Purpose of Evasion Page 10

  Sami threw the door open but stayed in the firefighter’s view.

  “Karim, it’s too late. Let’s go!”

  “I have to get that truck out of here.” Karim was frantic, scanning the keys hanging in the cabinet. They all looked the same.

  “Yo! Let’s go!” The firefighter started down the hall toward Sami.

  They had to go. All of Yoda’s worst fears were coming true. Sami was not a covert operator, but he knew one thing. They could not stay.

  “Karim!” Sami shouted through a clenched jaw.

  Karim stopped and for a moment Sami thought he would come along.

  Instead, he turned and said, “When Calamity befalls them, they say, ‘Verily, unto God do we belong and, verily, unto Him we shall return.”

  Al-Baqarah. Sami forgot the exact verse. It was something heard commonly in his childhood. At funerals. At his parents’ own funeral.

  The firefighter was only fifty yards away now.

  “Here they are.” Karim held the truck keys in his hand. “At least he told me to call my children. Alhamdulillah.”

  Karim was not leaving without trying to move the truck, which meant that Karim was never leaving. They had waited too long. Sami stepped back and closed the door to the Valet. The firefighter was closing in, but if Sami stepped back now, the man might not see Karim in the Valet office.

  “Sorry. Sorry about that, man.” Sami shouted down the hall.

  “We need you out now!” the firefighter said.

  Sami feared that one of his team might have called in the bomb threat, but if the firefighter’s demeanor where any indication, they had not.

  He held up his hands and responded. “I know. I know.”

  The exit door at the end of the hallway was only five steps away. The firefighter made the same mistake that Sami made with Karim and turned on his heel expecting Sami to follow. Sami took off in the opposite direction, threw his weight into the push bar and was outside before he heard the firefighter shout after him.

  Sami sprinted across the parking lot and he kept running. Only a quarter mile of downtown Annapolis remained before the Spa Creek Bridge. Like downtown Annapolis, Eastport was another finger of land that jutted into the Severn River. He sprinted across the bridge, his breath ragged now. Sami saw a busy commercial area to the left, down Severn Street. He ran a little further and turned right, onto a well-traveled residential street. He could get lost here.

  He was thinking about Karim. If the firefighter chased Sami down the hall, he might have seen Karim in the office. Even if he didn’t give chase, someone might have seen Karim when he came out of the office. He would have been caught or at least chased. If Karim was caught, he would tell them about the bomb. He might tell them about Sami.

  Sami turned off the main road onto a cul-de-sac. He was a mile away from the hotel and he stopped running. He stopped worrying about Karim. Karim was gone as soon as he closed that Valet door.

  Sami was hunched over, hands on his knees to catch his breath when he heard the explosion.

  PART 2

  FIFTEEN

  WASHINGTON D.C.

  Gerald Seymour knotted a lush silk tie. It was bespoke. As was his shirt. Both were made by a haberdasher whose only shop was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Years ago, when the tailor mentioned that he was getting close to retirement, Seymour ordered 100 of the Supima broadcloth shirts he favored. When the tailor chuckled at the request, Seymour returned a baleful glare. He wasn’t joking.

  All the shirts were white. Seymour didn’t precisely think America’s problems could be traced to men wearing shirts of other colors, but he had entertained the idea. He seldom turned out in a shirt and tie anymore, but when he did, he preferred to wear each shirt only once. Any more than that and the collars became grimy.

  He was wearing a tie today because his presence in the West Wing demanded it. Certain things even he conceded to, and the pageantry of the Oval Office was one. Particularly now that its occupant was under his sway. The concession was not to the man, but to the office. To the Constitution and to the Federalist Papers, and to the ideal of a libertarian, North American, Christian republic. He had only recently renewed this concession, after eight years of decrying trespass into this sacrosanct space by a globalist, socialist, Islamist, un-American interloper.

  The conversation this morning would be as brief as possible, and cryptic.

  There’s a problem. Don’t ask me what it is.

  Do I have your permission to solve it? Don’t ask me how.

  Under no circumstances, Mr. President, consider the possibility that this has anything at all to do with that pesky little hotel bombing thirty miles up the road.

  It wasn’t important for the President to get bogged down in details. The important thing was to stop the next attack, an attack that Seymour knew was imminent. Actually, that was not the most important thing. Attacks would happen in a free and open society. If it wasn’t the Muslims, it would be…someone else. The most important thing was managing the fallout from the attack. Or attacks.

  Days ago, he hoped the threat to him and to this White House might have been managed. Quietly. It had not been. There had to be a formal response. The country had to act. Seymour needed to control that action. He needed to guide it. Because if things headed in a certain direction, there were consequences he did not wish to consider. They were unthinkable.

  The source of the bomb used in Annapolis could never be revealed. The contents of the FBI file that crossed his desk in early July must never be known. The organizing force behind these attacks against America could never be discovered.

  The revelation of any of those facts, or even the future availability of any of the raw intelligence which analysts had used to assess the truth of these matters, would jeopardize this White House.

  No. In point of fact - a fact that Seymour was loathe to acknowledge – no matter how integral he was to the campaign, and no matter how much POTUS trusted and relied upon him, the truth would jeopardize Gerald Seymour.

  He would be the fall guy. Because that was how the White House worked.

  A ready solution awaited. It would leverage a narrative that had been building for years, and which the American people understood instinctively. The great benefit for Gerald Seymour was that this would vitiate the need for any fabrication on his part. Just leave the blanks blank, and the American people would fill them in.

  His plan would get an assist from the news networks and the last gasping breaths of the print media, ironic since he painted them as the true adversary during the campaign. The people who had opposed his candidate would now save the presidency.

  With the President’s endorsement and the media’s support, he would tell the American people a story they wanted to hear. The resources he needed to extinguish this threat would have been inaccessible a few months ago but were now at his fingertips. They would be meager really. A discreet and well-trained CIA SOG team, directed against one compound.

  The enemy were a dozen men. Men that no one in America would ever hear about. They wouldn’t believe it anyway. Americans knew that “others” threatened them. Their jobs. Their safety. Their values. Solving this problem should not come at the cost of shattering that certainty.

  The plan was instinctive. Like the campaign. Seymour’s instincts had never failed him. Or POTUS. He was so certain of this plan, so confident, that he thanked God for the opportunity now. He remembered a poster on the wall of a company he bought and liquidated in the 1990s, something about how some Asian language used the same symbol for two words. Crisis. Opportunity.

  He finally understood the stupid poster. He had to get this right to save himself and save the White House. But he would get it right, and he would show America that the threats he had come to snuff out were real. Crisis. Opportunity.

  As the most powerful man in the world entered the Oval Office, Seymour felt a surge of pure joy.

  “Good morning, Mr. President.”

  SIXTEEN

&n
bsp; CULPEPER COUNTY, VIRGINIA

  Sami woke suddenly, as if from a nightmare. He blinked hard. It was real. He was in the upstairs bedroom of a safe house tucked into a hollow between two hills about 75 miles southwest of Washington. The area had once been horse country but was fast being threatened by the sprawl of Metro Washington.

  “Safe” was a relative term for a place off even the non-official grid. Rather than one of the well-protected and well-provisioned houses that the CIA kept outside of D.C., they were in a property that Andy maintained with a slush fund. “House” was hardly more fitting. There were four rooms downstairs and this one bedroom upstairs. Like most everything else about the house, the weathered wood frame was original. The farmhouse’s only renovation was concealed below grade, where Hasan Khalifa was imprisoned under control of cuffs and a Propofol and Lorazepam cocktail.

  Sami heard the distant white noise of breaking news downstairs: the droning anchor, an occasional reporter on-scene, an expert on the phone. He could picture the images being cycled on the screen, a formula familiar to anyone who lived in post-9/11 America. Police cars arriving. Ambulance lights flashing. Wreckage seen from a helicopter. A trail of smoke diffusing into the sky. More than imagining the video, Sami could visualize it. Because he had been there.

  The hotel in Annapolis. Karim’s truck. The bomb. It was real. Sami hadn’t stopped the bomb. His friend was dead.

  As Sami descended the creaking stairs, he saw that the sun had not cleared the hills east of the house. Emily and Alexa were watching the TV. Neither of them had slept much, if at all. The network bug in the corner of the screen read 6:21 AM.

  Yoda was in the kitchen, Hasan’s laptop open on the table in front of him. Andy was on guard duty, sitting on a kitchen chair by the door that led to the basement. The dungeon. A small monitor sat on a coffee table next to him, broadcasting a fisheye view of the subterranean cinder block room.

  “Sleeping?” Sami asked.

  “Like a baby, Dost,” Andy said. “I relieved Alexa at 0500. Gave him another cocktail just before then. We can get him up soon.”

  Hasan was lying prone on an Army cot, his hands and feet cuffed to the frame. Another chain extended from a restraint belt to an iron loop installed in the wall. It was meager as secure holding went, but adequate. Why Andy had the foresight to construct it, Sami could only wonder. Who paid for it was another question outside of his understanding.

  What he knew was that he and Andy had no basis on which to hold this man. No matter their intentions, the legal status of their actions was not in doubt. Kidnapping. And a dozen other charges.

  They arrived at the safe house at 11:30 the night before. They secured Hasan and by the time they debriefed Andy, it was 3 AM.

  It was a frantic night, but they grabbed Hasan at Dulles. There were no FBI or TSA agents there to make the arrest. There were not even any black-and-whites from local law enforcement. After all, they had enforced no laws. They had abducted a grown man. That was not a novel feat for the CIA, but there were exigent factors.

  The grown man was a U.S. citizen. He was taken in a busy international airport. They were on American soil. And they were not the CIA. They had no resources, no authority, and no legal grounds upon which to claim either.

  If that swirl of factors had been last night’s dilemma, this morning’s was much clearer. They did not stop the first attack. Any chance of preventing another attack seemed to rest entirely in their hands. Or, at least, in their basement.

  At 6:30, through the haze of coffee, Sami heard the TV anchor updating the facts for the bottom of the hour. Confirmed 18 dead, 71 injured. So far. The wreckage was still smoking. After running pictures of the scene, the entire night, the network was teasing its morning show coverage, beginning at 7. The pictures would be more compelling when lit by the sun. There was one more item to report.

  A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SOURCE WHO IS REMAINING ANONYMOUS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO SPEAK ON THE RECORD, HAS TOLD US THAT THE FBI ARE SEEKING TWO PERSONS OF INTEREST. THEY ARE DESCRIBED AS MILITARY-AGED MALES, MIDDLE EASTERN, WHO WERE SEEN IN THE LOBBY OF THE HOTEL JUST BEFORE THE BOMBING. THERE IS ALSO A REPORT OF AN OLIVE OR BROWN-SKINNED MAN WHO RAN AWAY FROM THE HOTEL JUST BEFORE THE EXPLOSION OCCURRED. AT THIS POINT, AUTHORITIES CANNOT CONFIRM WHETHER THIS WAS A THIRD MAN, OR ONE OF THE TWO PERSONS BEING SOUGHT.

  Alexa turned toward Sami and Andy. “Fuck!”

  “Just wait until they have pictures,” Sami said. Chances were that a surveillance camera somewhere would have recorded him. He turned back to Andy. “Get him up.”

  “You going to interrogate him?” Andy asked. Sami’s clenched teeth said he was. “He’ll be useless to you,” Andy checked his watch, “for another 60-90 minutes.”

  “Is that enough time for you to get the cavalry here? A real interrogator?”

  “The cavalry ain’t coming, Dost.”

  “Then get him up.”

  ***

  The first time Sami tried to talk to Hasan, the only response was some gurgling and a wide-eyed stare. He went back upstairs, had coffee and breakfast, and tried to collect his thoughts and prepare an interrogation plan. Rather than administer a drug that would accelerate Hasan’s wake-up, they wanted him to come around naturally so that Sami could maximize the time when he was awake and responsive, but still under the beneficial effects of the drug cocktail. An hour later, Andy reported signs of life on the monitor and Sami went downstairs for the second time.

  The only concession to Hasan’s comfort was rolled up under Sami’s arm. He brought nothing else. Not a cup of water, nor a scrap of food. These would be rewards for cooperation. The air conditioning in the room was at full blast, bringing the temperature down into the high 50s. That was not cold enough to break Hasan, but it was uncomfortable. As the July sun rose, it would be difficult to keep the room cool, even underground, but if Hasan wanted a blanket, it would come at a price.

  The conditions were imperfect, but as much as possible they wanted to mimic a real interrogation at a real CIA safe house. One of the most imperfect of their circumstances was that the Sami was not trained as an interrogator. He had seen it done.

  In person, in Iraq, where he was part of a small HUMINT team that rode outside the wire on the tail of a mounted patrol. On video, at Langley, where he often referred to taped interrogations as part of the analytical process. But he had never done it himself.

  That made all the difference. He had watched Bryce Harper hit dozens of balls into the right-field deck at Nationals Park, but Sami had no hope of stepping up and doing it, too.

  He tried to focus on the PIRs. Priority Intelligence Requirements.

  Where did the money for the trucks come from?

  Who made the bombs?

  Who was the delivery man?

  What was the next target?

  Even those four questions almost overwhelmed Sami’s ability to collate them. They were huge questions. Getting answers – even from a cooperative subject, which Sami was not sure he could expect Hasan to be – would be a challenge. If this were a covert Op, CIA would have had dozens, maybe hundreds, working the operation. Off the books, as leader of the Andy Rizzo Five, it was down to Sami. Which led to a

  different set of questions.

  Why had his team been denied the raw intelligence?

  Why was Andy pushing back on pursuing the bomb maker?

  Why now – even after an attack – was someone in the government not offering Andy everything he needed?

  Why wouldn’t Langley take it from here?

  The second set of questions had to wait. Sami needed to focus.

  On the monitor, Hasan still appeared to be restrained, but nothing could be taken for granted. As Sami descended the stairs, he listened for any sudden movement. Having had the worst of last night’s ordeal, Hasan looked as haggard as everyone else in the house, but Sami saw that the young imam was more alert than he had been an hour ago. Sami placed the two rolls under his arm onto the plastic chair opposite
the cot. Hasan immediately recognized these objects. Sami checked the cuffs and restraint belt. All were still fastened.

  “As-salamu alaykum.” Sami’s greeting was not amicable, but it was polite.

  “Waʿalaykumu as-salam” came back from Hasan, in kind.

  “If you promise me you will pray in peace, I can have your restraints removed.”

  “This is more than the concessions given at Guantanamo.” Sami expected a sneer but saw a glimmer in the prisoner’s eyes. “I am in the States still.” The first PIR point on the board went to Hasan.

  For a moment, Sami’s heart sank. Hasan was clever. Far from cooperative, he would be difficult for an experienced interrogator to crack. Then, spurring himself, Sami bucked up. The cavalry ain’t coming.

  “You’ll never know where you are. And neither will your brothers in arms. We can take up that discussion now if you like. Or we can pray.”

  “Hayya alas salah.” Islam’s equivalent to Let us pray, the Arabic phrase translated literally as Hasten to prayer. It had been years since Sami heard it and the inflection and pronunciation were his grandfather’s own. A chill ran down his spine as he climbed the stairs to retrieve the keys for the cuffs and restraints.

  The keys were kept upstairs as a security measure, in case Sami were overpowered. It also supported the ruse that this was a fully-staffed operation. In a proper safe house, he would have been accompanied back downstairs by beefy guys in balaclavas, but only Andy was waiting at the top of the stairs to hand him the ring, and Sami returned alone.

  The restraint belt and cuffs removed, Sami handed one of the prayer rugs to Hasan. They unrolled them, Hasan hesitating just a second for Sami to confirm the orientation of his rug toward the East. There was no hesitation in what happened next, Hasan needing no indication that it was he – the imam – who would recite the Adhan.