The Wolf of Sarajevo (22 page)

“What do you think, Eric?” Annika asked at the end of the tour. “Are we ready?”

“The hotel is in good shape. The plenary rooms are big enough. The delegation hold areas are too small to be comfortable, which is good. We could use a little more office space, another couple of computers, and a better copier than the one the hotel has offered. Wylie will give you one if you ask. If the talks get traction, we're going to need the ability to adjust the texts in something close to real time. We'll need to produce a lot of paper on a short timeline.”

“Anything else I should ask of your ambassador while I'm at it?”

“Other than to stay away?”

“I doubt very much that he would give me that no matter how sweetly I asked.”

“You're probably right.”

At the front entrance to the hotel, they paused to consider how they would coordinate the complicated protocol dance of the arrivals and departures of the assorted muckety-mucks, all of whom would want to demonstrate their power and influence by jumping to the front of the line.

The hotel was located on Ulica Zmaja od Bosne, the street that had once been known as Sniper Alley. Eric looked down the now-crowded street toward the buildings on the hills ringing the city that had once served as the vantage points for the snipers and
marksmen who had terrorized the populace of Sarajevo for the better part of three years. That was all in the past.

But Filipović's murder was still fresh in Eric's mind. There was no reason to believe that the assassination was the only one that Mali and his allies had planned.

Eric had not told anyone about that night. He had not reported it to Wylie because the ambassador was likely to respond by throwing him out of the country. He had not told Sarah only because he had no idea where she was or how to reach her. And he had not told Annika, largely, he suspected, because he did not want to give her cause to doubt his judgment. He had persuaded himself that he could operate effectively on his own in a fluid and ambiguous environment, and he had put himself in a dangerous position as a direct result. Filipović's murder had raised the stakes to a much higher level than Eric had anticipated. Mali Barcelona had acquired an efficient instrument of death, and there was now empirical evidence that he intended to use it. With Mali's opposition to the peace conference, the High Representative would have to be considered among the possible targets.

“Annika,” he said impulsively. “There's something I need to tell you.”

“Shoot.”

It was an unfortunate choice of idiom.

“You read the stories in the papers about Filipović's murder in Srpska?”

“Of course.”

“I was there when it happened.”

Annika's eyes widened.

“Really?”

“I was sitting two meters from him when he was shot. I believe the shooter works for Marko Barcelona. Filipović was ready to sell Mali out to save his own skin and he told me that he knew what it was Mali had over Dimitrović. So Mali decided that he'd be better off with Filipović dead. I was negotiating the terms of Filipović's defection. But we didn't get the chance to close the deal. Whatever Filipović knew, he took to his grave.”

“Any idea who the shooter is?”

“None. But he's extremely good at what he does. Annika, I'm worried about you. It's possible that if Mali decides you've become a serious threat he'll move against you personally. He's not above it. Not by a long shot.” Eric winced at his own poor choice of words.

Annika was not easy to intimidate.

“Eric, through all the years of fighting in the Balkans, how many of the international negotiators were targeted for violence by the belligerents?”

“None,” Eric conceded.

“The risks were too high. It just wasn't worth it. That hasn't changed. They will do absolutely brutal and unconscionable things to each other, but I doubt very much that they'll extend the same treatment to you or me. The outsiders are all replaceable parts.”

“I'm replaceable, Annika. But I'm not at all convinced that you are. Will you at least get close protection? A detail.”

“If Mali really wants me dead, it wouldn't matter. I'll let some Sarajevo policeman follow me around if it'll make you feel better, but I'm ready to take whatever risks I have to in getting this done. There's too much at stake.”

Annika's thinking paralleled Eric's own. He had been chewing over Dragan's suggestion that they use the opportunity of Mali's
meeting with the political and criminal leadership of Republika Srpska to search his house. Eric did not doubt that Dragan could get them inside. He did not know what they might find there, but he knew that at the moment they were two steps behind Mali—and that the leader of the White Hand seemed bent on ensuring that the Sondergaard Plan died in the cradle.

Sarah would not hesitate. But it was her line of work. Eric was a diplomat, not a spy. In principle, he enjoyed diplomatic immunity, so he could not be prosecuted even if they were caught breaking into Mali's home. In practice, judgment was likely to be delivered outside a courtroom and the execution of the sentence would be summary. A bullet to the back of the head did not discriminate on the basis of diplomatic niceties.

Annika stepped back and looked appraisingly at the hotel. She seemed satisfied.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked. Annika was talking about the peace conference. But Eric was thinking about Mali and Dragan and Sarah. Annika was right. There was too much at stake. This was a chance to correct the mistakes of the past. Or at least make amends.

He was ready.

“Let's do this,” he said with more conviction than he felt.

There was no way that Annika could know he was answering a different question.

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

NOVEMBER 10

I
nterrogation was a kind of seduction. Done right, it required time and patience as the questioner and the questioned did their complicated dance. The interrogator was the male figure. The pursuer. The aggressor. The conqueror. The subject was the female. The pursued. The defender. The conquest. At the end of a successful interrogation, the subject should give him or herself willingly to the interrogator as though it were the consummation of a secret desire. The subject would unburden himself of his secrets; whether he did this because of guilt or pride or weariness did not really matter. Interrogation was a delicate art form that could not be rushed.

—

VW did not
have time for that shit.

—

There was
another kind of interrogation: short, sharp, and brutal. This was the interrogation of the waterboard, of the electric current, of sleep deprivation, of stress positions, and of fear. It was violence first, questions later. Torquemada and his Inquisition. Interrogators of this stripe did not need to worry about establishing credibility. The bruises and burns they left behind did that quite nicely.

Not long after the beginning of the Global War on Terror, in which the United States of America formally declared hostilities against an abstract noun, VW had done a short stint at the prison in Guantánamo, Cuba, where the military was holding a group of what it called “high-value detainees.” Most were anything but, just angry and confused kids with delusions of jihadist grandeur. A few, however, were the real deal, men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The al-Qaeda propaganda chief had been waterboarded almost two hundred times, ultimately confessing to masterminding the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombing in Indonesia, and the attempted shoe-bombing of an American Airlines flight. If they hadn't stopped, Mohammed would have accepted responsibility for the Gulf oil spill, global warming, and Jar Jar Binks. That was the shortcoming of this approach. Push hard enough and you would always find what you were looking for. Torquemada and his team had an extraordinary batting average. In the end, everyone confessed. They would say anything to make the pain stop.

Most of the class-A interrogators at Gitmo had been patient seducers. There had been a few good ones, however, who preferred
shock and awe. Done right, it could be extremely effective. It could also be efficient.

VW needed to move fast. She did not really have much in the way of hard data: a code name, some dodgy accounting practices, and a single grainy photograph. She had her suspicions, even a few theories, but the evidence was so tenuous and uncertain that she was reluctant to push it forward too soon. If VW was right about a cancer in the Western Balkans Division, it would have to be cut out ruthlessly without compunction. But the standards in place for that kind of radical surgery were high.

She needed to find someone on the inside and break him quickly before the principals could activate the force field of the Old Boys' network and destroy whatever actual evidence might be out there. VW had no charter or authority for what she was doing. She was far outside her lane and, therefore, vulnerable. If she went after the Old Boys without solid proof, they would countercharge, and VW had no illusions about which party would come out the worse in that exchange. The operations side of the Agency was tight and clannish, dominated by a group of ex–Special Operations types who drank Scotch and smoked smuggled Cuban cigars while they watched the Redskins lose to whomever they were playing that week. No more proof of VW's outsider status was necessary than her residence on the Island of Misfit Toys. The Old Boys never so much as visited the Island.

Her target was Roger Penforth. She had chosen him carefully. Penforth was a relatively junior analyst assigned to the operations team and the antithesis of an Old Boy. He had no rabbi looking after his career and no field experience working undercover in a
hostile environment. He had been through the short course on the Farm, but he had had few opportunities to put his theoretical training into practice. His shell would be thin and brittle. VW thought she would crack it and feed on the information that lay within, soft and gooey and rich with data. Penforth was responsible for operations support. He would have the answers that VW was after.

She would get one shot at this. If she pushed Penforth and he didn't break, he would run back to the Balkan Action Team. The Old Boys would circle the wagons. And her investigation would be closed.

Penforth was nothing if not punctual. He knocked on her door at exactly ten fifteen, the time VW had specified. She may have been exiled to the Island, but VW still had rank and Penforth could not easily have refused her summons.

“You asked to see me?”

Penforth was young and looked even younger. VW suspected that he only needed to shave once a week. He was handsome in the kind of wholesome and nonthreatening way that no doubt had appealed to the sorority girls at the University of Virginia where Penforth had majored in political science and minored in binge drinking. Or maybe it was the other way around. The transcript of his last lifestyle polygraph exam had left this ambiguous.

There was still something of Peter Pan about Roger Penforth, the boy who had never grown up. His life had been charmed and easy, and as near as VW could tell, almost entirely devoid of the kinds of setbacks and failures that built resilience. For all of his obvious confidence, Penforth was, she hoped and expected, fragile.

Penforth was nattily dressed in a blue pin-striped suit and pink
shirt. His club tie was done up in a neat half Windsor. His hair, just a little too long for the Clandestine Service's quasimilitary culture, was gelled firmly into obedience.

VW was wearing an ill-fitting pantsuit she had bought off the rack at JCPenny. There was a stubborn stain on the collar that her dry cleaner could not quite seem to remove. VW felt a sudden stab of desire to take the untroubled boy standing in front of her down a peg or two just on principle. She suppressed the thought as both unworthy and self-defeating. She would need a clear head for what she was about to do.

“I did, Roger. Thank you for making the time on such short notice. But I'd rather discuss the matter at hand in a clean room if you don't mind. Can we go downstairs?”

“Sure.”

Typical Roger,
VW thought,
self-assured and incurious.
She led her charge to the bank of elevators down the hall. She needed to scan her badge before hitting the button for the second basement level. It was restricted access.

VW had to scan her badge again to open the door to room B2-412. She ushered Penforth inside and closed the steel door behind them. The pneumatic seals set around the frame hissed. The room inside was featureless and gray, with metal walls and a mirror that did not even try to disguise its nature as one-way glass. The air felt heavy and oppressive. The clean rooms were pressurized. A low hum from the sound maskers made it seem as if an enormous colony of bees were crawling in the space behind the walls.

A Formica table was set at the far end of the rectangular room with a single hard-backed chair oriented to face the door.

“Sit down, Roger,” VW commanded.

Penforth sat in the chair, still seemingly oblivious to the hostile nature of the upcoming conversation.

“Are you going to just stand there, VW?” he asked.

“No. I'm going to ask you some hard questions and you're going to give me straight answers.”

“Questions about what?”

“Parsifal.”

For the first time, Penforth looked uncertain, almost nervous. He glanced at the mirror, imagining, VW hoped, the large team of investigators gathered behind it. In reality, the only one on the other side of the glass was David Rennsler.

“The opera?” Penforth suggested. VW could see he was stalling.

This was no time for subtlety. She had no authority to hold Penforth in this room. He could get up and walk out at any moment and either report the conversation to his bosses in the Western Balkans Division or lawyer up. Neither outcome would help VW get to the truth. She needed to crack him open quickly before he had a chance to think, to orient himself.

She needed shock and awe.

“Roger, the director believes that there are elements within the Balkans team engaged in an unauthorized operation. He tasked me to investigate, and I believe you are involved. The operation is called Parsifal, the story of the quest for the Holy Grail, which makes it sound pretty damn important. It is as off-the-books as you can get. But in the world of twenty-first-century record keeping, that doesn't mean quite the same thing as it used to.”

VW pulled a bright orange Top Secret folder from her briefcase and set it on the table. She opened it up and spread the papers out
in front of Penforth. He glanced at the documents but did not take time to decipher them. He did not need to, VW realized. He knew exactly what they were.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Penforth held up his hands, palms out, as though warding off a blow. He glanced again at the mirror, and VW had the impression that he was looking for allies on the other side of the glass.

“Listen, Roger. I don't think you are an important piece of this. But the fact is that a rogue operation is a crime. Technically, it's treason, the penalties for which are traditionally rather severe.”

Penforth nodded and gulped. All of his ruling-class sangfroid had evaporated.

“The director's not interested in the little fish,” VW continued. “We want the big fish, the decision makers. If you help me with this investigation, there's at least a reasonable chance that you can stay out of federal prison. That deal's only available until I walk out of this room. Tell me what I need to know, Roger. Now. After this, you're on your own.”

“I don't know what you mean, VW. I've never heard of any operation called Parsifal. And I have no information about any operations being run out of channels.” He looked at her with what he doubtless hoped was a look of guiltless confidence. It was not. Penforth was a terrible liar.

“That's interesting. Because I've already spoken to Simmons and Weinberg, and they both pointed the finger at you. Said it was your op.” While not exactly a shot in the dark, there was some guesswork behind this charge. Simmons and Weinberg were senior managers on the Balkan Action Team, and it made sense that they would
need to be part of any operation that deviated from the norm. VW wanted to give young Roger the impression that he had already been thrown to the wolves to lighten the sleigh.

“That's bullshit!” Penforth said vehemently, confirming for VW that she was on target.

“Are you saying that it wasn't your operation?”

“I was barely involved,” Penforth said. The sudden flush to his face told VW that he realized too late that he had just confirmed Parsifal's existence. Good. She wanted to keep him uncertain. It was hard to keep your balance when you were backpedaling.

“What was the extent of your involvement?” VW asked. “What was your role in Parsifal?”

“Support,” Penforth sputtered. “I provided intel support to the team.”

“What team?”

“The team in the field.”

“Where? Sarajevo?”

Penforth looked at her as if she were an idiot.

“No. Geneva.”

VW pointed at the paper sitting on the table in front of Penforth.

“This spike in spending in Geneva. What is it about?”

“They're looking for something.”

“What?”

“I don't know. The Holy fucking Grail, I suppose. I didn't need to know. It wasn't my job.”

“Roger, if you don't help me, I can't help you.”

“They called it the package. It has something to do with Marko Barcelona. That's all I know.”

“Why Geneva?”

“There was a lawyer. Emile Gisler. He was supposed to be holding it for Mali. Parsifal wanted it. I don't know why.”

“Why the past tense?”

“Gisler's dead.” He saw the look on her face. “No, it's not what you think. He had a heart attack. At least that's what they told me.”

“Who's in on Parsifal? How high up does it go?”

“I don't know.”

“Who did you get your orders from?”

“Simmons.”

Harry Simmons was the deputy director of the Balkan Action Team and a dyed-in-the-wool son of a bitch. VW had long suspected that he had been behind her exile. Now she was beginning to understand why.

“Who's running the operation?”

“Someone called Kundry. I think it's a code name.”

“Tell me about Geneva.”

Penforth was quiet.

“Tell me about Geneva,” VW repeated, more insistently this time. She placed her hands on the tabletop and leaned in toward Penforth, trying her best to make her five-foot-six frame appear menacing.

“I think I need a lawyer,” Penforth said.

Time to unsettle him some more. VW pulled another file out of her briefcase.

“Roger, three days ago I flew a Wyvern over Mali's house in Kriva Rijeka. I got a good picture of him when he stepped out into his garden.

She laid the photograph on the desk, an eight-by-ten black-and-white print. It was grainy from the high magnification but clear enough for her purposes.

Penforth looked at the picture.

“Holy shit! That's . . .” His voice trailed off as he tried to process the implications of the photograph. They were considerable.

“Yes,” VW agreed. “Yes, it is.”

Penforth cracked. He told her everything he knew. It was not a complete picture, but it was enough. Enough for her to take to the seventh floor.