Bloodmoney

35

Joseph Sabah’s dog, Emile, needed a walk. That was what got them out of the ivy-covered house in Waterloo in the first place. When the miniature poodle finally woke up from the drugs that had been shot into him, he did his business on the rug in the hallway. A security officer proposed to take Emile out for a quick walk, but his owner, Mr. Sabah, insisted on coming along, too, claiming that they would torture the dog if he wasn’t present. Soon a small delegation had emerged from the house into the backyard.

The poodle inevitably started barking. That attracted the attention of the neighbors, who weren’t used to a dog on the property. One of them, evidently a busybody, called the police to report that there were strange people in the house next door and that the quiet couple who usually lived there had disappeared several days before. The cops might have ignored the call, but for that.

A blue-striped Belgian police car arrived at the door. The CIA officer from Brussels station had to show his embassy ID and do some fast talking to convince the gendarme that a ring of kidnappers hadn’t taken over the house, which was, in fact, precisely what had happened.

Sabah was quickly bundled upstairs when the doorbell rang. Major Kirby stuck a towel in his mouth as a precautionary measure. That didn’t do much for rapport with the man who was the team’s only channel of contact with the Pakistani mastermind behind the killing of American intelligence officers. They would have to move from the house now to another secure location, bringing along an angry and perhaps uncooperative source.

Sophie Marx proposed that she sit down with Joseph Sabah after the barking-dog incident. During the twenty-four hours that the group had been working together, she had emerged as its leader. She argued now that the only way to regain Sabah’s confidence was to be honest with him, even at the risk of violating operational security. Otherwise, he would be useless to them. Nobody disagreed.

Sabah was in his room upstairs, still upset about how he had been manhandled, when the police arrived. Marx knocked, and when he didn’t answer, she gently pushed open the door. She was bringing a cup of tea and a plate of cookies as a peace offering.

“It’s me, Edith. I brought you a little something to eat, Mr. Sabah.” She brandished the tray. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Sabah was scowling, but she was already well into the room, and he didn’t turn her away. She set the tray down on the bedside table and pulled up a chair for herself.

“I’m very sorry for the way we have treated you,” she said. “I don’t blame you for being angry with us. I would be, too.”

“I am absolutely furious,” he answered. “Look at how you people behave. No wonder everyone hates America.”

“You’re right,” she said.

She looked over at the plate of cookies. There were some Bonne Maman gallettes and a stack of chocolate-covered Petit Ecolier biscuits. She took one of the dark chocolate biscuits from the plate.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

“Of course not. They’re yours. You brought them. You can eat them all. I am not going to help you simply because you bring me sweet biscuits.”

She ate the rest of her cookie and handed him the plate.

“Take one, for goodness’ sake. They’re delicious.”

He took a Petit Ecolier and had a small bite, then a bigger one.

“You are correct. This is quite delicious. But you did not come to bring me sweets.”

“I came to explain something to you, Mr. Sabah. Maybe then you will understand why we have been treating you so strangely.”

“Go ahead. But I will not change my mind.”

“The man we were talking about before, the man who called himself George. There is something I didn’t tell you about him.”

“This is a surprise? Ha. You never tell the truth, any of you. Why should I believe you now? This is like Emile chasing his tail.”

Marx ignored his comment. She leaned toward Sabah.

“This man George tried to kill me a few days ago in Pakistan. He planted a bomb in my hotel room, which was meant for me. Instead, it killed a Pakistani soldier who was acting as my bodyguard and trying to protect me. They took him out on a gurney. One of his arms had been blown off. When I close my eyes, I can see his body.”

“I did not know that. I am sorry for you.”

“That’s not all. George killed four people I worked with. Two of them were my friends. They were good people, but they died bad deaths. That’s why this is personal for me.”

“I wish someone had said this before and treated me like a friend instead of an enemy.”

“We should have. That was our mistake. I hope it’s not too late.”

Sabah was still scrolling his catalogue of victimization.

“Those men downstairs are ignorant. They put a towel in my mouth so I could not breathe. They hurt me, but why? What did I do?”

“They’re just soldiers. And they are not in charge, Mr. Sabah, I am. That’s what I wanted to tell you. This is my responsibility. I have to do something, and you are my only hope. I know you think that we’re all liars, but I’m telling you the truth. If you won’t help me, then this man will kill more of my friends. He may kill me.”

“Is this true?”

“Yes. I need you. That’s what I am saying. We all need you. Otherwise we are in a terrible situation, and I don’t know how it will end.”

Sabah lowered his head. He was a generous man, in his way. He wanted to be helpful to people who needed him. That was why he had been so easy for the Pakistani to manipulate in the first place.

“What do I have to do?” he asked. “You said before that you wanted to use me as the bait. Is that it?”

“Yes. I want you to contact this Pakistani who called himself George. Whatever channel you used before, I want you to use it again. I want you to tell him that you have new information that you need to send him. Can you do that?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I told you before: The contact information is on my computer at home.”

“Will you come with us now, so that you can get your computer from home and move to another safe place? We can’t stay here now that the police have visited.”

“Can Emile go outside at the new hiding place? He needs exercise. He gets depressed if I do not take him out, morning and night.”

“Of course, and he’s such a cute dog, by the way. So enthusiastic. But you have to promise to help me. No shouting, no calling out for help, no running away to the Belgian police. If you do that, then the men downstairs will get nervous again. That would be awful. So can you be a good helper for me?”

“I will help, but only for you. You are a trickster, too, but you are smarter. The others I do not want to see.”

They took two cars, the van in the garage and a “clean” Audi sedan provided by the station. Sabah and Marx sat in the back of the Audi with Emile, while Major Kirby and the rest of the team crammed into the van.

Brussels station had been watching Sabah’s apartment on the Avenue George Bergmann and they reported that it was clear. The Audi idled out front while Sabah and Marx went in together to collect his things. He found the laptop computer and bundled it into a case. Marx suggested that he should pack a change of clothes, too, and any medicines and personal things he might need.

“How long will we be away?” he asked as he collected his socks and underwear from his top drawer. He already had gathered Emile’s dog dish and blanket, a bag of dry dog food and a leash.

“A day or two,” she answered. “Assuming we catch him. By then you’ll be a hero and we’ll fly you to Disney World.”

“I don’t want to go to America, ever. When we are finished, I want to go home. How soon will that be?”

“Soon,” she said, leading him back downstairs toward the car before he changed his mind.

The new safe house was a freestanding brick residence south of Brussels, on the military reservation in Mons where NATO had its headquarters. The location was secure and easily guarded. It had a large fenced yard where a dog could bark until he dropped dead without attracting attention. The house had just been remodeled for one of the NATO generals, who had been evicted on short notice.

Marx sat down with Sabah in a large study that had been set aside for them on the ground floor of the villa. He was guarding the computer bag on his lap.

“Do you want me to turn it on?” He held the laptop the same protective way he did his dog.

Marx knew it was urgent to get the information, but she also knew not to rush. Once Sabah turned over these secrets, everyone would be splashing about and the water would get muddy. This was a last chance to get a clear look at the man and what he knew.

“Not yet,” she said. “Let’s talk a minute first. Tell me how you got started helping us. Remind me what year it was? And maybe you can remember who contacted you and what they asked you to do. You probably think we all work together at the CIA and know the same secrets, but it doesn’t work that way.”

Sabah smiled and shook his head. America was a very strange country. It was a miracle they didn’t have even worse problems.

“The program began in 2002, I think. But they did not ask for my help until three years later, in 2005. They were trying to follow the money flows of Al-Qaeda. They had developed software to look at patterns, you see. They would examine all the data electronically, so that they could follow anyone who had ever touched the bank account or credit card of someone in their database. Then they would look at that person’s accounts, and run the traces all over again. It was simple link analysis. They told us that the digital space was our best weapon. Everything had an address, and every event left a signature.”

“Why did they need you, Mr. Sabah?”

“Sometimes they had trouble with the Arabic names when they were doing their analysis. They needed people who were cleared into the SWIFT system who could help them make it work. We were consultants. We had to be approved by their security before they would let us into the program. One day we had a videoconference with one of the Americans back in Washington, the big boss who was running things. He gave us, what do you call it, a ‘pep talk.’ He was very loud.”

“Do you remember his name or where he worked, Mr. Sabah? Maybe I could go back and talk to him.”

“The name was a false one, I am sure. Mr. Smith. Mr. Jones. I did not take it seriously. But he told us that he worked at the Counterterrorism Center. That was real, I think.”

“Yes, sir. The CTC was running that program, with the Treasury Department. What did the man look like?”

“He was thin, tough. He looked like a soldier. I can’t remember the rest, really. The video wasn’t very clear.”

“That’s okay. I’ll try to find out who that was. Now, you said there were other consultants who were involved in this surveillance program. Do you remember where they were from?”

“All the places you would think. There was a man from Saudi Arabia, a man from Kuwait, one from Morocco, two from Egypt, two from Pakistan, maybe more.”

Marx had been making notes as he talked, but she paid special attention now as he spoke of the consultants.

“Did you meet them, these consultants? Did you learn any of their names?”

“Oh, no. That was against security. This was a videoconference, remember. We were all watching from separate locations. I only know about the others because when they began the session, they gave an overview, so that we would know what a big thing this was. They wanted us to feel we were part of something important.”

“But there was a consultant from Pakistan, you said.”

“Two, I think. But I never saw them. They were trying to protect our identities.”

“Do you think George could have been one of the consultants?”

“I didn’t think so when he contacted me last year. He said he was an American, and that he had been part of the program, and they were restarting it. But when you told me at the other house that my George was a Pakistani, I thought maybe yes. He might have been one of the consultants. He seemed to know all the same things that I did, when he contacted me.”

“We’ll get to George in a minute. But what else can you tell me about this meeting with the man from CTC, by videoconference?”

“He was like a coach in one of those American sports movies. He wanted to get us excited. He told us we were part of the war on terrorism, and that people in every country were working with us. He said that by helping identify members of Al-Qaeda, we would help America bring justice to the world. They could not escape, he said, I remember that. He said Americans had big hearts, or strong hearts, or something like that. They could not hide. America would hunt them down and kill them.”

Marx made a note to herself, and put a star next to it.

“Anything else?”

Sabah pondered the question a moment, searching his memory, and then came back to her.

“One more thing. He said America had a weapon called a Predator that could follow the Al-Qaeda fighters from the skies, by flying over the places where they were hiding in Pakistan. They had been using it since 2002, but now there were more of them. I had only read about these Predators in the newspaper, but here was someone talking about them. He said that with our help, America would take revenge for September 11, so that it would never happen again. They cannot escape justice, he said. It was supposed to make us feel happy and strong.”

“Did any of the consultants say anything, when this man from the CTC talked about the Predators?”

“Everyone was very quiet. We were all thinking, I suppose, about how powerful America was, that it could follow people and kill them from the sky.”

They took a break. Sabah wanted to walk his dog and asked if there were any plastic bags. One of Major Kirby’s men kept an eye on him and Emile as they circumnavigated the property several times.

Marx wrote a quick cable for Cyril Hoffman about the discussion she had just had with Sabah. She asked him for two pieces of information. First, she wanted a list of any Pakistani nationals who had been used as consultants during the SWIFT phase of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. She requested every shred of information they had on such people-phone numbers, addresses, travel records, security assessments, reports from liaison services. Second, she wanted a list of any senior officials from the Counterterrorism Center who had briefed foreign nationals involved in the SWIFT program in 2005.

She sent the cable in the restricted-handling channel, requesting an urgent response. But she thought she already knew the answer to her second question.

While dog and master were still outdoors, Marx tried to reach Thomas Perkins in London. His cell phone was turned off. A policeman answered his office extension and said that it would not be possible to talk to Mr. Perkins or leave a message for him at present. That was a relief for Marx, in truth, knowing that Perkins was under police quarantine.

Marx sat down again twenty-five minutes later with Sabah. He looked restored by his brief jaunt outdoors. There were grass stains on the seat of his trousers, from where he had evidently lain down on the lawn for a tussle with Emile. Sabah turned on his laptop computer as soon as he was seated, before Marx had a chance to ask him. He wanted to do his work now and get it finished.

It took thirty seconds for the machine to boot up and the screen to come alight. He opened his contact file and searched for names, mumbling to himself as he tried one, then another. Eventually, he voiced a relieved, “Ah,” and called up the name.

“I was looking in the g ’s for ‘George,’ but I had him listed by the last name he is using now on his emails, which is a w. I forgot that. Do you want the address?”

“Yes, please.” She tried to sound at ease, as if this piece of information weren’t something her life might depend on.

“It’s George. White09@yahoo. com. That’s what he called himself, George White. That’s the address we used to communicate the last half dozen times. Before that it was GeorgeWhite17@hotmail. com. I still have that address but it doesn’t work. He closed the account.”

Marx asked for his cell phone numbers. Sabah had two, but he thought they were both dead. The U.S. number was 001-703-202-1211. The Swiss number was 4179-555-6548. She repeated the email addresses and the numbers back to Sabah carefully, digit by digit, to be certain she had them right.

“Do you mind if we take another little break?” she said. “I need to share these with my colleagues so that they can do some detective work.”

She gave him a kiss on the cheek, which pleased and embarrassed him, and then excused herself and went into the control room, where they had set up a secure communications suite. Major Kirby brought in the dog to keep Sabah company, along with a sandwich and a glass of beer. Sabah drank the beer but fed most of the sandwich to Emile.

The communications officer helped Marx set the right designators for her message. She sent the cable to Hoffman, this time copying the Information Operations Center, which managed CIA exploitation of cyber-intelligence, and copying the operations center of the National Security Agency, as well. Then she waited.