The Good Son (13 page)

“But not you.” A smile here.

“No.” No smile.

“What’s his native language, do you think?”

Cynthia had spent thousands of hours listening to recordings of dozens of Arabic dialects, and of native speakers of several score other languages speaking Arabic. “It’s hard to say exactly. I’m inclined to think a South Asian language. Dari or Pashto. Maybe Panjabi. Maybe Farsi. But Abu Lais is supposed to be Pashtun, so that fits. I could tell more with a longer colloquy.”

“Yes, and it would be nice to have their cell-phone bills with the address printed on them.” He turned to Lotz. “What does the voiceprint say about the recipient subject?”

“The voiceprint?”

“Yes. We have a recording of al-Zaydun’s voice. Is it the same?”

“I haven’t . . . I mean, we thought we should come to you . . .”

“Go do it.”

“Now?”

“No, next Easter. Go! No, wait! Lotz, this catch stays with us three alone until further notice, understand? I mean
no one
else.” Lotz said he got that, and Morgan made a shooing motion.

When the door had closed on Lotz, Morgan leaned back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head, and grinned. “Well, finally!”

“You think it’s genuine?”

“Fuck, yes! We have the right guys—I fully expect the voiceprints to check out—and the right place, and what the hell else could it be? They’re not shipping bananas.” He gave her an inquiring look. “Why, don’t
you
?”

“Not just yet. As a matter of fact, I’ve been waiting for them to try something like this. I mean, don’t you think it’s a little funny that the most elusive al-Q operative on earth, who as far as we know hasn’t used a cell phone in years, should call a senior al-Q leader on a compromised device, which leader immediately identifies him by name?”

“People make mistakes,” he said. “The history of intelligence is full of boners.”

“Yes, Lloyd, we both know the history of intelligence,” she replied. “But I’m more concerned with
recent
history. This country is involved in two wars right now, and both of them are the result of massive systemic intelligence failures: we missed 9/11, and that’s the war in Afghanistan, and we screwed up on WMD, and that’s Iraq.”

“I’d hardly call Iraq an intelligence failure. There was no evidence of WMD because there weren’t any weapons.”

“No, but our intel on the Iraqis was so piss-poor that any bunch of bozos could make a temporarily plausible case for an invasion. Now we’re making noises at Iran. So I ask you, who would benefit from a stolen-nuclear-weapons scare in Pakistan? Who would love to see us involved in yet
another
attack on a Muslim country?”

“Iran?”

“For starters. The mullahs would
love
it. Plus, any hints that the Paks are not reliable custodians of nuclear weapons drives a wedge between us and them. Actually, al-Q would like nothing better than a U.S. involvement in northern Pakistan. The country would come unglued. Half the population would go jihadi. A big chunk of their military and intelligence service are sympathizers already; so we have to make absolutely sure that this is the real thing before we pass it upstairs.”

“There are no absolutely sure things in intel,” he said. “That’s one of the things you learn when you’ve been in the business as long as I have. I got a good feeling about this one, Cyn. And I’d like to win one for a change.”

As he said this Morgan leaned back in his chair, and Cynthia saw his eyes pass across a souvenir of a lost one, a framed North Vietnamese battle flag Morgan had brought back from his tour as a junior army intelligence officer in 1968. That was one of his object lessons: we had tried to fight a war where the enemy knew everything about us and we knew practically nothing about them—or, rather, we had all the information we needed but wouldn’t use it.

After a moment, Morgan continued. “Look, get off anything else you’re doing and tell Ernie to do the same. Focus on the intercepts from Peshawar and the Kahuta area. I’ll make sure all that material is routed to you. If you get any confirmation, anything at all, come direct to me.”

They spoke about details for a while, and Cynthia asked if he wanted to open a permanent file on the intercept. Morgan said he did and, after consulting his computer and a list of available code names, he told her to call the file
GEARSHIFT
.

As she left she reflected once again on Morgan’s perfect discretion. Within the bounds of the institution, even when they were alone in an office, never did he indicate by a look or an action that they were anything but subordinate and superior. In this too was Morgan a career model.

Cynthia went back to Ernie Lotz’s office and found him hunched over his keyboard.

“Are you recovered?” she asked.

“My shorts are still smoking, but I’m fine. He never yells at you like that.”

She ignored this. Cynthia didn’t really know how widespread was the intel that she was sleeping with Morgan, but gossip usually filled in the blanks

“Actually, I should have thought of checking the alleged al-Zaydun voice against the files. Sorry, my bad. Did you have any luck with it?”

“I did some preliminary checks. The software says it’s the same voice. So it’s the real deal.”

“It could be. Morgan certainly thinks so.”

“And you don’t?”

“I’m reserving judgment.”

Lotz made a face. “Yeah, but if it’s real and we don’t blow the whistle, we’re in deep shit. Why do you think it’s a fake?”

“I didn’t say it was a
fake
. I’m a little suspicious, is all. And I didn’t like that cat-eating-cream look on Morgan’s face. He’s been waiting for this for years. It justifies his whole existence. So let me play devil’s advocate for a while. Anyway, this intercept is now
GEARSHIFT
, and just for the three of us until further notice. You didn’t tell anyone else about it, did you?”

“No. I put it up on my Facebook page, but no one ever looks there. I have three friends, and one of them is my mom.”

Cynthia let this go by, and there was the kind of silence that occurs when someone has made an inappropriately facetious remark. Ernie was prone to these little high-school-level comments, excusable as office banter, self-deprecating remarks about his social life, although why he should have trouble in that department was beyond Cynthia’s comprehension. The sad-puppy thing did not suit him, she thought, or maybe it really did and it didn’t suit her. Irritating, at any rate.

After a moment, she said, “We need some way to refocus the comint screens around voiceprint catches off these two subjects,” and they began to work in their usual easy professional way, planning how to lay off their current duties on others and roughing out communication intelligence protocols.

Afterward, Cynthia went back to her own office and started to read through recent transcripts from relevant areas. Now that they had this lead, she thought, maybe other conversations that seemed innocent at the time might appear in a different and more interesting light. She searched for
package
,
first phase
,
sheikh
, occurring in the same intercept and also for that odd locution,
some small time
. Not an idiom, the phrase was more likely to be used by someone not at home in Modern Standard Arabic.

As she worked, she thought about her paranoia, if that was the word. She knew Morgan didn’t think that their enemy’s psychology ran to this kind of deception. They were true believers, not at all like the cynical gamesmen of the late Soviet regime. These people were perfectly frank about their aims. They felt that God was on their side and, while they were crafty enough, they were not crafty in that way. On the other hand, there was always a first time. The events of 9/11 had drilled that lesson deep into the minds of the entire U.S. intelligence community.

So she would try to keep a lid on Morgan’s enthusiasm. And as she thought about this she considered the possibility that his enthusiasm,
his desire to be at the center of the largest conceivable kind of national security crisis, would lead him to overstep, to push the evidence further than it warranted. And if he did that, and if she was the one who reined the whole thing in, who prevented America from falling into yet another blunder fueled by faulty intel—well, that would be it, the much-desired coup. She would be made. Morgan would be destroyed, of course, at the same time, and as she reflected on this she found, a little to her surprise, that she didn’t mind at all.

B
ound together in a line, the Conference on Conflict Resolution on the Subcontinent: A Therapeutic Approach is herded through the night over rocky trails, across drifts of sand and shale that drag at their feet, through ankle-twisting boulder fields, across freezing streams. Sonia is tied behind Karl-Heinz Schildkraut and in front of Annette Cosgrove, who is the last of the coffle. Schildkraut is wearing European slip-on shoes and in the waning daylight Sonia can see they are coming to pieces. Sonia herself is wearing sandals made of buffalo hide, of local manufacture, and she has complete confidence in them, although her feet are now soaked and numb with cold. Schildkraut stumbles often and several times falls heavily. When this happens their silent captors jerk at his rope and prod him with the butts and barrels of their rifles until Sonia and Annette grab him by his arms and help him to his feet. He is ashen and wheezing, and Sonia tries to suppress useless feelings of guilt. She thinks he might not survive this travail.

A military helicopter flies low overhead, and at the first sound of its engine their captors shove and club them all into the convenient overhang of a rock wall until it has passed. Then they are on the move again, driven like animals. Sonia feels herself descending into animal mind: the future fades, the past fades, there is nothing but the next step, the pain from her many bruises, and the chafing cords. She is barely conscious of the passage of time, until she becomes aware that the sun has sunk below the mountain ridges and color has leached out of the surrounding landscape. Still they are pushed along relentlessly until it is hard to see their footing in the gloom, the captives are tripping at every other step, and at last someone at the head of the line falls off the trail into a shallow ravine
and the whole group is yanked off their feet. The kidnappers call out to one another as they attempt to get their captives back on the trail. Sonia crawls forward from where she has fallen to where Schildkraut lies.

“Karl-Heinz, are you all right?” she whispers.

“I am alive, at least. I would have worn my hiking boots if I had known this was part of the conference program.”

“I’m so sorry,” she says and then one of the kidnappers comes along and tells her to be quiet and get to her feet. When she doesn’t move quickly enough to suit him, he jabs her in the ribs with the muzzle of his AK. She stands up and looks him in the face. There is still just enough light to see he is a young man, in his late teens at most.

She says, in Pashto, “How dare you strike me, you little pisser! I’m old enough to be your grandmother. Does your mother know you’re out in the night beating women?”

The boy’s eyes widen. He raises his weapon to firing position. “Move!” he says.

Sonia raises her voice. “How? I am tied to this man.”

The boy kicks at Schildkraut, producing pitiful groans. It is unbearable to watch and Sonia throws her own body over his, crying out for the abuse to stop. A moment later, Annette Cosgrove rushes forward and also flings herself down to protect the old man’s body. “Don’t hurt him,” she shouts, and she has a carrying voice. Sonia hears Annette’s husband call out her name from forward on the line. The other prisoners now also call out; there is a commotion, guards and prisoners shouting. Their cries echo from the now-invisible rock walls of the gully.

Sonia adds her voice, louder still: “Look, this is an old man. He must rest, or if you want him to move at this pace, someone must help him, and we can’t if we’re tied up like this. Do you think we’ll try to escape? How could we? From twenty armed men when we don’t know where we are? If you untie us, the stronger will be able to help the weaker ones and we won’t fall as much and you will go faster to wherever it is you’re taking us.”

Sonia hears a voice calling out in Pashto, “Patang! What’s going on back there? Shut that woman up!”

Sonia says, “Patang, talk to him! Tell him what I said! Believe me, you will move more quickly. Otherwise, you might as well shoot us all now.”

The boy hesitates, then leaves briefly and returns with a thin man in a large black turban and a sheepskin jacket. Sonia listens while the boy
Patang explains the problem as she had expressed it, to which the other man replies, “Cut them loose and shoot the old man. We can’t afford to waste any more time.”

Sonia cries out, “Oh, I see I was mistaken—I thought you were mujahideen. I prayed you were mujahideen. But now I see you are only bandits, and accursed of God.”

With that, she drops down again on Schildkraut, covering his head and shoulders with her body while Annette Cosgrove lies across his legs and lower back.

“Now you will have to kill three of us,” Sonia says, in the same loud voice, “and then you will have to kill her husband too, and that will be four of nine hostages you won’t have, and who will make up the ransom for them? Think, man! Nine hostages delivered on time in reasonable condition against five, and maybe fewer than five, because no one can walk through this country tied together with their hands bound. What will you do if there are broken legs or broken necks?”

Sonia cannot see the man’s face, but she does not think he will shoot them, nor does she think he will order the boy to shoot them, or that the boy would obey such an order. She has spent a good deal of her life among violent men of this type and she is betting three lives that she has judged them correctly. A minute passes. She can hear Schildkraut’s heavy breathing and the lighter breaths of the other woman. She is deeply grateful that Annette backed her play. That was another quick assessment that worked out. She hears low voices and the sound of retreating footsteps and then shouts from the head of the column.