The Counterfeit Agent (15 page)

“He said that?”

“No. But he spoke in a way I’d never heard before.
‘This man wants revenge for something that happened a long time ago
.
A woman. It’s a mistake.’
I told him, leave. He said he had never quit halfway through a job, that he would try to make Hank change his mind. He said he could handle Hank.”

“He mention the CIA? A station chief?”

“No. Since then, nothing. No call, no email. Of course, he has disappeared before, but this is different. I think he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry to keep asking the same questions, but this American who hired him, all Eddie said about him was that they worked together a long time ago in Peru?”

She reached down, picked up the packet of money.

“That’s right. I don’t think I know anything more. But you could ask, if you like.”

Wells had a thousand questions for the woman who sat beside him. How could she be so clear-eyed about Nuñez, who he was, what he’d done for her, the sadness of their partnership, yet so delusional about her ability as a singer? How had she wound up as a prostitute? Was she in on the joke at Cortes Frescos? Or did she think she was one song away from her big break? And, on a more personal note, how close had she come to pulling the trigger upstairs?

But a judge would strike them all as irrelevant, and potentially upsetting to the witness. Wells would carry only speculation in his baggage.

“Did Eddie ever mention Iran?”

Her face was a blank. “No.”

“Revolutionary Guard? Hezbollah?”

“I never heard of those.” She tucked the packet to her chest like she feared he might change his mind and take it. “
Gracias
for this.”

“Can I call you if I have questions?”

“I’m going away from Panama City. I have family in Bogotá. No one can find me there. But I’ll have my phone.”

“If you have your phone, someone can find you. Leave it. Get a new one.” He scribbled one of his email addresses on the envelope. “Set up a clean email account, send me your number at this address, and then never use that account again.”

“It’s like that.”

“Yes.”

At the door, she turned to him. “You think Eddie’s alive?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“He’s a survivor type.”

“Like you.”

“Sí.”

“Remember this, then. When you remember me. Mr. Bishop or whatever your name is. Everyone dies. Even the survivor types.”

He half expected her to pull a pistol and plug away. Instead, she pushed open the door and bowed her head as she walked off. He understood her not at all, but he was sure she’d told him the truth about Eddie.

—

Back at the hotel, he passed the word to Shafer.

“‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ cried Alice.”

“Who’s Alice?” Wells said.

“My sister-in-law. Got Alzheimer’s. All she can remember are nursery rhymes. You went a long way for that story. Spent a lot of money.”

“I believe you pointed out it wasn’t ours. Anyway, we have a timeline now that dates back three-plus years.”

“Which doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.”

“So we’re looking for an officer who was in Lima back in the day.”

“And got into it with someone else—”

“Over a woman. To the extent that this officer holds a grudge a decade or more later.”

“Sounds like someone should remember it,” Wells said.

“So what’s your next move?”

Wells found himself wanting to see Ramos settled to safety. He read the feeling as protective, not sexual. Her singing career seemed no less noble for its inevitable failure. He wondered if she had touched a similar streak in Nuñez. “Lima, maybe?”

“Whole station’s turned over two, three times since then. Anyway, we’re low on time. Nuñez has been gone for a couple weeks. The Iranian warning came in last week. Assuming they’re connected—”

“You think the Rev Guard would hire an American to put together a hit squad?”

“Not impossible. A few years back, the Iranians tried to hire a Mexican cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador to D.C. Lucky for the Saudis the guy they went to was a DEA agent. Check the court records if you don’t believe me. Come on home, we can talk this through in person.”

“Plus I’ll have the joy of seeing you face-to-face.”

“I thought that was understood.”

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

W
hite-knuckle night driving was another of aging’s indignities. Oncoming traffic streaked blurrily by. The road itself seemed as narrow and slick as stones in a stream. Shafer kept his hands at ten and two, stayed below the speed limit. He’d never been much of a speed-limit guy. But then he’d never been old. Worse, he was sure the drivers stuck behind him were thinking
Outta my way, geezer.
He’d have thought the same, a few years back.

Fortunately, he hadn’t misplaced his mind. Not yet. He hadn’t visited Duto’s house in years, but he knew every turn. He rolled up to find a black Chrysler 300 parked outside the front gate. He handed his license to the unsmiling man inside.

The guard looked it over, handed it back. “The senator’s expecting you.”

“You mean Vinny.”

The guard ended the conversation by raising his window.

“Don’t you need to frisk me?” Shafer knew he was acting up. The security annoyed him, though Duto needed it. Former agency directors made ripe terrorist targets, none more than Duto, who had run the CIA’s drones as enthusiastically as a queen bee.

The Chrysler edged into the street and the gate swung open, revealing two more sentries in a black Chevy Tahoe. Shafer waved at them. They stared back like they were looking for an excuse to shoot.

The front door was unlocked. Shafer let himself in, found the man himself sitting on a rocking chair in his glass-walled back porch, sipping a glass of something brown. A cigar smoldered in an old-school black plastic ashtray at his feet. The
Post
and
Times
lay on the table at his elbow, alongside a BlackBerry and iPhone. Shafer had known Duto for decades. Even so, he couldn’t be sure if he was watching a subtle self-parody
: I, Washington Insider.

“Is Ward Just eavesdropping in the kitchen?”

“Ward who?” Duto reached down, came up with a square bottle
. 
“Straight from Kentucky. Delicious. Have a splash, take your cares away.”

“Have a
what
? When did you turn into Lyndon Johnson’s love child?” Nonetheless, Shafer dribbled a finger of the stuff into his glass, took a sip. Duto was right. It was delicious. Too bad he couldn’t drink more of it. Not until his car learned to drive itself.

“What do you think?”

“That it violates a gift limit. Can I tell you what Wells found or do I have to gaze with wonder at the backyard first?
I sho’ do love yo’ oak trees. Mulberries, too.
”

Duto exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke at Shafer for his insolence. “Go.”

Three minutes later, Shafer was done.

“One hundred grand for that? Glad it wasn’t my money.”

“Whose, if you don’t mind sharing?”

“Someone who’s in my office a lot. Told him the truth. Not for me, not illegal, might mean a lot to the country. Two hours later, I had a cashier’s check for ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars. At a hundred, he would have needed an extra signatory.”

“You threw in the last dollar yourself? On a senator’s measly salary? Charity lives.”

“Let’s assume the story’s true. That the station chief who’s been targeted misbehaved back in the day in Lima. Then what?”

“Any tales of one-sided wife-swapping make it over the Andes to your happy house in Bogotá?”

“Assuming we can trust the timeline, this happened right around 2000. I was gone.”

“Beginning your climb up the skull ladder.”

“Exactly.”

“Would Cannon know?” John Cannon had followed Duto as Bogotá station chief.

“Too nose-in-the-air to care about who diddled who. Spencer might, but he hates me. Maybe Hatch—”

“Don’t know that name.”

“Chip Hatch. He was in Colombia for around five years about that time. At Lockheed now.”

“Course he is. It’s a wonderful world.”

“There’s a couple other guys, too. I’ll make calls.”

“They won’t talk to me.”

“Sadly, no.”

The great irony. Shafer couldn’t stand Duto, but he wished the man had never quit. Everyone senior at Langley had known that Duto used Shafer and Wells when he wanted to steer clear of agency rules. As long as Duto was DCI, Shafer had juice. Even when he wasn’t working for Duto, people assumed he was.

Now Shafer needed to beg for even small favors. So far he’d worked mostly as a conduit on this mission. Not the way he hoped to end his career. He sucked down the last of his bourbon, hoping to anesthetize his self-pity. As soon as it hit his throat, he knew he’d made a mistake. The Honda would feel like an eighteen-wheeler on the way home.

“Care for a cigar?”

“Pass.” Shafer’s bones creaked like a bridge in a hurricane as he sat up. “I have to go.”

“Call you if I hear something. Though I have to say if anybody but Wells came back with this, I would have laughed. If we had to worry about every ex–case officer with a grudge, we’d be in a world of hurt.”

Every ex
–
case officer with a grudge.
The words gave Shafer an idea. Sure, Duto had the money, the power, and maybe even the friends. But Shafer had the brains. The bourbon filled his stomach and warmed his heart. He upgraded his self-assessment. Not just brains. Genius.

—

The next morning, Shafer reached his desk before sunrise. He spent two hours concocting a realistic-sounding memo, printed it out, called Lucy Joyner. It was barely 7:30, but he wasn’t surprised when she picked up.

“Lucy.”

“Ellis.” Which sounded like
A-lis
. Three decades in Washington hadn’t touched Joyner’s Texas accent. She used it as she did her bleached-blond hair, to hide a fierce intelligence and loyalty to the agency.

“We’re overdue for dinner.”

“How come you only call when you want something?”

“Who said I wanted something?”

Joyner didn’t bother to answer.

“Let me explain in person. Five minutes. Ten at most.”

“This going to be”—
gun be—“
ten minutes I regret? Had a few of those in my life.”

“Maybe.”

“Then get down here primo pronto. ’Fore my admin gets here and this becomes an official and scheduled visit.”

During much of Duto’s time as director, Joyner had served as the agency’s inspector general, its second-worst job. When he left, her reward was a transfer to the worst job of all, director of human resources. A less committed employee would have taken the hint, retired, cashed her pension. But Joyner, who had never worked as a case officer, had deep and unrequited love for those who did. Shafer had seen the attitude in other support staffers.
I’m not worthy of front-line duty, but I will carry water as best I can. Abuse me. I deserve it.
In her twenty-ninth year at CIA, Joyner still worked sixty hours a week.

Most officers and desk heads regarded the human resources department as useless at best, an impediment at worst. Joyner didn’t try to change their minds. She focused on recruiting, where she did have leverage. After September 11, the agency had hired heavily from the armed forces. Veterans knew government bureaucracy, and many came prequalified with security clearances. But they inevitably contributed to the CIA’s creeping militarization. Joyner was enlarging the pool of civilian candidates by recruiting older employees. She had increased the agency’s presence at elite scientific universities like Caltech and at times pressed for hires with smudges on their background checks.

Shafer understood her goals, though he worried the experiment might end badly. The Snowden case proved the risks. If one of the new hires went wrong, the CIA’s congressional overseers would howl, and Langley would wind up leaning even more heavily on the military than before.

Meantime, Joyner was one of the few people Shafer still trusted. Years before, she had seen Duto at his Machiavellian worst, using Wells and Shafer against the Director of National Intelligence. The episode had cemented her relationship with Shafer. They ate together every few months. Shafer was married, Joyner was divorced, but they had reached an age where they could have dinner without misunderstandings. At their last meal, Shafer had made the mistake of suggesting they might even have made a good couple once upon a time. Joyner chortled so loudly that even the waitresses looked at her.

“What?”

“My type’s a little more—” She laughed again in big honking hoots. Finally, she broke off, rubbed her jaw. She was a solidly built woman, the type who turned almost masculine in late middle age. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Let’s just say cowboy.”

Shafer took the cheapest shot he had. “Sure you don’t mean cowgirl.”

“Completely.”

—

Joyner leaned over her keyboard, editing a PowerPoint slide titled
Retention Rates at SIS-1 Level by Geography and Subspecialty
.

“Fascinating.”

“We also serve. How you messing up my life today, Ellis?”

“As it happens, I also have an interest in retention. Specifically, case officers who served in South America, including TDYs, and who were fired or left under duress between four and twelve years ago.”

From the timeline that Montoya and Ramos had given Wells, the rogue officer must have left at least four years before. The twelve-year outer limit was arbitrary, but Shafer was short on time and needed to shrink the pool of suspects. For the same reason, he had limited his search to officers who had been fired or forced out. Of course, the suspect might have nursed his grudge quietly, left the agency with a clean record. But the showiness of the planned attack struck Shafer as the work of someone who had flamed out spectacularly and wanted revenge.

He knew he faced long odds trying to find a traitor this way. The alternative was to sit in his office waiting for Duto to call.

“You want this why?”

He handed her the memo he’d concocted. “I want to look at station management techniques. This is the first step.” The story was as far from the truth as possible without technically being a lie.

She read the top paragraph, pushed the memo back. “Wanna tell me what this really is?”

“Not a bit.”

“All those personnel records are TS, and some are SCI, you know that.”

He did. He also knew that Duto’s departure had cost him his super-duper all-access backstage pass. Why he was reduced to these games. “I’m looking for a name. Someone with a grudge.”

“And you can’t tell me more—”

“Better if I don’t.”

“Define
left under duress
.”

The fact that they were still talking gave him hope. “Resignation or retirement after a negative evaluation, a failed poly, referral for alcohol or substance use. Et cetera.”

She sighed like the sweet San Antonio girl she’d once been. “May take a couple days.”

“Too long.”

“I’m liking this less and less.”

“It’s an active grudge.”

“This is the only way?”

“Unless you want me to have to depend on Vinny Duto.” The truth, though he knew she’d read the words as sarcasm.

“Your piece of short fiction, please.”

He passed back the memo. She read the whole thing this time.

“Thinner than an oil slick. And twice as ugly. Let’s hope nobody ever asks about it. Set up in there”—she nodded at her conference room—“so I can keep an eye on you. I’ll have a tech bring in a laptop with the files. You take paper notes only, leave the laptop here whenever you leave. Call of nature, whatever. Everything stays in the room. I’ll handle my assistant. She’s a little bit nosy. Actually, a lot. In fact, it would be better if you just snuck back at lunch, stayed in there the rest of the day.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t screw me on this, Ellis. I still have some things I want to do at this place.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t call me ma’am. You’re even more decrepit than I am.”

“No cowboy, either.”

“For sure.”

—

That afternoon Shafer hunched over a laptop, scanning personnel records for forty-two case officers. He wasn’t expecting to find anything as obvious as a note explaining that an officer had lost his wife in an intramural three-legged race. He planned a process of elimination, looking for guys who had been thrown overboard in rough seas. He hoped to end the day with a few names worthy of further scrutiny. The agency didn’t usually require ex-officers to register their addresses or new jobs. But the older targets should be trackable through their pensions. As for the rest, Shafer would have Social Security numbers and photos. They ought to be easy to find, unless they were hiding, which would be a red flag in and of itself.

He knocked out twenty-five names with little trouble. Fifteen had worked only in Argentina, Brazil, or Chile and couldn’t have known Eduardo Nuñez. Ten more had resigned to join other government agencies and had no problems with their records. He assumed Joyner’s staffer had included them by mistake. Seventeen officers were left, a manageable number.

He paged through, looking at all the ways a CIA career could implode. Seven officers had evaluations no worse than mediocre but had been transferred repeatedly to smaller and less prestigious stations, a sure sign that they had problems with senior officers. Eventually all seven had quit. Six others had resigned or retired after warnings about their failure to recruit agents or general lack of productivity.

Maybe one of those thirteen was angry enough to decide to assassinate a station chief years later. But none jumped at Shafer. They were second- and third-tier case officers who had been winnowed out. It happened.

The other four names on the list were more interesting.

Gabriel Lewis was sent to Johannesburg after a successful rotation in Bogotá. In South Africa, he spent thirty-two thousand dollars on a recruiting trip that turned out to be a ten-day vacation with his mistress. His station chief was angry enough to argue for referring the case for criminal prosecution, though Lewis was ultimately allowed to repay the money and resign. But Shafer saw one immediate problem with Lewis as a suspect. Based on his name, he was probably Jewish. An Iran connection was hard to imagine.

Ted Anderson had started in Lima and moved to Saudi Arabia, then Spain. In Madrid he flunked a routine five-year polygraph, registering as deceptive on a crucial question:
Have you ever had contact with a foreign national that you failed to reveal?
He denied committing espionage, and that answer registered as true. But when he was asked why the poly showed deception on the other questions, he didn’t know. Three months later, he resigned.