The Assassin (10 page)

The thought that this file might have been intentionally pulled out of circulation piqued Kharmai’s interest, but the possibility seemed to have escaped Liz Peterson. The British computer engineer seemed almost bored as she closed the door and wandered back to their improvised work area, flipping the folder open and scanning the compact lines of text as she approached.

Her eyebrows rose as she dropped into her chair. “Wow, this is unbelievable.”

Naomi was on the edge of her seat. “
What?
Come on, Liz. I’m dying here.”

“He’s an American. An ex-soldier, no less. You wouldn’t have thought it, would you? I mean, his Arabic is nearly perfect, at least on tape—”

“Liz.” Peterson looked up at her name and was surprised to find that Naomi’s face had suddenly gone pale. “Who is he?”

Another glance at the file. “Umm, hold on a second. I hate the way they compile these damn reports. You can never find the most basic… Okay, here it is. Jason March.”

Naomi felt like the ground had suddenly dropped out from under her. She caught her breath and struggled to think it through, looking for the rational explanation.

It had to be a mistake. Jason March was dead, killed in an airstrike on a Hamas training camp the previous year, less than a month after he had attempted — and failed — to assassinate three world leaders in the U.S. capital. The man’s death had been verified through numerous sources and celebrated at the highest levels of U.S. intelligence. She had seen the after-action report; it had been leaked to the press…. She grabbed the edge of the desk to steady herself and held out her hand for the folder, knowing that the face she was about to see would be,
had
to be unfamiliar. But when she looked at the first page and saw the attached photograph, her worst fears were confirmed.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

CHAPTER 10

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA • IRAQ

When Harper stepped into the plush, seventh-floor office ten minutes late, he immediately registered the tension in the room. Director Robert Andrews, a large man draped in one of the Ralph Lauren Purple Label suits that he favored, was concluding a call in the meeting area. Sitting directly across from him was the deputy DCI. Rachel Ford was turned out in an ivory blouse of fine silk, which she’d paired with a form-fitting navy skirt. Her hair was perfectly arranged, for once, and her light make-up seemed freshly applied. Her anger, though, was almost palpable, and it hardened her features, somehow negating her aesthetic efforts.

Ford was the first to speak. “I’m glad you could make it, John. We seem to have quite a situation brewing here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Jonathan Harper didn’t respond to the sarcastic remark, instead moving forward to take a seat, glancing around in the process. The DCI’s office was located close to his own and was similar in size and constitution. Harper’s own space, however, was utilitarian at best: neat, sparsely furnished, and free of personal touches, save only for a small photograph of his wife. The director had gone the other way entirely, surrounding himself with inlaid mahogany and Italian leather. It was too much, but fitting. Harper had long ago noticed the not-so-subtle differences between career intelligence officers and outside appointees such as Robert Andrews. Still, Andrews was better than most, including the woman who was currently staring him down.

“Have you seen this?” Ford flicked a hand toward the television on the other side of the room. Even at a distance, Harper could make out the silent images of an Iraqi mob screaming their outrage into the cameras. Crude, hastily assembled posters of a cleric in full robes bobbed amongst the dark heads. The face on the banners was instantly recognizable to Harper as that of Arshad Kassem.

“CNN’s been running it all day,” Ford continued. Her voice was cold. “Some high-profile religious and political figures in Baghdad are accusing us — and by that, I mean
us
, not just the United States — of involvement in his kidnapping, and the press is all over it. Apparently, Kassem has some pretty important friends over there. Even worse, they know how to connect the dots. There’s already speculation about how this might tie in to the bombing of the Babylon Hotel.”

Harper nodded but remained silent. The DCI’s face was equally neutral; for the moment, it seemed, he was content to let his subordinates have it out amongst themselves.

Finally, Ford raised her arms in exasperation. “So what’s the situation?”

Harper shrugged. “I’m waiting on an update. Right now, I don’t know any more than you do.”

His apparent lack of concern was completely feigned. In truth, Harper was furious. He had never authorized Kassem’s kidnapping, precisely because of what was unfolding on the screen before him. And this was only the beginning; despite the president’s vague authorization, he knew that Kealey’s actions would bring down some serious heat from the White House.

On the way back from their meeting with President Brenneman, Harper had briefed Ford on his plan, which was to put a lot of hard questions to the Agency’s high-level informants in Iraq. Admittedly simple, perhaps, but it was a straightforward approach that had worked in the past. While signal intercepts and satellite photographs were popular with the politicians on the Hill, the DDO knew that HUMINT, or human intelligence, often proved the most reliable source of information. In time, they would have likely turned up a few names, people who might have had an interest in seeing the Iraqi prime minister dead, but it was now clear that Kealey had been the wrong man to pursue this task. The fact that he had been the president’s first choice didn’t matter in the least; politicians, Harper knew, had a limited memory span when it came to those kinds of conversations.

“I don’t understand how you could have let this happen,” Ford was saying. “To have a field man operating on his own, with no line of communication from our end, is just ridiculous. I mean, we can’t even—”

“It works, Rachel.” Harper was getting tired of this argument; he’d heard it too many times before. “We set up Special Activities for that specific reason: to avoid all the oversight. On this matter, I was personally briefed by Pete Hemming. He’s the head of special operations over at Tyson’s Corner, by the way.” This was a reference to the National Counterterrorism Center, a state-of-the-art facility located in McLean, Virginia. “He assured me that the man they used on this is one of their best. If he took Kassem out of the city, it was done for a reason.”

“You’re telling me that you have
no
idea who this man is?” Ford asked skeptically.

“Unfortunately, no,” Harper replied mildly.

“Even if we get some good intel out of it, nothing changes the fact that he broke every rule in the book. Unless I’m hugely mistaken, we don’t have a presidential finding authorizing any of this. There has to be some accountability here.”

“And there will be. You’ll get a full report as soon as I do. Until then, we deny everything. Arshad Kassem may have a lot of friends, but he’s got his share of enemies, too. We can play it off easily enough.”

But Ford wasn’t done. “I want the name of this operative,” she said heatedly, “and I want him out of the Agency—”

“That’s enough, Rachel.” Ford’s head spun around at the director’s first words. Her cheeks flushed slightly at the mild rebuke, but she settled back in her seat, her angry gaze still fixed on Jonathan Harper.

“Inquiries will be made,” the DCI continued. “But we have a more immediate issue to take care of. Jonathan?”

Harper nodded and cleared his throat, then went on to explain about Rashid al-Umari, Erich Kohl, and the tape found in al-Umari’s London home. “Anyway,” he concluded, “we received a lot of cooperation from the British on this, and the voice analysis seems to confirm that Jason March is still alive and working in conjunction with al-Umari.”

Ford shook her head, her dark red hair flashing against pale skin. “I saw the after-action report on that. March was killed in an airstrike last December….”

She trailed off when she saw that Andrews was already shaking his head. “First of all, Jason March is not his real name, and he didn’t die in a Libyan training camp.”

Perplexed, Ford said, “I don’t understand.”

The DCI gave Harper the nod, and the DDO turned to Rachel Ford, whose expression had softened in her confusion.

“Shortly after the Senate majority leader was assassinated last year, the president gave us carte blanche to hunt down the killer. We had a pretty good idea who was responsible, but the man you know as Jason March was —
is
, I should say — a former Special Forces soldier. As such, he was decidedly difficult to track, and everything pointed to something more.

“So we brought in a retired field man to hunt March down, somebody with, well, relevant experience. You see, our man was ex-army himself; in fact, he trained March in the late nineties. Then, while on deployment in Syria in 1997, Jason March went rogue. He shot five men in his detachment and nearly killed his commanding officer — our operative.”

“And who is
he
?”

A subtle glance at Andrews brought another prompting nod. Reluctantly, Harper went on. “His name is Ryan Kealey. He’s been with us for four years.”

Ford made a mental note to pull the man’s file. “And?”

“Once we had Kealey on board, we paired him with an analyst from the CTC, Naomi Kharmai. Together, they were able to learn March’s true identity: William Paulin Vanderveen, a South African national. As it turned out, Vanderveen harbored some real hatred toward the United States, hatred that stemmed back to his father’s death during apartheid. You’ll have to read the briefing folders to get the whole story, but ultimately, the chase ended in Washington. What you may not know is that after the failed assassination attempt, Vanderveen turned the tables on Kealey and tracked him back to his home on the coast of Maine. There was a struggle — Kealey was nearly killed — but in the end, it was Vanderveen who went over the side and into the ocean.

“There was a storm, and it was a drop of about a hundred eighty feet. Basically, his death was a foregone conclusion.”

“So you just
assumed
he was dead?” Rachel Ford was amazed, her anger forgotten. “That’s pretty convenient.”

“We helped the local authorities sniff around for a while — discreetly, of course. Even if Vanderveen had died in the fall, though, finding the body would have been nearly impossible.”

“But why the cover-up?”

“Because Kealey was — and still is — one of our most successful operatives.” The others were not surprised by Harper’s choice of words. In the intelligence business, talent was never an issue; the end result — success — was all that mattered.

“We did our very best to bury this,” Harper continued. “Not even Kharmai knows the truth. We couldn’t afford to blow Kealey’s cover, and he was considered a legitimate target at the time. It was done for his protection.”

The deputy DCI considered these words for a moment. Then realization dawned on her face, a small smile touching her lips. Harper issued a silent inward curse; it was clear that she had made the connection between Arshad Kassem and the current topic. He briefly wondered what he had said to give it away, but Ford’s next words cut his musings short.

“So where does this leave us?”

“We don’t have a choice. We have to wait,” was his simple reply. “Hopefully something comes in from Baghdad. All communications with respect to al-Maliki are being routed to the logistical hub in the embassy. If our man can’t pull any information out of Kassem, we’ll have to work our other sources and see what develops.”

Rachel Ford snorted and seemed about to speak when her cell phone beeped. She glanced down at the number. “Gentlemen, I’ve been waiting on this call.”

She was halfway to the door when she turned back to Harper and, in a strange monotone, said, “It seems to me that we need to engage in some serious damage control here. Needless to say, Kassem cannot be allowed to tell his story. I assume you agree.”

Jonathan Harper was too surprised by the statement to respond immediately. Instead, he nodded once, and she walked out.

Once she was gone, the mood in the room seemed to lighten a little. Andrews glanced at his watch, stood up, and moved to a cupboard behind his desk. After a moment he returned with two half-filled glasses.

Harper gratefully accepted the generous measure of Glenlivet. The DCI regularly bent the rules by keeping alcohol in his office, but he was strict about its use. If a drink was offered, it was only after close of business, and while a second was consumed on occasion, a third was almost unheard of.

As Andrews sank wearily into his seat and loosened his tie, Harper brought up Ford’s parting words, and the director nodded thoughtfully.

“I’m not sure about her yet,” he mused. “It’s hard to know where she stands. Did you know that she served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence?”

Harper nodded, not at all surprised by the turn the conversation had taken. Although Ford outranked him, Jonathan Harper had been with the Agency longer than Andrews and Ford combined, and the DCI had never been reluctant to take advantage of his subordinate’s extensive experience. “I don’t know that much about her — I don’t get invited to the hearings — but I did see that in her bio when she was nominated.”

“She also served as the vice-chair on the terrorism subcommittee.”

Harper lifted an eyebrow. “I must have missed that part.”

“She backed us up on quite a few things in that position, and that was before she got the nod from the president — before she was even considered, in fact. They had oversight on HUMINT and counter-intelligence as well. I
do
get called to those hearings, John. She could have made things hard for us more than once, especially after what happened last year, but she cut us some slack. That’s why I went along so easily when she was nominated. When you get to the top, you have to pick your battles.”

“I had wondered about that.”