Phair couldn’t tell whether that was meant to impart information or a threat. Again, he decided he had to look past it. That traitor wasn’t him.
They took the elevator to the sixth floor. The place had the feel of a kind of mad newsroom, people rushing here and there from cubicles, studying video monitors on the desks. Phair was still getting used to the proliferation of LCD screens in every house, office, or store he entered.
“You didn’t lose a lot of weight in Iraq,” Kealey said.
They were weaving through the maze in a pattern Phair could never have repeated. The cleric’s mind snapped to attention. They’d had several hours to discuss this. Why now?
Because you’re distracted, Phair told himself. He wants to catch you off guard, see if you hesitate.
“The populace tends to be generous with holy men,” Phair said.
“India is that way, too,” Kealey said as if he had expected the answer. “You told Major Dell that you earned some money teaching English and helping men haul goods to market.”
“Is there a question?” Phair asked.
“Who wanted to learn English? Young people, mostly?”
“Mostly, and typically men,” Phair said. “A lot of merchants saw the GIs as potential customers—at least, when insurgents weren’t there, threatening to kill anyone who did business with them.”
“Them?”
“Us,” Phair said.
“Did you ever have encounters with American soldiers?”
“No.”
“You didn’t want anyone asking about you, entertaining ideas about bringing you back.”
“That’s right. Not until I had experienced everything I could.”
“If you hadn’t been spotted, how much longer do you think you would have stayed?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Phair said. “I’ll admit to being homesick for a soft bed and a fast-food hamburger.”
Kealey smiled. He seemed satisfied.
They walked through a secretarial office into a larger office beyond. Kealey smiled at the young man behind a desk. He introduced “Major Phair” but didn’t stop, so there was no handshaking.
Kealey shut the door behind him.
“Major Phair, I believe you’re a good man and you’re certainly a patient one,” Kealey said. “I believe you’re a patriot and would be an asset to us. But we need to have an understanding.” Kealey stepped behind his simple glass-topped desk and folded his arms. “The military had reasons for making you a hero and not an AWOL, but I don’t. If you are in the field and go off mission for any reason, you will come back like our friend from New Jersey.”
Phair’s heart rate jumped. He’d gotten reprimanded before, especially during the Gulf War. He had witnessed a lot of excessive zeal among commanders who felt that pockets of resistance were better blasted out and buried than smoked out and imprisoned. They had deadlines to meet. Phair had been vocal in his disapproval of the hammer-down approach, and that was one reason he’d gone to help the wounded Iraqis on the day he became separated from his unit. He believed that his presence offered them a little protection. Kealey’s tone wasn’t what bothered him, and the threat of death didn’t get to him. He’d faced that daily in Iraq. What troubled Phair was the recurring doubt. Every time it seemed to retreat, back it came in full, ugly flower.
“I do try to be a good man and an understanding one,” Phair said. “But I have to tell you, Mr. Kealey—you push me on that. Leaders who rule by doubt and denunciation are never as effective as those who govern by trust and hope.”
“Your personal and philosophical priorities may change when thousands of lives depend on every decision you make, when you worry that you’ve missed a clue that can cause the next World Trade Center attack or Madrid train bombing,” Kealey said. “When you have the resources at your disposal to destroy a village just to get one particularly nasty radical, it’s tough to keep from lashing out like the angel of fucking death.
“But thanks for the sermon,” he added pleasantly as he sat and gestured toward the sofa. “It’s something to shoot for.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
Back in his office after his meeting on Capitol Hill, Jonathan Harper felt a momentary thrill at the sight of an OD request—Open Door—from a foreign intelligence service.
This one came in via secure e-mail: just seeing that subject line in his mailbox gave him a frisson of excitement, a chance to pit himself against a fresh and unknown challenge. He liked having new perspectives, new contacts, even new enemies. Or at least, he used to. His thrill quickly lapsed. He supposed he had always enjoyed OD requests because deep down, he enjoyed showing up anyone outside the country’s borders. He respected the intelligence services of a few other nations, but he regarded most as inferior. Now, however, he was no one to be throwing stones. His glass house had broken because he had failed to remember the completely obvious—Christmas.
The OD was from Egypt; Harper’s interest waned a little further. If one of the tougher units, like Israel’s Mossad or Britain’s MI6, had needed assistance, that may have meant a project big enough for Harper to forget himself in.
At least it wasn’t Interpol, he thought. Those international flatfoots asked for help at least three times a day. It wasn’t even personalized anymore. Harper’s contact in Barcelona said they sent “eyes only” requests to over twenty-five intelligence services a day. It was surely a symptom of their laughably small annual budget, but still, they should have some pride.
He ran the request from Egypt’s Task Force 777—even the name was uninspiring, the numbers coming from the month and year they were chartered—through the decryption and translation programs. He knew he shouldn’t be so hard on them; they were a good bunch in Cairo, understaffed but committed to fighting terrorists at home and abroad, and they had navigated the military’s struggles with the Muslim Brotherhood with a notable disinterest in jockeying for power. But they, too, were so underfunded that anything that could be outsourced, was.
The official read the request from Lt. General Adom Kaphiri Samra.
“Shot fired at agent. Possible jihadist at Mt. Sinai. Passive intel and surveillance requested. We will take necessary action.”
Passive intel. Harper sighed. What they wanted was up-to-the-minute satellite images. Their Russian friends probably didn’t cover the area with the frequency of the National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO would handle that, if they were so inclined. But there was something else about the request that made Harper instant-message his executive assistant in the next room:
Wasn’t there something about Sinai in a recent intel summary?
The cut-and-pasted segment came back within seconds.
“BBC television crew records man who claims to have encountered an individual who is the embodiment of the Biblical Moses. Internet chatter suggests groundswell of interest among moderate Muslims. Recommendation: Watch for possible influx of foreign destabilizers among the pilgrims.”
The video clip was attached. It was tagged item 35-599, 900-2. The numeral prefix designated the visual medium, in this case Internet. The second number identified it as one of more than a half million video clips pulled from the Web since that library was started in 1993. The acquisition team consisted of twenty-eight full-time employees, and the collection was growing exponentially—three hundred a day, up from one hundred a year ago. Clips were accessible by several different searches: keywords, location, individuals, date, and danger level. The final number was a “heat” reference. On a scale of one to ten—Ned Hull, head of the Computer Access Division, had once described ten as being Osama with a Russian nuke—this video clip had been marked a two. Only clips eight and above were sent to everyone on the internal intel mailing list.
Harper watched the thirty-second fragment twice, then went back and paused on the man who came down the mountain. The team had been shooting in high-definition, so he was able to get a clean blowup of the acolyte’s face. Harper dropped i
t in a file that analyzed facial characteristics such as a taut mouth for fear, wide eyes for shock, even corneal reflections to make sure that what was seen in the subject’s eye coincided with the surroundings, thus eliminating the possibility that a head was photographed elsewhere and superimposed.
The findings declared the photograph “93 percent authentic”—the view of the location was not in the database and therefore unavailable for comparison. The subject was profiled using keywords drawn from expression- and movement-based templates in the program: “non-aggressive, transfixed, aimless.”
“A crazy man who doesn’t want to blow something up,” Harper muttered. “Yet.”
He asked another program to identify the individual by nationality and location, if possible. The result came back: “Ethnicity: 89 percent Eastern Hamitic; age: late thirties; wardrobe: indigenous but inconclusive.”
That meant he was almost certainly a native Egyptian, not one of the infiltrators the evaluation had warned against. Of course, the video had not yet been disseminated. Who knew what the situation would be like now?
The request from Task Force 777 seemed rather temperate in light of the potential threat. Harper recategorized the clip as a four, given its coincidence with the date and location of the Egyptian alert. Had the individual been identified as likely a Syrian or Lebanese, Harper would have raised the alert higher, since that might have suggested an early border-crossing and possible insurgent activity.
He checked his watch, then called Ryan Kealey on his cell phone. The agent should have gotten back from South Carolina by now. He might even be in his office in the same building. But instead of dropping down to see him, Harper called.
“Good morning, Jonathan,” Kealey said.
“Good morning. Everything going smoothly?”
“Yes. You got my e-mail?”
“I did.” Kealey had written earlier to say that General Farrell had given his blessings to seconding Major Phair to the CIA, and that Phair was coming to HQ. Harper said, “I’m sending along something for the both of you to look at. I’d be interested in your new man’s impressions of it.”
“Related to the hospital?”
“No, but definitely in his field of expertise. It won’t take much of his time.”
“How urgent is this?”
“I don’t know,” Harper said, forwarding the file he’d compiled of the video clip, the photo analysis, and the request from Task Force 777.
“We’ll have a look as soon as we receive it,” Kealey promised.
Harper made appropriate signing-off comments, then hung up. There seemed to be no point in trying to warm up the coolness between them. He knew it wasn’t personal; Kealey was simply burying himself in his work to avoid his own sense of helplessness, as Harper wished he could.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
Kealey caught up on e-mails while Phair sat and looked helplessly, absently, at a gadget Kealey had given him—something called an iPad.
The cleric’s mind was elsewhere. He had decided that he was not going to let the passive-aggressive displays from Ryan Kealey get to him. When the initial shock passed—he hadn’t been dressed down in many, many years—he understood that the questions and comments were not personal. Moreover, Phair well understood the root of Kealey’s concerns.
Even before the chaplain went to the Gulf, the intelligence services were criticized for all the things they didn’t know, for relying too much on electronic surveillance and too little on human intelligence—eyes and ears on the ground, among the people, which gave you a more accurate read of the mood of a place. Phair’s own experiences among the Iraqis could attest to that. No doubt that was one of the reasons he had been seconded to a civilian group.
After the World Trade Center attacks, the Saddam-controlled press was filled with mockery of the CIA and their inability to stop what was described as “Islamic justice.” After the Iraq invasion, the Iranian press picked up the torch. Returning home, Phair saw more of the same in the American press. It had to be debilitating to people like Ryan Kealey.
The truth was, American intelligence was superb. The fault lay in the lack of protocols to share and analyze the assembled data.
Men like Ryan Kealey were the answer. They cared less about ego than about the process running smoothly, whoever and whatever it took to do that. Upon reflection, he realized the man was not a self-serving autocrat and, just hearing one side of his conversation with his superior, Phair could tell he also wasn’t an ass-kisser.
“Making any progress over there?” Kealey asked.
“Working on it,” Phair lied. He focused on the device. He had seen others using them and BlackBerrys and iPhones at Fort Jackson, but he was still getting used to the idea of personal computers and cell phones.
“James.”
Phair looked up. It was strange to hear his first name barked. Kealey was still staring at his monitor.
“Moses and Islam,” Kealey said. “What’s the connection in twenty-five words or less?”
“Muslims believe that Adam was the first prophet, a spokesman of God,” Phair said. “Mohammed was the last and greatest. Between them were Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.”
“Perfect. So if he were to return and proclaim Islam the one true faith?”
The idea was preposterous, but Kealey seemed serious.
“That would be a problem. Has Moses returned?” Phair asked.
“Someone seems to be doing miracles with his staff up on Sinai,” Kealey said. He clicked on another e-mail from Harper. “A newspaper in Lebanon, Al Fasulya, is calling any Muslim who believes that to be ‘a child.’ ”
“That’s a Christian newspaper,” Phair said. “I’m sure they meant ‘child’ as in ‘immature,’ an insult, and not ‘child’ as in ‘youth.’ ”
Kealey grinned. He seemed pleased that Phair knew that.
“Is that kind of name-calling common enough that it won’t cause a row?” Kealey asked.
“It is uncommon in a religious context,” Phair said. “But it’s a very, very mild deprecation.”
“Not fightin’ words?”
“Not yet.”
Kealey returned to the original e-mail. He sent the file to the iPad and told Phair how to access it. “Have a look at the data, let me know what you think.”
Phair did as he was instructed and read through the material after enlarging the type. He hadn’t realized he was leaning so far forward until he settled back.
“Is it that serious?” Kealey asked.
Phair was confused.
“Your expression,” Kealey said.
Phair hadn’t realized he was frowning so deeply, either. He relaxed, then lapsed unwittingly right back into a scowl.
“This is similar to the concept of the mahdi, the Messiah who will appear at the end of days in Sunni Islam,” Phair said.
“How similar?”
“Actually, what’s important here is the difference,” Phair said. “The concept of the mahdi suffered a setback with the rise and fall of the last pretender, Mohammad Ahmad, who seized Khartoum from the British in 1885 and died five months later—due, in part, to pestilence spread by his slaughters.” Kealey’s eyes wandered back to the computer, and Phair realized he’d lapsed into professor-speak. He tried to get back to the twenty-five-words-or-less approach. “The movement went away, but this is worse. Someone who proclaims himself to be an incarnation of the deliverer-prophet, but stops short of declaring himself a messiah, attracts a following and the resultant power while removing the burden of actually having to liberate anything.”
“I get it. But if this fellow is proclaiming himself the new Moses, why wouldn’t Christians and Jews embrace him?”
“Some may,” Phair said. “But they’ll be coming to the party too late.”
“How do you figure that?”
“He was introduced to us by an Arabic title, Gharib Qawee. That has already marked him as their own.”
“Is
the label really that powerful? A Moses by any other name—”
“It defines him by his relevance to the Muslim world,” Phair said. “Moses is a prophet in that he was given the laws, by God, to give to us. For Muslims, he is revered for that, not as the deliverer of Israel. The people who have the most immediate access to Mt. Sinai are Arabs, and they’re coming to see Gharib Qawee. They will claim him as the lawgiver. They will revere him as a forebear of Mohammad. Whoever organized this was very clever.”
“A cabal? I didn’t think clergymen were cynics.”
“Only when it comes to the actions of men,” Phair said.
“Assuming you’re right, couldn’t some religious brain trust have cooked this up to win over Muslims and some Jews and Christians, to foster peace?”
“Doubtful,” Phair said. “The original Moses, the real Moses, was not backward about being forward. He didn’t hide in a cave. He came down, he announced the fact of the Burning Bush, Aaron threw the staff at the feet of Pharaoh and it turned into a serpent, Moses brought down the plagues and parted the sea. Someone will quickly ask to see some miracles. As soon as someone does that, an Al Fasulya or some TV reporter, that puts the Muslims in a position of having to defend their reincarnated prophet on principle, not on evidence.”
“The goal of any conspiracy must be to make the man himself the issue,” Kealey said.
“The question is what will happen next,” Phair said. “The Egyptians had no other information?”
“Not that they’re sharing right now,” Kealey said.
“Are you saying they’d withhold information?”
“Would and probably are,” Kealey told him. “Many intelligence groups tend to parcel it out as needed. The more data they control, the more likely they’ll be the ones to break the case.”
“I can’t believe it. That’s more important than a quick resolution?”
“They’re both important,” Kealey said. “Getting the Nazis out of France was paramount during World War II, but the Allies often waited to make a final push—subjecting local populations to the Germans’ brutal parting abuses—so that French troops could be the first ones into liberated territory. Image matters.”
Threatcon Delta Page 14
