The Middleman Page 7

  One at a time, they nodded. Richard Kranowski placed his fingertips on one of the sheets. “Who’s this on page five? James Sullivan?”

  Rachel turned to page five of her report and looked again at the CCTV shot of a morose-looking man at a pay phone. When the photo had first reached her in-box, she’d lost her breath, remembering that flirtatious drink eight years ago. “Corner of Forty-First and Second, a block from UN headquarters. We don’t know his name for sure, but he used James Sullivan back in 2009, at one of Bishop’s early lectures. In this shot, he’s calling Bishop at the party. Presumably warning him to leave the Ferrises’ house.”

  “What is he?”

  “We honestly don’t know. A friend of Bishop’s.”

  “Ah,” Kranowski said, nodding. Everyone, in fact, nodded, even though she’d given them nothing to ah about.

  Paulson looked at Rachel, so she continued. “You’ll find in the memo a summary of conclusions we’ve reached based on the limited intelligence we’ve been able to gather. I’m afraid it’s not much, but we are convinced that we haven’t heard the last of Bishop. Not with four hundred soldiers at his disposal.”

  “Who’s Ingrid Parker?” Lynch asked.

  Rachel wanted to suggest Lynch read the memo for herself, but she was beginning to despair of anyone going to the trouble. “Parker met Bishop for the first time at the June 18 party. When she arrived at work the next day, she used a Tor client to talk to someone. Deleted it afterward. We don’t know who she was talking to, or what she said. Whatever it was, she didn’t want anyone finding out about it. She, too, is among the missing.”

  “What do you propose now?” Paulson asked Rachel.

  “What I suggest is a more coordinated effort, nationally, to track down Bishop, Mittag, and their followers.”

  Morbidly, Barnes said, “You want money.”

  “Of course,” Rachel said. “And money is another subject.” Everyone looked at her. “How’s he funding this?”

  “We shut down his bank accounts,” Kranowski said. “That was taken care of a couple of hours after he disappeared.”

  “Yet he’s had no trouble financing the disappearance of four hundred kids. He’s working with cash. Where did he get the cash? His converts would have brought in some money, but not enough to keep them going for long. Either he’s going to run out in another week, or he’s got a source we haven’t discovered. I’m going to need some people to help me look into this.”

  “Erin?” said Paulson. “I believe you’ve got some crack accountants in Counterterrorism.”

  Erin Lynch admitted that she, too, was guilty as charged.

  “And we have to go public,” said Rachel.

  “About what?” Barnes asked.

  “About the four hundred kids.”

  Paulson raised an index finger and shook it, but Rachel wasn’t done yet.

  “I understand the concerns, but it’s the only way we’re going to get eyes on this,” she explained, more to him than the others. “A group of young people show up in a town and stick to themselves, someone’s going to notice. But right now they don’t know to call us.”

  Paulson chose not to reply. Instead, he delegated by looking down the table at Kranowski, who took the hint and turned to her. “Rachel, do you know the effect it would have, telling the American people that a terrorist group captured four hundred of their children?”

  “We’re not talking about Boko Haram. The followers weren’t captured. They went willingly.”

  “Brainwashed,” Kranowski said. “That’s how it’s going to play. Kidnapped. Abducted. Whatever.”

  Lynch sighed aloud. “That would do a nasty job to the Bureau’s public relations. And the president’s?” She shook her head.

  Barnes said nothing, so Paulson finally spoke. “We appreciate your point, Rachel, but that isn’t the way forward. Not at this juncture. The way forward is to find them on our own. Then we present Bishop and the children to the public as a gift.”

  They were of a single mind about this, and nothing would sway them. Ignorance is that way. “Then we’re not going to find him,” she said after a moment. “We’re not going to find him until he wants to be found.”

  Lynch came close to laughing, but not quite. “I think we’ve got ourselves a pessimist.”

  “Have some faith in your government,” Barnes told her. “We march stupidly into countries we don’t understand; we sit back as our cities are decimated by natural disasters; and we let our schools go quietly to shit—despite these things, one thing we’re pretty good at is finding people who don’t want to be found.”

  7

  KEVIN MOORE was one of many. There were eleven people like him—twenties, college educated, full of revolutionary fervor—living in this ramshackle, two-story clapboard house near the base of Black Mountain in Wyoming. They cooked and washed dishes together, ate together and shared bedsheets. They even shared their noms de guerre—the men were all George, the women Mary. At the beginning, when they’d been told this, a single woman raised her hand. “And if we’re trans?”

  “Then it’s up to you,” said the tall, green-eyed Mary who had opened the door and welcomed Kevin and Tracey to the “fascist-free zone.”

  He hadn’t understood the naming convention—how were they supposed to communicate when there were more than two in a room? After a couple of days, though, he got it: When talking in groups, people were forced to look at each other, to meet eyes and communicate. “George” was identified not by his name but by the direction the speaker was looking, whose face she or he chose to gaze at. And this brought them closer together, all these meetings of eyes.

  When Kevin had imagined what would follow his call to the underground, he’d envisioned something more in line with his military background, or the Palestinian training camps he remembered from old movies, where they marched in formation and rolled through obstacle courses and shot at makeshift targets in the desert. While target practice was part of their regime, it seemed almost an afterthought to the words that filled their days.

  They read books—the house was stocked with fiction, political theory, and history—and in the afternoons they sat in circles of six or seven or eight to discuss the ills of society. They called it the Secret Seminar. As the murderous George with the GTO had told him, each person had his own bone to pick. George from Ohio talked about his older brother, who had gone from a bright young man to an unemployed, obese, diabetes-ridden failure in the space of five years, simply because a factory had closed down, and because society didn’t care enough about his decline. “Empathy,” he said to the group. “A civilization without empathy isn’t worth holding on to.”

  Mary from Louisiana—this was the transgender who had asked how she should be named—was entrenched in gender politics, finding in the very clothes of American consumer society repression and self-sabotage. “If we don’t fit in a box, we’re discarded. It’s such a waste—it makes me want to cry.”

  Tracey felt no ambiguity about gender; she was a woman who argued that civilization had been born with a fatal illness: patriarchy, though she didn’t call it that. She called it “men running things.”

  Tracey had worked all her young life for men, and could no longer take their physical and economic dominance. By the third Secret Seminar she opened up about her first boss, at a restaurant in East Sacramento, who had convinced her that blowjobs would help her job prospects. Living check to check, she’d given in—and was laid off after half a year, once he’d moved on to Santa Cruz. “I hate myself most of all,” she said, “but I hate him for making me feel this way.”

  Louisiana Mary rubbed her back. Tracey shrugged and said, “But it’s bigger than assholes in Sacramento. You know? Like, people say the terrorists hate the West because of our drones and television shows and Mohammed comic strips. Or, maybe, because of our freedom. But that’s not it. They hate us because of our women. It’s fear. That their women will finally take revenge for history. In the eyes of angry Weste
rn women, they see the writing on the wall. They can kick Christians and Jews and Hindus out of their land, but they’ll never get along without women, and at any moment those women can stick a knife in their backs. So they cover them up, slice off their clitorises, beat them down. Just the other day they kidnapped a hundred and twenty girls in Nigeria because they were getting a fucking education.”

  There was silence; her transition to the international sphere had been too quick, and she could see it in their eyes.

  “It’s an observation,” she said. “I’m just saying those guys who cut off heads and stone women to death—they’re as much our enemy as the American government. Only problem is, they’re beyond our reach. For now. But after we’ve changed America we’ll be exporting our revolution, and we’ll go after them.”

  When it was his turn, Kevin spoke of being a black man in a racist society, of the unnatural deference he had to show the police, of job interviews that would, by default, go to the white man in the room. “White man,” said Tracey, and he nodded at that, admitting it was true.

  “But racism isn’t about race,” he went on. “It’s something rich people dreamed up so their wage slaves would feel better. Just be happy you weren’t born a nigger. You angry you don’t have a job? Well, don’t blame me—that Mexican works for half the price. They never say, I only pay him half as much as I pay you. No, it’s the Mexican’s fault for being desperate enough to work for peanuts.” He shook his head. “Rich people, they’re smart. Which is why we have to be smarter.”

  While they each had their own cause, Kevin noticed that they all shared a single need that life in America had not satisfied: belonging. All these Marys and Georges felt like aliens in their own country, disassociated from the mainstream of American belief, and so they had left their homes in search of a new, better family with whom they could finally be comfortable in their own skins. These were the misshapen pegs, the ones for whom no space was an easy fit.

  One important question came up during the seminars: How many misshapen pegs were there? Not just the deserters like them, who had escaped to safe houses like this in order to avoid a government crackdown that had begun with the attempted capture of Martin Bishop and Benjamin Mittag in New Jersey—what about those who had not yet deserted? How deep into the American fabric could their group spread and grow? What percentage of Americans felt alienated from America? Five percent? Fifteen? Forty-five? Gleefully, one George pointed out that a minuscule percentage of the Russian population had been Communist when the Bolshevik Revolution took over their country.

  The weapons were stored in the basement, in crates, a hodgepodge of semiautomatic and hunting rifles, slide-action pistols, and six-shooter revolvers collected from gun shows, parents’ attics, and friends’ locked cabinets. Every day they gathered the weapons and headed higher up the mountain, where they shot at pinecones labeled with smiley faces on Post-it notes. Sometimes ten or twenty pinecones were hung from trees, all these smiley faces, a single one among them labeled PIG—the object was to hit the cop but no one else.

  “So this is the plan?” asked a George from Wisconsin. “We’re all going to show up one day and shoot cops across America?”

  Green-eyed Mary shook her head. “You think they’re not going to shoot at you? Just learn to defend yourself, hon. I, for one, don’t want to be a martyr to the cause. Not yet, at least.”

  Kevin, with his military training, excelled at the gun practice, and his sharpshooting gained him favorable attention. He noticed that in the afternoons they listened more closely when he spoke, as if his skills behind the trigger were a reflection of a wiser mind. When green-eyed Mary asked his opinion, all faces turned to him in anticipation.

  He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

  8

  UNDER DURESS, Lou Barnes had given Rachel an office, a fifteen-by-twenty-foot windowless room that, like the old conference room, became deafening when the air conditioning switched on. He’d also been ordered by Paulson to give her a more substantial budget from his discretionary fund, and while it was a pittance it was better than nothing. She was trying to remain optimistic.

  Her staff had been culled from other departments. Four analysts, each assigned to one of the national regions—West, Midwest, South, and Northeast—shared three desks, while near the door was another desk for Rachel. Ashley, Erin Lynch’s “crack accountant,” moved in, followed by a technician pulling her computer on a cart. There wasn’t any space for Doug, the loaner she’d finagled from Cyber, but he made do.

  She’d flown in two SACs—special agents in charge—both of whom had been running undercover agents inside the Massive Brigade during the past year. Of the six agents who had infiltrated the community, only one, OSWALD, had been invited to move underground on June 18. Another undercover agent, who had been tracking a Massive follower named Tracey Hill, had been found in the Nevada desert shot dead in her car. While suspicion was high, there was no direct evidence that her murder was related to her work.

  Janet Fordham, the SAC who had run their one success, was a diminutive fifty-year-old who looked so inconvenienced by the lack of chairs that Rachel got up and offered her own. Fordham settled down and rubbed the corner of her eye with a pinkie. “We’ve heard nothing from OSWALD,” she said finally. “One message, then he disappeared.”

  “What’s your assessment?” Rachel asked.

  Fordham sighed. “Well, he’s good. OSWALD spent a year undercover in New Orleans. He won’t crack—I know that. But if he can’t get word to us he’s useless.”

  “That means something, though, doesn’t it?” asked Rachel.

  “Excuse me?”

  “If he can’t get word to you, then it means they’re in lockdown. They’re working toward something.”

  Fordham went back to her eye, rubbing. “I don’t know, Rachel. I don’t know what it means anymore.”

  Doug was a twenty-five-year-old West Virginian with a thick mountain accent that even a precocious education at Yale hadn’t washed away. He’d long ago cracked the back end of The Propaganda Ministry and had been charting locations each time the site’s administration page was accessed. This administrator, even accounting for IP masking, always visited from a different location: One day he’d be traced to Louisiana, another day Alaska. Doug’s assessment was that the administration of the site was shared by an unknown number of people, each of whom checked on it once and then, perhaps, never returned.

  “But how do they communicate?” Proulx asked.

  A shrug. “NSA’s been scouring the mobile networks—zilch. Obviously they’re using phones—there’s no choice in the matter—but they’re sticking to burners. We’ve got nothing on email. We suspect they’re using a hodgepodge of techniques. Burners. Shared email accounts, communicating through draft folders. Newspaper classifieds. Couriers. Mostly, though, they talk face-to-face.”

  “Sounds like Bishop learned his trade from us.”

  “Or paperback thrillers,” said Doug.

  “Try al Qaeda,” Ashley said as she walked up and handed Doug a white paper bag stained with oil. Each day, without fail, Ashley walked a block to Fogo de Chão, a Brazilian steakhouse, for their “Gaucho lunch.” Rachel felt a special fondness for the post-lunch Ashley, refueled and smelling of grilled meats.

  In the afternoon, she and Doug sat down to figure out how to divvy up the gigabytes of Martin Bishop’s online correspondence, just sent over from NSA. They looked up at a knock on the doorjamb: a balding crewcut in a suit, early forties. He stuck out a hand and continued over to her desk. “Ms. Proulx? Owen Jakes. Really great to meet you. Your San Francisco report is a classic.”

  Unsure, Rachel shook his hand and asked where he’d come from.

  “They didn’t tell you?” Jakes said, then rolled his eyes. “Why am I not surprised? I only just got into town—Lou Barnes sent me over.”

  “I thought Lou believed we were wasting his money.”

  Jakes winked. “He’s usually the last one to fi
gure these things out, isn’t he?”

  There was something about the way Jakes had moved confidently into her office and casually mocked his boss that felt like a ham-fisted flirtation. Rachel looked at Doug, who seemed to be reserving his judgment. “Sit down, then,” she said. “Let’s find out why he’s sent you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, then looked at Doug. “Who are you again?”

  Doug stood and shook his hand, introducing himself.

  “Look, man,” Jakes said, “my story doesn’t have anything to do with computers. You mind?”

  Doug, uncomfortable, glanced at Rachel; she nodded. He went to join Ashley at her desk.

  Rachel leaned against the desk. “Next time, Owen Jakes, I’ll do the dismissing.”

  “Sure, sure. I get it.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Probably because I used to know Martin Bishop,” said Jakes.

  From 2005 to 2010, Jakes explained, he had worked liaison out of the Berlin embassy, sharing intel and coordinating with his opposite numbers in Germany’s BfV—Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. One subject of mutual concern had been the Kommando Rosa Luxemburg, one of whose founders had been arrested in Frankfurt for hacking the Christian Democrats’ main server and dumping thousands of emails onto the internet. “But the KRL didn’t claim responsibility for what their member had done, and the Germans couldn’t tie them to it. So other than that one arrest nothing was done about them. Then I got a call—a new face, an American, was attending the KRL meetings. We didn’t have anything on Martin Bishop. So I made contact.”

  “Official contact?” Rachel asked.

  He shook his head. “I was just a guy. A charming fellow American in Berlin. I can be very charming if I need to be.” He smiled, but Rachel didn’t bother to mirror him. “A few days into it, he tells me about the Kommando. Paints it like it’s a discussion group.”

  “So he was inviting you in.”