Vince Flynn - The Last Man

A quick sound check with the men in the van verified that it was working. Coleman and his men then left the area, knowing that Wilson was at FBI headquarters. When Wilson left the building shortly after noon, a second team followed him home and was able to listen in on the bug. Nothing of real interest was reported other than the fact that the team thought they heard Wilson crying at one point. Having lost men in battle, Coleman had no respect for a man who cried over his own fuckups.

As the former SEAL listened to the dialogue between the senator and Wilson, he nodded with the confidence that he was going to be able to give Kennedy some actionable intelligence. If the senator was in fact getting his intel from a foreign intelligence asset, he had recklessly placed himself in a very precarious position. On top of that, they now had his game plan. The man wanted to hold public hearings.

Coleman transferred the audio file of the conversation onto his smartphone and then placed it in an email marked Urgent and sent it to Kennedy. He then asked the driver to pull over.

“Guys,” Coleman said to his two men, “stay with them and email me any updates.”

“Where are you going?” the wiry tech asked him.

“Zurich. Keep sending me stuff. I should be back in a few days.” Coleman closed the door and jogged off in the direction of his car.

Islamabad, Pakistan

Nadeem Ashan had endured difficulties before but none of them compared to what he was now going through. In the middle of dinner last night there had been a knock on the door. He had feared such an event all day, ever since a second video of Joe Rickman had been released. In it he had clearly implied that Ashan was an American agent. Ashan knew he needed to confront the lies, so he had gone directly to the director general’s office to state his innocence and to offer his assistance in any way that would help disprove what was an obvious attempt at disinformation. Ashan could tell by Taj’s tepid response that this was not a problem that would go away easily.

The rest of the day was businesslike. His counterparts both stopped by his office to lend their support. Durrani was confident that the accusations would be proven baseless. Lieutenant General Mahmud Nassir, the deputy director of the Internal Wing, offered his apologies that an investigation was necessary. Ashan and Nassir had never had a warm relationship, so the Chilly meeting did not seem out of character.

At the sound of the knock, Ashan’s heart sank. His wife had already spent much of the night crying, as she was friends with the foreign secretary’s wife and had seen how he was dragged from his house. It was not a big leap to think that the same thing could happen to her husband. When he opened the door he was not surprised to see Lieutenant General Nassir, but he was surprised to see his friend Durrani.

Before Nassir could speak, Durrani stepped forward and said, “I’m here to make sure you are treated with the respect that you deserve.”

Nassir remained as impassive as ever and motioned for his men to proceed. Ashan and his wife were put in separate rooms, and fortunately, Durrani went with Ashan’s wife to comfort her, as she was not prepared for a lengthy interrogation. Three men plus Nassir accompanied Ashan into his study and proceeded to interrogate him for six straight hours. Despite being asked multiple times to not smoke in his house, the men ignored him. Ashan made a mental note that when this was all over he would make sure these three were punished for their brazen disrespect of his rank. Nassir, on the other hand, was hopeless.

If it weren’t for Durrani, Ashan would have been a mess worrying about his wife. Shortly after ten o’clock his friend informed him that his wife had been allowed to go to bed. Ashan felt a bit of relief that they were being civilized with her, but that relief was short-lived. Durrani then informed him that Ashan’s son and daughter had both been picked up for questioning. His son was a doctor in Karachi and his daughter an engineer in Islamabad. His son would be fine, but his daughter was an extremely attractive young woman, and the ISI was not known for its restraint.

Ashan looked daggers at Nassir and said, “I am innocent of these charges, and will be cleared. If my daughter or son are harmed in any way, I will make sure that your children experience the same degradation.”

The threat probably had a fifty-fifty chance of working on its own, but then Durrani made sure it stuck. After unleashing a string of obscenities, he screamed a more vivid account of what he would do to Nassir’s children and then threw a few threats at his three men for good measure. Of the three deputy generals, Ashan was by far the most civilized and Durrani was the least. Fearless in his attacks against Pakistan’s enemies, he had a reputation for being ruthless that was wellknown by the men of the Internal Wing.

Nassir promptly excused himself so he could go in the other room and make it very clear to his men that he would execute anyone who did not treat Ashan’s children with absolute respect. A little less than an hour later, Nassir and his men called it a night. After Durrani’s graphic description of how he would have each of them sodomized, repeatedly, the men seemed to have lost their zeal.

Ashan thanked his friend profusely for his support. Durrani stated that if things were reversed, he knew that Ashan would do the same for him. Ashan went to bed wondering if that was true. He held his wife and nervously waited for his children to call. His daughter called first and wanted to know what was going on. He told her it was all a misunderstanding and was keenly aware that the conversation was being recorded. It took almost two and a half hours for his son to call, and neither Ashan nor his wife slept while they waited. Finally, after reassuring his son that everything would be fine, Ashan fell asleep with his wife in his arms at four-twenty in the morning.

Two hours later he woke, shaved, and dressed for work. When he left the house he noted the cordon of military vehicles and wondered if he would be allowed to leave. An Army colonel approached and informed him that he would be escorting him to ISI headquarters. Ashan was gripped with an ominous feeling as he climbed into the back of the unfamiliar vehicle. In Pakistan it was a national pastime to assassinate government officials in their cars.

The drive to the office was fortunately uneventful, but the morning was not. Ashan arrived to find out that all three of his secretaries and two of his deputies had been arrested during the night. His office was crawling with Internal Wing types who were pilfering confidential files. This was more than the intelligence professional could take. He left immediately for the director general’s office. Three assistants tried to stop him from entering, but Ashan pushed past. He opened the door to find Director General Taj and Durrani and Nassir. The look on Durrani’s face was not comforting.

“What’s wrong?” Ashan asked.

“Please sit.” Taj pointed to a spot on the couch next to Durrani.

Ashan remained standing. “There are men in my office. Men who are looking at classified files.”

“I am aware of that. You need to sit.” Taj pointed at the couch with his cigarette.

“Those men are not cleared to see those files,” Ashan said as he sat. “It is a major breach of protocol.” He looked at the other three men for some sign that they understood the enormity of the problem.

Taj looked at Nassir and gave him a sign to proceed. Nassir opened a gold file and held up a sheaf of documents. “Do you recognize these?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Give them to him so he can read them,” Taj ordered.