Retribution (9781429922593) (18 page)

Naisir maintained two homes—a small one behind tall walls near the airport in Rawalpindi, which he used as a safe house where he met in secret with field officers who were never allowed to come anywhere near ISI headquarters. And the other, the home he shared with Ayesha, his wife of nine years, behind spotless white walls in F-10, just west of the expansive Fatima Jinnah Park in F-9.

Islamabad was considered a green city because of its tree-lined avenues and many parks, and it was always a great pleasure for Naisir to come back to it, to his modern open-plan home, and to Ayesha, who was not only his wife but his best friend, major confidante, and chief adviser.

It was she who agreed that he should take the assignment to kill the SEALs who had violated Pakistan's sovereignty when they'd taken out bin Laden. All of Pakistan would rejoice, especially those in the president's inner circles. “But with care, Ali,” she said.

They were in each other's arms in bed, the house staff retired for the evening, no children to disturb them. “It's a great deal of money,” he'd said.

“That little sum of is of no consequence; it is the response of the American government that's vital. The money they give us in military aid is about all that stands between us and the Indians.”

“Plus our nuclear arsenal.”

“Which we would never have achieved without the inadvertent help of Washington.”

“What are you saying?”

“If the CIA can prove that Pakistan is behind the deaths of the SEALs, it will go very badly for us. Our diplomatic response—whatever it might be, no matter how mild it might be—would anger our people.”

“Which is why we hired an outside team for the operation. They will be blamed.”

“You're not listening to me. If it goes bad you will throw the Schlueter woman and her operatives under the bus, but do you honestly believe that if they are arrested and interrogated, they wouldn't point their fingers at you.”

Naisir had considered the possibility from the beginning, which was why he'd taken such care to hide the money trail, and his physical meetings with Schlueter. “She and her people might point fingers, but without proof it would be meaningless,” he told his wife.

“Just a hint, a suspicion on the CIA's part would be enough,” she'd pressed.

“Enough for what?”

“For General Bhutani to feed you to the wolves.” Lieutenant General Tariq Bhutani was the director of the ISI and maintained a warm relationship with Walter Page, the CIA's director.

“It's possible,” he'd conceded.

“In that case, my husband, we need to think about our survival. Inside of Pakistan if possible; outside if need be.”

“It's a little early for such dark thoughts,” he'd said, stroking her thigh.

“It's never too early, because when the sword falls there won't be time,” she'd replied. “Think on it. I will.”

*   *   *

It was early afternoon when he got home. Ayesha met him at the door, and after they embraced she looked critically at him and nodded. “Let's talk.”

“Yes,” Naisir said.

Ayesha's family was well-to-do; her father, two brothers, and an uncle owned three rug factories and eleven outlets in Pakistan and in six major European cities, in addition to New York, Washington, and Miami. Because of the family fortune Ali and his wife were able to afford to buy the house when he'd still been a first lieutenant, and to afford a cook, a housekeeper, and a gardener, even on a major's pay.

The inner sanctum was the only wing of the house that didn't face in the large central courtyard and garden, but instead faced toward the park. Here was his study and hers, plus a pleasantly furnished sitting room separating the two, a modern Western bathroom, and a wet bar. It was the only area of the house that none of the staff were ever allowed to enter. And it was the only place that was protected from electronic eavesdropping, where they could speak freely.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked when the door was closed and they were safe.

“A brandy, I think.”

“Tell me everything,” she said as she poured him a nice Rémy in a crystal snifter. She opened a Coke for herself, which she always drank straight from the bottle.

“Something's come up involving the CIA, as you expected might happen.”

“Are they working with the Germans?”

“Not from what I can gather. But I once mentioned to you a man who used to be the director of the CIA, Kirk McGarvey.”

“There was something about his family being involved in an attempt on his life that went wrong. Has he become involved?”

“It looks like it,” Naisir said. He briefly outlined the Norfolk operation that had gone bad even before it had fully developed. “McGarvey's gotten himself involved for some reason. He personally either killed or took down one of the operatives and used the stupid man's cell phone to call Schlueter and warn her to back off. Which she did.”

“So now what? Has the mission been canceled?”

“Postponed.”

“Until when?”

“I've promised a two million euro bonus to Schlueter to eliminate the man.”

Ayesha's face dropped and she put her Coke on the table. “You cannot be serious. McGarvey was the CIA's director, and that's a presidential appointment. Men who have reached that status are untouchable. The kind Prophet's wrath would come down upon you like a storm from the desert beyond anyone's imaginings.”

“If it were ever to be traced back to me.”

“If the Schlueter woman is successful, and somehow manages to kill McGarvey, the CIA will move heaven and earth to find her and then you. There would be nowhere for us to go. We would be as good as dead. Surely you must see this.”

“But he has to be eliminated,” Naisir said. “Somehow he knew about what was going to happen in Norfolk, and he was there—at exactly the right place at exactly the right time.”

“Which is exactly my point, my dear husband. The man has an intelligence resource—almost certainly he still has friends inside the CIA. If he's somehow tapped into Schlueter's communications with her team, he may already know your name.”

“Not likely,” Naisir said, but the doubts he'd already had were being reinforced by his wife's.

“If he's followed her movements—say, to Tehran—then he knows that you're involved.”

“He'd need proof.”

Ayesha looked away for a longish moment. “The SEAL Team Six were not one hundred percent sure of Usama's location at the compound. They have publicly admitted it themselves. It did not stop them from flying across our border and against impossibly long odds accomplish the mission and get out with his body.”

Naisir said nothing, because he knew what was coming.

She looked back. “You are only one man, Ali. Nowhere as well protected as Usama was, and certainly much easier to find. Think on it. If McGarvey is assassinated someone could very well come here for you—in retribution.”

 

TWENTY-NINE

It was very early in the morning and Otto Rencke was in his element back at his suite of offices at CIA headquarters; he had been given a task to find out things, and the task had been given to him by the only friend other than his wife he'd ever had in his life—Kirk McGarvey.

Mac and Pete, with Wolf in tow, got back up to Washington last night and had gone directly to Otto's safe house, where they'd hashed out the Schlueter operation. It would probably have gone off spectacularly if it hadn't have been for them, and the two names they'd learned—Steffen and Naisir—along with the cell phone.

Martinez had personally taken the German down to the lockup at Quantanamo Bay, where he would be held in an isolation cell until this mess was straightened out, after which it would be up to the AG what to do with the man.

Which was of no concern to Otto at the moment. When Kirk got involved with something, the eventual outcome, though not always neat and tidy, was an outcome. Things got resolved. Shit happened, as the kids used to say.

Otto had set several of his search programs to work on the issue when Kirk had first brought the problem to him. He added the name “Steffen” as most likely a German citizen, possibly ex-military, and the name “Naisir” as a Pakastani ISI officer.

While he waited for something to pop up on one of the screens, he took a look at the phone. It was a basic Samsung with a SIM card that would work either in Europe or the United States but not in Japan or Korea. It, along with five others, had been purchased at an airport kiosk in Paris four months ago with a Barclays credit card under the name Monica Lawson. The phones were on one-year prepaid plans that included four hundred units of voice and text time.

As he suspected, someone had tested them during the last month; five of the phones had called the sixth. There was no record of any conversation or text sent, just the numbers. The last call made from the one Kirk had taken from Steffen had been to the same sixth number. Presumably the one Pam Schlueter carried.

He tried calling that number, but it did not ring, nor did the other four. When he tried to call the phone in his hand nothing happened, not even a busy signal.

As he'd also suspected once the operation in Norfolk had fallen apart, the service to all of the phones had been canceled.

He used an evidence kit to swab the microphone and then bagged the swab and the phone. Later he would send the bag to a lab to see if any DNA other than Mac's could be found.

Within less than a minute one of his programs came up with a dozen Steffens that more or less matched his broad search parameters, two of them starred. One was for Steffen Engel, who'd been a tactical instructor in the German KSK, and the other for Steffen Voss, who was an analyst for the BND special signal intelligence directorate, which was still outside Munich.

He phoned Martinez, who answered on the first ring.

“Si.”
There was a roaring noise in the background.

“Where are you?”

“About ten minutes from Gitmo.”

“I want you to take a picture of your guy and send it to me ASAP.

“Are you at work?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on. It'll just take a minute,” Martinez said.

While he waited, Otto pulled up the files, including the government ID card photos of both Steffens. Both men had the same general Teutonic square-jawed look, an intensity in their eyes, almost of hatred. Otto's bet was on the ex-KSK sergeant.

“Here it comes,” Martinez said. “Keep me posted, would you?”

“You got it, Raul. Thanks.”

Even before he transferred the image from his cell phone to a computer screen he knew the man Mac had picked up in Norfolk was Steffen Engel, and he immediately queried his program to find out everything about the man in just about every computer in the world. Beyond the man's basic military records he set his machines to look specifically for incidents that would give them a more rounded idea of who he was, how he operated, and where he'd been in the past year or so.

Naisir was a very common Pakistani name: eighteen of them in the ISI alone, and one hundred more in the military and other governmental agencies. Otto concentrated on the ISI because he did not think that the Schlueter woman was acting alone. Someone was directing and financing her, and the only logical choice was the ISI.

He'd brought a carton of half-and-half from his private stash at the house and had stopped at a 7-Eleven to pick up a couple of sleeves of Twinkies, something that he'd had a lot of trouble finding until last year. Louise didn't know that he had fallen back on old habits; if she had, he figured that she would skin him alive. But when times got tough, a guy needed something to fall back on. And in his case it wasn't alcohol.

He sat back, his sneakered feet on the edge of the desk as he ate his Twinkies and drank his cream, the screen racing through hundreds of databases with backgrounds of the eighteen ISI officers his program had picked out.

Ten minutes later he sat forward all of a sudden. Several photographs of a major in the service's Directorate of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous by the name of Ali Naisir popped up and something resonated in the back of Otto's head, though he didn't really know why.

Naisir's background was pretty normal. He'd joined the military out of high school. After a short stint of active duty, he was accepted into the Pakistan Military Academy's two-year program, after which he'd studied for four years at the National Defense University.

He'd been set for a general court-martial for insubordination, but in the fall of 2008 the charges were dropped and he was allowed to return to the university, after which he was promoted to captain and assigned to the Joint Intel directorate.

The timing struck Otto. In the late fall of 2008 Musharraf had resigned his presidency, and it was almost certain that some faction of the Taliban would assassinate him. But he'd managed to escape, it was rumored, with the help of the ISI, where he turned up in Jalalabad, and from there to Mecca for his pilgrimage.

The timing of Naisir's dropped court-martial was most intriguing to Otto, because the date of Musharraf's escape matched perfectly.

He was a major now, which meant he had more autonomy than as a captain, and he was still with the Joint Intel directorate, which was notorious for causing new officers to crash and burn—many of them within the first year or two.

But Naisir had legs; he had a history.

Otto studied the man's official photograph and looked into his eyes. Something was there. Not innocence, exactly, but more like honesty. No guile. He was a man who was saying: I am what I am, give me a job to do and get out of my way so that I can do it.

Sorta like Mac.

And despite himself Otto found that he admired the man.

 

THIRTY

CIA director Walt Page and deputy director of operations Marty Bambridge, who was an officious, self-important bastard in just about everyone's opinion, sat across the coffee table from McGarvey and the agency's general counsel, Carleton Patterson, in the DCI's office. The late afternoon sun streaming through the windows did nothing to dispel the somber mood.