Anonymous Sources (31 page)

“I had asked for an interview with the director.”

“Again, he's not available. Between you and me, you're better off with
Tusk,” the spokesman added conspiratorially. “Former chief of station in Islamabad and Kabul. Amman too, I think. He speaks Dari, Pashto, God knows what else. He's the one who knows all the people worth knowing over there.”

“Well, I'll need it to be on the record.”

“Sorry. Can't do it. Not the way these guys roll.”

“But—”

“Listen, you gotta understand, this is a guy who's probably never talked to a journalist in his life. He only just got his cover lifted back in February.”

“He—what?”

“He was working undercover until he got called back to HQ a few months ago.”

I sighed. Nothing about this experience was making me envy Elias the intelligence beat. Did no one ever use a real name or speak on the record? Still, I couldn't see I had much of a choice. Maybe once I got out there and met the guy I could persuade him to give me a few quotes I could print. I agreed to a time and hung up.

The second call was from Marco Galloni.

It felt like years since I'd thought of him; it actually took me half a second to place the name. Was it only last week we'd been flirting and trading threats in the Eliot House courtyard?

“Alex,” he said urgently. “Hi. You okay? What are you mixed up in? I shouldn't be calling. But the weirdest alert just came across. About increased vigilance at border crossings, and new orders for highway patrol to stop produce-delivery trucks for random searches—”

“No. Are you kidding me?”

“No, they just came out this morning.”

“But from where?”

“Let's see . . . NCTC. The National Counterterrorism Center. You know, we're supposed to all be partners now, a whole new world of information sharing, yada yada yada. Sometimes stuff even trickles down
to lowly local law-enforcement guys like us. But, Alex, the memo mentions you.”

“What?”

“Yeah. It's in the increased airport-vigilance section. Something about a security incident yesterday on a British Airways flight?”

I laughed darkly. “A security incident. That would be one way of putting it. The woman sitting next to me was murdered. And it appears it was actually me they were after.”

“But you're okay?”

“I appear to still be among the living, yes.”

Galloni made a whistling noise as he exhaled. “Jesus. Why would someone want to—want you dead?”

“I don't know. The last few days have been extremely strange. Listen, Lieutenant—Marco—sorry, I'm not even sure what to call you—”

“I think we can go with
Marco
at this point.”

“Okay. Marco. No one seems to believe me about this, but I think it's somehow all mixed up with Thom Carlyle. I think he was involved in something big. I don't know exactly what, and I can't tell you everything I do know. But this wasn't—this wasn't just a guy who fell out of a bell tower because he was depressed or got clumsy after a couple of beers.”

“Yeah. I think we were in agreement on that point last week. I just can't prove it.”

“No. Me either.”

At that moment, a truck beeped its horn loudly behind me.

“Alex? Where are you?”

“Washington. Just walking down K Street. Trying to find a decent sandwich.”

“But I called your desk.”

“It's auto-forwarding calls to my cell phone. I had a meeting at the White House this morning. And I'm off to the CIA this afternoon. Quite the glamorous life I'm living down here.”

Galloni was quiet for a moment. “Alex, two thoughts. I want you to listen to me, okay? You should switch to Skype. Stop using the cell.”

I stopped walking. “Why?”

“Because I can't tell you everything I know either. But trust me, it's not that hard to eavesdrop on a cell phone once somebody knows the number. Skype is harder to intercept. Still not hard, mind you, but harder.”

“Okay, but—”

“You just told me somebody tried to kill you yesterday. What makes you think they've stopped trying? And this morning your name went out in an urgent memo to every metropolitan police department on the East Coast. I'd say making yourself a little tougher to find might be a good idea.”

“Fine. No more cell phones. What was the second thing?”

“Are you staying somewhere safe? Don't say the name out loud.”

“Now you're making me paranoid! Yes, I am staying somewhere safe.”

“Good. I'm going to call a buddy of mine down there. He's in the Secret Service. You going back to the White House?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Still. His name's Ralph. Ralph McNamara. He's a good guy. Solid. Actually, he owes me a beer next time he's in Boston. I'm gonna tell him to keep an eye out for you.”

“Thanks. I'm touched. But I'm fine.”

“No, you're not. Remember. Ralph McNamara. You see him, you tell him Marco Galloni said to take care of you.”

    

    

T
hey say the best spies look like Midwestern dentists.

Or accountants.

Meaning they have bland, easy-to-forget faces. People too handsome or too ugly or too distinctive in any way could be a liability. They stand out.

If true, Edmund Tusk made an excellent spy.

He was neither tall nor short. He could have been forty or sixty or anywhere in between. He was portly, but not excessively so. His hair was colorless and thinning and he spoke in a flat, accentless voice. Tusk's only distinguishing characteristic was a pair of enormous glasses,
with lenses so thick it was hard to make out the color of his eyes.

I had been swept through the main lobby, where the huge CIA seal looked exactly as it does in the movies. The lobby was gray and white marble. Oppressive. And dated, the way you'd imagine an elite spy headquarters looking in the 1970s. Past a row of metal turnstiles I could see a glass wall and sunlight from an inner courtyard. A few Agency staffers were hurrying past. But the place felt strangely deserted. I had expected fierce security—metal detectors, X-ray machines, body-cavity searches, who knew? But there was just one uniformed guard behind a big desk. In front of it stood the spokesman who had called me earlier. He instructed me to leave my phone in a cubby behind the desk. Then he steered me away from the turnstiles and up several stairs to the left, into a small, antiseptic conference room.

Edmund Tusk was already there waiting.

He stood up to greet me, adjusted his paunch above his gray suit trousers, and sat back down. The spokesman looked nervously from Tusk to me and cleared his throat.

“So, just to reconfirm the ground rules we discussed—”

“We're good,” I interrupted. “No quotes, no recordings, no photos, no nothing. Got it.”

“And actually, you're free to go,” added Tusk, to my surprise. “I think Alexandra and I will get along fine on our own.”

“Oh, no, I'll stay. I'd prefer to.”

“I insist.”

“But Agency policy—” The spokesman tried to protest, but Tusk was now making a shooing motion with his hands.

“Out you go. I promise not to give away any state secrets. Just leave the door open a crack, will you? For the cat.”

The cat? I wanted to inquire, but Tusk had leaned back and was studying me with great concentration, his eyes swimming behind the huge glasses. A button strained against his belly. I wondered vaguely whether it would hold. Then he smiled.

“So. Alexandra James. It's good to meet you. You're doing wonders for morale around here, you know. We always enjoy watching someone else ratchet up the stress levels of our brethren over at the White House. I gather you worked the good general into quite a rage this morning.”

“I thought he was always like that.”

“True. Not the gentlest soul. Was he wearing the Semper Fi tie?”

Now I smiled. “And the cuff links.”

“Excellent. Something so exquisitely . . .
insecure
about that, isn't there? But I digress. How can I help you?”

I took a breath. “I've been reporting on a man named Nadeem Siddiqui. I understand US intelligence was interested in him too, so I'm assuming you know who I'm talking about and also that he's dead. Can you tell me what you know about him? How he died? Who he was associating with?”

“No. I can't get into individuals. Just broad themes, that sort of thing.”

“But would you steer me away from—”

“I don't play that game, Alexandra.”

I tried another angle. “This group UTN. Everyone thought they had gone away after 9/11. Are they active again? Why is the administration so concerned about them?”

He answered my question with one of his own. “Was it Carspecken who told you there's concern about UTN?”

“My meeting with the general was off the record, so I can't say.”

“Mike Carspecken wouldn't know his UTN from his arsehole,” Tusk snorted. “He can't keep many acronyms straight in his head at any given time, so he just latches on to one and runs with it. Sure, UTN is running around in Pakistan. So is Hizb ut-Tahrir, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and half a dozen Taliban factions, not to mention the Haqqani network, and Hekmatyar's guys . . . You've got all kinds of crazies running around. Of course, unfortunately, the most dangerous ones are completely sane.

“Here's how I summed it up for the president the other day,” Tusk
added, a tad pompously. “Pakistan has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth. And it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace on earth. What could possibly go wrong?”

He gave a strange little giggle. For all his blandness, there was an effeminate quality about Edmund Tusk.

“You—you mentioned the nuclear weapons program,” I said. “This banana shipment that Nadeem Siddiqui had delivered. That you guys are now looking for. Is that really because there might be nuclear material inside?”

“Again, I can't comment on any specific situation.”

“But would it actually be possible to steal a nuclear weapon, hide it inside a fruit crate, and just mail it to America?”

“Can't go there.”

I was getting frustrated. “Okay. Hypothetically speaking—”

“I don't indulge in hypotheticals.”

“Fine. Broadly,
thematically
speaking—how small can a nuclear weapon be? Would one fit inside a crate the size of a car?”

He shifted in his chair as if considering how to answer. “You know,” he said finally, “it's difficult sometimes to remember what's classified and what's not. Isn't that funny? So many not even remotely interesting things are top secret. And so many important ones lie right there in plain view.” He paused. “But I think it's fairly common knowledge that you can build a sweet little bomb these days with less than forty pounds of HEU.”

“HEU?”

“Weapons-grade uranium.”

“That's it? Forty pounds? But that's—that's the size of a child.”

“Well, that's not counting the explosives, the electronics, the casing, what have you. But no, it needn't be large. And then you pop it inside a lead bag and you can move it wherever you want, no worries.”

“It can't be that easy. I mean, hasn't Iran been trying to build nukes for ages? And they haven't managed, and they've got a whole country working on it?”

Tusk summoned his patience visibly. “You miss the point, my dear. Pakistan already
has
nuclear weapons. You're just talking about plucking one off the shelf. Anyway, Iran—well, the whole analogy just doesn't work. Iran is trying to build a nuclear
program
. If you're a terrorist, you don't need a program, you just want one bomb. It doesn't have to be reliable, does it? Even if it fizzles and doesn't work that well, you've still succeeded at producing a complete fucking catastrophe.”