“Oh my God.”
“I will leave, and when I know if your software worked as described, I will contact my friends here and give them one of two orders. You live on, or you die so very slowly and unpleasantly.”
McKell’s eyes clouded and his lips trembled.
“So you see, I am leaving now with the drive, and this is your last chance to tell me if you left anything out, put anything in, or did anything to it to render it ineffective.”
Now Phillip McKell began crying.
Mohammed looked on uncomfortably for nearly a minute.
Eventually McKell spoke, between sobs and gurgles of mucus in his throat. “It’s not a trap. I swear to God it will work!” He put his head in his hands and began blubbering openly. “Please. Please let me go.”
Mohammed just winced in discomfort, then he glanced to Shiraz. In Farsi he said, “I believe him.”
Shiraz nodded, stepped forward, and pressed the tip of his Glock’s suppressor on the top of the seated man’s head. McKell pulled his hands away from his face quickly and he started to scream, but the Quds Force operative shot him at point-blank range.
He dropped dead onto the floor at the foot of the bed, blood dripped from his mouth and nostrils, and the Iranians began their work. Shiraz and Kashan collected the personal belongings of the two dead Americans, removing anything that could be used to identify them. Then they lifted both men off the floor and laid them on the king-size bed.
While this was going on Mohammed stood close to the wall by the bathroom, his eyes fixed on the bodies. While he gazed at the dead men he used his mobile phone to call in Isfahan, who appeared in the doorway with a pair of two-liter soda bottles in his hands. He opened the first bottle and began pouring gasoline on the bed, and handed off the other bottle to Kashan, who took it and poured it all over the bodies, taking care to thoroughly soak every stitch of clothing.
When they were finished with their work, Shiraz addressed the commander of the operation. “Mohammed, you should go to the car. Ormand is waiting. We will be right behind.” Mohamed shook his head, still looking at the bodies. “Give me the lighter. I want to do it.”
“Sir, there are a lot of fumes. It will go up quickly. Better you—”
Mohammed reached a hand out. “Please. I want to do it.” Shiraz looked at the others. With a shrug he said, “Sure. Of course. But stand in the open doorway and throw it in. The flames can be unpredictable.”
The three Quds Force operatives went out onto the landing and checked the area, then they looked down to make sure Ormand was still there, behind the wheel of the running Chrysler four-door. When they were satisfied everything was in order, Shiraz pulled his Zippo lighter from his pocket and held it out to Mohammed.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Of course. Why not?” Mohammed took the lighter with a quavering hand, and he did as the Quds Force operative suggested, standing in the doorway, then tossing the burning lighter onto the bed. It erupted in flame and light, and Mohammed stood there watching for several seconds, as the bodies were engulfed in the inferno.
“Sir?” Shiraz said from behind. “We must leave immediately!” Mohammed observed the fast-moving fire, the death, and the destruction he had wrought, up until the moment Shiraz put his hand on his arm and pulled him gently out of the doorway. Then the Quds officer shut the door to the room—already fully engulfed from the bathroom at the back to the curtains in the front window—and he pushed the little Revolutionary Guards major toward the stairwell, the other two body men leading the way.
15
ETHAN ROSS JOGGED THROUGH the high-dollar streets of Georgetown in a frigid predawn, passing town homes and chic stores and coffee shops not yet open for the day. There were several runners on the pavement with him, even now at six a.m. Like Ethan, most wore expensive running shoes and cold-weather compression pants and base layers and gloves. Virtually no one was over forty, and virtually everyone had earbuds in their ears. But as far as Ethan was concerned, the similarities ended there. He doubted any of them had Joan Baez pumping through their headphones like he did. He also seriously doubted any of the other runners here in Georgetown planned on going by a predetermined point in the neighborhood to hunt for a secret signal indicating that the meeting in the woods for later in the morning was a go.
Ethan had not slept well at all. His polygraph was set for three p.m., and although he knew objectively he had the skills he needed to beat it, his armor had always been his impenetrable confidence. His armor had been administered a hell of a blow, and this unfamiliar insecurity resulted in his bout of nerves and poor sleep.
At ten minutes past six he passed the green fire hydrant in front of the Gap Kids on the corner of Wisconsin and N Street. He glanced at it quickly as he jogged by. He thought he saw the telltale chalk mark, but he wasn’t certain, so he pulled up his run and came to a full stop. He stood there, feigned an air of nonchalance as he pretended to stretch his calves by leaning against the hydrant, and while doing so he leaned down and examined it carefully.
Yes, a distinct white chalk mark had been made across the top of the iron device.
His plan had been to continue up N Street and make a big loop back to his place, but now that he knew he had to meet with Banfield before work, he cut his run short and turned to head back up Wisconsin.
It was laughable tradecraft, but no one was watching, and he got away with it.
ETHAN ARRIVED AT FORT Marcy Park at eight a.m., and he parked in the little lot a few spaced down from Harlan Banfield’s Volkswagen. He climbed out of his Mercedes, then marched quickly through the frosty morning up the hill with his hands deep in the pockets of his wool trench coat. The trail to the rendezvous point wound up and around a thick copse of trees, so it wasn’t until Ross rounded the turn that he stopped dead in his tracks.
Harlan Banfield was there, standing by the cannon, and he was not alone. With him was a woman with long, curly black hair. She wore a black coat and stood with her hands deep in her pockets. Vapor from her breathing hung around her face, obscuring her appearance.
Ethan felt a quick twinge of panic, and his face reddened with anger and confusion. His first thought was that the FBI was here, in the trees, and they were going to knock him to the ground and drag him off. He looked around, half expecting the ubiquitous Hollywood-generated sound of the clicking and clanking of guns as they were pointed at him.
But there were no sounds save for the rumble a big truck rolling along Chain Bridge Road a hundred yards on through the woods.
Banfield called out to Ross, his hand up and waving him forward. “It’s okay, Ethan. Everything is fine. Come over here, I have someone I’d like you to meet.”
Ethan wanted to turn away and run back to his car, but he saw no chance of escape if this was some sort of a trap. He forced himself to continue to the cannon and the two people waiting for him there.
He was all the way up to the woman before he recognized her. He’d seen her on TV and on the Internet, and he’d once seen her in person in Berlin.
She extended her hand and Ethan shook it. “My name is Gianna Bertoli.”
“I know who you are.” His anger subsided quickly, but his concern remained. As he looked once again into the trees he said, “I saw your film. I admire the work you do for the cause.”
She smiled. “Thank you, but it is you who deserves admiration.”
After an uncomfortable silence the three of them sat down on the small bench.
Ethan coughed nervously. “I hope to hell you haven’t come to film a documentary about all this.”
She shook her head with a smile. “No. Of course not. I just arrived from Geneva last night. I’m here to personally assure you we are going to take care of you throughout this investigation.”
“Then I guess that makes you the head of the International Transparency Project.”
Her smile widenened and she nodded. “While working on the documentary I got an intimate look at every aspect of t
he Project. I met all the players. I grew to respect the work they did. As it happened, I was asked to take over the reins after the former director fell into ill health, and it was an honor to do so.” She beamed. She was as charming as he remembered her from Berlin. “It’s a role that is both eased and complicated by my film work.”
Ethan breathed vapor into the cold morning. “You are here because Harlan told you about the polygraph.”
She smiled. “He mentioned it. And I know he also mentioned that you will beat the polygraph as soon as you realize you have nothing to hide.”
“With apologies, Ms. Bertoli, I do have something to hide.”
“But it is not guilt and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You had no role in what happened in India. I am here to guarantee you of that. It was just bad luck. Bad luck for everyone.”
Banfield reached into his coat and pulled out three small and plain plastic bottles, each one containing several pills. He said, “These will help. The first two are sertraline and clonazepam. They will relax you. You’ll want to take the pills this morning, as soon as you can, to see how they affect you. Test your speech. A good polygraph examiner can tell if you’re doping up to beat the box. Just take one each. This should not overly sedate you. Take one more of each a half-hour before the exam.”
“And the other bottle?”
“Glycopyrrolate. It will inhibit your ability to perspire. Take two pills now, and that should cover you for the rest of the day.”
Ethan took the pill bottles from Banfield and slipped them into the pocket of his wool coat, but his eyes remained on the Italian woman. “You wouldn’t have come if you weren’t concerned. You think I’ll fail, don’t you?”
“On the contrary, if you get arrested, you will be a lost cause to me. If I thought you were a lost cause, I wouldn’t be here. I have every intention of getting you extricated from this short-term problem and back to the important work you are doing. We have much invested in you at the Project. We have a lot of whistleblowers working for us.” She gave him a half-wink. “But you are our rock star.”
Ethan considered himself impervious to the charms of others. Working as a diplomat, he’d dealt with hundreds of people in his career who attempted to use their charisma to captivate and thereby control him.
Such tactics rarely worked on Ethan.
But Bertoli was different. She conveyed at once an air that was sexy, motherly, intelligent, and compassionate. She transmitted an appearance of calm control. Ethan found himself drawn to her magnetism.
She said, “I want you to know we are prepared to go to whatever lengths are necessary, with no restrictions at all, to protect you. Whistleblowers like you merit our services for as long as you need them.” She added, “You will be safe.”
“Thank you.”
“However, there is something you can do to help yourself.”
“What is that?”
“Create an ace in the hole.”
“I don’t understand.”
Bertoli smiled at him. Sympathetic. Compassionate. “Yes, you do. I am talking about you taking some information of a sensitive nature from the files where you work. Something damning. And then you encrypt it and keep it ready to use as a get-out-of-jail-free card if the need arises.”
Ethan Ross looked off into the woods. “You are talking . . . you are talking about a scrape.”
Banfield looked back and forth between the two of them. “A scrape?”
Ross said, “She wants me to pull every bit of classified data I can get my hands on. Store it on a portable and protected device of some sort.” His voice cracked. “And then run with it.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t need to run now, but you need to be ready. It is the only way, Ethan. Obtaining something from the files of a classified nature that, if revealed, could be more trouble to the American government then they are prepared to deal with. I’m not talking about sharing it with anyone. Not even me. No, this is just for you. Just for your own safety. If you need to protect yourself, you can have it ready to wave under their nose.”
“I’m not that naive, Ms. Bertoli. If the FBI finds out about what I did, then I am fucked.”
“It’s Gianna. And it’s naive to think the FBI doesn’t turn the other cheek when a target creates more trouble than he’s worth. I’ve seen it happen. They keep it quiet, of course. No one admits they dropped an investigation because a target held something over their heads, but it does happen.”
Ethan said, “I don’t even know how to scrape.”
Gianna reached into her purse. “I brought something with me from Europe.” She held up a yellow thumb drive, just a small plastic rectangle with a USB connector. On it was written NASCAR.
Ross didn’t understand why it was marked with advertising for stock-car racing, but he knew exactly what it was, and his cockiness meant he needed to tell her.
“That’s a crawler.”
The Swiss woman nodded her head solemnly.
Banfield was still out of the loop on this. As a journalist, he dealt with sources and leads. Not computer hacking. “What does it do?”
Ross answered, “Ms. Bertoli wants me to sneak this into NSC, plug it into a port on my computer. It will send a spiderlike program out there and scrape data. It will then pull it all into a file on the server and exfiltrate it out. How much data?” he asked.
“That is one-point-two terabytes.”
Ethan whispered, “Holy shit.” He looked the thumb drive over more closely. “You know it will work?”
“It will work. It was created by ex-employees of the NSA. People who know how to exploit the Intelink-TS network, but people without access to the system any longer.”
Banfield said, “So anyone who can get at a White House computer can plug that in and—”
Ethan cut him off. “No. You need the right administration access.”
Gianna said, “And we know you can get that access. We’ve been very impressed with your computer skills.”
Ethan sighed. “You will insult my intelligence if you pretend you don’t know I am dating an IT security expert working for a government contractor.”
Gianna’s smile now turned apologetic. “I am sorry about the façade. I was not sure how you would take it if you knew we looked into you. Not much, just a little.”
“It just makes your organization look competent. That is important to me, especially at present.” He sighed again, still thinking about the potential for a scrape. “I have a way to do this, but if I’m discovered, they will assume she helped me.”
“There is no reason it will ever be discovered unless you reveal it to the authorities, and you will only reveal it to the authorities if you need it as a bargaining chip.”
Gianna softened. “Of course, Ethan, I am biased because I am fond of you. But you need to be thinking of your own selfpreservation here. Eve will be fine. If you should need your get-out-of-jail card, it will only be because you have been discovered. If you have been discovered, that means they know you accessed the network. Not Eve Pang.”
“What is the crawler designed to exfiltrate?”
“U.S. intelligence proxy assets around the globe.”
“All over the world?”
“Correct.”
Ethan shook his head emphatically. “You don’t understand my motives. The intelligence I have passed has been done for ideological reasons. Causes I believe in. I am no enemy of the state. I’m not some zit-faced hacker who wants to vacuum all the secrets out of America to put them on the Internet. I have specific grievances with the administration in power, and I am working against specific targets. Not America itself.”
“As I said, this is your decision. But I do have some experience in protecting brave patriots like you, and my suggestion comes from many years of this experience. Nine times out of ten it is completely unnecessary, but I felt it wise to make the suggestion nevertheless. Just remember, if you decide at a later date that you might need to flee, it might well be too late for
you to gain entry to the data you need. The government will block your access to secure networks if they have any suspicions of your whistleblowing.”
Ethan’s face darkened and he leaned toward Bertoli. “Is that why you came? To have me pull more information off the network before I get arrested? To get one more piece of intelligence before I am worthless to you?”
“Your imagination is very vivid. No, Ethan. That is not why I am here. I am telling you, I do not want the information you take.”
Ethan stood, a way of ending the meeting. “I won’t need the crawler, because I won’t need an ace in the hole. I’m going to beat the box, the G’s are going to move on to something else in a few days, and the entire matter will be forgotten. Trust me, I remain in control of this situation.”
If Gianna was disappointed, she did a good job of hiding it. “Of course, Ethan. And we are here at your service.”
Ethan shook hands with the two and then he left them there in the trees. He retraced his steps back to his vehicle and drove back to D.C. He popped several of Banfield’s pills, swallowing them down a throat that had gone dry for some reason.
16
DOMINIC CARUSO WOKE at nine, late for him. Instantly he felt his pounding head, the stiffness in his ribs, and lingering stinging from the wound on his arm.
He sat up and rubbed his face. His disposition, if anything, was worse now than it was before he left his condo last night. More than anything, he was mad at himself for engaging the three assholes in the bar. Not because they didn’t deserve it, but because his commitment should have been to his clandestine work with The Campus, and instigating barroom brawls was listed nowhere in The Campus’s mission statement.