Chapter 11 Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
THE HOUSE STOOD IN THE 3300 BLOCK OF N STREET, one of an elegant terrace of Federal-style residences priced far beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest of Washingtonians. Gabriel climbed the curved front steps in the gray half-light of dawn and, as instructed, entered without ringing the bell. Adrian Carter waited in the foyer, dressed in wrinkled chinos, a crewneck sweater, and a tan corduroy blazer. The attire, combined with his tousled thinning hair and unfashionable mustache, gave him the air of a professor from a minor university, the sort who championed noble causes and was a constant thorn in the side of his dean. As director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, Carter had no cause these days other than keeping the American homeland safe from another terrorist attack—though twice each month, schedule permitting, he could be found in the basement of his Episcopal church in suburban Reston preparing meals for the homeless. For Carter, the volunteer work was a meditation, a rare opportunity to thrust his hands into something other than the internecine warfare that raged constantly in the conference rooms of America’s sprawling intelligence community.
He greeted Gabriel with the circumspection that comes naturally to men of the clandestine world and ushered him inside. Gabriel paused for a moment in the center hallway and looked around. Secret protocols had been made and broken in these drably furnished rooms; men had been seduced into betraying their countries for suitcases filled with American money and promises of American protection. Carter had used the property so often it was known throughout Langley as his Georgetown pied-à-terre. One Agency wit had christened it the Dar-al-Harb, Arabic for the “House of War.” It was covert war, of course, for Carter knew no other way to fight.
Adrian Carter had not actively sought power. It had been foisted upon his narrow shoulders block by unwanted block. Recruited by the Agency while still an undergraduate, he had spent most of his career waging secret war against the Russians—first in Poland, where he funneled money and mimeograph machines to Solidarity; then in Moscow, where he served as station chief; and finally in Afghanistan, where he encouraged and armed the soldiers of Allah, even though he knew that one day they would rain fire and death upon him. If Afghanistan would prove to be the Evil Empire’s undoing, it would provide Carter with a ticket to career advancement. He monitored the collapse of the Soviet Union not from the field but from a comfortable office at Langley, where he had recently been promoted to chief of the European Division. While his subordinates openly cheered the demise of their enemy, Carter watched the events unfold with a sense of foreboding. His beloved Agency had failed to predict Communism’s collapse, a blunder that would haunt Langley for years. Worse still, in the blink of an eye, the CIA had lost its very reason for existence.
That changed on the morning of September 11, 2001. The war that would follow would be a war fought in the shadows, a place Adrian Carter knew well. While the Pentagon had struggled to come up with a military response to the horror of 9/11, it was Carter and his staff at the Counterterrorism Center who produced a bold plan to destroy al-Qaeda’s Afghan sanctuary with a CIA-funded guerrilla war guided by a small force of American special operatives. And when the commanders and foot soldiers of al-Qaeda began falling into American hands, it was Carter, from his desk at Langley, who often served as their judge and jury. The black sites, the extraordinary renditions, the enhanced interrogation methods—they all bore Carter’s fingerprints. He felt no remorse over his actions; he hadn’t that luxury. For Adrian Carter, every morning was September 12. Never again, he vowed, would he watch Americans hurling themselves from burning skyscrapers because they could no longer bear the heat of a terrorist fire.
For ten years, Carter had managed to keep that promise. No one had done more to protect the American homeland from the much-anticipated second attack, and for his many secret sins, he had been pilloried in the press and threatened with criminal prosecution. On the advice of Agency lawyers, he had retained the services of a high-priced Washington attorney, an extravagance that had steadily drained his savings and forced his wife, Margaret, to return to teaching. Friends had urged Carter to forsake the Agency and take a lucrative position in Washington’s flourishing private security industry, but he refused. His failure to prevent the attacks of 9/11 haunted him still. And the ghosts of the three thousand compelled him to keep fighting until his enemy was vanquished.
The war had taken its toll on Carter—not only on his family life, which was a shambles, but on his health as well. His face was gaunt and drawn, and Gabriel noticed a slight tremor in Carter’s right hand as he joylessly filled a plate with the government-issue treats arrayed atop the sideboard in the dining room. “High blood pressure,” Carter explained, as he drew coffee from a pump-action thermos. “It started on Inauguration Day, and it rises and falls in relation to the terrorist threat level. It’s sad to say, but after ten years of fighting Islamic terror, I seem to have become a living, breathing National Threat Advisory.”
“What level are we today?”
“Didn’t you hear?” asked Carter. “We’ve abandoned the old color-coded system.”
“What’s your blood pressure telling you?”
“Red,” said Carter dourly. “Bright red.”
“Not according to your director of homeland security. She says there’s no immediate threat.”
“She doesn’t always write her own lines.”
“Who does?”
“The White House,” said Carter. “And the president doesn’t like to needlessly alarm the American people. Besides, raising the threat level would conflict with the convenient narrative making its way around the Washington chattering classes these days.”
“Which narrative is that?”
“The one that says America overreacted to 9/11. The one that says al-Qaeda is no longer a threat to anyone, let alone the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. The one that says it’s time to declare victory in the global war on terror and turn our attention inward.” Carter frowned. “God, but I hate it when journalists use the word ‘narrative.’ There was a time when novelists wrote narrative and journalists were content to report facts. And the facts are quite simple. There exists in the world today an organized force that seeks to weaken or even destroy the West through acts of indiscriminate violence. This force is a part of a broader radical movement to impose sharia law and restore the Islamic Caliphate. And no amount of wishful thinking will make it go away.”
They sat on opposite sides of the rectangular table. Carter picked at the edge of a stale croissant, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. Gabriel knew better than to rush the proceedings. In conversation, Carter could be a bit of a wanderer. Eventually, he would make his way to the point, but there would be several detours and digressions along the way, all of which would undoubtedly prove useful to Gabriel at a later date.
“In some respects,” Carter continued, “I’m sympathetic to the president’s desire to turn the page of history. He views the global war on terrorism as a distraction from his larger goals. You might find this difficult to believe, but I’ve seen him on just two occasions. He calls me Andrew.”
“But at least he’s given us hope.”
“Hope is not an acceptable strategy when lives are at stake. Hope is what led to 9/11.”
“So who’s pulling the strings inside the administration?”
“James McKenna, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, also known as the terrorism czar, which is interesting since he’s issued an edict banning the word ‘terrorism’ from all our public pronouncements. He even discourages its use behind closed doors. And heaven forbid if we happen to place the word ‘Islamic’ anywhere near it. As far as James McKenna is concerned, we aren’t engaged in a war against Islamic terrorists. We’re engaged in an international effort against a small band of transnational extremists. These extremists, who just happen to be Muslims, are an irritant, but pose no real threat to our existence or way of life.”
“Tell