The Prisoner's Wife (24 page)

Danielle followed more slowly. “You're leaving al-Masri?”

“Believe me,” Shawn said, “I wanted his laptop more than him. Could have done a deal with the Company, if I'd got it. But—” They were in the building's lobby. The black-clad woman, who was now a man, was heading outside. From his robe he drew what Shawn saw was an American .38 Magnum.

“But—what?” asked Danielle, watching the robed man.

“But I know when I'm outgunned,” Shawn said. “An AK's not that accurate. If it's on automatic, that doesn't matter too much. Ten rounds a second, you're going to hit some damn thing. Which could be me.” He held open the building's steel-lined entrance door. “I want to see what's happening here.”

*   *   *

Outside the apartment building Samir stood by the taxi, looking upward. The gray structure loomed over them, its eastern wall blank and rough, unfinished. From the top story, wide joists—balks of darkened wood—projected outward, like cannons from a warship.

On one of the joists stood Ahmed al-Masri, a puppet, a dwarf, black against a cloudless sky. Balancing; swaying; edging outward.

Samir backed away from the building. “I believe Ahmed will—he will—I believe he is about to jump.”

“To the next building?” Shawn asked. “From there? No way. No chance.” In his mind he measured the angle for a shot. He wasn't sure he could do it. With a rifle, perhaps. Not with a handgun.

Danielle's lips were moving. No words came.

Now there were other black-clad men kneeling on the building's roof. CIA hit squad, Shawn thought, awaiting an order to shoot.

Al-Masri, arms wide, balancing like a man on a tightrope, came to the end of the beam. He stood there a moment assessing the gap, poised in space. Even from where he stood, Shawn could see the man was shaking.

“No,” he said again to Samir. “No. Never make it.”

Afterward, Shawn was unsure whether he heard a shot before or after the young man jumped, in a high parabola that did take him to the next building, but not to its roof. Shawn saw al-Masri grab at a balcony rail, startling the old woman who stood there gathering armfuls of washing. As she backed away, into her apartment, the rail tore from its mooring, sending the Egyptian downward—a tiny flailing figure, black against an Egyptian sky, falling, and falling, and falling.

Shawn bundled Danielle into the back of the still-waiting taxi. He said, “I have your passport.”

Samir climbed into the shotgun seat. Shawn looked back to see what was happening behind them. A curious crowd had gathered, gazing down at the terrorist's shattered body. The cop with the pink Nokia stepped forward to put a single shot in the head of the corpse.

“That range,” Shawn said, “he can handle.” To Samir, he said, “Tell the cab guy to turn. Tell him, don't go past the Transit. Don't drive fast. Then tell him, take us out to the airport.”

The taxi was driving along the banks of the Nile when Danielle asked, why the airport? Where were they heading? To Peshawar?

Shawn shook his head. “I really don't want to do that.”

She asked why.

“Memories,” he said. “Peshawar, I have memories. Guy called Raphael Ramirez. He died there.” He paused, then said, “I helped to kill him.”

 

28

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, 18 JUNE 2000

Shawn had had some bad weeks, but the week Rafe Ramirez died in Peshawar was the worst he could recall; the worst in a bad twelve months.

The year started well—Shawn was settled in the Agency, promised promotion—but now Lala was demanding a divorce, for reasons she was prepared to list, and did list, with the help of a hungry female lawyer. Alcohol and pills and assorted flirtations all figured in Lala's accounting. She moved out of the family home in Brandywine; by court order, it had to be sold. When Shawn found a buyer, Lala refused to sign. The house wasn't in great shape, due to fights at the messy end of the marriage, but she thought it was worth way more than what was on the table.

Shawn called his soon-to-be-ex-wife where she was living with her new boyfriend, an unemployed actor called Chet. When Chet worked—not often—he specialized in action movies. His acting ability lay in his arms: a great set of delts and pecs. Without irony, he called himself an action hero. Shawn asked to speak with Lala, not the hero. He tried to stay polite. He told his wife the house would go to the bank if not sold by the end of the week.

Keeping his voice down, he said, “You know what repossession means? Should I spell it for you, you dumb bitch?” At which point Lala hung up the phone. It was Rafe Ramirez, the good buddy, who got her talking again. Rafe who organized the house sale. Rafe who sat in sad bars, hearing Shawn rehearse his troubles with marriage, and with women.

Late in '98, the two men went separate ways. Rafe was dropped into Iraq to check on what might be a nuclear weapons program. Shawn was posted to Sudan to keep an eye on assorted bad guys. Among them were bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, camping there, though not yet seen as a serious threat.

When the Agency closed down its Sudanese operation, al Qaeda dropped off the map for a time. Shawn was sent to Afghanistan, crossing the Pakistani border from Peshawar, delivering lethal weaponry—Stingers—to what became the nucleus of the Taliban. He was there, in Pakistan, at the end of the year when terrorists blew up American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Langley brass were, as ever, blindsided. After Sudan, they'd lost touch with al Qaeda, but now they made a guess that Afghanistan—bin Laden's new base—figured in the mix.

Rafe was pulled out of Iraq and sent to meet with Shawn in Peshawar, on the Afghan-Pakistani border. Conventional wisdom held that if there was any one place to gather intelligence on religious terrorism, that place was Peshawar. Unlike most conventional wisdom, this was, in fact, the case.

Shawn and Rafe took rooms at the Rose Hotel, in Khyber Bazaar, on Shoba Chowk. Rafe had a young sidekick learning the trade: a southern kid from outside Little Rock called Dodie Sale. He had some proper Arkansas-type name, but Shawn never remembered what it was. Most of the time Rafe just called the kid “fuckwit.” Dodie called his boss Chief or—if he was feeling lucky—Jefe. Between the three of them, they picked the Rose Hotel partly because there was not a lot of choice in Peshawar among places that had not been bombed, and partly because the hotel had a restaurant where all sorts of people came to eat, and some of those people likely had information about the embassy bombings. Getting it was a whole other issue. Shawn didn't wish to criticize his friend, but Rafe spoke no Arabic. Not even basic. Even if he had, extracting information from foreigners was not one of Rafe's skills.

*   *   *

In Peshawar that scorching summer, in the restaurant of the Rose, Rafe raked over the problems he had with his various bosses. Dodie sat silent and listened, as he commonly did when Rafe spoke. Shawn and Rafe tried to understand what was happening in the Agency, then seemingly confused as to mission.
Did Langley ever read field reports?
Rafe asked aloud.
Had those assholes ever heard the words “al Qaeda?” Did they not know ISI was sending American cash to the Taliban?
He stopped midsentence to point out an Arab-looking man sitting alone in a shadowed corner of the restaurant.

“Bilal Sayed Salaah,” he said. “Am I wrong?”

Shawn had an eidetic memory for the photographs the Agency held on its Terminate file. After a cautious glance he said, “If I had to guess, I'd say that's him.”

“Well, then,” Rafe said, standing, “he speaks English, right? Let's go chat.”

“Believe me,” Shawn said, “not a good idea. Not here, not now.” But Rafe was already crossing the room, carrying his magnum glass of gin and juice, which looked, from the outside, like straight OJ. He sat himself at Salaah's table and, though he knew the answer, asked if the man spoke English.

Salaah glanced at Shawn and Dodie, who took seats at the same table. He said that he did indeed speak English.

“Then,” Rafe said, “help me. Tell me what's happening across the border. Tell me what's happening in the south. Start with Kandahar. Then tell me what goes down with ISI. With Mullah Omar. With the Taliban.”

Salaah asked why Rafe imagined he would know.

“Because,” Rafe said, “according to my information, you are an adviser to the mullah. You are his liaison with groups outside the country, since he's never been out of Afghanistan. Isn't that right?

“No,” Salaah said, “that is not right. None of it.”

Rafe brought his heavy glass down hard on Salaah's right hand. Shawn thought he heard some small bone crack. Rafe took the man's hand in his own and gripped. Salaah yelled and half-stood, tipping the table, trying to get away, trying to break the agent's hold. With his free hand, Rafe reached out to squeeze the man's balls.

Across the restaurant, armed men also stood, to see what was happening.

“We should leave,” Shawn said. “Now.”

Rafe let go of Salaah's hand. The man's eyes were bright with tears.

“Next time, brother,” Rafe said to Salaah, “don't lie to me, or I'll hurt you. Truly. I don't like being lied to. Ask my buddy here. Makes me act mean—do things I might regret. Things you might regret.”

Shawn took Rafe's arm and eased him out of the restaurant. When they glanced back, Salaah was still in his seat, nursing his hand and, it seemed, watching which road they took.

*   *   *

After that, things went steeply downhill. Shawn had only one reliable informant in Peshawar: a hotel waiter who called himself Jamal, though that was not his given name. The self-styled Jamal had brothers in a Taliban training camp in the mountainous regions of Wana and Miranshah.

Jamal was edgy. He would speak to Shawn only when he was doing his job, serving food. After the incident with Salaah, he doubled his price for information. His most urgent message was that Rafe and Shawn and Dodie should leave town.

“Why would I leave?” Shawn asked. “I'll have the chicken tikka.”

“Sir,” said Jamal, low-voiced, “I tell you again, you and your friends should leave. Do you know where they are?”

“Right this moment,” Shawn said, “no.”

Jamal turned away. “I will bring you bottled water.”

As things turned out, it was already too late to leave. Before Shawn finished eating, Jamal came back. Speaking quietly, he said, “Sir, I told you.”

“Told me what?”

“You should leave. Now, they have your friends.”

Shawn felt his heart miss a beat. He stood. “What do you mean—they have Mr. Ramirez?”

“And the other man. Young man.”

“Who has him? Where? Tell me.”

Jamal, who was already whispering, lowered his voice further. “Men put them in a car. A blue Lada.”

Shawn held Jamal's wrist in an unbreakable grip. “What men? They took them where?”

“Sir, please let me go. You are hurting. I don't know where they have your friends.”

“Then,” Shawn said quietly, “fucking find out, Jamal. Do it fast.”

*   *   *

In those days, Shawn still talked by satellite phone to Langley. Langley called in a group of special forces based outside Quetta, to search for Mullah Omar. These men had CIA links, though they were said not to be paid by the Company, or officially part of it. Langley told Shawn there would be a time gap. He guessed the crew would be driving into Peshawar in their usual style, in Humvees, firing at motorcyclists who might be suicide bombers, edging other traffic—cars, mules, auto-rickshaws, and people—off the narrow road. Even so, the squad might take time.

By then, Jamal knew where Rafe and Dodie were. Once again, the waiter doubled his price for the information because, he said, he, too, would need to leave town, would have to cross the border, in case he had been seen talking with the American agents more often than serving food would merit. Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Sale were held, he said, under a dried-fruit warehouse out on the Warsak Road. If not there, in a gas station beside the warehouse.

“Under? You said
under
a warehouse?”

The waiter nodded, lowering his voice further. “Beneath, sir. Tunnels have been made. Now, your friends are there. Or in the place next door.”

*   *   *

Shawn passed Rafe's location to the captain of the unit he'd called in. The captain said he was three miles out of Peshawar. He gave an ETA and advised Shawn not to go near the target location. Shawn omitted to say that he was already on his way there. As unobtrusive transport, he'd hired a local taxi, a Morris Oxford. If the driver wondered why an American would go to such an isolated and dangerous location, he said nothing about it. He hoped for—and finally got—an unusually large tip, which might, Shawn hoped, persuade him not to talk with the local men of al Qaeda. He was asked to wait a quarter mile down the street.

The fruit warehouse on Warsak Road was a three-story gray concrete monolith seemingly devoid of life. Shawn waited in the shelter of a parked truck, a Russian KAMAZ. From behind the cab, he watched a shalwar-clad Pakistani exit from the building's rear entrance. The guard was young and restless: a kid, really. He propped his rifle against a graffiti-covered wall and moved from foot to foot, scratching himself. Back home, Shawn would have assumed this was a man in need of a drink. In Muslim Pakistan, it must be something else: a smoke, Shawn guessed, as the man made a cigarette sign to a passing seller of khat and was briefly rebuffed. Moments later, the guard retrieved his rifle and disappeared around the corner of the building in search of more generous smokers.

Shawn cocked the Beretta he carried and went fast into the warehouse. Quietly closing the street door, he was confronted by a passage on ground level and steps leading down in half-darkness to a level below. On this lower level, Shawn surveyed a network of tunnels—by the look of them, recently dug from subterranean clay.