Compromised

by Tom Saric

“But we have several checks and balances that—”

  “I’m telling you it came through the same way,” Paul shouted. “Something went wrong on your end of things.”

  “Do you have evidence of this?”

  Paul pressed his teeth together, and took a deep breath in through his nose. His initial impulse was to scream but instead he lowered his voice so that it was almost robotic. “How am I supposed to have evidence when according to the procedures that were set out by the NCS, I’m to destroy the information as soon as I pass it on?”

  “So you can’t prove it,” her voice rose.

  “Listen, Officer Clarke, if I wanted to give weapons to terrorists, why would I immediately inform the NCS of the situation?”

  “I don’t know what your motives are, Dr. Alban. But I do know that, after you informed Officer Wright of the situation, you proceeded to murder him.”

  “They had no intention of letting me leave alive and you know it.”

  “You were in custody and you escaped.”

  “Officer Clarke, does it make sense to you that I would have set something like this up?”

  “It doesn’t really matter what I—”

  “To you personally…does it make sense?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “Look at the facts.”

  There was a heavy sigh on the other end. For a moment, Paul felt hopeful. Had he made a connection with her? Her voice assumed a professional and distant tone. “The facts are that you’re a wanted man. Look at the situation. A stock of nuclear weapons is in the hands of terrorists. You are the only connection to them. You escaped custody and killed an intelligence officer. The truth is that it doesn’t matter what I think. Unless, of course, you have evidence that someone, as you claim, somehow interfered with the lines of communication.”

  Paul dragged his gaze over to Ellen. He thought about telling Officer Clarke that Ellen had switched the SIM card on his phone. That someone posing as an INTERPOL agent had convinced her to do it. But then what? Would they hunt Ellen instead of him? She didn’t have anywhere to run, at least nowhere that the NCS wouldn’t find her. Where would that leave him? Alone. Again.

  After the moment of silence, she continued, “In that case Dr. Alban, I suggest you get some proof. Or run.”

  18

  When Bailey Clarke opened the door of her one-bedroom condominium and tossed her car keys and laptop case onto the kitchen counter at 10 p.m., she realized she couldn’t really remember the drive home. She remembered leaving the Langley complex and smiling politely when the handsome guard with the forearm tattoos asked if she needed help carrying her laptop bag to her car. She remembered that when she started the Honda, the volume control was turned up and the radio blasted a Coldplay song. Any memory of the drive home had dissipated like a puff of smoke.

  All she thought of on the ride was Paul Alban’s angry voice. Predictably, he claimed his innocence. Even more predicable was that he attributed James Wright’s death to self-defense. But why was he calling her? That wasn’t predictable; a guilty man would have fled as fast and as far as possible. By now, he could have been on a boat heading to the Arabian Gulf. Instead, he called her. Look at the facts, objectively, kept playing on her mind. Questions kept floating through her head. If he set this up, as Crilley had said, then why did he warn them about the missing weapons?

  She put her hand on the kitchen counter, stared at the vase of daffodils above the stove, and tried to force the thought from her head. She couldn’t. Pursuing these questions won’t get you anywhere, she reminded herself. Crilley had made it clear there would be no discussion of Paul Alban’s possible innocence. When he had said it, it had come out almost as a warning, hadn’t it? Even though his assumption that Paul Alban was guilty seemed hasty, Crilley had far more experience than she did in managing these situations. Where would challenging Crilley get her?

  Bailey slid one of the kitchen chairs over to the fridge, stood on it, and opened the cupboard above. She reached inside and felt with her fingers past the bags of pita chips until they found the unopened glass bottle of spiced rum. It had collected dust at the back of the cupboard ever since she returned from her vacation in Jamaica four months ago. Sherri Banks had driven down from New York and showed up at Bailey’s door holding two all-inclusive tickets to a singles resort in Montego Bay. Six months, Sheri said. Time to forget about Chris.

  Bailey twisted the cap until it snapped open and poured several lugs into a glass. She poured a tepid can of Diet Coke over the rum, took a big gulp, and grimaced as it went down. She stood there with her esophagus burning and looked over the kitchen counter, past the beige microfiber sofa and the floral printed ottoman, to the large living room window that overlooked Vernon St. Parkway and the all-night Chinese food restaurant across the street. She thought that the vague nausea she felt was probably because she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. That’s all she needed: a good meal and a good sleep. She picked up the phone and ordered a ginger beef plate over chow mein noodles, for delivery.

  She crossed the room, tossed the phone on the sofa, sat down, and put her feet up on the ottoman. She leaned forward and rubbed her feet with her fingers, trying to press out the soreness that had developed from being in uncomfortable heels all day long. She picked up the remote control, turned on the flat screen that hung on the wall, and clicked through the channels, not resting on a single one for more than a second before she decided there was nothing worth watching anyway. She leaned forward and picked up the magazine that rested on the ottoman. The cover read How to Win Future Wars and featured an article discussing the merits of working with internal resistances in countries rather than full-scale invasions, as the U.S. had done in Iraq.

  She shook her head. It was as if Crilley had written the article himself.

  But the fact was that, as a result of this strategy, a stockpile of man-portable nuclear weapons was in the possession of terrorists. They had no leads. Their only connection to them was now on the run. And she had told him to do that.

  Why would the NCS want to kill their only connection to a missing stockpile of nuclear weapons? Guilty or not, Paul Alban was the only person they had on the ground in Somalia. He was their best chance at recovering them.

  But she knew that she didn’t know everything. She didn’t know Paul Alban. Bailey reminded herself of her mission in operations. It was a stepping stone. She watched as two of her fellow graduates from Camp Peary – both men – were quickly scooped up by clandestine ops divisions, while she continued to punch data into computers. Their analytic ability, meticulousness, and work ethic paled in comparison to hers, but they were good at shooting the shit with to old guard over beers after work, while Bailey stayed late at the office. This move to the NCS was her opportunity. If there were casualties, well, that was Alban’s doing. At least partly.

  She got up, took another sip of her rum and Coke, and grabbed her laptop bag. She thumbed through a stack of papers stuffed inside the back pocket until she found the printouts of the Stebelsky’s official manifest that she had obtained from port records in Odessa. She read through it again, all one hundred and twelve pages, part of her hoping in vain that she had somehow overlooked an entry for man-portable nuclear weapons when she had scoured it earlier.

  As she squared the papers into a pile, her eye was drawn to a series of entries. The majority of cargo was registered to multinational corporations such as Odessa Arms, Markov Factory, and Tomahawk Manufacturing. Four containers had A. Senechaux listed as the registrant. It seemed odd that four individual containers would be registered to an individual rather than a corporation. All the containers registered to A. Senechaux contained small arms, mostly AK-47s and hand grenades. She flipped her laptop open and accessed the NCS remote access server, typing in her series of passwords. She searched the name A. Senechaux and came up with a one-line entry: Armand Senechaux – suspected alias for small arms dealer or group of dealers – probable French or Russian national.
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br />   Disappointed that she didn’t find anything more substantial on A. Senechaux, she pulled up the files on Paul Alban. She had been through them a half-dozen times during the day, but part of her hoped that if she looked through them again, she would find a clue to support her suspicion that Alban was set up. Three quarters of the paramilitary staff were at Langley planning a recovery mission for the missing weapons. Once recovered, they would go after Alban. If she was going to find evidence of his innocence, she had to find it soon. Or maybe, she would find something that convinced her that he was lying. Either way, her mind would rest.

  The files on Paul Alban appeared onscreen. The first folder contained the basic identifying information page she had seen in Crilley’s office. Forty-eight years old, Caucasian, single. Born in Massachusetts but on a French passport. Fluent in English, French, Spanish, Somali, comprehends Arabic. There was a poorly scanned copy of a medical degree from Université Francois Rabelais in 1985, with a fellowship in internal medicine. Bailey assumed the degree was a fake. Alban spoke perfect English and the accent that she detected in his voice was New Englander, not French. She figured he likely received his degree somewhere in the U.S. Active operative in Somalia since 1999. Working under the cover of a foreign aid worker in Bosaso, Autonomous Republic of Puntland, Somalia. James Wright was listed as the contact point for Paul Alban.

  She scanned through the long list of folders in Paul’s file. There were hundreds. She needed to find out more about him and didn’t have time to go through it all. She double-clicked on a folder named background, but it was empty. Not a single file was inside the folder. Bailey rubbed her eyes with her palms. The agency typically recorded massive amounts of history on their operatives. It was common to find exhaustive transcripts of screening interviews documenting social upbringing, psychological or behavioral problems, family members, significant relationships, and education history. Results of psychological testing and history of mental health problems were usually documented. Sometimes, the names of pets could be found in the files.

  But nothing on Paul Alban.

  It was as if he had not existed before 1999.

  She sat, staring at the computer screen on her lap, when her apartment buzzer went off. She didn’t react initially, but after a few seconds, the buzzer went off again and she hauled herself off of the couch. She had forgotten all about the Chinese food and only when she realized it had been twenty-five minutes since she called her order in did her hunger return. In fact, she felt weak and close to vomiting. When she stood up, she felt the alcohol course its way to her head. She staggered to the doorway and didn’t bother asking ‘who is it’ before pressing the button beside the intercom to let them in. She pressed her hand against the wall for support, as the black rings in her vision threatened to expand. When the delivery boy arrived, she snatched the paper bag from his arms, pressed a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, and muttered for him to keep the change. She sat back on the couch and shoveled the noodles into her mouth faster than she could chew. She leaned on her elbow and scrolled through Paul Alban’s files with her free hand, ignoring the food that slipped out of her mouth and onto the couch.

  Then she stopped chewing.

  Inside the folder marked background she saw a footnote that she had overlooked earlier.

  MR-14406.

  It referred to another file. Bailey had heard that when Langley started converting from paper to computerized records, some operations officers refused to give up the files on some of their operatives. They said that they didn’t trust the confidentiality of computerized records. The skeptics thought they just didn’t want people privy to the operations they were conducting. Was MR-14406 referring to a paper file? Immediately, her mind flashed to Crilley’s office. He had hundreds of manila folders stored away in boxes on the floor in his office.

  She slurped up the last of her noodles when she heard her BlackBerry vibrating inside her laptop bag. She put the bowl on the ottoman and scrambled to get the phone to her ear.

  “Bailey Clarke here.”

  “Clarke,” Crilley’s voice boomed through the receiver. For a moment that seemed longer than it probably was, he didn’t say anything. Bailey sat up straight and suddenly felt alert, sober. Does he somehow know I was snooping through Paul Alban’s file?

  His voice sharpened, “I need you to come back to Langley. Meet me in my office. And you can forget about that report for the meeting.”

  “Yes, sir.” She closed her laptop and made her way to the door. “You don’t need the report?”

  “No. Things have changed. We have a lead on the weapons.”

  19

  Darkness still resisted giving way to sunlight when Paul and Ellen pulled into the deserted clinic parking lot. They needed to speak to Ali. Every time they had rushed across this parking lot it was to save a patient from gunshot wound or a suffocating infection. Today, they rushed across to save themselves.

  Could CIA agents be waiting for him in Bosaso? Could they have already surrounded the clinic?

  Paul scanned through the darkness, part of him expecting a mob of agents to rush through the parking lot, screaming at him to get on the ground. Part of him expecting to not see anything at all, just hear the pop of a sniper before everything turned black.

  But there were no men. No guns and no snipers. All he heard was the sound of his own breathing and the chirping of crickets in the thicket at the edge of the parking lot.

  Paul nodded to Ellen. She unlocked and opened the door.

  In the far corner, a nurse, a ward aide, and a guard played cards at wobbly table under a dim table lamp. None of them noticed Paul and Ellen enter. Paul nudged the small of Ellen’s back. “In and out,” he repeated.

  They swept forward through the main aisle between the patient beds, and at the far end pushed the curtain aside. A figure lay wrapped motionless in a blanket. Paul leaned over until his face was inches away from his patient. He heard a voice whisper behind him.

  “Doctor.”

  Paul whipped around, startled. He was surprised to see Ali sitting up in the bed behind him, half covered in a white blanket. Ali’s once empty eyes were now alive. His breathing too had improved; no longer was it labored and wheezy.

  “Ali,” Paul said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Ali twisted the edge of the blanket in his hands. “Where is my uncle?”

  Paul considered lying. They needed Ali’s help and couldn’t risk him shutting down. Ali’s expression seemed to show that he already knew. “I’m sorry,” Paul said and his voice became softer as it trailed off. “He was killed.”

  The words lingered in the hot, sticky air. For a moment, Ali’s expression didn’t change; he stared at Paul. Then, he let out a stuttering sigh and brought a trembling hand to his face.

  Ellen sat on the edge of the bed and put her arm around him. Ali cried the way a son would cry about his father’s death. Paul knew that was an agony that faded but never died. He wondered if Ali would let himself drown in guilt.

  “How did he die?” Ali turned his red-rimmed eyes towards Paul.

  “He died saving my life,” Paul tried to keep his voice calm and reassuring. “The ship that you hijacked had important weapons on it. Asabiyyah found out about them and tortured me to get information about the ship. Kadar Hadad tried to get me to lead them to Sami so they could steal the weapons from the port.” Paul left out the part where Sami died on a rock, ambushed from behind.

  Ali nodded rhythmically, absorbing the information. Then his head stopped bobbing. “Why would they torture you?”

  “They knew I could get Sami,” Paul said, deciding it was best to keep his role as a CIA asset out of it.

  “Why would they think that?”

  Paul exchanged glances with Ellen. If he gave Ali a little, maybe he would open up. “I gave Sami the manifest.”

  “You did?”

  Paul nodded.

  “And Hadad has the weapons now?”

  “I believe so.”
r />   “Then you should find them before he uses them. Kadar Hadad is a crazy man.”

  “That’s why we’re here. I need your help finding him.”

  Ali shook his head and laid back down on the gurney. “My uncle is dead, it is too late to do anything.”

  “It’s not too late,” Paul pleaded, “but the longer we wait, the farther he could have taken them.”

  Ali turned his head toward the curtain.

  “Ali,” Ellen said gently, “we need you to help us. You know people in the Puntland. At this point, Hadad and Asabiyyah either are moving the weapons or have already taken them out. But you know people who work the docks and the border crossings.”

  Ali didn’t move. Paul cut in, “Ali, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Asabiyyah are taking over your country. Imagine what they can do with thirteen nuclear weapons.” He leaned over and whispered in Ali’s ear. “Your uncle wanted to stop them.”

  Ali shot up in the bed, pointed a finger in Paul’s face. “You created this problem. You gave us the manifest. You went with my uncle to those docks. He died because of you.”

  “He helped me because I saved your life. He felt he owed me something for saving his ‘son,’ so he came with me to the docks to stop Hadad and stop the weapons from being stolen.”

  Ali lowered his shoulders.

  “Ali, we can stop them together.”

  Ali nodded and placed his palm on his forehead. “There’s a man who works at the docks, his name is Salaam. His cousin is in Asabiyyah. He might know where they have gone.”

  20

  The Jeep wasn’t following a road, just old tire tracks made in the rocky desert. The sun set ahead, and the desolate landscape faded into darkness. The texture of the sky was changing. Woolly clouds gathered in the east and the air felt swollen.

  Watching the scene from the backseat next to Ellen, while the Jeep shuddered over rocks, while howling wind enveloped them, Paul felt like he was in a dream. Ali sat behind the wheel, the tails of his bandana whipping in the wind. He barely spoke, focused on their destination. He spoke only once to the man in the passenger seat, Habib, the lone survivor of Sami’s band.