Twelve Days (20 page)

Part of him wished he’d made a trickier move, checked in and then left the airport. He could have caught a cab to downtown Moscow, found a train or a bus heading west to Poland. But that would have taken yet another day, time he didn’t have. Unless he found a smuggler to lead him over the border, he would still have to clear an immigration post that would be on the same computer network as the one he’d just passed. By tomorrow the FSB would surely have sounded the alarm.

When the flight opened, he was the first to board. He settled himself in seat 2C, watched placidly as the plane filled around him. A pretty thirtyish woman with bobbed blond hair took the seat beside him, looked him over, buried her face in a German gossip magazine. Fine by Wells. With any luck, he’d be asleep by the time this plane left the runway.

The last passenger boarded. The purser made the usual preflight announcements in German, Russian, and English. And then finally closed the cabin door. Wells had never been so happy to hear the solid
thunk
of metal fitting metal, the low hum of air seeping from the vents over his seat. The flight attendants took their seats and the Airbus 319 rolled back from the Jetway. Diana Ross sang to Wells:
Set me free, why don’t
you, baby,/Get out my life, why don’t you—

The plane slowed.

Stopped.

The intercom alert chimed. The purser grabbed a headset. Listened.
Made a short announcement in German that sent a brief hum through the passengers around him.

“What’s he saying?” Wells said to his seatmate. Though he already knew. The knot in his stomach was all the translation he needed.

“He says we need to return to the gate for a moment. A sick passenger.”

I’d much rather be treated in Frankfurt, thank you very much.

She gave Wells the thinnest of smiles, and he knew she knew. He wondered if he should ask her to call Shafer when they landed. But the story was too tricky to explain in the few seconds he had, and she didn’t seem the type to do favors for strangers.

The plane inched forward. Stopped. 2C was near enough to the cabin door for Wells to hear the electric motors inching the Jetway forward. The death rattle of his bid for freedom.

The Jetway skimmed into place.

The purser stood, kept his eyes on Wells as he raised the big handle and pushed open the door. Wells found himself unbuckling his belt. No need to be difficult. And where could he go, anyway?

“Viel glück,”
the woman murmured. Maybe Wells had misjudged her. Too late now.

A man in a suit stepped inside, two cops in tow.

These are not the droids you’re looking for.

“You are Mr. Wells?”

Wells nodded. The man flicked two fingers.
Up. Up.
The simple perfect command of a police officer in a police state, a man who knew his orders would be followed without question, much less argument.

“Come with me. Please.”

PROVO, UTAH

M
ormons creeped Shafer out.

A ridiculous prejudice. Yet he couldn’t shake it. The long underwear. The polygamy. The promise that believers might receive their own planets after death. Most of all, the unfailing perky friendliness. He didn’t trust anyone who smiled so easily.

But here he was in Provo, the spiritual heart of Mormonism. He’d flown to Denver on United in the morning, supposedly heading for San Diego. At Denver International, he’d shucked his connecting flight, bought a fresh ticket on Southwest to Oakland via Salt Lake. Simple countersurveillance. He’d walked the United flight three times, scanning faces. He didn’t see any of them on the Southwest flight.

In Salt Lake, he rented a car, drove to the wide boulevards south of downtown, found a long-term lot. He locked his phones in the glove compartment, taking only a burner he’d never used. He walked east and south until he found Great Deals Used Cars on State. He carried eight thousand dollars in cash, crisp hundred-dollar bills he’d pulled from his basement safe the night before.

The showroom was nicer than he’d hoped. A salesman in jeans and
cowboy boots beelined for him. “Afternoon. I’m Rick. What can I do you for today?”

“Put the preposition in the right place.”

Rick’s smile faded, then came back stronger. “Sir?”

“Your cheapest car.”

“We can do that. Naturally.” Rick laid a friendly hand on Shafer’s shoulder. “But maybe I can show you something nicer first, credit problems are no problem at Great Deals—”

Shafer was in no mood for cute. He twitched his shoulder like he was having a seizure until Rick pulled his hand away. “Cash. You want the quickest sale of your life, or not?”

Rick cleared his throat. “In that case. I think you’re looking at a 2000 Regal. A Buick.” Rick nodded over his shoulder at a fenced-in corner filled with junkers. “Hundred sixty thousand miles. Sticker’s nineteen hundred, totally fair, but maybe I can knock fifty bucks off for a cash sale—”

“It’ll get me to Provo?”

“Heck, it’ll get you all the way to New York City”—those last three words spoken as if New York were Mars—“if that’s where you want to go. All our cars go through a ninety-point checklist, we call ’em Great Deals certified—”

“Done.” Shafer pulled out his wallet. “If you can get me out the door in ten minutes.”

“No problem, sir, no problem at all—”

“And
shut up
while you’re doing it.”

Nine minutes later, Shafer had himself a new used car, legally registered and insured. The Regal was the saddest vehicle he’d ever driven. Someone had sprayed its pleather seats with mint air freshener in a futile effort to hide the smell of ten thousand cigarettes. Its steering wheel clicked ominously when Shafer switched lanes. Its brakes worked like a radio call-in show, with a seven-second delay.

No matter. Shafer had made himself as untraceable as any American could. Even if Salome’s crew tracked the credit card he’d used for the rental, the trail would dead-end in Salt Lake. The Regal was too old and cheap to have a GPS. He’d ditched his phones. He could head to the safe house, where Evan and Heather were hiding, with a clear conscience.

—

This visit counted as a rear-guard action at best. Not that Wells and Duto were making much progress. Shafer had stopped at Duto’s house predawn, on his way to Dulles. Duto stood in the doorway in black silk pajamas, reading glasses dangling from a lanyard. He didn’t invite Shafer in.

“Told her I was gonna rape her,” he said before Shafer could ask about Donna Green.

Shafer thought he’d misheard. “You threatened to tape her?”

“Rape. R-A-P-E. Rape.” Emphatically. Like he was trying to win a prison spelling bee.

“The National Security Advisor? Of the United States? Of America? All these years learning to hide what a psychopath you are, you choose this moment to blow it?”

“She said I was making a play. I told her I’d be back with the truth, and when I was done with her she wouldn’t sit down for a month.”

“More like buggery, then.”

Duto folded his arms over his chest and smirked. He reminded Shafer of an old-school Hollywood mogul, the kind who made every starlet spend time on his couch. “That better or worse? I’m telling you, there was no convincing her. She knows about the Midnight House, how I got to Whitby.”

Now Shafer understood. Green had waved the red flag, told Duto that she’d taken the agency from him. And Duto had charged, just as she’d expected.

“Nothing’s changed,” Duto said.

“Sounds like a productive meeting.”

“More than you think. Donna told me we got the guys who took out the jet. Delta grabbed ’em in Mumbai last night. They’re Hezbollah.”

“So we’re going to come back at them?”

“Yes. She wouldn’t say how.”

Another step toward war.

“And Wells busted out, too.” The text had come in a few minutes before, Wells reporting that Volgograd was headed for Moscow and then Frankfurt. “I think he’s in rough shape.”

“He’s a big boy.” Duto’s standard answer when Shafer worried about Wells. Like Wells was a horse who could be worked forever without consequence. “Call him when you work it out with Evan. That’ll cheer him up.” Duto edged the front door toward Shafer’s foot. “Anything else? I gotta take a piss.”

“Me, John, you against the world, you still need me to know you’re in charge.”

As an answer, Duto shut the door.

—

Now Shafer parked the Regal outside a gray two-story house in the snow-dusted foothills on Provo’s east side. A wooden stockade fence hid the building’s first floor. The blinds were pulled tight on the second. A bubble camera watched the locked front gate. Shafer buzzed.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice.

“Heather? It’s Ellis.”

“I need to see your identification, sir.”

Not Heather. An FBI agent. Shafer held his license to the camera. A fresh westerly wind blew from the desert, dragging lacy clouds across the blue Utah sky. Shafer listened to the weekday sounds floating up from the streets below, school buses idling, kids yelling. Footsteps crossed the yard, and the gate opened to reveal an olive-skinned woman, late twenties.

“I’m Special Agent Rosatto. Hands against the fence.” She frisked him thoroughly. “Come with me.”

In the living room, Evan and Heather, Wells’s ex-wife, played Scrabble on a beige couch. They grunted insincere greetings. They’d wanted Wells.

Heather was in her early forties now, still pretty, but with the hollowed-out face of a compulsive exerciser. Shafer had met her long before, when Evan was a toddler and Wells was on his way to Afghanistan to infiltrate al-Qaeda. She and Wells had fallen in love in high school, married young, had a baby. Then she’d left. Like Exley. And now Anne. They’d all seen that the field was Wells’s true mistress.

As for Evan, Shafer didn’t need a DNA test to know that he was John’s son. He was tall and rangy like his father, the same strong nose and thick brown hair. But his cheeks were unlined, his eyes soft.
I used to care . . . but I take a pill for that now,
his T-shirt explained. Shafer didn’t know if Evan was weaker than John or just younger. Not even nineteen. Not one but two generations behind Shafer. Shafer knew he’d been that young once. He had pictures to prove it. But his memories of those years were lighter than dreams.

“We need a few minutes outside,” he said to Rosatto.

“If she’s okay with it.”

Heather nodded.

“Just please stay in the yard.”

So they stood around an empty sandbox, Heather and Evan on one side, Shafer on the other. Heather took a half step back, letting her son do the speaking.

“I saw you on TV a couple weeks ago, Evan,” Shafer said. “At Fresno State. That one-three must have been thirty feet out.” He’d checked YouTube highlights the night before.

Evan looked at Shafer the same way Shafer had looked at Rick the used-car salesman. “Where is he?”

“Flying from Russia to Germany, or he may already have landed.”

“What’s he doing?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Then he should tell us himself.”

Evan’s voice was cool. Composed. Maybe he was more like John than he seemed, snarky T-shirt and all.

“He can’t call. He’d have to come here, and he can’t spare the time.”

“Because of the NSA?”

“Among other things.”

“That woman in there, she’s FBI, yes? And you’re CIA.”

“Yes.”

“So why are we worrying about the NSA?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Enough of that.”

“I wish it weren’t.”

“Ellis. I haven’t forgotten what John did in Kenya. But this, we’ve been here a week. You know she won’t let us leave the house? Haven’t even been outside until now.”

“A few more days.”

“Give us
something
, Ellis.”

Shafer had known they would reach this point sooner or later. Now he realized he wanted to tell them. Everything. He shouldn’t, but he did. If only to unburden himself.

“You want to know?”

“Yes,” Evan said.

“No,” Heather said.

“Go inside, Mom.”

“Don’t do this. It’s not
fair.
” She looked at Shafer with wide pleading eyes. He understood. She had lost Wells to this shadow war. She feared Evan would be next.

“Fair’s got nothing to do with it,” Evan said.

The kid was eighteen. Old enough to enlist, if he wanted. He had the right to know.

Heather turned away, walked into the house. So Shafer told Evan the story. It took an hour. He didn’t mention Duberman by name, but he gave up everything else. Evan looked at him in disbelief when he finished.

“This mysterious billionaire might kill us to get at John?”

“Your father’s lots of things. Not crazy. Neither am I. It’s all true. And we would both feel better if you stayed here until we figure out where the uranium came from.”

“Or we, the country, I mean, invade Iran,” Evan said. “This guy won’t care after that, right?”

“Probably not.”

“So John’s running to every country that ever had this stuff, and they’re all blowing him off. And in another week, we’ll attack and it’ll be moot.”

Something about what Evan had said bugged Shafer. And it wasn’t the dig, either.

“Say that again.”

“I said, John’ll be in Libya, chasing some guy who worked at some reactor in 1983”—as if the year was the dawn of recorded history—“and meanwhile the President will come on television to tell us all about Operation Irani Freedom or whatever. And Richie Rich will buy himself a new spaceship because he’s so excited his plot worked.”

—

Some reactor in 1983.
That fast, Shafer saw what he’d missed. He was a fool. It had taken an eighteen-year-old kid to spot the hole.

A country running an active nuclear weapons project would track its HEU to the milligram. It wouldn’t sell the stuff at any price. But what about a country that had stockpiled a chunk of weapons-grade uranium
and then ended its program? The material instantly would be a liability. It would be locked in a vault and after a few years forgotten. Waiting for someone—for Salome—to find it and pry it out for the right price.

A long shot, sure. But no longer than the possibilities that had taken Wells to Russia and Duto to Israel. Plus Shafer had an edge. Of all the countries that had walked away from enrichment programs over the years, South Africa had gotten the furthest. It was the natural place to start. Shafer’s first agency posting had been in Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire—the country now known as Congo. This was the late seventies. Kinshasa was rife with officers for the South African Bureau of State Security—infamously known as B.O.S.S. All over Africa, the CIA worked hand-in-glove, white-hand-in-white-glove, with South Africa. It saw the white-run government in Pretoria as a buffer against the Communist-supported African National Congress.

In Kinshasa, Shafer had worked with a dozen South African intelligence officers. They were for the most part unapologetically racist, especially after a few drinks.
The blacks can’t be trusted to manage their own affairs,
one told Shafer.
You don’t let the animals run the zoo.
Yet when they weren’t talking politics, they were pleasant enough. And Shafer, cynical to his core, nonetheless believed that some forms of government were worse than others. Communism would make Africa even poorer and more miserable. Eventually, sooner than they expected, white South Africans would have no choice but to give the vote to the black majority. Meantime, he would work with them when the need arose.

So Shafer told himself. Though he wondered if he was just making excuses.

The white regime took longer to fall than he expected. But it did. And in the mid-nineties a couple of the guys he’d known in Congo emigrated to the United States. Shafer couldn’t remember where they’d wound up, but he could find out easily enough. Lucky for him, they all had these weird Afrikaner
names. He wouldn’t need fancy databases to track them. He was guessing the United States had only one Joost Claassen
.

—

A poke in the ribs from Evan brought him back to Provo.

“I gotta go. Promise you’ll stay.” If Evan sat tight, so would Heather. “Even if you think it’s BS.”

“For that story, I’ll give you a week. On two conditions. One for you, one for my dad. First. Whatever happens, promise when it’s over you’ll give me the after-action report.” The kid raised his eyebrows, at once acknowledging and mocking the lingo.

“Done. What’s the other?”

“You tell John, I want him to come out here, come skiing with me. If I’m stuck in Utah, I might as well get to Alta. Pow-pow.”

“What about basketball?”

“I’m already out of the rotation.”

“All right, I’ll tell him. Though I bet he hasn’t skied in at least twenty years.”

Evan grinned, and Shafer saw he’d chosen the sport for exactly that reason. An easy way to show his superiority over the old man. Shafer turned for the gate. “Tell your mother I had to run.”

“I’d like to see that,” Evan said.

Shafer found a copy shop that had workstations with Internet access. In forty-six seconds, he found Joost and Linda Claassen, in Henderson, Nevada. He bought himself a phone card, hoping Joost hadn’t moved. Or gone unlisted. Or died.