Direct Action (38 page)

SIMs are all for Los Angeles–area numbers.”
Tony Wyman looked at Tom. “What were the dates of those flights?” Tom checked his notes. “Outbound Wednesday, November twentysixth; returning Friday, November twenty-eighth. Outbound Wednesday, December tenth; returning Friday the twelfth.”

“I think,” Wyman said, “we can rule out an attack over Thanksgiving.” “Why?” Tom asked. “He’s scheduled himself to be in Los Angeles over Thanksgiving. What better time for an attack than during the peak holiday travel time.”
“No,” Reuven said. “The al-Qa’ida model is to stage simultaneous attacks, not a series. They carried out the operations against your embassies in Kenya and Tanzania within minutes of each other. On 9/11, they hijacked four aircraft almost simultaneously. It’s the AQN pattern.” Wyman played with his monocle. “You read it as attacks on Flights 068

and 070, and attacks on Flights 069 and 071 all on one day.” “Two days,” Tom said. “All of Ben Said’s tickets were for a Wednes
day and a Friday,” Tom said. And then he clapped his hand over his mouth.
“Oh, my God—it’s Christmas. It has to be Christmas.”
Wyman pulled a pocket secretary out of his jacket pocket and flipped
through it. “Tom’s right. This year, Thanksgiving and Christmas both fall
on Thursdays.”
He paused. “Fits the al-Qa’ida pattern of scoping out the flights firsthand. Satisfies the simultaneous-attack criterion, too.”
“But that’s not enough.”
Wyman turned toward Tom. “Why not?”
Tom looked at his boss. “Wheelbarrows, Tony.”
“What?”
“Roger said the SIMs all came from phones registered in the Los Angeles area. Now, you can make a call from anywhere to anywhere on a cell
phone. What this tells me is that Ben Said bought his cell phones in Los
Angeles because that’s where he’s going to use them.”
Wyman frowned. “That’s awfully thin, Tom.”
“Maybe. But it’s what I think.”
Roger Semerad wheeled his scooter next to Tom and said, “Wasn’t
al-Qa’ida going to strike at LAX during the Y2K New Year celebration?” Wyman nodded. “The guy coming from Canada with the explosives in
his car, right?”
“That’s the one.” Semerad played with the handlebar of his scooter.
“Isn’t one of AQN’s benchmarks that they like to hit targets more than
once?”
Wyman spent half a minute in silence. “If we go ahead, we’re doing so
on very circumstantial evidence.”
Tom said, “That doesn’t make it any less valid.”
Finally, Wyman turned to Reuven. “You head back to Tel Aviv and get
the DNA work done.”
The Israeli saluted.
“And make sure your man Salah gets us copies of everything he pulls
out of Hamzi.”
The Israeli nodded in agreement. “Will do.”
Wyman cocked his head in Reuven’s direction. “By the way, what do
you guys call your company?”
Reuven didn’t hesitate. “Hawkeye.”
“Well, next time—if there is one—we operate jointly, Hawkeye’s going to split the expenses. I can’t afford to float you people.”
“What about seventy–thirty,” Reuven said. “You’re established. We’re
just starting out.”
“Half and half, Reuven, it’s the American way.” He paused. “But you
get to use our facilities here and in Washington—not that you haven’t been
doing that already.” Wyman turned to Tom. “Write this up. You know what
to leave out and what to include. I’ll check it over. Then we’ll head for
Washington. I want you and MJ with me when I present this package to
CTC.” He caught Tom’s look of amazement. “Your fiancée had a lot to do
with this,” he said. “If she hadn’t had the grit to bring the Gaza material to
Paris in the first place, we probably wouldn’t be standing here.” Tom beamed.
“You work with her.”
“I’m on it.”
“Good. We’re handing them twenty-four-karat material, Tom. And I
can assure you they don’t get twenty-four-karat very often these days.”

18 NOVEMBER 2003
3:04
P
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14528-C FLINT LEE ROAD, BUILDING 42, CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA

THEY WERE EARLY for the 4
P
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M
. appointment with representatives from CTC because Tony Wyman always liked to be early, and besides, like all good case officers, he preferred never to go anywhere he hadn’t scoped out in advance.

They’d driven out from the 4627 corporate offices in Rosslyn in Wyman’s big, gray Suburban. Tom found the venue bothersome. A proposed meeting at CIA headquarters had been summarily rejected by the CTC chief, who hinted that Wyman and Tom were unwelcome presences at Langley. Wyman had suggested as an alternative one of CIA’s Rosslyn satellite offices because of their proximity to 4627. That, too, had been rejected. Instead, CTC had dictated the Chantilly site, just short of an hour’s commute west of Rosslyn through the crowded Dulles corridor and along the perpetually gridlocked Route 28.

14528-C Flint Lee Road turned out to be an anonymous shoe box of a one-story building set among scores of identical one-story shoe-box buildings that lined both sides of a potholed, four-lane road that ran on an east–west axis half a mile south of Route 50 and six-tenths of a mile due south of Dulles Airport’s barbed-wire-topped outer perimeter fence.

As they turned onto Flint Lee Road, Tom, who was riding shotgun, said, “I don’t like it, Tony.”
“Why?” Wyman flicked a glance in the rearview mirror then turned toward Tom.
“Just gives me bad vibes. And why the hell did they make us drive an hour? You know as well as I do they have plenty of suitable sites in McLean or Vienna.” He stared through the windshield. “Plus, there’s only one way in and out.”
“Amen.” Wyman drove past the turnoff to 14528, turned left into a culde-sac warren of warehouses, and pulled over. He turned to MJ, who was riding behind him. “What about you?”
She shrugged. “You guys are the operators. You tell me.”
Tom said, “I think we position ourselves in a standoff position and see who arrives.”
Wyman nodded. “I agree.”
“What are you concerned about, an ambush of some sort?”
Tom thought about Jim McGee riding in the front seat of the armored State Department FAV and said, “Nothing’s out of the question these days.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” MJ said. “Aren’t you two being just a little bit too much cloak-and-dagger?”
Tom turned to face her. “Didn’t you see the T-shirt I put on this morning?”
“T-shirt?”

MJ gave him a skeptical look. “Are we talking about now-now, or thennow, Tony?”
“Both.” He swiveled toward her and deflected. “So, when’s the wedding?”
MJ’s hand dropped onto Tom’s shoulder. “Day after Christmas.” She saw the crestfallen look flash across Wyman’s face. “It’s just us and my family, Tony—the ceremony at the local parish and a reception at my parents’ house in Great Neck.”
“I understand.” He nodded. “Not to worry.”

He listened for a quarter of a minute, his expression darkening by the second. “You told them they could shove it up their asses, right?” he growled. “Good. We’re on our way back.”

Wyman slapped the clamshell phone shut, put the Chevy in gear, and wheeled roughly out of the cul-de-sac.
“What’s up?”
“This appointment was a ruse to get us out of the office. At three sharp, two Agency security types showed up in Rosslyn demanding all our files on Ben Said, as well as the transcript of your conversation with young Adam Margolis. Said we were in possession of illegally obtained classified materials and were obliged to turn everything over to them immediately.” He looked at Tom. “Oh, and by the way, your security clearance has been revoked.”
“Oh?”
“The reason given was that you compromised an Agency operation.”
“What?”
“Liam McWhirter’s setup in Cormeilles-en-Parisis.”
“When he was trying to compromise me.” Tom rolled his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Dead serious.” He looked at Tom. “Don’t worry—we’ll deal with it.”
Tom bit his lower lip. “What about the office?”
“And Bronco asked them for their warrant. They told him they didn’t have one—this was just a friendly call. Bronco told them to get stuffed and they backed off.” He looked at MJ. “It was a bluff—for now.”
“For now?”
“Look,” Wyman said. “The seventh floor has a staff of lawyers and security investigators who just love to make things tough for certain people.”
“They dress like the guys in Men in Black,” Tom said. “We used to call them the DCI’s gestapo.”
“We still do,” Wyman snorted.
Tom looked at his boss. “So, what’s the plan, Tony?”
“It’s time to put a stop to all this crap.” Wyman flipped the cell phone open, punched up his phone book, scrolled down until he found the number he wanted, hit the transmit button, and waited for the connection.
Then he said, “Porter? It’s Tony Wyman. I’d like to bring two of my colleagues for a meeting with you in the committee’s bubble room.” He paused. “I’m talking CRITICOM.” There was another pause. “Uh-huh. An hour and three-quarters.” Wyman checked the dashboard clock. “We can do that. I don’t want to talk on an open line, but let me say we have information relating to certain operations that would have resulted positively in the CT area, but which were blocked by the seventh floor. And we can document the fact that DO is so dysfunctional that private companies like mine have to perform CIA’s core missions and thus affect the national security of the nation with no oversight over our operations whatsoever.”
Wyman listened. “Yes, I know there are no recruitments anymore. No risk taking. I know he said five years. But it’s been more than eight already—and there’s been no improvement since I pulled the plug. The DO is dead, Porter. A shell. Remember the nimble, flexible, core-missionoriented enterprise where we used to work? Well, it’s a fleeting memory.” He listened some more, then nodded. “Yes, I’m convinced they have to go, Porter. It’s time to muck out the stables.” There was another pause. “We’ll be there. Thanks.”
As Wyman snapped the phone shut, Tom said, “I thought you told me 4627 wasn’t in the business of staging coups at the CIA.”
Wyman looked at his young protégé long and hard. “You were the one who told me we should be. You were right. This country’s been deaf, dumb, and blind for more than a decade now, and that’s too goddamn long. Porter may not be the perfect choice—but he’s our guy. He’s all we’ve got these days. It’s time for them to go. All of them. Every last piece of deadwood.” He looked at Tom. “We owe that much to Jim McGee.” He paused. “And to Shahram.”
MJ’s eyes filled up. “When Tom and I marry, I expect you to fly in and stand up for him, Tony.”
“Fly? Moi? Not on the twenty-sixth of December, m’dear.” Wyman caught her worried look in the rearview mirror and laughed. “It’s not so far to Great Neck. I’ll drive, if you don’t mind.”

IN THE EARLY EVENING of November 18, 2003, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and his chief counsel held a two-and-a-half-hour off-the-record meeting with three unidentified individuals in HPSCI’s bubble room, which is located in a secure area on an upper floor of the U.S. Capitol building. Left behind after the session was a thick folder of materials, which were secured in the chairman’s personal document safe. The meeting was never logged in any of HPSCI’s formal records, and HPSCI’s chief counsel requested that the U.S. Capitol Police officer manning the security checkpoint directly outside the hallway refrain from checking the identities of the visitors and entering their names in the committee’s sign-in book.

Precisely what was said at that meeting is still unknown. But a string of subsequent events—virtually all of them covered in the media—might serve as an accurate indicator.

• On December 24, 2003, Air France canceled the December 24 Air France Flights 068 and 070, and December 25’s Air France Flight 068—all to Los Angeles. The return flights to Paris, Wednesday’s Flight 069, and Thursday’s 069 and 071, were also canceled.
• That same day, French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin issued a statement explaining that the preemptive measure had been taken “on the basis of information, currently being checked, which was gathered in the framework of Franco-American cooperation in the fight against terrorism.” According to a report on French television and sourced to unnamed security officials, the flights were aborted because intelligence information suggested al-Qa’ida was to bring down multiple civilian aircraft somewhere between Paris and Los Angeles during the Christmas holidays. Some newspapers reported that thirteen passengers were detained for questioning. According to press reports, all thirteen were released.
• A short article in the December 26 Le Matin reported that in an unintended consequence of the increased security at Charles de Gaulle airport, three expensive Louis Vuitton Montsouris knapsacks—one carried by a passenger on Flight 068, another by someone traveling on Flight 070, and a third on Thursday’s Flight 068—were confiscated when French customs inspectors discovered the bags were counterfeits. The passengers, according to the story, were interrogated, and after it had been established that they believed they’d bought genuine Vuitton merchandise, the knapsacks were replaced on the spot by the French authorities with real Montsouris.
• Beginning in early January, Washington reporters who covered the intelligence beat found themselves the recipients of an unexpected trickle of leaks from Capitol Hill sources detailing the sorry state of CIA in general and the Directorate of Operations in particular. By the beginning of March, the trickle had become a torrent, and DCI George Tenet began to realize that someone up on Capitol Hill had painted a huge target on his back.
• On January 19, 2004, Al Jazeera reported in a short tell-story that Moroccan authorities, acting on what was described by Mukhabarat sources as the fruits of a successful interrogation, discovered an Islamist bomb factory in a residential villa on the outskirts of the city of Safi, a hotbed of Islamist activity 250 kilometers southwest of the capital city of