The Last Man

Chapter 33
THE image of a bloodied and battered Joe Rickman was all over the Internet. Thanks to an alert analyst in the CIA's Ops Center, Kennedy was spared having to learn the information from Al Jazeera. The analyst who was working the night shift was surfing her way through a series of hard-core jihadist websites when she stumbled across the video. Ten minutes later she had a voice match on Rickman and the alert went out. For reasons Kennedy could never quite understand, Bagram and Kabul were eight hours and thirty minutes ahead of D.C., not eight hours or nine hours. The thirty minutes threw her off, so when Eugene told her that it was 10:13 in D.C. it took her a second to run the calculation - it was 6:43 a.m. in Bagram.

Eugene handed Kennedy the secure phone and she sat up in bed.

"It's Brad," he informed her.

Kennedy rubbed the sleep from her eyes and said, "I'm here, Brad, what's up?"

"Irene, it's not good."

Kennedy was billeted in one of the base's VIP trailers. She motioned for Eugene to turn on the TV. "I'm listening."

"It's Rick. It's all over the Internet."

Kennedy felt a lump in her throat as she assumed the worst. "Is he alive?"

"Barely. His face is unrecognizable. We had to do a voice analysis to make sure it was him."

"But you're sure it's him?"

"One hundred percent."

Kennedy heard the stress in her deputy director's voice. Brad Stofer had been in his new job for just eight months, but he had been at Langley for twenty-six years. He was a pro, and if he was bothered by what he had seen, it meant it wasn't good. Kennedy also knew that voiceprints rarely came back with a 100 percent match. She feared the worst. "Describe it to me."

"It's four minutes and thirty-seven seconds long. It's heavily edited. His arms are tied above his head. Looks like he's hanging from the ceiling. They were smart enough to cover the walls with sheets. Two men handle the interrogation. It starts out with a lot of head slaps and then they bring out the rubber hoses. He's a bloody mess by the end of it." There was a long pause and then Stofer added, "It's f*cking horrible."

Kennedy started to think about what Rickman was going through, and then she got a grip on her emotions. Now was not the time to lose it. "What does he say?"

"The audio isn't great, but our people say they can clean it up. We should have a good copy in the next thirty minutes. I'll get it to you as soon as it's ready."

"Brad," Kennedy said in a slightly impatient voice, "how bad is the damage?"

"Bad . . . some names are thrown around."

"Which ones?"

"Five of our people in Afghanistan . . . the two cabinet members, the general, the head of intel, and the president."

The Afghanistan assets were the least of her concerns. The accusations were already out there. The people expected it. "What else?"

"He mentions how much we're paying them, and we're pretty sure he names the bank in Switzerland where we keep their money for them. We'll know more when the audio gets cleaned up."

"What else?" She knew there had to be more.

"He mentions Nawaz."

"Gillani."

"Yep."

Kennedy thought of the Pakistani foreign minister who had been their best window in the decision-making process of their hot-and-cold ally. Trying to pull him out would be impossible. "Does he know?"

"Yes. He's going to sit it out. I think he's betting on indefinite house arrest."

Kennedy wasn't so sure, but there wasn't much she could do about it. "What else?"

"There's a spot on the tape where it sounds like he says 'Sitting Bull.' "

Kennedy threw off the covers and stood. Sitting Bull was the code name for their highly placed mole in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service. "Does he say anything other than the name?"

"No. He blurts it out in the middle of one of the beatings."

"Send me the current version. I need to see this for myself."

"It's on its way. What do you want to do about Sitting Bull?"

Kennedy was holding a fistful of her hair. She had on a modest pair of gray pajama pants with a matching long-sleeved top. Eugene was in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. He wasn't doing any good standing there, so she covered the phone and said, "Wake everybody up. Get the coffee going and tell them we have a meeting in twenty minutes." She watched Eugene leave and looked at Al Jazeera on the TV. So far there was nothing, but that wouldn't last. A CIA Clandestine Service operative being tortured was their bread and butter. "Give me a second," she told Stofer.

The damage assessment in the immediate aftermath of Rickman's abduction hadn't come anywhere near Sitting Bull. "Get our people to take a fresh look at this. I want to know how in the hell Rick even knew about Sitting Bull. As far as I know, he wasn't read in on him. Get his handlers in tonight and find out if one of them happened to casually mention it to Rick, and if no one fesses up, hook 'em all up and polly them."

"So we leave him where he is?"

"I need to think about that." Sitting Bull was their best source in the Russian government by a long shot. She needed to be certain before she gave the order to bring him in. "Put an extraction team on standby. Find out if he has any reason to travel in the next twenty-four hours. If we can meet him on neutral ground we can have a sit-down and he can decide, but I don't want anyone telling him until we know for certain. Am I clear?"

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

"Those are the major points. He mentions Hubbard and Sickles and a few other people, but other than Hubbard everyone is secure."

"All right." Kennedy let out a huge sigh as she tried to digest the scope of the problem. "Give me twenty minutes and I'll call you back." Kennedy ended the call and turned on her laptop. She used the bathroom and brushed her teeth while she waited for the encrypted file to download. When she came back out, she sat on the edge of the bed and hit Play. Her job required a good deal of detachment, but there was no way to remain detached from this. She winced with each blow, felt Rickman's pain, wanted to scream along with him, but knew she had to keep it together. By the end of the tape she was on the verge of throwing the laptop against the wall. Instead, she bit her fist and let loose a silent scream. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she closed the laptop and went back into the bathroom to collect herself. In a matter of minutes she would be watching this in a room with as many as eight of her people. She needed to keep it together. Emotions would only cloud her judgment. She was going to have to make some very difficult decisions, and her people needed to see that they were coming from a spy boss, not some blubbering mother.