No Way Back(Jack McNeal #1)(40)

The line went quiet. “You okay, son? You sound a bit stressed.”

“Had a bit of a situation last night.”

“What kind of situation?”

McNeal told him about the honey trap and Francesca Luca’s ID.

“That is not good.”

“Not good at all.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. How about I check out that name?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Word to the wise. I’m sure you know this now. But just so we’re clear, you’re messing with dangerous people, son.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’ll get something on this girl.”

McNeal was grateful to be able to reach out to O’Brien. It was good to know his digital footprint wouldn’t be getting picked up if he or Peter did a search. He picked up his iPad and sat down at the writing desk.

McNeal started to scroll through the dossier on the man his wife believed to have been responsible in some way for Sophie Meyer’s death.

Henry Graff had been born in Jefferson, Maryland. He was fifty-six years old, a former West Point graduate who joined the Rangers, then was assigned to a CIA unit. He was a Medal of Honor recipient, earned a Purple Heart during years working behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. He lived and breathed Kabul, according to those who knew him. He enjoyed the shadowy life, cultivating sources across the Afghan government. Tribal elders. Military intelligence officers posted in the city. Graff had also been accused by a soldier under his command of carrying out extrajudicial executions of captured Taliban fighters.

No one else had spoken out. Graff had an air of invincibility, according to the fiercely loyal men who served with him. They remained devoted to Graff. Special Operations, meanwhile, grew concerned that he seemed to have gone rogue. Operating with his own agenda. More and more bodies were unearthed in villages he and his men had taken over.

It was believed, by CIA psychiatrists, that Graff was psychotic. Borderline personality disorder. Still, no one wanted to pull him out of the country. Superiors who visited Graff and his men in the farthest flung corners of Afghanistan, occasionally crossing into Pakistan, spoke of being in awe of the man. They talked of his “impenetrable silences,” interspersed with quotes, softly spoken, from The Art of War. Graff, they said, occasionally spoke in Dari and Pashto, highlighting how he had “gone native.” He schooled his men in the Afghan languages. Talked to them about Afghan customs. He and some of his men also cultivated poppy, and Graff became, for a while, an opium addict. It was alleged he smuggled opium back into the States. Military sources said Graff was the “point man” for the CIA, funneling opium for production in Pakistan into heroin. And the profits—believed to be in the tens of millions—bought greater covert funding as the war wore on.

Eventually, a four-star general had been tasked with relieving Graff of his duties. He concluded in a classified report that Graff was a “bad seed and psychologically flawed.” That meant Graff was a perfect fit for the continuing “covert and nefarious” operations. New orders from the general’s superiors at the Pentagon got handed to Graff. New electronic equipment and supplies were dropped into the mountains.

The shadowy operations intensified. Graff and his men, high up in the Safed Koh, stealthily approached hundreds of Taliban foreign fighters before battles would begin. A relentless war of attrition developed. Proxies for Pakistan and the Saudis were the enemy. Atrocities on both sides.

Graff grew to love the isolated mountain ranges. He lived with villagers for weeks, sharing their food, learning their stories. He would provide small luxuries. Cigarettes, gold coins, and dollars for information. He drank poppy seed tea with village elders. He smoked opium.

The villagers gave him information on the foreign fighters in their midst: the Chechens, Egyptians, Libyans, Uzbeks. Graff built a picture and passed it through encrypted codes back to CENTCOM in Tampa, Florida. Sometimes it was sent to the forward headquarters in Qatar.

From there, it wound its way to Langley and the CIA.

The Agency could see how a man like Graff, a man who had no compunction about killing, a man who seemed at home deep in the heart of enemy territory, a man who had built up a forensic knowledge of black operations, was a major asset. Graff excelled in false flag operations. He existed in a shadowy world.

A mixture of fascination and trepidation grew as McNeal read on. He wondered whether this was indeed the guy who had killed his wife. Was Graff responsible for killing his own wife, Sophie Meyer? Taking a human life certainly wasn’t a problem for this guy.

The more he learned, the more fucked up it all sounded. McNeal read about Graff’s own father, a Korean War veteran who had become CIA station chief in El Salvador during the 1980s. He got exposed by Amnesty International for his part in tipping off the El Salvador death squads to the whereabouts of a dozen American priests and nuns who were working with the poorest in the country. Some were decapitated. Years later, by then an old man, Edward Henry Graff was found guilty of being an accessory to murder by a military court. He was jailed for exactly one year, then released, never to be seen or heard from again.

That was Graff’s bloodline.

McNeal gulped the rest of his coffee and leaned back in his seat, contemplating Graff, the man. He was, in many ways, the best and worst of America. The warrior, the brave soldier, the risk taker. McNeal admired that greatly. He read on, transfixed by the near-mythical figure of this man. He studied the field reports claiming Graff suffered from “psychotic episodes.” The warrior’s descent began high up in the mountains of Afghanistan, Graff and his men, for months at a time, fighting the enemy. Being watched by the enemy. Blending into the villages. It took raw courage. But it also came at a terrible price. Graff’s own psychological breakdown. Blood was shed. Atrocities. Innocent people were killed, or they disappeared.