“I don’t know,” Noreen said, her answer sounding defensive even to her.
“Of course you do,” Rapp said. “You’ve got a grand total of one operational tour of duty under your belt and you’re on your way out the door. You’re Farm-trained, but you’ve never worked as a NOC and you sure as shit haven’t done anything like this. You’re here because you have the right profile to work this op, but I don’t entrust my life to performance evaluations.”
“So you decided to test me?”
“Damn right I did. The SDR you ran this morning was adequate and the tell on your front door was well done. Real old-school stuff. But tradecraft is only part of what makes a good case officer. Ops never go according to plan. I needed to know how you’d react to the unexpected.”
Noreen unscrewed the plastic water bottle opposite her plate and took a drink. The gesture had less to do with thirst and more that she needed time to think. Was she pissed-off that Rapp had purposefully scared the shit out of her?
Yes.
Had she come dangerously close to losing it after realizing the Glock was empty?
Also yes.
But she hadn’t lost it. This certainly hadn’t been how she’d imagined her day would end when she’d laced up her hiking boots this morning, but she was glad for Rapp’s presence. Working as a lone wolf was cool in the movies, but after experiencing it in real life, Noreen would use a different descriptor.
Terrifying.
For the first time since arriving in Pakistan, Noreen felt like she could breathe. The scope of her mission was enormous and the consequences for failure were still unthinkable, but she was no longer alone.
“Was the plan for me to link up with you all along?” Noreen said. “I thought this was a solo op.”
Rapp shook his head. “You’re not on this alone. There’s an Agency safehouse located within line of sight of the compound. It’s chock-full of antennas, cameras, and mikes along with half a dozen stir-crazy CIA officers. You know what they’ve got?”
Noreen shook her head.
“Jack shit,” Rapp said. “Whoever’s living in that compound is a careful son of a bitch. Eighteen-foot walls topped with razor wire ring the place, while the inner building is protected by a second seven-foot wall that cordons it off from the courtyard. They have electricity and gas, but no telephone or internet service. The inner courtyard has a bunch of vegetable gardens and a small farm—chickens, goats, rabbits, the works. The only people who go in and out of the compound are the two couriers and occasionally their kids. The families even burn their trash. Our safehouse has been operational for close to a month. Other than confirming that there are a shitload of people living inside the compound based on the amount of laundry drying on the clotheslines, the CIA officers have come up with nothing.”
Noreen knew some of this.
After she’d agreed to Nash’s pitch, there hadn’t been much time to bring her up to speed. She’d squeezed in a single classified briefing at headquarters that had covered the basics before catching a flight out of Dulles. A little less than eight hours had elapsed from the time she’d answered Nash’s call to the moment she fastened her seat belt on a plane heading east.
To say her husband, Brian, hadn’t been pleased was an understatement. But at the end of the day, he’d done what he’d always done—kissed her forehead and told her that she’d be in his prayers. Though she’d been raised Muslim, Noreen wasn’t practicing. Usually she considered Brian’s devout Christian faith an endearing, if confusing, facet of the man she loved.
Not this time.
Until she completed this operation, Noreen would welcome all the divine help she could get.
“If you weren’t part of the initial plan, why are you here now?” Noreen said.
“Things have changed,” Rapp said, “and not for the better. What was your mission?”
Noreen paused before replying. Surely Rapp knew what she’d been instructed to do, so why was he asking? The answer followed on the heels of her question. For the same reason he’d slipped inside her apartment and waited for her in the darkness. He was testing her. Not her recall, but her understanding of what was at stake.
“Mike Nash was my briefing officer,” Noreen said, “and his instructions were a bit vague. He told me to come to Abbottabad, rent an apartment, and establish my legend as a travel writer. He wanted me out and about, but away from the city proper. Further instructions would be issued via my COVCOM device.”
“Sure,” Rapp said, waving away her explanation. “That’s what he said. What did Nash mean?”
Noreen took a deep breath.
She’d been thinking on this subject seemingly nonstop since she’d received her orders. Her operational experience, while admittedly limited, didn’t jibe with such an open-ended tasking. Case officers were not exactly a dime a dozen and bringing one of them into country dark took some doing. After flying out of Dulles, Noreen had spent the next twenty-four hours hopping planes, trains, and automobiles to clear her tail.
A considerable amount of time and resources had been expended getting her in-country clean, including Mike Nash’s presence in Islamabad. To do this without giving her a clear purpose didn’t make sense. After reflecting on this contradiction, Noreen could think of just one explanation.
“I’m a pinch hitter,” Noreen said. “I speak the language, look like I belong, and spent part of my life in Pakistan. My guess is that plan A didn’t work and neither did versions B, C, D, and E. I’m the Hail Mary. The high-risk, high-reward operation that only gets approved when the ops folks have nothing left.”
Rapp stared at her in silence for an uncomfortably long period of time.
Then, he spoke.
“Your chief of station was an idiot,” Rapp said.
“Why?”
“You’re smart and can think on your feet. That can’t be taught. Recruiting assets takes time to master. Some people pick it up right away. Other go through a bit of a learning curve. But your operational sense is far more mature than what someone with your limited experience should possess. Your chief of station should have recognized that and structured your evaluation accordingly. Once we’re done, I’ll set things right.”
Noreen swallowed, unprepared for the level of emotion Rapp’s statement engendered. Yes, she’d certainly thought herself better than her abysmal performance evaluation depicted, but she really didn’t know. The Congo had been her first tour. Competition between fellow case officers was fierce and promotions through the government service, or GS, scale was directly linked to the number of successful asset recruitments.
In her darkest moments, of which there had been more than a few, Noreen found herself wondering if perhaps her boss had been correct. Maybe this wasn’t the life for her. While she couldn’t say for sure whether her decision to exit the Agency might have gone differently if she’d departed Africa as a success rather than a failure, a positive evaluation certainly would have helped.
But that was neither here nor there.
She and Brian had agreed that leaving the CIA was the best thing for their family. She was in Pakistan because she was a patriotic American willing to answer her nation’s call a final time. Nothing more. Rapp’s assessment and his offer to right what he perceived as a wrong were a balm to Noreen’s injured pride, but that was it.
At least that’s what she told herself.
“Thank you,” Noreen said. “So what’s the plan?”
