“No obvious pattern,” Wells said. “They’re from all over. Mostly not interrogators.”
“That is the pattern. Only four of the guys have experience handling interrogations. Terreri, the LTC who ran it. Jack Fisher. The lead interrogator, Karp.”
“And my old buddy Jerry Williams.”
“Even those four, they were all over the map. None of them knew each other before 673 was formed. It’s all spare parts.”
“You think we wanted a clean break from other units.”
“Remember the legal situation at the time. Post-Abu Ghraib. Post-Rumsfeld. Pressure to close Guantánamo. The Red Cross accuses us of torturing detainees. Torture. That’s their word. And it’s the Red Cross. Not Amnesty International. Everybody knows the score. This stuff isn’t supposed to happen anymore,” Shafer said.
“But we still need intel.”
“And we think we have to get rough to get it. So, we make this new group, a few old hands and a few new ones. They’ve got a connection to the Pentagon, but nobody’s exactly responsible for it. That was the point. The whole reason for the structure.”
“Maybe so, but these guys, they’re not dumb. They would have wanted legal protection. There’s got to be a finding”—a secret Presidential memo that authorized 673 to operate. “Even if they destroyed the interrogation tapes, or didn’t make any, there’s transcripts.”
“Forget the records,” Shafer said. A note of irritation crept into his voice. “They’re gone. Focus on what we know.” Shafer held up his fingers. “One: Ten guys on the squad. Six are dead, one’s missing. Two: Millions of dollars can’t be accounted for. Murphy and Terreri, the guys who allegedly took the money, are two of the only three to survive. Three: Two detainees have vanished. Their records, anyway. Four: Duto — maybe on his own, maybe on orders from Whitby — stopped the IG from investigating. And then, for some reason, pulled us into this to do our own investigation. Five: According to the FBI, the remaining members of the squad have airtight alibis. Terreri’s been in Afghanistan for a year. Poteat’s in South Korea, and like Brant Murphy told us, he wasn’t part of the squad for long anyway.”
“And Murphy?”
“He was at Langley last week when Wyly and Fisher were killed in California. Our own surveillance tapes prove it.”
“Maybe he outsourced.”
“Doubtful.”
“Doubtful.” Contract killers were popular in the movies. In the real world they were greedy, incompetent, and more often than not police informants.
Wells stared at the ceiling. Everything Shafer had said was true, but he couldn’t see how it fit together. “What about the FBI interviews? Anything yet from them?”
“So far, no.”
“There is one other mystery,” Wells said. “Jerry Williams. We keep assuming he’s dead. What if he’s not? What if he disappeared because he got wind that someone was after 673?”
“There’s another explanation,” Shafer said.
“Not possible,” Wells said. “I know Jerry.”
“You knew Jerry. I asked Murphy about him. He said Jerry was disgruntled, thought he deserved a promotion, hadn’t gotten it—”
“So, he’s stalking his old unit?”
“Deep breath, John.”
Wells nodded. Shafer was right. He liked Williams, but they hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years.
“Either way, you’ve got your next move,” Shafer said.
“Noemie Williams.”
“Beats hanging around here waiting for FBI reports, trying to figure out what Duto’s really up to.”
“Amen to that,” Wells said. “But do me one favor. Next time you talk to him, tell him to make the Egyptians go easy on Zumari if they ever catch him. I’d do it myself, but you know it would be counterproductive.”
“Done. Can I run any other chores, my liege?”
“Mind holding on to Tonka a couple more days?”
“The kids like her. Anyway, I think she’s forgotten all about you. Doesn’t even know who you are anymore.”
“I’m going to pretend I don’t get that analogy.”
13
Three months left on the tour. As far as Martin Terreri was concerned, it couldn’t end soon enough. He was done with Poland. Sick of the whole damn country.
Terreri was sick of their living quarters. The Polish government had given his squad two barracks in Stare Kiejkuty, a military intelligence base near the Ukrainian border. The Poles on the base shared a mess hall with Terreri and his men and provided overnight security for the prisoners but otherwise kept their distance. The hands-off attitude was the reason that the United States had chosen to operate here. But the freedom came at a price. Terreri had never felt so isolated. They could leave for day trips, but the Poles required them to return each night, since they hadn’t cleared Polish immigration and officially weren’t even in Poland. And ironically, they lived under harsher conditions than American soldiers almost anywhere else. Bases in Iraq and Afghanistan had the amenities that U.S. troops had come to expect: decent grub, live satellite television, well-equipped gyms. But the Polish army wasn’t much for creature comforts. The showers had two temperatures, scalding and freezing. The food in the mess was sometimes fried, sometimes boiled, always tasteless.
Terreri was sick of the Polish countryside. Not that all the women here were ugly. In Warsaw they were gorgeous, a magic combination of blue-eyed Saxon haughtiness and wide-hipped Slavic sensuality. But the peasant women aged at warp speed. They wore ankle-length dresses to hide their boxy bodies and sat by the side of the roads selling threadbare wool blankets. They had stringy hair and tired, stupid eyes. The men were worse, sallow, with faces like topographic maps and brown teeth from their cheap cigarettes. They rode sideways on diesel-belching tractors, pulling bundles of logs on roads that were more pothole than pavement. No wonder the Russians and the Germans had taken turns beating up on them all these centuries.
Terreri was sick of being alone. He’d promised to e-mail Eileen and the kids every day. He’d even attached a Webcam to his computer for video chats. But the calls, the instant messages, the seeing-without-touching of video, they made him more depressed, reminded him of what he’d left stateside. He almost preferred the old days, when being on tour meant checking in for five minutes once a week.
Terreri was sick of his squad. The Rangers were fine. But the CIA guys, they weren’t soldiers. He could tell them what to do, but he couldn’t command them. He couldn’t give an order, get a salute, and know that what he wanted would be done quickly and without question. That instant response was the essence of military discipline. The CIA guys didn’t have it. He had to negotiate with them, explain his decisions to them. A pointless chore. And Rachel Callar, the doc, she was about two minutes from turning into a real problem. She didn’t have the stones for the job. Literally or figuratively.
Terreri was just plain sick. Probably because he wasn’t sleeping right or exercising right or eating right. And because of the dirt and lead and chemicals in the air, the stale gray clouds that coated his tongue with a metallic tang that he couldn’t shake no matter how much Listerine he swigged. For a month he’d been fighting a sore throat, a low fever. Callar said he had a virus and antibiotics wouldn’t help. But she was a shrink, not a real doctor, even if she did have an M.D. What did she know about treating sore throats? He bitched at her for antibiotics until she gave him a course. The meds didn’t help his throat, but they gave him diarrhea for a week. He didn’t tell Callar, didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, but he knew she knew.