“Those men downstairs are ignorant. They put a towel in my mouth so I could not breathe. They hurt me, but why? What did I do?”
“They’re just soldiers. And they are not in charge, Mr. Sabah, I am. That’s what I wanted to tell you. This is my responsibility. I have to do something, and you are my only hope. I know you think that we’re all liars, but I’m telling you the truth. If you won’t help me, then this man will kill more of my friends. He may kill me.”
“Is this true?”
“Yes. I need you. That’s what I am saying. We all need you. Otherwise we are in a terrible situation, and I don’t know how it will end.”
Sabah lowered his head. He was a generous man, in his way. He wanted to be helpful to people who needed him. That was why he had been so easy for the Pakistani to manipulate in the first place.
“What do I have to do?” he asked. “You said before that you wanted to use me as the bait. Is that it?”
“Yes. I want you to contact this Pakistani who called himself George. Whatever channel you used before, I want you to use it again. I want you to tell him that you have new information that you need to send him. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But I told you before: The contact information is on my computer at home.”
“Will you come with us now, so that you can get your computer from home and move to another safe place? We can’t stay here now that the police have visited.”
“Can Emile go outside at the new hiding place? He needs exercise. He gets depressed if I do not take him out, morning and night.”
“Of course, and he’s such a cute dog, by the way. So enthusiastic. But you have to promise to help me. No shouting, no calling out for help, no running away to the Belgian police. If you do that, then the men downstairs will get nervous again. That would be awful. So can you be a good helper for me?”
“I will help, but only for you. You are a trickster, too, but you are smarter. The others I do not want to see.”
They took two cars, the van in the garage and a “clean” Audi sedan provided by the station. Sabah and Marx sat in the back of the Audi with Emile, while Major Kirby and the rest of the team crammed into the van.
Brussels station had been watching Sabah’s apartment on the Avenue George Bergmann and they reported that it was clear. The Audi idled out front while Sabah and Marx went in together to collect his things. He found the laptop computer and bundled it into a case. Marx suggested that he should pack a change of clothes, too, and any medicines and personal things he might need.
“How long will we be away?” he asked as he collected his socks and underwear from his top drawer. He already had gathered Emile’s dog dish and blanket, a bag of dry dog food and a leash.
“A day or two,” she answered. “Assuming we catch him. By then you’ll be a hero and we’ll fly you to Disney World.”
“I don’t want to go to America, ever. When we are finished, I want to go home. How soon will that be?”
“Soon,” she said, leading him back downstairs toward the car before he changed his mind.
The new safe house was a freestanding brick residence south of Brussels, on the military reservation in Mons where NATO had its headquarters. The location was secure and easily guarded. It had a large fenced yard where a dog could bark until he dropped dead without attracting attention. The house had just been remodeled for one of the NATO generals, who had been evicted on short notice.
Marx sat down with Sabah in a large study that had been set aside for them on the ground floor of the villa. He was guarding the computer bag on his lap.
“Do you want me to turn it on?” He held the laptop the same protective way he did his dog.
Marx knew it was urgent to get the information, but she also knew not to rush. Once Sabah turned over these secrets, everyone would be splashing about and the water would get muddy. This was a last chance to get a clear look at the man and what he knew.
“Not yet,” she said. “Let’s talk a minute first. Tell me how you got started helping us. Remind me what year it was? And maybe you can remember who contacted you and what they asked you to do. You probably think we all work together at the CIA and know the same secrets, but it doesn’t work that way.”
Sabah smiled and shook his head. America was a very strange country. It was a miracle they didn’t have even worse problems.
“The program began in 2002, I think. But they did not ask for my help until three years later, in 2005. They were trying to follow the money flows of Al-Qaeda. They had developed software to look at patterns, you see. They would examine all the data electronically, so that they could follow anyone who had ever touched the bank account or credit card of someone in their database. Then they would look at that person’s accounts, and run the traces all over again. It was simple link analysis. They told us that the digital space was our best weapon. Everything had an address, and every event left a signature.”
“Why did they need you, Mr. Sabah?”
“Sometimes they had trouble with the Arabic names when they were doing their analysis. They needed people who were cleared into the SWIFT system who could help them make it work. We were consultants. We had to be approved by their security before they would let us into the program. One day we had a videoconference with one of the Americans back in Washington, the big boss who was running things. He gave us, what do you call it, a ‘pep talk.’ He was very loud.”
“Do you remember his name or where he worked, Mr. Sabah? Maybe I could go back and talk to him.”
“The name was a false one, I am sure. Mr. Smith. Mr. Jones. I did not take it seriously. But he told us that he worked at the Counterterrorism Center. That was real, I think.”
“Yes, sir. The CTC was running that program, with the Treasury Department. What did the man look like?”
“He was thin, tough. He looked like a soldier. I can’t remember the rest, really. The video wasn’t very clear.”
“That’s okay. I’ll try to find out who that was. Now, you said there were other consultants who were involved in this surveillance program. Do you remember where they were from?”
“All the places you would think. There was a man from Saudi Arabia, a man from Kuwait, one from Morocco, two from Egypt, two from Pakistan, maybe more.”
Marx had been making notes as he talked, but she paid special attention now as he spoke of the consultants.
“Did you meet them, these consultants? Did you learn any of their names?”
“Oh, no. That was against security. This was a videoconference, remember. We were all watching from separate locations. I only know about the others because when they began the session, they gave an overview, so that we would know what a big thing this was. They wanted us to feel we were part of something important.”
“But there was a consultant from Pakistan, you said.”
“Two, I think. But I never saw them. They were trying to protect our identities.”
“Do you think George could have been one of the consultants?”
“I didn’t think so when he contacted me last year. He said he was an American, and that he had been part of the program, and they were restarting it. But when you told me at the other house that my George was a Pakistani, I thought maybe yes. He might have been one of the consultants. He seemed to know all the same things that I did, when he contacted me.”
“We’ll get to George in a minute. But what else can you tell me about this meeting with the man from CTC, by videoconference?”
“He was like a coach in one of those American sports movies. He wanted to get us excited. He told us we were part of the war on terrorism, and that people in every country were working with us. He said that by helping identify members of Al-Qaeda, we would help America bring justice to the world. They could not escape, he said, I remember that. He said Americans had big hearts, or strong hearts, or something like that. They could not hide. America would hunt them down and kill them.”