“I thought he might. He must have decided that the satellite phone was how he got tracked to Macau. What would the NOC have told him?”
“Probably to get a new phone.”
“But you’re able to track him anyway?”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
“How?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid that would come under the heading of ‘sources and methods.’ ”
“What, have you got the NSA listening in for a digital voice imprint?”
He shook his head again. All right, I wasn’t going to get the specifics. “Still think I’m paranoid for not using a cell phone?” I asked.
He smiled. “Maybe not. Anyway, I plotted out the coordinates of every Asian location to which we’ve tracked Belghazi’s phone calls during the last two years. What you get looks like a semirandom collection of dots. Except for one place.”
“Yes?”
“Three times in the last year, Belghazi has shown up at Kwai Chung in Hong Kong.”
“The container port?”
“Yeah. Always at Container Terminal Nine, the new one on Tsing Li island. He makes a call from inside. Always between two and four in the morning.”
“How’s he getting in there?” I asking, thinking out loud. “It’s got to be a secure facility.”
“I wondered the same thing. I thought, maybe he’s got an accomplice in there, a bribed Customs guy, night watchman, something like that. That’s why always the same terminal. I did a little research. And I found out something interesting.”
“Yes?”
“There’s an access agent. Hong Kong Chinese, lives in the New Territories, works at Kwai Chung. Transferred to Terminal Nine when it came online in July 2003. Belghazi’s first visit there was in August of the same year.”
“Who was the recruiting officer?”
He looked at me. “The NOC.”
I thought for a moment. I didn’t see Dox in that role. He was a shooter, not a recruiter. But I couldn’t be sure.
“So the NOC has the relationship with the port employee,” I said. “He tells Belghazi, ‘Hey, you can ship through Hong Kong, I’ve got the local connections to make sure it all goes smoothly.’ A little service from your friendly neighborhood CIA officer in exchange for information on WMD precursors or whatever.”
He nodded. “That sounds about right.”
“What does the port guy do, do you think?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve been doing a ton of research on container shipping, though, and my guess is that this guy provides the physical access, shows Belghazi and the buyer or seller the merchandise in one of the containers, then takes care of the necessary EDI information to conceal the true origins and nature of the container cargo in question.”
“ ‘EDI?’ ”
“Electronic Data Interchange. Kwai Chung is the most heavily computerized container shipping terminal in the world. If the port guy has access to the EDI system and the physical containers, presumably he could change the necessary identification codes, country/size/ type codes, etcetera, and ensure that the cargo in the container gets sent to wherever Belghazi wants it to go.”
I thought for a moment. “Where is Belghazi now?”
“Still in Macau.” He looked at me. “You learn anything new about the woman? The blonde?”
Delilah. Well, there had been that message, advising me that the wait was almost over. But of course it wouldn’t do to mention any of that to Kanezaki.
“Nothing,” I said. “You?”
He shook his head.
“What about Belghazi?” I asked. “Any calls from Terminal Nine?”
“Not yet.”
“All right, then, we might still have a shot at him.” Without pausing, making the request sound as smooth and obvious as possible, I said, “I’ll need the names and particulars of the NOC and the access agent.”
He shook his head. “No. No way.”
Well, that didn’t work. I looked at him. “Are you having second thoughts about this op?”
He shook his head again.
“Because you know now that there are people in your organization who find Belghazi useful, who want him to stay healthy.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what game they’re playing. I have my mandate, and my mandate is to have him removed. And knowing who he is, that mandate makes sense to me. If someone wants to disabuse me, they’ll damn well have to be explicit about it.”
“Good. I thought you were wavering there for a second.”
“It’s not wavering. It’s just-”
“Look, I can’t get to Belghazi directly anymore, okay? He’s seen my face, he knows he’s being hunted, he’ll be taking extra precautions. My only realistic hope of getting close is through a third party. Like one of the ones you just mentioned.”
“I understand what you’re saying. But I can’t give you the name of a CIA officer-especially a NOC-or the name of an asset. I’ve crossed a lot of lines with you, it’s true, but I’m not crossing that one.”
I could tell by his voice and his expression-and by recent experience with Crawley, who had refused to talk even in extremis-that he wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to know. It would be useless to ask about Dox. Even if I asked, I wouldn’t be able to trust his answer.
I thought for a moment, and it occurred to me that there might still be a way to do Belghazi, even without the information Kanezaki was determined to hold back. It might involve calling off the wait that Delilah was counting on, but business is business.
“All right, let’s go back to the beginning,” I said. “What’s the purpose of the ‘natural causes’ requirement with regard to Belghazi, anyway?”
He shrugged. “Well, originally, I was told that it had to look natural because Belghazi has protectors in other intelligence services. But now-”
“Now it seems that the more important objective was to avoid offending protectors in your intelligence service.”
“Yeah, I know. Life at the CIA is funny that way.”
“I told you the right hand and the left aren’t exactly working in perfect harmony with you guys.”
“I didn’t disagree.”
“And now, it seems, the right hand has learned that the left has taken a contract out on Belghazi.”
He nodded. “So it seems.”
“But they haven’t complained to you. They haven’t gone through channels. You’ve suggested they’re afraid to do that.”
“What are you getting at?”
I shrugged. “Maybe you were being overly strict in your interpretation of just how ‘natural’ Belghazi’s demise needed to be. Because, if for whatever reason your people aren’t in a position to complain about the existence of a contract on Belghazi, maybe they’re not in a position to complain if the contract gets carried out.”
He looked away and nodded, rubbing his chin.
I said, “I mean, the point of the ‘natural’ requirement is to avoid blame, right? Plausible deniability, that kind of thing?”
“What you and I agreed on involved a bit more than just plausible deniability,” he said, shaking his head. “More like, Belghazi’s death would happen in such a way that uncomfortable questions would never even get asked. There would be nothing to have to deny.”
“Sure. But we’ve learned a few things since we had that conversation, haven’t we? For example, we’ve learned that Belghazi seems to be in Hong Kong to oversee one of his arms transfers. You’ve got multiple parties involved-buyer, seller, middleman, bought-off port official, CIA overseer-and a lot of money changing hands.”
He looked at me, and his mouth started to turn up into a smile. “Yes, that’s true. A lot of players, a lot of money.”
“Lots of potential for… complications.”
His smile broadened. “And people to get greedy.”
“Right,” I said. “What does a bodyguard make a year? Not much, I’ll tell you that. And he’s spending all that time with Belghazi, securing Belghazi’s hotel suites and then returning to his own tiny room, it’s like watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous from the inside of a slum. He gets resentful, he gets jealous. He gets-”