“An inadequate prophylactic, Your Honor. Again,
“This sabotages a deal made only a week ago.”
Feeling the pressure of the stranger’s gaze boring into his neck, Lattimore decided what the hell. He rose, eased his way past two other agents in attendance and headed down the center aisle toward the courtroom door, avoiding the stranger’s eye, choosing instead to cock his hand into a gun, then firing at the bailiff who glanced up from his
Lattimore waited in the corridor, figuring it would take only seconds. True enough, the door eased open, the rumpled man with the scratchy beard and off-kilter glasses materialized, breaking into an ample smile, teeth the color of butterscotch, plowing forward, hand outstretched. His footsteps echoed brightly in the empty corridor, a sound like he was tap-dancing across a shower stall.
“Jim Lattimore? My name’s McIlvaine, Andy McIlvaine. I’m with the Banneret Group.”
They shook hands. “Can’t say I know your outfit.”
“We’re security specialists, out of Dallas.”
Lattimore was thinking Midwest, not Texas, given the accent. And he would have guessed OGA, Other Government Agency, the new nickname for the CIA. As though changing acronyms hid anything. Maybe he was a cutout. But a security firm, what kind of cover was that?
“Might I have a moment of your time?” McIlvaine at last let go of Lattimore’s hand. “It concerns your interest in a man by the name of Samir Khalid Sadiq.”
Lattimore led him to the prosecution conference room. It was clubby in atmosphere and no one else was there at the moment, the day being set aside for pretrial motions and other drudgery. Lattimore gestured McIlvaine into a plump leather chair and dropped into the one opposite, saying, “Not to be rude, but could I see some form of ID?”
McIlvaine hefted his battered leather briefcase into his lap as though it contained a bowling ball, unhitched the clasps and withdrew a business card. “If you call the home office, ask for Ron Stillwagon, he was with the bureau’s Houston office for quite a while. I think he might be able to fluff your comfort level.”
“Give me a minute.” Lattimore rose, thumbing his cell phone, but the number he entered wasn’t the one on the card. He called the secretary for his unit, ran the company and its numbers past her, then the names McIlvaine and Stillwagon. “Text me back if it all checks out. Call otherwise.” He flipped the phone closed, walked back to his chair and sat. “Sorry.”
“Not at all. I’d do the same.”
For the first time, Lattimore noticed that one of the man’s ears was half an inch lower than the other. It explained the crooked glasses. He had to resist an impulse to dock his head, render the face plumb. “Mind if I ask why you’re interested in Samir Khalid Sadiq?”
“We have units stationed in Iraq, doing both VIP transport and antifraud. We work closely with the bureau over there, among other agencies. One of our men in the Green Zone is an old Urgent Fury pal, the two of us were intelligence analysts with the Second Fleet, we stay in pretty regular touch. Your inquiries came to his attention and he thought, given the fact your case touches on matters relevant to my region of interest-that would be Mexico, Central America-that I might want to connect with you, see if I could be of any assistance.”
Lattimore felt vaguely backdoored. The bureaucratic merry-go-round in this thing was already mind-numbing. Beyond the guys on the ground in Iraq whom this McIlvaine bird had already mentioned, there was the counterterrorism desk in Washington, the Transnational Anti-Gang Task Force in Los Angeles, and outside the bureau he’d had to involve ICE on the immigration angle-without a significant public benefit parole, Happy Orantes would get grabbed right out of Lattimore’s office and deported so fast his head would spin, no matter what he had to say or who he had to offer. Then there was Homeland Security’s inspector general on the corrupt border agent angle, and if they decided to pass-he was still waiting for an answer-it would be back to ICE, their office of professional responsibility. And then there was the Pentagon, the NSA, even the OGA/CIA, who’d be tracking the cousin Roque through his cell phone and informing trusted local contacts in Mexico and Central America of his whereabouts in case something went sideways. The State Department insisted on notification too, since they were permitting known criminals to enter a sovereign ally, and most likely they’d inform the MFJP, the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, the gold standard for south-of-the-border corruption, something to put off as long as possible.
He felt his cell phone vibrate in his breast pocket, pulled it out. A text: “All OK.” He dropped the phone back in his pocket.
“So then, Mr. McIlvaine-”
“Andy. Please.”
“What can I do for you?”
The bristly face rubbered up another butterscotch smile, further skewing his glasses. He fussed again with his briefcase clasp, rummaged about inside, finally extracting a thin sheaf of papers. With no more exertion than that, a bead of perspiration formed in the hollow of his temple, hanging there, a minor defiance of gravity. “This may still be making its way to your desk.” He leaned forward, holding the documents out. “I thought I might facilitate.”
Taking the papers, Lattimore noticed the cover sheet bore no agency heading or seal, just a line at the top for subject reference-in this instance, the name Samir Khalid Sadiq-then another line for the date, a third bearing a source code he couldn’t decipher. He pictured the original gathering dust on somebody’s desk in Baghdad. Typical, he thought, and yet the poverty of detail on the face sheet suggested clandestine channels, spooks in the ether, dead drops. OGA. How many lies would he have to sit through, he wondered, if he asked Mr. Itchy Teeter-Peepers how he got his hands on the thing?
The second page was in Arabic, the third a translation. It appeared to be a data sheet of some sort, for an employee, a contact, maybe the target of an inquiry. Lattimore’s eye, trailing across the page at random, quickly settled on the word “Mukhabarat.”
“You may or may not know this,” McIlvaine ventured, the lone bead of sweat still hovering at eye level. “Forgive me if I’m belaboring the obvious. After the fall of Baghdad, coalition forces took control of various government ministries, including the Mukhabarat, Saddam’s secret police. By the time they arrived, unfortunately, many of the files had been destroyed in the invasion’s first wave of bombings. Most of the rest were boxed up by loyalists and hustled away or carted off by looters. In the weeks after Baghdad fell, some files resurfaced, many of them ransomed off to the families of men who had disappeared. Some were sold to journalists-it was practically a cottage industry. It’s difficult to know the value of what remained. This, for example.” He wiggled his hand at the sheaf of papers. “Your man Samir was on the payroll, that much appears certain. What does it mean? He may have been an interpreter through the foreign press office or a minder for a foreign journalist. They may have enlisted him as an informer, they kept a close eye on the Palestinians in-country. Or he could have been nothing more than a driver for one of the car companies the Mukhabarat operated.” He shrugged, then crossed his legs, revealing a bright hairless shin above the bunched gray sock. “Maybe he collected payoffs. Maybe he was an assassin. Maybe this document is fake.”
Lattimore had to resist an impulse to reach over and wipe the drop of sweat away, maybe straighten the man’s glasses while he was at it. He handed the papers back. “You came all the way from Dallas to tell me that?”
McIlvaine’s smile turned sly. “A link to the Mukhabarat is, of course, inherently significant. Top to bottom- analysts, case agents, drivers, torturers, common thugs-they were jobless after Baghdad fell. Many went to the Americans hoping for a job and got brushed off. That left the resistance, which they flocked to, angry, humiliated, out of work, but also well informed and lavishly armed since neither the Third Army nor the First Marines were assigned to guard the weapons depots.”
Lattimore studied the man’s eyes, which had hardened almost imperceptibly behind the old-fashioned lenses. Anyone who’d served in uniform couldn’t look at that war and not turn bitter at the recklessness, the idiocy, the arrogance. But that wasn’t quite relevant to the matter at hand. “The fact we can’t be sure exactly who this man is as yet,” he said carefully, “argues for the greater control we can exert by keeping tabs on him, which this investigation does. What would you rather have us do, let him move at will?”
Another smile from McIlvaine, less sly than indulgent. “We’ve learned Mr. Sadiq was sponsored by a prominent Salvadoran of Palestinian descent for his visa, not someone we know, exactly, but a friend of a friend, let’s say, two or three degrees removed from people we trust. That doesn’t mean he’s a genius or a saint but he’s on our side, as far as we can tell.”
“Let me stop you for a second. Tell me again, this is all of interest to you why?”
“To be honest, I thought the more relevant issue would be its interest to you.”
