The Ghost Agent

by Alex Berenson

  ‘Right through the living room. I’ll show you.’

  The bathroom and the living room were unexceptional, though both hinted at hidden wealth – an expensive Persian rug in the living room and fancy granite fixtures in the bath. In five minutes, Exley was back in her car. Maybe Keith Robinson wasn’t the mole, but he was something, Exley thought, as she put the Caravan in gear and drove off, mopping sweat from her forehead. His house stank of secrets.

  Exley went back to the office in Tysons Corner and spent the rest of the afternoon poring over Robinson’s work history. She already knew that his biographical details fit what Wen Shubai had given them. She was looking for smaller, subtler signs. Sure enough, she found one. Beginning eight years earlier – the time when the mole had approached the Chinese, according to Wen – Robinson’s performance evaluations had steadily improved. After being lazy and unmotivated for years, he’d shown new interest in his work, his bosses said. As a result, he’d wound up with new responsibilities – and new access to information.

  When she was sure she’d seen every scrap of information they had on Robinson, she poked her head into Shafer’s office. He’d spent the last several days casting a wide net, asking vague questions about possible suspects to officers in and around the East Asia Division. Exley thought he was being too cautious. Legwork wasn’t his strong suit; he was much better thinking through threads that other people had gathered. All his jujitsu wasted time, and time was suddenly in short supply.

  Since Shubai’s defection five days earlier, Langley’s top two agents in the People’s Republic had gone dark. One spy, the logistics chief at the giant naval base at Lushun, had simply disappeared. He’d requested an urgent meeting with his case officer, then hadn’t shown up. Now his cell phone was turned off and his e-mail shut down.

  The other agent, a deputy mayor in Beijing, was the highest-ranking political source the agency had inside Zhongnanhai. At least he had been until Tuesday, when he’d been arrested on what China’s official news agency referred to as ‘corruption charges.’

  Of course, the arrest and disappearance might have been coincidences. But no one at Langley believed that. The odds were higher that Osama bin Laden would quit al Qaeda to become a pro surfer. Chinese counterintelligence officers had surely tracked both men for years, allowing them to remain free to provide false information to the CIA. Effectively, the men had been tripled up – used by China against the United States, even as the United States believed that it had doubled them back against China.

  But Wen’s defection had ended that game, and so the spymasters in Beijing had arrested the men. And now the United States was flying blind at the worst possible time. Did the PRC want open war with Taiwan and the United States, or was it bluffing? Was its leadership unified, or was its belligerence the product of an invisible power struggle inside Zhongnanhai? The president, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council were desperate for answers. Too bad the CIA had none to give.

  ‘I think I have something.’ She recounted her meeting with Janice Robinson, as well as Keith Robinson’s strange personnel evaluations. When she was done, Shafer looked down at his notes.

  ‘She didn’t specifically mention children, then?’

  ‘I’m telling you the whole house was off.’

  ‘Jennifer. I don’t doubt it. I’m only trying to figure out where to go next. Remember, Robinson’s only on the list because he failed a poly. He doesn’t meet Shubai’s criteria for a personal problem. He hasn’t had a heart attack, gotten divorced, sued, anything like that –’

  And then Exley knew. ‘We should have figured it from the beginning, Ellis. What’s the worst personal crisis you can have? Not getting sick, not an accident –’

  ‘You think he lost a kid.’

  Exley nodded.

  ‘Well, that we can find out. If you’re right, it’ll be time to tell Tyson.’

  The mole was surprised by the silence that greeted him when he opened his front door. Janice always left the downstairs television on while she made dinner. And where was Lenny? ‘Janice? Jan?’

  No answer. Then he heard her in the kitchen, crying softly.

  She sat at the kitchen table, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Lenny lay at her feet, looking up hopelessly. An empty pan sat on the stove. A shrink-wrapped plastic tray of chicken breasts sat unopened in the sink, alongside uncut tomatoes and peppers.

  Janice looked up as he walked into the dark room. For a moment she didn’t seem to know who he was. Then she covered her face in her hands and offered a high-pitched moan, Ooooooooooooo, a soft dirge that sounded like a distant tornado. He went to her and rubbed her neck. More than anything, he wanted the moan to stop.

  ‘I’m a failure, Eddie.’ The words emerged in a damp, stuttery blubber. ‘Such a failure.’

  The mole – Keith Edward Robinson, known as Eddie only to his wife – pulled up a chair. ‘Sweetie. Did something happen?’

  ‘This woman, she and her husband are looking at the Healy place, on the corner, and she asked me about the neighborhood and the schools and I just, I just snapped –’

  The cabinet where the mole kept his whiskey was within arm’s reach. He grabbed a bottle of Dewar’s and took a long slug, not bothering with a glass.

  ‘Woman? What woman?’

  ‘She came by the house. She wanted to know about the schools, Eddie. Look at us. What’s happened to us?’

  The mole put the bottle on the table. No more whiskey. He needed to think clearly now, and quickly. The strange part was that he really did want to comfort Janice. But first he had to figure how close they were. ‘This woman, honey, who did she say she was?’

  Janice lowered her hands. She seemed perplexed at the turn the conversation had taken. ‘Said her name was Joanne.’ She pulled a crumpled business card out of a dish on the table and handed it to him. ‘Said she was a consultant.’

  The mole examined it as though it were a tarot card holding the secret to his future. Which in a way it was. Ender Consulting, a Professional Corporation. Joanne Ender, MBA. Beneath the name a phone number and an e-mail address. The mole wanted to call, but whether or not Ender Consulting was real, the number would go to a professional-sounding voicemail. And if it was a trap, they’d have a pen register on the line and they’d know he called. He tucked the card into his shirt pocket. He’d check later. ‘Did she ask anything about me, Jan?’

  ‘What? No.’

  ‘Please. I know it seems like a strange question, but think on it.’

  Janice twisted her hands. ‘I told you we didn’t talk long. She mentioned her kids and I started to get upset, so I made her go.’

  ‘Did she look around the house? The basement?’

  ‘Of course not. Why?’

  ‘Did you ask the Healys about her? If she actually went to their house?’

  ‘She was just some lady asking about the neighborhood. What are you so worried about? Is she your girlfriend?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m not stupid, Eddie. Don’t make things worse than they already are.’

  ‘Sweetie. I promise I’m not having an affair with this woman.’

  ‘Swear.’

  ‘I swear on Mark’s grave.’ He’d never said anything like that before.

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Do I love you? What kind of question is that? Yes. Of course I do.’ The mole surprised himself with the words. But as he said them, he knew they were true. For too long he’d forgotten that Janice was a real person. ‘Do you love me?’

  As an answer, she put her arms around him and sobbed into his shoulder. ‘Can we just start again, Eddie? Can’t we?’

  Strange to hear the question asked so baldly, the mole thought. Like they could dunk themselves in a river and wash away not just their sins but their whole messy lives. Stranger still that the answer was yes. He had the means and the motive to leave all this behind. Because maybe he was panicking, but he didn’t think so.

&nb
sp; The polygraph. Wen’s defection. George not showing up this morning. Now this woman visiting. Too many coincidences too soon. Nothing definitive, but if he waited for definitive he’d wind up in a cell or a wooden box. Both Ames and Hanssen had known the walls were closing in. They just hadn’t had the guts to run. Now they were spending their lives in prison.

  ‘Jan. What if I said yes? What if we could start again?’

  ‘I think I’d like that.’

  ‘We’d have to change our names. Leave the country.’ He couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  She didn’t freak out. She giggled.

  ‘I’m not kidding. We’d have to do it now.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Do you want a new life or not?’ Sailing around the Caribbean, fishing, hanging out. Maybe buying a cabin somewhere, trying again to have a baby. It would be a long shot, but what wasn’t?

  ‘Yes, but –’ She stopped, stood up, looked around the kitchen. ‘Could we take Lenny? And where would you work? Your job is so important.’

  The mole’s visions of beachfront paradise faded. This wouldn’t work, he saw. When she said start over, she meant that they should take a vacation, be sweeter to each other. The things normal people meant. Not dropping everything and moving to Indonesia. Anyway, he didn’t have a fake passport for her, or any way to get one. And what would she think when she saw his face on TV? The FBI has named Keith Edward Robinson, a veteran CIA employee, as a person of interest in an ongoing espionage investigation. . . . Keith Robinson, who disappeared two weeks ago, is suspected of the greatest intelligence breach in more than twenty years. . . . Authorities now say they believe fugitives Keith and Janice Robinson have fled the country. . . .

  ‘Got that right, sweetie.’ He made himself laugh. ‘And we can’t leave Lenny. Guess we’ll make do here.’

  That night he lay beside her, listening to the suburban night, sprinklers rattling on and off to keep the lawns green. He was afraid, he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t, but excited too. His last night in this bed, this house, this life. He supposed he’d known all along that the path he’d taken would end this way.

  He’d had sex that night with Janice, not once but twice, the first time in years. Ironic. But not surprising. Part of her knew he wasn’t joking about leaving. Part of her wouldn’t be surprised when she woke up and found him gone.

  He rolled out of bed, quietly, sure not to wake her. He padded out of the bedroom, down the stairs, into the basement. And there he unlocked his safe and filled a canvas bag with everything he needed.

  TWENTY-SIX

  EAST CHINA SEA, NEAR SHANGHAI

  EVERY DAY HENRY Williams thanked God he’d been given the chance to command the USS Decatur. He knew it sounded like a cliché, but it was true. Nothing was better than controlling a five-hundred-foot-long destroyer armed with enough cruise missiles to level a city, or steaming into Bangkok or Sydney beside a carrier loaded with F-18s. The oceans were the world’s last frontier, and the United States Navy ruled them, full stop.

  Plus Williams found life aboard the Decatur satisfying in a way he would never have imagined growing up as a landlubber in Dallas. He didn’t come from a Navy family. He’d chosen Annapolis mainly because the academy’s basketball coach had offered him the chance to start his freshman year. But after twenty-two years in the service, Henry Williams had fallen in love with the ocean – or more precisely, with the ships that plied its waves.

  The sea was unpredictable, but the Decatur’s rhythm was steady as a heartbeat. Its floors were scrubbed each day. Its bells chimed every half-hour. In the wardroom, the tablecloths were spotless, the silverware polished. Williams could no longer accept the chaos of real life, life on land. So his wife, Esther, had told him three years ago, when she filed for divorce. She still loved him, but she no longer understood him, she said. Williams didn’t try to change her mind. In his heart he knew she was right.

  Within the Decatur, Williams’s word was law. He could call a general-quarters drill at noon or midnight. Demand that the laundry room be scrubbed until it shined – then scrubbed again for good measure. The 330 sailors and officers aboard the Decatur obeyed his orders without question. Nowhere in the world was the chain of command followed more closely than aboard ship.

  And that discipline was vitally important now, with the Decatur in hostile waters, at the forward edge of the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, almost in sight of the Chinese coast. Even the dimmest of the Decatur’s crew knew that the United States was close to war with China. The tension aboard the ship was palpable from the engine room to the bridge, and nowhere more than among the sonar operators, who had the job of listening to the ship’s SQR-19 towed array. The biggest threat to the Decatur came from the Chinese submarines that lurked in the shallow waters off the coast.

  Now Williams sat in his stateroom, poring over the classified report that contained the Navy’s new estimate of the capabilities of China’s subs. The Chinese had made progress, but their fish still couldn’t hope to compete with the Navy’s nuclear attack subs, it seemed.

  A knock on his cabin door interrupted him. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Captain. Lieutenant Frederick requests permission to enter.’

  ‘Come in, Lieutenant.’

  Frederick stepped in and saluted Williams crisply. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir. It’s about the reporter.’

  ‘What’s she gotten into now?’

  As a rule, the Navy was the most publicity-friendly of the services. With the War on Terror having become the focus of U.S. foreign policy, the admirals in the Pentagon felt constant pressure to demonstrate the Navy’s relevance – and protect its $150 billion annual budget. After all, al Qaeda didn’t exactly present a major naval threat. The clash with China had given the service its chance for a close-up, and the Navy didn’t intend to miss the opportunity. Reporters and camera crews were thick as roaches aboard the Reagan, the Abraham Lincoln, and the John C. Stennis, the giant nuclear-powered flattops steaming toward the China coast. The Decatur had a reporter of its own, Jackie Wheeler. With her long dark hair and deep brown eyes, Wheeler could have been a TV babe, though she actually worked for the Los Angeles Times.

  Williams generally disdained the media, but he didn’t mind Wheeler. Pretty women were good for the crew’s morale, and the Decatur was controlled too rigorously for her to get into much trouble. And Williams knew that being chosen to host a reporter from a national paper was something of an honor. He also knew that he hadn’t been picked to host Wheeler solely because of the Decatur’s spotless record. He was one of only a handful of black captains in the service. But he didn’t mind being trotted out this way. Like his commanders, Henry Williams knew the value of good press.

  ‘She’s been asking again about the CIC.’ The Combat Information Center was the windowless room deep in the Decatur’s hull that functioned as the destroyer’s brain. ‘Says she can’t write a proper profile without spending a few hours inside.’

  Williams sighed. He’d already given Wheeler a tour of the CIC a few days before, and he didn’t want her in there with the Decatur on combat footing. But he supposed he’d have to compromise to get the glowing profile he wanted.

  ‘Okay, Lieutenant. Tell her to come over here at 2100.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Dismissed.’

  An hour later, a knock roused him. ‘Captain?’

  2058. Wheeler had learned something about naval etiquette during her week on board. ‘Ms. Wheeler? Come in.’

  She stepped in tentatively. Until now Williams had been polite to Wheeler, but nothing more. He’d been busy. He’d also figured that keeping her at a distance, then slowly opening up, would make for the best profile. Up close she was younger than he had expected, barely thirty. Prettier too. ‘Sit.’ He indicated the couch. ‘So you want another look at the CIC.’

  ‘I won’t describe anything classified, Captain. I know the rules.’

  ‘You bored with this skimmer?’


  She laughed nervously. ‘Skimmer?’

  ‘Some of us oldsters use that term to refer to any boat that floats.’

  ‘Don’t they all float?’

  ‘Not the submarines.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ She smiled, and Williams wished for a half-second that he were twenty years younger and meeting her in a bar instead of this cabin.

  ‘Be honest. Wish you were over on the Reagan with the flyboys?’

  ‘No, the crew’s treating me great.’

  ‘Not the question I asked, but okay. Has Lieutenant Frederick told you about the man the Decatur is named for?’ He flicked a thumb at the painting behind his desk, of a dark-haired dandy in a crimson jacket and fringed white shirt.

  ‘No.’

  Williams smiled with real pleasure. Telling this story reminded him that the Navy was different from the other services, more connected to its past. The men who had crewed the first ships in the fleet would recognize the way the Decatur was run – though they might not enjoy having a black man give them orders.

  ‘You’re fortunate to be aboard a ship named for a famous American captain.’

  ‘Aren’t they all?’

  ‘I wish I could say yes, but we don’t have enough famous captains to go around. Some destroyers are christened after real second-raters. Or worse, Marines.’

  ‘Tragic,’ Wheeler said, playing along.

  ‘Behind me is Commodore Stephen Decatur. During the War of 1812, he destroyed two British vessels. We won’t mention the third battle, the one he lost. After the war, he sailed to North Africa and shook down the Libyans. Along the way, he got famous for a line Machiavelli would have appreciated. “In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” Sort of a “Better dead than red” for the nineteenth century.’

  ‘I hope you don’t throw me overboard, but I’d say that kind of thinking has gotten us in a lot of trouble the last few years. We need more questioning of authority, not less.’