“Then why aren’t there records at CIA?”
“Because it’s extra-governmental. It’s outside of CIA, even if it looks like they maintained connections.”
Lopez felt his stomach drop. “This doesn’t sound very good. Why would they pull it out of CIA?” He continued to read through the names. “Wait. Sara — I know some of these names.” He pointed to one of them. “Mitchell Longman, marked April 2010.”
“Who?”
“He was an activist for HRW.”
“That crazy lobbyist for Human Rights Watch? The Sapos guy?”
Lopez nodded. “Yes. I donated to HRW. Have a card.”
“He was a giant pain in the side of the counterterrorist movement.” Houston looked up at him. “So what happened in April 2010?”
“He killed himself. Jumped off his New York City balcony.”
Houston sat upright stiffly, looking between Lopez and the screen. “Holy shit. Francisco, there are a lot well-known names here.”
Lopez looked again, trying to make associations. Several names were meaningless to him. But as he looked over the list, too many were not. Prominent Muslim activists. A CEO. Political lobbyists. A colonel. He felt dizzy.
Houston sounded hyper. “This is Alicia Whitley — the first-term Tea Party candidate from Iowa. You know, the one who went nuts about violations of the Constitution with the 2012 Defense Authorization Act.” Lopez nodded. “She died in a car crash six months after it was passed. And this! Brian Nurse, Colonel Brian Nurse, who testified against indefinite detention and torture in 2009, riling the new Obama administration. Francisco, he had a heart attack a year later.”
Lopez pointed to another name. “Charles Kenneth Thorington Gunter, the Third. Can’t forget a name like that.”
“The CEO of that solar company?”
“Yes! He was a big deal. One of the few American companies that matched Chinese panels in prices. New England blue blood do-gooder — your type.”
“Yeah, he was in the papers a lot. Investigated by Congress and the FBI for fraud. Big brouhaha.”
Lopez nodded. “But only after he started his charity, HabeasNow.”
Houston nodded vigorously. “I remember! HabeasNow — they raised millions for litigation of terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo. They were flooding the courts with writs of habeas corpus. Public enemy number-one in several CIA divisions and the DOJ.”
“He’s dead, too, Sara. His private jet went down six months ago in New Jersey. Look at the date next to his name!”
Houston put her fingers to her forehead, pressing firmly. “I don’t want to look.” She closed her eyes. Her hand over the computer mouse tightened into a fist. “Oh, my God, Francisco. This isn’t real. This can’t be real.”
Lopez pulled up a chair and sat down. It was too much, the surreal nightmare swirling around him. In front of them was the earth-shaking evidence that these rogue CIA teams had gone far beyond mere efforts to stop terrorism. In front of them was evidence of the murders of political and cultural figures. Assassinations, he forced himself to acknowledge. Assassinations of figures who had exerted influence in attempting to end controversial CIA and military practices like torture and extraordinary rendition. Figures who were silenced, their causes thrown into disarray, their impact erased.
“This finally all comes together,” said Lopez, the satisfaction of the jigsaw fitting together not dispelling the full horror of the image revealed. “They had to bury this, and now, they have to bury us, and anyone who gets too close to the truth. If this gets out, it wouldn’t just lead to a scandal and jail. It could lead to a damn revolt.”
Houston nodded, scrolling through the pages of the document. “The killers wanted us to see this, Francisco. Not us, but whoever discovered this…. scene,” she trailed off, gesturing around her. “Miller wouldn’t have just left this file open.”
“Maybe he didn’t have time to close it.”
“Maybe. But it feels like more. Feels like ruination.”
Lopez turned toward Houston and put his hand on her arm. “But at least one name isn’t with the other agents on this list.”
“No,” answered Houston. “Miguel isn’t here.”
“Does that mean he didn’t go along with it? Wasn’t involved?”
Houston shook her head. “I don’t know for sure. How could he not have known? All those years as part of the rendition teams?”
“Assassination teams, you mean.”
“Yes,” she said, swallowing. “It couldn’t have started out that way. I can’t believe that. Miguel wouldn’t have signed on — that much I know about him. He had a different vision of America.”
Lopez sighed. “After 9/11, no one knew what to do. Extraordinary events seemed to require extraordinary actions. That’s what Miguel said in the church that night. He said he only wanted to protect us all. It was the last time I saw him.” Houston leaned her head against his shoulder. Lopez reached his hand up and stroked her head. It seemed like the only sane action in the middle of this madness.
“But not Miguel. He’s not here. Whether or not he knew about the assassinations, we may never know. But he’s not part of the team. Thank God for that.”
“Amen,” said the former priest. He uttered a silent prayer for his brother’s soul. Be at peace, Miguel. We know not what we do.
Houston had straightened up and was scrolling through the document. “Page two,” she said. Lopez read a new set of names, several of them well-known senior officials formerly at the CIA. “Here are the directors, the organizers of this nightmare. Miguel’s killer has served them up on a silver platter.”
“Then we need to pay these men a visit,” said Lopez, his voice strained. He was angry again. “But we can’t go public! They’ve taken away all our options. They’ll just throw us in a cell and lose the key. No one will believe our rantings.”
“Even if they did, I think we’re beyond due process now, Francisco. We’re in a game where people disappear their political opponents and kill them. We’ll be dead.”
Lopez exhaled. “The rules are different.”
Houston raised her gun and stared at it. “There are no rules, and we’re running out of time.” She stood up suddenly, put her weapon away, a fiery look in her eyes. “We have to find these leaders. What we’ve discovered is bigger than the murders of CIA agents. It’s bigger than extraordinary rendition of American citizens. It’s fucking Orwellian. Time to locate the architects of this death squad. These men have to be put away for life; they’re more dangerous than Miguel’s killers. They’re a cancer inside the body of our government.”
“But how do we find them? These are big names,” he said, looking over the document pages again. “Their addresses are here, amazingly enough. But if they’ve been keeping up with current events, I bet they’re in their own private foxholes by now.”
“No doubt. But we have Fred Simon,” she said, removing the smartphone and photographing the screen. She panned through all the data they had discovered on Miller’s computer, uploading the photographs to a secure and anonymous server they used for private storage. “We’ll be asking everything from him, but I know him, Francisco. This will break his heart. Make him sick. And after a few minutes, make him very angry. He’s got contacts, remember? The Watchmen. He’ll do everything he can to dredge this muck up and get it out of the Agency. He’ll find where they’re hiding.”