The Midnight House (14 page)

“Ellis Shafer,” Murphy said. He had a clipped Yankee accent, a relative rarity at the agency, which recruited more from the South and Midwest.

“Good to meet you,” Shafer said. “I appreciate this.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Murphy said. He didn’t look pleased. “If the director asks, I’m glad to accommodate. And of course your reputation precedes you.”

“Follows me, too.”

Murphy led them into a high-ceilinged conference room, the walls of which were lined with expensive black-and-white photographs of Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Nice digs.”

Murphy looked around as if he’d never seen the photos before. “You spend as much time in here as we do, you hardly notice.”

“Just like Poland?”

“Not exactly, but sure.”

Shafer set a digital tape recorder on the table. “Do you mind?”

“And here I thought this was a social call. You don’t mind, I’d prefer we keep it informal.”

The room itself was almost certainly wired, but Shafer didn’t argue. He slipped the recorder away, reached into his pocket for a pen and a reporter’s notebook, its pages filled with an illegible scrawl.

“Tell me how you became part of 673.”

“Have you seen my file?”

Shafer grunted noncommittally.

“So, you know a couple years back I did a tour in Iraq. Mosul. My COS”—chief of station—“there was Brad Gessen. Remember him?”

“Yeah.” Gessen had been arrested for stealing 1.2 million dollars from a fund used to bribe Sunni tribal chiefs in Iraq. Starting in early 2006, the CIA and army had thrown cash at the tribes, hoping to turn them against the insurgency, or at least buy their neutrality. More than one billion in cash was distributed through the program, with only the barest accounting. Rumors of thefts were rampant. But only Gessen had been arrested, probably because he’d stolen so much money that some of the tribal leaders had complained to the army about the missing payments.

“Brad and I were tight,” Murphy said. “I mean, I had no idea what he was up to—”

“Sure about that?”

“I don’t appreciate that question.”

“One-point-two million, and the guy was your boss and you didn’t know?”

Murphy controlled himself, the effort visible. “There was a full investigation. The IG cleared me. But my career took a hit. Started hearing that I might get moved to Australia”—not exactly the agency’s hottest theater. “So 673, when it came up, I figured it was a chance to turn the page. High-risk, high-reward, but we get the right intel, we’re all heroes.”

Shafer started to like Murphy a tiny bit more. The man hadn’t sugarcoated this explanation. No talk of taking the battle to the enemy, broadening his experience. He’d made a clear-eyed analysis that going to Poland might rescue his career. He was a hopelessly ambitious careerist, but at least he wasn’t pretending otherwise.

“And what did you do in Poland?”

“Ran admin and logistic,” Murphy said, calm again. “Nine-person unit on a foreign base, plus the detainees, there’s a lot to do.”

“Thought it was ten.”

“I’ll get to that. I handled our relationships with the Poles, set up the supply chain. When there was significant intel, I summarized it and passed it to the Pentagon.”

“With so few men, how did you watch the prisoners continuously?”

“We had help from the Poles. They supplied food, picked up garbage, handled security around the building. At night they helped us monitor the cells.”

“But they weren’t actively involved in the interrogations.”

“No.”

“How often did you visit the detainees?”

“When necessary,” Murphy said. “Like I said, it wasn’t my role.”

“And how were they treated?”

“As illegal enemy combatants. If they cooperated, they received more privileges, and if they didn’t, they didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Shafer said. “I didn’t hear an answer.”

“I told you, I spent most of my time on admin.”

“The unit was short on manpower,” Shafer said. “You were basically running a jail with a ten-man squad.”

“Yes and no,” Murphy said.

“How many detainees did you have?”

“Ten.”

“And you’d hold one or two at a time?”

“Yes. Once we had three, but Terreri didn’t like that. Said it was too many. And he was right.”

“Walk me through a day in the life.”

“The interrogations ran about eight, ten hours at a stretch. Two or three men were involved: the interrogator—that was usually Karp—and a muscle guy or two.”

“So you could run two interrogations at once.”

“If we needed to. But we preferred to go one at a time. As you know, the squad was all men, except for the psychiatrist, Rachel, Dr. Callar. The org chart, LTC Terreri was the CO”—the commanding officer. “I was XO”—the executive officer, the number two. “Karp was the lead interrogator. Jerry Williams did swing duty; he knew Arabic, so he could handle interrogations. And also he oversaw the three Rangers, who were the muscle. And then Callar.”

“What about Hank Poteat?”

“He was technically part of the squad, but he was only there a couple of months, at the beginning. He helped set up our coms, and then he left. So that’s everybody.”

“It isn’t, though,” Shafer said. He flipped back through his reporter’s notebook. “CO is Terreri. XO is you. Karp is the interrogator. Callar’s the doctor. Williams and his three Rangers make eight. Poteat counts as technically part of the squad, even though he wasn’t there long. That’s nine. You forgot Jack Fisher.”

“Right,” Murphy said. “Fisher helped Karp with the interrogations. He would stay up late with the prisoners. If they wouldn’t talk, they needed an extra push. Sometimes Jerry Williams helped. The Midnight House, we called it sometimes. Fisher, he’d tell the detainees when they got there, ‘Welcome to the Midnight House.’ ”

“Funny.”

“We were trying to take the edge off. Stuck in Poland for a year and a half.”

“How tough was Fisher?”

“I don’t know. Specifically.”

“Friendly persuasion. Cup of cocoa. Tell me about your mother.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“You were the second-in-command and you didn’t know.”

“I told you, I wasn’t operational.”

“You strike me as the type who prefers to lead from the rear.”

Murphy stared at Shafer as if Shafer were a misbehaving brat he wanted to spank but couldn’t. In turn, Shafer made faces at Murphy, raising his eyebrows, throwing in a wink.

“I’m sorry,” Murphy said finally. “I didn’t hear a question.”

“Try this. Did the unit have internal tensions?”

“We were a small group living in close quarters in a foreign country. We couldn’t tell anyone what we were doing. Of course, we didn’t always get along. But nothing you wouldn’t expect.”

“Did you believe that the detainees were treated fairly?”

“From what I saw, yes.”

“Did 673 ever uncover actionable intel?”

For the first time, Murphy smiled. “Definitely.”

“What, exactly?”

“I can’t say. Vinny Duto wants to tell you, it’s his business.”

“But it was valuable.”

“You could say that.”

Shafer made a note. “Fast-forward,” he said. “The squad breaks up, a bunch of guys retire. You stay.”

“With the intel we’d gotten, I wanted to see where I’d be in a year or two.”

“Any idea why so many guys decided to leave?”

“Ask them.”

“Guilty consciences?”

“I’m not a mind reader. Not now or then.” Murphy looked at his watch. “The FBI’s coming tomorrow, and I’m sure they’ll be asking all the same questions as you, and more besides. Can we finish up later?”

“A few more minutes,” Shafer said.

“A few.”

“After you got back, did you stay in touch with the rest of the unit?”

“Colonel Terreri and I had lunch a couple times before he got sent to Afghanistan. I saw Karp upstairs once.”

“How about Fisher?”

“Talked to him once or twice. No one else. It was an ad hoc deployment, and we got scattered.”

“You didn’t know what was happening to the unit. The deaths.”

“Of course I did. We all heard about Rachel. Not right away, but we heard. Then Terreri sent me an e-mail that Mark and Freddy”—the two Rangers—“were KIA. Then Karp. By then we were all wondering a little bit. I remember saying to Fisher, ‘What’s the story? Somebody put a curse on us?’ But we didn’t know that Jerry was missing. I know it looks obvious in retrospect.”

“You don’t seem nervous.”

“Should I cry for Mommy?”

“Can you think of any reason someone might be after the squad?”

“Beyond the fact that we put the screws to some bad actors?” Murphy drummed his fingers on the table. In contrast with his neatly tailored clothes, his nails were jagged, bitten nearly to the quick. “My ass on the line. I’ve thought about it. I don’t know.”

“What about Alaa Zumari? ” Shafer said.

“I can’t tell you anything that’s not in the file.”

“Haven’t seen the file,” Shafer muttered into his teeth.

“Say again?”

“I said I haven’t seen it. Not yet.”

“You’ll have to work that out with Vinny.”

“How about you walk me through it?”

“How about not?”

Shafer wanted to reach across the table and slap Murphy, but in a way he was right. Duto had started this charade, asked him and Wells to try to find a killer without the background information they needed.

“Any chance Alaa Zumari’s connected to this?”

“If we thought he was a terrorist, we wouldn’t have let him go.”

“Maybe he lied. Withstood the pressure somehow. Could he have figured out who was on the squad? Your real names?”

“We were pretty tight about opsec. Never used real names with the detainees.”

“The Poles? Could they have leaked your names?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Could anyone inside the unit be responsible for the killings?”

“You asking if I’m the killer? I’m gonna have to say no.”

“How about Hank Poteat? Or Terreri? Or Jerry?”

“I told you, Poteat wasn’t part of the squad. The colonel’s in Afghanistan. Jerry’s dead.”

“What if he’s not?”

The question stopped Murphy. He ran a hand down his tie, flipped up the tip, looked at it as if the fabric might hold the answer. “Jerry had a temper. And he was having problems with his wife, we knew that. And he thought he deserved a promotion. He quit when he didn’t get it. But I don’t see him taking it out on us.”

Murphy pushed himself back from the table. “Mr. Shafer. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I have to get to work. I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.”

“Before you go,” Shafer said. “Tell me about the C-one drop.”

“What about it?”

“Eight million for ten guys for sixteen months? Nice work if you can get it.”

“Two hundred grand a month to the Poles to rent the barracks and the guards. Payments whenever we landed a jet. A million for coms gear that we bought over there. Charter flights.”

“You keep receipts?”

“Of course. We wanted to leave a nice long paper trail for all those congressional investigators. And the Justice Department.”

“I take it that’s a no.”

“You take it correctly.”

Shafer leaned forward in his chair, flared his nostrils like a terrier on the scent of a rat.

“Let me make sure I understand. You worked for a guy who stole one-point-two million dollars in Iraq. This squad, you’re in charge of eight million. And you don’t keep receipts.”

“I got verbal approval for anything over twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“From who?”

“Somebody in Sanchez’s office, usually.”

“Anybody keep records of those conversations?”

“Colonel Terreri knew where the money was going.”

“Terreri. He’s not dead yet, right?”

“You have something to ask, ask it,” Murphy said. The vein on his forehead had popped out again, visible proof that Shafer’s bluff had scored.

“Maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow, when the Feebs come to town.” Suddenly, Shafer understood. Every so often he had a flash like this, the pieces fitting together all at once. “Six-seven-three was your career saver? Guess again. You put in for it figuring on the unrestricted drop. Figuring you could skim. You saw Gessen’s mistakes. And you would have gotten away clean, if not for the murders.”

“Only one problem with that theory. It’s been investigated. And I’ve been cleared. No evidence of wrongdoing, and that was that. I’ve got it in writing. Now, you want to talk to me again, you call my lawyer.”

Murphy pulled open the conference-room door, walked out, slammed it shut behind him hard enough to leave a hairline crack in its porthole-shaped window.

“New construction,” Shafer said to the empty room. “Can never trust it.”

F
or two days, Wells cooled his heels at the Lotus, leaving only for a quick trip to the Intercontinental. The move was risky, but if his room stayed empty too long, the hotel’s managers might get nervous. Wells stayed an hour, long enough to muss his bed, take a shower, and have a brief conversation with Shafer on an innocuous Long Island number that routed through to the agency.

“Mr. Barber,” Shafer said. “How’s business?”

“I’m worried our client has another bidder. A local agency.”

“Maybe you should work together.”

“I think our needs are different.”

“You’re the man on the ground, so I defer to you.”

“Your man in Havana.”

“You’ve been reading again, I see,” Shafer said.

“Despite your warnings.”

“I recommend
The Comedians.
It’s excellent. Anything else I should know?”