The Rendition (6 page)

I shrugged. “I figured they wanted to scare me. I tried not to let it get to me.”

“Why didn't they kill you?”

“I've thought about that. First, they wanted to find out who I was and who sent us. They knew we were after Nadaj. Second, they wanted to film me telling the world how wonderful they are.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. When they brought in the video camera, I realized what they were doing. They wanted to use me as part of a propaganda campaign—”

Colonel Frost suddenly looked very alert. “Did they indicate exactly what they wanted you to say?”

“They told me a bunch of things to say. To be honest, I can't remember exactly.”

“Can you make an effort? It's important.”

“Well, they said I should criticize the government, the president, that sort of thing.”

“Try to discredit America, in other words?” When I nodded, she said, “Is that all? Was there any mention of weaponry?”

“I was supposed to say we don't fight fair. We commit atrocities. We didn't get too far with it, probably because I wasn't that cooperative. I figured that once they got me to say what they wanted, I'd become expendable.”

She asked how I was able to escape, and I said, “I was rescued by three men, who were able to determine where I was being held. I heard automatic weapons. I assume they had to shoot their way in.”

Colonel Frost said, “Do you know how they were able to determine where you were?”

“Before leaving, we were each provided a passport, a watch, some small tools. As you've just indicated, Colonel Frost, the watch and one of the tools each had a GPS transmitter.” I paused. “Was Buck Romero involved at all in rescuing me?”

“You can make your own surmise about who was or was not involved. Your partners radioed in what had happened. Another question: Who was with Ramush Nadaj?”

“Two men and a woman. The men were called Fadilj and Quemal. Quemal was also known as ‘The Assassin.'”

“Why? What did he do?”

“According to the woman, he got the name back in his village when he killed the mayor. He may have earned it in other ways too.”

Colonel Frost looked at me questioningly. “Killed the mayor?”

“That's what the woman said.”

“Was he some kind of hit man?”

“Possibly. Or someone who just liked killing people. Everyone needs a hobby.”

Needless to say, Colonel Frost ignored the last remark. “What can you tell me about the woman?”

“Her name was Viktoria. She said she had lived in the States for a time. Her English was fluent. She said she'd lived in Bridgeport and had worked in a furniture factory there. You might want to make her.”

“Was she legal?”

“She said she had a green card.”

Colonel Frost nodded, seemingly impressed by this information. “Did you speak with them at all?”

“Only with the woman. Among themselves they spoke Albanian. I don't understand that language.”

She said, “You were once given a ten-day course in Albanian. It says right here that—”

“The course was Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, ma'am, and it was over five years ago. We were in Bosnia, where everyone spoke Serbo-Croatian. Except for a few phrases, I've forgotten most of the Albanian.” I'd taken the course while we were planning the Milosevic rendition. My impatience with this grilling was beginning to show.

“Was there anything noteworthy that you overheard? You say the woman spoke to you in English.”

After trying to recall what I heard, I said, “She spoke about Afghanistan. She asked if I knew anything about Afghanistan.”

“Is that all she said? I have to ask again: was there anything about weaponry?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“You're sure? It's important if there was.”

“Nadaj became very excited at one point. It had something to do with Afghanistan. But I don't know anything more than that.” I decided
not to mention that he threatened to cut off my nose. “One other thing. I noticed that Nadaj was carrying an MP5 machine pistol. That surprised me.”

“Why?”

“As far as I know, that weapon is only cleared for special ops people in Afghanistan.”

She nodded. “I guess we can assume that's where he got it.”

When she crossed her legs, her skirt climbed higher. When she became aware I was having a difficult time keeping my eyes away from her legs, she gave her skirt a quick tug. Her eyes flashed. Then she uncrossed her legs.

She said, “Do you have any questions?” She closed her notebook, began fussing with her briefcase.

“Sure? Why is Ramush Nadaj so important? No one ever told us that.”

“I can't reveal that. Is there anything else?”

“Only one more thing, ma'am. And that is, I am completely through with working for the United States government. When I am back in the States, I guarantee—guarantee—that I will never ever say yes to another contract. Be sure to write that in your report. I don't want anyone calling me, writing me, e-mailing me, or visiting me. After nearly twenty-five years of this stuff, I have had it—up to here.”

Acting as if she hadn't heard me, Colonel Frost continued fussing with her briefcase.

“Let's put it this way,” Buck Romero said. “It was the one thing that under no circumstances was supposed to happen.”

My old partner was referring to the fact that in the course of the Ramush Nadaj rendition, I ended up a prisoner of the very guy we were looking to extract. It was worse than embarrassing. It was disastrous. He was explaining to me in unwelcome detail just what were the consequences of my little screw-up.

Buck and I were talking for the first time since my return to the States three weeks before. Because I'd been ordered to report to Walter Reed and would be in D.C. for a couple of days, I suggested we meet at Arlington Cemetery, where my father is buried. Buck had known where to find me.

“They did a nice job,” Buck had said by way of greeting. He was referring to my face, which the military doctors in Landstuhl and Walter Reed had patched up. “Considering you weren't exactly a matinee idol to start with.”

Buck was right. Except for a hardly noticeable scar on my left cheek, an indentation in my forehead and the fact that my nose now leaned just slightly to the starboard, my face wasn't any different from the way it had looked before my arrival in Kosovo.

Earlier we'd stopped by the recently dedicated memorial to the 184 victims of the Pentagon attack. It was a beautiful May day—blue sky and a bright sun making the white headstones seem even whiter and the grass even greener. Now we were wandering through the big cemetery, looking at names and inscriptions and wondering about guys
and gals we'd known through the years, both of us in a reflective mood. My close call in Kosovo had the effect, however fleeting, of making me reflect a little more than I normally do on my own mortality.

As we strolled, I said, “Things would have gone down differently if we'd had some backup.” I wasn't happy about the fact that I seemed to be catching most of the heat because things hadn't worked out. “Who put the operation together anyway?”

“I'm guilty, but I had an accessory.”

“Colonel Frost?”

“From what I understand, you and she have spoken.”

“I gave her—shall we say, my views of the situation.”

“Not to mention a piece of your mind. By the way, what are your views?”

“That there was too little margin for error. And that it wasn't that well thought out.”

We nodded hello to two women—one in her twenties, the other somewhat older—who were out here with two youngsters, a boy and a girl, neither of them older than six and both carrying a bunch of flowers. I didn't want to think about the reason for their visit.

“One of the characters who was in that shack is dead.” When I asked which one, Buck said, “He had on a red bandana, a field jacket, green corduroy pants over boots. On the way in there was a brief firefight, and he made the mistake of getting in Angel's way.”

“His name was Fadilj.” I recalled Fadilj waving his automatic weapon in front of my nose and pounding me with it while I was flat on the floor. “He wasn't one of my favorite people. Tell Angel that's another lunch I owe him.”

“Angel and Scotty send their best. Angel's out in Vegas.” We both grinned. Angel had a weakness for casinos, where he generally blew the money he made on his government jobs. Larry Scott's weakness was the opposite sex. Well, none of us are perfect.

I said, “I told Colonel Frost that I'd worked on my last contract.”

Buck nodded. “You did the right thing. By the way, how did it go out at the hospital? You get your chit punched?” He was referring to my visit that morning to the psychiatric section of Walter Reed Medical
Center in D.C. One of the military doctors, having mentioned something called post-traumatic stress, had ordered me to see a government shrink. It's the kind of thing people in our business don't usually do, except under orders.

I said that my visit had consisted only of an hour-long interview with a female psychiatrist, an attractive blonde woman behind a large desk piled with papers.

“You didn't hit on her, I hope.”

“I might have, but she had a picture of a guy and two young girls on her desk.”

“I'm impressed by your discretion. By the way, how does it feel to be a civilian again?”

“I enjoyed being Captain Sanchez. All those nice nurses. I don't think I've ever been so spoiled.”

I'd arrived back in the States on a military flight from Ramstein, Germany, to McGuire Air Base. Although I didn't quite kiss the tarmac, I can say it felt great to be back on American soil. I spent nearly three weeks as an outpatient at Walter Reed, where the military doctors and dentists got me squared away. It was now six weeks since Buck, Angel, and Larry had hauled me out of the hole in which Ramush Nadaj and his buddies had me stashed. The last time Buck and I had spoken was back in March at Dulles, just hours before I'd left for the Balkans, when we'd made the final arrangements for the Kosovo rendition. At that meeting he'd given me some currency, the watch and Leatherman with the GPS transmitters, and a few other knickknacks.

It was the transmitter in the Leatherman that had made it possible to locate us. I'm not sure Buck planned it exactly that way, but I couldn't complain about how things had worked out.

Like me, Buck had been in the military—until someone decided that his talents might be put to more effective use working covertly rather than overtly, with the result that he went from being a captain in Special Forces to being an operations officer in our agency. In the mid-nineties, when things quieted down on the intelligence front, he went to work for a D.C. legal firm which represents the defense industry. His colleagues include a number of former two- and three-star generals
and well-connected legal people. The job gives him a certain amount of access and keeps him in touch with old friends. He knows what's going on, and if he doesn't know he's usually in a good position to find things out.

As we walked, I asked Buck about Colonel Cranley.

“Frank's retired. He spends most of his time fishing and playing golf.”

It was Cranley, an MI officer on a listening post in the Alps, who had first introduced us. That evening Buck and I had traveled up to Munich and had dinner—and learned that we had at least two things in common: we'd both started off in Special Forces and we liked to drink beer.

Although we would subsequently determine that we worked well together, it was a while before we found that out.

Buck has a mildly forbidding air about him, giving the impression that he disapproves of just about everything and everybody. He's a broad-shouldered, six two, has dark hair, brown eyes, and a square jaw. He isn't that easy a guy to get to know, which might be the result of his having grown up in a hardscrabble mining town in Pennsylvania, a place where he once told me people spend all their time “either working, watching football, drinking, or fighting.”

As we wandered through Arlington National Cemetery we were both thinking the same thing, recalling the seven hectic years we'd worked together. Our beat was central Europe, during the Cold War years before the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Those seem like innocent times now, with none of us aware of the vast array of enemies our country has in the world.

Among the people Buck and I recruited were quite a few who turned into wellsprings of information. After a time, we had it down to a science. When the NSA analysts, usually working with electronic intercepts and tidbits of information, identified and built a file on someone in the Soviet bloc hierarchy who could be persuaded to work for us—usually a military officer or a politician—Buck and I would get the file. After figuring our approach, we'd head into the East and close the deal. At some point, I lost track of the number of times I'd gone through
the Iron Curtain and the number of different passports I'd carried. Mostly, we went to East Germany, where our cover usually was that we were businessmen traveling to one of the trade fairs or factories. We carried business cards and I had a nice line of patter—usually along the lines of “our firm's” need for heavy machinery of one kind or another. Besides East Germany, there were forays into Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and even into Russia.

If we could turn the guy, we'd run the agent for as long as possible, which usually meant until he was experiencing psychological melt-down from the stress of leading a double life. When the agent finally came out, he'd have a substantial bank account, a brand new identity—and the opportunity to lead a comfortable life in the United States, usually a far more comfortable life than those of the American taxpayers who were footing the bills for his room, board and, quite often, the payments on his sports car. Mostly, the taste of former Russian officers tended, in cars, toward Porsches and, in women, toward leggy blondes, both of which would get heavy use before being traded in for newer models. When we weren't reading files or recruiting, Buck and I worked out of the white building near the Tivoli Bridge in Munich's English Garden and posed as journalists. That cover was always good for a laugh since neither Buck nor I could have typed out a news story if our lives depended on it. Fortunately, they never did.