Gann’s expression suggested he conceded that the number of casualties was excessive. Otherwise, he remained confident of his actions. ‘I think that Charon guy is a federal agent.’
Hank looked at Mandrick for an explanation. Mandrick raised his eyebrows in denial.
‘I ain’t as stupid as you think I am,’ Gann said. ‘I figured out there was a fed agent on the ferry myself. Why else would we have to kill everyone? But now I think the only guy to escape the ferry was the only one who shoulda died.’
Hank’s jaw clenched. ‘You mixed my Talibutts with the regular prisoners knowing it would cause a riot because you think there’s a fed in the building? You know something . . .’ he said, pausing to control himself, ‘you’re so fuckin’ dumb I’m irritated just by the sight of you.’
Gann wondered just how problematic it really would be to kill a CIA agent. ‘I didn’t suspect it so much before the riot.’
Hank’s brow furrowed.
‘I always suspected there was something strange about the guy,’ Gann went on. ‘Right from when I first met ’im. Even before the accident. There was somethin’ about him, the way he was always lookin’ at people and things, but not in a normal way.’
Hank squared up to Gann who was a head taller and much broader. ‘I don’t give a damn if J. Edgar fuckin’ Hoover himself turned up for lunch . . . Federal agent my ass.You must think I’m as stupid as you are. I know why you want to kill Charon. He’s the only person who can finger you for the ferry sabotage.’
Gann smirked. Hank was completely right, up until the fight in the galley. ‘So I guess you’re not interested to know if one of my inmates is interested in one of yours?’ Gann looked smug.
Hank squinted at the oversized guard. ‘What’re you talking about?’
‘Like I said. Charon is a motherfuckin’ spy. He ain’t here to do time. He’s here for one of your Talibutts. I got proof, too,’ he said, producing a mini-CD from his breast pocket. ‘Take a look at it. It’s from one of the cameras in the galley.’
Hank took the CD, eyeing Gann suspiciously, placed it in a slot on the panel and hit the play button. Mandrick got up from his seat and walked around the desk to get a closer look.
An image of the galley looking down from above flickered onto one of the monitors.
‘This is just before it went off,’ Gann said, moving to the monitor to point things out. ‘While everyone else is movin’ towards the Talibutts, Charon and his cellmate Hamlin move back. They don’t want any of the action. Now, my boys move in . . .’
‘Your boys?’ Hank interrupted.
‘My job - orders from your boss, as I understand it - was to take out the people in that ferry and it ain’t done until Charon is history.’
Hank’s expression tightened. He glanced at Mandrick, wondering if he was in on this. Mandrick remained poker-faced.
‘Now look at this. Charon here wastes my guys in just two moves. He didn’t learn that in the joint . . . Then he starts to move back to safety. Remember, he don’t want any part of this fight. But then he sees somethin’ and in a second he’s the other side of the room and on top of one of the Talibutts. But take a look at this. He ain’t there for the fightin’. He even says somethin’ to the guy. Whatever it is, the guy gets mad and then the depressurisation got to ’em.’
Hank was not entirely convinced and replayed the last segment of the recording.
‘I don’t know what he’s doin’,’ Gann said. ‘But I know when something stinks - and that guy stinks.’
Hank freeze-framed on a close-up of the Afghan.
‘The Talibutt’s name is Durrani,’ Gann offered. He could see that he had scored with the video.
Mandrick remembered the name as the one Hank had given to him earlier when he’d asked him to carry out a pre-interrogation softening-up. He stared at the side of Hank’s head, wondering what was going on inside it.
Hank knew it was Durrani the moment he saw him on the monitor. The Afghan was the reason for his present visit. He pondered the various permutations of the situation, unable to make anything out of it at that moment. But the observations, if accurate, certainly gave food for thought. Cogwheels of possibility began to turn and click as an intelligence with twenty-two years of experience in the business filed the information in readiness for any future connections.
Hank had spent the last ten years specialising in interrogation and information-extrapolation techniques with Asian and Middle Eastern Muslim subjects. He began his Agency career in Pakistan near the end of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, spending much of those early days operating out of an office in the US embassy in Islamabad. For most of that period he liaised with the Saudi Arabian and Pakistani intelligence services in their combined efforts to finance, supply and train the Afghan mujahideen in order to oust the Russians. Then, when the Communist grip on Russia finally collapsed along with the Berlin Wall, Hank was already taking seriously the new danger shaping up to take its place in the form of Islamic fundamentalism. He was in Langley when Mir Aimal Kasi gunned down five CIA staff as they waited at the checkpoint to drive into the CIA headquarters. A month later in New York Ramzi Yousef parked a vehicle on level B-2 of the World Trade Center and detonated a bomb that killed six people in a cafeteria above. The two young men, both of Pakistani origin, neither of whom knew that the other existed, casually left the country on flights to Pakistan hours after their attack.
Hank moved to Afghanistan to begin the overseas hunt for them. He also got involved in several operations intended to kill or kidnap a dangerous upstart called Osama bin Laden. He lived through the formative days of the great jihad against America that eventually led to the successful destruction of the Twin Towers. He remained in Afghanistan to welcome the first American troops and followed them into Kabul to set up the Agency’s new offices. Hank played his part in the defeat of the Taliban only to then suffer the indignity of their subsequent reorganisation with the help of many of his ‘old friends’ in the Saudi Arabian and Pakistani intelligence services who had their own agendas that were far removed from his.
With the rise of the Iraqi insurgency after the US-LED invasion of that country Hank was assigned to aid in the setting-up of information-gathering cells around the world. But following the constant media attacks against Guantánamo Bay and the subsequent witch-hunt by many countries against CIA interrogation centres within their borders, he was grateful for a chance to take a key development role in what could only be described as a bizarre and audacious undertaking. Not only did Styx eventually open for business but it ended up yielding high-quality information while attracting the minimum possible outside scrutiny.When it came to security, media curiosity, eavesdropping and covert investigations, a prison beneath the surface of the ocean was like having one on the Moon. It was almost perfect . . . almost, but not quite.
Hank had never been under any illusion that Styx would last for ever. But he thought it would at least survive for a decade or two and, with luck, perhaps even see the Agency through to the end of the jihad. Now, after only two years, organisational cracks were starting to form in the administrative structure of the little oceanic citadel that he’d had such high hopes for. The FBI was trying to investigate the CIA interrogations as well as the so-called mining infractions by the host corporation. The media had become equally keen to report on anything to do with the prison.The White House was afraid of what the FBI and the media might find. And the only thing holding it all together outside the Agency was the greed of a handful of civilians who ran the place.The key, with them at least, was to ensure that their greed was not completely sated. Rumours that the mine was drying up did not help matters at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. He was in danger of losing the only glue holding it all together.