The Night Crew (20 page)

Chapter Nineteen

I went upstairs to engage in a little philosophical jujitsu about myself, about life, and about women. I sat on the bed and, after about two seconds, I became bored with it. So, looking for something better to do—actually giving myself a kick in the balls was preferable to this—I realized I had not read, much less studied, Chief Ashad’s military record because I had assumed a dead man was unlikely to be a big factor in this case. Wrong, wrong, wrong. As I was learning, his ghost was becoming more and more of a spectral presence and germane influence regarding what went down in the dead of the night in a dreary place called Cellblock One. So I opened his file and began correcting that.

As Captain Willborn had informed us, Ashad’s place of birth was Baghdad, and apparently, after arriving in the States sometime during his teen years, he’d done well enough, because his undergraduate college degree was from Cornell University, suggesting he was a model immigrant kid, a good student, and an upright citizen. According to his record he was commissioned as a warrant officer one at the age of twenty-two, shortly after graduation. Why he chose warrantcy over a full commission as a lieutenant and the chance to become a general was an open question. He was branched military intelligence, and as I read through his initial assignments, I thought it seemed a little out of whack, though his Iraqi background and his native fluency in Arabic and Farsi perhaps accounted for an unorthodox career path.

Specifically, he attended the basic course at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where all young MI officers and warrant officers go to learn the rudiments of their trade, then upon graduation was immediately reassigned to Washington, DC, specifically to the National Security Agency, which struck me as highly unusual for a virgin warrant officer. The army typically consigns brand new officers to a lower level tactical unit, to an intel shop in a combat arms brigade or division, or to a military intelligence battalion, the basic idea being to learn the trade from the ground up.

Three years later he was assigned to the Central Command, the major headquarters for the region that includes Iraq and Iran, remaining there for seven years in a series of positions that ranged from interpretation to strategic analysis.

Then, in 2006, three years after the war in Iraq broke out, he wound up assigned to the 315th Military Intelligence Battalion, as a member of Captain Willborn’s tiny interrogation team, where he found himself at the end of the universe in a shithole called Al Basari Prison, and then to his ultimate destiny, traveling down a dusty street with a big bomb with his name on it.

His religion was listed as Moslem, and his age at the time of his unfortunate passing, as thirty-seven. Just how an Ivy League stud ended up as a lowly warrant officer, and why a highly experienced strategic analyst ended up pigeonholed in an interpreter slot for a small tactical interrogation team, were mysteries to me. I put a little more mental grease into it and my conclusion didn’t change. Does not compute.

So I closed the file, and carried it downstairs to my dining room office, where I used my cellphone to call LTC Mark Hertling, an old buddy who these days happened to be a military intelligence officer working in the bowels of the Pentagon. Mark and I had done a tour together when we were younger officers, both of us bachelors. He liked to drink and womanize, as did I, so we hit it off pretty good.

A female lieutenant commander named Hernandez answered with her rank and her name, then said, “Office of Middle Eastern Threat Analysis.”

“This is Lieutenant Colonel Sean Drummond and I need to speak with Colonel Hertling.”

A few moments later Mark was on the line, sounding slightly annoyed. “So what do ya need?”

“Ever hear of a guy named Amal Ashad?”

“Yeah, sure, just . . . give me a minute . . . I’m having trouble remembering if he’s Al Queda Iraq, or Pakistani Taliban.”

“Try Chief Warrant Officer Three, United States Army. Military intelligence type.”

“Oh . . .
that
guy?” Then he informed me, “Nope.” He then asked, “What’s this about?”

“The Al Basari case.”

“You got a piece of that?”

“I didn’t run fast enough.”

There was a brief pause before Mark asked, “Which one is your client?”

“Lydia Eddelston . . . she’s—”

“I know, I know, the idiot who likes to play with their little ding-a-lings.”

“Well . . . everybody needs a hobby.”

He laughed. “Shit, you really got the runt of the litter, pal. Who did you piss off?”

“Have you got a pad of paper and an hour?”

“Yeah, figures. Hey, who got that blonde hottie?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about. They all look the same to me, Mark. Says so in the manual.”

“Yeah, right.” He laughed.

I said, “I need you to look at something, okay? Give me your fax number.”

He did, and I faxed him the first three pages of Ashad’s military personnel file, which included his basic biographic data and the summary of his assignments, then gave him a few minutes to look it over.

Eventually he said, “This looks a little funny.”

“Okay, tell me what looks wrong with it.”

“What looks right? How about an Ivy League egghead becoming a warrant? Doesn’t fit. And his career progression . . . it’s possible . . . but . . .”

I suggested, “Maybe because of his Iraqi birth and childhood, the army decided he posed a security risk and an officer’s commission was ruled out.”

“Okay . . . that happens . . . Except your guy passed a special background investigation, has a Top Secret clearance and is in about five I’d-have-to-kill-you-if-you-knew compartments.”

“It’s important, Mark. I need this guy checked out.”

“Quietly, right?”

“Don’t even chew before you swallow.”

He thought about it, then said, “Thirty minutes. If you haven’t heard, Middle Eastern threats is a growth business around here. I’m analyzing my ass off. Be standing by the phone.”

We hung up and I wasted about half an hour swigging coffee, watching CNN recycle old news stories, thinking dark thoughts about Amal Ashad, and avoiding Katherine, before Mark called back. He said, “Okay, here’s the deal. I called George Harrit who was the executive officer to the J2 at Centcom headquarters during the years Ashad’s record says he was assigned there.” Having explained that, he went on, “Harrit’s the Rabbi type. He knew everybody in intel down there, and I mean,
everybody
. Okay? And . . . he never even
heard
of your guy.”

“Right.”

“So I called another pisan, Billy Kline. Billy worked intel officer assignments during those years. And he called three or four old buddies, and they called . . . Want the long story short?”

I told Mark, “Well . . . I know you’re busy.”

He laughed. “Okay, your guy Ashad is a fuckin’ ghost.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means his name’s in the system . . . he’s listed as deceased, so he’s in the personnel computers, right? . . . But . . . guys who should definitely know or remember him from when he was alive, definitely don’t. Capisce?”

“Is it possible Ashad was working in sensitive compartments with covers that shielded him from normal channels? They do that with certain clandestine units, like Delta, right?”

“Possible? Sure. Likely? Nah. Anyway, I went down that route. The assignments guy who handled special compartments says your goombah wasn’t one of his boys. Got it?”

“Got it. I owe you one.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said and we rang off.

I drank another cup of coffee and thought a little more about CW3 Amal Ashad and did not like what I had just learned. I had a growing apprehension about what was behind this—or rather, who—but it wouldn’t be easy to confirm, and definitely shouldn’t be tried long distance.

Even more definitely it shouldn’t involve, or even be revealed to Katherine, at least not yet. For if my suspicion was correct, this case was about to take a turn into truly weird territory and become even more complicated, not to mention dangerous, than it already was. But also Katherine, and her new pal Nelson, had a different agenda than the mere pursuit of justice: to wit, they wanted to use Lydia’s trial to convict the administration and the army for condoning and even propagating the use of questionable interrogation techniques.

Anyway, Katherine could not enter the places I might need to go to, and the people I might need to talk to would clam up in her presence.

So I scribbled what I hoped was a maddeningly obtuse note to Katherine saying I might be back tomorrow, without fully explaining why I would be gone, or where.

I then went upstairs to my room, packed some civvies, a fresh uniform, my overnight kit, and my gun, got in the car and headed off to DC, and hopefully some answers.

Chapter Twenty

As I expected she might be, Phyllis Carney, my putative CIA boss, was seated behind her desk at the offsite location of the Office of Special Projects in Crystal City, Virginia, when I dropped in unexpectedly at 9:00 p.m.

I used my magic CIA passkey to enter the facility, and nobody stopped me, or even noticed me, perhaps because the building was dark and empty. The sole defense of Western Civilization was a crack of light coming from beneath Phyllis’s office door. I opened that door without knocking and entered, then moved straight to the long conference table in front of her desk, where I took a seat, and waited for her to react.

She was reading a memo, then without greeting, or even the mildest manifestation of alarm or surprise, she looked up and remarked, “You’re supposed to be in New York.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be home? It’s nine at night, Phyllis. A lady your age needs her beauty sleep.”

Rather than respond to my age-insensitive query, Phyllis replied, “I hadn’t expected you . . . not this early.”

“But you were expecting me?”

“Let’s just say I had a premonition that you would find your way down here. Eventually . . .”

I thought about this mysterious premonition, then came right to the point. “Why did you release me to this case?”

She shuffled some papers. “How I answer that depends on who’s asking. Is this Sean Drummond, an auxiliary member of the CIA? Or Lieutenant Colonel Sean Drummond, an army JAG officer seeking a favorable verdict for his client?”

I understood the distinction she was making and chose not to address her query, but to keep the ball in her court. “Answer my question, Phyllis.”

“Well . . . I suppose you deserve one.”

“You’re damned right I do.”

We looked at each other in silence before she continued, “Several reasons come to mind. Because I thought you were becoming bored and grumpy, and a break from this office might be good for you.” She paused, then confessed, more accurately, “Actually,
I
needed a break from you. Also, it’s a vitally important case. The army should have its best lawyers attending to it.”

“Try again, Phyllis.”

Phyllis casually brushed a strand of white hair off her forehead and leaned back in her chair. I had not expected her to blush or shudder, but neither had I expected her to react in a manner that could only be described as blasé and aloof. I had underestimated her, and reminded myself not to do that again.

I should mention here that Phyllis is, in every sense of the phrase, a tough old bird. She joined the OSS when she was a teenager near the end of WWII, and has been kept around, in one capacity or another, long past any sane retirement age, primarily because every CIA director has been scared shitless of her. The joke around the office is that Phyllis knows Victoria’s Secret, which might be an exaggeration, but she definitely knows Uncle Sam’s secrets, which means Uncle Sam’s balls are on her keychain. But, in fact, I could not imagine a woman like Phyllis relegated to a retirement home in Florida, passing her sunset years cheating at bridge, and worrying about what terrible trouble the nice young doctors on
General Hospital
will get into that day; I don’t think she could either. Nor could I imagine that her masters in the Agency would find serenity in the thought that Phyllis, combatting the boredom, would be sitting down in Florida composing her memoirs and revealing seven decades of screw-ups and scandals they thought were long-buried and forgotten. She told me once that she will leave this job her own way, on her back, in a coffin. Also, she happens to be very good at her job, though I’m not entirely certain what that job is, and here we had a case in point.

She gave me her old schoolmarm frown. “If you remain civil, Sean, we can have a fruitful conversation. Otherwise, show yourself to the door right now.”

I wasn’t about to back down, which meant it was time to get a few points on the board. So I looked back at her and asked the last question she expected or, indeed, wanted, to hear. “Who is Amal Ashad?”

It took a moment for her to answer that question and, when she did, it was to ask, rather coldly, “What makes you think I know who he is?”

“That’s not the answer I’m looking for, Phyllis.”

“Maybe because you’re asking in the wrong place. But I’m being rude. Would you care for some coffee or tea?”

When I made no response to that obvious diversion, Phyllis stated, “That was meant to be a hint, Sean . . . perhaps I was too subtle.” She added, with a slight smile, “Subtlety is never the right tact with you. I prefer Earl Grey.”

So I got up and went to the corner where she kept two large metal stand-up urns, one filled with coffee, from which I poured myself a lukewarm cup, the other filled with steaming hot water, from which I made her a cup of tea, with two bags, and two squirts of honey, sans cream, just the way she prefers it.

It didn’t escape my notice what she was doing or how sly and indirect she could be; she was using this petty show of servitude to remind me that she was the boss, and I, the compliant underling.

You have to know that, with Phyllis, every conversation is like a game of chess. There are no idle or wasted words; she always starts two or three moves ahead, so, as long as you play by her rules, you always end up on the short end of the stick. But you also have to pay attention because she shifts pieces around the board when you aren’t looking. She will say something seemingly harmless and innocuous like, isn’t the weather here unbearably chilly today, and you nod—and the next thing you know you’re on a fast plane to the searing climate of Iraq.

I brought her the tea, then, carrying my lukewarm coffee, returned to my seat. I said to Phyllis, “May I be blunt?”

“Regrettably, I believe that’s the only way you know how to behave.”

“Look at me, Phyllis.” She looked at me. “There are two ways this conversation can end. One, you can tell me the truth, or two, I can call Melvin Cramer and he can root around, find out who Amal Ashad really is and we can both read about it on the front page.” We made eye contact. “You know this is not a bluff, don’t you?”

Phyllis stirred the tea bags with a spoon, then put the cup down. She replied, typically without replying, “What makes you think Ashad isn’t who he’s supposed to be?”

“The better question is how did anyone believe he
was
who he was supposed to be? For one, here’s some advice for next time—have somebody who spent a day in the army create the phony personnel files. Two, nobody from the previous assignments listed in that file ever heard of Amal Ashad. And three, at Al Basari prison, guys from outside agencies, like this one, for instance, were sneaking around, dressing, talking, and trying to act like something they weren’t—soldiers.”

“Sometimes, I forget just how smart and resourceful you are.”

“Oh, I think you knew I would figure it out.”

“You might be right, Sean. I’ll admit that when General Fister called to ask for you, I had . . . well . . . reservations about releasing you to this case.” That didn’t match Katherine’s account, but Phyllis fingered her teacup and added, “You know, an army of military investigators have been digging through this case for months. You’ve been on this case only a few days, but you’re the first one to smell this out.”

“Rats leave a trail of droppings. Ashad had diarrhea. You’re avoiding my question, Phyllis.”

She tested her tea with a small sip, then withdrew the teabags with a spoon and, with exaggerated care, placed them on her plate. I knew what she was doing: reappraising the situation, and me, and figuring out her next move—in other words, it was time for me to keep my eye out for the moving pieces. She said, “You say you want the truth, and I’m willing to give it to you. But first I need your word.”

“My word about what?” With this lady you never respond to an unconditional request.

“Much of what I’m about to say is classified and extremely sensitive. It cannot be disclosed, under any conditions—certainly not to the public, not in court, not even to your cocounsel, or your client.”

“Phyllis, do I look stupid?”

“No, you’re bright enough, Sean. Maybe too bright.”

“Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll tell
60 Minutes
what I do know.”

Phyllis did not look happy with that threat—the CIA enjoys publicity about as much as men enjoy visits to the proctologist, which actually isn’t such a bad metaphor. Anyway, she ground her teeth for a few seconds, then relented. “I don’t think I should have to explain to you, of all people, the importance of reliable and actionable intelligence to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These kinds of conflicts are settled by who knows what, and when they know it. Early in both conflicts we underestimated . . . or, no, we forgot that, I suppose. The price was awful and getting worse. Both wars going off the rails. Thousands of body bags returning home.”

“Who’s we?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. Answer the question.”

“The military, this Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, senior people in the government, certain opinionated members of Congress. Everybody who matters, and quite a few who don’t. We slid into these wars with an intelligence apparatus built for other purposes. It proved a wrong fit . . . a catastrophically wrong fit.”

“What does this have to do with Ashad?”

“Stop barking at me, Sean, and I’ll get to that. A year into the war, the army was complaining bitterly about inadequate support from the Agency. And the Agency, in turn, was criticizing the army’s intelligence efforts as too amateurish and unsophisticated. The situation became . . . intolerable.”

I didn’t really need this bureaucratic gibberish lesson. “The question was, what does this have to do with Ashad?”

“I’m getting to it, Sean. After the usual symphony of teeth gnashing and fingerpointing, an accommodation was worked out. The Agency would step back from the big picture and get more involved at the granular level. We decided to place certain assets in the army, for example, to advise field commanders on local conditions and channel raw intelligence to them before it sprouted cobwebs being massaged and debated by the bureaucracy here in Washington. We also decided to place some of our more promising interrogators on the front lines . . . at the grassroots level, if you will.”

“And Amal Ashad, was he one of your people?”

“
Our
people, Sean. And you already know the answer or you wouldn’t be here. About fifteen years ago, we recruited him out of Cornell where he majored in Arabic studies . . . he was fluent in Arabic and Farsi . . . had spent his childhood roaming the streets of Baghdad. He was a perfect catch.” In a transparent attempt at gaining my sympathy she told me, “He was married with three young children, if you’re interested.”

“I’m really not, Phyllis. Why did you disguise him as a soldier?”

“Many reasons, all them good. But protection, for the most part. Some . . . in fact, most of those attached to this program have been NOCs or served in some undercover capacity. We didn’t want them exposed and compromised.”

“So you had them march around like toy soldiers? Did you teach them to salute, and how to use a bayonet? Really, Phyllis.”

She snapped, “You make it sound dumb, and it’s not.” She then took a deep breath—Phyllis prided herself on self-control, and I tended to test it a lot—then continued in a more composed tone, “Take our friend, Amal Ashad. Living in a military prison, associating with the worst scum of Iraqi society, and who knows how many foreign jihadists trying to make their creds by killing Americans. On a daily basis, he was face-to-face with dozens of insurgents. Why hang a sign around his neck that says CIA? His future value in any overseas capacity would be lost forever.”

“So the uniform was intended to hide his identity?” I asked, perhaps allowing a tiny note of cynicism to creep into my tone.

“That was one consideration. Now here’s another. Had the people he was questioning known he was an Agency man, they would’ve been less vulnerable . . . less forthcoming. They would’ve clammed up.”

“I definitely get that.”

She was used to my sarcasm and knew how to react to it—she ignored me and said, “Don’t be insulted, but army interrogators are not particularly feared or respected by the insurgents. It’s not exactly a promising career track in the military. Many of your army interrogators have shallow experience, limited training, and questionable talents. Some can’t even speak Arabic, for God’s sake—they have to rely on interpreters. Ashad not only brought his linguistic and cultural fluency, he also had a masters degree in psychiatry from Johns Hopkins, a degree paid for by the Agency before he spent years interrogating for us. How many of your army interrogators can match such credentials?”

The question was obviously rhetorical, and I gave her the rhetorical courtesy of not answering.

She acknowledged my nonresponse and continued, “The people Ashad interrogated at Al Basari had no idea they were being massaged and manipulated by a pro. That army uniform . . . well, you might say it put a wolf in sheep’s clothes.” She was into the metaphorical analogies now. “Think of a grandmaster playing chess against a rank amateur, an amateur who has not a clue who he’s up against.”

I looked at Phyllis and wondered if she was talking about Ashad and his targets, or herself and me.

“But, in fact,” I noted, “it also gave the Agency perfect deniability. Any abuses would be blamed on the army. I’m sure your people considered that. I’m also sure they loved that part.”

“Stop saying
your
people, Sean. We’re on the same side.”

“Are we?”

I saw a little squirming from Phyllis, an uncharacteristic show of emotion. “I’m telling you that wasn’t the intent, Sean. Nobody was playing the blame game.”

“If not the intent, it is, in fact, the reality. The army is caught in a shit storm, and Ashad flushed the toilet.”

Phyllis smiled condescendingly. “You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I? My client and her friends—”

“
Your client
? Oh, for God’s sake, Sean, don’t tell me this is the first time you ever had a client lie to you.”