The Devil's Light (12 page)

“They just grow it in the open? I thought that Hezbollah was Shia. The Shia forbid the use of drugs and alcohol.”

“In general they do. But as the great Boston politician Tip O'Neill once said, ‘All politics is local.' In the valley, good politics means arming yourself against Israel with profits from the drug trade. So sit back and smoke the benefit.”

Maureen glanced at her. “You've learned a lot about this place, haven't you?”

“We're here,” Laura answered. “Curiosity helps kill time.”

Entering Baalbek, they were greeted by posters of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, hanging from telephone poles and streetlamps. As they neared the center of the city, Maureen stared at the wooden replica of a bearded man in combat fatigues, twenty feet high, standing atop the ruined shell of an Israeli tank. “Who's
that
?”

“The late Imad Moughniyeh, assassinated several years ago by an Israeli hit team in Damascus. Back in the 1980s, he planned the bombing of our embassy in Beirut, as well as the barracks filled with our marines.” Laura's voice turned cold. “Several hundred died. As an American, and a New Yorker, the lionization of butchers like Moughniyeh challenges my powers of detachment—on 9/11 we saw where that can lead. But Hezbollah is sentimental, so Moughniyeh iconography is huge here. If you like, you can buy a keychain with his picture and send it to your mom.”

“No way,” Maureen rejoined. “She'd think it was Fidel Castro, and disown me. She has no room for enemies of the Catholic Church.”

Laura smiled. “Neither does mine, actually. We still argue about abortion.”

They turned down the main street, a crowded thoroughfare in which the posters of Nasrallah were interspersed with the photographs of young men barely older than boys. “Those are ‘martyrs,'” Laura informed Maureen, “who died in some action against Israel. Baalbek is where the Iranians set up Hezbollah in the first place. No doubt it remains filled with people from all over who are up to no good. But when I came here as a child, all that I knew was that I loved the food.”

Maureen stared at her. “Your parents brought you to Baalbek?”

Laura jammed on the brakes, barely missing a pedestrian. “My mother's family are Maronites, and Beirut is her second home. So I came by my Arabic the easy way. Every summer, Mom brought my brother and me back to visit family.” Swerving abruptly, she stopped in front of the Hotel Palmyra, a colonial relic with vines creeping up its walls. “One year, we stayed at this hotel, which I swore was haunted. But across the street were the most astonishing Roman ruins outside of Italy. That's where I first decided to become an archaeologist.”

Maureen gazed at the massive arches rising from the site. “How old were you?”

“Eight,” Laura said. “My parents thought I was crazy. Now Mom calls me ‘a gypsy among the rubble.' The lure of the past eludes her.”

Returning to Anjar, Laura dropped Maureen at the site with the dental picks essential to Segolene's more delicate efforts. Before getting out, Maureen sat back, watching the team at their work. Lightly, she said, “I wonder if anyone here is a spy.”

Laura gave her a smile of puzzlement. “Why would you think that?”

Maureen's eyes lit with a humorous enthusiasm. “Haven't you read the histories? There's a great tradition of archaeologists as secret agents, like the Englishwoman Gertrude Bell. Maybe Segolene works for French intelligence.”

Laughing softly, Laura said, “Why don't you ask her? I can certainly see the advantages—you get to know the language and the people, and have an excuse for being in someone else's country. So why not Segolene?”

Maureen turned to her, interested. “Why not indeed?”

“Seriously? Because she's too good at what she does. You can't fake your way through archaeology, and no real archaeologist would throw away her career.” Absentmindedly, Laura polished her sunglasses, as though considering the matter further. “Gertrude Bell has been dead for decades. These days there's too great a risk of getting caught, so I wouldn't augment your day job by pursuing a life of adventure. Likely you'd be captured or killed. Besides, you're much too competent to work for the CIA.”

Maureen had laughed at this. She was, Laura had already divined, a type she knew well from America—the reflexive liberal, an innocent living in a world more complex than she knew. Unless, of course, Maureen was not what she pretended. But Laura knew a considerable amount about lies and liars, and this was not how she read Maureen. One tool of her survival was a gift for separating casual liars from people like herself.

Now, dropping Maureen at the site, Laura drove back to the dig house.

In the next few hours, she would find an excuse to drive off in her jeep alone. She had scheduled another cell phone call, at one o'clock. A new and troubling secret made the call imperative.

S
equestered in his office before the next crucial meeting, Brooke sorted through his emotions.

For two years in Lebanon, he had acted on his own, operating under nonofficial cover—a “singleton NOC,” the definition of a loner. No past or future had tied him to anyone: He became Adam Chase, a young American businessman with a gift for languages and an interest in Arab culture. Chase was free to follow his instincts.

Now Brooke Chandler was a bureaucrat. The central purpose of his existence had not changed: to help ensure that the tragedy still echoing from 9/11—which had taken so many lives and changed countless others—never happened again. In recent days, fearing an event far worse, he felt his instincts quickening. But instead of acting, he must undertake the slow, patient, often frustrating work of persuading others who, for reasons good and bad, might not listen. He felt like a man in a straitjacket.

But the job, he reproved himself, was not about indulging his likes or dislikes. To be right—if he
was
right—imposed terrible responsibilities. And to fail meant living with a psychic burden too terrible to imagine, turning the last decade of his life to ashes.

Standing, he studied the photograph of Ben Glazer and his wife. “I'll do my best, pal,” he promised, then headed for the meeting.

Around the conference table was the core group focused on the missing bomb: Carter Grey, Frank Svitek, Ken Sweder, Michael Wertheimer, and
Noah Brustein. It was 7:00
A.M.;
each man had a steaming mug of coffee. Projected on the wall were maps of India, Pakistan, the Middle East, and the shipping lanes to North America.

There were pouches beneath Grey's eyes, suggesting a night too racked by pain for sleep. In a rough, tired voice, he asked Brustein, “What's the situation in Pakistan?”

“Still holding. The secretary of state has extracted a promise from the Pakistani prime minister to find and prosecute anyone involved in the terror attacks in India.”

Grey snorted. “Does anyone believe that?”

“
I
don't. But it may help to hold off a war, and slow down the wholesale slaughter of Muslims in India. If true, the only nuclear turd is in our pocket.” Brustein glanced up at the maps. “The task this morning is to think about where the missing bomb may be going, and how it gets there.”

“What are its specifications?” Brooke asked at once.

“According to our sources,” Brustein answered, “it contains enough HEU to destroy New York, but can travel in a container about the size of a coffin. The total weight is roughly two hundred pounds, meaning that you don't need a lot of men to move it. Two men, perhaps. You could put it on a van, truck, boat, train, airplane, or conceal it in a cargo container. At that weight, even a small private plane could get it off the ground.”

“How detectable is it?”

“Not very. Even the most sensitive equipment probably won't pick up radiation.”

“Do we know how it detonates?”

Brustein turned to Sweder. “It has an altimeter,” Sweder told Brooke, “set for one thousand feet. When the plane gets above that altitude, you unlock the bomb's security system, then drop it. At a thousand feet, it goes off.”

“What's the security system?” Michael Wertheimer inquired.

“The Pakistanis' version of our PAL—permissive action link—a sequence of numbers much like the code to an ATM machine. The purpose is to confine knowledge of the code, preventing unauthorized use.” Reflexively, Sweder straightened his tie. “That's some comfort, I suppose. To detonate this bomb, al Qaeda—if that's who has it—would need a technician sophisticated enough to bypass the system, or a Pakistani insider who knows the code.”

Grey reflected on this. “That's a critical piece of this. I assume we've asked the Pakistanis for the identities of anyone with the wherewithal to do that.”

“Of course,” Brustein answered disgustedly. “Repeatedly, and vehemently. But anytime you seriously question a Pakistani about their nuclear program, and his lips start moving, he's lying. And they certainly don't want us tracking people who know the secrets of their arsenal. All they'll say is that the information is ‘sensitive' and they're making their own inquiries—”

“Fuck
them,
” Frank Svitek snapped. “I'm sensitive about Chicago.”

“Please,” Grey said softly, “they're a proud people.” He turned to Sweder. “Is Immigration checking out any Pakistanis entering the country, and the ones already here? Or will that offend their sensitivities as well?”

“They're checking,” Sweder said tersely. “If this person exists, we need to find him. Follow him, and maybe we can locate the bomb.”

Grey nodded. “Speaking of which, how's our surveillance over Pakistani airspace?”

“So-so. We've redirected our satellites to areas nearest to where the bomb was stolen. Of course, unmanned aerial vehicles would give us better images. But the Pakistanis won't permit overflights of UAVs as long as they're worried about the Indians.”

Grey grimaced in disgust. “Whoever planned this is an operational genius, with a sophisticated understanding of how it might play out.” He turned to Frank Svitek. “How are we using our assets in the Middle East?”

Brooke watched the wariness steal into Svitek's eyes—this was a classic human intelligence problem, and the agency would succeed or fail based on its network of operatives and sources. Firmly, Svitek responded, “Our station chiefs are pressing foreign intelligence agencies and flogging every source we've got. We're working on suspect jihadist groups, transfers of money, smuggling rings, suspicious convoys, private planes, and vehicles moving at night. We're also questioning informants with ties to al Qaeda, which is how we got Khalid Sheikh Mohammad after 9/11. As for signals intelligence, we're focusing on cell phones in Pakistan, India, and the Middle East.”

“That's about a million calls an hour,” Brooke observed. “An operative this smart will be talking in code on a series of ghost phones. The only
way to sort through all the garbage may be through samples of his voice. Do we have any for Amer Al Zaroor?”

“None.” Svitek scanned the group. “We
have
picked up some interesting phone chatter. On the surface, the contents are banal—too banal, perhaps. But from the location of the calls, and the repetition of certain phrases, they could suggest a suspicious package may have moved through Swat into Afghanistan.”

“What sense does that make?” Grey inquired. “Except for Bagram Air Force Base, there's nothing in Afghanistan worth blowing up.”

“Unless it's headed for Iran,” Svitek countered. “For a country developing nuclear weapons, a Pakistani bomb would be a blueprint.”

“Then al Qaeda didn't steal it,” Brooke said flatly. “They hate the Shia, Iran most of all.”

Brustein looked from Brooke to Svitek. “The chatter could be disinformation,” he said, “as Frank well knows. But we can't dismiss it out of hand. I've told Frank that we have to follow up.”

Somewhere in the Middle East, Brooke thought, a man without a voice is laughing.

“Nonetheless,” Brustein pressed on, “our working premise is that al Qaeda has the bomb, and that it's headed for the United States—possibly through the ports in Long Beach or New York. The principal concerns are Washington, D.C., and New York—although, as Frank suggests, we also worry about major cities like Chicago.”

Grey turned to Michael Wertheimer. “What about targets outside the U.S.?”

“There are a number of them. Given the apparent involvement of LET, India is one possibility.” He placed a finger on Afghanistan. “If they go after Bagram Air Force Base, as you suggest, Afghanistan actually would make sense.”

“Not to me,” Grey rejoined. “We've got too many troops there for al Qaeda to risk it. If you want to take a flier, try the Chechens blowing up Moscow. Not that I'd mind.”

“There's also every capital in Europe,” Sweder proposed. “Rome, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, and, most likely, London. If al Qaeda levels any one of those, no European country would help us fight our wars again.”

“Are they helping now?” Grey asked innocently. “Please, show me on the map.”

Sweder smiled a little. “There's also the Saudi oil fields. Beyond wanting to cripple the world economy, al Qaeda hates the royal family. Finally, of course, there's Israel.”

“I'd move it toward the top,” Brustein said, “if saving Israel was this agency's job one. But it isn't.” He looked around the table. “Taking the targets we've identified, how does the bomb get out of Pakistan?”

“Maybe it doesn't,” Grey suggested. “At least not right away. In al Qaeda's place, I might hide it somewhere safe until everyone exhausts themselves looking.”

Sweder looked dubious. “Then how would you get it out?” he asked Grey. “Every day of delay gives the Pakistanis more time to turn their attention from India, tightening the net.”