Sabah had been rubbing his eyes after the blindfold was removed, like a mole emerging from his hole in the ground and adjusting to the light. Now he looked at them warily, especially at Marx. He had not realized there was a woman present during the earlier interrogation.
“Who are you, please?” he asked Marx.
“I am an American intelligence officer. So is my colleague here. My name is Edith Halsey and this is Mr. Samuel Potter. You can call the U.S. Embassy and ask for the regional security officer. He will vouch for us.”
She handed him a piece of paper with her new alias and a telephone number at the embassy written on it. He put it in the pocket of his blue jeans.
“What do you want from me?” asked Sabah. “This is very confusing.”
“It’s been confusing for us, too, if that’s any consolation. But I think now we understand it better. The man who contacted you, who called himself George and gave himself the code name Perihelion, is not an American at all. We think that he is a Pakistani Muslim and a very dangerous person.”
“That is impossible. He said he was an American. He spoke of the earlier work. He hated the jihadists. He was working against them.”
“It’s called a ‘false flag,’ Mr. Sabah. A man from one country pretends to be from another, to get cooperation. Israelis pretend to be Americans. Americans pretend to be Canadians. It’s part of the game.”
“I don’t like it. It’s lying.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sabah. But lying is the game.”
The Lebanese-Belgian shook his head. It was too much to absorb in one evening.
“How could George know all the details of your programs, if he wasn’t one of you?”
“We don’t know. That’s one reason we need your help.”
“I’m not sure. I need to think. After all this…” He gestured to the room and, by extension, to the events of the last several hours.
“We don’t have time for you to think about it, Mr. Sabah. This man is responsible for the deaths of some brave Americans, and he will kill more people if we do not find him. We can’t wait.”
Sabah was shaking his head.
“I do not know. C’est trop. This is dangerous for me, too.”
“Let me show you something,” said Marx. She removed a piece of paper from a folder and handed it to him. It was a copy of the list of four bank account routing numbers that Malik had given her in Islamabad.
Sabah studied the paper. This was a code that he understood well. He handed it back.
“I know what this is. I obtained this wire-transfer information for George. This was his most recent request. Is this a trick?”
“No. Not a trick. We know you were helping him, but we want to believe that you made a mistake. I want to show you something else.”
She passed a second sheet to him. This was the transcript of the call between Sabah and his contact, shorn of its Pakistani ISI tailings. He looked at this one for a long while, and then put his head in his hands.
“ Haram,” he muttered, using the Arabic word that in Lebanon connotes wrongdoing, for Christians and Muslims alike.
Marx spoke now with a harder tone in her voice.
“I hope you can see now why it is so important that you help us, Mr. Sabah. These documents connect you with a man who is a terrorist. If you do not work with us, we will have to assume that you are working against us. You would not be happy with that situation, I’m certain.”
Sabah sighed. He knew that he was caught, more tightly now than before when he had been hooded.
“So I do not have a choice,” he said.
“No. Not really. There is only one good answer for you.”
“I will do what I can,” he said glumly. “What is it that you want?”
“We want you to help us catch him.”
“You mean that I am the cheese, and he is the mouse?”
“Yes, that’s the idea,” said Marx. “But this man is no mouse. He is somewhere between a rat and a snake. He has a motive, and he wants to kill, and right now you are the only chance we’ve got. I hope that makes you feel better, knowing that you are important.”
“It does not make me feel better,” said Sabah. “Nothing will make me feel better until I am rid of all of you.”
They took a break. Everyone was tired. Sabah’s contact records and datebook were in his laptop computer at home. They needed the computer, and every digit of email and phone information it contained about the man who had posed as George. Sophie Marx would take Sabah to his apartment, where they could retrieve the computer files.
But right now the dog Emile was barking annoyingly in the hallway and Sabah went to check what was wrong.
32
Jeff Gertz had a two-part rule for dealing with trouble. It dated back to when he worked for the Counterterrorism Center traveling to Iraq and Afghanistan: First, always have a plan for what to do if something bad happens; and second, always be the first to move when danger strikes. Don’t wait for others to run for shelter when a mortar round comes in, or to open fire at a hostile checkpoint, because by then it will be too late: Have a plan, move first. The threat in this case wasn’t shrapnel or bullets, but it was deadly nonetheless. Gertz had one other rule. It was the cardinal precept of the rational man: Save yourself first, and worry about the others later.
The morning Cyril Hoffman called him to report that someone had tried to kill Sophie Marx in Islamabad, Gertz understood that the structure he had built was collapsing. He didn’t know how or why Sophie Marx had been targeted, or even what she had been doing in Pakistan, but it was clear that every outpost of his network was vulnerable. It wasn’t a matter of physical danger; he was deft enough to stay alive. His problem was more mundane: He needed to clean up the mess before it created an open scandal that would lead to his political and legal ruin.
He cursed Sophie Marx for her disloyalty and, more, for being smarter and tougher than he had expected. But he couldn’t afford the luxury of personal animosity now.
Gertz called Ted Yazdi at the White House. There was no answer on the STU-5, so he sent a message to Yazdi’s BlackBerry and got a quick, ostentatious message: In Oval. Can’t Talk. Gertz responded: We have trouble. Must see you in DC soonest to explain. After five minutes, the White House chief of staff sent back his answer: Meet me at ten tonight. Same place in Bethesda. Don’t do anything stupid.
Gertz called the Burbank airport and alerted the crew of the Gulfstream that he would be leaving in an hour for Dulles. Then he had his secretary send out a book cable to everyone in the system, saying that he would be holding an emergency staff meeting in twenty minutes. Overseas personnel could watch on secure videoconference.
That left just enough time to call back Hoffman at Langley. When they had spoken earlier that morning about Sophie Marx, Gertz had been angry and flustered, but now that he’d had some time to digest the news he was cold as a stone.
“We’re shutting it down,” he told Hoffman. “Fire sale. Everything must go. It will take about a week. Then, bye-bye birdie. Finita la commedia, as you opera buffs would say.”
“Isn’t that a bit rash, Jeffrey? We don’t know how serious the damage is yet.”
“Yes, we do. We know there’s a leak. We know the boat is going to sink. It may take a week or a month or a year to go under, but we know how the story ends. You and Miss Priss can do what you want, but I’m not sticking around.”
“What do your chums in the White House think about your liquidation plans? They seemed rather enthusiastic about this business enterprise.”
“They don’t know yet. I see them tonight. But they’ll agree when I tell them the alternatives. They’ll love me for it.”
“Everyone loves you, Jeff. Always. We’re just never sure what you’re doing.”