* * *
AT 6:05,
she heard three quick taps on the door. Then two more. She opened up, and Rashid stepped in. Though if she hadn’t expected him, she might not have known who he was. The dapper doctor in the thousand-dollar suit had become a white-robed villager with a scraggly black beard and sunken cheeks. He closed the door, sat on the bed, smoothed his robe. “
Salaam aleikum,
Miss Simmons.”
“Aleikum salaam.”
“How are
you?”
“Fine. More important, how are you? You look different.”
“You think so? I don’t see it.” He smiled, and for the first time she recognized him. His smile, simple, almost shy, hadn’t changed.
“Are you hungry?” She’d put out bags of chips and bottles of soda. Case officers were supposed to have snacks at these meetings. Usually they went uneaten. Not today.
Rashid gulped down half a bottle of Coke. “I suppose I’m hungry. They took me to a camp. In the mountains. Then a missile hit another camp a few kilometers away. So none of us could go anywhere.”
“They blamed you for the attack?”
“No, no. Just when one camp is hit they keep the others quiet for a few days. They know that the drones watch for movement after an attack. So we were stuck. And this camp was low on food. We had to be careful we didn’t run
out.”
“It sounds difficult.”
“I wasn’t used to it, that’s
all.”
I was wrong,
she thought
. I should never have suspected you.
Yet some corner of her mind still wasn’t convinced. The brave smile, the patchy beard. Was he acting? He couldn’t be. If he could pull this off, he belonged in Hollywood. If she wasn’t going to disappear into the counter-counterespionage fun house, she had to believe in her agents. Anyway, Rashid had no reason to make up this story. He was a spy, not a charity case. He knew the agency would judge him on the intel he produced. Rashid—no,
Marburg—
had given them three solid reports in two months. Reason enough to trust
him.
“But you got
out.”
“On Wednesday, Abu Khalid—that’s the man who runs the camp, at least what he calls himself—said I could leave.
Hamdulillah.
” Thanks be to
God.
“Abu Khalid.” Holm didn’t recognize the name, but al-Qaeda commanders regularly changed their pseudonyms. “If I showed you pictures, could you recognize him?”
“Yes.”
“And where the camp
is?”
“No. They made me leave my phone, all my things, before they picked me up in Peshawar. Then they blindfolded me and drove for a long time.”
“Today’s Sunday. That means you left the camp four days
ago.”
“Yes.”
“When was the bombing?”
“The bombing happened, I want to say, five days before that. Yes. Nine days ago. Friday night.”
“You have such a good memory, Rashid. So specific and detailed.”
“I do my best.”
Specificity and detail were good, in theory. She could check the time line he’d provided against records of drone attacks. But if he was a double agent, he’d expect her to check. He wouldn’t make up an attack, slip on something so obvious. So all his specificity and detail proved nothing, in the
end.
“’Round and ’round we go,” she said. “Where we stop, nobody knows.”
“I don’t understand.” He opened another Coke, drank deep. His thirst, at least, was genuine.
“You’ve grown a beard,
too.”
“All the men up there have them. I expect the next time you see me, it will be even bigger.”
“Unless they want you to shave it so you can travel more easily.”
“I think they want me to stay up there. That’s why I asked for this meeting, Miss Simmons.”
“Call me Marci. Please.”
“Yes. Marci. They’ve told me a top man is sick. Some kind of heart trouble. They say they want me to see
him.”
“Do you know
who?”
“They haven’t told me, no. From the way they’ve talked about it, I think it must be someone very senior. But Abu Khalid told me that if they even suspect I might betray this man, they’ll kill all my family. He showed me a picture of my house in Amman to prove he was serious.” Rashid’s black eyes were hard and desperate. “You must promise you won’t let that happen.”
“I guarantee, you get us al-Zawahiri or bin Laden, we’ll move your whole family to America. And don’t forget the reward.” The twenty-five-million-dollar reward the United States had offered for the capture of al-Qaeda’s top leaders.
“You promise that?”
“You’ll be a hero. You’ll meet the president. Now, please, tell me about the meeting with Abu Khalid.”
“After he showed me the picture of my house, he went through the man’s symptoms. That he feels tired all the time and has sharp pains in his chest that make him lie down. He asked what was wrong with the man. I told him the truth, my best guess. This man may have had a heart attack. Now his heart is giving out. Congestive heart failure, we call it. And the altitude and the cold make it worse. But I can’t be sure without seeing him. This kind of thing, you have to hear the heartbeat, touch the skin, talk to the patient.”
“What did Abu Khalid
say?”
“He asked me, ‘If you see him, can you treat him?’ I told him it depends how sick he is. And the medicines he needs, some are only in Karachi or even Dubai. Abu Khalid told me to get everything that I might need. He said he would let me know in a few days whether they would bring me to the patient.”
Holm thought through the options. “Don’t push. Don’t reach out to Abu Khalid. Pressing will only scare them.”
“And if they tell me to see this man? Do you want me to bring some sort of transmitter?”
“No. If this is al-Zawahiri, they’ll strip you naked before they take you to him. Check every pill bottle you have. They may even make you take the medicine you’re giving him. One for you, one for him. They’ll be paranoid. They find anything suspicious, they’ll shoot you, be done with
it.”
“So what do I
do?”
“You treat him, Doctor. As best you can. Make him feel better. That’s the best way to make him trust
you.”
Rashid nodded.
“Just don’t cure him or he won’t need to see you again.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Simmons—Marci. There’s no cure for heart failure.”
“Good, then. So you’ll help him. And the next time they take you to him, they’ll relax. A little bit. That’s all we need. But before then, we’ll need to meet—”
“We—”
“A few of us will want to debrief you.”
You’ll be pure gold, and half the agency will want the credit for this,
Holm didn’t say. For the next hour, she refreshed him on codes and contact information. He told her his plan. It was simple enough. He would buy the medicines he needed. Finding them would take a day or two. Then he’d go back to Peshawar and wait for instructions.
“Are you ready for this?” she said.
“I don’t want to make any grand speeches, Miss Simmons. But I’m sure in my heart that these men must be punished.”
“Good luck, Doctor. Go with
God.”
“The same God for us all. I wish we could remember that.” He extended his hand and shook hers briefly. Then he disappeared. She listened as his steps shuffled down the hallway and the stairs and into the Karachi night. Trying to track him would be pointless, and anyway she knew where he was going. Back into the mountains. To trap Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Unless the trap was meant for
her.
* * *
BACK IN KABUL,
Cota was thrilled. The agency put a Special Operations squad on what was called “black watch.” The term meant the unit, a twelve-man team, couldn’t be used for any other mission, no matter how important. Basically, the squad was under house arrest at Bagram Air Base, waiting for a shot at al-Zawahiri.
Holm was in a similar position. Cota pulled her off her other jobs. A week after she returned, he stepped into her office at the Ariana and gave her a salute. “I shouldn’t tell you. But Duto”—Vinny Duto, the CIA director—“briefed the White House about the
op.”
“We’re way ahead of ourselves. Marburg may not even get the call.”
“He doesn’t, no one’s going to put it on you. You handled him great. I watched the video from Karachi. He likes you, he trusts
you.”
“I hope
so.”
He sat down across from her. He tried to look sympathetic, but his tone was irritated. “So what’s wrong? You nervous that he’ll blow his cover, get strung up? He’s a big boy, he went in with his eyes open.”
“It’s not that.”
“Not the
skiing
,
again
.
He’s not a double, Marci.”
“I like him, you know. He’s got better manners than anyone I’ve ever
met.”
“Better than
me?”
“I’ve seen you pick your nose, Manny. You aren’t even in the same time zone.”
“Congratulations to
him.”
“What if he’s too good to be true?”
“Marci. You keep forgetting, we’re not dealing with the KGB. These guys, their idea of tricky is Semtex instead of ANFO. No way they could run a double as sophisticated as this.”
“Maybe they got lucky with Marburg. We think we got lucky with him, right?”
“Give me something specific. Anything.”
“He’s not nervous.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even before I met him. The way he approached the
muk
in Amman. Walked right up to the gate. Who does that? He’s never nervous.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a nervous disposition. Anyway, I saw the tape of you and him. He was nervous when he talked about his family.”
“Only for a few seconds, before he dropped
it.”
“Because you reassured him. You did your
job.”
“Or because he wanted to bring it up for sympathy, then let it go. He’s so afraid for his family, how come he didn’t ask for specifics of how we’re going to get them out of Amman? A written guarantee.”
“Written guarantee? You think he wants a contract that says, ‘If I deliver al-Zawahiri, my family gets free passage to the United States.’ What’s he going to do, keep it in his underwear?”
“I could hold
it—”
“Then it’s really useful to him. Come on. You’re overthinking this. The guy’s a moderate Muslim, they do exist. He’s pissed that his brother killed himself, that’s a totally reasonable motive. Now he’s helping us. You’ve got evidence to the contrary, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
She had nothing to say. He rapped his knuckles on her desk.
“Good girl.”
* * *
FOUR WEEKS PASSED,
no word. Despite—or because of—her fears about Rashid’s reliability, Marci was desperate to hear from him. For the first time, she understood what other case officers had meant when they said an assignment had eaten them alive. She felt almost literally as if she were being consumed. She hardly ate. She’d always been skinny, but now she could count her ribs. She pressed her husband for sex two and three times a day. Finally he rebelled.
“What you’re doing, it’s obvious.”
“I thought you’d like
it.”
“Being used like a fence post so you can distract yourself. No. I don’t like it. I keep waiting for you to call me Marburg. ‘Oh, yeah, Marburg. That’s so good. Gimme some of that.’”
She had to smile. “I really have been unbearable, haven’t I? Thank
you.”
“For what?”
“For putting up with me, you ninny.”
“Didn’t know I had a choice.”
She rested her arm on his chest. CIA guys came in three sizes: muscled-up ex-military types, trim guys who’d run in college, and chubby desk jockeys. Pete was a runner, with narrow shoulders and tightly knitted abs. “Have I ever told you you have a great body?”
“Never.”
“Well, you
do.”
“I love you, Marci.”
“Love you,
too.”
Outside, the wind howled from the north, promising fierce weather. She closed her eyes and slept without dreams for the first time in a month.
* * *
THE NOTE ARRIVED
in her in-box the next morning. Rashid was supposed to use e-mail only to set up meetings. Instead he’d sent a full report—his first tradecraft mistake:
I have met our mutual friend. He is quite sick. In America, he would receive a pacemaker immediately. Unfortunately, I do not know where he is or how you can find him. They did as you suggested they would. I told them that to be searched in such a way was humiliating and unnecessary, but they insisted. This was in Peshawar. They even poured out my medicines and looked them over. They allowed me to keep the pills and bottles, but nothing else. They gave me new clothes, a robe and sandals. They put me in a van and blindfolded me and drove for hours. Then moved me to another vehicle.
When the second car stopped, I was led into a building. My blindfold was removed. I found myself inside a concrete room, no windows. I heard cars passing. After a minute my guards escorted me into another room with a long wooden table. They searched me again. This time they allowed me to keep on my clothes. We waited together—I don’t know how long. Finally, a car stopped outside. A minute later, our friend walked in, with four guards. He looked me over and said, “He has been checked?” and my guard said, “Completely.” He dismissed the guards, and I examined him. With the results I have already reported, I cannot do much for him here. Again as you suggested, his guards picked two pills at random from the bottles of medicine I’d given him and forced me to take them. I did not
argue.
This meeting took place ten days ago. Until yesterday, I was confined at the house. They told me that they wanted to be sure the medicine “worked.” I told them that I was loyal and didn’t like being treated this way. Also that I wanted to consult with a specialist in heart failure to see if I could improve his treatment. Finally, they let me go. But I am sure they will bring me back to see him
again.
I know I have gone on too long and that this is not the proper channel for this communication and I apologize. I am fearful now, but I believe that we have been given a great opportunity for justice. Whether they are watching me, I don’t know, but I am certain that I can find a way to disappear for a few hours if necessary. I look forward to seeing you
soon.