The Midnight House jw-4

by Alex Berenson

  “But 673, were they ever mentioned specifically? ”

  “Last year, a jihadi Web site wrote about them. ‘The American squad 673 are rabid dogs who must be exterminated.’ Nothing specific about their tactics. Generic stuff. We have the pages cached if you want to see them. NSA tried to find the source, but it couldn’t.”

  “We know how the squad ID number got out? ”

  “It was reported in Germany last year. A prosecutor in Berlin opened an investigation into our rendition tactics. But the names of the squad members weren’t mentioned, not in the papers and not in the prosecutor’s report. As far as we know, they’ve never leaked.”

  “Doesn’t mean jihadis couldn’t find them. Maybe they got help from somebody in Poland,” Shafer said. “Or somebody in the prosecutor’s office.”

  “There’s another reason to believe it’s Al Qaeda. Yesterday morning a group calling itself the Army of the Sunni posted a claim of responsibility online. It refers to the murder of Mike Wyly. Looks authentic. At the time it was posted, his death hadn’t been reported. This morning the FBI backtraced the posting to a pay-per-minute computer at a Dunkin’ Donuts in L.A. The kind where you literally feed cash into a box. But the place doesn’t have cameras, and the counter guy doesn’t remember anyone special.”

  “What’s the posting say? ”

  “That the killings are revenge for the way we treat detainees. These sites are in Arabic, so the media hasn’t noticed it yet. But eventually they will. You can see the headlines. Payback for rendition, et cetera.”

  “If it’s true, it’s got to be personal,” Wells said. “I can’t see why you’d pick these targets otherwise. Somebody who 673 interrogated and let go. But they’re all in our custody, right? ”

  “All but two. One of them we can rule out. His name’s Mokhatir. A Malaysian national, caught in the Philippines with three soda-bottle bombs, looked like the kind you’d use to take out a plane. He was in custody for a few weeks, had some kind of health issue. They sent him back to the Philippines. He died in detention maybe eight months ago.”

  “A health issue? ”

  “That’s all we heard.”

  “How’d he die? ”

  Duto shook his head. Dead is dead. “If you care, ask the Philippine army. I wouldn’t bother. The other guy is the one we need to find. Alaa Zumari’s his name. We sent him back to Cairo two years ago, give or take.”

  “Halfway through 673’s tour.”

  “Give or take. He was arrested in Iraq with a bunch of cell phones and cash, suspected of being part of the insurgency. But 673 cleared him.”

  “Anybody over there tried to talk to him? ”

  “Tried, yes. Succeeded, no. The Egyptians lost him a few months ago. He’s gone.”

  “Vinny,” Shafer said. “I’m still not clear on what you want from us.”

  “I want you to investigate,” Duto said. “Start with Alaa Zumari.” He looked at Wells. “Go to Egypt, find him. If I recall, your particular skill set might come in handy for that.”

  The idea was implausible. Wells had burned the jihadis twice and couldn’t see how he could get inside a third time. Even so, his pulse quickened. Aloud, he said only, “I’m guessing the FBI has about a hundred agents on this? ”

  “There are complexities here. Which they may not see.”

  “Just tell us,” Wells said. “What you’re dancing around.”

  “Because this is interagency, the FBI is reporting to the DNI”—Fred Whitby, Duto’s boss, the director of national intelligence. The position had been created after September 11, when Congress and the White House decided a new Cabinet-level post was needed to oversee not just the CIA but the entire intelligence community. “I’m concerned that Whitby may not be giving the full picture to the Feds.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I can’t tell you more. At this time.”

  “You want us to sneak behind your boss’s back—”

  “He’s not my boss, John.”

  “Actually, he is,” Shafer said. In fact, the relationship between the DNI and DCI was still being defined.

  “I run the CIA. Fred Whitby’s got no operational authority here.”

  “Have I touched a sore spot, Vinny? ”

  Always, Wells thought. At Langley, and all over Washington, the men and women at the top always focused their attention on power plays and turf grabbing, as if the world outside the Beltway didn’t exist except as a kind of simulated reality, a way to keep score.

  “You want us to interfere with the FBI,” Wells said. “Operate on American soil. Which is illegal, last time I checked. And you won’t even tell us why, exactly, except that you don’t trust Fred Whitby. I didn’t know we were such good friends.”

  “It’s not interfering. It’s piggybacking. I’ll get you access to the 301s—” the reports that FBI agents filed after interviews. “The physical evidence. Lie-detector tests. After that, you do what you like. Say John wants to go to Cairo, find Alaa Zumari before the Feds or the Egyptians? Nobody can stop him.”

  “What is it you’re not telling us? ”

  Duto paused. “Without going into details. These guys, they broke something important. Major security implications.”

  “Related to this Egyptian, Zumari? ”

  “No.”

  Wells and Shafer waited for Duto to go on, but he didn’t. The silence stretched on. The room’s air seemed to thicken. Even Tonka’s breathing slowed.

  “I can’t tell you,” Duto said finally. “Not even you two. Only about eight people in the country know the whole story.”

  “Vinnie, you know as well as we do, we’re coded for everything.”

  “Everything here. These files, they’re at Liberty Crossing”—the buildings a couple miles west of Langley where the office of the director of national intelligence had its headquarters. “And Whitby’s holding them tight. He’s not even planning to tell the FBI what I just gave you. The Feebs, they’re getting the names of the squad members and the names of the detainees. Not their full records, just their names. I think there are ten. Along with the barest outlines of the way 673 worked. Nothing more. Nothing at all about what they found. I think Whitby’s making a mistake, and I told him so. But I’m overruled. So, yeah, I want you involved. Maybe I can feed you tidbits. The bureau comes back with a suspect, makes an arrest, great. They get lost, maybe you come up with something they don’t, steer them the right way.”

  “And you embarrass Whitby and the FBI by doing what they couldn’t,” Wells said.

  “You’ve gotten so cynical, John.”

  “At least give us access to the full detainee records—”

  “I don’t have them.”

  “Then no,” Wells said. “Forget it.”

  “We’re in,” Shafer said.

  5

  Why?” “When the director asks, it’s best to agree,” Shafer said.

  “When the director asks, it’s best to agree,” Shafer said.

  After the meeting, Shafer suggested they leave Langley, get some air. They were standing along the black granite wall of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. Tucked behind the Mall, on the southwest edge of the Tidal Basin, the monument rarely attracted attention.

  “New philosophy for you, Ellis,” Wells said. “Whatever this game is, I don’t want in.”

  “Let me explain something, John,” Shafer said. “In five minutes you would have done it anyway. Here’s how it would have gone. Duto would have said it was a chance for you to turn the page with him, build a new relationship. And when that didn’t work, he would have appealed to your sense of duty, told you you needed to avenge Jerry Williams and the rest of the guys. That probably would have done it. And if it didn’t, he would have challenged your manhood and you would have bitten in about half a second.”

  “No, he—”

  “Yes, he. Because that’s what I would have done.”

  Does Duto think he can manipulate me that easily? Wells wondered. Followed by
, Am I that easily manipulated? Even now, after everything he’d done, he suspected that these men, Duto and Shafer, saw him as little more than a door kicker, playing the role they gave him.

  Wells could have forced Duto to accept him as an equal. With his successes the last few years, he could have become deputy director of operations. He could have quit the agency entirely, moved over to the White House and the National Security Council. He could even have taken a job teaching, someplace like Georgetown, while he figured out his next move. But he knew he’d be bored out of his mind wearing a suit to work every day, running meetings. He belonged outside. But because he wouldn’t accept more authority, Duto and Shafer didn’t respect him.

  Wells’s pulse crept higher. He forced himself to smile, not to give Shafer the satisfaction of seeing the sting of his words. “You like the FDR? ” Wells said aloud.

  “Not so much. Too politically correct, don’t you think? The Democrats wanted it, and then the Republicans stuck it in the back of beyond. And all this self-conscious inspiration. We should have kept to Lincoln and Jefferson and Washington.”

  “Where’s Exley?” Wells said, apropos of nothing. And saying Exley’s name made him think of Anne. He imagined he could smell her on his hands, feel her skin on his. Thinking about her made his mouth go dry. Yet, equally, he wanted to confess what he’d done to Exley. To apologize to her. And to make her jealous. Remind her of what they’d had. “How is she? ”

  “Ask her yourself. You know how to find her. I’m not involved. You’re going to get back together, one of you needs to break already. Otherwise you’ll just make each other miserable.”

  Suddenly a class of elementary-school kids, third or fourth grade, swarmed the memorial. Their teacher was barely old enough to shave, a hipster in black glasses, a well-meaning Teach for America refugee halfway between the Ivy League and law school. He was trying, but he could barely keep the kids in line. They bounced off one another, shifting foot to foot. Two boys ran off, chased each other around one of the marble benches at the edge of the memorial, playing at a gunfight. “You dead. Pump this shotgun on your head.” The other boy ducked behind a bench, then raised an invisible rifle in both hands. “Shotgun ain’t nothing. You the one is dead.”

  “Let’s go,” Wells said.

  “Depressing.”

  “I hate watching it.”

  “I mean, the waste of ammo. These kids can’t hit the side of a barn. And somebody needs to reload.”

  “Nice, Ellis.”

  “Can’t let everything get to you. You got to be able to smile sometimes, the absurdity of it.”

  They left the kids behind, walked around the basin toward the Jefferson Memorial. A faint breeze fluttered off the stagnant water, carrying the muddy, briny smell that Wells would always associate with Washington. The swamp. A city that existed only as a kind of hotel for power. New York or Philadelphia would have been more natural sites for the seat of government, but the South wouldn’t agree, back in the day. So here they were.

  Wells supposed the United States had been lucky to have D.C. If the capital had stayed in the North, the South might have seceded a decade earlier, before the Union Army could bring it to heel. And if the South had broken away, at least three countries would have formed in the area now occupied by the United States — a North, a South, and a West. Then the United States wouldn’t have been the dominant world power in the twentieth century. Perhaps World War I or even World War II would have ended differently. On and on the counterfactual history ran.

  Kierkegaard was wrong, Wells thought. Life couldn’t be understood backward or forward. In the end, humans depended on faith as armor. But Wells’s own faith had faded. He didn’t know where to look. He’d lived as a Muslim for a decade. But how could he rejoin the umma, the community of believers, after what Omar Khadri had done to him? Yet Wells was even more perplexed by Christianity, the religion he’d been raised in growing up. He found Islam’s precepts easier to accept than Christianity’s, the relationship with God more personal.

  The wind picked up and riffled the basin’s brackish water, scudding low waves against its concrete walls. Despite himself, Wells found himself looking for a fish in the pool. A fat, ugly carp or even a toothy pike. Lord, just show me a pike that got lost on its way up the Potomac, and I will never question your existence again.

  No fish.

  Wells shivered in the breeze. Duto had certainly ruined his mood.

  “Cold? ” Shafer said.

  “Wondering if I should become a Buddhist.”

  “I don’t think it would suit you. You know what you need, John? A mission.”

  “That what you think? ”

  “I knows you fancies yourself a deep thinker,” Shafer said in a ridiculous southern accent. “But philosophy ain’t your thing, John-boy.”

  “You were born an ass, you will forever be an ass, and you will die an ass.”

  “At least I’m consistent. You ever see Gandhi eating meat? Barbecue? Pulled pork? A fat T-bone? Sirloin? Broiled in butter and served with a side of bacon? ”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re making me hungry, Ellis.”

  “Follow your destiny,” Shafer said. “Put down the book, grasshopper. Pick up the gun. Can’t kill nobody with a book.”

  Wells laughed. “When we get back to the office, I’m going to try. Then I’m gonna put you on a spit.”

  “Meantime, get to it.”

  “You really want to do this,” Wells said.

  “If nothing else, don’t you want to catch whoever killed your friend?”

  “You don’t know he’s dead.”

  “He’s dead, John. Until proven otherwise. Let’s find out who killed him.”

  “Simple,” Wells said. “And if the truth turns out to be complicated?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Or burn it. Whatever.”

  “All right.”

  “So, Duto wants us to play detective, we play detective,” Shafer said. “Spitball. Everything but the obvious, the jihadi connection. Save that for last.”

  “You know anything more about 673? Anything Duto didn’t tell us? ” Wells said.

  “Only this: we and the army paid the members of the squad their regular salaries. But the expenses were financed by the agency through what’s called a C-one drop. The squad got quarterly disbursements. No accounting of what happened to the money after that. No receipts, no oversight. It’s very rare. Seven-three got close to eight million through these drops.”

  “Eight million for a ten-man squad. Not bad.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Some went to the Poles who were running the base. Some for charter flights. Some for coms equipment, probably. Satellite gear, et cetera. But that’s another possible motive. Maybe whoever was in charge of the money skimmed a couple million. Now he’s worried the rest of the squad found out, so he’s eliminating them.”

  “What I don’t see, why kill the rest of the squad now? You’re just calling attention to yourself. Doesn’t make sense.”

  “I can’t disagree,” Shafer said. “Okay. Your turn.”

  “What about the woman, Rachel? The doctor. One woman, nine guys. Maybe she was having an affair. Two affairs. A love triangle.”

  “Then she gets home and one of the guys kills her? And makes it look like a suicide? Then starts in on the rest of the squad? Why now?”

  “Same problem as the money,” Wells said. “The timing doesn’t work.”

  “Okay, this is the worst yet,” Shafer said. “Say one of the members is actually a jihadi. Who worked for all these years for the agency. Or the army. Waiting to get put on this squad. And then, lo and behold — no. I can’t even say it. It’s so ridiculous.”

  “Try this. Coincidence. The doctor killed herself. Jerry Williams walked out on his wife. Karp got shot in a robbery—”

  “Tell it to the guys who just got popped in San Francisco and L.A.”

  With that they stood and looked over
the Tidal Basin. Two helicopters flew low overhead, most likely headed for the White House, as an overweight jogger huffed slowly along the path that circled the pool.

  “Not the most productive ten minutes we’ve ever spent,” Shafer said.

  “What if—” Wells said.

  “Just say it.”

  “What if, let’s say, someone inside the agency or the Pentagon is embarrassed by what 673 did? Somebody high up? ”

  “So, they want these guys taken out? One by one? Okay, go with it. Six-seven-three was torturing detainees. They were dumb enough to keep evidence, videos or photos. And some senior official was stupid enough to put his authorization in writing. He’s got a problem.”

  “Big problem. The kind that puts him in jail.”

  “Sure,” Shafer said. “But that’s a lot of stupid. And even so, the risk of taking them out is huge.”

  “People have been known to do dumb things when they panic.”

  “True. But play it the other way. What if Duto’s telling the truth and 673 found something huge? Proof the Kremlin is financing terrorism against us. Evidence that the French were paying bin Laden before nine-eleven.”

  “Now someone’s decided that the information is too important to risk a leak. And so it’s time for 673 to go.”

  “In the immortal words of Avon Barksdale, ‘They got to be got.’ ”

  “Who? ”

  “Ever see The Wire?”

  Wells shook his head.

  “It’s great. You’d like it. You’re like McNulty, only less of a hound. So. Six-seven-three finds something big, gets the wrong people upset. ” Shafer trailed off.

  “Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “I never buy the big conspiracies. You know, half the time we can barely tie our shoes. And now we’re saying the SecDef or the President or the Pope is taking out these guys one by one? That they’re rubbing their hands together in the White House, whispering to each other, ‘First San Diego. Then New Orleans. They know too much. Kill them. All of them.’ Giggling. Bwah-hah-hah.”

  “The Russians,” Wells said.

  “The Russians do enjoy their conspiracies. They might be crazy enough to kill our guys this way. But if Duto and Fred Whitby think it’s the Russians, why wouldn’t they tell us?”