The Faithful Spy

She showed her CIA identification and special navy pass to the two sailors posted outside Keifer’s room. They eyed both carefully, then saluted her. The ensign pulled a thick metal key from his pocket and slid it into the heavy lock on the door. He pushed the door open slowly, and she stepped into the windowless room.

“Take as much time as you like, ma’am,” the ensign said, closing the door behind her. “Mohammed’s not going anywhere.”

Keifer lay on a narrow hospital cot, hands and legs shackled to the side of the frame, an intravenous drip flowing into his arm. His beard had been shaved roughly and his hair cropped close. A yellow bruise ringed his left eye. He was skinny and small and looked like a philosophy grad student or something equally useless. He wasn’t much of a flight risk, but just to be sure, a camera in the corner was trained on the bed, and two more sailors stood by the door. Either could have tossed Keifer into the Atlantic with one hand. For one tiny moment Exley felt sorry for him. Then she didn’t. u n d e r n o r m a l c i rc u m s ta n c e s, Exley wouldn’t have spoken to Keifer. She was a handler, not an interrogator, and the CIA and DIA — the Defense Intelligence Agency, Rumsfeld’s boys — had grilled Keifer for weeks. But after reading the transcripts of Keifer’s interrogations, Exley and Ellis Shafer, her boss, the section head for the Near East, decided she should talk to Keifer herself. Exley decided to be his mother. She was old enough, and he probably hadn’t seen a woman in a while. She walked to the bed and put her hand on his shoulder. His drugged eyes blinked open. He shrank back, his shoulders hunching, then relaxed a little as she smiled at him.

“Tim. I’m Jen Exley.”

He blinked and said nothing.

“You feeling okay?”

“What does it look like?”

Unbelievable. This dumb kid still wanted to play tough. All hundred and forty pounds of him. Fortunately, the sodium pentothal and morphine running through his veins had softened him a little. Amnesty International might have objected, but they didn’t get a vote. Exley tried to arrange her face in sympathy rather than the contempt she felt. “Can I sit down?”

He shrugged, rustling his cuffs against the bed. She pulled over a chair.

“Are you a lawyer?”

“No, but I can get you one.” A little lie.

“I want a lawyer,” Keifer said, his voice slurred. He closed his eyes and shook his head, slowly, metronomically, seeming to draw comfort from the motion. “They said no lawyer. I know my rights.”

You’re gonna have to take that up with somebody a lot more senior than me, Exley thought.

“I can help you,” she said. “But you have to help me.”

Again he shook his head, sullenly this time. “What do you want?”

“Tell me about the other American over there. Not John Walker Lindh. The third guy. The older one.”

“I told you.”

She touched his face, moved his head toward her, to give him a look at her blue eyes — her best feature, she’d always been told, even if crow’s-feet had settled around them.

“Look at me, Tim. You told someone else. Not me.”

She could see the fight leave his eyes as he, or the drugs in him, decided arguing wasn’t worth the trouble. “They called him Jalal. One or two guys said his real name was John.”

“John?”

“Maybe they had him confused with John Walker Lindh. I’m not even sure he was American. I never talked to him.”

“Not once?” She hoped her voice didn’t reveal her disappointment.

“No,” Keifer said. He closed his eyes. Again she waited. “The place was big. He was in and out.”

“He was free to come and go?”

“Seemed that way.”

“What did he look like?”

“Big guy. Tall. Had a beard like everybody else.”

“Any distinguishing features?”

“If there were, I didn’t see any. It wasn’t that kind of camp.”

She leaned close to him and smiled. His breath smelled rank and acrid at the same time, like a rotten orange. They probably weren’t brushing his teeth much. “Can you remember anything else?”

He seemed to be thinking. “Can I get some water?”

Exley looked at the sailor by the door. He shrugged. A stack of plastic cups sat beside a metal sink in the corner of the room. She filled one and brought it to Keifer, tipping it gently to his lips.

“Thank you.” Keifer closed his eyes. “The American — Jalal—

guys said he was a real soldier. Tough. He’d been in Chechnya. That’s what they said.” He opened his eyes, looked at her. “What else can I tell you?”

What she really wanted to know were questions she wasn’t supposed to ask. How much of the Koran have you read? Do you really hate America, or was it just an adventure? By the way, when are your friends going to hit us next? Where? How? And as long as she was chewing over unaskable, unanswerable questions, how about this one: Whose side is he on? Jalal, that is. John Wells. The only CIA agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda. A man whose existence was known to fewer than a dozen agency officials. A singular national asset.