Bloodmoney

12

The Dubai Airport had a hungover, half-deserted look when Marx arrived. She made her way past bleary-eyed South Asians in transit, who were wandering up and down the corridor like weary birds looking for a place to alight. The customs hall was nearly empty, except for the Filipina “Marhaba” girls who were arrayed to greet any VIP visitors who chanced to arrive. The city beyond had the look of a new luxury car, its seats still wrapped in cellophane, standing in an empty showroom with no customers in sight.

“Things are looking up in Dubai,” insisted her taxi driver, an Indian from Kerala. He offered to show her an apartment that she could sublet, half price, no, quarter price. Marx took his card and then told him to be quiet. As the driver weaved along the airport road across the new downtown, they passed a dozen dazzling apartment towers that appeared to have few if any tenants. Would anyone ever live in them, or would they gradually decay into ruins of chrome and glass, with blowing sand caking the entryways and the elevators creaking to a halt for lack of maintenance?

Marx checked in to her hotel, a vast place made to look like the architect’s fantasy of an ancient Arab city. It had been immaculate a few years before, every surface of brass and wood polished and sparkling, so that if you rubbed one of the urns that decorated the lobby, you might expect Aladdin himself to pop out. Now the mahogany furniture was losing its stain, and some of the fancy carpets were discoloring from the sun and the foot traffic.

Marx loved Dubai the way earlier generations of intelligence officers had embraced Beirut or Hong Kong. It was a city that existed at the margins, between East and West, between the imaginary and the real. Plus it had good air service, and you could drink the water. She liked it even more now that the bubble had burst and the place had come back to earth. The hotels that were never full, and the parking lots that were still sprinkled with Mercedes cars that had been abandoned when their owners couldn’t make the payments.

She showered and changed, and lay on her bed for a while staring at the ceiling, thinking about how she would handle the interrogation of Hamid Akbar. An hour before the meeting, she rode the elevator down to the ground floor, which opened onto one of the ersatz canals that linked the buildings in this imaginary Medina. She took a seat in the stern of a dhow that served as a water taxi; behind her loomed the towers of a make-believe Arabian fortress.

She was dressed in a black pants suit, her hair pulled tight in bun, sunglasses masking the fatigue in her eyes. She turned her head toward the breeze blowing in off the Gulf. A gust caught a few strands of hair and pulled them loose. She had taken a pill to sleep on the long flight, and then another. Now that she had arrived, she felt groggy. She gave her cheek a gentle slap to wake herself up. With the sting came a bit of color.

The turbaned boatman tried to be friendly. He was a poor fisherman from Dar Es Salaam who couldn’t support his family running a boat back home. He spoke about fish. Sophie Marx didn’t want to make small talk, and she didn’t have any dirhams to give him a tip. She told him in Arabic to keep his eyes on the water or she would report him to the hotel manager.

The boatman deposited her at the Villas, the meeting place that Gertz’s support staff had arranged on short notice. The polygraph operator was already there. Gertz had dispatched him from Prague, where he nominally worked for an electronics company. Dubai station had a resident polygraph technician, but he reported to Headquarters, and Gertz vetoed that.

Marx stepped gingerly off the prow at the landing. The polygraph operator opened the door for her. He was a big, powerfully built man, well over six feet, with tattoos decorating his biceps. Marx was glad to see him.

“Hey, my name’s Andy,” he said, extending a forearm as thick as a log.

“Where did you come in from?” she asked.

“Ashgabat,” he said. “It was the quickest flight from Prague. I had to sleep in the transit lounge in Turkmenistan. Too hot. Glad to leave.”

“It’s hot in Dubai,” she said.

“Not when you’re in the pool.” He smiled. This assignment was a vacation for him.

Marx looked around the villa. It was too fancy for the task ahead: It offered a fine view of the water and beyond it the Burj Al Arab, billowing like the sail of a dhow forty stories tall. Marx closed the curtains and turned up the heat in the room till it would raise a sweat. She made herself a pot of coffee and waited for the Pakistani.

“Break him,” she told herself. “Make him talk.”

Hamid Akbar knocked gently on the door as if he were afraid that he would wake the neighbors. Through the intercom, he spoke the phrases of the recognition code. He retreated a step when Andy, the technician, opened the door. The American was so big. Akbar peered inside and saw that the CIA officer awaiting him was a compact and well-tailored woman. He bowed slightly in her direction and said, “Madam.”

“Welcome, Mr. Akbar,” she responded. “Please sit down. This will be a long visit, I’m afraid. I have many questions for you. Would you like some coffee?”

The Pakistani was waiting politely for her to sit down before seating himself.

She motioned sharply for him to take his seat, while she remained standing, her arms folded. She knew that she must establish dominance from the beginning.

“I am sorry about Mr. Howard Egan,” said the Pakistani, placing his hand over his heart. “It is most unfortunate that he is missing. I do not know what went wrong.”

The Pakistani sat awkwardly, his knees together primly. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. There was perspiration above his lip.

“We are all sorry, Mr. Akbar. But we need to know how this happened. People in Washington have questions about your role. I must warn you of that, so that we understand each other.”

The Pakistani arched his neck. He looked offended.

“Why me, madam? I have done nothing wrong, I assure you. It is I who am in danger. Next they will get me.”

Marx had been about to deliver to him the coffee she had promised, but she thought better of it. She set the cup down.

“I don’t think you get it, Mr. Akbar. You are a suspect. That is why you are here. You were the last person to see Mr. Egan. We need answers from you. My friend here is going to strap you to a machine that will tell me if you are lying. The reason we are doing this is because we have power over you. You must understand that.”

He looked at her warily. She was a woman; he was a man. But she was giving him instructions, and the big American with the tattoos was there to back her up.

“I can leave,” he said. He was trying to be assertive, but the way he formed the words it sounded more like a question.

She heard the weakness in the voice. It was the same voice she had heard on the NSA audio file.

“No, Mr. Akbar, you are wrong there. You cannot leave. You have taken money from the United States, and now, to be honest with you, we have power over you. Do you realize that? You could try to leave. But my friend Andy and I would stop you. And then we would tell people in Pakistan about your contacts with us, for all these years, and they would take care of the rest. So don’t talk any more about leaving, please. Are we clear?”

There was silence, so she repeated the question.

“Are we clear, Mr. Akbar? Otherwise, I am going to instruct Andy to take you into custody.”

He nodded. The sweat beads were rolling down his forehead now. He wiped the dampness away with his sleeve.

“And don’t call me ‘madam.’ It’s a name for someone who runs a brothel. Tonight I am your control. You can call me that. Miss Control.”

The little lines around his mouth crinkled. He had been nervous when he walked in the door. Now he was frightened.

“What is my name? Say it, please.”

“Miss Control.”

“Thank you.” It sounded strange, even to her, but she nodded approval. One of her tradecraft instructors had admonished her years ago at the Farm that an interrogator was like a jeweler working on a precious stone. You had to tap it at the right points, to make the rough bits fall away so you could see what was really there.

“Let’s get started,” she said, motioning to the technician to begin attaching his wires to Akbar’s body. The Pakistani fidgeted. He didn’t like to be touched, but there was nothing he could do about it.

“First the technician is going to ask some baseline questions, to measure your normal reactions. You do have normal, right?”

“Yes.”

Andy went through a string of simple questions: name, place and date of birth, passport number. As the Pakistani answered, he became confident again, leaning forward in his chair. Marx listened for a while, struggling to think of a way to establish primacy. When there was a pause, she broke in.

“Are you a homosexual, Mr. Akbar?”

“My goodness, no. Of course not. How can you ask that?”

She looked at Andy’s monitor.

“You’re lying. Let me ask it again. Have you ever had sex with a man?”

“No. This is a most gross insult. I am leaving now.” He began pulling at the wires, and then stopped when the big American seized his hand.

Marx looked to Andy, who studied his computer terminal and shook his ahead.

“You’re still lying, Mr. Akbar. Three strikes and you’re out. That’s what we say in America. Now tell me the truth. Have you ever had sex with a man? When you were a boy, perhaps? Women have an intuition about this, I’m warning you.”

“I do not have to answer,” he said. His eyes were becoming moist at the edges. He was humiliated to the core.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “Not a problem with me. All I care about is that you tell the truth. If you don’t, I’ll find out. Is that clear? Okay. Continue, Andy.”

She sat back, confident now in her dominance. People from shame cultures were so vulnerable if you pushed the right buttons.

The technician asked more questions, alternating soft ones and hard ones. He stood behind the Pakistani, who couldn’t see him and heard only his questions, one after another. When the machine indicated deception, Andy would ask the question again until he got an answer that registered as truthful. After forty-five minutes he nodded to Marx that he was ready for her to begin.

Her task now was to break him. This man had set Egan up. She had become convinced of that as she pursued her investigation. Now she had to prove it.

“We will begin the serious part, Mr. Akbar. I can tell you that your life depends on your giving me the right answers. Do we understand each other? This is life or death.”

The Pakistani nodded.

“Let’s go back to the night Howard Egan disappeared. In addition to your uncle, someone else knew that you were meeting with him. Is that right?”

He shook his head. He paused a moment, looked around the room, and then said quietly, “No one.”

Marx turned to Andy, who nodded. The answer had produced no sign of the anxiety associated with a lie, which meant that it had to be considered true.

“Let me ask it again, Mr. Akbar. You told someone else you were meeting with Egan, right?”

“No. No one.”

Andy nodded again.

Marx loomed over the Pakistani man. Her face showed a blush of anger.

“You are a liar! Tell the truth, or you won’t make it to the next Eid. You told someone else about your meeting with Howard Egan. True or false?”

His voice was thin and strained by fear. He was sweating. But he gave the same answer.

“I told no one.”

Andy again signaled that the machine had not registered deception. Marx stepped back from the Pakistani. She motioned for Andy to join her in the bathroom, where they talked for several minutes. Then she returned.

“Your contact in the Taliban told you to move up the meeting time for Howard Egan. Is that right?

“No. That is not true. I don’t know anyone in the Taliban.”

Andy nodded.

“Are you lying to me now?”

“No. I wanted to hide the meeting. It was dangerous for me. Why would I tell anyone?”

“I’ll ask the questions, Mr. Akbar. Who told you to move up the meeting?”

“My Uncle Azim. He said he had to go back to Waziristan the next morning for the funeral of someone in the tribe. That was why he had to do it that night.”

“Is that statement truthful?”

“Yes.”

“Have you talked with your uncle since Egan disappeared?”

“No.”

Andy’s face was suddenly animated, as he shook his head to indicate that the machine had registered deception.”

“You are a liar. I am warning you, we will not tolerate this. Now let me ask you again. Have you talked with your uncle since Egan disappeared?”

“Yes.” The man’s voice was so small, the word sounded as if it had been blown through a tube. The sweat covered his forehead.

“I talked with him the night the meeting was supposed to happen. He called me. He asked why my friend had not come to the address we had agreed. I said I did not know. He called me again and said that he was going to leave and go back to Waziristan right away. He was frightened. That is all.”

“Why did you lie before?”

“Because I was afraid that you would be angry with me. I was not supposed to talk to anyone about anything. But I talked with him.”

Marx nodded. She went over to the thermostat and turned it down, until the air conditioner was blowing full-tilt.

“It’s too damn hot in here,” she muttered.

Marx started again, probing around the edges of Akbar’s story. She asked him for details about his initial recruitment and handling, about his past meetings with Egan, about his payments from the agency. She kept looking for a route into the deception that she had been certain was there when they started. But try as she might, she couldn’t find an opening in his story.

After another hour of frustration, she decided that the only explanation was that she had been wrong: Hamid Akbar had not blown the operation. The compromise had come from somewhere else.

The Pakistani looked spent-sweated and chilled, poked and prodded until he had no reserves left. He wasn’t deceiving her, but there was still a missing piece. She nodded to Andy that she wanted to continue a little longer.

“We’re almost done, Mr. Akbar,” she said. “I have just a few more questions, okay?”

“Sure,” he said. His face was drained.

“Have you been in touch with another intelligence service?”

“When?” he asked.

“Ever. Have you ever been in touch with another intelligence service, besides ours? Or any other contact that you’ve never told us about.”

“Not that I haven’t told you about. I always told the truth.”

She looked at Andy. He nodded. The machine said he wasn’t being deceptive.

“Why do you say, ‘Not that I haven’t told you about’? There’s nothing in your file about contact with another intelligence service. Who have you talked to?”

He opened his palms wide in a protest of innocence.

“It was only the police. The Intelligence Bureau at the Ministry of Interior. I told that to my case officer.”

“To Mr. Egan?”

“No. The one before him. As soon as the police contacted me, I told him. It wasn’t important. They talk to everyone. They are police, like I said.”

“How often did you meet with them?”

“A few times. Six, or eight. I am not sure that I can count. They visit people who have studied abroad, like me. They visit everybody. It is Pakistan, madam. It is not Baltimore.”

“Did you tell the police about your contacts with us?”

“Oh, no, madam. Certainly not. I knew that would be wrong.”

“And they believed you?”

“Oh, yes, I think so. They never said they did not.”

“Did you ever talk to the Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI?”

“Oh, no. Not ever. They are quite dangerous. In Pakistan, we make an effort not to talk with them.”

“How about your uncle? Did he ever talk to the ISI?”

“That I would not know. It is not something that I would ask, or that he would answer.”

Marx looked at Andy. He shrugged, out of sight. It all registered true.

“Please, madam. If you doubt me, check your files. I explained it all. I have never told a lie.”

“How recently did you meet with the police?”

“The last time? It was six months ago, perhaps. We met at my office. They came round, to stop and talk.”

“And they never asked about Mr. Egan?”

“No. They knew about my investments, all right. The ministry has a section that monitors foreign accounts. But they did not ask about Mr. Egan.”

Marx thought a moment, trying to see how the pieces fit.

“Have you ever had your office swept, Mr. Akbar? To check for microphones or cameras?”

“Oh, no. Why would I do that?”

“Just to be safe,” she said. She closed her eyes.

She offered Hamid Akbar a cigarette and a glass of whiskey, while Andy unstrapped the wires. He accepted both. She opened the bottle and poured a drink for everyone. They’d had a couple of shots each when Marx pulled her chair up a little closer.

“We’re friends now, right? So I am going to ask you a question, friend to friend. How do you think Howard Egan was discovered, then, if you didn’t tell anyone?”

“I am sorry,” said the Pakistani. “It is not for me to say.”

“Go ahead. Tell me what you think.”

He closed his eyes, and spoke a sentence in Pashto. “Da cha, pakhpala. Gila ma hawa dab ala.”

“Sorry, but that’s not very helpful.”

“It is a saying of my Pashtun people. It means: ‘These are self-inflicted wounds, not from others.’”

She was startled. “What do you mean by that?”

“I think that you have a problem, madam. The problem is not me. Mr. Egan’s job was very secret. The people who have taken him, I am sorry for that, but they would not have known who he was unless someone told them. There is a leak. They are inside your house. It must be that. I am sorry to say it. That is why I am frightened. What this leak might be, I cannot say, but I hope that you will find out. Yes, truly I do.”

Sophie didn’t answer him at first. She didn’t want to start telling lies herself. Eventually she spoke. It was the voice of a tired combatant on an ill-lit battlefield.

“We will protect you,” she said. “America has great power. When we look weak, that is an illusion.”

The Pakistani nodded respectfully, but inwardly he smiled. How could these Americans protect anyone, when they did not know who had stolen their secrets?