Davis left, and they got back to work. Clark went first to the photos they had of the Emir, which weren’t many and were of poor quality. The eyes, he saw, were cold. Almost lifeless, like a shark’s eyes. No expression in them at all. Isn’t that interesting? Clark thought. Many said the Saudis were a humorless people-like Germans but without the sense of humor was the phrase a lot of people used-but that hadn’t been his experience there.
Clark had never met a bad Saudi. There were a few he knew well from his life in the CIA, people from whom he’d learned the language. They’d all been religious, part of the conservative Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam. Not unlike Southern Baptists in the thoroughness of their devotion. That was fine with him. He’d been to a mosque once and watched the exercise of the religion, careful to stay inconspicuously in the back-it had been a language lesson, for the most part, but the sincerity of their religious beliefs was evident. He’d talked religion with his Saudi friends and found nothing the least bit objectionable in it. Saudis were hard to make as close friends, but a true Saudi friend would step in front of the bullet for you. Their religion’s rules on such things as hospitality were admirable indeed. And Islam prohibited racism, something Christianity had unfortunately left out.
Whether the Emir was a devout Muslim or not Clark didn’t know, but the man was no fool, that much AESOP made clear. He was patient by nature but also capable of being decisive in his decision-making. A rare combination, Clark thought, though he’d been that way himself on occasion. Patience was a hard virtue to acquire, all the more so for a true believer in whatever cause he might have chosen as his life mission.
His computer manual had a directory of the Agency’s in-house computer library, and he also had references from the keyword EMIR access point. So Clark started surfing. How much did Langley have on this mutt? What field officers had worked with him? What anecdotes did they write down? Did anyone have the key to this guy’s character?
Clark shook himself out of his reverie and checked his watch. An hour had gone by. “Time flies,” he muttered, and reached for the phone. When the other end picked up, Clark said, “Gerry, John. Got a minute? Tom, too, if he’s handy.”
He was in Hendley’s office two minutes later. Tom Davis, The Campus’s recruiter, walked in a minute later. “What’s up?”
“Got a candidate, maybe,” Clark said, then, before either of them could ask the obvious question, continued: “This came from Jack Ryan-Senior, that is.”
This got the attention of Hendley, who leaned forward in his chair, hands clasped on his desk blotter. “Go on.”
“Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know all the details, but there’s a Ranger, an old hand named Driscoll, who’s landed in some hot water. Rumor is, Kealty is looking to make an example of him.”
“Over what?”
“A mission in the Hindu Kush. Killed a handful of bad guys in a cave while they were sleeping. Kealty and his AG want to hang murder on Driscoll.”
“Good Christ,” Tom Davis muttered.
“You know this guy?” Hendley asked.
Clark nodded. “About ten years ago, just before Rainbow started, I had a little job in Somalia. Had a team of Rangers working overwatch for me. Driscoll was one of them. We’ve stayed in touch, had a beer now and again. Solid guy.”
“How far’s this thing with the AG gone?”
“The Army CID has it. Preliminary investigation.”
Hendley sighed and scratched his head. “What’s Jack say?”
“He told me for a reason. He knows I’m on board here.”
Hendley nodded. “First things first: If this is coming from the White House, Driscoll’s not getting out of this unscathed.”
“I’m sure he knows that.”
“Best case, he’s separated. Maybe keep his pension.”
“He knows that, too, I’m sure.”
“Where is he?”
“Brooke Army Medical down in San Antonio. He got a little souvenir in the shoulder during the exfil.”
“Serious?”
“Don’t know.”
“Okay, go have a chat with him. Feel him out.” Then to Davis: “Tom, in the meantime, get a jacket started on Driscoll. Full background and all that.”
“Right.”
Come on in,” Ben Margolin told Mary Pat. “Shut the door.”
Another day at NCTC. More intercept traffic, more leads that could be something big or nothing at all. The volume was overwhelming, and while this was nothing new to any of them, most were worried they were missing much more than they were catching. Better technology would help, but who knew how long it would take to get the new systems up and running. The Trailblazer fiasco had made the powers-that-be gun-shy of another failure, so they were beta testing the hell out of the thing. In the meantime, Mary Pat thought, she and the rest of the NCTC scrambled, trying to keep the dike plugged while looking for new cracks.
Mary Pat closed the door as instructed and took a seat across from Margolin’s desk. Outside, the operations center hummed with activity.
“They shit-canned our outreach idea,” Margolin said without preamble. “We won’t be using any of the Brits’ assets in Pakistan.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Above my pay grade, Mary Pat. I took it as far as I could, but no go. My best guess: Iraq.”
The same thought had occurred to Mary Pat just before her boss said the word. Up against pressure from its citizens, the UK had been steadily distancing itself, both in policy and in combat resource allocation, from the Iraq War. Rumor was, despite his conciliatory tone in public, President Kealty was furious with the Brits, who had, he felt, left his administration holding the bag. Without the UK’s even nominal support, any plan to withdraw U.S. troops would be slowed, if not jeopardized. Worse still, Britain’s arms-reach attitude had in turn emboldened the Iraqi government, whose calls for a U.S. departure had gone from polite but firm to strident and belligerent, a trend American citizens could not help but notice. First our closest ally, then the very people we’d shed blood to rescue. Having run his campaign on the promise to disentangle the United States from Iraq, Kealty was slipping in the polls, and some of the TV pundits had gone as far as accusing Kealty of stifling the withdrawal to put pressure on Congress, which had itself been wishy-washy on some of their new President’s pet projects.
The fact that their request to enlist the Brits in following the Peshawar-map angle was denied shouldn’t have surprised Mary Pat, a veteran of more intragovernment political squabbles than she could remember, but it did nonetheless. This damned cave was the best lead they’d had on the Emir in years. To see it slip through their fingers over what amounted to a presidential tantrum was infuriating. Of course, it didn’t help that their DCI, Scott Kilborn, was himself a weasel.
Mary Pat shook her head and sighed. “Too bad Driscoll lost his prisoners.”
“A little water inhalation tends to loosen the lips,” Margolin said.
A popular view, Mary Pat thought, but of little use in the real world. She was neither squeamish nor such a Pollyanna that she thought torture did not have its merit, but generally those techniques fell far short on producing reliable and verifiable information. More often than not, it was a waste of time. During and shortly after World War Two, MI6 and the OSS got more information from captured German generals with a game of Ping-Pong or checkers than they did with a pair of pliers or electrodes.
The “ticking bomb” scenario so casually batted about was a near myth. Most plots against the United States since 9/11 had been broken in their infancy, as the bad guys were recruiting, or moving money, or putting logistics into place. The image of a terrorist with his finger hovering over a button somewhere while the good guys tried to squeeze info from his compatriot was beyond rare, a Hollywood concoction, and bore about as much similarity to real-world intelligence work as James Bond did. In fact, there’d been only one instance of the “ticking bomb” during her entire career, and John Clark had settled that in a matter of minutes by breaking a few fingers and asking the right questions.