When the analysts called Hoffman to report that they had identified their target, he knew that it was essential to take action to remove this target as quickly as possible, but also in an appropriate way. He roused his CIA colleagues in Karachi, Islamabad and Dubai. He alerted the JSOC liaison at Headquarters to get military assets ready. He had one more essential call, but it could wait a few minutes. First, he wanted to reward himself for his unsung mastery.
He sent his secretary down to the cafeteria to purchase a cup of soft-serve ice cream, a chocolate and vanilla swirl. Some men, when they want to celebrate, might do something reckless-buy themselves a night with a fancy hooker, or get fall-down drunk in public. But Hoffman’s pleasures were gentler. When the ice cream arrived, he took from his desk a package of oatmeal cookies and crumbled one on top of the ice cream, to add a crunchy texture to the cool on his tongue.
When he finished his ice cream, Hoffman placed the call to Sophie Marx in Belgium. She was still at the villa on the edge of the NATO compound, awaiting approval to travel to Dubai. She had been dozing, allowing herself the pleasure of an afternoon nap, but she braced up when she heard the voice on the other end of the line.
“We’ve got him,” said Hoffman. “You can unpack your bag and relax.”
She was speechless for a moment. When you’ve wanted something badly, it’s hard to believe that it has really happened.
“Thank God,” she said. “Who the hell is he?”
“He’s a Pakistani computer scientist named Omar al-Wazir. The analysts are still assembling the file, but from what we know he’s a Pashtun, some kind of a computer genius. He travels all over. He’s in Karachi now, working out of one of the universities there, but he’s based at the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad. I don’t think you’re in his sights anymore. His main concern right now would be staying alive, I would think.”
“Can we grab him? I want this guy in a box.”
“I don’t think capture would be the right solution here. We’re doing a little of this and that. The consulate sent a team last night to the university. Surveillance-plus, shall we say. Islamabad station found another spot where he stayed in the past and sent a team there. We fired a few warning shots, you might say.”
“Have you told the Paks?”
“Goodness, no. I make it a rule never to tell General Malik anything unless it’s for the purpose of deceiving him. That’s the way he treats me, invariably. I will have to tell him something, sooner or later. We need help in dismantling the good Dr. Omar’s underground network. We can’t kill them all ourselves.”
“What have you got on the network?”
“We have identified two people in Dubai, thanks to his messages. The UAE will arrest them at dawn. We’re analyzing old message traffic, from Professor al-Wazir and anybody he has touched. Each time we get a good name, we will take them down.”
“You are the ayatollah, Mr. Hoffman.”
“Thank you, but I haven’t told you the most interesting part. We have been running checks on Dr. Omar’s contacts with Americans, and guess who turns up in our first run-through? It’s a bit upsetting, I have to warn you.”
She knew the answer. She felt as if she had known it for days, maybe weeks.
“Jeff Gertz,” she muttered.
“Clever girl! How did you know, pray tell?”
“It had to be him. From what Joseph Sabah told me about the consultants, I figured there must have been contact between Gertz and the Pakistani. I just didn’t want it to be true.”
“Well, believe it,” said Hoffman. “Jeffrey has stepped on a rather large turd, I’m afraid.”
“What have you got on him?”
“Not much as yet. The analysts have just started looking. But there were regular chats, it seems. This is rather sensitive, as you can imagine. It’s embarrassing for us; the White House, too. But we’ll pry it loose, and then take a look at it. The White House will want to limit damage, no doubt, and I’m sure they will understand better the case for strengthening the agency that I have been making on behalf of the director.”
“Where is Jeff now? Is he still in L.A.?”
“Heavens, no. He closed that operation down, kaput. Your beloved office has probably been turned into a tanning spa or a manicure salon. Jeffrey is on the move, tidying up this, shutting down that. And no wonder. Last I heard, he was on his way to Britain.”
“That’s my destination, too, Mr. Hoffman. Now that we have our man al-Wazir, I want to go back to London. I left all my things there. I’m sick of wearing the same clothes. And honestly, I’m worried about Tom Perkins. I want to see if there’s some way to talk with him. Maybe I can help him out. Do I have your permission?”
“I don’t think you need my permission, actually. It’s not really clear who you work for. But I would never want to separate a lady from her wardrobe for too long. And if you’re going to London, perhaps I’ll just come along, too. We can have a reunion, what?”
“A cast party,” she said. “Like on the night when they close down a show.”
“Not at all, my dear. This show has a way still to run. Just a few cast changes.”
39
The Metropolitan Police took Thomas Perkins first to a holding cell at the West End Central Station. It was on Savile Row, a few doors away from Perkins’s tailor, as it happened. The station was a flat brick box, constructed in the bland, suppressed style of British public buildings of the 1960s and ’70s when there never seemed enough money to decorate a facade or build a proper-sized room. The police held Perkins overnight in the lockup downstairs, not sure what to do with him. There was high-level interest in the case, not just from the Serious Fraud Office, but from a young man who claimed to represent the Foreign Office and camped out in the squad room with the sergeant on duty.
That first evening the superintendant’s office at New Scotland Yard issued a directive saying that the new prisoner at West End Station was a security risk. The order didn’t specify whether the risk was to others or to the prisoner himself, but an extra detail arrived at the lockup to keep an eye on him. The security officers were mum about who had dispatched them, but the sergeant on duty was told by one of his mates at headquarters that they were from the counterterrorism command known as SO15. They established a cordon around the station and banned parking on upper Savile Row and the adjoining Boyle Street.
Perkins himself was quite content. He ate a hearty dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce, and tried to converse with the other two over-night prisoners in the lockup. That was not productive, since both had been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. The first was raving piss-drunk and the second passed out.
After thirty-six hours, Perkins was moved on order of the crown prosecutor to an old Victorian-era prison in North London called Pentonville. This was a much bigger and more imposing establishment, built in Victorian times as a model penal institution. Its entrance was a creamy white facade that might have belonged to a Georgian townhouse; inside were facilities for fitness, wellness and the modern range of therapies. A plaque outside the gate noted that inmates over the years had included such luminaries as Oscar Wilde and Boy George.
Perkins was nervous at first when they put him in the police transfer van, worrying that the CIA might be planning some form of secret extradition. But through the barred windows he saw that the van was not moving west, toward Heathrow, but north, past King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations and up Caledonia Road toward Islington.
The prison warden, a tall man with a long nose and fringe of white hair, greeted Perkins personally and issued him a set of gray coveralls. He was assigned a cell in A-wing, where new arrivals were housed. But after an hour, an order came that he should be segregated from other prisoners, so he was moved to an empty corridor of D-wing, which was reserved for “enhanced” prisoners who were thought to be nonviolent. They gave Perkins his own television set and a stack of back issues of a celebrity magazine called OK! that featured pictures of big-breasted actresses and members of the royal family.