Jack Coughlin - An Act of Treason

The FBI agent felt sweat beneath his armpits. “How do you know all of this?”

That brought a gruff laugh from Zaman. “Do you believe that you are the only investigators here? This is my country, Special Agent Silver, and we have put everything we have into finding out what happened here yesterday and what caused it. Our techniques can be quite different than your American standards, particularly in the wake of such an atrocity. We are quite comprehensive, and have numerous sources.”

“Well, General, all I can say right now is that I am completely baffled by your statement, and completely unaware of any involvement by my country.”

“Then let me give this file to you. From the rubble of an apartment house, we recovered two bodies with gunshot wounds to their heads. They were a pair of Taliban gunmen, according to our people. Some local police apparently heard the shots, just before the explosions, pursued this man Swanson, and eventually captured him.”

Silver rubbed his knees, a sign of nervousness. “We want to interview him.”

“Naturally. Have someone from your embassy contact the Foreign Office to arrange it.” The ISI official slowly pulled on the cigar.

“No, General. I mean we need to talk to him right now, to begin our own investigation.”

Zaman shook his head. “That is not possible.”

“You refuse my request?”

“Not at all. I just want you to go through proper channels, Special Agent Silver. Enough of the cowboy stuff, doing whatever you want to and whenever you want to do it in our country. The government of Pakistan will cooperate, and in the proper manner. Meanwhile, Swanson stays where he is, in our protective custody.”

“I will protest this with the ambassador.”

Zaman waved away the complaint. “Fine. Meanwhile, if you want to do something productive, take a look at that envelope in the file. We have been unable to identify Swanson’s accomplice. Police were closing in on him when the explosions began, and he was blown apart and buried. One of the officers managed to reach what was left of the body before fire consumed everything. He thought fast enough to use his knife and shear off a sample that should help identification through DNA and international police databases. We would appreciate the FBI putting its computers to work to help on this particular front, since we are overwhelmed at the moment.”

Silver opened the big folder and found a smaller envelope, sealed, with something lumpy inside. He tore open the flap and removed a square, transparent ziplock bag. Inside was a human finger.

J IM H ALL STOOD BEFOREthe huge window in the spacious living room of the Royal Ocean Suite of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, on the coast of Dubai. Maroon curtains flanked the impressive view of the water and the white yachts, while thin, sheer curtains cut the glare. His hand hurt.

He had flown from Islamabad International on a nonstop Emirates flight and, with his German passport, cleared customs on both ends without a problem. The customs officer in Dubai asked about the bandaged left hand and was satisfied with the explanation that much of his hand had been crushed by a falling stone in Islamabad, and then a finger had to be amputated, which was verified by a doctor’s statement. A waiting limousine delivered him to the beautiful hotel.

Once in the huge suite, some 2,325 square feet of luxury, Hall took a shower, and paused while changing the bandage to examine the wound. The amputation had been clean, although after the finger was off, the edges of the severed digit were chopped and caked with dirt to make it look like an amateur job. With the mild sedatives, he had not felt much discomfort at the time, but as the anesthetic wore off, the pain visited. The doctor did a good job. Keep it clean and give it time to heal. He opened a bottle of pills and chewed two, washing them down with water. Then he used the gauze and tape to bandage it up again.

Retrieving his PDA from the pocket of the sports jacket he had worn on the trip, Hall slid into the armless gray chair before a table of shining light wood and opened the laptop computer that Lauren had left behind. The hotel offered wireless Internet connections, and in less than a minute he was logged on to his account. The bank routing numbers that he kept on the PDA were pecked carefully into the appropriate formats, using only his right hand. His days of ten-finger typing were over, he thought.

One by one, he opened various accounts in various banks and investment houses, answered security questions, and used his right index finger like a spear to force the computer to do its job. He did not have to speak to a human during the entire process, which took less than thirty minutes. By then, he had cleared out every account he had ever established for the CIA, secret holding pens in which tens of millions of dollars had been stored to pay for covert operations over the years and never returned, although the funds technically had still been under CIA control.

No longer. Jim Hall emptied them all that afternoon, as if shaking a giant trash can of cash, and moved the money to new accounts under new names in new places that protected the identity of their investors. After receiving confirmations and safely logging those combinations of letters and numbers back into the PDA, he scrubbed and destroyed the computer hard drive. He shut the lid, walked to the window, and looked at the pretty people on the pretty boats on the pretty water. He was now one of them. Jim Hall was rich, and he did not miss his finger at all.

ISLAMABAD

K YLE S WANSON SAT WITHhis back propped against a stone wall, blindfolded and with his hands cuffed behind him. His ankles were bound together. Spots of wetness told him where he had been bleeding, but the cuts were insignificant. The boys out in the street had taken their own sweet time bringing him to a headquarters area. Once inside, the rifle butts and kicks had given way to slaps and being jerked around and dragged across a smooth linoleum floor. There was still an odor of smoke in the air. It had taken them long enough to catch him, Kyle thought with satisfaction. If he had just kept going and not helped that woman and her kids, who knows? He might be back at Bagram by now, having a cold soda. Didn’t work out that way, but he was glad that he had stopped to save those lives. It was rare in his line of work to actually have an opportunity to do something good for someone else.

Now that they had grabbed him, Kyle knew he would be moved up the chain of command and out of the reach of the maddened soldiers on the street. He presented his captors with a problem, and killing him would not really solve anything. Swanson rotated his neck to get some relief from the tight muscles. A thin band of light showed beneath the blindfold, but he could not see anything. That, plus the smooth floor, indicated that he was probably secluded in an office somewhere, or an interrogation room, and not in some prison cell. Questioning would follow. Worrying would do no good, and wondering what might happen next would only lead to nightmare speculations. Shakespeare had written long ago that “present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” Stay calm. Wait. Give the Pakis time to figure out who he is and what to do with him.

I T DID NOT TAKElong. He heard the door open and boots stepping across the linoleum. Two sets of hands stood him up and removed the handcuffs and the blindfold, leaving the ankles hobbled. The room was small and rectangular, with an enclosed toilet area at one end. Kyle blinked in the sudden light, but it wasn’t really bright, certainly not interrogation room bright. “Bathroom?” he asked. The two guards helped him move to the toilet and stood outside the open door while he urinated. He washed his hands and glanced into the mirror covering a small medicine cabinet. Filthy. Without asking, he left the water running and washed his face, too, sluicing the water into his aching eyes. Then he hobbled back out, and they put him in an ordinary folding metal chair.