Al Zaroor jumped into the remaining van beside a nameless stranger half his age. “Go,” he directed.
The operation had taken nine minutes.
Two swift miles later, they swerved onto a rutted dirt path. In the shadow of a tree sat a Pakistani van, its surface festooned with the intricate colors favored by freelance truckers.
A squat bearded man got out. He adjusted his turban, then helped Al Zaroor’s driver move the box from one van to the other. The first man did not know where the box was going; the second where it had come from. Wheels spinning, the van headed for the highway.
For once, Al Zaroor thought, perfection.
For forty minutes Al Zaroor and his companion drove without speaking, moving at a clip impossible on such a road unless the driver knew it well. The truck slowed to a stop on the banks of the Indus River.
Its broad waters were peaceful. On its far side lay deserts and mountains, the harsh land of Baluchistan; beyond that Afghanistan. The powerboat that would cross the river was moored near its reedy banks.
Two men waded ashore, their pants legs rolled up. Silent, Al Zaroor pointed them to the van. As his driver opened the rear door, they slid the metal coffin from the truck. Al Zaroor thanked the driver, the first words of their journey. Then he drove off, severing another link in the chain.
“We must hurry,” Al Zaroor told his new companions.
Helping them lift the container, he felt its weight for the first time. A sharp pain shot from his spine through his leg. Too many battles; too many jolts from horses or pitted roads. Clamping his jaw, he moved with the others.
Knees bent, they descended the bank, then waded into the waist-deep waters, container hoisted like a casket. With a grunt of relief, Al Zaroor helped push it inside the powerboat. One man helped pull him up; the other fired up the motor.
At half-speed, the pilot steered them toward the far bank. But for the thrum of the engine in their wake, the waters were silent and still.
The far bank was flatter. Gliding close to shore, the men slid the bomb from the boat and quickly returned to their craft.
Ahead of Al Zaroor, another dark form appeared in the half-light. The black van stopped in front of him. Jumping out, two al Qaeda fighters greeted him in whispers.
Straining, they lifted the container into the van. As Al Zaroor clambered into the front, he felt the sweat drenching his shirt. All this in an hour, he thought.
They sped into trackless desert, avoiding the Indus Highway and bypassing the low-slung town of Dera Ghazi Khan. Again they used no lights. All Al Zaroor saw were the outlines of mud huts, one no different from another. Only his driver knew where they must stop.
Abruptly, he did. The men leaped out and laid the container on an arid patch of earth. Then the second man drove off, leaving Al Zaroor and the other man on foot.
For grueling minutes punctuated by fleeting seconds of rest, they carried the container to its destination, perhaps two soccer fields away. It was a mud structure like any other—open windows and a door, a wire fence to hem in chickens. Inside the fence was a wooden cart made to be hauled by donkeys.
Getting out, Al Zaroor scanned the skies. He saw nothing but stars; heard only silence. “Move the cart,” he ordered.
The young man stepped inside the fence, straining to pull the cart. Its movement exposed a low ridge of fresh dirt and chicken droppings. Stepping over the ridge, Al Zaroor stared into a hole in the earth six feet long and three feet wide, the dimensions of a grave. But this grave was lined with car batteries.
Hoisting the steel box, Al Zaroor and his partner carried it to the hole. The younger man climbed down inside. With the aid of ropes, the two men maneuvered the container into its resting place. Then Al Zaroor pulled his companion out.
Wordlessly, the two men took shovels from the cart and started pitching dirt into the hole. Somewhere in the night, Al Zaroor knew, the van that had left them was speeding toward the Afghan border. The driver believed that the two men and the container were now in a second truck, headed in the same direction, and that his mission was to clear their path. Perhaps the army would catch him, perhaps not. If caught, he would put a bullet through his brain.
As Al Zaroor had told Bin Laden and Zawahiri two years before, it was a matter of operational security.
Zawahiri’s words of doubt were harsh. “Why not exfiltrate at once?” he had demanded.
“They’ll expect that,” Al Zaroor said evenly. “There will be search parties and checkpoints—if they’re not too proud to call the Americans, also spy satellites peering from above. It will be hard to reach Afghanistan; harder to get through the Punjab and out to sea.” He faced Bin Laden, his tone quiet but persuasive. “The army will form concentric circles from the site of the ambush, trying to find the bomb. Best to make it disappear.”
Bin Laden pondered this. “For how long?”
“Perhaps a month. Enough time for the search to cool off, allowing the hunters to think the bomb has left Pakistan. The last thing they’ll believe is that it’s a hundred miles from where we stole it.”
“And if they find the others, Amer?”
Al Zaroor shrugged. “What could any of them say? None will know the men before or after them in the chain. None knows where the container is headed—a ditch seeded with batteries to prevent detection of radioactive materials—”
“One man will,” Zawahiri cut in. “The man who helps bury the bomb.”
Al Zaroor faced his antagonist. “With respect,” he said slowly, “leave this man to me. I will assure that he’s reliable.”
Pausing to rest, the young fighter leaned on his shovel, wiping his brow with his shirtsleeve.
Al Zaroor backed two feet behind him. Taking the Luger from his belt, he aimed at the back of the man’s skull, hesitating for a last split second. His finger squeezed the trigger. There was the concussive pop of bullet on tissue and bone; the man’s arm fell to his side, as though he had finished wiping. Then he toppled into his grave.
Motionless, Al Zaroor gazed down at the body sprawling gracelessly across the steel cylinder. I’m sorry, my brother. But you are neither the first nor the last.
Al Zaroor picked up his shovel. With quick rhythmic thrusts, he covered the corpse and the bomb, then concealed the disturbance of earth beneath chicken droppings. The strain of pushing the cart back in place shot fresh pain down his leg. In the distance he heard the whine of helicopter blades.
Hurriedly, he left the fenced area and entered the house.
It was bare save for a mattress, an oil lamp, and enough provisions to last a month. Al Zaroor felt unspeakably tired.
Sitting against the mud wall, he closed his eyes, listening to the whir of Pakistani choppers as they searched for a nuclear bomb.
“He’s more tired now,” Anne Grey said quietly. “There’s no respite from pain, and no time during which Carter has been braver or more stoic. Or, despite my best efforts, more miserable.”
Brooke felt a fresh sadness, the confirmation of his instincts and observations. Briefly, he glanced at the muted flatscreen, seeing new pictures of violence in India, then looked toward the door of the bedroom where Grey slept in midafternoon. “Is there a fix for this?” he asked.
“Surgically? Maybe yes, maybe no. But at Carter’s age and condition, the risks quadruple.” Anne’s voice grew softer yet. “Two nights ago he told me, ‘I’m staying with you as long as I can. I see no future on the other side.’ Carter lacks the consolation of faith. Except in the people he loves, like you.”
The words touched Brooke more than he could express. “If there’s anything I can do—”
A telephone rasped. Anne stood, then realized that the sound came from a phone used by Grey alone. The third ring was cut short.
Glancing at Brooke, Anne fell quiet. On television, the secretary of state spoke with no sound, her face weary and haggard.
Abruptly, Grey’s bedroom door cracked open. Hair mussed with sleep, he hobbled into the great roo
m. “That was Noah Brustein,” he said without preface. “We’ve picked up heightened activity in Punjab—soldiers, planes, and helicopters on the move, a lot of chatter from military communications. We’re trying to focus our satellites.”
“Where in the Punjab?” Brooke asked.
“Near Baluchistan. In terms of war with India, that makes no sense. And a coup would focus on Islamabad and Rawalpindi.” Grey stood straighter. “Brustein wants me to consult,” he told Anne bluntly. “Mind driving up to Washington?”
Brooke watched the concern in Anne’s eyes commingle with resignation and, perhaps, a trace of gratitude toward Noah Brustein. “I can pack for us in minutes,” she answered. “I learned that in Iran.”
Facing Brooke, Grey’s smile for Anne lingered. “You’re coming, too,” he said. “I told Brustein that you’re intolerable when bored. Trying to fend off Armageddon should keep you amused.”
PART TWO
THE THREAT
Washington, D.C.—Pakistan—Dubai—Lebanon August 2011
ONE
Just before six the next morning, Brooke Chandler drove from his brick town house in Georgetown to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Though cut by the breeze of his convertible, the early morning air felt hot and close, the harbinger of an insufferable day. Switching on NPR, Brooke heard what he already knew—though their troops were massed at the border, the tenuous truce between India and Pakistan was holding. There was no word about the problem that obsessed him.
His mind kept racing, even while registering everything on the highway around him. As he took the off-ramp to Langley, the white SUV in front of him stopped abruptly. At once Brooke slammed on his brakes, glancing over his shoulder for a second car intent on blocking his escape. There was none. As a stray cat skittered from beneath the SUV, Brooke expelled a breath and then laughed softly at himself. His training, and Beirut, were imprinted for life.
In minutes, he passed through the security barriers into the cloistered world of American intelligence, 250 wooded acres banded by electronic fences, sensors, and warning signs. The massive building at its heart, the George Bush Center for Intelligence, was the length of three football fields, a seven-story grid of windows and offices that housed Brooke’s unit. He parked, then walked swiftly through the entrance.
His first impression of this vast marble hall remained vivid: the seal emblazoned with an eagle and embedded in the floor; the statue of Wild Bill Donovan, the World War Two spymaster who became the agency’s godfather; the ninety stars chiseled on the wall—now increased by jihadist bombings in Afghanistan—commemorating agents killed in service, some of whose identities remained secret. At the rear was a statue of George H. W. Bush, revered within the agency for raising its morale in a time of trouble and adversity. There had been too many directors since, Brooke thought, often faced with much the same mission. As now.
Heading for the elevator, he passed a hall of exhibits limning the history of the CIA. The one that held meaning for Brooke was placed at the entrance—the metal scrap of a safe-deposit box taken from the Twin Towers, melted beyond recognition by heat estimated at 1800 degrees. On the odd day he would pause there, quiet. It was the nearest Brooke Chandler came to prayer.
Today, without stopping, he took an elevator to the seventh floor.
The hallway was long and white and sparsely decorated, its doorways serving as entries to vaults of offices sealed off from the others and locked at night. Brooke’s office was also spare, a ten-by-twelve box with a floor-to-ceiling window and an L-shaped desk equipped with a computer, a small-screen TV, and two telephones—one a secure line on which he could call any CIA station in the world. In the corner was a burn bag for disposing of classified documents. The only photograph on the desk was of Ben, his closest friend, and Ben’s new bride, smiling at Brooke from the summer of 2001.
Brooke was reaching for his secure line when it rang. “We’re meeting in Brustein’s office,” Grey said brusquely. “You’re wanted.”
By agency standards, the deputy director’s quarters were commodious, with a desk, leather chair, bookshelves, and a seating area containing a couch, more chairs, and a table on which one could place coffee or papers. Crowded around the table were Grey, Noah Brustein, and several administrators with whom Brooke had varying degrees of familiarity: Frank Svitek, head of operations, a stocky, crew-cut man with merry eyes and a doctorate in English literature; Ken Sweder, who ran the counterterrorism center, known for his slender build and perfect dress as the most elegant spy in Washington; Michael Wertheimer, a senior analyst who specialized in Pakistan, and whose keen eyes and gold-rimmed glasses evoked for Brooke an extremely crafty accountant.
The man he knew least, Noah Brustein, was the new deputy director. Though Brustein’s name conjured for Brooke an orchestra conductor rather than an operative, the man’s appearance fit his reputation. An ex-marine, Brustein was barrel-chested and extremely fit, with close-cropped hair, a trim beard, and ice-blue eyes. Once a storied field agent, Brustein was fiercely loyal to the Outfit, and his return from a lucrative consulting business had cheered an agency buffeted by politics and a bewildering succession of new directors. Shaking his hand, Brooke remembered another facet of Brustein’s reputation—that his grip could maim you for life.
Brustein sat across from him, commencing with the directness he was known for. “We’re picking up more indications that the Pakistanis may have lost a nuclear weapon. Carter tells us you’ve already been mulling this.”
“An unlucky guess,” Brooke answered. “In a country riddled with jihadists—including in government—it was a matter of time. The best time is when weapons are moving.”
“You said more,” Wertheimer interjected in skeptical tones. “According to Carter, you posit a possible arrangement among LET, al Qaeda, and the Taliban to bring on a state of war.”
Brooke poured some coffee, then faced him. “Tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll be happy. Can you?”
Wertheimer pursed his lips. “We don’t even know if a bomb is missing. We don’t think the prime minister of Pakistan knows, either.”
“No surprise there,” Ken Sweder put in. “The army thinks nuclear weapons are only for grown-ups. If someone snatched a bomb, their first concern is to protect their own position.”
“Are we absolutely certain,” Grey asked, “that a faction of the army didn’t steal it? Perhaps as a precursor to a coup.”
“We’re not,” Brustein responded. “But what we’re seeing is activity in the area of Baluchistan near Dera Ghazi Khan—helicopters, roadblocks, deployments of troops in areas the army usually avoids. It feels more like a manhunt than a mutiny.”
Brooke spoke to Wertheimer, the skeptic. “Which plays into a conspiracy thesis, Michael. To steal a nuclear weapon takes meticulous planning—not just the theft itself, but how to get the weapon out of Pakistan. That requires months, if not years, of arranging. You don’t just up and steal a bomb because LET blew up the Taj Mahal. Please credit the possibility that LET’s attacks on India didn’t precede the plan, but followed from it.”
Wertheimer frowned. “You’re suggesting an act of genius.”
“A few such geniuses exist.” Turning to Brustein, Brooke asked, “What are the Pakistanis saying?”
“Nothing, and we’re not pushing yet.” Brustein scowled. “As you well know, our speculation about a missing bomb is subsumed by a larger worry—the threat of nuclear war. Right now the president’s working the phone with the prime ministers of India and Pakistan, and the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs are ping-ponging between Islamabad and New Delhi. One of the keys is pressing the Pakistanis to roll up LET, which only the army and ISI have the power to do. At least until we have more proof, we can’t start accusing them of losing a weapon and covering it up.”
For the first time, Svitek spoke. “We’re working it,” he said with a trace of defensiveness, “and so’s the new station chief in Islamabad. We still have o
ur own friends in the ISI and senior command. Problem is, a lot of them are massed at the Indian border, or caught up in planning for war. And we can’t start flying surveillance planes over Pakistan in the midst of a nuclear alert.”
Carter Grey, Brooke noticed, held himself carefully, the effort to keep his back straight showing in his eyes. “There’s another barrier,” Grey said. “The senior Pakistani generals are absolutely consumed with India. The last thing they want is to give us an excuse to come in after their weapons. Even if the situation weren’t so fraught, we don’t know enough to go in uninvited.” He looked from face to face, pausing at Brustein. “If our guess is right, whoever took this weapon is smart enough to know all that. They may even hope that we do come in, throwing the country into turmoil and empowering the jihadists. So the immediate focus has to be who took the weapon, and where it may be going.”
Wertheimer put down his coffee cup. “As to who has the apocryphal missing bomb,” he told Brooke in his driest tone, “Carter says you know that, too.”
Brooke inclined his head toward Sweder. “So does Ken—better than anyone. Not the Taliban, LET, or a pack of mutineers.”
Nodding, the head of counterterrorism addressed Brustein. “Al Qaeda makes sense, Noah. We’re all aware of their self-concept—Islamic warriors fighting to create a caliphate from Spain to Indonesia and, beyond that, to bend the world to their will. In his own peculiar way, Bin Laden was a romantic. But taken on their own terms, Bin Laden and his inner circle have always been extremely rational—the exact opposite of the illiterate knuckle draggers who still dominate the Taliban. Bin Laden studied economics, and Zawahiri is a physician. The rate of college graduates among al Qaeda activists is higher than that of Americans. Almost none of them, if you believe our psychologists, has significant mental pathology.
“The result is a bizarre but potent combination—an apocalyptic vision pursued with cold-eyed realism. Their plan is to wear down America and its allies by creating al Qaeda franchises throughout the Islamic and Western worlds, building an infrastructure that can stage attacks so terrifying that we’ll beg for mercy. A nuclear detonation would be the ultimate strike.”
Devil's Light, The Page 5
