadn’t bothered to tell him about the day before—Swaricki apparently didn’t like to repeat himself. It had the same charge of torture and the Marine’s disgust with the heavy censoring, but it also had something new. “This material was not in our system before about two months ago. It appears to have been part of a big take from Mossad that included all that stuff on Shiite politics, but this is sort of off the wall—different subject. But it comes with the routing number of the Mossad take. Maybe they swept up a lot of stuff to pad the take, give us a thrill. My question would be, is it an Israeli report? I thought it was US.”
Mossad cleaning house? A small voice said, Well, the Israelis use torture. Even though their supreme court said it’s illegal.
Or somebody screwing up? Not screwing up big-time, but making one of those little mistakes that everybody does. And saying when it was discovered, “What the hell difference does it make? It’s a nothing.”
Except that this nothing was supposed to be an American intel report. Partlow hadn’t given any indication that it was otherwise. And it sounded American—American jargon, written by somebody who’d been at it long enough to write in army-speak. But if it was American, it must have been sent to Israel in the first place. Which was not at all unusual—allies trade intelligence. But getting it sent back was.
Craik put his hand on his internal phone and called Swaricki. “Did you get any indication that that document had been in our system before two months ago?”
“No, sir. If we had the headers, we might pick up a number we could look under, though. It could have been here all the time that way.”
Craik put the phone down and tried to walk the cat back: Partlow would have been looking for a target to match an existing antiterrorism task. Maybe he had already had some names, had pinged on the one in this document because it connected to al-Qaeda—a great selling point. Partlow was being a good bureaucrat. Looking for an operation that would support a task and bring in money and medals.
Except that it was awfully convenient that the document had turned up just in time to serve Partlow’s purpose. Unless Partlow had known another way to access it in the system—a way he hadn’t indicated in referring to it.
“I don’t have time for this shit,” Craik said out loud. He had E-6 fitness reports coming up. He jotted some notes on a yellow sticky and stuck it to his screen amid a forest of other such notes. The process of writing made him uneasy. The note said only:
Partlow
Israel
Access?
But the words hung there. That was when he knew in his gut that he was looking at something bad.
A London hairdresser was a more difficult proposition altogether for Hackbutt than clothes or shoes. He couldn’t explain why he was so resistant, but he was. Because he had no rational reason to resist, it was almost impossible for Piat—or Irene—to convince him to go.
Piat resorted to force. He called the salon he had selected and made an appointment—a late appointment.
Hackbutt wouldn’t look up. “I don’t want to,” he said. He was pleading.
“Too bad,” Piat said. “The appointment’s made, Digger. Here’s the deal. If we miss it, the op’s off. That simple.”
“You’re trying to make me into somebody else!” Hackbutt said. Point for Hackbutt. Maybe game, set, and match, too.
Irene brushed Hackbutt’s lips with a finger. “He’s trying to make you into yourself,” she said.
Once again, Piat had the feeling that she was speaking lines he’d written for her. Case-officer lines.
Hackbutt looked up at her, and they hugged. He looked miserable, but he hugged.
They made the salon on time.
The difference afterward was so remarkable that Piat had to keep himself from looking at Hackbutt the way that Hackbutt had looked at his new shoes. His beard was trimmed now, neat; his moustache was full and dark, his hair groomed—still a little wild, but disciplined. The man with the scissors had been gifted. He’d cut like a sculptor, revealing rather than excising. Going into the salon, Hackbutt had looked like a street person in expensive shoes. Coming out. he looked like a retired U-boat commander.
Irene glanced at Piat. “How did you find that place?”
“I liked the sound of the guy’s voice and the style of his website. He never used the word art.” Piat shrugged again.
“As if you’d know art,” Irene said. Then she ran her fingers through her hair and raised her eyebrows.
“Of course,” Piat said.
Near the end of the Washington work day, not too long before most people would leave (but Craik wouldn’t; he’d be there until eight or nine), he headed downstairs, down past the ground floor and the nominal basement to the B-2 level. Two floors below ground. The burrows of the computer geeks, the real masters of the intel universe.
Down here were IT support people from all the services. The Navy specialists were DPs—data processing ratings. Craik made a point of spending time down there, both to understand how things were done and to get to know a few of the people. One, a DP second class named Brakhage, had proven to be a familiar face, a young black guy who had spent six weeks on his team prepping an exercise in India several years before. Now, Craik headed for the big room where Brakhage and fifteen other people sat all day at computer monitors.
“Hey, Captain.”
“Hey, Brakhage, how you doing?”
“Not as much fun as planning that war game. But sort of fun.”
“If your work is fun, you’ve got it made.” Alan pulled a rolling chair over from an empty station and sat down. Brakhage was inputting data from what looked like handwritten notes. Rather a contradiction, that anybody worked by hand to give stuff to a computer. Some old-timer. Brakhage kept working, but he said, “Do something for you, sir?”
“I’ve got a sort of peculiar problem.”
“Just give me a minute, sir.” Brakhage tapped the keyboard, turned a page, tapped some more. What appeared on the screen was gobbledygook to Alan Craik.
“Encrypted?” Alan said.
“Yessir.”
Brakhage stopped typing and studied the screen, his eyes screwed up as if he needed glasses. Craik thought of asking him if he did, decided it was none of his business. Then Brakhage swung around to face him. “Yessir, what can I do for you?”
Alan took the folded printout of the contact report. Unfolding it, he said, “This is kind of strange.” He handed the paper over.
Brakhage eyeballed it and looked up. It didn’t take long to read the almost blank page. Craik explained, “It’s the contact report on an operation I signed off on. I’m just do
tting the i’s now.” He leaned back. He wanted to seem casual but assured that what he was asking was okay. “It’s got no headers or footers, so I don’t know where it’s from or who did it. I thought maybe you could do a search on the text and find the original.”
“Been really redacted.”
“Sure has. Can you search on the sentence that has the Arabic name in it?”
“Might do that,” Brakhage muttered.
“Not much to choose from.”
“Any unique string’ll do.”
“Can you do it?”
“You’re gonna authorize it?”
“You want it in writing?”
Brakhage sucked air through the space between his front teeth and said he guessed not. The implication was that Craik was asking for something that was probably not quite legit but that would pass muster if anybody ever checked. Which was exactly the way Alan saw it. It didn’t hurt that they’d worked together before and that Brakhage had seen then that Craik was a straight shooter.
“Shall I come back?”
Brakhage shook his head. He clicked his mouse, and the current screen disappeared; he clicked some more and apparently got out of the encryption program, and then he called up a vivid screen with the DIA seal in the middle. From that, he progressed to one with the Department of Defense seal, and finally to a fairly drab one on which Craik was able to read only “CETIX Search” and a multiple password window.
“Don’t look,” Brakhage said with a grin. He began to tap the keyboard. He muttered, “Short string.” He clicked his mouse and fell back in his chair and watched the screen. So did Alan.
