The Invisible

CARTAGENA

Twenty minutes later, Kealey ended his conversation with Harper. He lowered the phone and stood there for a moment, thinking it through. Then he opened the door to the living room. Finding it empty, he walked past the couch and looked through the French doors, which were still open to the cool night air. Marissa Petain was seated alone at the garden table. She was absently toying with the stem of her wineglass, apparently deep in thought. Kealey thought about leaving her to it, but she deserved to know what had been said, and he had questions of his own. Questions that couldn’t wait until morning. Walking back to the kitchen, he popped the top off a fresh bottle of beer and went out to join her. The evening air was cool on his face and arms, the slight breeze scented with flowers and fresh-cut grass. As he approached, she looked up quickly, clearly startled. When she saw it was him, she nearly came out of her seat. “Well?” she demanded. “What’s happening?”

Kealey took a seat and placed the sat phone on the table. Then he started to explain, beginning with Benazir Mengal. The analysts in the Operations Directorate had worked with their counterparts at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center to build a complete profile of the former Pakistani general. What they had dug up was of considerable concern. His long-term association with Inter-Services Intelligence was a problem all by itself. To dissuade any one person from gaining too much power, military officers were never assigned to ISI for more than three years in their entire career. This standard had been put into place by Pervez Musharraf himself, but exceptions had clearly been made for Mengal, who’d spent nearly ten consecutive years as the head of Joint Intelligence North (JIN), the ISI section responsible for the disputed areas of Jammu and Kashmir. In that role, Mengal had worked closely with Kashmiri rebels—secretly, of course—in an attempt to track Indian troop movements, as well as to keep the conflict bubbling at a low boil.

And that was only the hard evidence. The rumors were equally insightful. According to a Pakistani major captured by Indian forces during the Kargil war, Mengal was personally responsible for the murder of a dozen Kashmiri rebels who’d been working as double agents for India’s Special Frontier Force, an outfit created in 1959 with the assistance of the CIA. According to the major, who had narrowly survived the interrogation methods used by his captors, Benazir Mengal harbored no ill will toward the men he had killed in that incident; in fact, he’d been seen joking around with them prior to the executions. The way the Pakistani major had described it, Mengal was a man who had no special allegiance to his men or even to his country; he did what he did simply because he was extremely good at it.

Petain listened carefully to Kealey’s recitation, then leaned back in her chair. She blinked a few times, then pursed her lips thoughtfully, as though processing the information. Kealey watched her carefully, but he couldn’t detect a hint of fear or hesitation, two things that would have caused him to reconsider his plans. She was simply thinking things through.

“That’s an interesting point of view,” she finally said, “but it begs the obvious question. If Mengal has no allegiance to anyone but himself, why is he mixed up in all of this? Why did he break Amari Saifi

out of prison, and why did he orchestrate the abduction of Secretary Fitzgerald?”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Kealey replied. “But remember, this is just one man’s opinion, and he shared it under duress. It may be the closest thing we have to a psychological profile, but it’s far from conclusive. The only person who can really answer those questions is Mengal himself.”

“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to ask him. Has the DO had any luck in tracking down his known associates?”

“Yes. In fact, they’ve come up with an interesting theory. You know that the FBI flew an Evidence Recovery Team into Rawalpindi a couple of days ago, right?”

Petain nodded. “They were sent in to start an extraterritorial investigation.”

“Exactly. They’ve already completed a preliminary report, based on what they found in the remains of the vehicles, as well as their interviews with some of the witnesses. It was standard fare, for the most part, but they did construct a possible scenario that caught the Agency’s interest. Apparently, a senior investigator with the NTSB accompanied the Bureau team to Pakistan.” The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent federal agency tasked with investigating civil aviation accidents in the Unites States, as well as major accidents involving other modes of transportation. “Based on his initial assessment, the vehicle carrying Brynn Fitzgerald sustained damage severe enough to ensure serious injuries to all its occupants. As we already know, Fitzgerald’s driver was killed in the attack, as was her detail leader.”

“So, the investigator is saying that Fitzgerald was seriously injured in the attack?”

“He’s saying it’s possible, even likely. According to people who witnessed the ambush, Fitzgerald was carried away from the wreckage of her Suburban by two of her assailants. Not dragged, not escorted, but carried, indicating she may have been too hurt to walk on her own.”

“So where does this leave us?”

“Obviously, they were trying to keep Fitzgerald alive,” Kealey pointed out. “Otherwise, they would have shot her like they did Patterson. And if she was hurt in the attack . . .”

“Mengal would need to find someone to treat her,” Petain concluded. Her eyes widened in realization. “And he has plenty of connections. He would know the right man to turn to. A licensed doctor on his payroll, maybe, or a medic who used to serve under him.”

“Exactly, and now we have a starting point. There’s a man in Lahore who knows Benazir Mengal personally. If anyone can point us in the right direction, it’s him.”

Petain frowned and stared at him warily. She was unsure of the story he was feeding her, Kealey realized. “Where did this ‘man in Lahore’ come from? I thought the Agency didn’t have any reliable assets in Pakistan.”

“That’s what I thought, too, but Harper managed to dig someone up. I didn’t push him on it.”

Petain seemed to accept this explanation, much to Kealey’s relief. Harper had given him a list of possible candidates to check up on, including names and probable locations. All of them were based in Pakistan, and the majority of Mengal’s associates were located in Islamabad and the outlying area. As Petain had just suggested, many of them were military-trained medics who’d once served under Mengal, but with Javier Machado’s offer of assistance, Kealey now had a more probable lead. As Machado had instructed, Kealey hadn’t mentioned anything about their arrangement to the deputy DCI. Harper had ordered him to take Kharmai and leave Petain behind, but Kealey was going to do the exact opposite. He and Petain would be able to fly once they recovered the passports they’d left at the Sofitel Madrid. One of the operatives tasked with watching Ghafour in Madrid had been instructed to drop off the documents in the morning, then catch a flight back to the States. Kealey and Petain would be going in a very different direction, and now was as good a time as any to tell her.

When he was done explaining it, she nodded her agreement. He was surprised at first by her willingness to accept his story at face value, but then he remembered that she had no reason to doubt him. After all, she knew nothing about the accord he had struck with her father.

“So what time are we leaving?” she asked.

“We have to wait for the courier, but once he arrives, we’ll head straight for the airport and catch the first flight out. I don’t want to waste any time.”

“Fair enough.” She fell silent for a moment, examining her empty glass. She pointed at his beer, which he’d almost finished. “Would you like another? It’s early yet.”

“Sure,” Kealey said. As she stood up and went inside to fetch the drinks, he began working through a list of questions in his mind. He didn’t know what Machado’s angle was, but at the moment, Marissa Petain was his best chance to figure it out.

They were on their fourth drink, and Kealey could see that it was starting to catch up to her. Over the last two hours, the conversation had been gradually shifting course, drifting away from work to more personal matters. He had been careful not to rush it, as he didn’t want to seem too eager to change the subject. As far as he could tell, he had navigated the waters well. She was responding readily, and she wasn’t acting overly defensive. At the same time, Petain was not the open book he had thought she would be. She seemed reluctant to talk about her family, especially her father. Kealey couldn’t help but think this was strange, given that she’d followed his career path so closely. There was something in her past, he kept thinking. There’s got to be something there. . . . She had just finished talking about her first assignment with the Operations Directorate, a surveillance op in Mexico City, when she suddenly paused and shifted uneasily in her seat. Sensing she was about to bring up something important, Kealey set down his beer and gave her his full attention.

“Ryan, I just want you to know . . .” She trailed off, fidgeting absently with a thin silver bracelet around her