Wells pulled open the front door, backed out. He scuttled around the corner, then ran for his car, waiting for footsteps. Shots. But nobody came after him, and the sighing of the city was all he heard.
AT 7 A.M. the next morning, his sat phone jolted him awake. No mystery about who was on the other end. Only Shafer and Exley had the number, and Wells was fairly certain Exley wasn’t calling him at this hour.
“How’d it go?”
Wells filled him in.
“Think she was straight with you?”
“I do.”
“And he’s dead?”
“Most likely.”
“Anybody else for you to talk to down there? Girlfriend, anyone like that?”
“I don’t think so. He didn’t have many friends down here. What about you?”
“Getting some threads here. Mainly about Whitby. Looks like our director of national intelligence knows more about 673 than Duto let on at first.”
“How’s that?”
“You know how Duto told us the intel from the Midnight House went to the Pentagon? He neglected to mention that Whitby was on the other end.”
“Say again, Ellis?”
“Whitby ran the unit where Brant Murphy sent his reports. It was called the Office of Strategic and Intelligence Planning. Big name, but there were only three people in it. Whitby, a deputy, and an assistant. When Whitby left to become DNI, the Pentagon closed the office, took it off the org charts. It’s not exactly a secret, but you have to know where to look. I’m not sure the FBI knows about it. Though they must.”
“How’d you find it?”
“Amazing but true, Duto told me. I went to him about the missing prisoner numbers, and he told me he didn’t know anything about them. He told me it was Whitby who made him kill the inspector general’s investigation into the letter. Then he told me that Whitby had been in charge of 673 at the Pentagon.”
“Back up, Ellis. Why did Whitby make Duto stop the IG investigation?”
“Duto says Whitby wouldn’t tell him.”
“Whitby made Vinny Duto end an internal CIA investigation and didn’t tell him why. And Duto agreed? That’s impossible, Ellis. Duto would never do that.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you. But this isn’t a normal situation.”
“What are you saying, Ellis?”
Twelve hundred miles away, Shafer sighed. “Whitby’s got a lot of juice, and I’m not sure where it’s coming from. Let’s talk about it in person.”
“I’ll be back this afternoon. We need to talk to Duto and Whitby. No more pussyfooting.”
“Not yet. First, I need to talk to the NSA. They’re the ones who ran the registry. Find out if they have anything on the missing detainees. Meantime, you go to California, talk to Steve Callar. Rachel’s husband.”
“Why would Callar talk to me? It’s not like Noemie. I don’t know him. Or his wife.”
“I’ll send you the FBI interviews. You’ll see. I checked. American has a flight to Dallas at nine thirty, on to San Diego at noon.”
“Thanks for letting me decide for myself,” Wells said.
But Shafer had already hung up.
15
There is actor and acted upon, you understand, Jawaruddin? In this room. And I’m the actor. Which makes you the — work with me here — the acted upon.”
In his right hand, Kenneth Karp held a stun gun, a sleek gray box no larger than an electric razor. He pushed a button on its side. A tiny lightning bolt arced between the prongs at the gun’s head.
Karp was skinny, with wiry black hair and dark brown eyes. When he got excited, his hands twitched and words poured out. He was excited now, pacing the room. Angry. Or pretending to be. With Karp, the distinction could be difficult to make.
Jawaruddin bin Zari, the object of Karp’s attention, sat shackled to a chair. Steel chains wrapped around his chest, forearms, and shins. A U-shaped band of steel extended from a rod behind the chair, holding his head in place. Unlike Karp, he seemed calm, his breathing steady.
The room around them was cinder-block, no decoration of any kind. With one exception. An American flag filled the wall in front of bin Zari. He could escape it only by closing his eyes.
Karp finally stopped pacing, knelt beside bin Zari, ran a hand down his biceps. “For ten days now, you have been our guest,” Karp said, speaking Arabic now.
“Guest,” bin Zari said. He hardly moved his lips. His voice was soft, nearly inaudible.
“Yes, guest.” Karp pulled a half-dozen grainy photographs from the file folder on the table behind bin Zari. He held them up one by one. “Your truck. Your truck bomb. Very nicely put together. The house where we arrested you. Three Paki army uniforms, found inside the house, genuine. Three army identification cards, also genuine. And a pass for the building where your president was to meet White”—Sir Roderick White, the British foreign minister. “This wasn’t just any operation. This was well planned. Well organized. The heart of Islamabad. A senior British official. And you would have pulled it off, if not for bad luck.”
Karp put the photos aside. “Yet when we ask you, you tell us you don’t know anything about it. Where’s the pride of ownership? The pleasure a man takes in his craft?”
Bin Zari shifted sideways, clanking his chains against the chair.
“You don’t respect us enough even to lie to us. Make something up. Pretend to answer our questions.”
A tiny smile flickered across bin Zari’s face.
“The idea of lying pleases you. Let me tell you again. You don’t want to be in this room. This is not a good room. You don’t want me to ask you questions. You don’t want to be the acted upon. So I’ll ask you one last time. We both know you didn’t put this together alone. Who gave you the security plans? The uniforms, the ID cards?”
Silence.
“Are other elements of your cell still operational?”
Silence.
“Do you want me to hurt you?” And without waiting for an answer, Karp jammed the stun gun into bin Zari’s jowls. Bin Zari screamed and the muscles in his neck bulged, but the restraints held him tight. Karp counted aloud. “One Miss-iss-ippi. Two Miss-iss-ippi. Three Miss-iss-ippi. ”
At five, Karp stopped, stepped away from the chair. Spittle ran down bin Zari’s chin. He reached out his tongue to wipe it off and then seemed to change his mind. He pulled back his tongue and snapped his mouth shut.
“Here’s what you’re thinking. You’re thinking,
Karp knelt beside bin Zari. “What you don’t understand. You might get used to this.” Again, Karp jammed the gun into bin Zari’s neck. Zari tried to pull his head forward, but the band around his temple held him tight. He squeezed his eyes closed, grunted, as the electricity poured into him.
“I’ve got a hundred different ways to hurt you. They all hurt in a different way. It’s not a fair fight.”
Karp left the gun in place until bin Zari screamed and his eyes rolled back and he slumped into the side of the world. Only the thump of his pulse in his neck proved he was still alive. Karp reached under bin Zari’s chair for a plastic gallon jug, uncapped it, poured it over bin Zari’s head.
Bin Zari snapped awake. The fear in his eyes flared and faded as fast as cheap fireworks. ”Do it again,” he
