The Midnight House

“Are we the squirrels or Tonka?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I’m starting to miss the jihadis,” Wells said. “At least I know what they want. This I don’t understand at all. Did Murphy, Whitby, and Terreri really team up to kill everybody in 673?”

“We still need a motive. A couple of million dollars isn’t enough. Not split three ways. Not for this.”

“What if it was more? A lot more. Say 673 got onto something, some secret account for bin Laden that had fifty million dollars in it. A hundred. Pick whatever number you want. They take the money and then they kill the detainees. The whole squad’s in on it. The detainees have to die because if they ever get to Gitmo, they’re going to tell their lawyers about all this money. Murphy comes back here, gets D’Angelo to delete the names, so nobody ever knows the detainees even existed. The squad disbands, and somebody has an attack of conscience. Sends a note to the IG. Alleging torture and theft. And Murphy and Terreri don’t know who sent it. So, they decide to eliminate the rest of the squad. And Whitby, he’s happy with the intel they got, he doesn’t want to hear anything else.”

Not for the first time, Wells was struck by the enormous gap between the agency’s headquarters and its frontline operatives. The lords of the intelligence community sat in their offices at Langley and Liberty Crossing, pretending they were in charge. Until something went wrong. Then they told the prosecutors and the congressional investigators that they couldn’t be expected to know exactly what was happening on the front lines.

“Possible,” Shafer said. “But let me ask you. Why didn’t the letter mention a hundred-million-dollar bank account? Plenty of accusations in there. Why not that? And why cut Whitby in? For that matter, can you see this whole squad killing two prisoners in cold blood? Can you see Jerry Williams going for that? And one more thing. I don’t like Brant Murphy, either. But would he murder his own squad? Or anyone else.”

Wells tried to picture Murphy putting a bullet in someone. Even ordering a hit. And couldn’t.

“Or even Fred Whitby. It takes a certain disregard — a certain coldness—”

“I know, Ellis. Better than you.” Wells looked at Shafer. “Or not. I never have gotten the stories, what you did all those years running around Africa. And behind the Wall.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“I think of you as this oldster whose socks don’t match, but you weren’t always.”

“I wasn’t,” Shafer said. “Maybe there’s another explanation for what happened. And it comes from something we keep forgetting.”

Wells waited.

“The Pakistani nuke depots. Massive coup. Unless Whitby and Duto are flat-out lying, we got it because of intel that 673 developed. Terreri and Murphy must have known it would get noticed at the highest levels. And that they would have to produce the prisoners who gave it up. But what if those prisoners were dead? Problem. Best solution, make the names disappear. Let the intel stand on its own.”

“So, in this scenario the prisoners weren’t killed pintentionally? ”

“Maybe they tried to escape, got shot. Maybe Jack Fisher interrogated them too hard and they died.”

“So, these detainees had the list of all the nuclear weapons depots in Pakistan. Where they’re located, how they’re guarded.”

“I admit, that part doesn’t work. Crazy as the Paks are, I can’t see them giving that info to a terrorist.”

“Try this,” Wells said. “We kidnapped a Pak general. We got the info on the weapons depots from him, and we killed him accidentally on purpose and we made him disappear.”

“And the ISI went along with it? We killed one of their top guys and they didn’t care?”

“Maybe they didn’t know. They thought he defected.” Wells shook his head even before he finished. “It still doesn’t work.”

“Brant Murphy’s going to have to explain it for us.”

“We can’t get to him. We show up at CTC, he calls Whitby, Whitby calls Duto.”

“That’s half right, John. We can’t get to him at CTC.”

“You’re not saying we go back to Kings Park West.”

Shafer nodded. And Wells could only smile.

“Know what I like about you, Ellis? You’re as crazy as me.”

BUT GETTING TO MURPHY at home proved as hard as getting to him at work. After the murders of Jack Fisher and Mike Wyly, the agency had given Murphy a permanent protective detail. An unmarked van, two guards inside, sat in front of the house around the clock. An armor-plated Lincoln Town Car ferried him to and from Langley. When he had to drive on his own, he used an agency Suburban, also armor-plated. But he rarely went anywhere except the gym. And wherever he went, two guards always shadowed him.

Because Murphy’s guards were CIA officers, Wells and Shafer couldn’t use any of the agency’s unmarked vehicles. Instead, a friend of Shafer’s at the FBI let them borrow from the bureau’s surveillance fleet, which included everything from bank vans to FedEx trucks to a 1988 Jaguar XJS. They switched cars every day, sometimes twice a day.

They did have one advantage: Murphy wasn’t the only one in Kings Park West who’d bet on real estate. Every fourth house in the neighborhood seemed to be for sale, giving them a good excuse to drive around. They scheduled appointments to visit houses in the early evening, hoping to catch Murphy making a mistake, going for a run or out to dinner without his bodyguards.

But after a week, they were no closer to getting to him or even figuring out how they might. “We need to face facts,” Wells said, on the fifth day of their drive-bys. “This isn’t working.”

“He’ll let his guard down,” Shafer said.

“Not soon enough. And the guards are in the way.”

“We can find a nonlethal way to take them out.”

“Long shot, but say we can. Then what? We kidnap Murphy? Where do we take him, Ellis? Your house? It’s insane.”

“You can always get to people.”

“I couldn’t get to Ivan Markov. As much as I wanted to. And we’re not talking about killing him. We’re talking about interrogating him. Which means we can’t cut and run. It means we need time with him. Which we won’t have. And why exactly do we think he’s gonna talk to us now? He didn’t before.”

“We didn’t have D’Angelo before.”

“Ellis, no matter how many different cars we borrow, we’re low on time. Two guys can’t run long-term surveillance on a defended target. Especially not here. It’s too quiet. I can feel people watching me. We’re going to get spotted. In days. Not weeks.”

Shafer didn’t argue.

“It’s time to clue the bureau in,” Wells said. “Tell them everything. If they knew about the letter and D’Angelo, they might make progress. Or I can go back to New Orleans, talk to Noemie Williams, see if she remembers anything. Or Steve Callar. Or maybe we need to talk to Duto, see if he’ll tell us what game we’re playing.”

“Let’s give it a couple more days, see if anything breaks. It’s just possible Murphy’ll get bored, go for a drive on his own. Or a run, even better.”

“Two days,” Wells said. “No more.”

AND SOMETHING DID BREAK, though it wasn’t what Wells had expected.

Three p.m. Saturday, the seventh and final day of surveillance. Shafer was watching his daughter play softball, so Wells was alone. He had just cruised by Murphy’s house in a Verizon van. The armored van sat out front, as usual, a red Ford Econoline with two unsmiling men in front.

Then he saw two cars in the driveway of a foreclosure that was the closest empty house to Murphy’s. The first was a blue Audi A4 with a vanity Virginia license plate: “SLHOUSE.” It belonged to Sandra (“Call me Sandy”) Seward, a Century 21 agent who had several listings in the area. Wells had met her during his house-buying excursion. The second was a black Toyota Tercel. Wells had seen it before. Precisely three nights ago, stopping in front of Murphy’s house. At the time, it had worn a Domino’s Pizza sign on its roof. The driver hadn’t gotten out of