Blow the House Down by Robert Baer

account. Sure, I oversaw a lot of clandestine accounts, but they belonged to the Agency. And the money always went out. It never came back the other way.
    â€œLet me see the statements. The only bank account I have is at Riggs in Georgetown.”
    Scott looked over at Webber, who nodded again. That’s when it occurred to me: They were taping this—audio, not video. Bifocals would have the starring role. Webber might never have been in the room at all.
    â€œThe money was wired from Geneva to what we believe is a life-raft account in Nauru, a numbered account,” Scott said with his best
Dragnet
menace. “We’re verifying it’s yours. We will, though.”
    I think it must have been the “though” that finally pissed me off enough to draw me out from cover. There was something so officious about it, so unctuous, so dead certain that I wanted to shove my fingers up Scott’s nostrils, hoist him out of his chair, and snap his neck.
    â€œThis has got to be a joke,” I said, trying to calm down. “Listen to yourselves: You’re telling me that you’ve pulled my badge, one, because of trips I made to Geneva that just happened to coincide with transfers to an account you’re not sure who owns and, two, because I ate lunch in the same restaurant at the same time as a now-dead narcotics dealer.”
    I knew exactly what was going on. Ames’s arrest had set Congress’s hair on fire. The burning hair begat the Counter-Espionage Center (CEC, as it’s known in the Agency), funded to the grotesque tune of $300 million so the Agency could go through the motions of cleaning up its act. The money and the center and the nearly thousand people who worked there, deconstructing and reassembling old leads, begat the bullshit charges, and the bullshit charges begat today’s meeting. It was like some miserably updated version of Genesis: the Langley Bible. The Russians thought they could use Ames to steal the crown jewels, but he’d done a lot more damage by conning us into slitting our own throats in the aftermath.
    Their dot connecting, or matrices, or whatever the CEC called it these days had yet to catch a spy. Ames, Nicholson, Pitts, and all the other turncoats were hauled in the old-fashioned way, by recruiting spies in our enemies’ intelligence services: messy human beings who knew messy human secrets. Still, they couldn’t have been more pleased with themselves. It was all so much more tidy and cost effective than running spies. Webber would never have to explain to the House Intelligence Committee why he happened to have on his payroll a Hizballah shooter who sent a bullet into his pregnant sister’s face at point-blank range. The dot connecting had reduced the shock factor almost to zero, but all they’d accomplished thus far was to destroy a lot of careers. Mine, too, apparently, although at this point my career needed only a gentle shove to go careening over the edge.
    â€œAnd you’re stacking these flimsy leads up against twenty-five years of service to this organization?”
    Silence. I’d hit a nerve.
    I flipped the black-and-white glossy back across the table, unfortunately with a little too much force. It skimmed the table like a Frisbee, rising and hitting Scott in the middle of his paunch, which was draped over the table.
    â€œThere’s more,” Scott said, undeterred.
    â€œMore?”
    He picked up a yellow legal pad from the table, licked his finger, and flipped a page with it.
    â€œTheodore Hew-Chatworth.”
    â€œHarold—”
    â€œHarold what?”
    â€œHe was born Harold Pooters. Theodore Hew-Chatworth came later.”
    Scott looked up and gave me a hard stare.
    â€œSuspected heroin dealer,” he read. “Probable contacts to Cabrillo family. Mr. Waller”—the “Mr.” was drawn out for effect—“managed to find time in his busy Manhattan schedule to pay Mr.