The Ghost Agent

by Alex Berenson

  ‘Planning to break into the D.C. Zoo, liberate the chimps?’ the specialist – an attractive forty-something redhead with the thoroughly Irish name of Winnie O’Kelly – asked him. ‘You know they bite.’ Wells merely smiled. She handed over the pistols. ‘Try not to lose them. They’re not particularly traceable, but you never know.’

  Clubgoers took ketamine because at low doses the drug produced what doctors called a ‘dissociative reaction,’ almost an out-of-body experience, giving users the feeling they were in two places at once, watching themselves from a distance. At higher doses, ketamine caused unconsciousness in seconds. Further, ketamine wasn’t an opiate derivative, so it wouldn’t suffocate the guards if Wells accidentally overdosed them. At worst they would wake up stiff and headachy. The Versed in the mix would put the guards to sleep even faster.

  Of course, the syringes couldn’t work their magic unless Exley got the guards out of the Escalade.

  Exley drove past the mansion’s driveway. The Escalade was on the left, three tons of steel deliberately designed to be ugly. Its hood stared out at the street, a gas-guzzling fake tank driven by rich men who liked acting tough while knowing that other, poorer men would do the real fighting for them. Exley passed by slowly, making sure the men in the Escalade saw she was alone.

  A hundred yards farther on, the road dead-ended at the empty parking lot for Two Mile Hollow Beach. Signs warned that any car without a town beach pass would be towed. ‘So much for free public beach access,’ Exley said to herself. But of course anyone paying ten million bucks for a house didn’t want to share the sand.

  She turned the Sienna around, double-checked the syringe in her purse. The reality of what she was about to do filled her. Then she turned the radio up, loud, and drove back down Two Mile Road toward the Escalade, now on her right. Just outside the driveway of the mansion, she stopped and parked in the road, making sure the Sienna was angled toward the Escalade. She stumbled out of the van and walked to the open gate.

  The Escalade’s windows stayed shut as she approached. She rapped hard on the driver’s-side window. In the background the van’s radio blared.

  Finally the window slid down. ‘Can I help you?’ The man inside sounded distinctly unhelpful. He was big and muscular, and his T-shirt didn’t hide the holster on his hip. Exley noticed a dog in the back seat, a big German shepherd that looked up eagerly at her, its red tongue lapping its teeth.

  ‘I’m so lost. This guy I met, he told me about this party in Amagansett. This is Amagansett, right?’

  ‘Lady. If you’re looking for Amagansett, go back to that road up there and make a right. Good luck. This is private property.’

  Exley turned away. ‘Drunk skank,’ one of the men in the Escalade said, deliberately loud enough for her to hear, and the other laughed. ‘Headed for the drunk tank.’ The window slid up.

  Exley got back in the Sienna, buckled her seat belt. Don’t think too much, she told herself. She put the van in gear, floored the gas, and –

  The crash with the Escalade whipped her toward the steering wheel. Her belt tightened and the exploding air bag caught her, knocking her back. Even though she’d known the collision was coming, its force surprised her, and she heard herself scream.

  She gathered herself. She’d wrenched her neck and had a cut on her arm, but she hadn’t broken any bones. The Sienna had taken the brunt of the impact, its hood crumpled, radiator leaking, windshield starred. The Escalade, taller and heavier, had little visible damage, though Exley saw its air bags had inflated. The bottle of wine cooler had broken and the minivan stank of peach. She reached into her bag and grabbed the syringe.

  She unbuckled herself as the doors of the Escalade opened and the men inside stepped out. They didn’t look happy.

  From his spot on the corner, Wells watched Exley park. When she stepped out of the van to talk to the men, he began to pedal the mountain bike beside the hedge on the east side of the road, the same side the Escalade was on. He stayed hidden in the shadow of the hedge. Unless the men looked directly his way, they wouldn’t see him.

  Wells took his time, not wanting to get close too soon. The grass under his wheels was wet with dew, and this close to the ocean Wells could smell the clean salt air. Under other circumstances, Two Mile Hollow would make a perfect lovers’ lane.

  Now Exley turned around, walked back to the Sienna, her shoulders slumped, her little ass wobbling slightly as she walked. She surely had the undivided attention of the men in the Escalade, Wells thought. Which was exactly what he needed. He was about fifty yards away, close enough that the men would see him if they looked his way.

  They didn’t.

  Bang! The Sienna smashed into the Escalade so hard that the bigger vehicle rocked back and its front end lifted before thunking back down. Wells took advantage of the distraction to throw himself and the bike onto the grass. He was less than twenty-five yards from the Escalade now, on its passenger side. Exley had rammed the Sienna into the left front of the SUV, the driver’s side.

  The Escalade’s doors opened and the men stepped out. Inside the Cadillac, a dog barked madly, its rapid-fire woofing echoing through the night.

  ‘My door won’t open,’ Exley yelled through the night. ‘Help me.’

  ‘Dumb cootch,’ the Escalade driver said. ‘Fred, radio Hank, tell him what happened.’ He yelled to the minivan. ‘You know whose car you just hit?’

  Fred the guard turned back to the Escalade. Wells aimed the air pistol, bracing it in both hands. He squeezed the trigger. Propelled by compressed carbon dioxide, the inch-long dart took off with a soft hiss and hit the guard in the center of his back. He yelped, then sighed dully as the syringe pumped anesthetic into him. He raised a hand to the sill of the Escalade to steady himself and slumped into the front passenger seat.

  ‘You are one dumb drunk slut,’ the driver of the Escalade said as he reached into it for Exley. She slumped across the passenger seat.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so stupid, please help me,’ she said. He grabbed her harshly and tugged her out, making sure to grope her breasts. As he pulled at her, she jabbed the syringe hidden in her hand through his khakis and into his thigh.

  ‘Goddamn,’ he said. ‘Wha –’ But even as he cursed, Exley felt his grip loosen. He crumpled, the deadweight of his arms dragging her down. She freed herself and looked at him, fighting the urge to kick him in the balls. His breathing was slow, but he seemed fine otherwise.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ she said.

  ‘You all right?’ Wells said from across the Escalade.

  ‘Never better. Do what you have to do.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  IT WAS 3:05 a.m. Wednesday. The radio’s bright green LCD lights told the mole what he already knew. He was awake.

  For the last few weeks, he’d found sleep harder and harder to come by. He lay in bed, eyes blinking slowly as a toad’s, twisting the thin cotton sheets Janice liked. Two bottles of wine at dinner and a hefty snort of whiskey afterward hadn’t been enough to knock him out. Worse, he didn’t seem to sleep even when he was asleep. He had the odd sensation of his mind nudging itself toward consciousness. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, if his eyes were open or closed, until he tapped on the radio and heard a late-night commercial: ‘We need truckers. Best rates per mile!’

  So he made his way to the spare bedroom to watch reruns of Road Rules and Laguna Beach as Janice snored away obliviously in their bedroom. The mole had a weakness for the bikinied bodies that filled MTV’s version of reality, though he had to mute the sound to spare himself the nonsense that poured from the mouths of the kids on screen.

  Something was wrong. They were after him. Not the indefinable impossible they who plagued the suckers who heard voices in their heads. Not aliens or Jesus. A very real they, probably in the form of a joint agency-FBI task force. He couldn’t say how he knew, but he did. He’d never been nervous like this before. And he was damn sure he wasn’t having an attack of conscience over w
hat had happened to the Drafter. He’d traded in his conscience when his baby boy died. As far as the mole was concerned, God had no conscience, and if God didn’t need one, he didn’t either. No, this churning in his stomach wasn’t guilt. It was fear, fear that he might be caught.

  Yet when the mole stopped to consider the facts, as he did a hundred times a day, he had no evidence to support his fears. Almost no evidence. Except for the polygraph. A couple weeks before the North Koreans blew up the Phantom, he’d failed a poly. Not even failed, really. He hadn’t muffed the big questions, the ones that he knew were coming. They were no secret, part of a routine as established as the Lord’s Prayer. Have you ever been approached by a foreign intelligence service? Have you ever accepted money from a foreign intelligence service? And the granddaddy of ’em all, the Rose Bowl of polygraph questions: Have you ever committed an act of espionage against the United States?

  The mole’s exam had been scheduled months in advance, standard operating procedure. He’d hardly worried about it. In his basement lair, he practiced his answers until they bored him. When he walked into the musty offices in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building where the polygraph examiners worked their magic, he’d been relaxed and confident. In retrospect, maybe too confident.

  The session was supposed to last an hour. For forty-five minutes, he breezed through. When the trouble hit, he was already looking forward to being done. Maybe he’d cut out of work early, head over to the Gold Club, celebrate getting this chore out of the way for the next five years. They had two-for-one drink specials before 7:00 p.m, and sometimes the girls went two-for-one on dances too, just to stay loose.

  Then, apropos of nothing, the damned examiner had asked him if he had any hidden bank accounts. For some reason, the question had surprised him. He tensed up, actually felt his heart skip, and knew he was in trouble.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I have a brokerage account where I day-trade sometimes. Blow my retirement money. At Fidelity. That kind of thing, you mean?’

  The tester, a chubby middle-aged man with a heavy English accent, looked curiously at the computer screen where the mole’s blood pressure, heart and breathing rate, and perspiration levels were displayed in real time.

  ‘I mean accounts you haven’t reported to the Internal Revenue Service or on your financial disclosure forms. Might you have any accounts like that?’ For the first time all session, the examiner looked directly at the mole while asking his question.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘What about offshore accounts?’

  The mole pretended to consider. ‘Can’t say I do.’

  ‘How about other valuable assets?’

  ‘I don’t get what you’re going on about.’

  ‘Cars, boats, houses? Collectible automobiles, for example. A second home?’

  Collectible automobiles? Was that a shot in the dark or did this guy somehow know about the M5? ‘Nothing like that.’

  The tester looked at the computer screen, then at the mole.

  ‘Are you certain? Because I’m showing evidence of deception in your last several answers. I don’t mean to imply you’re doing anything illegal. People have many reasons to keep offshore bank accounts, as an example.’

  This prissy English asshole with his singsong voice. As an example. The mole wanted to gouge out his eyes, as an example.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re seeing, but I don’t have any hidden assets. I wish.’

  ‘All right. Let us move on, then.’

  And they had moved on. But three weeks later, not long after the North Koreans sank the Drafter, the mole had gotten a call from Gleeson, his boss, asking him to schedule a second polygraph.

  ‘Nothing serious. They have a few questions. Seem to think you have a bank account in the Caymans or something.’ Gleeson had snickered a bit, as if nothing could be more ludicrous. ‘Do me a favor and call them.’

  The same day he’d received the official request in his in-box, sounding considerably less friendly. Failure to comply with this notice may result in loss of security clearance, termination from the Central Intelligence Agency, and other penalties, including criminal prosecution . . .

  By the time the mole finished reading the letter, his hand was trembling. Until this moment he had never truly considered what would happen if the agency caught him. Of course, he’d known before he started spying that he could go to prison. But jail had always seemed like a vague abstraction. He was a white guy from Michigan. He didn’t know anyone in prison. Prison was a building he drove by on the interstate with razor-wire fences and signs warning ‘Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.’

  Now he found himself thinking about prison as something more than theoretical. The vision was not comforting. At best, he would spend decades locked up. More likely the rest of his life, at someplace like the Supermax Penitentiary in Colorado, where the government housed Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

  He’d be held in solitary confinement, caged twenty-three hours a day in a concrete cell with a window too narrow to see the sun. He’d get an hour of exercise in a steel mesh box, watched by guards who would never talk, no matter how much he begged them for the simple kindness of conversation. And he would beg. He was sure of it. Maybe the Unabomber liked his privacy. But the mole knew he couldn’t spend that much time alone, without a computer or a television or even a radio for company. He would go insane, cut himself just for something to do. His mind would gnaw itself up until nothing was left. Even the thought of being locked up that way made his heart flutter like he’d just run a marathon, made him want to go down to his basement and put his .357 in his mouth with a round in every chamber, so that no matter how many times he spun the cylinder the result would be the same –

  He breathed deep and pulled himself together. He was freaking out, and over what? Over a form letter. The agency didn’t think he was spying for the Chinese or anybody else. They thought maybe he had a bank account he hadn’t told them about. This letter was the Langley bureaucracy in action, nothing more. He’d call them back, practice harder for the poly, and be done with it. One day, when he was writing his memoirs, he’d be sure to include this incident, letter and all. That way everyone would see that the agency had muffed its big chance to stop him.

  Sure enough, when he called the polygraph office, a tired-sounding secretary told him that the examiners were backed up and that they couldn’t schedule him for a month at the earliest. She sounded like she thought she was doing him a favor, like she handled reservations for some fancy restaurant in New York. ‘So Thursday the seventeenth at noon?’

  ‘That’s the earliest availability. Do you want it or not?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘See you then.’ Click.

  With that he’d put the incident out of his mind, or at least to the side, a fly buzzing in another room. Even after the Drafter died, the mole figured he was safe. Then the rumors started.

  ‘Did you hear?’ Gleeson asked him one morning. ‘They’re running a full-scale review of how the DPRK’ – North Korea – ‘discovered the Drafter. Looking for leaks.’

  ‘I thought the working theory was that it had nothing to do with us.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Gleeson said. ‘Or maybe we have another Ames. Anyway, I need that report on my desk by two.’

  ‘No problem,’ the mole said as Gleeson walked off.

  For a week, he heard nothing more. Then he got a call from the same secretary in the polygraph office who had been so blasé earlier. ‘We need to move up your appointment. Are you free next Friday?’

  The mole’s heart twisted. ‘Friday? I don’t know, lemme check –’

  ‘Well, get back to me as soon as possible, please. If not Friday, it can’t be any later than the following week.’

  ‘What’s the rush? I mean, I’m very busy –’

  ‘You’ll have to take that up with the examiner. I’m just a scheduler.’ Click.

  The mole stared blankly at the receiver in his hand
, wondering what he’d done to deserve this treatment. He wanted badly to know if they actively suspected him. But asking too many questions about a leak investigation was a very good way to attract the attention of the people running it.

  Meanwhile, the tempo in the East Asia unit was picking up. Since September 11, Langley and the White House had paid relatively little attention to China. The agency had focused first on Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now Iran. Along the way, China and the United States had reached a quiet understanding. As long as Beijing helped the United States on terrorism, the White House would stay quiet on economic issues, such as China’s trade surplus.

  Even China’s rapid military buildup, its new submarines and fighter jets and satellites, had gone unchallenged. Some analysts within the agency thought that the United States should confront China aggressively now, while America still had a clear upper hand. But those discussions were largely theoretical. Langley knew that the White House had no appetite for a fight with Beijing at the moment, not with Iraq collapsing.

  But in the last few weeks, the unspoken bargain had broken down, and not because of anything Washington had done. Both publicly and privately, the Chinese seemed to want to force America’s hand. The Chinese had moved submarines into the Taiwan Strait, the narrow sea that separated Taiwan from mainland China, and declared that U.S. carriers there would not be welcome without Chinese approval. Washington had simply ignored this provocation, saying that American carriers would travel in any international waters they wanted.

  Beijing had also announced the successful test of a missile capable of destroying satellites and said that it didn’t intend to allow any nation to have ‘hegemony over space.’ The words were clearly intended for the United States. Then, a week before, the French intelligence agency had passed along a rumor that China and Iran had struck some kind of grand bargain. No details. Langley had told the White House and State Department, and now the U.S. ambassador to China was trying to get an answer from the Chinese foreign ministry. But the ministry so far had stayed quiet.