Ballots and Blood Page 16

Qatani breathed with great difficulty, the wet towel sucking against his mouth each time he inhaled. His fists were clenched tightly, his body shaking with fear, his brow furrowed. He was in great distress. Mahoney glanced at the CIA operative who was assisting him and nodded. “Do it,” he said.

  The operative held a metal pitcher filled with water up at a distance of about two feet and began slowly to pour it over the cloth enveloping Qatani’s face. He tried to shake his head from side to side to no avail, his screams muffled by the towel. The operative poured half the pitcher over the towel, creating the sensation for Qatani that he was drowning. After about ninety seconds of screaming and crying, Mahoney raised the board back to an upright position.

  “Have you had enough yet, Hassan?” He paused as Qatani choked and gasped for air. “Because I’m just getting going. And don’t think for a minute I’m going to stop until you start talking. Because I enjoy this. I relish watching you suffer. That’s what you did to Perry Miller, and that’s what you and your compatriots want to do to as many Americans as you can.”

  Qatani remained silent except for his labored breathing. The veins in his neck bulged, his vena cava protruding, his nostrils flared, every fiber in his body straining for oxygen. Mahoney walked to the other side of the room and looked through the glass into the observation chamber, where the CIA black-site supervisor and a colleague observed the proceedings. He shrugged his shoulders as if to ask, “Do I keep going here?” The supervisor stared back impassively, raising a mug of black coffee to his lips. They were reaching the end of their rope in terms of CIA protocols governing EITs, or enhanced interrogation techniques.

  Mahoney made an executive decision. He pulled his gun out of its holster and put the cold, nickel-plated barrel against Qatani’s temple.

  “Tell me what I want to know, NOW!” he shouted. “Who are the other members of your cell? Who are your handlers? Tell me, or I swear I’m going to kill you by either drowning you or pulling this trigger!”

  Qatani’s facial muscles twitched involuntarily. The CIA operative running the water board looked at Mahoney with a mixture of genuine concern for his physical safety and professional detachment. Mahoney knew neither the operative nor the Agency was happy with the way things were going. I’m living on the edge, he thought. But this was his interrogation, and it was sanctioned at the highest levels of the government, including the White House.

  “Drown him,” he muttered.

  The operative began to lower the board back in a reclined position. He took the damp towel, methodically folded it, and began to lay it across Qatani’s nose and mouth.

  “Istanna, istanna,” said Qatani in Arabic. “Wait, wait!” His voice was muffled through the wet towel.

  “Are you ready to talk?” asked Mahoney, putting his revolver back in its holster.

  Qatani nodded his head violently; the motion restricted the restraints holding his skull to the board. Mahoney looked at the operative and nodded. The CIA operative removed the towel from Qatani’s face.

  “Naam aaywa,” Qatani replied. “I will talk. Just please don’t put me under the water again.”

  Mahoney glanced back at the glass separating the observation room. He allowed himself a little smile. The CIA guys stared back, their faces like stone. They didn’t like Mahoney’s tactics. But they liked the results.

  IN A SEEDY, SMOKE-FILLED BAR in a seedy section of Damascus, not far from the old city, a middle-aged Iranian man ordered another shot of vodka, tapping the top of his glass with his index finger. The bartender nodded and pulled down a bottle of Russian vodka, which had become the drink of choice during the Cold War, and poured. The glass filled slowly with the clear liquid.

  Just then a petite woman in a short black dress, fishnet stockings, and stiletto heels walked from the end of the bar and slid onto the stool next to the Iranian. She had been eyeing him for some time, their eyes occasionally locking. Her dyed blonde hair was teased into the mop top of a Kewpie doll, her large red lips projecting a sensual allure, the rose tattoo on her left shoulder blade suggesting exotic wanderings. She opened her small black purse and pulled out a cigarette, placing it between two fingers.

  “Where are you from?” she asked as the bartender placed the glass of beer down.

  “Tehran,” said the man.

  “And what do you do in Tehran?”

  “I’m an engineer.”

  She placed the cigarette in her mouth and leaned forward, inviting him to light it. He picked up a pack of matches out of a nearby ashtray and lit her cigarette. She inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke into the air above his head. “An engineer. That sounds important. What kind of engineer?”

  “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” said the man, smiling.

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “Aaaah, a secret! So tell me your name, Mr. Secret Agent Man.”

  He extended his hand. “Nasrin.”

  “Good to meet you, Nasrin. My name is Marlin.”

  “Marlin?” he asked.

  “Yes, as in the fish.”

  The man became aware of a presence to his right. He turned to see a thin, wiry woman in a black lace dress, jet-black hair pulled back into a ponytail, her eyes covered with mascara so thick she resembled a raccoon. She crossed her legs and leaned in his direction, her black pump tickling the back of his calf.

  “This is my friend, Jasmine,” said Marlin.

  The man shook Jasmine’s hand. She giggled.

  “So . . . would you like to party with us?” asked Marlin.

  “What kind of party do you have in mind?”

  “Whatever you like,” she said. “We can dance for you. I can give you a massage. We can do whatever we want.” She looked over at her friend, who giggled again.

  “Sounds good. Where can we go?”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Beit Al Mamlouka.”

  “I know it. Very charming. Why don’t you get a check, and we’ll go there together.” The man agreed. She pulled up her dress, allowing him to gaze briefly at the garter belt holding up her stocking. “Like what you see?”

  “Yes,” he replied. Having seen the goods, he waved for the tab and paid for their drinks. They stumbled out of the bar, the man thoroughly inebriated, and walked arm in arm to the hotel, cruising through the lobby and up the stairs to his room. Once inside the room, they raided the minibar, and he uncorked a champagne bottle, filling three plastic cups.

  Marlin stood on the bed and began to do a slow dance, rubbing her hands up and down her body. “Put on some music,” she said. Jasmine kicked off her shoes and lay back on the bed, stroking Nasrin’s leg.

  Nasrin swung his legs over the bed and reached across the bedstand to turn on the radio, fiddling with the dial. As he leaned forward, the closet door slid slightly open. The barrel of a .45-caliber pistol with a silencer held in a gloved hand peeked out. He never saw it.

  Two shots were fired. Both bullets hit the victim in the back of the head, blowing the top of his skull off and pulling back a flap of his scalp, spraying the wall with blood, bone chips, and gray matter. His body lurched forward and slammed into the wall, crumpling to the floor, lifeless. His legs were splayed awkwardly to the side, his torso twisted away from the wall, his eyes stared unseeing, his head turned at an impossible angle.

  Marlin let out a scream, panicked. Tiny flecks of blood covered her face. “Why did you do that?”

  A man with short-cropped black hair came out of the closet and unzipped a green body suit. His feet were clad with green surgical shoe covers. He walked over to the body and wordlessly placed two fingers on the neck, checking for a pulse.

  “I couldn’t take a chance on him seeing me. He stuck the pistol in his belt and pulled out a wallet, counting out bills with his gloved hands and laying them on the bed. “That’s $2,000,” he said. “One thousand each.”

  The women stared at the money, still in shock. The man said, “What—you don’t want the money?”

  “Ye
s,” said Marlin in a quiet voice. She picked up the bills with trembling fingers and shoved her portion into her bra, handing the rest to her friend.

  “Pleasure doing business with you, ladies,” said the man. “If you become aware of any other customers who might be of interest to my clients, let me know.”

  He walked out the door, leaving them alone with the body.

  TRUMAN GREENGLASS CAME OUT OF his office and walked to his assistant’s desk. “What have we got this afternoon?” he asked.

  “You’ve got Tom Friedman doing another think piece on the Middle East peace process,” she said, her voice flat.

  “Again?”

  “Then the ambassador of Ghana, followed by a video hookup with General Slayton from Afghanistan.”

  Greenglass screwed up his face. “Reschedule everything. Get Bill Jacobs on the phone. And find out when I can brief the president and the war cabinet.”

  His assistant immediately dialed Jacobs’s number and put him on hold. “Bill’s on line one,” she said.

  Greenglass walked into his office and closed the door. As he stepped toward the phone, he glanced at the image of a photo of his wife and children he used for a screen saver. A thought rattled around in his brain: should he have his family relocated to a safer place, maybe the Dakotas or somewhere else in the Rocky Mountain West?

  “Bill, how are you?” he asked as he picked up the receiver.

  “As good as can be expected.”

  “How soon can you get over here for a meeting?”

  “I’m already en route,” said Jacobs. “Ten minutes tops.”

  “Good. I’ve cleared my calendar for the afternoon. We’ll work around the president’s schedule.”

  “I need to give you a heads-up on something.”

  “What?”

  “I’m bringing Pat Mahoney with me.”

  “That’s a no go. It violates protocol,” fired back Greenglass. He despised Mahoney and had no intention of letting him in the Sit Room. Mahoney forced him to hire a criminal attorney and run up a $50,000 legal bill (so far) to deal with his fishing expedition into covert ops in Iran. DOJ and Phil Battaglia were currently in a royal spitting match over whether Greenglass would have to share classified information with the FBI.

  “Too late. He’s with me,” said Jacobs. “If you exclude him now, it’ll make you look bad. And I’m going to insist he join us for the debrief because Mahoney is the one who broke Qatani.” He paused, reloading. “If you still want to try to stop it, you should know Keith Golden agrees with me.”

  “Fine,” said Greenglass, his voice jagged. “But only for the debrief on the Qatani interrogation. After that, he leaves.”

  “Okay, that works for me.”

  Greenglass hung up the phone and stared at the photograph of his children, deep in thought. Mahoney was out of control, he reflected, and this latest development was only going to strengthen his hand. To make matters worse, Jacobs was giving the little weasel a guided tour of the West Wing. The whole investigation was turning into a nightmare for the White House.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER THE DOOR to the Situation Room opened, and the president strode into the room. Everyone at the table snapped to attention. Gathering for the meeting in addition to Greenglass and Jacobs were other members of the National Security principals committee: Johnny Whitehead, Charlie Hector, Secretary of State Candace Sanders, Secretary of Defense Alan Sweet, and Attorney General Keith Golden. Aides from NSC, CIA, and DOD lined the walls, witnesses to history. Also present was Pat Mahoney, his face on high beam. He and Greenglass sat as far apart as possible, having failed to even acknowledge the other when they entered the room prior to the president’s arrival.

  All business, Long sat in his captain’s chair at the head of the table and spun in the direction of Jacobs. “I understand we’ve got information from this guy who killed Perry Miller. . . . What’s his name again . . . Qatani?”

  “Hassan Qatani, Mr. President,” said Jacobs, opening a leather- bound briefing book in front of him. “We’ve been utilizing EITs and they have yielded extremely valuable intel. With your permission I’d like to go ahead with what Qatani has told us.”

  Greenglass could hardly believe his ears. Jacobs and the Agency dragged their feet on using EITs on Qatani, and did so only when DOJ, the Pentagon, and the White House insisted. In a typical CIA maneuver, Jacobs demanded a presidential authorization to do so . . . and now he was taking credit for their success!

  “Proceed,” said Long, all business.

  Jacobs clicked a remote control with his thumb, illuminating the screen on the wall opposite the president with a photograph of Qatani. With black hair, a beard, and hollow eyes, he looked disheveled, his stare vacant. “Qatani is a Saudi national who trained in Yemen with an offshoot of al Qaeda. The underworld of Islamic terrorism is rife with personal rivalries and schisms tactical and theological. It looks like he switched teams after the assassination of Harrison Flaherty, believing Rassem el Zafarshan was more creative—and had more financial resources with which to fight.”

  “That’s been the problem with the fixation of the intelligence community on al Qaeda,” said Long firmly. “It’s not the organization that is the enemy; the real enemy is Islamic radicalism.”

  Heads nodded around the table.

  “So how did this Qatani guy get into the country?” asked Long.

  “Student visa,” said Jacobs.

  “Unbelievable,” said Long, shaking his head. “I can’t believe we’re not catching these guys when they enter the country.” He caught Greenglass’s eye, who shook his head in disbelief.

  “They’re getting more creative about who they recruit,” said Jacobs. “Qatani was an ideal candidate. He came from a prominent Saudi family and had no known terrorist ties.”

  “They’re also going aggressively after Americans,” said Golden. “They’re trying to puncture our security cordon.”

  “What’s Qatani saying?” asked Long.

  Greenglass jumped in. “He’s confessed to the murder of Senator Miller. He claims he acted with the full knowledge and funding of Zafarshan. He said the original plan was to kill Miller when he arrived home one night. Qatani said it was only after he saw Miller leaving the townhouse in Georgetown that he went back to his handlers and recommended staging it there.”

  “You’re telling me Qatani was going to the same dominatrix and just bumped into Miller one day?” asked Long, incredulous. “This was a total coincidence?”

  “Yes. He never physically encountered Miller but saw him leaving the townhouse.”

  “Incredible!” exclaimed the president.

  “If I may, Mr. President,” said Jacobs, “I’d like Special Agent Pat Mahoney with the FBI to take it from here. He participated in the interrogation of Qatani.”

  “Tell us what you’ve found out, Mahoney,” said Long.

  Mahoney stood to his feet, buttoning his blue suit coat. “Mr. President, we at the FBI felt from the beginning there were aspects of Senator Miller’s death that simply didn’t add up. We began by checking the client list of the dominatrix service, which was how we traced Qatani. We found him from disposable cell phone calls. He also visited the service’s Web site, so we traced the cookies to his laptop.”

  “What’s a cookie?” asked Long.

  “It’s a digital fingerprint that allows us to track where someone goes on the Internet,” said Mahoney. “Anyway, we ID’d Qatani but still had no motive. We never thought the sex worker did it. And once we began to delve into Miller’s involvement in funding covert activity in Iran, we had the motive for what we now know was a political assassination.”

  “Just like Harrison Flaherty,” said Golden.

  “Yes, sir,” said Mahoney, deferring to his boss. “Zafarshan’s MO is to strike fear into political leaders by making it clear there will be retribution if they act against regimes favorable to radical Islam. Where feasible, that means murder.”

  “Well, it won’t work with me
,” said Long.

  “He’s murdered two prominent U.S. politicians already. I can’t imagine he’s going to stop there,” said Secretary of State Sanders, her blondish-brown hair pulled back from her face.

  “Qatani says there are other targets,” said Mahoney. He clicked a remote control and a slide came up with a list of names. “Truman, Speaker Jimmerson, Secretary Sweet, the chairman of AIPAC, Reverend Andy Stanton.” He paused. “Mr. President, both you and Vice President Whitehead are targets.”

  “Is he serious?” said Long, his eyes searching the faces around the table.

  “Dead serious, sir,” replied Mahoney.

  “Well, Keith, we need to alert these targets and provide them with enhanced security,” said Long, pointing at Golden.

  “We’re on it, sir,” replied Golden. “Every target is being notified as we speak.”

  “Zafarshan’s ambitions don’t stop there,” said Mahoney, clicking another slide in the PowerPoint, this one showing the journey of enriched uranium from Iraq that a Zafarshan-funded crew of pirates hijacked. “Qatani indicates Zafarshan plans to smuggle the enriched uranium stolen from the tanker last summer into the United States and detonate a dirty bomb in either New York or Washington, DC.”

  “Is it here yet?” asked Golden.

  “Qatani says he doesn’t know. He says these operations are highly compartmentalized,” answered Mahoney.

  “When?” asked Long.

  “Not clear. But Qatani says it won’t happen in isolation,” replied Mahoney. “He says it will be detonated in retaliation for a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

  The room fell silent as everyone around the table absorbed the news.

  Long turned to Jacobs. “Bill, does Zafarshan have the technical ability to build and detonate a bomb?”

  “We don’t know for certain, Mr. President,” said Jacobs. “But the information on how to construct a dirty bomb is readily available on the Internet. He has the fissile material. It’s not a big leap from there to a weapon carried in a suitcase, a briefcase, or the trunk of a car.”