The Shadow Patrol

“Mainly Peter. Arango’s more of an administrator.”

“And Peter? What’s he like?”

“He’s—”

A KNOCK INTERRUPTED HIM. Lautner walked in.

“Like I was about to tell you, Peter’s the best boss anyone could have.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Lautner said to Wells. “I think a Predator just went down outside Jalalabad.”

Wells didn’t want to get paranoid, but he wondered why Lautner had shown up at the very moment Wells asked about him. Was he sending Wells a message: I’m watching you? Probably not. Probably Lautner’s appearance was pure coincidence. Wells hated coincidence. “Drones go down a lot?” Wells said.

“Not too often,” Yergin said. “Main thing is to blow it up before the Afghans can get their hands on it.”

“I can come back,” Wells said.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll finish up with you fast, and then if you have more questions, find me.”

“Another day in paradise,” Lautner said. “Carry on, Captain.” He saluted Wells and turned and walked out.

“I get the feeling he doesn’t like me much,” Wells said.

“He doesn’t like the fact you’re looking over our shoulders. Neither do I. I hide it better.”

“So you and he and Arango took over a little more than a year ago.”

“About that. For a while, things went really well. Recently, not so much.”

“Vinny said you’ve lost some of your best agents.”

“Did he tell you what happened?”

“No.” Technically, Wells wasn’t lying. Duto hadn’t told him. Wells had read the reports himself, in the files.

“One of our best sources got hit by a truck bomb. Trust me when I tell you it was an occupational hazard. Not necessarily because anyone knew he was ours. Another source, he told us a Talib commander was ready to defect. It was pure smoke. And now he’s gone. Either he got caught and he’s about to get his head chopped off, or he was playing us all along.”

“So that’s two of your best sources gone.”

“Listen, we know the rumor, John.”

“What rumor?”

“You insist on acting like some jarhead with more muscle than brains and I’m not sure why. Rumor is, somebody back home thinks we’ve been penetrated.”

So much for keeping the mission secret. Wells was surprised that Yergin had revealed so soon that he knew the real reason Wells had come. Forcing the issue into the open put Wells on the defensive.

“Nobody seriously thinks that’s possible,” Wells said.

“Then why are you here?”

“Let me rephrase. I don’t seriously think that’s possible. How could the Taliban turn one of you? What could they offer?”

“Devil’s advocate, maybe they bought somebody. Money knows no ideology.”

“Suppose they came to you, Gabe. Would you trust them to pay? And the truth is, money’s not a good motivator for treason. Money is the icing on the cake.”

“And the cake is—”

“Ideology or blackmail.”

“What about Aldrich Ames?” The worst traitor in the CIA’s history. “He did it for money.”

“Money as ideology. Ames convinced himself it was nothing but a game on both sides and he should get paid while he could.”

“So there’s no mole, John? You’re just here for your health.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

Yergin lit a fresh cigarette with his silver-plated Zippo. He flicked the lighter into the air and snapped it shut one-handed. “What if there is?” He sucked down on the cigarette, obviously enjoying the moment. But when he exhaled, he said only, “Course not. We were dealt a bad hand, but all in all I think we’ve played it pretty good. Duto should leave us alone, let us do our jobs. Anything you want to ask me?”

Wells decided to press. “Suppose you’re wrong. Suppose we’re both wrong. Any obvious candidates? Anybody acting strange?”

“Everybody’s acting strange. We’re all stressed beyond belief.” As if to punctuate his words, the hollow drum of an IED sounded somewhere beyond the blast walls.

“Anybody find excuses to get outside the wire without backup?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean much. Somebody senior like me could easily get to Kandahar or a big FOB and then go from there.”

Wells felt Yergin was almost winking at him, hinting he was guilty. “I’d like to look over your entry and exit logs.”

“Sure.” Yergin looked at his watch. “I have to figure out this drone that went down. Talk to anybody you like.”

Wells stood to leave. And played his last card. “What about drugs?”

“What about them?”

“Do you monitor the trafficking networks?”

“Around the edges. We’re not the DEA.”

“But it’s a source of funding for the insurgency.”

“You can overstate its importance. The Taliban run cheap. I mean, they literally pay fifty dollars to these kids to plant IEDs. If the drug money disappeared tomorrow, they’d still have cash from the charities, Iran, the ISI. But sure, we try to watch it.”

“Who specifically?”

“Right now an analyst named Joanna Frey. She’s been here seven months, leaving next month.”

“Where’s her office?”

“On five. She’s quite nice.”

“I’ll try not to scare her.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.”

FREY WAS MAYBE FORTY-FIVE, with a corona of long gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She looked like a college librarian. She didn’t look like she belonged at the agency, much less in Kabul.

“Ms. Frey?”

“Joanna.” She waved him in. “Sit.”

“I’m John Wells.”

“Of course. We got an e-mail you’d be visiting. Said we should cooperate.”

Another curiously passive-aggressive move. Cooperate somehow implied that Wells was not to be trusted. “So your tour is almost done?”

“Next month.”

“Looking forward to getting out of here?”

“I am. I volunteered to come, but I’m ready to go. Sick of being cooped up.”

“What did you do at Langley?”

“Counternarcotics analysis. Mainly stats, estimates of coca planting and refining all over South America. Where the stuff went. How big the business was start to finish. Lots of looking at satellite imagery, reviewing seizure reports and cables from Colombia and Bolivia.”

“Big picture.”

“We were interested in the big traffickers, their relationships with the government, the police. A lot of ELINT.” Electronic intelligence could range from wiretaps to cell phone traces to bank transfers. “Though we had trouble getting the NSA’s help. If it’s not terrorism or WMD, it’s not a priority for them.”