The Ghost Agent

by Alex Berenson

  ‘One more thing,’ Beck said. ‘Tell him, he should at least carry it. So he has the choice.’

  Choe shook his head, fired back in Korean, and turned away.

  ‘He says no,’ Kang said. ‘He says even talking about it is bad luck.’

  Beck ran his tongue over his teeth. His mouth felt dirty and he knew he’d smoked too many Camels this day. ‘More for me, then. You want yours?’

  Kang reached out. Beck shook the little capsule, hardly an inch long, into his palm.

  ‘Remember to give it back to me when we’re done,’ Beck said. ‘You don’t want these lying around the house.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  Beck stuffed the baggie with the other two pills into his jacket. He checked the disposable cell phone he’d bought the day before. His station chief had the number. If Langley had decided to abort the mission, the call would have come to this phone. But Beck hadn’t been expecting a call, and sure enough, none had come. He looked once more at his watch. 1730.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Go west, young man.’ Koreans called the Yellow Sea the West Sea.

  ‘Yes, skipper,’ Kang said. ‘A three-hour tour, right?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Beck hummed the famous theme song, hoping to clear the cabin of the bad karma the pills had brought. ‘Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.’

  ‘Think Ginger and Mary Ann will be waiting for us in Pyongyang?’

  ‘Let’s hope we never find out. Sing it with me now. “If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost.”’

  ‘“The Minnow would be lost.”’

  If Choe got the joke, he didn’t smile. He looked away, out the front window. He pushed forward on the throttle and the Phantom slid away.

  TWO

  DRINK THIS AND you’ll grow wings on your feet.

  John Wells wound down the throttle with his gloved right hand. Beneath him the engine groaned and the tachometer rolled toward 8,000 rpm and the big black bike jumped forward. Wells leaned close to the bike’s angular gas tank to lower his profile against the wind. Still he had to fight to keep upright. The Honda was a meaty motorcycle, heavier and wider than a true racing bike.

  Wells lifted his head and peeked at the speedometer. Ninety. He’d imagined faster. Beside him the highway was a blur, the trees beside the road blending into a single leafy cipher. He was halfway between Washington and Baltimore, hardly a rural oasis, but at 3:00 a.m. even the interstate was empty. At this speed the road’s curves disappeared in the dark. Interstates were built for bad drivers, Wells knew, grandmothers heading to the mall, truckers high on meth and anxious to get home. They were built with soft curves to forgive mistakes.

  Even so, Wells was pushing the limits of this highway. Anything could take him out. A raccoon prospecting for garbage. A car changing lanes and forgetting to signal. A broken bottle blowing out his front tire, sending him over the handlebars and into eternity. A stupid, pointless way to go. Yet here he was in the dark, as he’d been the week before, and the week before that, on the nights when midnight and 1:00 a.m. came and went and sleep remained foreign territory.

  Here the rich, smooth pavement soothed him. The speed made his mind vanish, leaving him with snatches of half-remembered songs, some old, some new. The words blended into a strange poetry he could never remember when the rides were done.

  Wells relaxed the throttle and the tach and the speedometer dropped in unison. At seventy-five the wind dropped slightly and the Springsteen in his head faded.

  From his earlier rides he knew he was approaching the sweet spot. He slowed to sixty as the road lifted him gently over a low hill. The trees disappeared. To his right, a shopping center parking lot glowed under oversized lights. Behind a blue dumpster, two police cars nuzzled beside each other, windows down, the cops inside telling each other stories to make the night pass. Just a few hours to go. It was close to 5:00 a.m., and the sun would be up soon enough. Wells thought of Exley, alone now in their bed, wondering when he’d be back, and in how many pieces.

  Jennifer Exley, his girlfriend. His boss at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he worked as a – as a what? Hard to say. Last year he and Exley had stopped a terrorist attack that would have dwarfed September 11. Now he was back in Washington, and – how to put this politely? – at loose ends. Osama bin Laden wasn’t happy with him, that much was certain. In an hourlong communiqué that even Wells hadn’t bothered to sit through, bin Laden had promised eternal glory to anyone who killed him. ‘Allah will smile on the martyr who sends this infidel to hell. . . .’ Yadda yadda yadda. But as a practical matter, Qaeda couldn’t touch him, at least in the United States. So Wells was waiting for a new mission. In truth, though, he couldn’t imagine what that might be. He wasn’t built for desk work.

  Meanwhile, he burned his days with three-hour-long workouts, and his nights with these joyless joyrides. Exley hated them, and a week earlier, Wells had promised her they would end. He’d thought he was telling the truth. But this morning he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Exley hadn’t argued when he rolled out of bed and pulled on his jeans and grabbed his helmet. No, Exley hadn’t argued, hadn’t said a word, and Wells supposed he loved her for her silence.

  But not enough to stay.

  Now Wells flexed his shoulders and stared down the perfect three-lane void ahead. This time when he twisted the throttle he didn’t hesitate but instead pulled back as far as he could. The bike surged, and suddenly Wells heard

  Just don’t play with me ’cause you’re playing with fire. . . .

  Not the confident strut of Mick Jagger but the bleak, reedy tones of Johnny Thunder.

  The engine roared and the speedometer needle jumped from fifty-five to eighty-five and kept going. When it topped one hundred, Wells flattened himself on the gas tank and hung on. For dear life, he thought. Though anyone watching might wonder exactly what those words meant to him. And then everything faded but the wind and the road, the bike jolting off every crease, its wheels caressing the highway, and Springsteen’s unmistakable voice in his ears:

  Drink this and you’ll grow wings on your feet.

  Wells glimpsed the speedometer, its white needle past 120, its tip quivering. It maxed out at 125, with the tach in the red zone at 9,000 revolutions per minute. He had never pushed the bike so far. He laid off the throttle and watched himself come back to earth.

  A few seconds later, he heard the siren screaming. The lights pulsed red-blue-red-blue in his mirrors, half a mile behind but gaining fast.

  He flexed his hand around the throttle. Part of him wanted to wind it down and take off again. He doubted the trooper could match his speed. He could probably get to the next exit and disappear.

  But Wells didn’t want to tangle this cop in whatever game he was playing with God, or himself, or the patron saints of the interstate. Instead of taking off, he flicked on his turn signal – see, Officer, I’m careful – and eased the Honda to a stop in the breakdown lane. As he waited, he patted the bike’s gas tank as if it were a horse that had just won the Kentucky Derby. Despite the trouble he was facing, an absurd pride filled him at the speed the machine had achieved.

  The Crown Victoria screeched to a stop behind him, its headlights glaring.

  ‘Turn off your vehicle, sir. Now!’ Underneath the cruiser’s scratchy speakers, Wells picked up a trace of nervousness. This trooper was probably just out of the academy, stuck on the overnight shift, jumpy about pulling over a triple-digit speeder with no backup. Wells pulled the little black key from the ignition and dropped it on the cracked pavement.

  ‘Off the bike. Now.’

  Wells wondered if Exley would appreciate the irony of his being shot in a traffic stop after getting the bike to 125 without a scratch. Probably not. The statie crouched behind the door of his cruiser, hand on the butt of his pistol. He was young, Wells saw. Maybe twenty. He had a thick, square face, but even so he hadn’t lost all his baby fat. ‘Don’t
look at me, sir! Look straight ahead!’

  Wells looked straight ahead, wondering why he always got sideways with the cops.

  ‘Helmet on the ground.’

  Wells pulled off his helmet. His eyes burned from the wind. Next time he’d wear goggles under the face plate. Next time?

  ‘You have a wallet? Identification?’

  ‘Yes, Officer.’

  ‘In your pants or your jacket?’

  ‘Pants.’

  ‘Take it out. Slowly.’ Wells pulled off his gloves and fished at his wallet. ‘Put it on the ground and kick it to me with your foot.’

  ‘Kick it with my foot? Not my hand?’

  ‘You’re talking back, asshole?’ The trooper no longer sounded scared, just pissed. ‘I have you on the gun at one eighteen.’

  Wells dropped his wallet on the ground, and kicked it toward the trooper. The kid was about to get the surprise of his life, he thought.

  ‘Lean forward and put your hands on the bike.’

  The metal of the gas tank was cool under his fingers.

  ‘Do not, don’t, move.’ The statie grabbed the wallet, flipped it open.

  ‘Mr. Wick? James Wick? That your name?’

  ‘Not exactly, no, Officer.’ Might as well tell the kid. When he got brought in, the truth would come out anyway.

  ‘You’re telling me your license is fake?’

  ‘There’s an ID card inside.’

  A few seconds later: ‘Is this real? Is that you?’

  ‘I’d be awful dumb to lie about it.’

  ‘Turn towards me. Slowly.’ The officer looked at the CIA identification card in his hand – the one with Wells’s real name on it – then at Wells. ‘You expect me to believe this crap?’

  Then Wells heard the faint thump of a helicopter’s blades. A few seconds later, the trooper heard it too. Together they looked up as the helicopter closed on them, dropping through the night, landing on the side of the highway, a black two-man bird with a long narrow cockpit. The passenger door opened and a man Wells had never seen before stepped out.

  The trooper’s mouth dropped open. Wells was just as shocked. The agency had been watching him? Watching these rides? Did he have no privacy left?

  ‘Officer,’ the man shouted over the whirr of the rotors, ‘do you know who this man is?’

  The trooper holstered his pistol. ‘Well, he said – I mean, he said – but I wasn’t sure –’

  ‘You believe him now? Or do I have to get somebody with stars on his collar to talk to you?’

  ‘Yes. I mean no. I mean yes, I believe him.’

  Without another word, the man walked back to the helicopter. As it rose off the side of the highway, the trooper rubbed his eyes like a kid waking up from a dream.

  ‘Damn.’ The statie shoved the identification card into the wallet and tossed it back to Wells. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Wells.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologize. Pulling rank on you like that was a real jerk move.’

  ‘No, no. If I’d known it was you, I never would have pulled you over. That’s the absolute truth.’ The officer stepped over to him and extended his hand. He didn’t seem bothered at all by what had just happened.

  Can’t even get arrested, Wells thought. When did I turn into such a saint? But he knew exactly when. The moment he shot Omar Khadri in Times Square. Wells wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. If he had a hundred more chances to kill Khadri, he’d take them all. But he was sick of being a hero. He shook the officer’s hand, feeling the sweat on the young man’s palm.

  ‘Won’t you get in trouble, letting me go?’

  ‘Radar gun’s been on the fritz all week. Says one eighteen when it means fifty-eight.’ The trooper turned back to his car, then stopped. ‘Be careful out there, Mr. Wells. We need you safe.’

  ‘You too, Officer. Lot of crazy drivers out there.’ Wells meant it ironically – crazy like me – but the trooper didn’t laugh. Wells thought sometimes that no one except Exley would ever laugh at him to his face again, no matter how much he deserved it. No one laughed at heroes. How could he trust a world that took him so seriously?

  The trooper returned to his sedan. Wells got back on his bike. At the next exit he turned back to Washington. He kept the Honda at an even sixty-five the whole way home.

  When he got back to Logan Circle the black Lincoln sedans with tinted windows were waiting, one on Thirteenth and the other on N. Two men in each, their engines running. As always. Security guards from Langley, there to watch out for him. And watch him, evidently. Wells hadn’t liked having them around before tonight. He liked them even less now. But Vinny Duto had insisted. If nothing else, they would keep the other residents in the building safe, Duto said. He promised that the guards wouldn’t follow Wells or Exley without their permission. Until tonight, they seemed to have kept their side of the bargain.

  Wells parked his bike in the building’s garage and went upstairs. As quietly as he could, he opened the door to Exley’s apartment. Their apartment, he supposed, though he had trouble thinking of it that way. Down the narrow hall filled with black-and-white pictures of Exley’s kids, past the little open kitchen. His boots smelled of grit and oil and the highway. He tugged them off. Exley’s looked child-sized next to them.

  ‘Jennifer?’ he murmured. No answer. She was asleep, or more likely too angry with him to answer.

  Exley’s old Persian rug scratched his toes as he walked toward the bedroom. She’d picked up the carpet during her posting in Pakistan. It was one of the few possessions she really cared about, its reds faded but the weave still tight. The apartment had only three rooms – this living room, their bedroom, and a spare bedroom where Jessica, Exley’s daughter, slept when the kids stayed over.

  Exley and Wells had talked about finding something bigger, maybe a row house on Capitol Hill so her kids could have their own bedrooms. David, Exley’s son, was ten, too old to sleep on the lumpy couch in the living room. Maybe someplace with a garden for Wells to weed and plant. Someplace they could keep a Lab, a big happy mutt that would slobber all over the house. They had even called a broker, gone to a few open houses. But everything they saw was too expensive, or too run-down, or too big, or small, or . . . The truth was that the house-hunting filled Wells with dread. He had run so long that he could hardly imagine being penned in by four walls and a roof.

  Left unsaid was the possibility that the new house might be a place for him and Exley to have a baby of their own. Wells didn’t know how he felt about becoming a father, though somehow it seemed less scary than buying a house. He didn’t even know if Exley could get pregnant. She was on the wrong side of forty, but women that age had babies these days. Didn’t they?

  He stepped into her – their – bedroom. The lights were out, but an infomercial for an all-in-one barbecue grill played silently on the little television on her desk. Outside, the sky was just starting to lighten.

  ‘Jenny? You awake? You won’t believe what happened tonight.’ Even as he said the words, he wondered if he should tell her. He didn’t want to admit how fast he was going. Maybe he’d just have to take this up with Duto himself, though he hated visiting the seventh floor of the headquarters building, where Duto had his offices.

  Exley stayed silent as he turned off the television, kissed her forehead, smelling the lemon scent of her face wash. He could tell from her uneven breathing that she was awake, but if she didn’t want to talk he didn’t plan to push. He put the helmet on the nightstand and pulled off his jacket.

  In one quick move she rolled over, grabbed the helmet, and threw it at him. But Wells had played linebacker in college and still had a football player’s reflexes. He caught it easily and put it on her desk.

  ‘Jenny, I’m sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t, but I really needed it tonight.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Up 95, towards Baltimore.’

  ‘How fast?’

  ‘I don’t know, Seventy, seventy-five miles an hour. Nothing I ca
n’t handle.’

  ‘John. Please. Shafer’s had a helicopter on you the last couple weeks.’ Ellis Shafer, their boss at the agency.

  ‘Shafer what?’ So that’s who’d been watching him tonight. ‘Did Duto put him up to it?’

  ‘Haven’t you figured out yet that Vinny Duto couldn’t care less about you, John? Shafer did it because I asked him to. He said they clocked you at a hundred ten. I wasn’t going to tell you, but that’s why I asked you to stop.’

  ‘Jenny –’ He guessed he wouldn’t be talking to Duto after all. A small consolation.

  ‘I swear, John, I wish you were out drinking, screwing somebody else.’ Her voice broke. ‘Anything but this. Every time you leave I think you’re not coming back.’ He sat beside her on the bed and put his hand on her hip, but she pulled away. ‘Do you even care if you live or die, John?’

  ‘Of course.’ Wells tried to ignore the fact that he’d asked himself the same question a few minutes before, with a less certain answer.

  ‘Then why don’t you act like it?’ She searched his face with her fierce blue eyes. He looked away first, down to her breasts, their tops striated with tiny white stretch marks. Her milky white thighs. And the scar above the knee where the bullet had hit.

  ‘Sometimes I forget how beautiful you are,’ he said.

  He heard a police siren whistling to the northeast, one of the precincts of Washington that hadn’t gentrified. The siren wasn’t as close as it sounded, he knew. Wells had spent a decade away from America, living undercover as an al Qaeda guerrilla, slowly ingratiating himself with the group. He’d picked up more than a few survival tricks along the way, including the knowledge that gunshots and sirens carried much farther at night than during the day. Just another bit of wisdom that no longer did him much good.

  ‘Your hand,’ she said. He looked down. His left hand was trembling on his jeans. She caressed it in hers until the shaking stopped.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,’ he said. For a while they were silent. She squeezed his hand and he found his voice again. ‘You know, I thought when I woke up in the hospital and saw you there that it would all be okay. That I was out on the other side. And now . . .’ In the distance a second siren rang out, then a third. Trouble in the night.