Alex Berenson - The Midnight House

“A few more minutes,” Shafer said.

“A few.”

“After you got back, did you stay in touch with the rest of the unit?”

“Colonel Terreri and I had lunch a couple times before he got sent to Afghanistan. I saw Karp upstairs once.”

“How about Fisher?”

“Talked to him once or twice. No one else. It was an ad hoc deployment, and we got scattered.”

“You didn’t know what was happening to the unit. The deaths.”

“Of course I did. We all heard about Rachel. Not right away, but we heard. Then Terreri sent me an e-mail that Mark and Freddy”—the two Rangers—“were KIA. Then Karp. By then we were all wondering a little bit. I remember saying to Fisher, ‘What’s the story? Somebody put a curse on us?’ But we didn’t know that Jerry was missing. I know it looks obvious in retrospect.”

“You don’t seem nervous.”

“Should I cry for Mommy?”

“Can you think of any reason someone might be after the squad?”

“Beyond the fact that we put the screws to some bad actors?” Murphy drummed his fingers on the table. In contrast with his neatly tailored clothes, his nails were jagged, bitten nearly to the quick. “My ass on the line. I’ve thought about it. I don’t know.”

“What about Alaa Zumari? ” Shafer said.

“I can’t tell you anything that’s not in the file.”

“Haven’t seen the file,” Shafer muttered into his teeth.

“Say again?”

“I said I haven’t seen it. Not yet.”

“You’ll have to work that out with Vinny.”

“How about you walk me through it?”

“How about not?”

Shafer wanted to reach across the table and slap Murphy, but in a way he was right. Duto had started this charade, asked him and Wells to try to find a killer without the background information they needed.

“Any chance Alaa Zumari’s connected to this?”

“If we thought he was a terrorist, we wouldn’t have let him go.”

“Maybe he lied. Withstood the pressure somehow. Could he have figured out who was on the squad? Your real names?”

“We were pretty tight about opsec. Never used real names with the detainees.”

“The Poles? Could they have leaked your names?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Could anyone inside the unit be responsible for the killings?”

“You asking if I’m the killer? I’m gonna have to say no.”

“How about Hank Poteat? Or Terreri? Or Jerry?”

“I told you, Poteat wasn’t part of the squad. The colonel’s in Afghanistan. Jerry’s dead.”

“What if he’s not?”

The question stopped Murphy. He ran a hand down his tie, flipped up the tip, looked at it as if the fabric might hold the answer. “Jerry had a temper. And he was having problems with his wife, we knew that. And he thought he deserved a promotion. He quit when he didn’t get it. But I don’t see him taking it out on us.”

Murphy pushed himself back from the table. “Mr. Shafer. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I have to get to work. I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.”

“Before you go,” Shafer said. “Tell me about the C-one drop.”

“What about it?”

“Eight million for ten guys for sixteen months? Nice work if you can get it.”

“Two hundred grand a month to the Poles to rent the barracks and the guards. Payments whenever we landed a jet. A million for coms gear that we bought over there. Charter flights.”

“You keep receipts?”

“Of course. We wanted to leave a nice long paper trail for all those congressional investigators. And the Justice Department.”

“I take it that’s a no.”

“You take it correctly.”

Shafer leaned forward in his chair, flared his nostrils like a terrier on the scent of a rat.

“Let me make sure I understand. You worked for a guy who stole one-point-two million dollars in Iraq. This squad, you’re in charge of eight million. And you don’t keep receipts.”

“I got verbal approval for anything over twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“From who?”

“Somebody in Sanchez’s office, usually.”

“Anybody keep records of those conversations?”

“Colonel Terreri knew where the money was going.”

“Terreri. He’s not dead yet, right?”

“You have something to ask, ask it,” Murphy said. The vein on his forehead had popped out again, visible proof that Shafer’s bluff had scored.

“Maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow, when the Feebs come to town.” Suddenly, Shafer understood. Every so often he had a flash like this, the pieces fitting together all at once. “Six-seven-three was your career saver? Guess again. You put in for it figuring on the unrestricted drop. Figuring you could skim. You saw Gessen’s mistakes. And you would have gotten away clean, if not for the murders.”

“Only one problem with that theory. It’s been investigated. And I’ve been cleared. No evidence of wrongdoing, and that was that. I’ve got it in writing. Now, you want to talk to me again, you call my lawyer.”

Murphy pulled open the conference-room door, walked out, slammed it shut behind him hard enough to leave a hairline crack in its porthole-shaped window.

“New construction,” Shafer said to the empty room. “Can never trust it.”

For two days, Wells cooled his heels at the Lotus, leaving only for a quick trip to the Intercontinental. The move was risky, but if his room stayed empty too long, the hotel’s managers might get nervous. Wells stayed an hour, long enough to muss his bed, take a shower, and have a brief conversation with Shafer on an innocuous Long Island number that routed through to the agency.

“Mr. Barber,” Shafer said. “How’s business?”

“I’m worried our client has another bidder. A local agency.”

“Maybe you should work together.”

“I think our needs are different.”

“You’re the man on the ground, so I defer to you.”

“Your man in Havana.”

“You’ve been reading again, I see,” Shafer said.

“Despite your warnings.”

“I recommend The Comedians. It’s excellent. Anything else I should know?”

“Probably, but I don’t feel like telling you.”

Shafer sighed. “Your honesty, so refreshing.”

“Have you learned anything new about my client?”

“No, but I did have an interesting talk with our friend Mr. Murphy,” Shafer said. “I’ll fill you in when you get back.”

“Something to look forward to. How’s Tonka?” After much protesting, Shafer had agreed to take the dog while Wells went to Cairo.

“She’s developed a taste for the rug in the living room. Aside from that, fine.”

“She miss me?”

“Without a doubt. Every day she leaves a note at my door asking when you’re coming back.”

“Good-bye.”

Wells left his air-conditioned room unwillingly. No question, he was getting soft. “A luxury once tasted becomes a necessity.” Wells didn’t know who’d popped that kernel of wisdom — someone richer and wit-tier than he, no doubt — but he had to agree. He needed to spend a few months in Haiti or Sudan, unlearn his bad habits.

Back at the Lotus he passed the time watching Al Jazeera and Lebanese soap operas. He figured he could wait a week, at most. If he was right and Hani was a mukhabarat agent, the Egyptians would put a tail on him soon enough — or just break down his door and arrest him. Part of him wondered why they hadn’t done so already. Probably because they didn’t want to scare him back to Kuwait, blow their chance at Alaa.

Or maybe Wells had gotten paranoid as well as soft. Maybe Hani was just what he seemed to be, a dedicated Islamist who had nothing to do with the police.