LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
JANETTA JONES ADJUSTED THE red-rimmed glasses that perched near the tip of her nose. A thin African American woman with twenty years in the CIA administrative branch, she was a pleasant co-worker but slow to warm up to others. Everybody in the building was that way, so it had come as a surprise to her when she became friends with Lauren Carson. She wanted to buy Lauren a drink and have some girl talk. She was surprised when she found Lauren sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, looking lost.
Jones went into the office, closing the door behind her. “Are you okay, Lauren? You should be celebrating, girlfriend. Letter of commendation going in your file for bringing those prisoners back is a big deal. I’m buying you a drink tonight.”
Carson pushed herself up straight, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a small mirror. “I look like crap,” she said. The eyes were serious.
“Right,” Janetta said. “Most normal women would sell their favorite shoes to look as good as you do on your worst day. What’s going on?”
Lauren dropped the mirror back and closed the drawer. Time for some major cosmetics. “I’ve just been summoned for an emergency internal review. Since I’ve already been debriefed about the prisoners, I guess it has to be about those explosions in Pakistan. No word from the team that went in yet. I don’t know anything about what happened over there.”
Janetta Jones had been around the Agency too long to try to dig for details. Jim Hall was probably involved in it somehow. Man about to retire goes off on a secret mission and gets himself involved in a crisis. Lauren, being his deputy, could catch some fallout. Then there was the emotional component. Lauren cared about Jim, and their affair had been no secret. It was impossible to keep that kind of secret within the walls of the CIA. “We’re in a risky business,” she observed.
Lauren was happy that Janetta had come in. The woman was almost an oracle, a walking encyclopedia of internal CIA mechanics.
“Just routine, so don’t worry about it. I’ve seen it many a time before. Many a time,” Jones said in a slow, soft voice. “I’m sure that it is just a SODD investigation. When something bad happens almost anywhere in the world, the CIA is usually held responsible until we can prove Some Other Dudes Did It. Getting blamed for everything is as much a part of this building as the elevators and the stones. Just who we are. What time is your interview?”
“Tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I was told to make sure that the door to Jim’s office is locked and that a special team will be sent along to secure and seal it until we hear from him. Nobody goes inside.”
Janetta smiled. “So let’s go do that. I’ll witness for you. Then you go fix your face and we’ll get out of here and go chase men.”
Lauren stepped from behind her desk, picked up her purse, and glanced sideways at the glass window to check her reflection. “I’m a mess.”
Janetta Jones rolled her eyes and turned away. “Yeah. Hideous. I’ll make you an appointment with one of the company’s plastic surgeons.”
ISLAMABAD
GENERAL NAWAZ ZAMAN OF the Pakistani intelligence service said, “We have captured an American assassin and killed his partner.” Then he tapped the spent embers from his cigar in an ashtray on his desk. The smoke coiled gray above it. His round face remained calm, but his eyes drilled into those of Daniel Silver, the SAC, or special agent in charge, of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s huge office in Islamabad.
Silver carefully measured his response. He had been so tightly focused on the massive explosions that had rocked the city that he had heard nothing of this. “I do not understand, General.”
“It is simple, Special Agent Silver. Your country decided to come across the Afghan border once again without authorization in pursuit of the Taliban.” He pointed out the window of his office. “Look and see what you have caused.”
“That is an absurd accusation, sir.”
“Perhaps, but it is also true.” The general opened a file on his desk. “The man we have captured has been identified as Kyle Swanson, apparently a United States Marine sharpshooter of some renown. The dead one has not yet been identified.” His eyes rose again to stare at Silver.
The FBI agent felt sweat beneath his armpits. “How do you know all of this?”
That brought a gruff laugh from Zaman. “Do you believe that you are the only investigators here? This is my country, Special Agent Silver, and we have put everything we have into finding out what happened here yesterday and what caused it. Our techniques can be quite different than your American standards, particularly in the wake of such an atrocity. We are quite comprehensive, and have numerous sources.”
“Well, General, all I can say right now is that I am completely baffled by your statement, and completely unaware of any involvement by my country.”
“Then let me give this file to you. From the rubble of an apartment house, we recovered two bodies with gunshot wounds to their heads. They were a pair of Taliban gunmen, according to our people. Some local police apparently heard the shots, just before the explosions, pursued this man Swanson, and eventually captured him.”
Silver rubbed his knees, a sign of nervousness. “We want to interview him.”
“Naturally. Have someone from your embassy contact the Foreign Office to arrange it.” The ISI official slowly pulled on the cigar.
“No, General. I mean we need to talk to him right now, to begin our own investigation.”
Zaman shook his head. “That is not possible.”
“You refuse my request?”
“Not at all. I just want you to go through proper channels, Special Agent Silver. Enough of the cowboy stuff, doing whatever you want to and whenever you want to do it in our country. The government of Pakistan will cooperate, and in the proper manner. Meanwhile, Swanson stays where he is, in our protective custody.”
“I will protest this with the ambassador.”
Zaman waved away the complaint. “Fine. Meanwhile, if you want to do something productive, take a look at that envelope in the file. We have been unable to identify Swanson’s accomplice. Police were closing in on him when the explosions began, and he was blown apart and buried. One of the officers managed to reach what was left of the body before fire consumed everything. He thought fast enough to use his knife and shear off a sample that should help identification through DNA and international police databases. We would appreciate the FBI putting its computers to work to help on this particular front, since we are overwhelmed at the moment.”
Silver opened the big folder and found a smaller envelope, sealed, with something lumpy inside. He tore open the flap and removed a square, transparent ziplock bag. Inside was a human finger.
JIM HALL STOOD BEFORE the huge window in the spacious living room of the Royal Ocean Suite of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, on the coast of Dubai. Maroon curtains flanked the impressive view of the water and the white yachts, while thin, sheer curtains cut the glare. His hand hurt.
He had flown from Islamabad International on a nonstop Emirates flight and, with his German passport, cleared customs on both ends without a problem. The customs officer in Dubai asked about the bandaged left hand and was satisfied with the explanation that much of his hand had been crushed by a falling stone in Islamabad, and then a finger had to be amputated, which was verified by a doctor’s statement. A waiting limousine delivered him to the beautiful hotel.
Once in the huge suite, some 2,325 square feet of luxury, Hall took a shower, and paused while changing the bandage to examine the wound. The amputation had been clean, although after the finger was off, the edges of the severed digit were chopped and caked with dirt to make it look like an amateur job. With the mild sedatives, he had not felt much discomfort at the time, but as the anesthetic wore off, the pain visited. The doctor did a good job. Keep it clean and give it time to heal. He opened a bottle of pills and chewed two, washing them down with water. Then he used the gauze and tape to bandage it up again.
Retrieving his PDA from the pocket of the sports jacket he had worn on the trip, Hall slid into the armless gray chair before a table of shining light wood and opened the laptop computer that Lauren had left behind. The hotel offered wireless Internet connections, and in less than a minute he was logged on to his account. The bank routing numbers that he kept on the PDA were pecked carefully into the appropriate formats, using only his right hand. His days of ten-finger typing were over, he thought.
One by one, he opened various accounts in various banks and investment houses, answered security questions, and used his right index finger like a spear to force the computer to do its job. He did not have to speak to a human during the entire process, which took less than thirty minutes. By then, he had cleared out every account he had ever established for the CIA, secret holding pens in which tens of millions of dollars had been stored to pay for covert operations over the years and never returned, although the funds technically had still been under CIA control.
No longer. Jim Hall emptied them all that afternoon, as if shaking a giant trash can of cash, and moved the money to new accounts under new names in new places that protected the identity of their investors. After receiving confirmations and safely logging those combinations of letters and numbers back into the PDA, he scrubbed and destroyed the computer hard drive. He shut the lid, walked to the window, and looked at the pretty people on the pretty boats on the pretty water. He was now one of them. Jim Hall was rich, and he did not miss his finger at all.