6

Jenny Morris watched her colleague operating in the lion’s den.

She could see he was in severe pain. She knew the immense pressure he was under. Stephens wanted him gone. Whitney was a lukewarm ally at best. Hernandez barely knew him. That was true of most of the other officials around the table as well. In theory, McDermott should have his back, but that relationship was complicated for reasons she had never quite figured out. The president? Well, Clarke was a tough man to read on the best of days.

Yet as sorry as Jenny felt for Marcus—for the torture he’d endured at the hands of Hezbollah and Kairos operatives in Lebanon and for the horrific personal losses he had suffered over the years—she also knew that this room was severely underestimating him. In all her years in the Central Intelligence Agency, Jenny had never met anyone like Marcus Ryker. He just might be the smartest and gutsiest operative she had ever met in her own government or anyone else’s, and the more time she spent with him, the more she liked and trusted him.

Getting a nod from Marcus, Jenny rose quickly and handed out black binders marked TOP SECRET to everyone present. Each was numbered. Each would have to be returned to her at the end of the meeting. For each contained the highly classified evidence backing up everything that she and Marcus were about to say. There were gaps in the presentation, she conceded—if only to herself—gaps that Stephens was going to try his best to exploit. But it was solid work, and she stood by it.

“To date,” Marcus continued, “we’ve captured and analyzed 6.2 million emails, sifted through 4.37 million text messages, intercepted 12,109 phone calls, interviewed 343 witnesses, and interrogated 93 enemy combatants. But the critical breakthrough came four days ago when my team and I captured this man in Doha, Qatar.”

Marcus put another photo on the screen. Though a bit faded, this one was in color. Abu Nakba could be seen on the left. Marcus identified the man on the right—at least a half-century younger—as Hamdi Yaşar.

“Hamdi Yaşar recently turned thirty-one years old. Turkish national. Born and raised in Istanbul. Moved to Doha a decade ago. Became a journalist for a Turkish daily. Then was hired as a field producer for the Al-Sawt satellite news network, where he won multiple awards and acclaim. But all the while he was a Kairos operative, loyal first and foremost to Abu Nakba. Indeed, this is the Libyan’s most senior and trusted consigliere. This is the man who plotted at least a dozen major terrorist attacks from London to Lisbon, from Warsaw to Washington, and from Johannesburg to Jerusalem.”

Marcus now displayed a series of photos of Hamdi Yaşar. Some showed him in custody and wearing an orange jumpsuit. Others showed him meeting with various world leaders, from the presidents of Russia and Turkey to the Supreme Leader of Iran and a group of generals in Communist China. Then came images of Yaşar’s apartment, safe, and the weapons, files, and electronic devices that Marcus and his team had seized.

“Hamdi Yaşar may not be talking to us—yet—but believe me, his hard drives are,” Marcus said, explaining the week he and his team had just spent at Gitmo. “His phones are. His files are. The videos of each attack we found in his possession certainly are.”

Marcus turned the floor over to Jenny.

Though younger than him, Jenny had been with the Agency for more than ten years. She had been the youngest employee ever to be promoted to station chief, and in Moscow of all places. That’s where the two had met. That’s where the two had encountered each other’s skills and grit. Jenny had narrowly saved Marcus’s life. He had even more narrowly saved hers. What started as a rivalry had morphed into grudging respect, and Jenny knew Marcus counted her as one of the most trusted members of his team and a personal friend.

He asked her to walk the room through a series of drone and satellite photos, explaining why everything they had uncovered pointed to one particular facility.

“This,” she said, “is Abu Nakba’s home. This compound is located in the western deserts of Libya, just outside a town called Ghat, not far from the Algerian border. This is the base of operations for Kairos. And we believe that Abu Nakba and most of his senior leadership are in this compound at this very moment.”

Jenny then proceeded through a series of slides provided by the NSA identifying a satellite phone purchased by Hamdi Yaşar in Doha six months earlier.

“Now that we have all of Hamdi Yaşar’s phones,” Jenny continued, “we know that this senior Kairos operative called one particular satphone more than any other single number. Forty-two times in the past 180 days. These calls were typically longer than almost any other calls that Yaşar made, often lasting an hour or more. And the NSA confirmed to me yet again—right before this meeting began—that the satphone Yaşar called so often is still active and located on the top floor of the main building inside the Libyan compound.”

Jenny turned the presentation back over to Marcus.

“That’s him, Mr. President. That’s Abu Nakba,” Marcus said. “That’s who Hamdi Yaşar has been calling every four days, often for hours on end. And to be clear, Mr. President, this is the first time that we have ever positively identified exactly where Abu Nakba is in real time.”

At that, Stephens went full Vesuvius.

“No, no, and hell no,” Stephens shouted, slamming his fist on the table. “This is not the view of the Central Intelligence Agency—not at all—not even close.”

Everyone in the room jumped, except Marcus, who had seen the eruption coming. He was surprised only that it had taken this long.

“And with all due respect, Mr. President, I must repeat the objections I made to you in private last night and again this morning,” Stephens quickly added, red-faced and practically coming out of his chair. “I know you have appreciated some of the work that Mr. Ryker has done in the past, even the recent past. But I must remind you: He is not an Agency man. Wasn’t trained at the Farm. Didn’t pay his dues. Refuses to operate by our playbook. And need I remind everyone how many times he has brought this Agency—indeed, this administration—to the brink of international calamity and humiliation?”

The room was silent until Clarke finally spoke. “Richard, I’m well aware of your history with Agent Ryker here, but—”

“It’s not that, sir—this isn’t personal,” Stephens broke in. “It’s the fact that—”

But Clarke cut him off. “I’m not interested in the past, Richard. I just want to know one thing. Is Abu Nakba in that compound, or isn’t he?”

“No, Mr. President,” Stephens replied, dialing down the intensity. “I’m not convinced of that, nor are my top analysts, Agent Morris notwithstanding.”

“Why not?”

“Everything you just heard, sir, was circumstantial, at best. Hamdi Yaşar bought a satellite phone in Doha—so what? And he’s speaking on it a lot—so what? That doesn’t prove Abu Nakba is the man he’s speaking to. Have we seen photos of Abu Nakba walking around the courtyard of that compound or sipping tea on the balcony? No. Have we heard intercepts of actual telephone calls in which we can hear Abu Nakba’s voice? No. We only got a drone over the site late last night. We only received satellite imagery a few hours ago. Now, could the Libyan be in there? Yes, that’s possible. Anything is possible. But we simply don’t know for certain one way or the other. Things are moving too fast. And key witnesses aren’t talking.”

“Like who?” Clarke asked.

“Hamdi Yaşar for one,” Stephens replied.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve had Hamdi Yaşar in custody for four days. Has he told us he gave the phone to Abu Nakba? No. Has he told us Abu Nakba is in that compound? No. Why not? Because Hamdi Yaşar isn’t talking—not about this, not about anything. And why not? Because Mr. Ryker here doesn’t have the stomach to interrogate him properly. As I said, Mr. Ryker is not one of us, sir. He wasn’t trained for interrogations. He wasn’t trained to be a field operative. He wasn’t trained for any of this. But allowing him to lead this investigation—against my strenuous objections—is setting this administration up for disaster.”

Stephens scanned the faces of his colleagues, then turned back to Clarke.

“Look, I realize there’s a strong degree of sympathy for Mr. Ryker in this room, especially after all that he has suffered of late. But honestly, is a man who has been subjected to such torture and degradation—with no time to recover, much less gain some distance, some perspective—really in a position to lead us into battle? Even if he was qualified to do so, I remind you that Mr. Ryker is the victim of a crime. This has become personal for him, and it is clouding his judgment.”