Wells stood and pulled off the electrodes and the blood-pressure cuff. The door opened and Dex came in, his hand on his 9mm. “Relax,” Dex said.
Wells sat. “Tell Vinny this little show is over,” he said. “Ask me whatever you like, call me a fool, but stop telling me I’m a traitor.” Walter walked out as Dex sat on the corner of the desk, hand on his gun.
“Let me guess,” Wells said. “Just following orders.”
IN THE ADJOINING room, Exley and Shafer watched the examination through the one-way mirror along with Regina Burke, another examiner, who was seeing a real-time data feed from the exam.
As the interrogation progressed, Regina, a small woman with short gray hair, leaned closer to her screen. Occasionally she clicked her mouse to mark one of the lines scrolling across the monitor. Exley wished she knew how to read the response charts. But she didn’t need to be a professional polygrapher to see that Walter had gotten under Wells’s skin.
When Wells blew up, Regina picked up her phone. “Could you inform Mr. Duto that the subject has discontinued the examination?” She paused. “Thank you.” She hung up. “Duto’s secretary says he’ll be here in a few minutes.”
Walter walked in.
“So?” Shafer said.
“He’s telling the truth,” Regina said.
“Yes,” Walter said.
“How sure are you?” Exley said.
“You can never know one hundred percent,” Regina said. “But his responses are physiologically consistent. He didn’t shut down under the stress, which is what he’d do if he were trying to lie.”
“If he’s faking he’s really good,” Walter said. “I think he’s loyal.”
Exley looked at Wells, who was staring into the one-way mirror, his face set and unsmiling. Occasionally he would walk around the room, sliding from corner to corner with slow long strides as Dex watched. A few weeks before, Exley had taken her kids to the Washington Zoo. Now, watching Wells, she recognized the controlled fury of a tiger pacing his cage. If they weren’t careful, he might not bother to control that fury much longer, she thought.
DUTO SCOWLED WHEN he heard Walter’s assessment. “You let him stop? You let the guys in the chair tell you what to do?”
“It’s not there,” Walter said. “He’s not lying.”
“Maybe he’s too tough for you. Maybe he needs a more coercive environment.”
Coercive. The magic word. Coercive meant weeks without sleep inside a tiny cell with no heat or running water, sensory deprivation in a dark, windowless room until the hallucinations began. Coercive wasn’t quite torture, but it was close.
Exley decided that if she didn’t say something now she might as well resign. “Vinny, you can’t do that.” She kept her voice steady.
“Did I ask permission?”
“Forget that he’s an American citizen and it’s illegal. He can help us.”
“Let me spell it out for you,” Duto said. “He hasn’t produced anything for us in a very long time. And this Islam crap is the last straw.”
“He’s the only agent we’ve ever placed inside al Qaeda,” Exley said.
“He’s not inside anymore. For all you know he’s lying about meeting Zawahiri. And even if it’s true, what did he get? A few bucks and a ride home? They don’t trust him any more than I do.”
Duto had just revealed the real reason he was being so hard on Wells, Exley thought. He didn’t care whether Wells was loyal. In his eyes Wells had failed, and Duto would do anything to distance himself from failure.
“Vinny. Coercion is unacceptable,” Shafer said.
“Unacceptable to who?”
“Drop it.”
“Who you gonna tell, Ellis?” Duto said disgustedly. “Your friends in the Senate? At the
“He already passed,” Shafer said. “Why don’t we have a friendly conversation with him tomorrow. Get more on these guys Khadri and Farouk. Maybe Wells can put together a name and a face. Maybe he knows more than he thinks.”
“I doubt it. Is that your official recommendation, Ellis?”
“Call it that.”
“Put it in writing and I’ll consider it. In fact, perhaps we shouldn’t detain Mr. Wells at all. What would you think of letting him come and go as he pleases?”
Shafer was taken aback, Exley saw.
“As long as he’s under surveillance,” Shafer said. “Maybe a monitoring device.”
“A monitoring device. He’ll love that. Put that in your note as well.” Duto turned to Walter. “I want a full report on the poly this afternoon. Thank you.” Duto walked out.
Exley was half impressed, half disgusted. These guys played bureaucratic games so hard that it was easy to forget the real enemy. Shafer had gotten control of Wells, but Duto had forced Shafer to put himself on the line to do it. And none of the infighting made any difference to the kids who’d died in L.A.
“Let’s go get our boy,” Shafer said.
IN THE CORRIDOR that connected the rooms, Shafer stopped and leaned toward her. “When we go in there, don’t tell John he passed the poly. Don’t be too friendly.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me on this. I don’t want him too comfortable.”
Then why’d you bother to take him from Duto? she wondered. But Shafer wasn’t going to tell her, so she didn’t ask. Something important had just happened. She wished she knew what it was.
THAT NIGHT SHAFER moved Wells to an agency safe house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington. From the outside the place looked like just another run-down town house. Inside, it had cameras and alarms in every room. Still, the surveillance was unobtrusive. Two minders sat outside the house overnight, and Wells wore an electronic ankle bracelet that broadcast his location.
Every day Dex drove Wells to talk with Shafer and Exley. They were decent, but hardly friendly. No one mentioned the polygraph, and he didn’t ask. He spent most of his time explaining al Qaeda’s structure and trying to identify members from surveillance photos. He was certain he wasn’t being shown anything too new or valuable. After he mentioned Khadri’s Oxbridge accent, Shafer gave him pictures of every Arab student who had attended a top British university in the last twenty years. None matched. The name Omar Khadri didn’t pop up in the NSA database either, they told him. Whoever Khadri was, he had stayed out of sight. Which made him very dangerous.
Privately, Wells seethed at being stuck in limbo. He never mentioned or checked the e-mail account Khadri had created for him, fearing that if Khadri sent a message the agency would immediately try to set him up. That would never work. Khadri didn’t trust Wells, or he wouldn’t have been so coy about his plans. Wells would have to earn Khadri’s confidence, though he didn’t want to guess what that might take. And Khadri had surely designed the next attack — whatever it was — to work even without him. They would need to roll up Khadri’s network all at once, and only someone on the inside could do that. To beat Khadri, Wells needed some freedom to maneuver, precisely what he didn’t have.
Exley and Shafer didn’t tell Wells much about the investigation into the Los Angeles bombings either, but he didn’t need to ask. From the
