should have it in an hour.”
“This is politics! I gave the man a full pardon for his work at CIA, just to prevent something like this from happening.” Ryan was yelling inside the car, the veins in his neck exposed.
“It
“I’m going to get in front of the cameras right now and tell America what kind of a man Ed Kealty is picking on. This is bullshit!”
“Jack, we don’t know the details. If Clark has done something other than what you pardoned him for, it is going to look extremely bad.”
“I know what Clark has done. Hell, I ordered him to do some of it.” Ryan thought for a moment. “What about Chavez?”
“He wasn’t mentioned at Brannigan’s press conference.”
“I need to check on John’s wife.”
“Clark needs to turn himself in.”
Jack shook his head. “No, Arnie. Trust me, he does not.”
“Why not?”
“Because John is involved in something that needs to stay quiet. Let’s just leave it at that. I will not go out on record with a call for Clark to come forward.”
Arnie started to protest, but Ryan raised his hand.
“You don’t have to like it, but you do have to drop it right now. Trust me, Clark needs to stay low until this blows over.”
“
43
General Riaz Rehan entered the baked-brick hut with two of Haqqani’s men. They stood on either side of him holding flashlights, and they shined their beams on a figure slumped on the floor in the corner of the room. It was a man, both of his legs were crudely bandaged, and he lay on the floor on his left shoulder, facing the wall.
The Haqqani operatives wore black turbans and long beards, but Rehan was in a simple
Rehan look?ed over the prisoner. The man’s matted and soiled hair was more than half gray, but this was not an old man. He was healthy, or he had been so before he’d been blown ten feet by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Rehan stood over the man for several seconds, but the man did not look toward the light. Finally one of the Pashtun gunmen walked over and kicked the man on a bandaged leg. He stirred, turned to the light, tried to shield his eyes from it with his hands, then just sat up with his eyes closed.
The wrists of the infidel were shackled to an eyebolt on the poured-concrete floor, and his feet were bare.
“Open your eyes.” General Rehan said it in English. The Pakistani general motioned for the two guards to lower their flashlight beams a little, and when they did so, the bearded Westerner’s eyes slowly opened. Rehan saw the man’s left eye was blood red, perhaps from some blow to his nose or eye but likely due to a concussion from the RPG blast that, Rehan had been told, caused the prisoner’s other injuries.
“So… you speak English, yes?” Rehan asked.
The man did not answer at first, but after a moment he shrugged, then nodded.
The general squatted down, close to his prisoner. “Who are you?”
No response from the prisoner.
“What is your name?”
Still nothing.
“It hardly matters. My sources tell me you are a guest in Pakistan of Major Mohammed al Darkur of the Joint Intelligence Bureau. You came here in order to spy on what Major al Darkur erroneously thinks is a joint ISI — Haqqani network facility.”
The wounded man did not respond. It was difficult to tell in the low light, but his pupils were still somewhat dilated from his concussion.
“I would very much like to understand why you are here, in Miran Shah, right now. Is there something special you are hoping to find, or was it just fate that has your journey into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas coincide with my visit here? Major al Darkur has been meddlesome to my efforts of late.”
The gray-haired man just stared at him.
“You, friend, are a very boring conversationalist.”
“Been called worse.”
“Ah. Now you talk. Shall we have a polite discussion, man-to-man, or shall I have my associates pry the next words past your tongue?”
“Do what you have to do, I’m going to catch a nap.” And with that the American lay back on his side, his chains jangling on the concrete floor as he positioned himself.
Rehan shook his head in frustration. “Your country should have stayed out of Pakistan, just like the British should have stayed away. But you inject yourselves, your culture, your military, your sin, into all cracks on the globe. You are an infection that spreads insidiously.”
Rehan started to say something else, but he stopped himself. Instead he just waved an angry hand at the prostrate wounded man and turned to one of the Haqqani operatives.
The American did not speak any Urdu, the native tongue of General Rehan. Nor did he speak much Pashto, the native tongue of the Haqqani network officer standing next to General Rehan. But Sam spoke English, so Rehan clearly intended for the prisoner to understand his command when he relayed it in Englid it in sh.
“See what he knows. If he tells you willingly, execute him humanely. If he wastes your time, make him regret doing so.”
“Yes, General,” replied the black-turbaned man.
Rehan turned and ducked his head as he exited the baked-brick cell.
From his position on the floor, Driscoll watched him leave. When he was alone in the room, Sam said, “You may not remember me, but I remember you, asshole.”
44
John Clark stepped off the bus in Arlington, Virginia, at five-fifty a.m. He kept the hood of his jacket over his head as he walked up North Pershing into a neighborhood that was still asleep. His target was in the 600 block of North Fillmore, but he would not go there directly; instead he continued on Pershing, ducked up the drive of a darkened two-story clapboard home, and followed the property line to the back fence. There he climbed over, dropped down into the dark, and followed this fence line until he made his way to the carport across the street from his target.
He kept his eyes on the two-story whitewashed home on a zero-lot property in front of him, crouched next to a garbage can with a violent cracking in his knees, and waited.
It was cold this morning, below forty, and a wet breeze blew in from the northwest. Clark was tired, he’d been moving from place to place all night: a coffee shop in Frederick, a train station in Gaithersburg, a bus stop in
