When he asked for Predator surveillance she said, “No way” and ostentatiously swiveled toward her computer screen.
Dismissed, Charlie returned to the shipping container he called home, turned up the air-conditioning, drank half a six-pack, and imagined how lovely it would be to sell Nicola Rogers to the Hells Angels. Then he pulled off his clothes, ran through the shower, crawled into his rack, and thought about Irish Beth.
Four days later, Friday, 18 June, while Charlie was working a source on lower Hilla Road, Tariq returned. The Iraqi asked for Nicola by name and demanded four thousand dollars.
Nicola paid him every penny and even apologized for Charlie’s behavior. The reason: Tariq brought two “proof of life” videos. The first showed a South Korean, thirty-three-year-old Kim Sun-il, who had been kidnapped not twenty-four hours previously. A tearful, terrified Kim begged his hooded captors not to kill him.
The second was also a gem: new video of Keith Matthew Maupin. Maupin, a Soldier from Ohio, had been captured when his convoy was ambushed by AQI two months previously. There’d been no sign of him since the week after his capture. In this video, Maupin was kneeling, an AK to his head, with three gunmen standing behind him.
When Charlie got back they screened the DVD half a dozen times, Nicola murmuring “holy shit” like a mantra.
Charlie was impressed, too, but wary. “Did you polygraph Tariq?”
“No, I did not polygraph Tariq.” Nicola was visibly annoyed by the question. “C’mon, Charlie, this is pure gold. Besides, there was no time to box him.”
You numskull, thought Charlie, you make the fricking time. Charlie frowned. The timing-Tariq’s sudden appearance and these 24-karat videos-was almost too good to be true. Charlie knew from experience that when things appeared too good to be true, they often were too good to be true. His skepticism was wasted on Nicola, who told him he should take yes for an answer and then ordered him out so she could tell her boss what had dropped into her lap.
Charlie copied the DVD, went back to his shipping container, and spent the afternoon memorizing every tiny detail. He noted every crack and stain in the walls, every irregularity in the marble floors, even the cabriole leg of an armchair barely in the frame of the Maupin video. He froze the picture, zooming in long enough to identify a fleur-de-lis pattern on the chair’s upholstered apron.
Two and a half hours later, a beaming Nicola showed Charlie the opening screen of a PowerPoint entitled “Hostages in Iraq: A New and Important Development from Nicola Rogers.” Nicola was ecstatic: Baghdad’s chief of station had forwarded Nicola’s package to Langley as flash traffic. But that wasn’t all. She’d received an e-mail from the deputy chief of Iraq Group at headquarters saying he was putting her in for a cash bonus.
When Charlie gave her a quizzical look, she showed him all twenty-one screens. She’d composed a piece of fiction explaining how she’d developed Tariq Zubaydi as her AQI penetration agent. She’d used Charlie’s surveillance photos to illustrate the narrative. Charlie, unnamed, was described as “an American operative.”
“Well,” she said, misreacting to Charlie’s scowl, “he is my agent. I told him to bring me-and only me-every DVD they give him. He promised he would. I only paid him after he agreed.”
Charlie felt like puking. Or quitting. Going the contractor route himself. He and Beth had talked about it. She’d been in favor. It was Charlie who’d hemmed and hawed like he had a flawed gene. The same gene that kept him at the Regiment for almost twenty-six years. The same gene, when he was offered a quarter mil by one of the private intelligence outsourcers, made him turn them down and apply to CIA, where the Brahman at human resources told Charlie even with his code word clearances he was lucky to get a GS-14 salary because he didn’t have a college degree.
So here he was, still a cog in the federal machine. BGAlbatross tells lies and gets a bonus. And what does operative Charlie have to show for his scars? A master sergeant’s pension, the Silver Star, the two Purple Hearts, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Combat Jump Wings, and the four rows of ribbons in the shadow box on his living room wall is what.
And yet… and yet… when he actually accomplished something-taught a young Ranger tradecraft that might save his life someday, killed or captured a high-value target, worked a source who got him one step closer to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi- to Charlie, that mattered. Duty. Honor. Country. That mattered, too. Later, he’d tell Jose, “I’m fricking old-fashioned is why. A dinosaur, that’s me.”
So Charlie didn’t puke. Or quit. Instead, he stuck his desert-booted foot in the figurative door and browbeat Nicola until she approved Predator surveillance of bayt Tariq Zubaydi.
With Nicola’s support, there was a bird overhead by 1830 hours. Charlie watched real-time, noting the half-dozen-plus vehicles that visited Tariq’s house over an eight-hour stretch. Got a look at some of the individuals. Washed the identifiable pictures not through Baghdad Station but Langley’s Big Pond photo database and its newest VEIL (Virtual Exploitation and Information-Leveraging) software. And came up with a couple of palpable hits.
At 0320 hours he woke Nicola and made his sales pitch: Tariq’s knowledge of tradecraft, his unique access to real-time information, and his links to known bad guys all made him a viable target.
“It’s the duck rule,” Charlie insisted.
Just after 0400 hours, wilting under Charlie’s barrage, Nicola grudgingly admitted that Tariq quacked like a duck and was therefore probably more than just a grocer who spoke some English.
“That’s right-that’s why we gotta pick him up.”
“Impossible, Charlie.”
She was so fricking consistent. But this time there was way too much at stake to let her have her way.
“Nicola, don’t be obstructionist. This guy knows stuff. I saw it in the interrogation room. He knows people. I saw it in the Predator surveillance. We gotta grab him.”
“If we do, I’ll lose him as my agent. I won’t get any more videos.”
Geezus. Did she see nothing? “He’s not your agent. He’s probably Zarqawi’s agent. He’s a walk-in. An unvetted walk-in, no less. He’s probably target-assessing us for AQI.”
“An AQI agent?” Nicola’s eyes narrowed. “But I told Langley…”
“Let me bring him in-you can box him. Then he’s vetted. Then we flip him. Double him back against AQI, like I did Faiz.”
She looked at him blankly.
“The mole. Remember?”
Nicola’s eyes lost focus. She squirmed, her body language telling Charlie she was nervous her lies would be discovered. So he switched gears. “Y’know, I’m convinced Kim and Maupin are in Tariq’s neighborhood.”
BGAlbatross crossed her arms. “Headquarters says AQI warehouses hostages in Fallujah, not Baghdad.”
“HQ could be wrong.” Charlie played off her quizzical look. “Fallujah? It’s complicated and risky. Think about the logistics. Moving Kim north with all our coalition roadblocks and thousands of troops, secreting him, making the video, and then getting it back to Tariq? And all in less than twenty-four hours?”
She pursed her lips. “You have a point… I guess.”
He paused. “C’mon, let me bring Tariq in.”
He saw she was weakening.
“For chrissakes, Nicola, if we can pinpoint just one hostage.”
“But the consequences, Charlie.”
“Nicola, think about the consequences of not doing this.”
“Not doing?”
“An old sergeant major used to tell me, ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.’”
When her expression told Charlie she had no idea what he was talking about, he spelled it out. “Our main thing is hostages, right?”