The Shadow Patrol

PROLOGUE

Marburg.

The trigger for everything.

What really happened.

The cab, a battered blue Nissan, pulled over a hundred meters from the front gate of the headquarters of Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate — the mukhabarat. The passenger handed over twenty Jordanian dinars and stepped out without waiting for change. He brushed imaginary dust from his tailored blue suit as the Nissan pulled away. The cars and trucks speeding by didn’t bother him. He was a light-skinned Arab, dapper and slim. He wore a thick gold bracelet on his right wrist, a steel Rolex on his left.

The gate guards were more puzzled than alarmed at his approach. His suit fit too well to hide a suicide vest. He didn’t look dangerous. But most Jordanians were wise enough to give the muk a wide berth. Especially ones dressed like him. Before he reached the gatehouse, two guards emerged, AKs at the ready. They put him on his knees and pulled a hood over his head and dragged him inside to explain himself.

His name was Dr. Ahmad Rashid. He was a cardiologist at a hospital in eastern Amman. And — as he told the muk and then the CIA — he wanted to go to Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, infiltrate al-Qaeda, and destroy it. He blamed al-Qaeda for the death of his brother, Farhad, who had killed himself a year earlier in a suicide bombing in Baghdad.

“This very day, one year ago. Twenty-two years old, but he could hardly read or write. If he went a few streets from our house, he was lost. A child. They filled his head with angels and virgins.”

Rashid’s potential was obvious. For nearly a decade, the CIA had sought reliable sources inside al-Qaeda, men who might narrow the search for Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Eventually, of course, the agency and NSA would track bin Laden to a compound less than fifty miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. SEAL Team Six would do the rest. But in 2009, bin Laden was still a ghost. The agency had no hard information on him. Rashid could fill the gap.

Assuming he was genuine, of course. Brad Stanley, the station chief at Amman, feared that Rashid might be a con man, or — worse — a double agent sent by al-Qaeda. But his story held up under scrutiny from Amman station and the muk. The Jordanians reported that Rashid belonged to a moderate mosque and wasn’t on their watch lists. Amman school records showed that his brother had dropped out in sixth grade. Army files confirmed a suicide bombing in Baghdad by a Jordanian, first name Farhad, last name unknown, on June 16, 2008.

With those preliminaries out of the way, Stanley decided that Rashid was worthy of surveillance. He put a four-man team on Rashid, led by Todd Laitz, his best watcher, maybe the best in the Middle East. For two weeks, Laitz and his men tracked Rashid. He jogged every morning at a gym in downtown Amman. He stayed late at the hospital most nights. He visited his mosque only for the Friday midday prayer, which was more or less obligatory. Laitz summed him up to Stanley in four politically incorrect words: “Even whiter than you.”

“Doubtful.” Stanley had played lacrosse at the University of Maryland, which made him practically albino. “What do you think?”

“I think there’s plenty of upside and we can limit the downside. I’d do it.”

Stanley agreed. So did the bosses in the Counterterrorist Center back at Langley. On July 16, the DO — as everyone still called the unit now officially known as the National Clandestine Service — approved Rashid’s recruitment. The CIA gave him the code name Marburg, after an African virus that caused its victims to bleed to death. The agency hoped that Rashid would do the same to al-Qaeda.

Running Rashid from Amman didn’t make sense. He was handed off to Marci Holm, a senior case officer in Kabul. Making Rashid report to a female operative offered another test for him. The agency believed that a genuine jihadi wouldn’t want to take orders from a woman. Plus Holm was a rising star, a tall, angular woman who had managed a half dozen successful ops in Afghanistan.

Rashid didn’t complain when he was told Holm would be his controller. Their first meeting came in late August, in Dubai. They walked the giant Mall of the Emirates as Holm gave Rashid a three-hour crash course on tradecraft. No dead drops or chalk marks, just e-mail addresses and keywords. Cricket to schedule a meeting, pulse if he believed he’d been discovered.

“You shouldn’t have trouble getting in and out,” she said. They were speaking English. Holm’s Arabic was good. Rashid’s English was better. “They won’t want to keep you in the mountains. They don’t have many men who can travel as freely as you.”

“Maybe they’ll want me to take care of them.”

“Even then they’ll let you leave to get the drugs you need to treat them. As long as they trust you, it won’t be a problem. And your brother martyred himself for them.”

“Animals.”

“They’re not stupid. You need to be cautious. No unnecessary risks. I don’t have to tell you what happens if they question your loyalty.”

“I understand.”

“But yes, we think they’ll accept you. We think it’s possible that within a few months you could meet their top men.”

“Bin Laden.” Rashid whispered the name.

“As far as we can tell, only a few people ever see him. Al-Zawahiri’s more likely. You understand, he sets the strategy. He’s the one who decides to use boys like Farhad as martyrs.”

“I know you don’t trust me,” Rashid said, apropos of nothing.

“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be here.”

“It’s all right. I’ll prove myself to you.”

They’d walked the mall twice, end to end, Rashid’s loafers clacking on the polished floors. Along the way they’d stopped at a Polo store, where he tried on a salmon-colored long-sleeved shirt. “Do you like it?”

“It’s very nice.” He’s not a terrorist, Holm thought. Can’t be. Terrorists don’t wear pink Polo shirts.

Now they had looped back to the mall’s signature attraction, its indoor ski hill, an almost criminal waste of energy, considering that the temperature outside was 101 degrees. But Dubai — like Las Vegas, its American twin — pretended to exist outside the laws of nature. Dubai created wants, and then satisfied them at a tidy profit. Put skiing in the desert, and people who’d never seen snow would buy twelve-hundred-dollar Prada jackets to skid down a two-hundred-foot hill. Yet Holm had to admit she enjoyed visiting the place, its glass-and-steel towers so unlike Kabul’s shattered blocks. She’d take endless consumerism over endless war.

Rashid watched the skiers. “Shall we try it?” As if they were on a date. His manners matched his clothes. He was old-fashioned, almost courtly.

“Not me.” She’d grown up in Oregon, snowboarding at Mount Hood. She wasn’t renting a parka for this foolishness. “But you should. Have you ever skied before?”

“No. But I shouldn’t make you wait—”

“Go. I’ll watch.” A bar overlooked the hill. Inevitably, it was styled as an après-ski lodge and called the St. Moritz Café. Holm sat by the natural-gas fireplace and sipped hot cocoa and watched Rashid ski. He moved cautiously, like most first-time adult skiers. But she saw that with a little training, he’d learn fast. He never let the skis run away from him. He saw her watching, waved. She waved back, and as she did—

Realized—

He’s too smooth. Has been all along. If he can pick this up this quick, then he can fool you a dozen different ways. Get rid of him. Burn him. Now.

SHE KEPT WAVING. The feeling faded as fast as a sunset. She had no reason to distrust this man. She felt as though she’d embarrassed herself, flinched in public. Though she hadn’t said a word aloud.

An hour later, he appeared, his hair mussed, grinning.

“Fun?”

“In point of fact, I enjoyed it enormously.”

“That means yes, right?”

“You missed out, Miss Simmons.” Her cover name.

“Next time.”

They walked to the mall’s giant parking garage and found the Toyota minivan she’d rented. There they went through the usual end-of-meeting housekeeping. She pushed five thousand dollars on him over his objections and gave him a Motorola that looked like a stock smartphone but was satellite-capable. “You get in trouble, you send the distress signal, we’ll come get you. Anywhere in the world.”

“Thank you, Miss Simmons. But I don’t intend to get in trouble.”

“Nobody ever does.”

“Until I see you next, be well.”

“You, too.”

He walked away without looking back.

BACK IN KABUL, she decided to tell Manny Cota, station chief, about her premonition. “Maybe we should slow it down with Marburg. Check him again.”

“What now?”

She explained. Cota was less than supportive. Much less. “I’m hearing this right, you want to lose this guy because you didn’t like the way he skied. Because he skied too well?”

“I’m telling you I’ve never had a feeling like this before.”

“And that’s good. I never pegged you as paranoid, Marci. You think those boys found this guy in Amman, convinced him to infiltrate us. And don’t forget the Jordies are on board, they think he’s a hundred percent copacetic.”

“I’m just saying—”

“And I’m saying we’re going to see what he gives us. You don’t want to be involved, okay. But this is happening. And if it happens without you, it won’t be good for you. Or Pete either.”

Pete was Peter S. Lautner, her husband, another case officer. They’d met five years before in Kabul, been together ever since. Like her, he was a rising star, just promoted to become the agency’s top liaison with the Afghan muk.

“You can’t put this on Pete.”

“It is what it is. Your career, his career, all tied up.”

Giving her something else to worry about. “Can I tell you something? You are a grade-A prick.” She tried to make her tone lighter than the words. She failed.

“Sticks and stones, Marci. I take it I have your cooperation.”

“As always.”

SHE TALKED the situation over with her husband that night, as they ate at the rough-hewn wooden table in their kitchen. Junior CIA officers lived in the Ariana Hotel. Even with wifi and a twenty-four-hour cafeteria, the hotel was depressing, its rooms low and dark, shadowed by tinted blastproof windows. More senior officers were assigned to homes in the walled zone around the hotel. Holm and Lautner had a two-bedroom brick house a block from the Ariana. Holm thought she might even miss it when they left.

She swirled a glass of the red wine she’d bought the day before in the Dubai airport, a thousand light-years away. “What do you think?”

He hesitated. “The guy’s been vetted pretty close.”

“You think I overreacted.”

“I wasn’t there, Marci.”

“I love you, husband, but that’s the wrong answer.”

But she knew she was beaten. The next morning, she filed her report on Rashid to Langley, hinting at her concerns in passive language only a bureaucrat could love. Marburg appears trustworthy, but it is important to note that his reliability has not been tested. Until he provides actionable intelligence, reasonable precautions as to his handling are dictated.

IN SEPTEMBER, Rashid arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani city that had been a jihadi hub for thirty years. As the CIA had expected, he connected easily with al-Qaeda. His medical degree made him useful. His brother’s death made him trustworthy. A few days before Halloween, he reported that three midlevel Talib commanders would meet in a village northwest of Peshawar. The agency confirmed the report with another source, and a Predator drone sent the Talibs into the next world with a Hellfire missile.

In mid-November, Rashid informed Holm that he’d seen a weapons cache hidden in a village near the Afghan border. Satellite overheads showed two pallets of artillery shells and a case of AKs. The CIA’s lawyers refused to allow a missile strike because of the risk of civilian casualties if the shells blew. Even so, the agency counted the tip as Rashid’s second success.

A few days later, he reported meeting two German Turks at a safe house in Peshawar. The men had come to receive training for an attack in Berlin. They hadn’t given up specifics, but Rashid had learned their names. The agency confirmed with its German counterpart, the BND, that the men were members of a Hamburg mosque known for its radicalism. They had left Germany three weeks before. CIA and BND agreed that they would merit a very close look when they returned. Rashid’s stock rose further.

Then he sent an urgent message requesting a face-to-face with Holm. They agreed to meet in the giant Pakistani port city of Karachi. The agency had two safe houses there, but the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency knew of both, so Holm preferred not to use them. Instead she picked a two-star hotel at random. Two-star hotels worked best for these meetings. They were crummy enough that the clerks didn’t ask questions, not so terrible that someone like her would attract attention.

She arrived at four p.m., two hours early. Two security officers and a tech operative were posted across the hall. The hotel was shabbier than she’d expected, linoleum floors and peeling yellow paint. It smelled of curry from the restaurant next door. Holm’s room, 308, was a ten-by-eight cell with a sagging twin bed and a broken television.

Holm locked the door, closed the curtains, and waved her handheld RF detector over the walls. Finding no bugs, she tucked the detector away and pulled a black lipstick tube from her cosmetics case. The tube was actually a fish-eye camera and microphone, with a transmitter that fed a recorder in the room across the hall. The images weren’t great, but the sound quality was excellent. She looked for a place to hide the camera, but couldn’t find one. Instead, she left it out on the nightstand. Men never noticed cosmetics. “Testing, one, two, three,” she said.

A minute later, she heard two knocks on her door, the tech across the hall letting her know the camera and mike were live. After that, she just had to wait. People outside the business never understood that spying was mainly waiting. Waiting for HQ to approve a mission. For a source to show up. For the excuse he’d give if he didn’t. For the nugget of information he’d been hoarding, lead disguised as gold. Waiting in dirty rooms, mall atriums, subway cars, armored Jeeps. Waiting and watching and hoping that the other side was just as bored.

AT 6:05, she heard three quick taps on the door. Then two more. She opened up, and Rashid stepped in. Though if she hadn’t expected him, she might not have known who he was. The dapper doctor in the thousand-dollar suit had become a white-robed villager with a scraggly black beard and sunken cheeks. He closed the door, sat on the bed, smoothed his robe. “Salaam aleikum, Miss Simmons.”

“Aleikum salaam.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. More important, how are you? You look different.”

“You think so? I don’t see it.” He smiled, and for the first time she recognized him. His smile, simple, almost shy, hadn’t changed.

“Are you hungry?” She’d put out bags of chips and bottles of soda. Case officers were supposed to have snacks at these meetings. Usually they went uneaten. Not today.

Rashid gulped down half a bottle of Coke. “I suppose I’m hungry. They took me to a camp. In the mountains. Then a missile hit another camp a few kilometers away. So none of us could go anywhere.”

“They blamed you for the attack?”

“No, no. Just when one camp is hit they keep the others quiet for a few days. They know that the drones watch for movement after an attack. So we were stuck. And this camp was low on food. We had to be careful we didn’t run out.”

“It sounds difficult.”

“I wasn’t used to it, that’s all.”

I was wrong, she thought. I should never have suspected you. Yet some corner of her mind still wasn’t convinced. The brave smile, the patchy beard. Was he acting? He couldn’t be. If he could pull this off, he belonged in Hollywood. If she wasn’t going to disappear into the counter-counterespionage funhouse, she had to believe in her agents. Anyway, Rashid had no reason to make up this story. He was a spy, not a charity case. He knew the agency would judge him on the intel he produced. Rashid — no, Marburg—had given them three solid reports in two months. Reason enough to trust him.

“But you got out.”

“On Wednesday, Abu Khalid — that’s the man who runs the camp, at least what he calls himself — said I could leave. Hamdulillah.” Thanks be to God.

“Abu Khalid.” Holm didn’t recognize the name, but al-Qaeda commanders regularly changed their pseudonyms. “If I showed you pictures, could you recognize him?”

“Yes.”

“And where the camp is?”

“No. They made me leave my phone, all my things, before they picked me up in Peshawar. Then they blindfolded me and drove for a long time.”

“Today’s Sunday. That means you left the camp four days ago.”

“Yes.”

“When was the bombing?”

“The bombing happened, I want to say, five days before that. Yes. Nine days ago. Friday night.”

“You have such a good memory, Rashid. So specific and detailed.”

“I do my best.”

Specificity and detail were good, in theory. She could check the time line he’d provided against records of drone attacks. But if he was a double agent, he’d expect her to check. He wouldn’t make up an attack, slip on something so obvious. So all his specificity and detail proved nothing, in the end.

“ ’Round and ’round we go,” she said. “Where we stop, nobody knows.”

“I don’t understand.” He opened another Coke, drank deep. His thirst, at least, was genuine.

“You’ve grown a beard, too.”

“All the men up there have them. I expect the next time you see me, it will be even bigger.”

“Unless they want you to shave it so you can travel more easily.”

“I think they want me to stay up there. That’s why I asked for this meeting, Miss Simmons.”

“Call me Marci. Please.”

“Yes. Marci. They’ve told me a top man is sick. Some kind of heart trouble. They say they want me to see him.”

“Do you know who?”

“They haven’t told me, no. From the way they’ve talked about it, I think it must be someone very senior. But Abu Khalid told me that if they even suspect I might betray this man, they’ll kill all my family. He showed me a picture of my house in Amman to prove he was serious.” Rashid’s black eyes were hard and desperate. “You must promise you won’t let that happen.”

“I guarantee, you get us al-Zawahiri or bin Laden, we’ll move your whole family to America. And don’t forget the reward.” The twenty-five-million-dollar reward the United States had offered for the capture of al-Qaeda’s top leaders.

“You promise that?”

“You’ll be a hero. You’ll meet the president. Now, please, tell me about the meeting with Abu Khalid.”

“After he showed me the picture of my house, he went through the man’s symptoms. That he feels tired all the time and has sharp pains in his chest that make him lie down. He asked what was wrong with the man. I told him the truth, my best guess. This man may have had a heart attack. Now his heart is giving out. Congestive heart failure, we call it. And the altitude and the cold make it worse. But I can’t be sure without seeing him. This kind of thing, you have to hear the heartbeat, touch the skin, talk to the patient.”

“What did Abu Khalid say?”

“He asked me, ‘If you see him, can you treat him?’ I told him it depends how sick he is. And the medicines he needs, some are only in Karachi or even Dubai. Abu Khalid told me to get everything that I might need. He said he would let me know in a few days whether they would bring me to the patient.”

Holm thought through the options. “Don’t push. Don’t reach out to Abu Khalid. Pressing will only scare them.”

“And if they tell me to see this man? Do you want me to bring some sort of transmitter?”

“No. If this is al-Zawahiri, they’ll strip you naked before they take you to him. Check every pill bottle you have. They may even make you take the medicine you’re giving him. One for you, one for him. They’ll be paranoid. They find anything suspicious, they’ll shoot you, be done with it.”

“So what do I do?”

“You treat him, Doctor. As best you can. Make him feel better. That’s the best way to make him trust you.”

Rashid nodded.

“Just don’t cure him or he won’t need to see you again.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Simmons — Marci. There’s no cure for heart failure.”

“Good, then. So you’ll help him. And the next time they take you to him, they’ll relax. A little bit. That’s all we need. But before then, we’ll need to meet—”

“We—”

“A few of us will want to debrief you.” You’ll be pure gold, and half the agency will want the credit for this, Holm didn’t say. For the next hour, she refreshed him on codes and contact information. He told her his plan. It was simple enough. He would buy the medicines he needed. Finding them would take a day or two. Then he’d go back to Peshawar and wait for instructions.

“Are you ready for this?” she said.

“I don’t want to make any grand speeches, Miss Simmons. But I’m sure in my heart that these men must be punished.”

“Good luck, Doctor. Go with God.”

“The same God for us all. I wish we could remember that.” He extended his hand and shook hers briefly. Then he disappeared. She listened as his steps shuffled down the hallway and the stairs and into the Karachi night. Trying to track him would be pointless, and anyway she knew where he was going. Back into the mountains. To trap Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Unless the trap was meant for her.

BACK IN KABUL, Cota was thrilled. The agency put a Special Operations squad on what was called “black watch.” The term meant the unit, a twelve-man team, couldn’t be used for any other mission, no matter how important. Basically, the squad was under house arrest at Bagram Air Base, waiting for a shot at al-Zawahiri.

Holm was in a similar position. Cota pulled her off her other jobs. A week after she returned, he stepped into her office at the Ariana and gave her a salute. “I shouldn’t tell you. But Duto”—Vinny Duto, the CIA director—“briefed the White House about the op.”

“We’re way ahead of ourselves. Marburg may not even get the call.”

“He doesn’t, no one’s going to put it on you. You handled him great. I watched the video from Karachi. He likes you, he trusts you.”

“I hope so.”

He sat down across from her. He tried to look sympathetic, but his tone was irritated. “So what’s wrong? You nervous that he’ll blow his cover, get strung up? He’s a big boy, he went in with his eyes open.”

“It’s not that.”

“Not the skiing, again. He’s not a double, Marci.”

“I like him, you know. He’s got better manners than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Better than me?”

“I’ve seen you pick your nose, Manny. You aren’t even in the same time zone.”

“Congratulations to him.”

“What if he’s too good to be true?”

“Marci. You keep forgetting, we’re not dealing with the KGB. These guys, their idea of tricky is Semtex instead of ANFO. No way they could run a double as sophisticated as this.”

“Maybe they got lucky with Marburg. We think we got lucky with him, right?”

“Give me something specific. Anything.”

“He’s not nervous.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even before I met him. The way he approached the muk in Amman. Walked right up to the gate. Who does that? He’s never nervous.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have a nervous disposition. Anyway, I saw the tape of you and him. He was nervous when he talked about his family.”

“Only for a few seconds, before he dropped it.”

“Because you reassured him. You did your job.”

“Or because he wanted to bring it up for sympathy, then let it go. He’s so afraid for his family, how come he didn’t ask for specifics of how we’re going to get them out of Amman? A written guarantee.”

“Written guarantee? You think he wants a contract that says, ‘If I deliver al-Zawahiri, my family gets free passage to the United States.’ What’s he going to do, keep it in his underwear?”

“I could hold it—”

“Then it’s really useful to him. Come on. You’re overthinking this. The guy’s a moderate Muslim, they do exist. He’s pissed that his brother killed himself, that’s a totally reasonable motive. Now he’s helping us. You’ve got evidence to the contrary, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

She had nothing to say. He rapped his knuckles on her desk.

“Good girl.”

FOUR WEEKS PASSED, no word. Despite — or because of — her fears about Rashid’s reliability, Marci was desperate to hear from him. For the first time, she understood what other case officers had meant when they said an assignment had eaten them alive. She felt almost literally as if she were being consumed. She hardly ate. She’d always been skinny, but now she could count her ribs. She pressed her husband for sex two and three times a day. Finally he rebelled.

“What you’re doing, it’s obvious.”

“I thought you’d like it.”

“Being used like a fence post so you can distract yourself. No. I don’t like it. I keep waiting for you to call me Marburg. ‘Oh, yeah, Marburg. That’s so good. Gimme some of that.’”

She had to smile. “I really have been unbearable, haven’t I? Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For putting up with me, you ninny.”

“Didn’t know I had a choice.”

She rested her arm on his chest. CIA guys came in three sizes: muscled-up ex-military types, trim guys who’d run in college, and chubby desk jockeys. Pete was a runner, with narrow shoulders and tightly knitted abs. “Have I ever told you you have a great body?”

“Never.”

“Well, you do.”

“I love you, Marci.”

“Love you, too.”

Outside, the wind howled from the north, promising fierce weather. She closed her eyes and slept without dreams for the first time in a month.

THE NOTE ARRIVED in her in-box the next morning. Rashid was supposed to use e-mail only to set up meetings. Instead he’d sent a full report — his first tradecraft mistake:

I have met our mutual friend. He is quite sick. In America, he would receive a pacemaker immediately. Unfortunately, I do not know where he is or how you can find him. They did as you suggested they would. I told them that to be searched in such a way was humiliating and unnecessary, but they insisted. This was in Peshawar. They even poured out my medicines and looked them over. They allowed me to keep the pills and bottles, but nothing else. They gave me new clothes, a robe and sandals. They put me in a van and blindfolded me and drove for hours. Then moved me to another vehicle.

When the second car stopped, I was led into a building. My blindfold was removed. I found myself inside a concrete room, no windows. I heard cars passing. After a minute my guards escorted me into another room with a long wooden table. They searched me again. This time they allowed me to keep on my clothes. We waited together — I don’t know how long. Finally, a car stopped outside. A minute later, our friend walked in, with four guards. He looked me over and said, “He has been checked?” and my guard said, “Completely.” He dismissed the guards, and I examined him. With the results I have already reported, I cannot do much for him here. Again as you suggested, his guards picked two pills at random from the bottles of medicine I’d given him and forced me to take them. I did not argue.

This meeting took place ten days ago. Until yesterday, I was confined at the house. They told me that they wanted to be sure the medicine “worked.” I told them that I was loyal and didn’t like being treated this way. Also that I wanted to consult with a specialist in heart failure to see if I could improve his treatment. Finally, they let me go. But I am sure they will bring me back to see him again.

I know I have gone on too long and that this is not the proper channel for this communication and I apologize. I am fearful now, but I believe that we have been given a great opportunity for justice. Whether they are watching me, I don’t know, but I am certain that I can find a way to disappear for a few hours if necessary. I look forward to seeing you soon.

THE NOTE WAS… PERFECT. Like everything else Rashid had given them. She forwarded it to Cota without comment. Three minutes later, he walked into her office.

“We’ve got to get a tracker on him. One they won’t find even if they strip him down again.”

“The pills could be the best way. They won’t check those twice.”

“Or he can tell them that he needs to bring some medical equipment this time. Point is, we want options for him when we meet him, and that’s going to take a couple days. Let’s aim for next week. At Holux.” Holux was a small CIA base near the Pakistani border. Two dozen CIA officers and contractors lived there, mostly directing drone strikes.

“You want to meet him on our base?”

“At least ten people are gonna be at this thing, Marci—”

“Too many.”

“Let him drive over the border, leave his car in Jalalabad, and we’ll pick him up and sneak him in.”

“Are you sure about this, Manny?”

“You don’t like it, you hand it off. I’m through debating. I reread the whole package, the walk-in, the surveillance in Amman, everything. And not just me. Both the Teds and Big Mike”—three of the top officers in the DO—“have looked it over. We agree. Marburg is clean. Marburg is gold.”

“I’m aware of the consensus.”

“You’re so worried about him, why’d you meet him one-on-one?”

“I had security across the hall.”

“We have a chance here to catch a guy we’ve been chasing a long time. End of story.”

Three e-mails later, she had set the meeting for Holux. As Cota had suggested, Rashid would cross into Afghanistan alone and meet a CIA pickup at Batawul, a village east of the camp.

BACK AT LANGLEY, the geeks in the Division of Science and Technology worked on trackers. A transmitter hidden inside a pill would have to be a low-powered radio unit that could be monitored only at close range. The DST preferred to hide a satellite transponder inside a heart monitor. When Rashid delivered the monitor to al-Zawahiri, satellites would autolock on him.

The night before the meeting, Holm couldn’t sleep. Around three a.m., she gave up, turned on a lamp. Her husband sat up, stretched his arms as if he’d been asleep, though she knew he hadn’t. “What if we’re wrong?”

“He’s already given us a bunch of guys. He’s proven himself.”

“I know I’m being irrational. Maybe it doesn’t make sense unless you’re a woman. But we’ve all had one of them. In college if you’re lucky, high school if you’re not. He’s older, picks you up at a bar. Doesn’t try to take you home that night. Gets your number, takes you to dinner, and he’s got a nice car. He’s so polite. Charming. Not like the stupid boys you know. You’re happy you dressed up for him. Then after dinner he takes you back to his place for a drink, and before you know it your skirt is off, and whether you want it or not, it’s happening. And when it’s done, he never calls again—”

“Did this happen to you?”

“I told you we’ve all had one of them. The point is, that’s the feeling Marburg gives me. He’s too good. Do anything to get in our pants.”

“Make sure they pat him down tomorrow. Before he gets inside.”

“I asked Manny and he says no. We haven’t searched him before, we can’t start now. Especially since he told us how much he hated those guys stripping him down.”

They were silent. Finally she said, “You know I can’t walk away now. It’s too late. Anyway, Manny has me believing I’m crazy to worry about this. Tell me I’m crazy.”

“The craziest woman I’ve ever met. Why I love you.”

She leaned over, kissed him. “Good night, sweetie.”

In the morning, she felt fine, chipper, even. She saw the truth. Marburg was not a double. He was her agent. He was about to give them Ayman al-Zawahiri. She showered and dressed and drank two big mugs of coffee and headed out.

The day was clear and crisp. A breeze splashed in from the mountains. They saddled up and flew to Camp Holux on two Black Hawks. The team totaled ten officers in all, including Cota and his deputy, the two top officers in Afghanistan. The most junior guy in the group was Tom Lautner, her husband’s brother, on his first tour in Kabul. He had been assigned to help provide security. She liked having him there.

The base was spartan, brick outbuildings that the CIA had rented from a local farmer, ringed with sandbags and barbed wire and low concrete blast walls. A South African contractor managed security, hiring Nepalese Gurkhas for the guard tower and locals to patrol outside the wire. In the one-room brick building that served as the communications center, Holm hailed Ted Khan, the officer overseeing Rashid’s pickup, on an encrypted radio.

“Stinson One, this is Holux, do you copy?”

“Copy. Awaiting subject. Over.” Even on encrypted frequencies, Khan wasn’t chatty. Holm was glad he was handling the pickup. He was half Afghan, and though he’d grown up near Los Angeles, he spoke perfect Pashtun.

Cota’s sat phone buzzed. “Yes, sir… Soon as we hear, sir.” He clicked off. “Erie wishes us luck,” he said to Holm. Erie was the code name for the deputy director of operations, the agency’s second-highest officer.

“It’s not even five a.m. back there.”

“He’s calling from home. Putting that encrypted line to good use.”

The radio crackled again a few minutes later. Holm reached for the handset but Cota grabbed it. “Firecracker here.” The code name for the chief of station.

“This is Stinson One. I have eyes on the subject. Umm, he’s wearing a jacket.”

“What kind of jacket?”

“A windbreaker type, not too puffy, but maybe loose enough to hide a vest. Request permission for a physical search.”

Do it, Holm mouthed at Cota. He raised a finger to his lips.

“Does he seem nervous? Head down, shuffling his feet?”

“Negative. He’s looking around for me, checking his watch.”

“No search. Subject is friendly and we’re gonna treat him that way. If you think he’s wearing a vest, you’re authorized to take action. But don’t be wrong.”

“Roger that. We’ll bring him in, then.”

The radio clicked off.

“Don’t say it,” Cota said.

“A windbreaker’s not his style. He’s never worn one before.”

“Come on. It’s thirty degrees. And I told Khan he was authorized to take action.”

“You also told him not to be wrong.”

“I think after today Marburg’s getting another case officer.”

They were all locked in, Holm saw. Cota was counting the promotions he’d get for running this op. The security guys would do what Cota said. She wanted to object, but it was too late.

Ten minutes later, Tom Lautner appeared. “They’re at the gate.”

THE OFFICERS FORMED an impromptu welcoming party outside the communications center. The gate rolled open and Ted Khan piloted his rusty old Toyota pickup through the chicane of concrete barriers just inside. Holm waved, and from inside the Toyota, Rashid waved back.

The pickup stopped a hundred feet from the CIA officers. Khan stepped out as Holm walked toward the SUV’s passenger side. Lautner and other security officers followed, their pistols holstered. Cota had told them no rifles. Too intimidating.

The front passenger door opened. Rashid stepped out, careful to make sure his gown didn’t touch the pickup’s muddy side panels. “Doctor—”

He stepped toward her. “Miss Simmons, salaam aleikum—”

Before he finished the greeting, she knew. His face was even thinner than it had been in Karachi. But under his windbreaker, his body was thicker. Squarer. Whoever had built the vest had done a good job. It wasn’t obvious. If it had been obvious, Khan would have been sure, instead of just worried.

But it was there.

Rashid took another step toward her. His eyes opened wide. He smiled. She saw he wanted her to know. He wasn’t nervous either. He was ready. He was looking forward to this.

“Bomb!” Holm yelled. “Bomb!” No time to say anything else. She pushed Cota aside and down—

Behind her the security officers reached for their pistols—

They were all too late.

Ahmad Rashid, code name Marburg, reached under his sweater and pushed the detonator on his suicide vest. The seven pounds of Semtex strapped to his body blew. The blast wave tore Marci Holm into pieces so small that her remains could be identified only by her wedding ring. It ripped off the back of Manny Cota’s head. It killed seven other CIA officers, including Tom Lautner. Marci’s body partly protected him from the blast. He might have survived, but the overpressure wave caught him awkwardly and snapped his neck. Six other officers were seriously wounded, Ted Khan worst of all. The explosion blasted the 4Runner’s windshield into shards that cut up his eyes before he could blink. In a way he was lucky. He couldn’t see what had happened to his face.

EVEN BEFORE the wounded were loaded onto medevac choppers for transport to Bagram and then Germany, the Critic-coded transmissions began.

EXPLOSION HOLUX… MULTIPLE KIA… MULTIPLE WIA… EMERGENCY TRANSPORT EN ROUTE… REPEAT EXPLOSION INSIDE WIRE HOLUX. PERIMETER SECURE NO FURTHER ATTACK. SUICIDE BOMB SUSPECTED. MARBURG ASSUMED RESPONSIBLE.

REPEAT MARBURG ASSUMED RESPONSIBLE.

In the days to come, the dimensions of the catastrophe would become evident. A less important station would have been temporarily shut. Not Kabul. Not for a month or a week or even a day. Not with the Taliban spreading and the Afghan government too corrupt to function. Not with al-Qaeda regrouping over the border in Pakistan. Even before Manny Cota was buried in Georgia, Duto and his deputies on the seventh floor at Langley were deciding who would replace him. Duto himself flew to Kabul to rally his officers.

“We’ve lost a battle,” he said. “A terrible battle. The war goes on.”