The Midnight House

“He already confessed.”

“But he was in Phoenix—”

Wells explained.

WHEN HE WAS DONE, Murphy nodded. “I see it,” he said. “Callar wore down. We got rough, and she couldn’t take it. We all knew she was depressed. Karp asked Terreri to send her home, but Terreri wouldn’t. He was stubborn, said we needed a doctor, and unless she requested a transfer he wouldn’t give it. And then at the end, finding the bodies sent her over. She told us we were all murderers, just like the Nazis, that she was going to report us. Terreri told her to go right ahead, betray us. She spent most of the last two months in her room. She kept telling us how she’d failed, how all of us had failed. Terreri would have sent her home by then, but the tour was practically done. Yeah, I see it.”

“But you couldn’t care less.”

“She knew what she was getting into. No one’s fault but her own that she freaked out. She comes home, offs herself, the coward’s way out. Then her whack-job husband decides he deserves revenge. On us. Like we’re responsible for her mental problems. I never laid a finger on her, never even raised my voice to her. You want me to feel sorry for her? I don’t think so.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“There’s another? Lemme guess. Poor little Rachel felt more deeply than the rest of us. Oh, the humanity.” Murphy stood. “The bad guys in this are Jawaruddin bin Zari and Steve Callar.” He walked down the driveway. “It’s time for me to go home.”

“Don’t you want to know where Callar is?”

Murphy gave him a mocking salute. “I leave him to you. I trust you’ll do the right thing. You always do.”

WELLS STAYED CALM on the surface roads, but when he reached the Beltway he pushed his foot to the floor and the WRX rocketed through the Virginia night. A childish escape, but it was all he had. For the first time in months, Springsteen filled his ears: “And there’s a darkness in this town that’s got us, too. ” “Independence Day.” The song’s hero was getting ready to move away, leave his life behind. Wells wondered if he had the strength to do the same.

Back in room 112, he found Callar and Shafer watching HBO, an early-season episode of The Sopranos. Callar’s cheek had bled through all the towels and most of two pillowcases, but he looked oddly comfortable as he grinned at Wells.

“Come outside with me,” Wells said to Shafer.

They sat in the WRX as Wells recounted what Murphy had told him.

“We make it official, he’ll be in custody the rest of his life,” Shafer said. “We’ll call him a material witness. An enemy combatant. He’ll never get a trial. We’ll never let that video come out.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

“Then that’s how it’s going to be. If the President makes that choice and signs those orders and Callar’s lawyers can’t get a judge to look at the case.”

“There’s another way.”

“No. Ellis, you’re the one who told me we needed to get the answers.”

“That was before I knew what they were. We go back in there and give him his one bullet. He’ll do it. I know he will. It’s all he’s been talking about.”

“No.”

“It’ll be easier. For him and for us.”

Wells gripped the steering wheel tight. “Easy is what got us here. We’re following the law this time.”

“And when the law fails?”

“I’d rather see the law fail than put my own judgment ahead of it. It ends here.”

“At the Budget Motor Inn.”

“That’s right.”

Wells stepped out of the car, walked into the room. Callar looked up from the television. “I want to see my wife.”

“Not tonight,” Wells said. “Tonight we’re taking you in.”

EPILOGUE

Wells wasn’t expecting a happy ending, and he didn’t get one.

To be sure that Whitby wouldn’t be able to make Callar disappear, Wells and Shafer brought him directly to Langley from the motel. In the days that followed, the FBI and Justice insisted that Callar had to be formally charged so the murder cases could be closed. The CIA and Defense argued that a trial, or even an indictment, would cause a media frenzy that would bust open the deal that the United States had cut with the ISI. Anyway, Callar wasn’t contesting his guilt, so a trial would be pointless.

Whitby stayed out of the fight. He was holed up with the defense lawyer he’d hired the day after Wells and Shafer brought in Callar. The lawyer, Nate Marmur, was a former solicitor general who specialized in cleaning up these messes, cases where guilt and innocence hardly mattered, or even existed.

The argument festered for a week. Then the President stepped in. Callar would plead guilty to four counts of murder in federal court in New Orleans for killing Jerry Williams, Kenneth Karp, Jack Fisher, and Mike Wyly. He would avoid execution, instead spending life in prison.

Callar initially refused to agree to the deal and demanded a trial. He relented after being told that if he didn’t agree, he would be held at sea for the rest of his life held in the brigs of American aircraft carriers. He was also promised, in writing, that he’d be allowed to visit his wife’s grave once every other year.

The plea agreement, which was unusually short for a federal criminal case, said only that Callar’s wife had killed herself after working with the men on a secret deployment. The murders were revenge for her suicide. Task Force 673 and the Midnight House were never mentioned. After signing confidentiality agreements, the families of the four men were brought to FBI headquarters and allowed to see a redacted version of Callar’s confession and the physical evidence against him.

A week after Callar pled guilty, Whitby resigned as director of national intelligence, saying that he wanted to spend more time with his family. The President accepted his resignation with great regret and named Bobby Yang, an assistant deputy director of operations at the CIA, to replace him. Articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post explained that Yang’s appointment showed that Vinny Duto had beaten back Fred Whitby and retaken control of the American intelligence community.

Murphy resigned from the CIA the same day, his twenty-third anniversary at the agency. He and Whitby joined Strategies LLC, a K Street lobbying firm that specialized in representing defense and private security companies. Jim D’Angelo was never charged for erasing the names from the NSA database, though he was barred from future federal contracting work, the slightest of slaps on his oversized wrists.

THEN ONLY DUTO, Shafer, and Wells were left. A week afer Whitby’s resignation, Duto invited Wells and Shafer to his office. They arrived to find Duto holding a bottle of Dom Perignon and three glasses.

“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “All your hard work.”

“Don’t rub this in our faces, Vinny,” Wells said.

“Aren’t you wondering if I knew what happened to bin Zari and Mohammed?”

“I’d break your jaw, but you’re not worth the punch.”

“I had no idea. So help me God. I mean, the deal with the ISI, yes, I knew. And there were rumors that the Midnight House, at the end, something was wrong. But I didn’t know what.”