Hunt the Wolf (14 page)

The crackers and tea in glasses Nasiri ordered an aide to serve didn’t help.

Mancini, who liked to focus on details, drew a quick sketch of the port—seventeen vessel berths on the east wharf, thirteen on the west. Each wharf held a large container terminal. The west pier also accommodated three oil berths, two ship repair jetties, a shipyard, and an engineering facility. In addition there was a large harbor adjacent to the western wharf that contained thousands of smaller fishing vessels.

“What do we do now?” Ritchie asked, his longish, straight black hair setting off his Cherokee cheekbones.

“We wait.”

They sat on a rough wooden bench and watched the clock on the opposite wall tick slowly past one-fifty-five to two.

Crocker asked Akil to go inside and ask Nasiri if they could see a list of vessels that had recently left the port. He referred him to the traffic manager’s office on the first floor. The lone official on duty there, a tall, thin man with large hooded eyes and thick lips, announced that the office was closed to visitors until 8 a.m. When Akil tried to reason with him, he waved him away and tried to close the door. Akil managed to wedge his foot inside and claimed he was from the U.S. consulate. When that didn’t work, he offered the night traffic manager forty dollars for the names of all vessels that had left the port in the past several days.

Five minutes later, a one-page printout was passed through the crack.

“You understand, of course, you cannot tell anyone that you got this from me.”

“I won’t.”

On the sheet about a dozen names were printed in type so faint it was hard to read. Akil ran up the stairs and handed it to Crocker, who had been considering checking into a nearby hotel.

“What’s this?”

“It’s the list of vessels that left the port over the past six days, including yesterday, the twenty-fifth.”

The team leader’s eyes burned. The names meant nothing to him as he read them out loud: “
Lucky Arrow, Northern Valour, Ginga Panther, Eastern Highway, Bunga Raya Tujuh, Rolldock Sun, Syrena, Aristea M—
”

“Wait a minute,” Ritchie said. “What’s the next-to-last one you mentioned?”

“The
Rolldock Sun
?”

“No, the one after that.”

“Syrena?”

“Yes,
Syrena
. Didn’t we see that name on an invoice we found at the house?”

“What house?”

“AZ’s safe house, the one we raided a couple of clicks from here.”

Crocker looked at the printout again and read the name—​
Syrena
. “You’re right,” he said, trying to fight through the dull fog of exhaustion and recall what else he knew about the
Syrena
.

“It might mean something, boss.”

“An interesting coincidence, at least.”

Crocker straightened his back and turned to Akil, who was biting his nails. “Take the finger out of your mouth and go see the night traffic manager again. Ask him to tell you where the
Syrena
is headed. What time, exactly, did it leave? When is it scheduled to dock again, and where?”

Akil said, “It’s gonna require cash.”

Crocker reached into his wallet and handed him three twenties. “Bargain with the bastard. If that doesn’t work, beat it out of him.”

“Yes, sir.”

His mind picked up speed. Carpets, S. Rastani, the port in KP, the
Syrena
…the shards of info were starting to fit together. Now they had something that linked Zaman to the kidnapping operation and Cyrus.

“We’re gonna need a helicopter and equipment,” he said to Ritchie. “Get Donaldson on the phone.”

“Aye-aye.”

“Davis, call Klausen in Norway.”

“What time’s it there?”

“Doesn’t matter. This is important. Tell him we’ve gotta stop that ship!”

H
e couldn’t
tell if it was the thick midmorning heat, his fitful, truncated sleep, or the fact that he was bracing himself for another meeting with CIA officer Lou Donaldson. Likely it was combination of the three that fouled Tom Crocker’s mood and set his mind whirring and turning in on itself like a rabid dog. Fueling his anger was intense frustration—the kind he felt squeezing his bones.

The sky beyond the wisps of white clouds and gray-​orange patina of pollution was vast and infinite blue. He hated waiting.

Something important was happening while Crocker and his men napped, played video games on the hotel computer, and talked to their families. Maybe it involved an attack Zaman was planning, since the name of the ship
Syrena
had been found on an invoice in his hideaway. Maybe it held a clue to the location of Malie Tingvoll.

Why were they cooling their heels in the Karachi hotel room? Why?

In practical terms, he knew the answer. One, their evidence was slight—a coded e-mail about a “delivery” that could be the kidnapped Norwegian girl had led them to the port of Karachi, through which a ship mentioned in papers found in Zaman’s hideout had passed.

Two, they needed money and equipment to move forward and intercept the ship. That required authorization from the CIA as well as his CO back in Virginia. Now, because of the girl’s nationality, the Norwegian government was involved, too.

Lou Donaldson was on his way from Islamabad. Mikael Klausen had changed planes in Oman and was scheduled to arrive within the hour.

But couldn’t something be done sooner? Like…now!

All that was really required was a couple of phone calls to the right people, and Crocker and his team could be on their way.

He blamed the culture of Washington and the millions of bureaucrats and officials who were like a layer of fat covering the muscle of the rich men and politicians who made decisions and set policy.

The bureaucratic mind-set put a premium on climbing the ladder, which meant serving superiors and avoiding risk. Agency officers were particularly risk averse. They cloaked their cowardice and self-interest with words like “policy,” “options,” “strategic goals,” and so on.

Imagining the billions of words that had been spoken and churned out in papers when real contingencies required action—all the arguments that had been carefully reasoned to support one theoretical outcome or another—made Crocker want to put his fist through the window.

He kept seeing the withered, bruised bodies of the girls they had found above the garage at the farm near Toulon. In his current state of torment their faces morphed into those of other women he’d known, including Jenny and Holly back home. All of them had come from families that were part of communities, departments, and countries served by armies of officials whose job was to protect them. But somehow the girls had managed to “slip through the cracks.”

Were they so hard to find, in fucking Toulon, France?

The real truth was that most citizens, even in modern Western countries like Norway, felt powerless. And the men and women whose job it was to protect them were too often incompetent and lazy. They just didn’t give a shit about people who in their narrow view weren’t important.

“Any word from the embassy?” Crocker shouted from the balcony into the hotel room where Davis was reading a book about Willie Mays.

“Donaldson has landed. He’s on his way.”

“It’s about time.”

A muezzin in a minaret across the street began to recite the call to noon prayer.

Loudspeakers amplified his voice so it echoed off the nearby buildings.

Crocker thought that everyone in the U.S. government, from the president on down, should be required to come to Pakistan and experience the country firsthand. The intense devotional pleading. The desperation and crushing poverty, with millions of slum dwellers pressed cheek to jowl. The cruelty and greed of those with any power. The enormous disparity between the rich and poor—and people thought it was bad in the States? The hovels that passed for hospitals, schools, and prisons. The millions of illiterate, ignorant people essentially living in the fifteenth century, who were perfect fodder for religious fanatics and demagogues.

Admitting that he was neither a prognosticator nor an intellectual, Crocker sensed that something important was happening in this far corner of the globe. Pakistan—with 180 million people. Its enemy India, with over a billion poised across the border. Both countries armed with nuclear weapons. As was China, with another 1.3 billion people, which loomed over both.

They were standing at the nexus of something. A moment in history. A cultural and political battlefield.

Crocker and his men weren’t just boots on the ground. They were part of the most highly trained and versatile military unit in history. But as talented as they were, they depended on political leaders to deploy them wisely.

Crocker was thinking about all the missed opportunities to crush al-Qaeda dating back to the late ’90s, when Davis emerged through the curtains, his blue eyes squinting into the hazy glare.

“Donaldson’s here,” he announced.

“Thanks.” Crocker took a deep breath and stepped inside, where the air-conditioned air cleaved to his skin.

Donaldson’s long face and body moved in deep shadow. Two shorter men in gray suits hung by his sides. He’d seen the shorter and stouter of the two before, at the meeting in Islamabad weeks earlier—Jim Anders.

“This is turning out to be one long, crazy fishing expedition,” Donaldson started off in his deep Carolina drawl. He wore a tan cotton suit with a white shirt open at the collar. “Where the hell are we now?”

The SEAL team leader recounted what he had learned so far, starting with his trip to the Club Rosa in Marseille. When he got to the raid at the farm, Donaldson leaned forward on the cream-colored leather sofa.

“I thought I told you I didn’t want any more casualties,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him.

“You said ‘collateral casualties.’ I wouldn’t put the men at the farm in that category.”

A big smile creased the CIA officer’s weathered face. “I wouldn’t either, Crocker. Nicely done.”

Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

“Thanks.”

Donaldson turned to the thick-necked, gray-suited man to his right and asked, “What do you think, Anders?”

Anders pulled at the front of his Brooks Brothers shirt. “Feels thin.”

Crocker: “I assume you’re talking about the trail of evidence.”

“Yes,” Donaldson answered. “Feels thin.”

The suit on his left agreed.

“Which part?” Crocker asked, trying to keep his composure. “The evidence linking Zaman to the
Syrena,
or the trail of Malie Tingvoll?”

“Both, Crocker. Both.”

“I don’t disagree. But what does it cost us to go after the
Syrena
?”

“Potentially a great deal.”

Anders popped open a briefcase and handed his boss a sheet of paper. The senior officer propped a pair of gold-framed reading glasses on his long nose. “First of all, what do you know about this ship?”

“Nothing, really. The port facility security officer told us it was some kind of freighter. Medium capacity.”

Donaldson glanced at the printout. “Turns out that it’s registered in Yemen.”

Crocker knew that was bad.

“The Yemenis don’t like us much,” Donaldson continued. “We touch a ship of theirs and they’re going to scream bloody murder.”

The guy on Donaldson’s left agreed. “They’ll use it as an opportunity to create an incident. Get the White House involved, the UN. We don’t want that.”

Donaldson clasped his hands together. “So we can expect zero cooperation from the Yemenis.”

“Understood.”

“Number two, the
Syrena
’s next scheduled port of call is Salalah, in Oman,” the CIA officer continued. “Arrives there tomorrow morning.”

Crocker sat forward on the edge of his chair. “Which means that if we’re going to board it in Salalah, we have to move quickly.”

Donaldson took a long swig of the Coca-Cola Davis had brought from the minibar under the desk on the opposite wall, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“The Omanis are reasonable people,” he explained, “who happen to be our friends. But they’re also extremely proud. Which means whatever kind of operation is launched on their soil they’re going to want to do themselves.”

Crocker spent a moment considering how to negotiate the obstacles that had just been put in his way.

“Can we ask the Omanis to monitor the ship when it docks, to see who gets off?” he asked.

Donaldson looked at Anders, who frowned.

“I don’t know how seriously they’ll take our request, but we can try.”

“How about a couple of us go there ourselves to watch what comes off the ship?” Crocker inquired.

“I expected you to ask that.”

“Nothing official. We act like tourists. Witnesses. If we see anything, we alert the Omanis.”

“Unwise.”

“Completely undercover.”

“And what happens if no one debarks in Salalah?”

“We proceed to the next port of call and do the same thing,” Crocker answered.

“That seems unnecessary.”

“Why?”

“We’ve got local assets who can do that.”

“You know as well as I do that we can’t rely on people who aren’t ours.”

“I said no.”

“Some of them sympathize with the fundamentalists. They don’t have as much at stake.”

“Dammit, Crocker. You think this is the only operation we’re running here? Let it fucking go!”

Crocker bit his bottom lip and started to tremble with an anger he had to use all his self-control to contain. Shifting his gaze from the glass table between them to Donaldson’s knotted-up face, he said, “All of us on the team feel badly that Zaman got away. We don’t want to give up on him or this girl from Norway. We all have families. It was sickening to see what they did to those kidnapped girls. There must be something we can do.” Crocker immediately scolded himself for pleading. For sounding weak.

Donaldson looked at Davis and Mancini, who were leaning on the wall behind their leader, and smiled. “It’s my job to look at the bigger picture. To look at the totality of all the things we have going on. You might think this is important, but I’m telling you that in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t. You and your men have done enough.”

“We don’t feel that way,” Crocker snapped.

“I appreciate your commitment and understand your frustration,” Donaldson said as Anders shut his briefcase. “We have experts back at Langley working on the laptop you fished out of the pond. They’re not convinced that the e-mails Rafiq received even originated with Zaman.”

“I disagree.” Crocker sensed what was coming next.

“We brought your team in for a specific mission, which unfortunately went wrong. It’s time to send you and your men home.”

No!

Donaldson rose; his bookends followed. “I’m sure you gentlemen miss your families. I’m sure they miss you, too,” he said with all the sincerity of a Hallmark greeting card.

Crocker resisted the impulse to reach out and grab Donaldson by the throat. Struggling to keep his cool, he watched the tall man in the tan suit turn and saunter out, with the two suits following. One of them cracked a joke he couldn’t hear. Their laughter was muffled by the closing door.

Crocker’s heart pounded so hard he thought it was going to jump out of his chest. His fists and teeth were clenched. All the hatred of authority he’d accumulated since he was in grade school rushed to the surface.

He looked up to see the defeat on Davis’s face. It was like a dagger pushed into his throat.

The three men were quietly packing their gear when Akil arrived from the port, looking pleased with himself. Sweat had formed two large
U
s under the arms of his pale blue shirt.

“What have you got?” Crocker asked.

In his big hand Akil clutched a quarter-inch sheaf of papers he said contained the lists of crew members and passengers who had passed through the Karachi port in the past eight days.

The four men abandoned their packing and tore through the lists, but found no Malie Tingvoll or Abu Rasul Zaman. Not that they had expected to see either name.

The dozen people listed as the crew of the
Syrena
were all men, mostly of what seemed to be Somali and Lebanese descent.

Davis did notice something—the ship was described as a tanker, not a cargo ship.

“What kind of tanker?” Crocker asked.

“I wasn’t able to find that out,” Akil answered.

“Hmm…”

“You want me to go back?”

Crocker stood looking down at the top of the table he had punched and cracked earlier, wondering how much it was going to cost to replace, when Ritchie walked in pulling a suitcase on wheels. Behind him followed a very tired-​looking Mikael Klausen, wearing a beige raincoat, a sky blue shirt that matched his eyes, jeans, and brown loafers, his straight blond hair sticking up.

In his cloud of frustration and regret, Crocker had forgotten about him.

Now the Norwegian stood before him, asking what they’d learned so far. It surprised Crocker how hard he found it to answer.

Klausen knitted his pale brow and listened carefully. His hand rubbed his jaw like he was hoping a genie would pop out.

“And your government turned down your request to proceed to Salalah? Is that correct?”

“Yes. Their main interest is Zaman, and they believe that the evidence linking the ship to him isn’t strong enough to justify the problems it could cause with the Omanis. Our contact, Mr. Donaldson, said he would pursue the matter with the government of Oman. I don’t know how strongly he’ll do that.”

Klausen folded his short arms across his chest. “Give me an hour or so to make some calls. I’m checked into a room down the hall.”