The Midnight House

EPILOGUE

Wells wasn’t expecting a happy ending, and he didn’t get one.

To be sure that Whitby wouldn’t be able to make Callar disappear, Wells and Shafer brought him directly to Langley from the motel. In the days that followed, the FBI and Justice insisted that Callar had to be formally charged so the murder cases could be closed. The CIA and Defense argued that a trial, or even an indictment, would cause a media frenzy that would bust open the deal that the United States had cut with the ISI. Anyway, Callar wasn’t contesting his guilt, so a trial would be pointless.

Whitby stayed out of the fight. He was holed up with the defense lawyer he’d hired the day after Wells and Shafer brought in Callar. The lawyer, Nate Marmur, was a former solicitor general who specialized in cleaning up these messes, cases where guilt and innocence hardly mattered, or even existed.

The argument festered for a week. Then the President stepped in. Callar would plead guilty to four counts of murder in federal court in New Orleans for killing Jerry Williams, Kenneth Karp, Jack Fisher, and Mike Wyly. He would avoid execution, instead spending life in prison.

Callar initially refused to agree to the deal and demanded a trial. He relented after being told that if he didn’t agree, he would be held at sea for the rest of his life held in the brigs of American aircraft carriers. He was also promised, in writing, that he’d be allowed to visit his wife’s grave once every other year.

The plea agreement, which was unusually short for a federal criminal case, said only that Callar’s wife had killed herself after working with the men on a secret deployment. The murders were revenge for her suicide. Task Force 673 and the Midnight House were never mentioned. After signing confidentiality agreements, the families of the four men were brought to FBI headquarters and allowed to see a redacted version of Callar’s confession and the physical evidence against him.

A week after Callar pled guilty, Whitby resigned as director of national intelligence, saying that he wanted to spend more time with his family. The President accepted his resignation with great regret and named Bobby Yang, an assistant deputy director of operations at the CIA, to replace him. Articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post explained that Yang’s appointment showed that Vinny Duto had beaten back Fred Whitby and retaken control of the American intelligence community.

Murphy resigned from the CIA the same day, his twenty-third anniversary at the agency. He and Whitby joined Strategies LLC, a K Street lobbying firm that specialized in representing defense and private security companies. Jim D’Angelo was never charged for erasing the names from the NSA database, though he was barred from future federal contracting work, the slightest of slaps on his oversized wrists.

THEN ONLY DUTO, Shafer, and Wells were left. A week afer Whitby’s resignation, Duto invited Wells and Shafer to his office. They arrived to find Duto holding a bottle of Dom Pérignon and three glasses.

“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “All your hard work.”

“Don’t rub this in our faces, Vinny,” Wells said.

“Aren’t you wondering if I knew what happened to bin Zari and Mohammed?”

“I’d break your jaw, but you’re not worth the punch.”

“I had no idea. So help me God. I mean, the deal with the ISI, yes, I knew. And there were rumors that the Midnight House, at the end, something was wrong. But I didn’t know what.”

“If you didn’t it’s only because you didn’t want to,” Shafer said. “Protect yourself from the scandal.”

“Don’t be such a cynic, Ellis,” Duto said. “Karp and Murphy never told me, and Whitby shut me down after we got that letter.”

It was at these moments that Wells felt his limits most keenly. These raw power games left Wells cold, and so he refused to play them. That attitude was a strength, but a weakness, too. It left him as a pawn for men like Duto.

“So, you called us,” Shafer said.

“I knew, I wound you up, you wouldn’t stop spinning until you solved the case.”

“And you figured the answer had to be bad for Whitby. Whatever it was. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to interfere.”

Duto twisted the champagne cork until it exploded across the room. Bubbly sunlight poured from the bottle. He poured the glasses full. Duto was in an expansive mood, Wells saw. His triumph filled the office like fog. Wells didn’t think he’d ever be able to drink champagne again.

“From the beginning, I should have been more involved with the Midnight House,” Duto said. “I knew we had to be in the mix, but I didn’t like the setup. Thought it could all blow up.”

“You figured, let the Pentagon handle it.”

“Then they hit the lottery, find this tape. And Fred Whitby rides it all the way to DNI. You think that’s good for the agency?”

“Now Whitby’s gone,” Wells said. “You’re right back where you belong. Top of the anthill.”

“Justice has been served, John. The killer caught. Congratulations. Have a drink. Well deserved.”

“A couple years ago, after China, I was so beat up. Exley, she told me, if I wanted to quit, I could. No one would judge me. Back then I thought, I can’t. I can’t be weak. But now I’m strong enough to be weak. I quit, Vinny. Effective immediately.”

“John—”

“Because it’s not about being weak. I’m sick of this game, that’s all.”

“Is this about Exley? I wouldn’t count on her taking you back.”

Exley. The magic word. Just hearing her name when he wasn’t prepared was enough to suck the air out of Wells’s lungs. “This has got nothing to do with Jenny.” Which was true in the strictest sense. Wells still hadn’t called Exley; he was headed for New Hampshire. Though everything was always about Exley. “This is about the stench coming off you. This is about the Midnight House. And that we know who killed Benazir Bhutto. And we’re not going to do anything about any of it.”

“Okay. You’re in charge, John. You’re the President. What do you do?”

“I go public.”

“And when there’s riots in Pakistan? And the nukes go missing?”

“We have to do something. We can’t let the ISI get away with murder.”

“What if we could do something? What if you could do something?”

TOO LATE, WELLS UNDERSTOOD that Duto had been leading him down this path all along. The floor seemed to twist under his feet. Was this what Duto thought he’d become?

He put a hand on Shafer’s skinny shoulder. “Did you know about this? ”

“Can’t swear to God, because I’m an atheist, but no.”

“I’m going to forget you ever asked me this,” Wells said to Duto.

Duto sipped his champagne. “You said it yourself. The ISI, they’re getting away with murder. And Tafiq is at the heart of it.”

“It doesn’t even make sense. We have a deal with him. Why would you want to get rid of him now?”

“We’d rather have someone we can trust running the ISI.”

“And killing the guy in charge is the way to get there? No. I’m not an assassin, Vinny. I came here to quit. My stuff’s packed. I’m getting out of this swamp.”

Wells wasn’t sure whether Duto was testing him or this offer was genuine. He no longer cared. More than anything, he wanted out of this office, out of this whole sick business.

“No problem. You’d have to quit. You couldn’t be connected with us at all, not for this.”

“Good-bye, Vinny.” Wells looked at Shafer. “If you had any guts, you’d come, too.”

Wells turned away, walked out of Duto’s office, slammed the big wooden door behind him.

But he couldn’t get away fast enough to escape the director’s last words. “Don’t kid yourself. You’ll be back.”