play it safe?”
“Don’t be naive. This person would lose everything. He brought the information to me as a favor.”
“That’s not going to do me any good.” Wilson was feeling more and more isolated. Rapp and Rickman and who knew how many other scumbags, and that bitch Kennedy, were all guilty as hell, but Ferris and this mystery informant weren’t exactly exuding courage. “This is bullshit.”
“Joel, I feel bad for you.” Ferris recognized that he was in danger of losing Wilson. The same characteristics that had made him the right man to sic on Langley were now isolating him from Ferris. “But you need to hang in there. Very soon I will be in a position to put a great deal of pressure on Ms. Kennedy. Until then, though, I need you to do something.”
“Why does it always involve me doing something for you? When are you going to do something for me?”
Ferris had had enough. He stared angrily at Wilson and said, “You need to snap out of it, buddy. You’re acting like a baby. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. This is Washington. It’s a tough place. What did you expect… that people like Kennedy and Rapp would quake at the sight of your badge and roll over?”
“No,” Wilson said defensively.
“Then get your head in the game. I told you, this is early days and you are on the team that is going to win, and when we do, Director Miller and an awful lot of other people are going to have to kiss your ass and apologize.”
Wilson liked the sound of that. “Okay, okay. What is it that you need me to do next?”
“You’ve heard of Darren Sickles?”
“CIA station chief, Kabul… I just met him.”
“Well, apparently he’s been recalled and Kennedy and Rapp are making his life miserable.”
“And why should I care?”
“Because, apparently, Mr. Rapp made certain threats against Mr. Sickles’s life.”
Wilson was suspicious. “Where did you hear this?”
“Arianna Vinter from the State Department.”
“I met her as well.”
“Well, you should interview her. She said that Mr. Rapp was extremely threatening.”
A scowl washed over Wilson’s face. “Stuff like that is not easy to prove in court.”
“I’m not talking about court. I’m talking about a public hearing on Capitol Hill, in my committee room with cameras and lots of press. You need to stop thinking like an agent all the time. We need to crucify Rapp in public. Paint a picture of an out-of-control sociopath who threatens, lies, and cheats to get what he wants. Once we do that, your legal case will fall into place.”
Two blocks away Scott Coleman was sitting in the back of a black Honda Odyssey minivan. The bug had been easy to plant. A cable company uniform and a few dog treats were all it took. The little pooch was not a guard dog. Even so, Coleman laced the treats with a mild sedative, parked the van in the alley, dropped the treats over the fence, and pretended to check the cable lines. After five minutes he entered the backyard and greeted the dog with a few more treats of the nonmedicated variety. He dropped to a knee, and while petting the dog, fixed the bug to the collar.
A quick sound check with the men in the van verified that it was working. Coleman and his men then left the area, knowing that Wilson was at FBI headquarters. When Wilson left the building shortly after noon, a second team followed him home and was able to listen in on the bug. Nothing of real interest was reported other than the fact that the team thought they heard Wilson crying at one point. Having lost men in battle, Coleman had no respect for a man who cried over his own fuckups.
As the former SEAL listened to the dialogue between the senator and Wilson, he nodded with the confidence that he was going to be able to give Kennedy some actionable intelligence. If the senator was in fact getting his intel from a foreign intelligence asset, he had recklessly placed himself in a very precarious position. On top of that, they now had his game plan. The man wanted to hold public hearings.
Coleman transferred the audio file of the conversation onto his smartphone and then placed it in an email marked Urgent and sent it to Kennedy. He then asked the driver to pull over.
“Guys,” Coleman said to his two men, “stay with them and email me any updates.”
“Where are you going?” the wiry tech asked him.
“Zurich. Keep sending me stuff. I should be back in a few days.” Coleman closed the door and jogged off in the direction of his car.
Chapter 50
Islamabad, Pakistan
Nadeem Ashan had endured difficulties before but none of them compared to what he was now going through. In the middle of dinner last night there had been a knock on the door. He had feared such an event all day, ever since a second video of Joe Rickman had been released. In it he had clearly implied that Ashan was an American agent. Ashan knew he needed to confront the lies, so he had gone directly to the director general’s office to state his innocence and to offer his assistance in any way that would help disprove what was an obvious attempt at disinformation. Ashan could tell by Taj’s tepid response that this was not a problem that would go away easily.
The rest of the day was businesslike. His counterparts both stopped by his office to lend their support. Durrani was confident that the accusations would be proven baseless. Lieutenant General Mahmud Nassir, the deputy director of the Internal Wing, offered his apologies that an investigation was necessary. Ashan and Nassir had never had a warm relationship, so the Chilly meeting did not seem out of character.
At the sound of the knock, Ashan’s heart sank. His wife had already spent much of the night crying, as she was friends with the foreign secretary’s wife and had seen how he was dragged from his house. It was not a big leap to think that the same thing could happen to her husband. When he opened the door he was not surprised to see Lieutenant General Nassir, but he was surprised to see his friend Durrani.
Before Nassir could speak, Durrani stepped forward and said, “I’m here to make sure you are treated with the respect that you deserve.”
Nassir remained as impassive as ever and motioned for his men to proceed. Ashan and his wife were put in separate rooms, and fortunately, Durrani went with Ashan’s wife to comfort her, as she was not prepared for a lengthy interrogation. Three men plus Nassir accompanied Ashan into his study and proceeded to interrogate him for six straight hours. Despite being asked multiple times to not smoke in his house, the men ignored him. Ashan made a mental note that when this was all over he would make sure these three were punished for their brazen disrespect of his rank. Nassir, on the other hand, was hopeless.
If it weren’t for Durrani, Ashan would have been a mess worrying about his wife. Shortly after ten o’clock his friend informed him that his wife had been allowed to go to bed. Ashan felt a bit of relief that they were being civilized with her, but that relief was short-lived. Durrani then informed him that Ashan’s son and daughter had both been picked up for questioning. His son was a doctor in Karachi and his daughter an engineer in Islamabad. His son would be fine, but his daughter was an extremely attractive young woman, and the ISI was not known for its restraint.
Ashan looked daggers at Nassir and said, “I am innocent of these charges, and will be cleared. If my daughter or son are harmed in any way, I will make sure that your children experience the same degradation.”
The threat probably had a fifty-fifty chance of working on its own, but then Durrani made sure it stuck. After unleashing a string of obscenities, he screamed a more vivid account of what he would do to Nassir’s children and then threw a few threats at his three men for good measure. Of the three deputy generals, Ashan was by far the most civilized and Durrani was the least. Fearless in his attacks against Pakistan’s enemies, he had a reputation for being ruthless that was wellknown by the men of the Internal Wing.
Nassir promptly excused himself so he could go in the other room and make it very clear to his men that he would execute anyone who did not treat Ashan’s children with absolute respect. A little less than an hour later, Nassir and his men called it a night. After Durrani’s graphic description of how he would have each of them sodomized, repeatedly, the men seemed to have lost their zeal.
