RainStorm

asked, showing him again that I knew a
    great deal.
    "Jesus," he said. "How do you . . . yes, NE."
    "And the information he gives you concerns . . . ?"
    He sighed, perhaps now rationalizing at some level, Well, I've come
    this far, what can it hurt, and he probably knows most of it anyway. . . .
    "Concerning the flow of arms, particularly WMD precursors,
    to groups that might use them against the United States."
    "Precursors?"
    "Precursors to weapons of mass destruction. Enriched uranium.
    Nuclear centrifuge designs. Anthrax culture. EMPTA, a chemical
    used in the production of VX gas. Etcetera."
    "I'm confused," I said. "I thought Belghazi is heavily involved in
    all of this."
    He shook his head. "Belghazi deals in the old-fashioned stuff.
    Guns and C-4 and RPGs. Stuff we're used to, that we can live with."
    "I didn't realize the CIA could be so accommodating."
    "Look, where do you think we get information on WMDs?
    From choirboys? Nobel Peace Prize winners? Sure, Belghazi is bad,
    but he's an angel compared to some of the characters we're trying
    to stop."
    "So he gives you information on some of the really bad guys
    out there . . ."
    "And in exchange we protect him, let him continue with his
    trade." He paused and looked at me. "Look, I'm cooperating. Can
    you untie me? I think I'm losing circulation."
    Nice try, I thought. I'd wrapped him up in such a way that the pressure
    of the bindings would be maximally distributed and no marks
    would be left. Accordingly, I knew his circulation was unimpaired.
    "You're doing well," I said. "If you keep it up, I'll untie you
    enough so that you'll be able to get out of the rest of it by yourself,
    and I'll leave."
    "All right," he said, no doubt comforted by our rational exchange,
    the civilized back-and-forth of bargaining. Denial again. A
    guy breaks into your apartment, lies in wait, knocks you out, ties
    you up, but--no problem!--you're willing to trust him to keep his
    word after that. At least you are if you desperately want to believe
    that you can trust him, glittering hope triumphing, as it often does,
    over the paler hues of common sense and gut instinct.
    "So Belghazi gives you information, and you give him protection,"
    I said, hoping to jar loose additional information by reflecting
    back what he'd already said.
    "Yes. It's not an uncommon system. Police departments do it all
    the time. They couldn't fight crime without it."
    "Belghazi is a snitch," I said.
    "Exactly."
    I noticed that he had moved us away from the specifics of the
    CIA's relationship with Belghazi to a more general discussion of
    these sorts of relationships in law enforcement. It was nicely done.
    Albeit futile.
    "You say you 'protect' Belghazi," I said. "Tell me more about that."
    His pupils dilated and his eyes shifted right again. He didn't want
    to tell me the truth, and was trying to come up with a substitute.
    "I can see you don't want to talk about this, Mr. Crawley," I
    said, "and that you're about to try to fabricate. So, before you say
    anything, you should know that, if I sense that you're lying, or even
    being incomplete, I'm going to pull that pillow out from under
    your head and smother you with it. Imagine what that'll be like." I
    smiled as though I had just wished him a nice day.
    He blanched, then nodded quickly. "All right. Sometimes we
    share information with him--say, about a rival broker, another deal
    that's getting put together. Belghazi can use that kind of intelligence
    to scuttle the other deal, or undercut it. Twice he's even used
    the information we provided to have a rival eliminated, which we
    generally view as a not undesirable outcome. Or if we learn that
    he's being watched by a rival intelligence service, or by law enforcement,
    we warn him."
    I nodded. "But that's not what you were hoping not to tell me
    a moment ago," I said, my tone regretful, as though in anticipation
    of what I was going to have to do next.
    "No, no it's not," he said quickly. "We also, sometimes, sometimes
    we put people on the ground. Oversee a transfer."
    All right, here we go. The moment of truth.
    "You keep saying 'we,'" I said. "Tell me who else is involved."
    He closed his eyes and nodded his head for a long moment, as
    though trying to comfort himself. Then he said, "There's a former
    Near East Division officer. He's a NOC, non-official cover, based
    in Hong Kong, attached to the Counter Terrorism Center. He has
    a lot of autonomy, and a lot of authority. The other officers