“Well, that’s the thing. The third man on your list, Anthony Mason, is located here.”
“Here as in the U.S.?”
“Here as in Washington.”
Kealey leaned forward in his seat, suddenly interested. “Well, that’s great. Have we picked him up?”
“No. As soon as the name went into the system, bells started ringing in Landrieu’s office at the NCTC.”
Kealey grimaced involuntarily. He harbored a strong dislike for Patrick Landrieu, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and the feeling was decidedly mutual. They’d had a run-in the previous year, but for Kealey, a petty disagreement was not the issue. He was far more concerned by the fact that the other man had managed to keep his job after a series of major terrorist attacks in the nation’s capital.
“The problem,” Harper continued, “is that we’re not the only ones with an interest in Mason. For the last three months, he’s been the subject of a joint investigation being run by the Bureau and the ATF. That’s how we knew his location.”
“You’re kidding me.” Kealey thought back to what Kassem had told him. “They want him for arms trafficking?”
“Something to that effect. I didn’t get the full picture, but here’s the interesting part. The Bureau’s stepped up their surveillance over the past week, and they already have a warrant.”
“When are they going in?”
“Today.”
Kealey stared at the other man in disbelief. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
Harper shook his head grimly. “I’m afraid not.”
“They’re doing it today? That’s not interesting, John. That’s… disastrous.” And also far too coincidental, he didn’t say. “If they’re forced to shoot him, we’ll be shit out of luck.”
“I realize that, but it’s out of our hands. When the senior FBI rep at Tyson’s Corner heard we were sniffing around, he told Landrieu in no uncertain terms that this was a very large, very expensive Bureau op, and that any interference would not be tolerated. So Landrieu, of course, made the call to Langley. Andrews nearly handed me my ass when he heard… We’re already in hot water for that little stunt you pulled in Fallujah. The heat isn’t just coming down from the White House, either. The Pentagon was distinctly unhappy with the way you misled Owen.
According to the director, the last thing we can afford to do is interfere with a DOJ investigation on domestic soil. That’s a direct quote, by the way.”
“That fucker Landrieu.” Kealey couldn’t restrain his anger. “The guy spent twenty years in the Agency, and he still stabs us in the back every chance he gets.”
“I hear you, but like I said, it’s out of our hands. We just have to hope that the Bureau brings Mason in alive, and that, at some point, we get an opportunity to talk to him.”
Kealey sat back in his seat and sipped the coffee, thinking about it. Of the three names Kassem had given him, Mason was the one he really wanted to talk to. The men who’d been killed on the Syrian border were Iraqi nationals, but Mason held American citizenship. Setting up secure lines of communication between Iraq and the United States would have been extremely difficult, which made it a good bet that Mason was involved at a much higher level.
And that brought him to something else. It was something that he’d tried to push out of his mind for the last twenty-four hours, but with this development, he could no longer ignore Will Vanderveen’s return to the ranks of the living. Vanderveen had joined the U.S. Army under false pretenses and had posed successfully as an American for years. Both Mason and Vanderveen had ties to Iraq, the latter man through Rashid al-Umari. Kealey knew it was entirely possible that the two men were connected by more than just circumstance.
He made a decision. “John, forget the hotel. I want to go out to the site.”
“Why?”
“I want to talk to whoever’s running things. At the very least, they’ll be able to tell us more about Mason than we can get on paper. Moreover, we might be able to convey how important it is that they take him alive. I mean, you said Brenneman wanted answers. You’d be surprised at what happens when you drop the president’s name.”
Harper considered the request at length. “Okay,” he finally said. “As it happens, I talked to one of the lead investigators in McLean this morning.”
This made sense to the younger man; McLean was just another reference to the NCTC, which was staffed by members of fourteen different government agencies, including the FBI and the CIA. It was one of the very few places where information was collated and disseminated within the U.S. intelligence community, though Kealey had never bought into the rhetoric. Based on what he had seen, the NCTC was no more effective than its predecessor, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, at minimizing interagency competition while maximizing output.
“She seemed willing to talk,” Harper continued, “so we might have an in. Just don’t push too hard, Ryan. Remember, this is their operation and their turf. They don’t have to cooperate.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
CHAPTER 13
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
They arrived at the staging area thirty minutes after leaving the runway at Dulles. Harper had spent half the trip on the phone, trying to get the location of the command post, as the Bureau rep at the NCTC just hadn’t seen the benefit in giving the CIA access to one of its ongoing operations. In the end, though, it was the use of the president’s name — as Kealey had anticipated — that settled the argument.
They were passed through following a brief examination of their credentials. The Suburban bounced over a concrete lip and into the parking area, where the driver pulled in next to a fleet of Bureau Crown Vics. Several agents in blue FBI windbreakers were standing around the vehicles, smoking and sipping from steaming Styrofoam cups, engaged in low conversation. Kealey got out and went to the rear cargo doors, where he opened his ruck sack and replaced his sweatshirt with a corduroy barn jacket. Then he tucked his Beretta into the waistband of his khakis, where the grip of the weapon was neatly concealed by the wrinkled folds of his coat. A few of the Bureau agents were shooting him curious looks.
Harper waved him over. “Remember what I said, Ryan. They didn’t have to let us in.”
The younger man caught the drift immediately: keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. He’d heard the words often enough that they weren’t really necessary; by now, the accompanying look was enough.
The command post itself was based on the second floor of a two-story walk-up. The room was overheated, despite the fact that someone was coming in or out every few seconds, and filled with agents and communication equipment. Clear plastic draped over the unused gear served as protection against the leaky ceiling, but nothing could be done about the sagging floors, which looked ready to give. A series of monitors on one wall provided numerous angles of the target building, which was located a block to the east. It was almost impossible to tell who was in charge, but Harper was already cutting a confident path through the crowd. Kealey trailed at a distance, swearing under his breath when he tripped over one of the numerous extension cords snaking across the scuffed wooden floor.
Harper stopped at a functional steel desk in the back of the room. Standing behind it was a young woman — mid twenties, Kealey guessed — dressed in a pale purple pullover and faded jeans. A black DeSantis holster containing a 10mm pistol was clipped to her belt, the shirt pulled behind the grip to allow easy access to the weapon. Her soft blond hair was not her own — a trace of light brown could be seen at the roots — but it was done well, and the color suited her brown eyes and lightly tanned skin. Her ears were adorned with small diamond studs, and she wore a thin silver chain at her neck, the bottom half of which slipped under her shirt. Kealey couldn’t help but notice how bright she was in the otherwise somber, darksuited crowd. She clutched a manila folder in both hands but seemed to be more interested in the phone that was pinched between her right shoulder and cheek.