House Divided (12 page)

Claire had a four-hundred-calorie lunch and then went to the gym to kick and hit the heavy bag for half an hour. She liked hitting the heavy bag. She had so much aggression in her that it sometimes seemed like hitting the bag was her only outlet. It was either hit the bag or hit Dillon.

As she was walking to the locker room, a guy waved to her—a good-looking guy maybe a year or two younger than her. She pretended she didn’t see him. She knew he was working up the nerve to ask her for a date, and she dreaded the prospect of turning him down, as she knew she would.

She’d been on a total of six first dates in the last ten years and she never saw any of the men again. They had all been decent guys—men that most single women her age would kill for. She even had sex with one of them—or tried to—because she thought having sex might jump-start her emotions. God, what a disaster that had been. Now, instead of sex, she worked and she exercised—and cleaned. She had to have the cleanest condo in Laurel, Maryland.

Following her workout, Claire had a brief unproductive conference with her technicians. They were striking out everywhere. They still couldn’t identify the cell phone owner who had called Hopper, and they could find no link via phone records or e-mails connecting Russo, Martin Breed, and the
Washington Post
reporter, Hansen.

The whereabouts of the reporter was another dead end. Neither his body nor his car had been found. And his damn bosses at the Post—based on statements they had given to the D.C. Metro police, and which the police had helpfully entered into their computers—were clueless as to what Hansen had been working on before he disappeared. All Claire could tell was that Hansen had been a political firefly, constantly flitting from story to story, investigating anything involving Congress or the administration that smacked of scandal or corruption. But he didn’t normally work the military side of things.

She also had a tech hack into the
Post
’s computers to look for anything Hansen might have filed that seemed relevant. Zip again. The last story he submitted had been written two weeks before he disappeared and was about a sixty-two-year-old congressman using a corporate jet for a trip to the Bahamas with a thirty-four-year-old ex-Redskins cheerleader. A story, in other words, as old and tired and tawdry as Washington itself.

The tech did find one interesting thing while poking through the
Post’s
electronic files. A GS-11 analyst at Langley had leaked a story about the CIA giving money to a psychopath in Hamas, the analyst apparently having some pro-Israeli bias. Claire couldn’t tell from the
Post’s
files why the CIA was funding a Hamas murderer and she finally decided she didn’t care. It just made her furious when low-level government employees leaked things to the media; leaking information was a management prerogative. She anonymously e-mailed the name of the CIA tattletale to a heartless prick at Langley she knew, confident that the leaker would soon be stationed in Greenland.

She looked up at the clock. It was seven
P.M
. and she could feel the onset of a migraine, so she turned off the lights in her office to see if that might make her headache go away. As she sat there in the dark, she reflected on the fact that the day had been a total waste. Goddammit, she needed to go
proactive
on this thing. She needed to stop looking at records and make something happen. She needed …

Two of her male technicians were slinking toward the door. They had their coats on.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” she said quietly.

The techs practically jumped out of their skins. With the lights out in her office, they thought she had left for the day. Fat chance.

“Uh, home,” one of the men said.

Claire didn’t say anything.

“Geez, Claire, we’ve been here like
twelve
hours. We’re tired.”

Twelve hours. Big deal. She thought about their current assignments. They weren’t involved in the Russo op, but what they were working on was important. Hell, it was all important—but she couldn’t afford to burn them out.

“Good night,” she said.

The two men looked at each other, surprised, and moved quickly toward the door.

Claire closed her eyes again.

She could see him: her fiancé, Navy Commander Mark Daniels. He had called her on her cell phone to tell her he’d just been summoned to a meeting over at the Pentagon and he didn’t know when he’d be home that day. At the time they were sharing an apartment in Annapolis, not sure when they’d get married, just knowing marriage was inevitable and that life was perfect the way it was.

She remembered being annoyed by the call. Of course he’d be late, she’d thought at the time. She’d be late, too. Half the people who worked in Washington, D.C., would be late that night because thirty-seven minutes earlier the second plane had struck the World Trade Center. So when Mark called, she’d been practically sprinting down a hallway toward a conference room because things were going crazy at Fort Meade. Half the bosses at the NSA were trying to figure out what had happened, and it seemed like the other half were already working on a story to exonerate the agency.

He’d been wearing his dress blues that day because he’d had some sort of ceremony to attend that morning. She could see him: tall, dark-haired, beautiful physique; two gorgeous dimples formed in his cheeks when he smiled. He wouldn’t have been smiling when he called, though; he would have looked serious, his eyes flashing, worried and angry, yet still courteous enough to call and let her know that he’d be late. And she could see herself, all impatient, no time to chat, striding down the hallway, irritated that he had called when he did. And then she heard him scream. She’d never forget that sound.

She could see him—and hear him—as he was incinerated by thousands of gallons of exploding aviation fuel as American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

She’d never see him again—and she’d always see him.

Levy watched Alberta Merker enter her house. It was nine
P.M
. Merker put in a long day, doing whatever it was that she did.

Merker’s house was in a quiet middle-class neighborhood and her next-door neighbors appeared to be at home. He could see people moving about in one of the houses and lights were on in the other. The houses across the street from Merker’s, all except one, appeared to be occupied as well.

He would have to wait until her neighbors were asleep.

He wondered if he was doing the right thing. He could have followed Merker tomorrow when she went to work to see where she would lead him, but he didn’t have time for that. He needed to know immediately what she was doing and who employed her.

He closed his eyes and thought, as he often did at quiet moments, about the last time he’d seen his brother. When his father had left he’d been too young and he didn’t really have a clear memory of the man. But his brother he remembered vividly: standing there in his uniform, his pant cuffs tucked into the top of his combat boots, the green beret on his head, the broad smile on his face—and then his brother vanished. Forever.

He also thought back to the day he met Charles Bradford for the first time. Bradford had been a colonel then and his commanding officer. It was midnight and Levy was sitting alone in the sentinels’ changing room, only nineteen years old, feeling totally alone and more depressed than ever. Bradford sat down next to him and asked how he was doing, and he was shocked to find Bradford knew about his father and brother. And when Bradford spent an hour with him, talking to him about the army, about the country, about patriotism, Levy was moved to tears. He never forgot that night. He didn’t speak to Bradford again for ten years, and when he did, he was astonished Bradford remembered him.

He was even more astonished by the job Charles Bradford asked him to do.

By one
A.M
., Merker and her neighbors appeared to be sleeping. Levy put on a ski mask, took a small gym bag from the trunk of his car, and picked the lock on Merker’s back door. He wasn’t particularly good with lock picks, and it took him almost five minutes. As he entered the house, he noticed a pleasant odor. Merker might have been burning incense or candles before she went to bed.

Merker slept on her back, her mouth slightly open, and there was a lamp on a small table next to her bed. Levy placed the gym bag on the floor, found the lamp’s switch, then pulled the Colt from his shoulder holster. He placed the barrel of the gun against the center of Merker’s forehead and turned on the light.

Merker came awake instantly and saw Levy looming over her, the gun in his hand, the ski mask covering his face. She opened her mouth to scream but Levy prodded her head with the gun and said, “Don’t.” She clamped her mouth shut; her brown eyes were huge with fear.

“If you scream,” Levy said, “I’ll pistol-whip you. If you fight me, I’ll pistol-whip you. I’ll make your face look like a Halloween mask. Do you understand?”

Merker nodded. He noticed that although the woman was clearly frightened, she wasn’t panicking, she wasn’t on the verge of hysteria. She was thinking about how to escape. She was a professional, of some sort.

“What do you want?” Merker said.

Levy didn’t answer. He threw back the sheets covering Merker. She was wearing what looked like men’s boxer shorts and a Garfield-the-cat T-shirt.

“Roll over on your stomach,” Levy said.

“I have money in the freezer,” Merker said. “There’s five hundred dollars in a little Tupperware thing. My credit cards are in my purse.”

“If you don’t turn over onto your stomach immediately,” Levy said, “I’m going to hurt you.”

Merker turned over and Levy reached down into the gym bag for a roll of duct tape. He used the tape to bind her hands, then took her by the shoulders and turned her so she was lying once again on her back.

“What do you want?” Merker asked again.

“I want to know who you work for,” Levy said. “I want to know who sent you to Arlington Hospital to get that man’s fingerprints.”

“What?” she said, feigning confusion, but Levy could tell she wasn’t confused.

“Alberta, tell me who you work for and I’ll leave. If you don’t tell me, then … well, I’m going to make you tell me.”

“I work in the commissary at Fort Meade. I buy stuff: you know, the produce and meat and shit. You got me mixed up with somebody. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, about fingerprints.”

Levy shook his head. “Stand up.”

“Look in my purse if you don’t believe me,” Merker said. “You’ll see my badge for the commissary.”

He was sure she did have such an ID badge. That meant nothing.

“Stand up,” Levy said again.

Merker rose from her bed and for an instant she seemed relieved, probably thinking that if Levy wanted her out of the bed he wasn’t planning to rape her.

“Go to the kitchen,” he said, and gave her a small push in the back.

In the kitchen, Levy turned on the lights. “Sit down in one of those chairs near the table.”

“Look, you got me confused with—”

He backhanded her. He didn’t slap her that hard but she stumbled against the kitchen table.

“Sit in the chair,” he said.

He took the roll of duct tape and wrapped the tape around her chest and legs, binding her to the chair. Her hands were still taped behind her back.

“What do you want?” Merker said.

“I told you. I want to know who you work for.”

“I work for the goddamn army! I work in the commissary at Fort Meade. How many fuckin’ times do I have to tell you? You’re making a mistake.”

Levy took a cloth sack from the gym bag and placed the sack over Merker’s head.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Levy didn’t answer. He tipped back the chair she was sitting in so that she was now lying on her back, her head on the floor, bound to the chair. He then searched the cabinets in the kitchen until he found what he was looking for: cooking pots. One was a five gallon aluminum pot that she probably used for making spaghetti or stews. Two other pots were cast iron and about half that size. He filled all three pots with water.

Waterboarding is a very effective form of persuasion. The prisoner is immobilized, usually on a board or table, a cloth sack is placed over his head, his head is placed in a position lower than his feet—and then water is poured onto the sack. It sounds harmless, and the prisoner isn’t marked in any way—except psychologically. Prisoners subjected to this procedure can have nightmares for life and often develop a number of phobias, some of them completely debilitating, such as an inability to take showers or having panic attacks whenever it rains.

During waterboarding, as the water cascades over the prisoner’s face and into his nose and mouth, his gag reflex kicks in. He begins to choke and cough uncontrollably, and the sensation is identical to drowning, a drowning that never stops. Interrogators have found the technique so effective that hardened men, fanatical terrorists, will sometimes confess in less than five minutes.

“Who do you work for?” Levy said.

“I told you. I …”

Levy began to pour the water onto Merker’s face and she whipped her head from side to side, coughing and choking and gagging, straining against the tape binding her to the chair, the chair bucking off the floor. He poured for almost two minutes—two minutes that would have seemed like an eternity to the woman. When he stopped pouring, Merker sucked in air in huge, ragged gasps, her chest heaving.

“Who do you work for?” Levy said.

She didn’t answer. It sounded as if she might be hyperventilating because of the panic she was certainly feeling, but she didn’t seem to make any attempt to speak.

He began to pour the water again.

Then something strange happened: Merker stopped moving. She just lay there, not choking or trying to evade the water. It appeared as if she’d passed out, but that didn’t make sense. That was one of the nice things about waterboarding: prisoners normally remain conscious, or at least semiconscious, throughout the process.