The Secret Soldier (22 page)

“Your sorrow won’t help him. Only revenge.”

And not even that,
Wells thought. As Miteb no doubt knew. “Safe journeys, Prince.”

“Safe journeys.
Inshallah.
”

 

 

THE KNOCK CAME THIRTY
minutes later. A valet handed over a black leather briefcase. When Wells popped the latches he found it stuffed with one-hundred- and five-hundred-euro notes and hundred-dollar bills, new and crisp and held in pale blue paper bands that read “Banque Privat—Credit Suisse.” Wells didn’t bother counting them. Miteb had sent over millions of dollars. In a briefcase that he hadn’t even locked. A reminder of the men Wells was dealing with. As if he needed one.

Atop the money, a pistol in a clear plastic bag. Wells’s second request. A Beretta 9-millimeter, from one of Miteb’s bodyguards. Given the choice, Wells would have preferred a Glock. But he knew that the guys who worried the most about muzzle velocity and trigger pressure were the guys who’d never shot to kill. Up close, a pistol was a pistol. Past forty feet, the Glock was superior. But if he was shooting from that far away, he was already in trouble.

Wells popped the clip, racked the slide to be certain the chamber was empty, squeezed the trigger. The Beretta’s previous owner had taken good care of it. It was freshly oiled, its action smooth. It would do. He reloaded it, slipped it into the briefcase.

The phone trilled again. “Mr. Wells?” A woman with a rich Irish brogue. “I’m Sandra McCord. With the American Express private client division. Mr. Azari asked me to call you.”

“I don’t know that name.”

“He works for the prince.” Her voice fell to a whisper, as if even saying the title was blasphemy. “He said you would need a credit card.”

“Then I’d better get one.”

Sandra agreed to messenger over two cards, one in Wells’s name, the other under the pseudonym Tom Ellison, matching his Canadian passport. Both would be basic AmEx green cards, less likely to attract attention than fancier varieties.

“How soon can you get them to me?”

“Two hours. We have an office in Nice.”

“Of course you do.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Tell you what. I’ll pick them up in an hour. And what’s the limit?”

“A half-million euros. That’s our standing agreement with Mr. Azari. I hope it’s acceptable.”

Miteb had supplied two of the four essential tools of the trade, money and a weapon. Wells still needed a clean passport and an untraceable phone, but those could wait. He had to move. He took the briefcase and folded his expensive new clothes in his expensive new bag and left. No reason to check out. Let the front desk believe he was staying another day.

 

 

AT THE TRAIN STATION,
Wells bought a disposable cell and a handful of SIM cards and a first-class ticket for a Eurostar to Milan. He wanted to head east. And to avoid airports as long as he could. Train passengers could pay cash, and passports weren’t checked within the European Union’s borders.

He arrived in Milan five hours later, just as the evening rush was starting. The station had opened in 1931 and was a creature of its era, enormous stone blocks and vaulted arches. Mussolini had no doubt been proud. Near the entrance, Wells glimpsed an Italian news channel reporting on the bombing in Jeddah:
“Terrorismo nell’Arabia Saudita.”
He stopped to watch, but the report lasted only a few seconds. Just another bombing in the Middle East. It had killed a member of the Saudi royal family, but Alia wasn’t exactly Princess Di.

Outside the station, Wells found a grimy two-star pensione and slipped a hundred-euro note to the clerk for a room, no passport or registration needed. He flipped on the television for background noise and called Shafer. “Tell me something.”

“You’re lucky. The card hit. Where are you?”

“Milan.”

“Who’d you meet in Nice?”

“Friend of a friend. This thing in Jeddah—”

“It’s bad.”

“Incisive analysis, Ellis.”

“Thank you.”

“What happened over there?”

“Nobody knows. We offered to send a forensics team, but they turned us down. They’re not in a caring and sharing mood. But they had real security at the hotel. Metal detectors, bomb dogs. They’re saying the bomber was dressed as a woman. Which would make it easier, but still.”

“AQ?”

“I don’t know, and I couldn’t tell you over this phone if I did. But we think no. Who gave you that credit card, John?”

“It’s from a guy the Saudis picked up last month in Riyadh.” An explanation that wasn’t quite true and evaded rather than answered the question, in any case.

“He’s connected to this?”

“They think so.”

“They still have him?”

“He’s dead now. They found a body, no ID. They wanted help in making him.”

“And came to you?”

“Some people think I’m helpful. What’s on that card, Ellis?”

“Tell me again how you got involved in this.”

Wells had no choice but to lift his skirt. A little. “The Saudis are worried about their security and thought I could help. They wanted somebody who isn’t connected to them.”

“Who?”

“Can’t say.”

“Inside the family or out?”

“Inside.”

Shafer was silent. Then: “The card was activated four months ago. First used at an electronics store in Beirut. Based on the size of the purchase, probably for cell phones. Then for flights from Beirut. On Middle East Airlines. The Lebanese carrier. One to Jeddah, two to Riyadh. Only one was round-trip. Then hotels in Riyadh. A rental car. Restaurants. Nothing exciting.”

“What’s the name on the card and the plane tickets?”

“Not until you give me more and not on this line. But I have a bonus for you. We think there’s a connected card. Used in the same store for more phones. Still active. Somebody’s been buying gasoline with it. Something from a gas station, anyway.”

“In Beirut.”

“No. A town called Qaa. In the northern Bekaa Valley. The plane tickets were bought on an Internet connection from the same place.”

The Bekaa. Hezbollah country. Wells didn’t get it. Miteb and Abdullah seemed certain that Saeed was behind the bombings. But what if Iranians were orchestrating all these attacks, trying to destabilize the Saudi monarchy?

“You should find an embassy so we can talk on a secure line.”

“Not now.”

“John. Who’d you meet in Nice?”

“I’m getting a feeling you already know. Who’s having this conversation, Ellis? You and me? Or is Vinny on speaker?”

“I’ll help you, but you’ve got to play, John. It can’t go one way.”

“Answer one question. You guys have anybody on me?”

“Truth. I’m not sure. But I don’t think so. You popped up too fast for that. Can I give you some advice?”

“Can I stop you?”

“Leave this one alone. Let us handle it. These Saudis, they’ll use you and toss you.”

“Lucky I can count on you, then.” Wells hung up, pulled the SIM card out of the phone, and flushed it away. A roach dropped from the showerhead, crawled along the tub. As if it knew it was in Milan, the creature was strangely stylish, black with brown stripes. Even so, Wells decided to move on.

 

 

HE SAT AT A
coffee bar just inside the train station’s center entrance and considered his next move. The conversation had gone too easily. Shafer hadn’t just given him a tip. He’d answered every question Wells had asked and demanded next to nothing in return.

Wells wanted to believe he’d outsmarted Shafer. Or that Shafer was helping him from respect for their history. But he knew better.
Leave this one alone. Let us handle it.
The truth was the opposite. Shafer and the agency wanted Wells to chase this lead. Because the CIA didn’t have sources it could trust in Saudi Arabia, certainly not at the top of the royal family. And it couldn’t commit operatives to the Bekaa without knowing more about what was on the other end. Vinny Duto couldn’t risk losing a team to Hezbollah. Duto wanted Wells to run recon until he decided what to do. He figured the agency could track Wells, and that even if Wells lost the watchers, he’d have to ask for help when he got in trouble.

The ugly part was that Duto was probably right. Even worse, Wells couldn’t be sure Duto would come through if he asked for help. After all, Wells didn’t work for the CIA anymore. He was on private business. Getting used by two countries at once.

So be it. At least he understood the game. And he was fairly sure that Shafer had wanted him to see how he was being played. Which was a minor comfort.

 

 

WELLS DIDN’T THINK THE
agency had put anyone on him in the last twenty-four hours. But he needed to be certain. Even on MATO—monitor and track only—orders, watchers would make trouble.

No need for fancy moves tonight,
Wells thought. He had enough money and alternate routes to Lebanon to make tracing him a chore. He bought a first-class sleeper ticket for the train from Milan to Bari, on Italy’s southeastern coast, the back heel of the boot. The train left at 8:20 p.m. At 8:17, he headed for the platform, shouldering through the dwindling crowds of Milanese commuters on their way home to the suburbs. He didn’t run. Anyone or no one could have been trailing him.

At these moments, Wells always remembered Guy Raviv, the CIA operative who’d trained him in countersurveillance at the Farm. Near the end of training, Raviv brought Wells to the Washington Monument. An agency team was watching them, Raviv said. Wells had thirty minutes to lose them and report back. He had to stay within one block of the Mall.

“These are the pros,” Raviv said. “Not the schlubs we use down in Virginia. I had to beg them to waste an hour on you. Told them you were the class stud. Every class has a stud, you know. Most of you make damn poor ops. You fall in love with the moves and forget the rhythm.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“If you’re lucky, one day you will. Now go.”

Wells wandered east, toward the Capitol. The day was sunny, warm, not too humid, a treat for D.C. in July. Thousands of families and students and twentysomethings hung out, playing Frisbee on the lush, green lawn and picnicking under the trees. Wells couldn’t figure who was on him. The heavy woman in a too-tight T-shirt and a red Cardinals hat? The two Asian students kicking a soccer ball past each other?

Wells bought a ticket to the National Air and Space Museum, took the big escalator upstairs, jogged down. The soccer players drifted in his direction. He walked east, found himself standing at the foot of the Capitol, looking up at its great white dome. Two joggers were making suspiciously slow loops. Or maybe they were just slow. The woman in the Cardinals hat huffed toward him. Any of them could have been watching, or all of them. He had no idea how he could lose this team under these conditions. The mission was impossible. Maybe that was the point. Raviv was always making a point.

Raviv was sitting near the base of the monument when Wells trotted back. “I saw you coming two blocks away. Very subtle.”

“It was an impossible assignment.”

“Don’t whine.”

“Sorry.”

“And don’t apologize. Did you lose them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who were they?”

Wells nodded at the soccer players. “Maybe these guys.”

“Anyone else?”

“A couple joggers looked good to me, but they’re gone now. I get it, Guy. Real CS is a lot tougher than training.”

“There was no one. No team. This idea that any of us have a sixth sense that lets us take three steps in a crowd and know who’s watching, there’s a word for that. Paranoia. You can’t make a team in a place like this unless you have more than thirty minutes. And space to disappear. Or unless they’re completely amateur. Or unless they want you to know. The lesson today is sometimes there’s nobody to lose. Sometimes you’re running from something that doesn’t exist.”

Sometimes you’re running from something that doesn’t exist.
Later, Wells understood that Raviv wasn’t just talking about countersurveillance.

 

 

WELLS’S COMPARTMENT HAD A
single narrow bunk, barely long enough to fit him but cool and clean and comfortable, its white sheets softer than he expected. Italy. He locked the door and napped fitfully as the train chugged through tunnels carved into the northern Italian mountains. It arrived in Bologna at 11:20 for a three-minute stop.

Wells waited two minutes and thirty seconds, grabbed his bag and briefcase, and trotted off. The station was low-ceilinged and tired, nothing like the grand hall in Milan. At the taxi stand, a half-dozen white sedans waited. Wells walked around to the driver’s window of the first taxi. “You speak English?”

The driver was small and round and stank of cigarettes. “Pretty much.”

“How much to go to Rome?”

“This is Bologna.”

“I know it’s Bologna. I want to go to Rome. The airport.”

“Fiumicino. Three hundred kilometers. Three hours each way. At this time of night, a thousand euros.”

Extortion, but Wells didn’t care, thanks to the magic briefcase. “Done.” He opened the front door. “What’s your name?”

The driver raised a hand. “Before you come in, I like to smoke, okay?” He nodded at a packet of Marlboros on the dash.

“All right.”

“And you pay now.”

Wells peeled two five-hundred-euro notes from his wallet. The driver inspected them, nodded. Wells could read his mind:
Should have asked for more.
Wells slipped in and shut the door, and they headed out.

“I am Sylvie.”

“Sylvie. My pleasure.” Wells closed his eyes. If Sylvie didn’t smoke too much, he might even sleep a little.

 

 

THEN HE HEARD THE
engine behind them. He looked in the passengerside mirror to see another taxi, this one a Mercedes minivan, following them from the station. It matched them turn for turn through the city’s winding streets. The driver looked over his shoulder.
“Signore.”