The Midnight House jw-4

by Alex Berenson

  The Midnight House

  ( John Wells - 4 )

  Alex Berenson

  When two former covert agents are gunned down, John Wells learns that the victims were part of an interrogation team that operated out of a secret base called the Midnight House, where they extracted information from the toughest jihadis. Wells must find out who is hunting and killing them. But the trail of blood leads him to a place he couldn't have imagined.

  Alex Berenson

  The Midnight House

  FOR THE MEN AND WOMEN OF CITY HARVEST,

  WHO BRING FOOD TO THE HUNGRY

  Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank.

  — Numbers 20:11

  PROLOGUE

  ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN. JUNE 2008

  To the worst place in the world.”

  “The worst place in the world.”

  George Fezcko and Dwayne Maggs raised their glasses and drank. The going-away party was over. One by one, the ops had said their good-byes and disappeared. Only Fezcko and Maggs were left. Fezcko, the guest of honor, leaving Pakistan after four years as deputy chief of station. And Maggs, his best friend at the agency.

  The clock on the wall said 1:30, and they’d been drinking since dinner, but Fezcko felt solid. Maggs had gotten hold of a half-dozen Omaha steaks and two racks of ribs. The meat had soaked up most of the scotch in Fezcko’s belly.

  Though not all. Fezcko put his head against the cool wood of the conference table and hummed tunelessly: “ ‘We few, we ragged few, we motley crew. ’ ” He trailed off. He couldn’t remember the rest of the song, or even if there was a rest of the song.

  “Mötley Crüe,” Maggs said. “Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.”

  “That’s AC/DC.”

  “Marine recon, too.”

  “Why does it always go back to the marines? By now everyone in this country knows you’re a jarhead. All one hundred fifty million.” Fezcko tapped Maggs on the forehead. “Tattoo it right there. The few, the proud, the stupid.”

  “You wish you coulda been a marine,” Maggs said. “Berkeley boy. You wouldn’t have made it through the first week of basic. Eaten up and spat out.”

  Maggs was the station’s director of security. He was short and wide and strong, arms as big as an average man’s legs. Fezcko had thinning curly hair and wild black eyes. In college he’d played bass for a band that had almost broken out. They shouldn’t have gotten along. But they did.

  “A marine? I wish I coulda been Tom Brady.”

  “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Land of the free, home of the suicide bomber. Bet you miss it already,” Maggs said.

  “What’s not to miss? The earthquakes. The weather. The fifteen pounds I put on ’cause it’s too hot to run outside.” Fezcko poked at the belly he’d gained.

  “Can’t blame Paki for that. That gym in the basement is pretty good. As you’d know if you ever visited.”

  “I like to run outside.”

  “How about the women? Those beautiful Paki women.”

  Fezcko sipped his scotch. “Black-and-blue with the ugly stick,” he said. “I never should have let Marci divorce me. Maybe if our security officers didn’t lock us in the embassy all the time, maybe then we’d find out what those burqas are hiding. Can’t even go down the block to the Marriott for a going-away party. It’s a Marriott, for God’s sake.”

  Indeed, because of the risk of terrorist attacks, the agency barred employees in Pakistan from gathering at hotels and restaurants. Maggs had refused to make an exception, even tonight.

  “Don’t mind getting you killed, but there’s got to be a reason,” Maggs said. “You know better than me, they aim for that Marriott once a month. I know who you’re gonna miss. The army and the ISI”—the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the Pakistani secret police. Between them the two services more or less ran Pakistan.

  “The army and the ISI. The ISI and the army. I’ll tell you something about the ISI and the army.”

  “Yeah. Give me the speech. With feeling. Like I haven’t heard it a hundred times before.”

  “The Egyptians, the Saudis, when they lie to you, they do it with a smile. Pour you tea, tell a story that takes an hour, and when they’re done you’re about ready to fall for whatever they’re spinning. These guys, they just yell, like if I give you this nonsense at high volume it won’t sound so ridiculous. They aren’t all bad, maybe, but most of ’em. ”

  “Remember when they won that cricket match and almost burned down Karachi? ”

  Fezcko looked into his glass. “You really think Paki’s the worst place in the world? ”

  “Somalia’s bad.”

  “Worse than this? ”

  “Hotter. And blacker.”

  “You think you can say that just ’cause you’re black? Insult your African cousins? ”

  Maggs smirked. “I can say it because I’m a marine.”

  “Let’s drink to Somalia, then,” Fezcko said. “The even-worse worst place in the world.”

  “Somalia. See you there.”

  “Three years. It’ll be like that movie with the French chick—”

  “I always knew you were gay, George—”

  Fezcko struggled for the memory lurking in his alcohol-fogged brain. “Ethan Hawke. Julie Something—”

  “Gayer by the second.”

  “Before Sunrise,” Fezcko said triumphantly.

  AND THEN HIS PAGER buzzed.

  He pulled it off his waist, squinted at it. The scotch had blurred his eyes, and he didn’t recognize the numbers. Then he did. 36963. Code for “call me now” from Nawiz Khan, a division chief for the ISI. Fezcko slid the pager across the table to Maggs.

  “Nawiz? ” Maggs said. “Wants to wish you good-bye.”

  Fezcko didn’t trust the ISI, but he did trust Khan, since a blown raid in Peshawar two years back. He and Khan had had to shoot their way out of an apartment. Khan took a round in the left thigh that night. He still favored the leg.

  Fezcko stood, feeling the steak and the ribs twist in his gut, and headed down the hall, shielding his eyes from the fluorescent lights. He touched his thumb to the fingerprint reader beside the door of his office. Inside, he sat down heavily on the edge of his desk and called Khan.

  Who answered after a single ring.

  “Fezcko,” Khan said, somehow making the name sound glamorous. The years he’d spent at university in London had given him a soft English accent.

  “Nawiz?”

  “May I speak freely? ”

  “You asking if this line is secure? Yeah, it’s secure.”

  “Also if you are as drunk as you sound.”

  Fezcko laughed. “Not quite. Though it’s been a long night.”

  “It has been a long night for me as well, George. But I have something you will want to see.”

  “Something or someone? ”

  “Both.”

  “Big?”

  “If you’re asking me, am I in line for your fifty million dollars”—the CIA’s reward for the capture of Osama bin Laden—“the answer is no. But my friend, I wouldn’t have called at this hour if this wasn’t worth your while. You may want to let your CT team know as well.”

  CT was agency lingo for the practice known publicly as extraordinary rendition. The letters stood for “collection and transfer,” snatching suspected terrorists from their home countries and holding them in American custody.

  “My CT team,” Fezcko said. “That’s me and Maggs. As you know.”

  “My men will make the arrest, then. And I will give them to you as a going-away present.”

  “ ‘Them’? What are you doing to me, N
awiz? ”

  “The question you should be asking me is what am I doing for you?”

  “We gonna need a G-five for this? ” A Gulfstream V jet, capable of carrying a dozen passengers halfway around the world without re-fueling, and thus the preferred method of transport for renditions.

  “I think so. These men, it’s best if they leave Pakistan.”

  “Man. You couldn’t have given me a little notice? I need an hour, make some calls.”

  “And drink some coffee.”

  “That, too.”

  “One hour. No more.”

  “One hour.”

  BUT NINETY MINUTES PASSED before Fezcko and Maggs rolled out the side gate of the embassy in a black Nissan sedan. The car looked stock, but its windows were bullet-resistant and its doors were reinforced with steel plates. It wasn’t as sturdy as the armored Suburbans that the ambassador and the chief of station preferred, but it would stop an AK round and it didn’t attract attention.

  In the passenger seat, Fezcko tried to rest, while his bodyguard, an ex-Ranger with the unlikely name of Leslie, drove. Maggs was in the back, playing a driving game on his iPod, his preferred method of relaxation before a mission. He seemed to have sobered up immediately. Fezcko wished he could say the same. Even after three cups of coffee, he was hardly in peak form. Before he left, he had gotten a definite maybe for a rendition from Josh Orton, the assistant chief for the Near East Section.

  “I’m going to need more details,” Orton had said, from his desk seven thousand miles away at Langley.

  “You think? ”

  “Don’t get pissy with me, George. You know the rules.” Since 2006, the agency had become much more reluctant to authorize renditions, although they still took place.

  The Nissan swung out of the Diplomatic Enclave, the high-security zone in eastern Islamabad that was home to the American embassy and other foreign missions. The night air was surprisingly cool for June. A breeze fluttered through the trees along Constitution Avenue.

  After Pakistan gained independence in 1947, its military leaders decided to create a new capital city that would be easier to control than Karachi, the original capital. The result was Islamabad, a million-person city that Pakistanis called Isloo. With its boulevards, parks, and office towers, Isloo wasn’t a bad place to live, at least compared to the rest of Pakistan. The city reminded Fezcko of Charlotte, his hometown — though Charlotte didn’t have a mosque that could hold three hundred thousand worshippers.

  The Nissan turned southwest on Nazimuddin Road, leaving the Diplomatic Enclave behind. Rather than giving names to the neighborhoods, Islamabad’s planners had divided the city into zones identified by numbers and letters. Sixty years later, the system had stuck. Fezcko and Maggs were headed for the I-10 zone, a lightly built area on the southwestern edge of the city.

  Fezcko’s phone trilled.

  “Are you standing me up? ”

  “Nawiz, please. We’re on the way.” Fezcko hung up, wondering at the urgency. Khan wasn’t a nervous guy.

  Ten minutes later, the Nissan pulled up outside an unfinished concrete building. A rusting white sign identified the shell as the “Future Center of the All-Pakistan Medical Commons.” As Fezcko stepped out of the Nissan, the building’s steel front door creaked open. A trim middle-aged man limped out toward him.

  “Salaam alekeim, Nawiz.”

  “Alekeim salaam.” They hugged, clapping each other tightly on the back.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were friends,” Maggs said.

  “Come,” Nawiz said. “I’ll show you your going-away present.”

  INSIDE, A BIG OPEN ROOM with a floor of hard-packed dirt. The air thick with dust and the stink of diesel smoke. A noisy generator powered strings of Christmas tree-sized white bulbs tacked to the walls, giving the place a strangely festive feel. In the corner opposite the generator, two men played checkers on a cheap folding table. Three more napped at their feet.

  “Your crack team,” Fezcko said.

  “Merely conserving their energy.” Khan handed Fezcko a long-lens photograph of a truck, a Mitsubishi ten-wheeler, the cab metallic blue with a spiffy beige stripe painted horizontally beneath the windshield. “Abu Zaineb Textile Manufacture (PVT) Ltd” was stenciled in black on the cargo compartment.

  “Nice truck,” Fezcko said.

  “Such insight. I see why you’ve been promoted.”

  “Is Abu Zaineb Textile real? ”

  “We can’t find the name. Though that’s not dispositive, you understand.”

  “ ‘Dispositive,’ ” Maggs said. “Mighty big word for a Paki.”

  Khan waved off Maggs and handed Fezcko another photo, this one centered on a pair of men standing beside the truck. One wore a white salwar kameez, the long tunic and pants favored by many Pakistani men. The other was younger and dressed Western-style, in jeans and a red T-shirt that, strangely, had a Batman logo stamped on its front.

  “You know them? ”

  Fezcko shook his head.

  “This one.” Khan pointed to the man in the salwar kameez. “His name is Asif Ali. He is a cousin of Jawaruddin.”

  Jawaruddin was Jawaruddin bin Zari, a thirty-four-year-old from Peshawar who was wanted for numerous terrorist attacks, including four bombings in Peshawar and the killing of two American aid workers in Karachi. He was a member of a terrorist group called Ansar Muhammad that had first turned up in 2006. In Arabic, ansar literally meant patrons, or supporters, but the word was usually translated as warriors — in this case, the warriors of Muhammad. The CIA didn’t know much about Ansar Muhammad, though the agency had picked up hints of connections between the group and the ISI. Some analysts at Langley believed the ISI was using the group to carry out anti-American attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In any case, bin Zari was a high-value target. Capturing him would be a coup for the agency, at least until his successor popped up.

  “Asif ’s an actual cousin? Or more like a good friend? ”

  “You’ve reached the limits of my knowledge, George. He was introduced to my men as a cousin. We didn’t perform a DNA test.”

  “And he’s part of Ansar Muhammad? ”

  “Based on what I’m about to show you, it seems likely.”

  “What about the other guy? Batman? ”

  “We don’t know. Probably a driver.”

  Khan handed across a third photo, this one focused on the Mitsubishi’s cargo compartment, which was filled with oil drums and plastic sacks. A fourth photo focused on the sacks, which were stamped “Highest-Quality Nitrogen Fertilizer.” Khan didn’t have to explain further. Ammonium nitrate and fuel oil were the basic ingredients for truck bombs.

  “These were taken where? ”

  “Peshawar.” Khan lifted his eyebrows, as if to say Where else? “Two days ago. My men learned that Asif Ali would be at a restaurant. They followed him, took these photos. Dumb luck.”

  “Your men learned how? ”

  “The usual way. A friend of a friend of an enemy.”

  “That like a cousin? ” This from Maggs.

  “I’d like some details on the sourcing,” Fezcko said.

  Khan lifted his shoulders a fraction of an inch: Too bad.

  “Where’s the truck now? ”

  “Approximately fifteen hundred meters”—about a mile—“from here. It arrived yesterday. I had hoped that bin Zari or someone at his level might visit the operation in person. But I think now that moment has passed. And I think we ought to move quickly.”

  Fezcko understood. The ISI was so ridden with Qaeda sympathizers that it was only a matter of time before the terrorists learned that Khan and his men were tracking them. Most likely very little time.

  “Heck of a nice truck. Shame to blow it up. You know the target?”

  “We’re all targets, George. Terrorism hurts us all.” Khan moved his lips, pretending to smile. “Roderick White arrives tomorrow for meetings with our president. He seems a likely candidate.”

&n
bsp; Fezcko rubbed his forehead, wishing his going-away party had been some other night. How had he forgotten that Sir Roderick White, the British foreign minister, was coming to Islamabad? “That sounds ambitious.”

  “You know our friends are optimists. And even if they don’t reach him, they know that whatever they do will get extra attention tomorrow.”

  “Maybe they’ll have help to get through a checkpoint or two.” Fezcko didn’t have to specify that the help would be coming from inside the ISI. “Who else knows about this, Nawiz? ”

  “Omar is the only one I’ve told.” Omar Gul, an assistant director in the ISI’s Counter-Terror Division. Sometimes known at Langley as the “Counting on Terror” Division. The CIA viewed Gul as the only reliable officer in the top ranks of the ISI, not least because he’d survived three assassination attempts in four years, the last of which had cost him his right eye.

  Fezcko saw why Khan was so anxious to move. “You want to do this now. Get them out before the sun comes up. You and Omar are the only ones who know. Tomorrow, the next day, you come back on that truck, a big show. It’s empty, and you tell your buddies that the bad guys disappeared.”

  Khan nodded.

  “Then whatever we get from them, maybe even some names inside your shop, nobody knows but you.”

  Another nod.

  The plan was at least one step past risky. Maybe all the way to stupid. Renditions usually required approval from senior-level officials on both sides. Now Khan wanted to grab two men on the fly. They weren’t in some village on the North-West Frontier, either. They were five miles from the Pakistani parliament. If something went wrong, if they got caught tonight, the Pakistani government wouldn’t be able to ignore what had happened. Khan would go to jail. There would be anti-American riots.

  If anyone but Khan had made the offer, Fezcko would have rejected it outright for fear of a trap. But he trusted Khan. And the deal was tempting. Anything they could do to clean up the ISI would be valuable.

  “We don’t have a plane in country,” Fezcko said, trying to buy time. “Where will we keep them? ”