The Midnight House jw-4

by Alex Berenson

  LUCKY FOR HIM, the djinns promised a way out.

  18

  Wells heard Tonka’s barking even before he opened the door of Shafer’s house. When he walked in, she put her paws to his chest and licked his unshaven chin joyously.

  “Yes. It’s good to see you, too.”

  “You inspire loyalty in one creature, at least,” Shafer said from the top of the stairs. His ripped cotton undershirt and plain white briefs somehow managed to be both baggy and revealing. “I’d ask how your flight was, but I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, it’s totally binary. You land, it was fine.”

  “You know what I like about you, Ellis? You make such great small talk.”

  “We have that in common.” Shafer stepped down the stairs, headed for the kitchen. “Come. I need some coffee, and you need to tell me about Steve Callar.”

  “I’d really prefer you put some pants on.”

  “My house, my rules.”

  OVER COFFEE, Wells recounted his conversation with Callar, the darkness inside the house and the man.

  “He’s crazy enough to be the killer. If only we could find the tele-porter he used to get back from Phoenix.”

  “And the FBI checked the airline records to see if he flew to D.C. when Karp was killed or Louisiana when Jerry Williams disappeared. They didn’t see anything.”

  “Don’t they need a warrant for that?”

  “Where have you been? It’s a matter of national security. So they send out NSLs”—national security letters—“asking the airlines for help. It’s not a demand, it’s a request.”

  “But nobody says no.”

  “Not in our brave new world.”

  “When did you turn into a libertarian, Ellis?”

  “I just want to be able to get on a plane without being felt up.”

  “At your age you ought to be happy about it.”

  “Anyway, the FBI didn’t find Callar’s name in the records.”

  “Maybe he drove.”

  “Maybe. Meantime, we have nothing on him. Or anyone else.”

  “Have the Feds talked to Terreri and Hank Poteat?” The other two surviving members of 673.

  “They’re trying to send a team to Afghanistan to interview Terreri, but the army isn’t cooperating. Says he’s planning an op and can’t be interrupted, even for this. They have talked to Poteat in Korea, but he didn’t give them much. Like Murphy told us, he wasn’t in Poland long. They’d barely started the interrogations when he left.”

  “What about the registry? You figured out who the missing guys were?”

  “I’m making progress. I spent yesterday over at NSA — they run the registry — talking to Sam Arbegan. The head of database analysis. He couldn’t come up with names for the detainees. But he did give me an idea who might have deleted the records.”

  “How? ”

  “You want the technical explanation?”

  “No, I want it in crayon.”

  “The registry has multiple layers of security. There’s no external access. It’s only available over an internal DoD network. Physically separate from the Internet and basically impossible for anyone outside to hack in. So, assume it was someone inside. A couple thousand people can see the database. At Langley, the Pentagon, the prisons themselves. But most of them, the access is read-only. To change records — for example, if a detainee moves between prisons — you have to have what NSA calls ‘administrative access.’ That’s restricted to a few dozen officers at the prisons. The NSA approves them individually. But even they can’t delete records. To do that, you have to have something called clearance access.”

  “And that would be senior people, like Duto or Whitby?”

  “Not even them. Really, only the software engineers at the NSA who run the database. On top of that, the registry has a spider, an automated program that tracks the registry. If I look up a prisoner record, my request is permanently stored in the spider, with my user ID and access code. If somebody changes a record, that gets stored, too.”

  “Deletions, too?”

  “That’s trickier. Deletions aren’t supposed to happen at all. But the guys with clearance access are the same engineers who created the database. They could probably turn off the spider, even though they’re not supposed to. But in theory, yes, if the spider stays on, nobody can delete a record without leaving a trail.”

  “Let me guess,” Wells said. “The spider doesn’t show anybody monkeying with the database.”

  “Correct. And Arbegan confirmed the registry doesn’t show the extra ID numbers we have. If they were in there, they were scraped out completely.”

  “Do the guys who ran the database have connections to 673?”

  “They’re mostly NSA lifers. But one of them, Jim D’Angelo, retired a few months ago. He set up shop on his own, started a company called AI Systems Analysis. Based in Chevy Chase. Tough to find it. Very sketchy information in the Maryland corporate records. Doesn’t seem to have a working office or phone or a Dun and Bradstreet report. But I did come across one sentence in an online newsletter that covers the federal contracting business. Last year, AI Systems was hired as a subcontractor for a company called CNF Consulting. Want to guess who CNF’s biggest client is?”

  “Considering what you told me two days ago, about how Fred Whitby was the guy who ran 673 at the Pentagon, I’m going to go with. Fred Whitby, the director of the Office of National Intelligence.”

  “Ding-ding-ding,” Shafer said. “You are correct. Every few months, CNF gets no-bid contracts for technical support for Whitby’s office.”

  “So you think Whitby used CNF Consulting to pay off D’Angelo. For cleaning out the database.”

  “Looks like it. D’Angelo quits the NSA and right away gets this contract? You have a better explanation?”

  Wells didn’t.

  “Then I asked Arbegan if the database ever showed any unusual outages or problems. When he looked, he found out that about eighteen months ago, during routine maintenance, the spider shut down for half an hour. Plenty of time for somebody inside to delete the records and then cover his tracks.”

  “But that was way before the IG got the letter with all the accusations,” Wells said. “Six-seventy-three wasn’t even finished with its tour.”

  “Which tells you that whatever happened to the detainees, they knew they had a problem right away. And that they had enough juice to make it disappear.”

  Wells sat at Shafer’s kitchen table, trying to make sense of the picture taking shape. They’d done a fine job eliminating suspects. At least as far as he was concerned, they could write off Jerry Williams and Alaa Zumari. Steve Callar had an airtight alibi.

  But Whitby’s name kept coming up.

  The idea that the director of national intelligence could be involved with these murders struck Wells as bizarre. Those conspiracies happened only in bad movies. And yet the evidence seemed to be pointing toward Whitby.

  “What do we know about Whitby?”

  “Not enough. He was a congressman for twelve years, served on the House Select.” Both the House and the Senate had committees to supervise the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community. “The agency considered him a friend. Supported our budgets, didn’t ask too many questions. He lost in 2004, wound up in the Pentagon, a civilian appointee. And, according to our friend Vinny, sometime in 2006 he wound up with responsibility for the secret prisons. Including the Midnight House.”

  “Why him?”

  “Probably because nobody else wanted to touch them.”

  “So, he got stuck with them.”

  “Correct. You know, a former congressman, they usually end up lobbying. Playing golf for a living, boring themselves and everybody else to death. This guy is a mid-level appointee at the Pentagon, and out of nowhere he got promoted to DNI. Duto’s boss. Something went right for him.”

  “We have to hit him.”

  “He’s the director of national intelligence,” Shafer said. “You don’t hit him.”


  “Let’s go back to Duto. Find out what he knows. What 673 really got.”

  “First, I want to talk to Brant Murphy again. With you there.”

  “I thought you said he’s insisting we go through his lawyer.”

  “He is.”

  WELLS AND SHAFER STOOD OUTSIDE the unmarked staircase that served as a back entrance to the Counterterrorist Center. Besides serving as a fire escape, the stairs were a shortcut between CTC and the main cafeteria at Langley. They were protected by two sets of double steel doors, built like an airlock and separated by a short hallway.

  At the first set of doors, Shafer swiped his ID through a reader, put his eye to a retinal scanner. The red light on the lock beeped twice — and then stayed red. Shafer tried again. Same result.

  “What part of all-access don’t you understand?” Shafer muttered to the lock.

  Along with the agency’s most senior officers, Wells and Shafer had “all-access” privileges throughout headquarters. The term was a misnomer. No one, not even Duto, had carte blanche to enter every room at Langley. Most individual offices were key-locked, not electronically accessed. No master key existed, for reasons of privacy as much as security. Officers hated the idea that their bosses could walk in on them without notice. Key locks preserved the illusion of privacy, though in reality, the agency kept duplicate keys to every office and its general counsel regularly authorized searches.

  But all-access privileges did allow Wells and Shafer to enter every common area and conference room — no matter how highly classified the section or the program. Now, though, Shafer’s access to CTC seemed blocked.

  “You try,” Shafer said.

  Wells ran his ID through the reader, stooped, matched his eye to the retinal scanner. The red light blinked green and the magnetized lock clicked open.

  “Murphy blocked me somehow,” Shafer said.

  “I thought that was impossible.”

  “So did I.”

  They walked down the stairs and into CTC itself, looking for Murphy’s office. Wells had never been to CTC before. Its size surprised him. Three long hallways held dozens of offices each.

  “Busy bees down here,” Wells said.

  “With all of them working so hard, I’m surprised we didn’t catch Osama years ago. Of course, then they’d be out of a job.”

  “Be nice, Ellis.”

  The door to Murphy’s office was closed. Without knocking, Shafer walked in. Wells followed. Murphy was poring over a report as they entered.

  “Excuse me, can I—” Then, snapping the file shut, “How did you get in here?”

  “Have you met John Wells, Brant?”

  Wells extended his hand.

  “You need to leave. Both of you.”

  “Give us two minutes. It’s not about the money. I promise.”

  Murphy picked up his handset. “Please don’t make me call security, embarrass all of us.”

  “You’re lucky it’s not about the money, because otherwise I might have some questions about those mortgages of yours—”

  “What?”

  “Public records. Anybody can find them. Even those dopes at the FBI. Start with your place in Kings Park West. The refi from 2005. My memory’s a little fuzzy, but I think it was five hundred thirty thousand? Your wife’s idea, I’ll bet. ‘We’re sitting on a pile of cash. Let’s live a little. Go to Europe. Take the kids.’ Then you had a better idea. Take the equity, double down. Get a vacation place. Eastern Shore. Real estate, in this market, the only way to lose is not to play. The mortgage on that was what, another four hundred? But lo and behold, guess what, six months ago, a year after you’re back from Poland, you paid off both mortgages. I’ll bet if you ever have to take a poly on that, you’ve got a story, some rich aunt left your wife a million bucks. But why would you have to take a poly? Nobody’s ever gonna notice.”

  Shafer delivered this recital without stopping for breath. Murphy flushed, faintly, but didn’t say a word or move, just held the phone to his ear as if it might have news better than what Shafer had delivered.

  “Two minutes, Brant.”

  Murphy lowered the phone. “Two minutes.”

  “How many detainees at the Midnight House?” Shafer said.

  “I told you, ten.”

  “That’s not what the letter said. To the IG. It said twelve. Twelve prisoner identification numbers. But two of them are gone.”

  “I don’t know what the letter said.”

  “What happened to the two missing detainees?”

  “The letter’s wrong. Anything else?”

  “What was it like over there?”Wells said. “Did you get along?”

  “I went over this already. With the FBI, and your buddy, too.”

  “Jerry Williams’s wife, Rachel Callar’s husband, they both told me the squad was having problems. And that something went wrong at the end.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “We’re trying to save your life, Brant,” Wells said. “Why won’t you let us?”

  “Six of your guys dead and you don’t seem worried for your own safety,” Shafer said. “A cynic might wonder.”

  “Full-time guards for me and my family.”

  “Maybe Duto should pull them,” Shafer said. “If you’re not going to cooperate.”

  “Let him try,” Murphy said. He stood. “Now you need to leave. Or I really will call security.”

  “THAT WENT WELL,” Shafer said when they were back in his office.

  “He’d rather get killed than tell us what happened over there.”

  “Or maybe he’s got nothing to worry about from the killer.”

  “You think that’s possible.”

  “I don’t know. It’s time to go at him. I’m going to get Duto to open up his 600s”—the financial disclosure forms CIA employees had to file. “His polys. We don’t need a warrant for that. You, you’re going to talk to his neighbors. Don’t sugarcoat it, either. Tell them Mr. Brant Murphy is under investigation—”

  “Ellis—”

  “He’s telling us to shove it. And he knows we’re working for Duto. His ultimate boss. He’s got nerve.”

  “He’s got protection.”

  “Then we’ll force it into the open. Whoever’s shielding him, Whitby, whoever, we’ll make him come out. He’s the pressure point. He’s the weak link.”

  “I don’t like it,” Wells said. “It feels forced.” Though the move made a certain amount of sense. Murphy was acting like he was untouchable. They needed to find out why.

  Shafer’s phone trilled. “Yes. They’re positive?”Pause. “No. I’ll tell him. Yes. I’m sorry, too.”

  Wells knew even before Shafer hung up. “Jerry Williams?”

  “Louisiana, Terrebonne Parish. A fisherman found his body today. In the swamp.”

  Wells remembered Jeffrey Williams, curled on his mother’s lap, awaiting sleep, awaiting his father. What would Noemie tell him now?

  “They’re sure.”

  “His wallet was in the jeans. And the body had a Ranger tattoo. Looks like he was shot in the head, but they won’t know for sure until the autopsy. Bodies in the swamp, you know—”

  “Ellis. You’re talking about someone who was a friend of mine.” Wells felt his gorge rise at Shafer. Then realized he should direct his anger at whoever was behind this.

  “Sorry,” Shafer said mechanically. “You going to the funeral?”

  “I don’t think Noemie would want to see me. And you’re right. It’s time to lean on Brant Murphy. Past time.”

  WELLS HAD ALWAYS DRIVEN with a heavy right foot. His WRX, a nifty little Subaru that looked like a five-door hatchback but could outrun the average Porsche, only made matters worse. Not his finest character trait, though he’d never had an accident.

  He was running at eighty on the Beltway, playing tractor-trailer slalom, when he saw the black Caprice sedan with Virginia plates sneaking up behind him. He figured the Caprice for an undercover statie. He eased off, wond
ering what the ticket would cost. The Commonwealth of Virginia had raised the price of speeding to extortionate levels.

  But the Caprice didn’t try to catch him, instead ducking behind an Audi three cars back. Wells peeked again at the mirror, saw a gray Chevy Tahoe sliding in behind the Caprice. Of course, unmarked government vehicles choked the Beltway at all hours. These two might have nothing to do with him. But the way they’d paced him made Wells think they did.

  Only one way to be sure. He was three miles from his exit now. Plenty of time to move. If they were on him, he would lose them, get off the highway before they recovered. He tightened his seat belt, feathered the gas, felt the WRX’s engine rumble. There. One lane right. Between two eighteen-wheelers. Then into the far right lane, a quick left-right-left around a FedEx van. and then he’d see.

  He pushed down on the gas, slid the wheel to the right. The WRX reacted instantly. The Caprice matched his first move but then got stuck behind the FedEx van. Wells accelerated and cut left, barely getting by a Toyota Scion. The Scion’s angry honk faded behind him as he pulled left and left again to a patch of open asphalt in the passing lane.

  And now, no lie, he was having fun, the Subaru weaving through its bigger cousins like a fox dodging a pack of hounds. This stretch of the Beltway had just been repaved — Virginians liked their roads smooth — and it was sticky and tight underneath his tires. For the first time in months, he heard the music of the highway, nothing serious today, no Springsteen: “He’s going the distance/he’s going for speed.” Cake.

  He boomeranged past a big low-slung Mercedes, resisting the urge to wave. Sixty seconds later, he’d lost any hint of the Caprice or the Tahoe in his rearview mirrors. Easy. Almost too easy.

  TWO MINUTES LATER, he swung onto Braddock Road. He was heading for Brant Murphy’s no-longer-mortgaged house in Kings Park West, an upscale neighborhood in the city of Fairfax, fifteen miles from Langley. Per Shafer’s plan, Wells would knock on neighbors’ doors, flash his identification, ask if anyone had noticed anything unusual about Murphy recently. Sudden changes in spending? Late-night trips? Let the neighbors draw their own conclusions. And let Murphy hear the gossip.