Bloodmoney (28 page)

The message appeared moments later on the Internet, as the caller said it would. It was in English, and it read as follows:

In the name of the Prophet Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him:

Today, the Brotherhood of Al-Tawhid, which celebrates the oneness of God, announces that it has executed an agent of the American CIA in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. This agent was delivering a bribe to a leader of the Islamic Movement of Tajikistan, to bring him into the camp of capitulation and shame, but this plot failed. For this crime, the agent received justice.

The Brotherhood also announces today that it was responsible for two previous operations against American agents. The agent Howard Egan was seized in Karachi, Pakistan, where he was seeking to bribe a tribal leader. The agent Alan Frankel was seized in Moscow, where he was seeking to bribe a Pakistani diplomat. For these crimes, they were executed. The Brotherhood delayed its campaign in the hope that these actions against Pakistan would stop, but they have continued.

We make this declaration of war. There are other secret American agents and they will be killed, one by one, until the United States withdraws from Pakistan and all Muslim lands. We will choose the time and place of our attacks. The American people should ask: Who are these agents who bribe and kill Muslim people far from home? Why do they seek to destroy Pakistan and other free and democratic Muslim nations?

We affirm the oneness of God. God is Great.

—Ikwan Al-Tawhid

Despite frantic requests from the news media, the White House waited two hours before authorizing a response. So few people knew the details of the case that it was difficult to assemble the proper team for discussions. In the end, a secure videoconference was held that included just four people: the president, his chief of staff, the associate deputy director of the CIA, and a CIA officer in Los Angeles who was called “John Doe,” even in this confidential meeting. After this session ended, the chief of staff instructed the State Department spokesman to issue this statement:

The allegation by the group that calls itself Ikwan Al-Tawhid is an absurd and baseless attempt to claim credit for the tragic deaths of three Americans abroad in recent weeks. Contrary to the claims of Al-Tawhid, the three individuals were not employees or agents of the United States government. Detailed public information confirms that one was a businessman in the financial sector, one was an advertising salesman, and one was involved in international philanthropic work.

The statement by Al-Tawhid is a cynical attempt by a previously unknown group to use these deaths to gain publicity. The United States condemns this action. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies are working with the governments of Pakistan, Russia and Tajikistan to identify the real killers of these three Americans and bring them to justice.

The State Department spokesman repeated this line when asked about the Al-Tawhid statement at the press briefing later that day. He told reporters in the off-the-record “gaggle” that followed the formal briefing that the FBI was pursuing evidence that the death of Meredith Rockwell may have been drug-related. It was possible, the spokesman said, that the other two deaths also had involved international criminal gangs, and that the “absurd” Al-Tawhid statement might have been an attempt by the mafia network to conceal its role.

The CIA public affairs chief, meanwhile, contacted the reporters who regularly covered the intelligence beat. He assured them in the strongest terms, speaking as a “U.S. official,” that the three people who had been killed had no connection whatsoever with the CIA. Weirdly, such denials had more credibility when they were not for attribution, and in this case it could be argued that the spokesman was telling the truth. Certainly it was true as far as he knew. The head of the National Clandestine Service personally called the reporters from
The New York Times
and
The Washington Post
and told them that the three dead Americans were not on the agency payroll. He could vouch for it personally.

The denials made it through the first news cycle intact, and the story held up over the next few days. There were some breathless exposé stories in the Pakistani press, but they were always making wild claims about American intelligence activities, so nobody paid much attention. The ISI press cell in Islamabad was unusually silent, and the reporters there assumed that was because the ISI itself must have links with Al-Tawhid. That was true enough, though even the ISI knew less than it would have liked. The reason for silence was more complicated. The director general of the service, Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik, was trying to decide what to do.

Jeff Gertz responded in character: He toughed it out. He maintained his composure and confidence, and looked for ways to project it to others. He held a “town hall meeting” with his staff in Studio City late that first day and reassured them that their security was his primary concern. He arranged protection details and armored vehicles; he provided counseling to help employees deal with stress; he hosed The Hit Parade and its global staff with money and perks.

Gertz called Sophie Marx in London and told her that she was running out of time. Unless she came up with something in a few days to explain to the White House why America’s most secret warriors were being killed, he would bring her home and send someone else. He needed the frame of a story, quickly; they could fill in the details later, when they had more time.

DOHA, QATAR

Cyril Hoffman did not
make the mistake of believing propaganda, least of all when it came from his own government. After the videoconference about Al-Tawhid with Gertz, the president and his chief of staff, the State Department had issued its statement, which Hoffman knew to be a bald lie. The claims by Al-Tawhid were essentially correct: The United States was running a covert-action campaign against Pakistan aimed at bribing key leaders and perhaps, over time, halting actions against America and gaining control of that country’s nuclear weapons.

It wasn’t that Hoffman thought these were bad ideas, necessarily, but he didn’t like the fact that the project had been assigned to a jury-rigged start-up agency behind the CIA’s back. It worried Hoffman, too, that Al-Tawhid had somehow penetrated the supposedly perfect security of The Hit Parade and was killing its operatives. That had to be stopped, but the magnificent Gertz seemed unable to find the leak.

Hoffman had been keeping tabs on Gertz for years, and more so since he had set up shop in Los Angeles for The Hit Parade. But despite Hoffman’s efforts to contain the experiment, it had morphed and grown to the point that it posed a risk to the U.S. government as a whole, including the CIA, which Hoffman was sworn to protect. American agents were getting killed; jihadist groups were issuing statements; the spill was widening.

One of Hoffman’s vanities was the idea that, when the Gertzes of the world had made a mess, people like him would have to clean it up. He had a favorite poem by Rudyard Kipling, which had been given to him years ago by his Uncle Frank, another cleaner-upper of other people’s disasters. It was called “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” and Hoffman kept it in his desk drawer, to reread whenever he encountered something particularly stupid. He turned to the poem now and reminded himself of the power of these gods to outlast the ambitious do-gooders:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

How to stop the terror and slaughter? That was becoming Hoffman’s responsibility now, too. If Gertz could not stanch the flow, then Hoffman would have to help. He thought back over his conversations with Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik. The ISI director had been trying to tell him something when he had visited Islamabad. But Hoffman had been so intent on delivering his own message that he hadn’t listened as carefully as he might have.

The Pakistani general had protested about the operation in Karachi. Well, fair enough, of course he would. Countries never liked it when other countries conducted unilateral intelligence operations on their territory. But there had been something else that the general had wanted Hoffman to understand. There was a leak of information; the kidnapping of Howard Egan wasn’t an accidental bit of good luck for the “bad guys,” but something more fundamental.

Hoffman had done the obvious things after he returned from Islamabad. He had talked with the top Pakistan analyst at Langley, and contacted his own most sensitive private sources, but he had come away with nothing. He wondered now why had he not listened more carefully to what the Pakistani general was trying to tell him.

It is never too late to apply good sense as a corrective to stupidity. The call to arms, as it were, came to Hoffman late on the night after Meredith Rockwell’s death. It was early morning in Islamabad, the time when Mohammed Malik would be having his morning tea in the office, and reading his cables, and planning what to do next. So often, Hoffman’s prescription was: When in doubt, do nothing. But he had a different instinct now, and he knew there wasn’t any more time to waste.

Hoffman picked up the phone and called Malik’s private number at ISI headquarters. The general himself answered, on the first ring, with a starchy hello.

“This is your friend Cyril Hoffman,” he began. “I think we need to talk. What do you say to that?”

“Talk or shoot, it must be one of the two. Your boys have been very naughty, Cyril. The Tawhid statement has set the cat among the pigeons. We are angry, I must tell you that, sir.”

“Let’s try talking. And they’re not my boys, or girls, either. That’s part of what I want to talk about. It will be worth your time, Mohammed, I promise you. And just for the record, it’s your boys who have been doing the shooting, not mine.”

“Where do you suggest that we have this talk, Cyril? The telephone would not be a good idea, for either of us. And I regret to say that I am not able to welcome you here in Islamabad at present. The mood is a bit sour, as you can imagine.”

“Let’s meet tomorrow in the Gulf, neutral territory. I’ll fly over to wherever you like. Just name it.”

“Not Dubai. Your service owns Dubai. I would suggest Doha, if I were prepared to say yes.”

“Come on, old boy. Don’t play games. We need to do this. People are getting killed, and it’s going to get worse unless sensible people get involved. This situation is dangerous, my esteemed brother.”

“I am glad that I am still included in your club of ‘sensible people,’ Cyril. And I am amused that you choose to call me ‘brother’ at such a time. It is either a sign that you are sincere, or that you are an unprincipled rascal.”

“You know very well that I’m a rascal. That’s why we get along. Now, say yes. Meet me in Doha tomorrow night. I’ll be staying at the Four Seasons. We’ll have dinner, my treat. Do we have a date? Come on, now, don’t make me beg.”

The phone was silent for several moments, as General Malik considered the situation, both the aspects that Cyril Hoffman understood and those that he didn’t.

“Yes,” said the Pakistani. “I will meet you tomorrow night in Doha. Please come alone. I will do the same. This is not a meeting that I am prepared to acknowledge in any way.”

“Don’t you worry. Uncle Cyril is going to use a clean plane, with virgin tail numbers. And I would be most grateful, dear friend, since we are talking about discretion here, if you didn’t share my itinerary with the gentlemen in Al-Tawhid, should you chance to encounter any of them. I’m not saying that to pick a fight, just being honest.”

General Malik was going to protest, but with three American intelligence officers dead, it was not an unreasonable request.

Hoffman made a second call that evening, to Jeff Gertz. He asked for a summary of the investigation that Gertz’s shop was conducting into the leak of information that had led to the attacks on Howard Egan and the others. Hoffman recalled that the probe was being conducted by that nice young woman, Gertz’s chief of counterintelligence, the one who’d been stationed in Beirut, with the peculiar family. How was she getting along?

“Sophie Marx is the officer’s name,” answered Gertz. His voice was clipped. He didn’t want to be answering questions from Headquarters now.

“And where is Miss Marx, pray tell?”

“She’s in London, investigating the hedge fund where Egan worked. She’s headstrong, and she hasn’t found the magic bullet yet. If she doesn’t figure it out soon, I’ll get someone else who will.”

“A bit hard to manage, is she? Knocking on too many doors?”

“Yes,” answered Gertz. “Something like that. Plus, she isn’t getting me any answers. Just more questions. She keeps asking about the big picture. This is a detective job.”