The Operative (22 page)
Authors: Andrew Britton
And then it occurred to her: it wasn’t water. The men had a scenario to enact.
She drained the vodka, sat back, and waited for it to take effect.
Blurry snippets of image and sound flashed through Yasmin’s mind. A solicitous doorman, a look of concern as they helped their inebriated friend to the front desk.
He didn’t know them. He had to call up to announce them.
A walk through a lobby whose ceiling reminded her of the Sistine Chapel’s, but with a maritime theme. The
bing
of several elevators coming and leaving, the three of them waiting for one. It arrived. They emerged. There was a floral-pattern carpet on the floor. Then it was above her, then below again... .
bing
of several elevators coming and leaving, the three of them waiting for one. It arrived. They emerged. There was a floral-pattern carpet on the floor. Then it was above her, then below again... .
You’re just dizzy
.
.
She was being carried now. There was darkness. Then she was motionless, lying on something soft. Her arms and legs were being moved... .
Yasmin awoke in absolute darkness. Her head hurt on the left side, above the eyebrow, like someone was striking the inside of her skull with a brick.
Hangover
.
.
She tried to move; that was when she remembered being bound. With leather, she could tell from the feel of it. She did not bother to struggle, but lay back. She was on some kind of foam that conformed to her body. She did not sink deeply into it, but she moved her hips slightly from side to side and felt it give with her motion, like soft clay.
She had not been brought here to rest.
Yasmin thought through the pain, realized that she was no longer wearing the clothes in which she had arrived. She was in what felt like flannel pajamas. She did not feel as if she’d been violated. Yasmin was obviously here for a test or experiment of some kind; whoever was behind it wanted her to feel as if she could trust them.
She became aware of a slight pressure on her chest, over her heart. Yasmin rolled her left shoulder several times. There appeared to be something hard in her shirt pocket. She was able to increase the pressure on the fabric by raising herself from the foam slightly. Yasmin felt an object in her pocket, and it was round. It moved slightly. She arched as far as she could in a failed attempt to let it roll out. After a moment she relaxed.
All right,
she thought. At least nothing had been implanted in her flesh.
she thought. At least nothing had been implanted in her flesh.
The idea of giving herself to the police in Cairo or to the American authorities now in exchange for something made it still a matter of choice. But being fitted with a device that could stop her heart or explode against her rib cage—that was untenable to her, the idea of it miserably suffocating. She did not know how she would react to what spies called an “off switch.” She had always assumed that if she were captured, it would be by some legitimate, rule-of-law agency, like Interpol.
The hammering in her skull drew her attention once more, and she lay back, listening to the hollow silence around her. She wiggled from side to side; whatever she was on was fixed to the floor. Even that level of restraint gave her some anxiety.
Was that part of the reason for incarceration? she wondered.
To distract me and break me down?
To distract me and break me down?
The headache prevented her from falling back asleep. Yasmin lay back again, with her eyes shut. She had no idea how long she lay there. She tried the wristbands again, giving little tugs, then an extended pull, and finally putting all her will into a long, fruitless struggle—first up, then sideways in both directions, then slumping.
“Hey!” she shouted.
Yasmin didn’t expect anyone to answer, but she thought the sound of her voice might tell her something about the size or composition of the room.
Her voice sounded unusually flat.
Sound-absorbent material,
she thought. Her captors didn’t want her to be heard outside the room.
she thought. Her captors didn’t want her to be heard outside the room.
She looked around as far as she could see to both sides, raised her head to gaze between her feet. There was no light, anywhere. Maybe the soundproofing was black curtains. For all she knew, they could be hanging just a few feet away. She didn’t feel a breeze, any kind of stirring, heard no exterior sounds, even though she was in Manhattan. She was definitely closed off
within
a room.
within
a room.
She flopped back and folded her thumbs in, squeezing her hands into narrow wedges. She tried to draw them through the restraints. The leather was too tight. Like the shouting, that, too, had been anticipated. She noticed then that even her nails had been trimmed. It was tougher to dig into someone’s eyes this way.
Over the years, Yasmin had evolved a three-tiered approach to captivity. Until she was apprehended at Heathrow, it had been theoretical. First, try to escape. Failing that, play on their compassion. Failing
that,
pretend to cooperate. Escape had failed. She sucked air through her open mouth several times to tighten her throat.
that,
pretend to cooperate. Escape had failed. She sucked air through her open mouth several times to tighten her throat.
“Please!” she cried. “Anyone? I thirst.”
No one came. She repeated the plea. She did not even hear the shuffling of feet, the click of a light switch, the beep of a cell phone or a computer, the chug of a water pipe, the hum of an elevator, the passing of an airplane. She might just as well be locked in a coffin buried in six feet of frozen earth.
Her thoughts about captivity had always been about what she would do to get free, not about what someone would do to
her
. Women were sexually abused by jailers, and she was mentally prepared for that. It wasn’t about a man taking her; it was about a man putting himself close to her so she could hurt him. She had learned that from studying kung fu during an extended mission in Hong Kong. When someone presented his body in an aggressive way, any part of it, you let him in. And by locks and strikes you kept him from getting away. Even bound as she was, she had teeth, fingers, her head, affected submission, the vanity of the male lover who wanted to win legitimately what he had taken.
her
. Women were sexually abused by jailers, and she was mentally prepared for that. It wasn’t about a man taking her; it was about a man putting himself close to her so she could hurt him. She had learned that from studying kung fu during an extended mission in Hong Kong. When someone presented his body in an aggressive way, any part of it, you let him in. And by locks and strikes you kept him from getting away. Even bound as she was, she had teeth, fingers, her head, affected submission, the vanity of the male lover who wanted to win legitimately what he had taken.
She had not contemplated isolation. Were the men from the plane waiting for someone to arrive or trying to unnerve her? She considered both with increasing anxiety. Though she realized that weakening her was probably the goal, she couldn’t help herself. Either one accepted a situation and thought about something else or one tried to accumulate information, understand motivation, replay what had been seen and heard in search of clues.
She did the latter, for what seemed like an hour or more, long enough for her headache to subside somewhat.
And then the world went suddenly, painfully white.
CHAPTER 15
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
“H
e’s breathing!”
e’s breathing!”
The words shot through the FBI radio system like a bullet. While four agents secured room 306 in the Hilton Hotel, two others performed crude field triage on the agent who lay in front of the broken door. His partner on the advance team was dead, with a bullet wound to the head, but this man was alive, with three holes in his left side.
Medics arrived in less than a minute, pulling off the bulletproof vest, which was putting pressure on the chest and increasing blood flow to the injuries. While one prepared an IV to replace the blood that was dripping onto the carpet, the other turned a pocket flashlight on the wounds.
“Point of entry—no serrations,” he said.
The other man nodded and said into his shoulder radio, “Debrief on-site.”
There was a crackled acknowledgment. The medic continued with his work. The clean wounds suggested not just a point-blank assault but a high-velocity penetrating intra-abdominal injury. In addition to the damage caused by the bullets themselves, the kinetic energy each one had generated would have caused severe trauma to adjoining organs. One of them had entered under the armpit and could not have avoided passing near the heart. The organ was probably already swelling. That injury alone was likely fatal.
The medics refused to think about anything beyond each passing second. The goal was to keep the victim alive as long as possible. His life was important, of course. So was information. Epinephrine would be part of the cocktail being administered.
The victim’s breathing was shallow. There was a bubbling sound deep in his throat. Blood. There was no point to surgical management. Adhesive bandages were placed on the wounds. A second medical unit arrived with a stretcher, along with a senior agent, an intelligence specialist.
The dead agent had been covered with a sheet from the hotel room. The IS knelt beside him, leaning close to his partner.
“Did you zap him?” he asked the medics.
“Just now,” said the agent with the IV. “Heavy dose. Give him a few seconds.”
A terrible quiet lay upon the hallway. The gurgling in the agent’s throat gave way to a sudden, vacuum-like inhalation. Then he gagged, coughed, lay still, wheezed, and opened his eyes.
He was not looking at anyone in particular. Perhaps he was peering into the near future or into the past. They would never know. He said just one thing before he died, spoken clearly and without equivocation.
“One ... of ... us.”
CHAPTER 16
WASHINGTON, D.C.
L
ocated in the heart of Washington, D.C., the century-old George Washington University Hospital was fully renovated in 2002, transforming it into one of the finest multi-care medical facilities in the nation. With a medical staff of over fifteen hundred doctors and nurses and nearly ninety thousand outpatients a year, the hospital boasted of many successes. Julie Harper, whose surname was then Deas, had previously been one of those success stories.
ocated in the heart of Washington, D.C., the century-old George Washington University Hospital was fully renovated in 2002, transforming it into one of the finest multi-care medical facilities in the nation. With a medical staff of over fifteen hundred doctors and nurses and nearly ninety thousand outpatients a year, the hospital boasted of many successes. Julie Harper, whose surname was then Deas, had previously been one of those success stories.
After she met Jon unpredictably at the notorious 1983 Peace Now rally in Jerusalem, where support of Israeli-Palestinian peace ended with a protester’s grenade killing peace advocate Emil Grunzweig, the political pair had agreed to reunite when they returned to “home field,” as they lightheartedly referred to anywhere peaceful.
The following month Julie finally received the promised phone call, and with it, Jon’s formal invitation to dinner. Julie, however, had another proposal, and Jon arrived at her home for a casual, no-fuss, intimate evening together. Pouring him a glass of 1978 Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne while she finished preparing her simplified version of an off-season Thanksgiving dinner, Julie had the misfortune of slicing into her left hand’s pointer finger, leaving the soft tip amid the turkey and other trimmings. She swore, but nothing more, as Jon swallowed what would be his last sip of champagne before rushing her off to the ER at the George Washington University Hospital.
Several stitches and a healthy injection of lidocaine later, Julie was released into Jon’s loyal care, and the pair returned to “home field,” where they nibbled on the uncontaminated side dishes, finished their bottle of lukewarm champagne, and watched the stunning D.C. sunrise. It would be the last one they’d share as strangers.
The meeting with the president ended around 8:00 p.m.—at least Ryan Kealey’s part in it did—and he cabbed over to the hospital. He had been offered a staff car but preferred to make his own way. For one thing, he didn’t like accepting gifts from these guys, not even a lift from one of their meetings. It was a matter of expressing your independence. That was important in Washington. Otherwise, people assumed they owned you. For another, he needed to be around real people, starting with a short walk across Lafayette Park to the Hay-Adams Hotel, which was where he got his ride.
The mood of the evening tourists in the park, and of the people in the hotel lobby, was one of somnambulism. Not disbelief. Americans knew what terrorists were capable of. That the bad guys had gotten through again, however, was still a blow. Even the cabdriver was silent and listening to the radio.
Jon Harper was sitting in the hospital’s main waiting room on Twenty-Third Street, NW. Someone with Harper’s connections and stature would certainly have been offered a private office to wait in. But someone of Harper’s personal stature would not have accepted special treatment. Which was why Kealey knew exactly where to find him.
Harper was slumped in a plastic seat, staring at his lap. The CIA official didn’t look up until Kealey was on top of him.
Harper didn’t say anything at first. He smiled weakly, then rose and put his arms around his colleague.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” Harper said.
“I made ’em pay,” Kealey said into the man’s ear.
He felt Harper’s grip tighten. “Thanks for what you did, buddy. Thank you.”
Kealey didn’t respond. It wasn’t a moment for words.
“Allison all right?” Harper asked, taking a step back.
“Yeah. Her nephew, too. He was lucky.”
Harper’s face was tight, fighting something more than tears. He cleared his briefcase from the adjoining seat, and Kealey sat. He looked around. The room was crowded, but not packed. It would be hours before the overflow from Baltimore began arriving.
“I heard,” Harper began, then choked, started again. “I heard some doctors talking. Seems that until the air force gives an all clear on medevac pilots, some of the injured are being brought here via hospital boat.”
Washington, D.C., had an automatic lockdown protocol in the event of a terrorist attack. The airways were closed, and incoming vehicular traffic was severely restricted. The perpetrators would expect a loosening of flyover regulations for medical aircraft. If they had compromised a pilot of one of these aircraft, how better to hit the nation’s capital?
“I can’t imagine that Ninety-five is real crowded in this direction,” Kealey said. “People will stay put or get the hell out of town.”
“I heard they still need the ambulances up there,” Harper said. “They’re finding people in the rubble.”
Kealey wondered if there had been further collapses since he’d been ferried away, weakened structures collapsing at the convention center, maybe more in the hotel. That was what happened after the World Trade Center attacks when, late in the afternoon, the weakened and burning 7 World Trade Center collapsed and slid onto the rubble.
Harper didn’t ask about the meeting. He knew that Kealey wouldn’t tell him anything in public.
“What’s the latest with Julie?” Kealey asked.
Harper shrugged helplessly. “She’s in surgery. Bone fragments on the brain. They told me that’ll be about five hours. When they can, they have to cut open her leg and close the flaps where her fingers used to be... .”
He stopped again, on the verge of losing it.
Kealey sat still, giving him time and space and also picking through his own thoughts. He had called the attack a beachhead, and to a man—even Andrews—the president’s other advisors had cautioned Brenneman that there was no evidence of that. Kealey agreed. Nonetheless, the kind of training the commandos had had did not come from a training camp in the mountains of Afghanistan. The weapons were new and, worse, current. They hadn’t been captured from fallen Russian or American soldiers. And the strike was complex, with more moving parts than September 11 or any other attack. No group put that kind of effort into an operation, then failed to take credit for it.
Unless they weren’t through.
It was flimsy, Kealey had to admit, but it wasn’t what the Company classified as an “unreasonable assumption,” the kind of spitballing agents did when they were looking for links in disparate enemy activity and chatter, overlapping names, places, timing, or objectives that might signal the coming together of a plan.
“When the hell does it end?” Harper asked.
“It will, Jon.”
“How? When?”
“Like the cavalry used to say out West, ‘When the renegades are taken or destroyed.’ ”
“It’s not the same,” Harper said. “The Indians had nowhere to go. We boxed them in and cut them down. This is like playing goddamn Whac-a-Mole with the whole damn world.”
“Not really,” Kealey replied. “You take out enough Osamas, you Tomahawk missile enough cars with top terror brass, and eventually the movement runs out of gas.”
“Jesus, Ryan. Do you really believe that?”
“I do.”
Harper shook his head dejectedly. “We do that, these killers just go on the Internet and recruit more.”
“They try,” Kealey said. “You remember that white paper Allison worked on?”
Harper thought for a moment and then actually chuckled. “You mean Project Pond Scum?”
“That’s the one. A small amount of algae is unavoidable, but after you skim the pond, you can keep most of it from coming back.”
“Algae doesn’t communicate via the Internet.”
“You obviously didn’t pay attention to what three million bucks and sixteen months told us,” Kealey said. “I had a long plane flight to South Africa to read it. Whether it’s terror or porn, yes, the Internet allows people to communicate and find kindred souls. But it doesn’t increase their ranks at the rate they’re being thinned by arrests and death.”
“Right, and that was what? Three years ago? We’ve got kids growing up with a sense of virtual community, a sense of video-game invulnerability, and an aggressive tribal mentality because of all that. Their minds calcify into something hardcore, into small agile pockets of twisted little sociopaths. I don’t share your optimism. I see packs that are tougher to track and destroy.”
“You’ve gotten too close to the daily intel briefings,” Kealey said quietly. “When I’ve been abroad, I see mothers who still don’t want to see their kids blow themselves up. And I see kids who mostly want Nikes and PlayStations.”
“Not the kids in hate schools in Yemen and Somalia,” Harper said.
Kealey chuckled. “Hell, Jon. When did
you
ever pay attention to anything your teacher said?”
you
ever pay attention to anything your teacher said?”
Harper considered that. He shrugged, sighed, and deflated.
“Having a vision is one thing, but getting shot at opens your eyes,” Kealey said. “For all the righteous indignation and out-of-the-box heroics, where would the Libyan rebels have been without NATO? For that matter, how long would the French Resistance have survived without D-day?”
And he wondered if that was what didn’t sit right today, the sense he got from the attackers and their matériel that there
was
a supply line, a logistical support system. What bothered him almost as much as the feeling was now knowing, whether he was frustrated or relieved, that none of this was his responsibility.
was
a supply line, a logistical support system. What bothered him almost as much as the feeling was now knowing, whether he was frustrated or relieved, that none of this was his responsibility.
“You’re probably knocked out,” Harper said. “You also need a shower. You smell of firefight and Situation Room.”
Kealey smiled. He was about to remark, “Hey, the ladies really go for it” when he thought of Julie and bit it off. “Yeah,” he said instead.
Kealey rose. So did Harper. They hugged again, and the deputy director thanked him once more for everything. He was still struggling to hold it together.
“Call me if you hear anything,” Kealey told him. “Or even if you don’t and just want to talk.”
Harper promised that he would.
Kealey left and got in the cab, which was still sitting at the curb.
“Hope you don’t mind me spying on you,” the driver said. “Saw you go in, figured you might not be long.” He poked a thumb at the radio. “Nobody calling to go anywhere tonight, and Union Station was dead.”
“No, I’m glad,” Kealey said. The cabbie was a young African American with an accent that sounded like Arkansas. Kealey gave him the address.
“Courtesy call?” the driver asked as he pulled away.
“Something like that,” Kealey responded.
“Probably a lot of that today,” the driver remarked.
“Yeah,” Kealey replied.
People were always friendlier in a crisis, wanting to make a connection. On the way over the driver had been too preoccupied with negotiating the streets blocked off with police vehicles to do more than mutter unhappily about the detours. D.C. cabbies were paid by the sector, not the mileage, and he was burning a lot of extra gas.
Kealey didn’t want to be rude, but he was too tired, too preoccupied to chat. He sat there, acutely aware now of the odors. That bothered him. He still had the old instincts for combat—those never left, even if the joints stiffened a little—but Kealey realized he was definitely out of practice. He hadn’t noticed the smells until Harper said something. That was the kind of slipup that could get someone killed in the field. He had always been alert to that after meeting a source overseas who smoked a distinctive tobacco or served him food that stayed on the breath for hours. Having Handi Wipes and flavored gum in his pocket was as important as having his passport and
balisong.
balisong.
His eyelids drooped as he sat there. The streetlights became smears; the outside world dreamlike. He just now understood what Harper had meant but hadn’t quite been able to articulate: since 2001 life itself had seemed unreal. Attacks or the threat of them. Anthrax in envelopes. Constant war.
Might as well call it what it is,
he thought in his strangely lucid state.
World War III on a slow burn.
he thought in his strangely lucid state.
World War III on a slow burn.
Each time one of these events happened, here or in Madrid, London, Israel, Kealey privately hoped it would be the tipping point, the event that caused the globe to scream, “Enough!” There had been another white paper, one prepared by the Department of Defense, called Operation Tripod. It was named for a code word ascribed to the theoretical next world war. The précis—which itself ran seventy-four pages, just one one-hundredth of the document’s entire length—described unprecedented bombing runs around Middle Eastern oil facilities and pipelines to cut them off, followed by a massive airdrop of personnel and matériel to protect them and the construction of secure spans to get the oil out. The idea was that without petrodollars the enemy would starve. Starving, he would be forced to attack for supplies. Attacking, he would be cut down. The most radical part of the proposal was the section called Dewdrop. Radical or fence-straddling regimes that did not instantly fall in line, from Iran to Pakistan, would have their capitals razed by MOABs, Massive Ordnance Air Blasts, bombs that delivered the destructive force of the smallest nuclear devices but without the radiation.
A horrible scenario with countless innocent casualties
,
yes,
Kealey reflected.
But worth the price for normalcy, of an end to the Dark Ages nipping at the world’s extremities?
,
yes,
Kealey reflected.
But worth the price for normalcy, of an end to the Dark Ages nipping at the world’s extremities?
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