Body of Lies (29 page)

"No. That's my decision."

"No, what?"

"No to your blackmail. I won't stay married to you so I can beat a bullshit rap about something you think you heard me say. If I agreed, then the next time you were angry, you'd invent something else. Anyway, I'm not here to ask you for anything. I'm here to tell you something."

"What's that, tough guy?" She said it tauntingly, but there was an undertone of uncertainty.

"Unless you withdraw your complaint immediately, I am going to take action to defend myself."

She laughed again, even more unconvincingly. "How's that? By recruiting one of your ridiculous CIA agents to come after me? I'm petrified."

"I'm going to defend myself by telling the truth. I'm going to say that I asked you for a divorce, and you went into a jealous rage and invented a false story. And then I am going to show them--and by that I mean show
your
employer as well as mine--that you are an unreliable person. An untrustworthy person."

She looked at him and then shook her head. "You've lost your mind, Roger. I know these people. The people on the White House staff are my friends. I am part of their world. They're not going to believe the word of someone like you from the CIA, which they
hate
, against someone like me, who's their friend. It will never happen.

"It won't be my word against yours. I have records. Letters. Pictures. Documents. I can take you out."

This explicit threat, rather than frightening Gretchen, seemed to enrage her, summoning a contempt for him that had been there all along. "You don't have the balls for this, Roger. You're too polite. I know you. You're not a killer."

"Try me. I put up with your tantrums and sexual demands, and I let you have your way. But this is different. I am fighting for my life. If you don't back off, I will destroy you. I mean it. Watch me."

He turned and walked out the door. She called after him, and then began cursing--screaming his name and joining it with vile obscenities. People down the hall began to open their doors. But it was too late for Gretchen. The elevator door had closed and Ferris was on his way out of the building.

F
ERRIS WENT
to his mother's house in the mountains, where he had taken the precaution of storing his private files when he went overseas. She tried to soothe him, realizing that something was wrong, but he was in another world. He gathered his material and began to sift it--papers, old e-mails he'd saved on discs, digital photographs that he had never printed, handwritten letters. He locked himself in his old bedroom and spent nearly a whole day going through this record of his life with Gretchen, deciding what would be useful to him now. He narrowed a big pile down to a smaller pile, and then sifted the items, one by one.

She had cheated on her college loans. That was probably his best weapon. Ferris had helped, and sent her an e-mail confirming that it was done. And she'd pulled a fast one in law school, crediting far more hours to her supposed campus job than was warranted. She had bragged about that in an e-mail, too. That was really Gretchen's problem. She had trusted too much in Ferris's decency. She had lied about drug use, too, in her interviews with the Justice Department. Ferris could prove that, as well, because she had sent him an e-mail asking for advice when she first applied for a job. Ferris told her, jokingly, to tell the truth and say she'd never used drugs. So she lied, and it worked, and she was so relieved and grateful that when it was over, she sent Ferris a gushy e-mail. The FBI would enjoy that.

Finally, there were her taxes. In the year before they got married, when she was still filing separately, she'd had an unusually large tax bill. She had been desperate to pad her expenses, so she had gathered up all her charges for lunches and dinners and pretended they were business meals and entertainment. She'd even included a trip they had taken to the Virgin Islands that Christmas. Ferris had kept copies of the receipts. Gretchen had been wrong about him. He had kept some ammunition from the first.

F
ERRIS'S MOTHER
could see that he was preoccupied, searching through his old files. And she didn't bother him until he had finally finished, well past midnight. But when he was done, she brought him downstairs in the kitchen and made him a cup of tea. It was early December; the leaves were down across the Shenandoah Valley and the winter winds were rattling the windows of her big, empty house.

"A man from the FBI came by," she said. "Or at least he said he was from the FBI. He showed me some kind of badge."

"Oh? What did he want?"

"He said he was updating your security clearances. He wanted to know if we had any family files. Old records, letters, that sort of thing. From your father's family."

"No kidding. That's strange. Did you give him anything?"

"A few papers for him to copy. I didn't have much to give. I let him rummage around for an hour or so. They did that before, when you first joined the agency. And they did it with your father, so many times. So I didn't think anything of it."

"Did he find anything he didn't like?"

"No. He seemed quite happy when he left. He said everything was in order, and not to worry. The update was fine."

Ferris shrugged. Hoffman must have sent the security man when Ferris joined Mincemeat Park. It didn't matter. He had no secrets. And right now he had bigger things to worry about. He said good-night to his mother and caught a few hours' sleep before heading back to the city.

F
ERRIS COPIED
two sets of the records. One he left with his attorney, the other he took with him to Gretchen's apartment. She had a beaten look from the moment she opened the door. There were deep circles under her eyes, and Ferris suspected she hadn't slept much since he had last seen her. She knew that he had the leverage. What she had never imagined was that he would use it.

Ferris laid the material out on the floor, item by item. He explained what each one was, in case she had forgotten, but it was obvious that she hadn't. He said that a copy of the same file was already with his lawyer, who had instructions to deliver it to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department at ten the next morning unless he heard from Ferris to the contrary. He had expected her to defend herself when he laid out the evidence--to claim it was all lies, or denounce his perfidy in keeping these personal records for so many years. He had thought there might be tears, too. But she remained silent, shaking her head occasionally. When he finished, she turned to him.

"I loved you," she said. "But I don't love you now. Not after this. Go away. I have to think." She walked to her bedroom and closed the door. Ferris picked up the papers and let himself out of the apartment.

Early the next morning, the Inspector General's Office received a call from a lawyer acting on behalf of Gretchen Ferris. The attorney said that Mrs. Ferris had discovered additional information concerning her husband. She was not prepared to testify against Mr. Ferris and was withdrawing the allegation that he had violated any laws or federal regulations as a CIA employee. Gretchen's attorney then telephoned Sheehan and recounted the conversation with the IG. He said that Mrs. Ferris had also instructed him that she was prepared to grant her husband a divorce.

Ferris felt empty in victory. He knew he had violated a trust. She had tried to hurt him but it had been for love; he had tried to hurt her back for his own protection, and that had broken the spell. Once love was gone, there was no more reason for Gretchen to care. She wasn't one for fighting lost causes, and she would be besieged with suitors soon enough. She was a prize, and she knew it. Ferris had counted on her rationality, but he hadn't realized how quickly it could turn.

"G
ET BACK
to work," said Hoffman. He was calling on the STU-3 with the news that the IG investigation had formally been dropped. He told Ferris an agency plane would be waiting for him that afternoon. He didn't say where Ferris would be heading, but it obviously wasn't Amman.

"I want to meet Harry Meeker," said Ferris.

"Harry is waiting for you in the cold room. He's not going anywhere, trust me. And we're almost ready to drop him into Suleiman's cave. But there are a few more details we need to prepare. That's why I got you the plane. We're almost to H-Hour. We have to do these last few stitches nice and neat."

Ferris paused. He was ready to go--eager to go, even. But there was a little question lurking in the back of his mind, one of the many little eddies of mystery that Hoffman left in his wake.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure. Ask whatever you like. Whether I'll answer is another thing."

"Why did you need a lawyer? What had you done that Mark Sheehan had to get undone?"

Hoffman sounded weary, as if the act of remembering drained something from him. "You don't really want to know," he said.

"Yes, I do," answered Ferris. "It's something we both have in common, right?"

"Let's just say I crossed a line. A big red line. And Sheehan convinced people that it would be better for everybody to pretend that I hadn't."

"What line had you crossed?"

"That's the part you don't want to know."

"Don't give me that, Ed. I'm going out to do the dirty work, and you're playing games with me. What line did you cross?"

Hoffman sighed in exasperation. It was easier for him to explain than to fight any more with Ferris.

"I crossed the line that says you aren't supposed to kill people. Nobody likes to admit that about our business, but we do what has to be done. And I did. It was something like what happened to you in Yemen with the prisoner, but there were more people, over a longer period of time. Don't ever ask me about it again. But don't forget: When it comes to operations, I mean it when I say that I will do whatever it takes."

25

ANKARA / INCIRLIK

A
WHITE
G
ULFSTREAM JET BEARING
Ferris landed in Ankara two days later. He took a taxi from the dowdy airport to the Ankara Hilton, an antiseptic tower set amid the diplomatic quarter. It was a bitter December day. The wind whipped into the city from the Anatolian plain; Turks hurried along the sidewalks, wrapped in scarves and sweaters and hunched over against the cold. A gray froth of steam emerged from cars and buildings and people's mouths. Several decades before, this had seemed like a city of a hundred mosques but no Muslims, so tightly had the army applied the secular tourniquet. But now Turkey had found its Islam, and it was rare to see a woman outside the international area of the city who wasn't wearing a headscarf.

When Ferris had settled into his room, he called Omar Sadiki in Amman. He spoke in his Brad Scanlon business voice, but his tone was urgent. A serious problem had arisen. Unibank's engineering chief for the Middle East had reviewed Al Fajr's plans for the branch office in Abu Dhabi and had raised questions about the specifications for insulation and the building's ability to retain air-conditioning efficiently. The climate in Abu Dhabi was extreme, with summer temperatures over 115 degrees, and the consultant wasn't sure that Al Fajr had planned adequately. The insulation they had specified might work in Jordan, but not in the Emirates. Too much of the cold from the air-conditioning might escape, which would make the building very expensive to operate.

Sadiki sounded surprised. "The insulation is good," he insisted. "It's the same as we use in Saudi Arabia. Hafr Al-Batin is even hotter. No problem there, for sure."

"Well, you need to explain it to our regional engineer. He's here in Ankara with me. He's a Turk. He needs to see you right away. Otherwise he says he's going to put a hold on the project."

"What does that mean?" asked Sadiki.

"It means you won't get paid. Sorry. I'm as disappointed as you are. It won't take long. You can go and come back in the same day. Our travel agent can make the arrangements and deliver the tickets to your office." Ferris tried not to sound anxious, but much depended on the success of this ploy.

"When do you want me to come?" Sadiki sounded curious rather than agitated. Construction projects always had unforeseen delays. "Wednesday. The day after tomorrow," said Ferris. "That's the only day that will work for the chief engineer. I'm sorry, but I have to ask you to do it. He won't talk to anyone else."

"Wait, please." Sadiki put Ferris on hold while he had a conversation, presumably with one of his superiors. It took several minutes. Ferris began to worry that the answer would be no. He and Azhar had a fallback plan, but it wasn't as good.

Ferris heard static as Sadiki came back on the line. "So, are we all set?" he asked.

"You will pay?" asked Sadiki.

"All the costs. Fly you business class. And we'll expedite payments, once this is resolved. We're really sorry."

"Okay, then. I will be there Wednesday, December the twenty-first, if the God wills." Ferris gave him the details of where to meet, in a building in the old Islamic quarter of the city. He said the airplane ticket would be delivered to Sadiki's office in Amman first thing the next day. Sadiki said not to worry, he understood. The Jordanian was always so pliant. Perhaps that should have worried Ferris, but it didn't.

F
ERRIS TOOK
a U.S. military helicopter late that afternoon to the big air base at Incirlik, 250 miles southeast of Ankara, which had been one of the staging points for American air operations over Iraq before the war. It was dark when he arrived. Waiting to greet him at the ramshackle military terminal was an agency officer Ferris remembered from somewhere, perhaps just the cafeteria at Headquarters. He was a balding, stoop-shouldered man in his mid-forties, who identified himself as a member of the Ankara station. NE Division had asked him to help with logistics. He led Ferris to the pallet where they had strapped his bag, and then to a waiting Humvee that drove them a half mile to an unmarked Quonset hut.