The Triple Agent

weeks to make sure she was taking her medicine.

“You’ve lost weight!” she said scoldingly to Balawi after he arrived for work one morning. “Are you sick?”

The doctor smiled weakly and said diabetes was making him thin. It was the last time she would see him; later she learned that Balawi had handed the clinic manager his letter of resignation.

Balawi was gradually checking out of his old life. In some ways, the old Balawi was already gone.

Defne Bayrak tried to understand what was happening to her husband but was getting only small glimpses. After his three days in the Mukhabarat’s prison he was almost unrecognizable: jittery, sullen, distracted. Never one to pray openly, he now prayed all the time, asking for God’s guidance with the smallest decisions. He sat in the apartment with an open Koran for hours at a time, and when the girls’ noisy playing got to him, he would run— sometimes literally—down the block to the neighborhood mosque and the serenity of its prayer room.

Occasionally he would allow her to pull back the curtain slightly. Defne was able to extract a few details about her husband’s detention, as Balawi described the sleep deprivation and how he was pressured to reveal the true identities of prominent writers. I gave up no names, he lied. He repeated to her what he told his father: that the Mukhabarat had not used torture but had sought to shame him. He would not say how.

He also talked about his new minder, an intelligence officer whose name was Ali and who was blood kin to the king. Since his release he had begun meeting with this officer for friendly chats, he told Defne, first over chai and then for longer sessions. For Balawi, there was no real choice but to agree to bin Zeid’s coffee klatches. Gradually he became intrigued by what bin Zeid was saying.

They would meet in a prearranged pickup spot, with bin Zeid usually showing up in his blue-gray Land Rover. If it was dinnertime, bin Zeid would choose the restaurant and pick up the tab, which sometimes ran to seventy-five dollars or more—outlandishly expensive compared with the shawarma and kebab joints in Balawi’s neighborhood. Once bin Zeid asked the physician to accompany him on an errand, and the two spent a half hour cruising Amman’s massive Western-style Safeway supermarket, with its dizzying array of fresh and imported foods and the small room where customers could discreetly purchase wine and whiskey. After the checkout line, bin Zeid tucked a case of dog food under his arm and handed several bags of groceries to Balawi—a gift, he said, for the doctor and his family.

Bin Zeid’s pitch was subtle, especially at first, but the message was always the same: We need you to help us. For your sake. For your country’s sake. He dissected some of the more strident essays Balawi had written as Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, trying gently to upend the jihadists’ use of the Koran to justify suicide bombings and terrorist attacks.

Osama bin Laden’s vision of Islam is distorted, he would say. The Koran forbids the taking of innocent lives.

Bin Zeid even suggested that Jordan’s King Abdullah II was a purer manifestation of Islamic principles than bin Laden. After all, the king, a man with Western affinities and a glamorous wife who traveled the world promoting education for women, was a Hashemite, a descendant of a clan that traced its lineage directly to the Prophet Muhammad.

Balawi nodded in tacit agreement. Maybe there was a way he could help the monarchy.

The precise role that Balawi might play was not immediately clear, but bin Zeid was clear about one thing: If the doctor could use his connections to help track down wanted terrorists, the potential reward could be immense. Enough to change his life and that of his entire family.

How much money? It depended on the target, but the CIA, the agency that wrote the checks, had put bounties on the heads of bin Laden and his wily No. 2, the Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, promising sums that were difficult even to imagine.

How much, exactly? Defne would ask later, when her husband was at home. Humam had been contemptuous of the Mukhabarat agent when he related details of their meetings to his wife in the privacy of their apartment. But now he was distracted again, lost in his thoughts.

Millions, he finally said.

On the morning of March 18, Humam al-Balawi packed two small bags and prepared for what he said would be a brief trip. He announced that he had decided to apply to study medicine in the United States, but he first had to pass a qualifying exam. The exam was being offered in Istanbul.

The story was mostly plausible. Long before his arrest Balawi had talked about studying in America, and he had fretted about whether he could decipher the highly technical English on the exam that would determine his eligibility. But when the subject came up previously, the test was always to be in Amman. Still, Balawi was well connected in Turkey from his school days, and no one questioned his reasons for going there. He hugged his girls and wife and left the house with his younger brother, Assad, who agreed to drive him to the airport. Humam said nothing to his father about the trip, and he would not bring himself to say good-bye to him.

At Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport, Humam motioned for his brother to bypass the check-in gate for Istanbul. Instead they queued up at an Emirates airline counter for a flight to Dubai, the transit hub of the United Arab Emirates. Humam dropped off his bags and asked that they be checked all the way through to his final destination: Peshawar, Pakistan.

Afterward Humam shook hands with his younger brother, who eyed him with a mixture of puzzlement and concern.

I think we should talk to our father about this, Assad al-Balawi finally said.

No, he is not to know, came the reply. Will you promise?

Assad consented.

Peace be with you, he said.

And with you.

Humam al-Balawi shoved his ticket and passport in his pocket, turned, and walked up the steps to the gate.

6. TARGETS

Langley, Virginia—May–June 2009

Throughout the spring America’s invisible army of spy satellites and eavesdroppers spread its nets across northwestern Pakistan, arraying the world’s most sensitive eavesdropping gear against one of the most backward regions on earth. Cameras scrutinized every mud house, barn, and goat stall across an area the size of Puerto Rico. Banks of computers trolled phone lines, Internet transmissions, and wireless signals, in an automated search for a single word or phrase that might signal trouble or lead to the capture of a long-sought foe.

In May one such phrase, plucked from routine phone intercepts, sent a translator bolting from his chair at the National Security Agency’s listening station at Fort Meade, Maryland. The words were highlighted in a report that was rushed to a supervisor’s office, then to the executive floor of CIA headquarters, and finally to the desk of Leon Panetta, now in his third month as CIA director.

Nuclear devices.

Panetta read the report and read it again. In a wiretap in the tribal province known as South Waziristan, two Taliban commanders had been overheard talking about Baitullah Mehsud, the short, thuggish Pashtun who had recently assumed command of Pakistan’s largest alliance of Taliban groups. It was an animated discussion about an acquisition of great importance, one that would ensure Mehsud’s defeat of Pakistan’s central government and elevate his standing among the world’s jihadists. One of the men used the Pashto term itami, meaning “atomic” or “nuclear.” Mehsud had itami devices, he said.

After the shock subsided at Langley, skepticism crept in. Was it a translation error? A tall tale? A ruse? Some of the agency’s most experienced hands were openly scornful. Baitullah Mehsud was a semiliterate gangster with a big mouth. His experience with bombs was limited to strapping a few pounds of homemade explosives on a hapless