Embling had no idea why this military officer, a stranger, would be telling him all this. Especially if he really did believe him to be a British spy.
“I hand-selected your case, Mr. Embling, I made sure that my men would pick you up and bring you to me.”
“What on earth for?”
“Because I would like to offer my services to your nation. It is a difficult time in my country. And there are forces in my organization that are making it more difficult. I believe the United Kingdom can help those of us who … shall I say, do not want the type of change that many in the ISI are seeking.”
Embling looked across the desk at the man for a long time. He then said, “If this is legitimate, then I must ask. Of all places, why are we doing this here?”
Al Darkur smiled a handsome smile now. He spoke in an attractive lilting cadence. “Mr. Embling. My office is the one environment in this country where I can be absolutely sure no one is listening in on our conversation. It is not that this room is not bugged, of course it is. But it is bugged for my benefit, and I can control the erase function on the recorder.”
Embling smiled. He loved nothing more than clever practicality. “What division do you work for?”
“JIB.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize the acronym.”
“Yes you do, Mr. Embling. I can show you my file on your associations with other members of the ISI in the past.”
The Brit shrugged. He decided to drop the pretense of ignorance. “Joint Intelligence Bureau,” he said. “Very well.”
“My duties take me into the FATA.” The Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a sort of no-man’s-land of territory along the border with Afghanistan and Iran, where the Taliban and other organizations provided the only real law. “I work with most of the government-sponsored militias there. The Khyber Rifles. The Chitral Scouts, the Kurram Militia.”
“I see. And the department that is working to have me kicked out of the country?”
“The order has come through normal channels, but I believe this action is being initiated by General Riaz Rehan, the head of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous Division. JIM is responsible for foreign espionage operations.”
Embling knew what JIM was responsible for, but he allowed al Darkur to tell him. The Englishman’s fertile brain raced through the possibilities of this encounter. He did not want to admit to anything, but he damn well wanted more intelligence about the situation. “Major. I am at a loss here. I am not an English agent, but were I an English agent, I would hardly want to involve myself in the middle of the nasty infighting that goes on, as a matter of course, in the Pakistani intelligence community. If you have some quarrel with Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous, that’s your problem, not Britain’s.”
“It is your problem, because your nation has picked sides, and they have chosen poorly. Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous, Rehan’s directorate, has been given a great deal of support by the UK, as well as the Americans. They have charmed and fooled your politicians, and I can prove it. If you can provide me the back channel access to your leadership, then I will make my case, and your agency will learn a valuable lesson about trusting anyone in JIM.”
“Major al Darkur, please remember. I never said I worked with British intelligence.”
“No, you didn’t. I said that.”
“Indeed. I am an old man. Retired from the import/ export field.”
Al Darkur smiled. “Then I think you need to come out of retirement, maybe export some intelligence out of Pakistan that might be useful to your nation. You could import some assistance from MI6 that might be useful to my country. I assure you that your nation has never had an asset in Pakistani intelligence as well placed as myself, with as much incentive to work for our joint interests as myself.”
“And what about me? If I am given the boot from Pakistan, I won’t be much help.”
“I can delay your departure for months. Today was just the initial interview. I will drag my feet through every phase of the process after this.”
Embling nodded. “Major, I just have to ask. If you are so sure your organization is rife with informants for General Rehan, how is it you are able to trust all these men working for you?”
Al Darkur smiled again. “Before I was ISI, I was in SSG, Special Services Group. These men are also SSG. Commandos from Zarrar Company, counterterrorism operators. My former unit.”
“And they are loyal to you?”
Al Darkur shrugged. “They are loyal to the concept of not getting blown to bits by a roadside bomb. I share their allegiance to that concept myself.”
“As do I, Major.” Embling reached out and shook the major’s hand. “So nice to find common ground with a new friend.” It was a polite thing to say, but neither man in this room trusted the other so early in such a risky relationship.
Two hours later, Nigel Embling sat at home, drank tea at his desk, and drummed his fingers on a well-worn leather blotter.
His morning had been interesting, to say the least. From a dead sleep to a pitch from a highly placed intelligence asset. It was enough to make his head spin.
Houseboy Mahmood, sporting a nasty purple-and-red gash on his head, brought his employer a plate with slices of suji ka, a coconut flour, yogurt, and semolina-based pastry. He’d brought it home from the neighbor’s house when Embling was returned by the SUVs from ISI. Embling took a sweet cake and bit into it, but he remained lost in thought.
“Thanks, lad. Why don’t you go play football with your mates this afternoon? You’ve had a long day already.”
“Thank you, Mr. Nigel.”
“Thank you, my young friend, for being brave this morning. You and your mates will inherit this country someday soon, and I should think they will need a good and brave man like you will turn out to be.”
Mahmood did not understand what his employer was talking about, but he did understand that he had the afternoon free to kick the soccer ball in the street with his friends.
As his houseboy left him alone in his study, Embling ate his cakes and drank his tea, his mind filled with worry. Worry about the potential for him to be expelled, for the dangers of high-level infighting in the Pakistani Army’s spy service, for the work that he would need to do to check out this Major al Darkur to see if he was, in fact, who he said he was, and not affiliated with any of the naughtier elements roaming around.
As worrisome as all this was, the chief concern of Embling’s right now was supremely practical. It appeared, to him, as if he’d just recruited an agent to spy on behalf of a nation that he did not represent.
He’d had no direct working relationship with London for years, though a few of the graybeards working at Legoland, the nickname of London’s SIS headquarters on the Thames, gave him a call from time to time to check up on this or that.
Once, the year before, they’d actually passed his name off to an American organization that he’d helped with a small matter here in Peshawar. The Yanks who’d arrived had been top-notch, some of the sharpest field operators he’d ever worked with. What were their names? Yes, John Clark and Ding Chavez.
As Embling finished the last of his mid-morning snack and wiped his fingers clean with a napkin, he decided he could, if this al Darkur chap checked out, run a very unusual version of the “false flag.” He could operate al Darkur as an agent without Embling actually revealing to al Darkur that he had no one, officially speaking, to pass his intelligence up the chain to.
And then, when Embling had something important, something solid, Embling would find a customer for his product.
The big Englishman sipped the rest of his tea and smiled at the audacity of his new plan. It was ridiculous, really.
But why on earth not?
18
Jack Ryan Sr. stepped over to a full-length mirror on the wall between two sets of lockers. Tonight’s presidential debate at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University was being held in the Emerson Physical Education Center to accommodate the huge crow
d. It was also known as the Veale Center, and Ryan had no trouble picturing this venue hosting a basketball game. Around him on the walls of the locker room that had been converted into a dressing room for the presidential candidate, big Spartan silhouettes looked back at him. The adjacent bathroom set aside for Ryan’s needs had a dozen showers.
He’d needed none. He’d showered at the hotel.
Tonight’s debate was the second of three scheduled between himself and Kealty, and this was the one of the three Jack had insisted on. Just one moderator asking questions of the two men, seated at a table. Almost like a friendly conversation. It was to be less formal, less stiff. Kealty had objected at first, saying it was also less presidential, but Jack had held firm, and the backroom dealing of Jack’s campaign manager, Arnie van Damm, had won the day.
The theme of tonight’s debate would be foreign affairs, and Jack knew he had Kealty beat on the subject. The polls said so, so Arnie agreed, too. But Jack was not relaxed. He looked into the mirror again and took another sip of water.
He liked these all-too-brief moments of solitude. Cathy had just left the dressing room; right now she would be finding her seat in the front row. Her last words to him before leaving chimed in his ears as he looked at himself in the mirror.
“Good luck, Jack. And don’t forget your happy face.”
Along with Arnie and his speechwriter Callie Weston, Cathy had been his closest confidante on this campaign. She did not get into policy discussions very often, unless the subject of health care came up, but she had watched her husband closely during his hundreds of television appearances, and she gave him her opinions on how he conveyed himself to the public.
Cathy considered herself supremely qualified for the role. No one in the world knew Jack Ryan better than she did. She could look into his eyes or listen to the sound of his voice and know everything about his mood, his energy, even whether or not he’d snuck an afternoon cup of coffee that she did not permit when they were traveling together.
Normally Jack did great in front of a camera. He was natural, not stiff at all; he came off just like the man he was. A decent, intelligent guy who was, at the same time, strong-willed and motivated.
But occasionally Cathy saw things that she did not think helped him get his point across. Of particular concern to her was the fact that, in her opinion, whenever he talked about one of Kealty’s policies or comments that he did not agree with—which was essentially everything that came out of Kealty’s White House—Jack’s face had a tendency to turn dark.
Cathy had recently sat in bed with her husband on one of the almost nonexistent nights that found him taking a quick break at home from the campaign trail. For nearly an hour she held the remote control for the flat-screen TV on the wall. That would have been hell enough for Jack Ryan, even if his mug was not on all the programs that she had recorded and flipped through. That was murderous for a guy who never liked seeing his face or hearing his voice on television. But Cathy was unrelenting; she used their TiVo, cycled from one press conference to the next, from lofty sit-down interviews with major network anchors all the way to impromptu exchanges with high school reporters while walking through shopping malls.
In each clip she showed him, every time a Kealty policy was brought up, Jack Ryan’s face changed. It wasn’t a sneer, and for that Jack felt he should get a damn medal, as incensed as he was by, literally, every last decision of importance by the Kealty administration. But Cathy was right, Jack could not deny it. Whenever an interviewer brought up a Kealty policy, Jack’s eyes narrowed slightly, his jaw tightened just perceptibly, and often his head shook back and forth, just once, as if to say “No!”
Cathy had tracked back for a moment to show Jack at a barbecue in Fort Worth, with a paper plate of brisket and corn on the cob in one hand and an iced tea in the other. A C-SPAN camera crew following him picked up an exchange where a middle-aged woman mentioned Kealty’s recent push for more regulation on the oil and gas industries.
While the woman relayed the hardships her family was enduring, Jack’s jaw tightened and he shook his head. There was empathy relayed in his body language, but only after his initial recoil of anger. His first reaction, that first flash of rage, locked into a still frame when Cathy pressed the pause button, was unmistakable.
As they sat in bed together Jack Ryan tried to lighten the moment. “I think I deserve partial credit on that one for not tossing up the baked beans I’d just eaten. I mean, we were talking about increasing red tape and bureaucracy on business in this economy.”
Cathy smiled, shook her head. “Partial credit isn’t going to get you the highest office in the land this time, Jack. You are winning, but you haven’t won yet.”
Jack nodded. Chastened. “I know. I’ll work on it, I promise.”
And now, in the locker room at Case Western Reserve, Jack worked on it. He tried out his happy face on the empty room, while thinking back to that poor woman’s family unable to find work in an environment that stifled the entire industry in which she sought employment.
Chin up, a slight nod, eyes relaxed, no squinting.
Ugh, Jack thought. Feels unnatural.
He sighed. He realized, not for the first time, that if it feels unnatural, then that means Cathy was right, and he had been making faces ever since he’d thrown his hat into the ring.
He worried now that debating foreign policy in person with Ed Kealty would be a tremendous challenge to his self-control.
Jack spent one more moment practicing the happy face. Thought about Cathy watching this debate from the audience.
He smiled unnaturally at the mirror. Did it again. A third time.
The fourth smile on his lips was real. He almost laughed. He couldn’t help it. A grown man making faces into a mirror.
He snorted out a laugh now. Politics, when you drilled right down into it, was ultimately so goddamn ridiculous.
Jack Ryan Sr. shook his head and stepped to the door. One more long sigh, one more affirmation to himself that he could pull off the happy face, and then he turned the knob.
Outside in the hall, his people began moving. Andrea Price-O’Day stepped up to his shoulder. The rest of his security team formed in a diamond around him for the walk to the stage.
“Swordsman is moving,” Price-O’Day said into her cuff mike.
19
Ed Kealty and Jack Ryan stepped out from opposite wings onto a stage awash in television lighting. There was polite applause from a crowd of students, media, and Clevelanders who’d managed to secure tickets. They met in the middle. Jack had a quick mental image of the men touching gloves, but instead they just shook hands. Ryan smiled and nodded, said “Mr. President,” and Kealty himself nodded, reached behind Ryan and patted him on the back with his right hand as both men stepped forward to the round table.
Ryan knew that Ed Kealty wished he had a switchblade in that hand.
The two men sat at the small conference table. In front of them sat CBS Evening News anchor Joshua Ramirez, a young-looking fifty-year-old who wore his hair slicked back and stylish glasses that, with the glare of the stage lighting, created a distracting shine in Ryan’s eyes. Jack liked Ramirez overall; he was smart and affable enough when the camera was off and professional enough when the camera was on. CBS had been no friend to Ryan’s first presidency, and they certainly seemed to be continuing the pro-Kealty slant through this campaign, but Josh Ramirez was just a foot soldier in their army, a working stiff, and Ryan didn’t blame him.
Ryan had been kicked around in the media long enough not to take it personally. Some of the things the media said and wrote about him, virtually accusing him of everything from stealing money from the elderly to taking lunches from school kids’ mouths, were nothing if not incredibly personal.
Jack Ryan, you are a vile human being … nothing personal.
Right.
Still, Ramirez wasn’t as bad as some of the others. The general media’s collusion in Kealty’s reelection campaign was pre
valent. A few weeks back, a guy at a Kealty Q&A in Denver had the temerity to ask the President of the United States when he thought gas prices would drop back down to where he could afford a road trip with his family. Kealty, in a moment that must have made his minders groan, shook his head at the question from the working stiff and suggested that the man see this as an opportunity to go out and buy a hybrid vehicle.
Not one of the major media outlets or wire services ran the quote. Ryan himself brought it up the next morning at an electric motor plant in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, making the obvious point, seemingly lost on Kealty, that a family having trouble filling their tank might have trouble purchasing a new car.
Five minutes after making the quip, as Jack climbed back into his SUV to leave the motor plant, Arnie van Damm just shook his head. “Jack, you just delivered a great line that no one but those people on that factory floor will ever hear.”
Arnie was right. None of the big media outlets ran it. Van Damm promised Ryan he could not count on any “gotcha moments” by the mainstream media against Ed Kealty. No, all the “gotcha moments” would go against Jack Ryan.
Liberal bias in the media was a fact of nature. Like the rain and the cold, Ryan just dealt with it and moved on.
Ramirez opened the debate with an explanation about the rules, then a lighthearted story about arguments between his elementary school children, finishing by joking that he hoped the two men in front of him would “play nice.” Ryan smiled as if the comment was not outrageously patronizing, and then the moderator began with the questions.
Ramirez’s line of questions started out in Russia, moved to China, to Central America, and then to the United States’ relationships with NATO and allies around the world. Both Ryan and Kealty addressed the CBS anchor directly with their answers, and they avoided any fireworks, even agreeing on a few topics here and there.