Free The Ghost War by Alex Berenson Page B

wounded animal. Even if I am.”
     
     
     
    BASEBALL PRACTICE HAD ENDED HOURS earlier, but fluorescent lights still shined over the field at Cardozo High School, just up Thirteenth from Exley’s apartment. In fact the lights never went dark, possibly because of Washington’s legendary municipal incompetence, possibly to make the stands by the field less inviting for midnight trysts. Now Exley, Shafer, and Tyson sat in the stands, waiting for Wells. They’d driven around Washington for fifteen minutes, confirming that no one was following them, before Wells dropped them off and promised to find parking.
    Wells trotted up, holding a plastic bag and handing out paper bags.
    “Beer?” Tyson peered into the bag distastefully.
    “For our cover,” Wells said. “Picked them up at that package store on U Street.”
    “For our cover?” Exley couldn’t help but laugh. Wells’s mood had certainly improved, with the promise of a mission and his dressing-down from Tyson, she thought. Even if he hadn’t said a word she would have known. He was watching the world in a way that he hadn’t in months.
    Wells popped open his beer and took a swig. Tyson looked at him. “What kind of Muslim are you, anyway, John?”
    “Don’t spend much time at the mosque these days,” Wells said.
    “I might feel the same if my co-religionists spent their days thinking of new and exciting ways to kill me.” Tyson poked the can out of the bag. “Budweiser?”
    “Budweiser, George. Put hair on your chest.”
    “Is she going to drink one too, then?” Tyson looked at Exley. “I’ve never had a Budweiser in my life. It’s Yankee beer.”
    “Budweiser’s from St. Louis,” Exley said.
    “All beer is Yankee beer,” Tyson said. “Real Southerners drink whiskey.”
    “George, why can I picture you overseeing a plantation, whip in hand?”
    “That’s your overactive imagination. Now, this is turning into a real fun evening, but I’d like to tell you why we’re here.” Over the next half-hour, Tyson filled them in on the Phantom’s mission, and its failure.
    “And we had no hint of trouble before our guy, the Drafter, asked for the extraction?” Exley said when Tyson was finished.
    “No. We saw him eight months ago in Pakistan, offered to get him out then. He refused. They’d just promoted him. Which is another reason I think it was from our side. Kim Jong Il doesn’t have enough good scientists to turn on them for no reason.”
    “And counterintelligence investigations always leave a trail,” Shafer said. “No matter how hard you try, you can’t watch the suspect without him knowing.”
    “He sees someone’s been poking in his office,” Tyson said. “Or we dangle something and he wonders why all of a sudden he’s got new access. Moles have this spooky sense of when we’re watching.”
    “Tell me about it,” Wells said, remembering the years he’d spent in the mountains. Every day he had wondered if al Qaeda and the Taliban would recognize him as an American agent.
    “So I suspect Sung would have known if they were after him,” Tyson said. “Instead he was as snug as a termite in a lumberyard until the day he told us to get him.”
    “Could you repeat that last bit?” Wells said. “In English?”
    “Ignore the Dixie twang and you have the facts,” Shafer said. “Odds are the North Koreans were tipped from the outside.”
    “Maybe they caught him holding something classified,” Exley said.
    “He was too careful for that,” Tyson said. “His stuff all came shortwave or face-to-face.”
    “How important was he, this guy?” Wells said.
    “Our most important human source.”
    “In North Korea?”
    Tyson sighed. “Anywhere. He told us where they hid their nukes.”
    “Then maybe it wasn’t the North Koreans.” Wells raised the Budweiser to his lips, filling his mouth with the cool tart liquid.
    “How do you mean?”
    “Maybe they got tipped by some other hostile service, somebody who wanted to hurt