Direct Action (22 page)

Tom had just lifted the wine to his lips when the cell phone in his coveralls vibrated. He set the glass down, pulled the phone out, and held it to his ear. “Allô.”

“C’est Tony. On peut parler?” Tony Wyman sounded stressed. “Sure,” Tom answered in French. “What’s up?”
“I’ve just come in from the home office.”
Tom cracked a smile. “Bienvenue.”
“Stow it. The job’s off. Come back to the office. No need to waste your

time waiting around where you are.”
“You’re kidding.”
“ ’Fraid not.” Wyman sighed. Tom could hear the man exhale. He

3 NOVEMBER 2003
6:37
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223 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. HONORÉ

“THEY WHAT ?” Tom looked across the desk at Antony Wyman. Wyman had been flying all day. He hadn’t even checked into his hotel, and yet he was impeccably turned out. How the man could do that was something Tom couldn’t fathom. “Who shut me down? I’ll talk to them. C’mon, Tony—let me talk to whoever it was.”

Wyman shook his head. “You know that’s impossible.”
Tom pulled uncomfortably at his wet shirt collar. “How can they be so stupid?” It had been a rush to get back. He and Reuven had made their way from rue Lambert to the warehouse, changed clothes and IDs, then run a cleaning route to the safe house, where they’d changed clothes and identities once more. Since it was rush hour, Tom used the motorcycle to get to the 4627 offices near the Place des Ternes. It had started to rain just as he’d sped through the Place du Brésil and he’d gotten soaked. He’d been riding alone. Reuven declined Tom’s invitation to accompany him, saying there was some trolling to be done and they’d catch up in the morning.
Tom’s curt tone reflected his mood. “I was just starting to make some headway, damnit.”
“They don’t care about headway,” Wyman growled. He glanced around the office with the look of a drill sergeant making a white-glove inspection, then he refocused on Tom. “Look, the seventh floor
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is running scared these days. There are more CYA leaks coming out of Langley than I’ve ever seen—and I’d be very surprised if a lot of them weren’t sanctioned from the top as a way of putting some blue sky between CIA and the administration on these Iraq screwups. As much as I dislike admitting it, politics plays a part in what we do. Sometimes we just have to back off—delay taking action until we can find another way of achieving our goals without making waves.”
“You’re sounding like one of them, Tony.” Tom wasn’t willing to accept that kind of rationalization—even from someone like Wyman. “Goddamnit, this is too important. I’m onto something big here. Immense.”
“I understand. I know the stakes, Tom. More than that—it’s personal. These sons of bitches killed Jim McGee and I want their heads on pikes as much as you do. But we’re up against a six-hundred-pound gorilla here and its name is bureaucracy. Langley insists on total control, and right now they’re yanking at our leash and saying, ‘Sit; stay.’ Don’t forget—we’re contractors.”
“We’re operators, and they’re idiots.” Tom clenched his fists. “Look at how Langley dealt with MJ’s stuff.”
“When has incompetence ever stopped anyone at Langley from becoming a division chief—or DCI, for that matter?”
“Jeezus, Tony—”
“Look, I’m more pissed than you are.” Wyman’s palm slapped the desk. “It’s absurd: I was told point-blank there is no Tariq Ben Said.”
“But—”
“Oh, they admit there’s a bomber out there. But they insist that by laying low and setting out traplines, the system will find him before he can do any damage.”
Wyman caught the incredulous look on Tom’s face and cut him off before he could speak. “Don’t ask me which system and what traplines, Tom, because I have no more idea what the hell they’re talking about than you do. Worse, they take a harder line on Imad Mugniyah. It wasn’t Mugniyah. Not in Gaza; and not in the surveillance photographs Shahram took on rue Lambert. The official line is that Mugniyah is somewhere in Lebanon, running Hezbollah’s operations against the Israelis and surveilling the American embassy. He is not involved with al-Qa’ida. And he is not partnered with Tariq Ben Said, because there is no Tariq Ben Said. Full stop.” “Why is Langley so unwilling to see what’s going on?”
“Like I said, politics.” Tony Wyman shook his head. “Headquarters rejects your premise because it contradicts everything they’ve been telling the president for almost three years now. Accepting the Ben Said–slash– Imad Mugniyah–slash–Arafat–slash–Tehran–slash–al-Qa’ida alliance would mean a direct link between Arafat, UBL, and Tehran.” “So? The president himself has talked about the UBL–Tehran link.” “Ah,” Wyman said, “but the Romanoffs at Langley have consistently argued that with the exception of Ansar al-Islam, no such link exists. Worse, tying Mugniyah and Ben Said to Gaza would indicate Arafat’s involved—Arafat would be connected to UBL, the Seppah, and Imad Mugniyah. C’mon, Tom—the CIA for years has its money on Arafat and Arafat’s Palestinian National Authority. CIA spent hundreds of millions helping the PA create a security apparatus—it was even called the Tenet Plan. CIA spent millions teaching Palestinian security people tradecraft. And what have the Ps done with all that education and all that money? They’ve become better terrorists is what they’ve done with it. How the hell can Tenet admit he was so wrong for so long and still not resign? He can’t—and so, he and his crowd stick their heads in the sand, leak positive stories to their friends in the media, and tell the White House and the oversight committees everything’s great, and they’re making real progress on America’s global war on terror, and in a mere five years, the clandestine service will be better than ever.”
“It’s all horse puckey.”
“Of course it is. The DO’s in a heap of trouble.” Wyman’s eyes flashed. “Christ, Tom, Ali Atwa, Mugniyah’s number two on the TWA 847 hijacking, is wandering around Beirut these days, under real name, and free as a bird. And what has CIA done about it? CIA has done nothing. What has Colin Powell’s State Department done? They’ve done nothing.” Wyman paused. “I took a snatch plan to Langley three weeks ago and they turned me down cold. ‘State will never agree. The Syrians might get upset.’ The Syrians? The frigging Syrians are getting paid to ship foreign fighters into Iraq. We should have bombed Damascus the same night we did Baghdad.” Wyman played with the monocle hanging around his neck. “Christ, how I wish Casey were still alive.”
“You’re not the only one.” Tom scratched his chin. “Isn’t there any way—”
“I spoke to the goddamn ADDO
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himself on this. He assured me the materials you sent forward were brought to the highest levels.”
“So they could be round-filed.”
“We have a problem here, Tom. We’re dealing with a dysfunctional organism. The WMD groups in Iraq are incapable of handling their jobs and yet they’re getting performance bonuses. The chief in Riyadh doesn’t speak Arabic, there are no Saudi recruitments, and he got a performance bonus, too. We hired Jim McGee because Langley hadn’t recruited a single PA officer in years—but TA got station performance bonuses. A system that pays people bonuses to reward them for failing is entirely broke. But it’s the only system we’ve got right now. Until someone gets rid of Tenet, nothing’s going to change.”
Tom curled his lower lip. “Thanks, Tony, I needed that.”
Wyman’s eyes narrowed and his tone grew frosty. “Sarcasm isn’t going to help. Bottom line, Tom: Langley insists on handling things their way.”
“Which is?”
“To hunker down, stay quiet, and hope all the problems will go away. They won’t pay us to uncover Ben Said. And you know as well as I do that these ops are both complicated and costly, and without Langley’s funding . . .” He looked at the younger man apologetically. “We’re not the government, Tom. There are limits to what we can do unless someone’s willing to pay.”
“This sucks.”
“Agreed. But unless we can find ourselves a wedge...”
Tom crossed his arms. “What about the bombs? The detonators? Ben Said’s new explosives? If that isn’t a call to action, I don’t know what is.”
“Action?” Wyman snorted derisively. “The system, Tom, detests action. Trying to get the system to react is like trying to turn a supertanker around.”
“What do they want? Another World Trade Center?”
“I think it would take about that much.”
Tony was right, of course. Between organizational timidity, political correctness, risk aversion, and lack of strong leadership on the operational level, it was virtually impossible to defeat the jihad Islamists were waging against America and the West. The USG was spending buckets o’ cash to—as the State Department’s public diplomacy panjandrums kept saying—“win the hearts and minds” of all those hundreds of millions of Muslims living under various forms of dictatorship. “You can’t act without listening to the Arab Street,” State kept insisting. What crap. Bill Casey said it best: “When you’ve got ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
Tom said, “The Israelis seemed worried enough when I laid it out for them. Maybe they can convince Langley we’re on the right track.”
“Not these days. There’s a problem with Israel these days.”
“There seem to be a lot of problems, Tony.”
“There are a lot of problems, son.”
“What’s up with Israel?”
Wyman adjusted his right shirt cuff. “We’re about to experience a huge hiccup with our Israeli friends. Something to do with Iran policy, classified documents making their way to Mossad via a leak somewhere in the Pentagon. The FBI’s gotten into it within the past couple of weeks and Langley is keeping Gelilot
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at arm’s length these days.”
“Christ.”
“I took some heat over our Israeli associate.”
“Reuven?”
“They said they don’t like the fact that we have foreign nationals working for us.”
Tom was incredulous. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m serious.”
“I love it. Most of our embassies are run by foreign nationals. CIA depends on foreign nationals—liaison relationships. And Langley’s upset because we have a retired Mossad officer working for us?”
Tony Wyman played with his monocle. “There are those who insist retirement’s just another form of cover when it comes to Mossad combatants.”
Tom cocked his head toward the window, which was covered with three layers of antisurveillance drapery. “Sam Waterman used to say that all the time about everybody.” He paused. “You don’t happen to know what Sam’s up to?”
“No idea. Saw him about a month ago at the club. He was having lunch with Ed Kane.” Wyman shifted in the big leather swivel chair. “Anyway, the seventh floor is unhappy about Reuven Ayalon.” He looked at Tom reassuringly. “But they’ll get over it.”
“Hope so. Because we’ve made progress because of Reuven, Tony. You saw the messages from Israel. Reuven and I know who, and we know where. We just don’t know when, or what the targets are. That’s why I wanted to get inside the safe house.”
“Understood.” Wyman shifted himself in the chair. “Still...”
Tom looked at his boss’s face. “What?”
“There’s something else. I haven’t mentioned it because neither Bronco, Charlie, nor I is sure how to handle things.”
The remark was uncharacteristic, and Tom said so.
“We’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that our contacts at Langley are lying to us. The reluctant conclusion is that they’re trying to push us away.”
“But why?”
“Ah,” Wyman said, “there’s the rub. It doesn’t make any sense. We’ve produced incredible product for them over the past twenty months. Charlie’s work in Libya helped result in Qaddafi’s decision to end his WMD programs and allow inspections. Bronco’s done a lot to repair the rift between the U.S. and Russia. And so far as al-Qa’ida goes, 4627’s been responsible for developing the intelligence instrumental in the capture of sixteen top-level AQN
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operatives. Sure, we butted heads over Iraq—the WMD material. But . . .” His voice trailed off. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Tom started to speak, but Wyman cut him off. “Look, this isn’t your concern. What does affect both you and Reuven is that Langley won’t pay 4627 to follow up on the Gaza murders, even if they were to track to Imad Mugniyah and Ben Said.”
“It makes no sense.”
“When has absurdity ever been eliminated as a factor when we’re talking about the seventh floor?”
Tom looked at his boss. “You think it’s coming from the seventh floor?”
“I think the whole seventh floor is running scared. There are four separate reports due out next year from Congress, from the 9/11 Commission, and from CIA’s inspector general. Each one will be more devastating to CIA than the last. So how bad do you think it will look when it’s revealed that CIA leadership has had to outsource the war on terror because they didn’t have the internal resources to develop adequate human-based intelligence to be able to satisfy the administration’s demands for answers and results?”
“That’s why they’re shutting me down? Goddamn seventh-floor egos? Frigging executives worried about job security?” Tom was furious. “People are dead, Tony. And there’ll be more corpses soon. We know that.”
“Langley’s beginning to think like an automobile manufacturer.”
“How?”
“Let’s say carmakers discover a flaw in a vehicle’s ignition system that might lead to fires. They estimate it will cost X dollars to fix the problem for the two hundred thousand autos with flaws. If there’ll only be Y number of fatalities, and the lawsuit factor is Z, they decide that it will be more cost-efficient to allow the flaw to remain than spend the money to recall every imperfect vehicle.”
“That’s immoral.”
“What’s your point? We’re in a business that sometimes confronts us with nothing but immoral choices,” Wyman said.
He slapped his palm on the desk. “Enough of the thumb-sucking, Tom. Here’s something you can act on: I learned that as of last week, headquarters dumped the whole Imad Mugniyah–slash–Tariq Ben Said mess onto Paris station.”
That didn’t make sense at all. If Reuven was right—and Tom had no reason to doubt him—Imad Mugniyah had slipped back into the shadows—he was either in Lebanon or Iran. It was Ben Said who’d returned to Paris to put the finishing touches on his backpack IEDs. Tom gave his boss a quizzical look. “I thought you said Langley’s opinion was Ben Said doesn’t exist.”
Wyman gave Tom a jaundiced look. “Strange development, ain’t it? We’re told it’s not Imad Mugniyah in the photos and there is no Ben Said, and now Paris station is ordered to poke around for them.”
Tom thought about it. “Very weird.”
“Of course it could just be RUMINT. I was having dinner with an old colleague. He said he’d heard some corridor gossip about a meeting in Paris with an Iranian source—couldn’t give me a name or any other specifics. The Iranian offered us Imad Mugniyah’s head on the proverbial platter. But he wanted the twenty-five-mil reward State’s posted. He asked for a down payment of half a million dollars—seed money for baksheesh and payoffs in Tehran was how it was described to me—and the balance of twenty-four mil five hundred thou to be paid on delivery.”
“Tony . . .” Tom’s antennae went active. “When was that offer made?”
“When...” Wyman took a Palm Pilot out of the desk drawer, turned it on, screwed the monocle into his right eye, tapped the screen with the stylus, and peered. “Sometime in mid-October. I was told it was put on the table within a couple of days of the Gaza flap.” He looked at Tom. “About the same time you were meeting with your Iranian friend Shahram Shahristani.”
“Uh-huh.” Tom’s mind was kicking into overdrive.
“My contact said RUMINT was the Iranian met with someone from Paris station.”