The Midnight House

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

The Silent Man
The Ghost War
The Faithful Spy
The Number
(nonfiction)

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
New York

G . P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014,
USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,
Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin
Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL,
England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia),
250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India
Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017,
India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books
(South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,
Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2010 by Alex Berenson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berenson, Alex.
The midnight house / Alex Berenson.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18526-1

1. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 2. Terrorists—Fiction. 3. United States.
Central Intelligence Agency—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.E75146M
813’.6—dc22

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

FOR THE MEN AND WOMEN OF CITY HARVEST,
WHO BRING FOOD TO THE HUNGRY

Thanks to my family for their thoughtful criticism; to Neil, Ivan, Leslie, Tom, and everyone else at Putnam and Random House UK for all their hard work making these books real; to Heather and Matthew for their advice; to Larry and the
Times
for keeping me around, and to Deirdre for catching the mistakes even the copy editors miss. Most important, thanks to Jackie, my lovely wife, partner, and friend.

And, finally, thanks to every reader who came this far. John Wells wouldn’t exist without you. As always, e-mail me with comments, suggestions, or criticism at [email protected]. With the volume of e-mail I’m now getting, I can’t promise to respond to every note, but I pledge to read them all.

Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank.

—Numbers 20:11

T
o the worst place in the world.”

“The worst place in the world.”

George Fezcko and Dwayne Maggs raised their glasses and drank. The going-away party was over. One by one, the ops had said their good-byes and disappeared. Only Fezcko and Maggs were left. Fezcko, the guest of honor, leaving Pakistan after four years as deputy chief of station. And Maggs, his best friend at the agency.

The clock on the wall said 1:30, and they’d been drinking since dinner, but Fezcko felt solid. Maggs had gotten hold of a half-dozen Omaha steaks and two racks of ribs. The meat had soaked up most of the scotch in Fezcko’s belly.

Though not all. Fezcko put his head against the cool wood of the conference table and hummed tunelessly: “ ‘We few, we ragged few, we motley crew . . .’ ” He trailed off. He couldn’t remember the rest of the song, or even if there was a rest of the song.

“Mötley Crüe,” Maggs said. “Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.”

“That’s AC/DC.”

“Marine recon, too.”

“Why does it always go back to the marines? By now everyone in this country knows you’re a jarhead. All one hundred fifty million.” Fezcko tapped Maggs on the forehead. “Tattoo it right there. The few, the proud, the stupid.”

“You wish you coulda been a marine,” Maggs said. “Berkeley boy. You wouldn’t have made it through the first week of basic. Eaten up and spat out.”

Maggs was the station’s director of security. He was short and wide and strong, arms as big as an average man’s legs. Fezcko had thinning curly hair and wild black eyes. In college he’d played bass for a band that had almost broken out. They shouldn’t have gotten along. But they did.

“A marine? I wish I coulda been Tom Brady.”

“The Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Land of the free, home of the suicide bomber. Bet you miss it already,” Maggs said.

“What’s not to miss? The earthquakes. The weather. The fifteen pounds I put on ’cause it’s too hot to run outside.” Fezcko poked at the belly he’d gained.

“Can’t blame Paki for that. That gym in the basement is pretty good. As you’d know if you ever visited.”

“I like to run outside.”

“How about the women? Those beautiful Paki women.”

Fezcko sipped his scotch. “Black-and-blue with the ugly stick,” he said. “I never should have let Marci divorce me. Maybe if our security officers didn’t lock us in the embassy all the time, maybe then we’d find out what those burqas are hiding. Can’t even go down the block to the Marriott for a going-away party. It’s a
Marriott,
for God’s sake.”

Indeed, because of the risk of terrorist attacks, the agency barred employees in Pakistan from gathering at hotels and restaurants. Maggs had refused to make an exception, even tonight.

“Don’t mind getting you killed, but there’s got to be a reason,” Maggs said. “You know better than me, they aim for that Marriott once a month. I know who you’re gonna miss. The army and the ISI”—the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the Pakistani secret police. Between them the two services more or less ran Pakistan.

“The army and the ISI. The ISI and the army. I’ll tell you something about the ISI and the army.”

“Yeah. Give me the speech. With feeling. Like I haven’t heard it a hundred times before.”

“The Egyptians, the Saudis, when they lie to you, they do it with a smile. Pour you tea, tell a story that takes an hour, and when they’re done you’re about ready to fall for whatever they’re spinning. These guys, they just yell, like if I give you this nonsense at high volume it won’t sound so ridiculous. They aren’t all bad, maybe, but most of ’em . . .”

“Remember when they won that cricket match and almost burned down Karachi? ”

Fezcko looked into his glass. “You really think Paki’s the worst place in the world? ”

“Somalia’s bad.”

“Worse than this? ”

“Hotter. And blacker.”

“You think you can say that just ’cause you’re black? Insult your African cousins? ”

Maggs smirked. “I can say it because I’m a marine.”

“Let’s drink to Somalia, then,” Fezcko said. “The even-worse worst place in the world.”

“Somalia. See you there.”

“Three years. It’ll be like that movie with the French chick—”

“I always knew you were gay, George—”

Fezcko struggled for the memory lurking in his alcohol-fogged brain. “Ethan Hawke. Julie Something—”

“Gayer by the second.”

“
Before Sunrise,
” Fezcko said triumphantly.

 

AND THEN HIS PAGER
buzzed.

He pulled it off his waist, squinted at it. The scotch had blurred his eyes, and he didn’t recognize the numbers. Then he did.
36963.
Code for “call me now” from Nawiz Khan, a division chief for the ISI. Fezcko slid the pager across the table to Maggs.

“Nawiz? ” Maggs said. “Wants to wish you good-bye.”

Fezcko didn’t trust the ISI, but he did trust Khan, since a blown raid in Peshawar two years back. He and Khan had had to shoot their way out of an apartment. Khan took a round in the left thigh that night. He still favored the leg.

Fezcko stood, feeling the steak and the ribs twist in his gut, and headed down the hall, shielding his eyes from the fluorescent lights. He touched his thumb to the fingerprint reader beside the door of his office. Inside, he sat down heavily on the edge of his desk and called Khan.

Who answered after a single ring.

“Fezcko,” Khan said, somehow making the name sound glamorous. The years he’d spent at university in London had given him a soft English accent.

“Nawiz?”

“May I speak freely? ”

“You asking if this line is secure? Yeah, it’s secure.”

“Also if you are as drunk as you sound.”

Fezcko laughed. “Not quite. Though it’s been a long night.”

“It has been a long night for me as well, George. But I have something you will want to see.”

“Something or someone? ”

“Both.”

“Big?”

“If you’re asking me, am I in line for your fifty million dollars”—the CIA’s reward for the capture of Osama bin Laden—“the answer is no. But my friend, I wouldn’t have called at this hour if this wasn’t worth your while. You may want to let your CT team know as well.”

CT was agency lingo for the practice known publicly as extraordinary rendition. The letters stood for “collection and transfer,” snatching suspected terrorists from their home countries and holding them in American custody.

“My CT team,” Fezcko said. “That’s me and Maggs. As you know.”