“The same rogue agent who stopped a nuclear attack on Washington—”
“That didn’t happen, Mr. Shafer,” Whitby said. “Or did it? It’s so highly classified, it’s practically a myth. And it’s going to stay that way. Could provoke national hysteria otherwise.”
“Times Square wasn’t classified.”
“Times Square was a long time ago. What’s he done lately?”
Whitby slid another red-bordered folder to Shafer. “As for you — I’ve got twenty years of you giving classified information to the French, Israelis, Saudis. Even the Russians.”
“Trading. Not giving.”
“Was it authorized? In writing?”
“We always got as much back as we gave,” Shafer said. “Or more.”
“I’ll bet I can find a couple exceptions. Those might be tough to explain to a jury. Or the
Wells slid back the file.
“Director Whitby,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”
“The same. Agent Nieves will show you out.”
THAT NIGHT, Shafer and Wells sat high in the upper deck at Nationals Park. D.C. had once been home to the famously lousy Washington Senators. Sportswriters had joked that Washington was “first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League” before the Senators decamped to Minnesota in 1960 and became the Twins.
Now Washington had a new team, the Nationals, itself a refugee from Montreal, with a new name and a new six-hundred-million-dollar ballpark. But the Nationals were no better than the Senators had been. And Nationals Park was three-quarters empty even on sunny days, making it an excellent place to avoid eavesdroppers.
Wells stretched his long legs on the seat in front of him. He and Shafer were in the upper deck, with an entire section to themselves. “So?”
“He can make it messy for sure. He knows how to work the press. Knows your stuff is classified and tough to leak. It really would be a problem if people knew how close we cut it last year. Meanwhile, Whitby goes to town. Bold move. Instead of dancing around your reputation, he attacks it straight on.”
“Paints me as out of control and dangerous.”
“Thinking you’re above the law. Yep.”
“How could he be so wrong?”
Shafer laughed. They both knew Whitby’s accusations had more than a grain of truth.
“What about you?”Wells said.
“He’s got ammo. You see it in context, it makes sense, but if he takes a couple examples, Shafer gave this satellite imagery to the Saudis, this NSA intercept to the French — it would take some time to explain to a jury. More important, money. Probably all I have.”
“And Vinny’s locked up tight.”
“Looks that way,” Shafer said. “Though I have a theory on that.”
“You think he set us up.”
“I’ll tell you when it’s all done. I promise. So, what do you think, John? Do we quit? Walk away? Give the man what he wants?”
Wells didn’t bother to answer.
“I didn’t think so,” Shafer said.
Far below them, a Nationals batter — a slim black guy who reminded Wells of Darryl Strawberry circa 1986, tall and lean and quick — stroked a scorching line drive to right field. It spun into the corner, and by the time the Brewers outfielder corralled it, the batter was rounding second, eating up the basepaths with smooth, long strides. The right fielder fired a strike from the corner, but by the time the third baseman got the tag down, the runner had touched the bag for a triple. The crowd, such as it was, cheered.
“Nice,” Wells said.
“You used to be able to run like that. Must be hard to get old for an athlete like you. Feel the reflexes go.”
“I still have enough left to toss you over the railing.”
Shafer squeezed Wells’s biceps. “Maybe. How about putting that muscle to good use?”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
“We have to go to Jim D’Angelo. As soon as possible. Find out who asked him to replace those names. And why.”
“But won’t he run straight to Whitby?”
“Not if we play him right.”
PART THREE
21
The white Mitsubishi van bumped through the center of Derai, a dusty farm town in the heart of the Swat Valley, one hundred miles northwest of Islamabad. The road through Derai was wide and potholed, lined with swaybacked two-story buildings that leaned on one another as unwillingly as employees at a team-building exercise.
The streetlights were out, and the stores were closed, their metal gates pulled down. The streets were empty aside from an old man slowly pedaling a bike ahead of the van, his skinny brown calves rising and falling under his robe. The only proof of life came from the televisions playing in the apartments above the stores.
Given what they’d seen on the road into Derai, the lack of activity wasn’t surprising, Dwayne Maggs thought. Maggs sat in the back of the Mitsubishi, massaging his aching right leg, which hadn’t fully recovered from the bullet he had taken two months before. In the front seat were two Delta operatives, both able to pass for local.
A skinny white cat skulked across the road, head low, fur matted by the summer rain that had been pelting down for an hour. The cat ignored the van with the studied nonchalance of a Manhattan jay-walker and disappeared into an alley on the other side of the street, beside a blown-out police station, its windows gone, concrete hanging at odd angles from its walls. The cops had fled across the river, to Mingora, a bigger and marginally safer town. A gray-and-white cat surveyed the street from between two sandbags atop the station. The cat was probably about as effective as the Paki cops had been, Maggs thought.
Outside Derai, the van turned southeast on the narrow road that dead-ended at their ultimate objective, a tiny farming village called Damghar Kalay. Maggs snuck a glimpse at his watch. Ten fifteen. Right on schedule. On the edge of town, a necklace of lights flickered on a minaret, glistening in the rain-streaked sky.
Aside from the minaret, Damghar was dark. A couple miles beyond it, on the opposite bank of the Swat River, the lights of Mingora glowed. Mingora was the regional capital. With one hundred seventy-five thousand residents, it retained hints of vitality that Derai had lost. Mingora, Derai, and the villages around them lay on a belt of flatland that the icy Swat River had carved from the mountains of the Hindu Kush. With hot summers and plenty of water, the southern Swat Valley was surprisingly fertile, an agricultural oasis. The mountains around it were largely uninhabited, a trackless and beautiful wilderness that in happier times had been called “the Switzerland of Pakistan.” Just seventy-five miles north of here, the massive peak called Falaksair topped twenty thousand feet, a stone fist punching through the sky.
