Eight days later, I sat in the darkened bar of the Albergo and watched John O'Neill enter like a vicar walking into a child brothel. He kept reaching into his linen sport coat as if he were going for a gun. He wasn't, of course, but this was Beirut. The gesture rattled the hotel staff.
"Someone's going to call for backup if you do that again," I said, walking up to him.
"It's my cigar case."
"Pull it out, then. Kill the suspense. You're in a smoker's paradise."
"I can't."
"Can't?"
"I stopped. Doctor's orders."
"You never took a doctor's order in your life."
"I'm a new person. I want to live to be a hundred."
He didn't look it: bags under his eyes, drawn face. It couldn't have been
jet lag or lack of sleep: O'Neill was an alien out of Men in Black. "You get to sleep when you're dead," he liked to say.
I suggested we pace through the tiny courtyard in front of the hotel as we talked. The Albergo itself was above intrigue, but you never knew if the lobby was wired.
O'Neill got things started by bitching and moaning about the hoops he'd had to crawl through just to show up: the embassy, the ambassador. In the end, they'd let him into the country only after he swore he would come to the meeting in an armored car, with bodyguards. I could see both cars parked across the street. The bodyguards milled around, hands in their vests.
"Listen, John-"
He wheeled on me before I could finish. "Max, what are you up to? Self-immolating? I can't believe you hooked up with Russians."
Russians? The only thing I could think of was that Webber had caught wind of Yuri, turned it into a full-blown counterintelligence investigation, and shoved the whole thing straight up O'Neill's nose. I didn't want to distract him with an explanation.
"I don't have time for that bullshit. Remember Applied Science Research, the clowns who followed me in New York?"
"Max, that's over. They followed you. They got crap. Ancient history."
"Did you hear they're working a case in San Diego?"
"Who's 'they'?"
"Applied Science."
"So what?"
I told O'Neill what India had told me about the two Saudis, about how Webber was intentionally withholding the information from the Bureau. The only thing I left out was my source, and her father.
"I'm gonna have his balls," O'Neill said when I finished. The words were right, but nothing else was. There was no punch behind them, none of O'Neill's usually blustering outrage. Time to worry about that later, too.
"Tell me about David Channing."
"No, first you tell me why I'm here."
"You're here because I know things you want to know. The same old game."
"Like what?"
"Like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad is planning to fly an airplane into a refinery-to make money."
"Woo-woo," O'Neill said, twirling his forefinger at his temple.
"Bin Laden's going along for the ride."
"Double woo-woo."
"You're not listening."
"Of course I'm fucking listening. You opened the door to the Woo Woo House, Max, and you heard the inmates screaming, and this is what they had to say. Big. Fucking. Deal. KSM? C'mon. Get real. He's afraid to set off an M-80."
"But what if-"
"What if nothing! It's crazy. You're crazy. The whole fucking Middle East is battier than goddamn Carlsbad Cavern!"
None of it sounded like O'Neill. Some bad impersonator had climbed inside his skin.
"Let me finish," I said. "What if KSM was just a front? Bin Laden, too. What if the people really doing the operation were the same ones who fought in the trenches in Beirut for fifteen years, the same people who truck-bombed the Marines, people who could put together a network and really carry off an operation like this? That scare you?"
"Yeah, if I were paying eight ninety-five to watch some rinky-dink, Hollywood version of the Great Global Conspiracy. Maybe you checked into the Woo Woo House, too." He took a long look around the over-planted courtyard and out to the street beyond. "Maybe you're already there."
"What's the matter, John?" I finally said. "They're on your ass?"
He sighed, huffed, reached for his cigar case again, and pulled his hand away in disgust when he realized nothing was in it.
"None of your damn business."
"Want more?"
"I got more than enough already."
I handed him the other phone number the prince had given me, the one in Tehran.
"Trace it," I said. "It's a Pasdaran ops number that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad calls from. I'm pretty sure his real masters are a couple crazies in the Pasdaran, not bin Laden."
"Oh, fuck. You're not still after Buckley's kidnapper, are you?"
"That's how it got started. No more."
That wasn't exactly true, but right now I needed O'Neill. He was my only connection to Washington. If he didn't believe my story, no one would. And my gut feeling was that the prince and his brother were on to something.
"Go home and check it out," I said. "If it's a good lead, call me and tell me it's worth pursuing."
"Oh, hell," O'Neill said, staring down at his palm as if I'd just spit in it. "Goddamn hell."
"David Channing?"
"What do you want to know about him?"
"How he makes money."
"Commodities. Oil. Pork rinds. Calls, puts. Hedge funds. He's deep in debt, though. A guy over at the SEC said they're about to investigate him. What does he have to do with KSM?"
"John, I still need one more favor."
He looked at me as if I were about to ask to borrow his pecker to screw his girlfriend.
"A last one. I mean it. Go through Millis's phone records for the afternoon of June 2, 2000. He was at lunch with me until at least two-thirty. See who he called after he got back."
I honestly thought he would say no, just leave. I'd emptied the cookie jar, run out of things to trade. It was down to trust now, the thinnest reed of all. In fact, he did turn to go, but I grabbed him by the arm before he got two steps. My jar wasn't empty after all.
"John, I wouldn't ask you if I didn't have to. But I can't get into Millis's House numbers. My bet is that if I find out who he called after I saw him, it'll mesh with something in the intercepts of KSM's calls."
"You have transcripts of KSM's calls?"
I nodded.
"Where are they?"
"You know the game. I play only if I get to be a player. I give you the transcripts now, and that's the last I'd hear from you."
"With or without them, it might be."
I knew what was going through O'Neill's mind. Even when you think your informant has gone over the edge, you make yourself listen on the outside chance that he comes up with one last piece of the puzzle that unlocks everything. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it's a fool's game, but the best intelligence officers keep playing.
"Okay, fuck," he said. Brushing my hand off his jacket. "If I can get my hands on them, how do I get them to you?"
I gave O'Neill the same e-fax number that Chris Corsini had used.
"Don't expect anything soon." O'Neill said, straightening his cuffs. "Unlike you, I got a daytime job."
"Listen," I told him, "I'm about to connect the dots. I'm not that far away. But-"
"No, you listen, Max: Stop adding two and two and getting twenty-two, okay? It'll only get you into more trouble. And stay the hell away from that Russian. Got it?"
O'Neill grabbed me around the neck, gave me a side hug, and started to walk away.
"Are we okay?" I called after him. He was more like himself now, but the whole performance was off a beat.
"Nothing I can't handle," he said without breaking stride.
"Sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. I'm John Fucking O'Neill."
O'Neill was halfway to his armored car when I thought of something else. "Wait," I called, racing after him. "What about Channing's company?"
"BT Trading, whatever that is. Some shell company registered in Maine."
Bingo. Here we go.
I was walking back to the hotel when I noticed an old BMW 316 parked down the street. The plates were gone. Even from a half block away, I could tell it was spray-painted. None of its three occupants were looking in my direction. One had a black vest on. Nothing entirely wrong about the picture, but nothing right about it, either.