Truth or Die (25 page)

In the parking lot. In the lobby. In the elevator. In the hallway. And ultimately, in the conference room. There were cameras everywhere. Everything was being recorded.

Welcome to the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.

“What fun have you brought us now, Valerie?”
asked Jeffrey Crespin.

Based on his tone alone, I was fairly certain the word
fun
in that question bore little resemblance to the actual definition of the word. Suffice it to say, Valerie Jensen had never been awarded Employee of the Month.

No wonder, really. When I’d asked her before the meeting why an agent working undercover would risk drawing so much attention to herself with her skeet shooting exhibition on Brennan’s lawn, she told me she simply couldn’t help it. Quote, “I just hate those penis-measuring contests that men always have.”

Crespin, who was introduced to me as a deputy director of some counterterrorism division I’d never heard of, listened patiently in his suit and tie as Valerie—now in sweatpants, a Northwestern T-shirt, and a ponytail—finished briefing him about her Saturday afternoon at Brennan’s house, which had necessitated her dragging Crespin away from a charity dinner and into the office on a Saturday night.

The long and short of it? Their ongoing investigation to prove Shahid Al Dossari was helping to launder Saudi money that was ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda operatives had suddenly collided with some Columbia Law School professor posing as a writer with the
Times
and his unseen partner, who were conducting their own little investigation.

“Only it’s not so little,” said Valerie. That was when she turned to me and nodded. It was my turn to talk.

But before I could get two words out of my mouth, Crespin interrupted me. “Where’s this partner, the one you were on the phone with at Brennan’s house?” he asked.

“That’s part of the agreement,” I answered.

Crespin cocked his head at Valerie. He definitely didn’t like the sound of that.
“What agreement?”

“Let’s just say the partner has trust issues,” Valerie explained. “The agreement I made with Mr. Mann is that he would come here voluntarily in exchange for being able to come alone.”

“Do you at least know where this person is?” asked Crespin.

“I don’t,” she answered. “But Mr. Mann does.”

He was staring at me again. “And I suppose that’s going to remain your secret, right? Who he is … who he works for?”

“Yes, but I know of a way you could probably get it out of me,” I said, grabbing the segue. “That is, if it didn’t kill me first.”

With that, I took out a flash drive containing the recordings Owen had first shown me, along with the ones from Dr. Wittmer. The stage was mine again. Or, at least, I was making it mine.

Valerie had a laptop booted up and ready to go. This was her second viewing within the hour. I dispensed with any preface and simply clicked Play.

I’d only just met Crespin, but I was hardly surprised to see him stare at the screen stone-faced as he watched. The guy was stoic. Like a doctor. I hardly expected him to recoil at the sight of torture.

But there was something.

It happened at the beginning of one of Wittmer’s recordings—the detainee who was cooperating under the influence of the serum but was still killed by it. The very moment the guy’s face was visible on-screen, Crespin glanced at Valerie. And Valerie glanced back.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” said Valerie.

But I knew the sound of that
nothing
. It was the same
nothing
I’d told Detective Lamont and his partner, McGeary, when they were showing me the recording of Claire’s murder on the CrackerJack: the moment when she stuffed her phone behind the seat.

Yeah, that
nothing
from Valerie?

It was definitely something.

“HOW DID you get these?” Crespin asked calmly after the last recording was finished.

It was tempting to joke about the irony. Here was the NSA asking me how I’d gotten information I wasn’t supposed to have. Yeah, that’s rich.

How did I get these?
“The how isn’t important,” I said. “It’s the who.”

And not just who was responsible, but also who had been killed along the way. Crespin needed to understand the stakes, the price others had paid.

I explained everything Owen and I knew for sure, as well as what we suspected. We’d been following the money, but we still didn’t know whose it was. Brennan, through his law firm, had been moving that money but not supplying it. It had to come from somewhere, though.

As for the serum itself, Dr. Wittmer had implicated Frank Karcher, the National Clandestine Service chief of the CIA, as the man who’d first approached him about transporting—and administering—it overseas.

Finally, there was the photo in Wittmer’s house suggesting that Clay Dobson could be involved.

“
Could
be,” I stressed.

I wasn’t about to try to sell Crespin on the idea of the White House being involved, as I was hardly sold on the idea myself. For starters, we had nothing that linked Karcher to Dobson.

Funny, though, how the world works sometimes.

When I was done, Crespin flipped open a manila folder in front of him and removed a large, folded-up piece of paper. He slid it in front of me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Go ahead
, said his nod,
open it
.

I unfolded the paper. It was a copy of the front page of the
New York Times.
Not today’s, though. Not even tomorrow’s, which would’ve been the Sunday edition.

No, this was Monday’s paper—an editor’s mock-up, complete with margin notes and dummy text for a couple of articles still to be inserted.

Instinctively, I looked at my watch. I knew from Claire that weekday editions of the
Times
went to print around ten o’clock the night before, with the “first edition A book,” aka the front section, always closing last. We were a full twenty-four hours before that.

It felt a bit like a
Twilight Zone
episode. Crespin was showing me the future.

I stared down at the paper again. I didn’t ask, but all I could think was
How did he get this?

If he wasn’t reading my face, he was definitely reading my mind.

“The how isn’t important,” he said. He then pointed to the first-column story above the fold, the tip of his index finger landing directly next to the name in the headline. “It’s the who.”

THERE IT was in boldface type.

President Set to Nominate Karcher
As Next CIA Director

Quickly, I scanned the first paragraph. My gut told me there’d be no need to read the second.

Frank Karcher was being dubbed the “unexpected choice,” but an “unnamed source within the White House” was certainly bending over backward to describe him as an impeccable candidate.

“It had always been a coin flip between Frank Karcher and Lawrence Bass. Heads or tails, though, it’s our national security that wins.”

Those unnamed sources sure can spin.

Crespin stood up from the table and walked over to the window. He stared outside, saying nothing. Meanwhile, Valerie had grabbed the laptop, her fingers furiously tapping away on the keypad.

I didn’t know what she was doing, but I figured Crespin must be deep in thought, trying to figure out this huge minefield he was suddenly standing in. On a pogo stick, no less.

There was no scenario that didn’t entail collateral damage, from the presidency on down. And that was if the White House
wasn’t
involved.

And if it was? If the link to Clay Dobson via Frank Karcher proved real?

Then Crespin wouldn’t need the front page of the
New York Times
in advance to know what the headlines would be. Independent counsels, congressional hearings, the entire administration upended, if not toppled. The Fourth Estate would have the ultimate field day. A feast for the ages.

Now kick in the foreign policy and national security ramifications.

This wasn’t drones or waterboarding or even some extremely ill-advised photos taken by a few guards at Guantánamo Bay. No, this was the coup de grâce, the mother lode.

The single greatest terrorist recruiting tool of all time. Or at least, until the next one came along.

If I’d been Crespin, I would’ve been staring out the window, too. He had to be wondering what his next move was. He was the NSA, not the FBI. At some point, this was a job for law enforcement, and I was assuming that point was now. On second thought …

He was the NSA, not the FBI.

Crespin turned away from the window. “How much do you know about this building, Mr. Mann?”

“You mean, the actual building?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I looked over at Valerie for some help.
Is this a trick question?
But her head was still buried in the laptop.

“I know nothing about it,” I said.

Crespin nodded. “You’re not alone. And what little the public does know about this building is because we want them to know it. But does that make it true? On Wikipedia, for instance, it says that every wall in this place is wrapped with an ultrathin copper shielding that prevents all electromagnetic signals from getting out.”

Okay, I’ll take the bait.
“Is that true?” I asked.

“It must be,” he said. “I read it on the Internet.”

Valerie, still fixated on her laptop, smiled. She was listening the whole time. Note to self: The NSA is always listening.

Crespin took his seat back at the table. I wasn’t sure what exactly he was talking about, although I got the feeling that was by design.

He continued: “You see, people like to say that information is power. But inside these walls—copper shielded or not—we like to say something else. The real power? It’s not information. It’s misinformation.”

As if on cue, Valerie leaned back in her chair. Whatever she’d been doing, she was done.

“Unbelievable,” she muttered.

“What?” I immediately asked. It was simple reflex.

But she wasn’t talking to me. Just Crespin. And as he stared back at her, he did something I’d yet to see him do. He smiled.

“Karcher to Brennan or Brennan to Karcher?” he asked.

“Both,” said Valerie.

I’d had enough of feeling like the odd man out. “Maybe one of you can tell me what’s going on?”

“Sure,” said Crespin. “But first I have to ask you something.
How good are you at pretending you’re drunk?
”

“WHAT ARE you having?” asked the bartender.

“Second thoughts,” I was tempted to say. Instead, “Double Johnnie Black on the rocks,” I told him.

This one drink would be my prop, a big ol’ glass of whiskey in an unsteady hand to suggest that I’d had plenty more where that came from. The fact that I was already looking pretty ragged from raw nerves and lack of sleep would only add to the effect.

What had Brennan said to his guests on the patio, his quote from Will Rogers?
You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

It wasn’t quite as catchy, but Jeffrey Crespin had his own saying for what I was about to do. “You only get one shot at this, Mann, so I’ll ask you a second time. Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Absolutely,” I lied.

From my end seat at the bar in a place called Shadows in Georgetown, it wasn’t Brennan I was waiting for. As hangouts go, this was hardly his scene. Hip and chic, all right, but not enough power brokers. Law students instead of lawyers, congressional staffers instead of congressmen. Plus, way too many Eurotrash guys with one too many shirt buttons undone.

Maybe that was why Shahid Al Dossari had chosen the place: the international flavor. That, and the de rigueur “dark and sexy” lounge lighting. Shadows was clearly saving the owners a ton of money on their electric bill.

All that mattered, though, was that the choice was Al Dossari’s. He’d picked the location. He might have gotten suspicious had Valerie led him there.

Excuse me, had “Beverly Sands” led him there.

At the twenty-minute mark, I checked the same prepaid cell I’d used at Brennan’s house to see if there was any follow-up from Valerie. Word of a delay or even a change of venue.

Neither, though. No new texts.

Finally, about a half hour after Valerie had first sent me the address, I looked up to see her walking in with him. Right away, I could tell he was really getting off on watching the other men jealously checking out his date.
Yeah, that’s right, boys, she’s with me….

Tick-tock.
Valerie’d had only an hour after leaving NSA headquarters to get dolled up again as Beverly. This, after initially telling Al Dossari that she had a previous engagement after Brennan’s party. No wonder the guy was smiling like the devil. This surprise nightcap was the next-best thing to a booty call. And undoubtedly, in his eyes, the night was still young.

How was Valerie handling that, I wondered? After all, Al Dossari had to have certain
expectations
by this point. Would she ever take one for the team, so to speak, like Joan did on
Mad Men
? No, she’d never. She couldn’t, right?

For Christ’s sake, Mann, let’s keep the focus….

As they passed the bar, I bent down to pick up something I’d pretended to drop. When I straightened up, I glanced over my shoulder to see them grabbing a booth in the back. All according to plan. Give them a little time to settle in with their bottle of champagne—nice and relaxed—and then …

“Hey!” I blurted out, stopping in front of their booth with a double take. “It’s Annie Oakley!” For good measure, I raised my arms as if shooting a shotgun, spilling some of my drink in the process.

I watched as Valerie pretended not to recognize me at first. Al Dossari, on the other hand, wasn’t pretending. All the better.

“Remember?” I said. “We met earlier today at Josiah Brennan’s little soiree. Trevor Mann? The
Times
?”