David Ignatius - Bloodmoney

“What’s going on?” Gertz asked. “This looks like a suicide watch.”

“It’s Howard Egan,” said the watch officer.

“What about him? He’s in Karachi.”

“He’s gone missing. He was supposed to be at a meeting nearly an hour ago, but we can’t find him.”

“What are you talking about? That meet is tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Steve?”

He turned to the operations chief, who was older than Gertz by about ten years and whose body was as lumpy as Gertz’s was fit. He had been in the ops job three months. The rumor was that he had been sent by Langley to keep an eye on Gertz.

“Change of plans, apparently. Sophie’s read the traffic.” He turned to Marx.

She stepped forward, toward the boss. She was trying not to think that this was her fault.

“The asset wanted to change the meeting time,” she said. “Egan messaged us about six hours ago to say that it had been moved up. He was supposed to be there at nine p.m., Karachi time-nine a.m. our time. But he missed the meet.” She looked at her watch. “He’s now almost an hour past due.”

“Call his BlackBerry. Tell him he’s late. Ask him where the hell he is.”

“We did that. No answer.”

“Flash message?”

“No answer.”

Gertz stroked his goatee as he pondered the possibility that this wasn’t just a screw-up.

“What about the asset he’s supposed to be pitching? The tribal guy.”

“The asset is waiting for Egan, at the place they agreed. There’s just no Egan.”

“Have you called the access agent, the Pakistani who set this up?

“Yes, sir,” said Marx. “His crypt is AC/POINTER, true name is Hamid Akbar. And yes, we’ve tried that. He isn’t answering his phone, either.”

Gertz shook his head. This day had started off so reasonably. The bad news didn’t fit.

“Maybe Egan is spooked,” he said. “He got the jitters the last time he was in Karachi, aborted two meetings. Maybe the same thing happened this time. He’s just freaking out somewhere, having a drink and looking at shadows.”

“Maybe, but we don’t think so,” said Rossetti, the operations chief. “We’re still tracking his BlackBerry signal. It’s been on the move for the last two hours, plus. He’s just not answering.”

Gertz shook his head. The room was quiet. He looked at Rossetti.

“Christ. This is bad.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Gertz stared at the floor, trying to compose himself. The color had drained from his face. It was almost as if he were embarrassed that something had gone wrong. His people weren’t supposed to make mistakes. They had big hearts. There was a dead quiet, which Rossetti filled.

“What’s Egan’s cover job?” asked the operations chief. It wasn’t on his cheat sheet. He was new. He still didn’t know most of the network.

Gertz was still looking at the floor, stroking that goatee some more. Marx broke the silence.

“He works for a hedge fund in London called Alphabet Capital. The only person there who’s witting is the chief executive.”

“Perkins,” said Gertz. “His name is Thomas Perkins.”

“That’s not very secure,” said Rossetti. “Why doesn’t Egan have his own platform?”

Gertz frowned. He didn’t like being quizzed by his operations chief.

“He’s a legacy, Steve. Blame your friends at Headquarters. Where’s Tommy? He can explain it.”

Tommy Arden, who as head of Support was responsible for organizing cover, scurried forward.

“He was a holdover from the old NOC group,” said Arden. “We got him from the Global Deployment Center. He’d been working for another investment company in London. We found him a new cover. It seemed to work, until about an hour ago.”

“Who knows he’s traveling?” asked Gertz. “Does he have a wife and kids?”

“Nope, he’s the usual NOC loner.”

“Good, that’s fewer people to notify.”

Gertz was being a hard-ass, but that wasn’t right. Not today. To be a leader, you had to take the lead.

“Okay, when London wakes up I am going to call Perkins and tell him that his man is missing. He’ll have to put out a statement. Otherwise, zip it. Total radio silence. Understood?”

Sophie Marx nodded assent, along with everyone else. She watched as the group fell away. She wasn’t a religious person; her counterculture parents, when they had thought about religion at all, had told her it was lies and nonsense. But as she thought about Howard Egan, gone missing halfway around the world in a frightening city, she asked God to watch over him.

Marx recalled her last conversation with Egan. She wished now that she hadn’t told him to “suck it up” when he had expressed anxiety about the mission.

Jeff Gertz bulled into his office, Steve Rossetti trailing behind. The others understood that they weren’t needed anymore. It was a room with a view, but only of Ventura Boulevard. On the walls were trophies Gertz had collected from various assignments: a rich silk tapestry that the crown prince of Morocco had sent in gratitude after he ascended to the throne; a laughable portrait of Saddam Hussein dressed as a tribal sheikh that he had brought out of Baghdad; a miniature marquee that said, in looping neon script, “The Hit Parade,” which he had ordered from a signage company in West Hollywood when his crazy experiment was approved; and behind his desk a picture of the Twin Towers with a long Chinese quotation whose meaning Gertz shared with his intimate colleagues. This was his kingdom, but it was about to be turned upside down.

Gertz sat down in his big black leather chair, and then bounded up again and stared out the window at the traffic heading north on Ventura toward the studios. Part of his problem was that he didn’t trust most of his colleagues. He thought they were soft, sapped by an intelligence culture that tolerated weakness and poor performance. They had small hearts. They lived in the visible world. Gertz wouldn’t have said it out loud, but he regarded Howard Egan as a weak man; now the strong ones would have to bail him out.

“This is a shit storm,” muttered Gertz. “What have we got nearby?”

“In Karachi, nothing of our own,” said Rossetti. “There’s a consulate, and I think Headquarters still has a base there.”

Rossetti spoke slowly and precisely. He was a company man, a slow roller, and he was scared that he would get blamed if things went wrong. But Gertz wanted action.

“Could we send in a traveler, in a hurry? I want to keep this close.”

“Sure, but it would be insecure, moving that fast. It’s easier to use the guy in the consulate.”

“Goddamn it,” said Gertz. He hated having to depend on Headquarters for anything. It only confirmed the old boys’ wisdom that his new outfit was fine until the chips were down. Then it needed help from the old structure.

“I’ll call Langley in a minute,” he said. “Let me think. Where’s the nearest extraction team?”

“Bagram,” said Rossetti. “They’re saddled and ready, twenty-four/seven.”

“Well, call them. Tell them we may need them in a hurry, but don’t tell them why yet.”

“Sorry, Jeff, but we need an okay from Headquarters to call Bagram. Those are military assets. We don’t have the authority to task them.”

“That ask-permission crap was supposed to be over.”

“That’s not what Headquarters says. You want me to call CTC and find out what they’ve got cooking?” Rossetti, among other things, was the liaison to the Counterterrorism Center, where Gertz had worked in a previous assignment.

“Ask them what’s going on in the Tribal Areas. From what I hear it’s the same crazy shit out there. Tell CTC that if they have any Preds up today, maybe this one time they could hold off blowing people away, until we get our guy back.”