As soon as possible Khadri needed to get authorization from Ayman al-Zawahiri for the new operation. Zawahiri wouldn’t be pleased with the change. Al Qaeda prepared its attacks years in advance. An operation as important as this wasn’t supposed to be revised on a few days’ notice, and the new plan would cost al Qaeda all its American sleepers at once. But Zawahiri would understand. Better their men should die gloriously than be arrested one by one. Better to strike while they still had the strength to land a heavy blow. This attack might not be as elegant as his original plan, but it would kill just as many people.
Khadri leaned forward to pray. He couldn’t delude himself. The noose was tightening. He would probably never see Mecca, his greatest dream. He would never be married or have a family. He would probably die in this alien land, surrounded by infidels. Yet he found himself more afraid of failure than death.
In this, at least, he and Wells were alike.
AS SOON AS the phone rang Wells knew. Khadri was the only person who had this number. He pulled the handset out of his pocket, took a breath, and accepted the call.
“Jalal.”
“Nam.”
“Check your gmail account.” Click.
“As you like, Omar,” Wells said to the dead line.
Finally, Wells thought. Finally Khadri had decided to use him. He felt certain this was the real mission, the one he had awaited for so long. And even if Khadri was sending him down another false path, Wells knew now that they would meet again. This time he would destroy Khadri. Even if he had to tear out the man’s throat with his bare hands.
Wells could see now that Khadri was Qaeda’s linchpin, even more important to the group’s plans than Zawahiri or bin Laden himself. Khadri and Khadri alone controlled Qaeda’s networks in the United States. Without him Qaeda’s ability to attack America would be set back at least five years. Maybe more. Not forever, but enough time for Major Glen Holmes and Wells’s old friends in the Special Forces to root out the last of the jihadis in the North-West Frontier. To catch Zawahiri and bin Laden himself. To defeat Qaeda. Khadri was the key.
15
AT THE DORAVILLE Public Library, Wells logged on to his gmail account. The orders were simple enough. Drive — Khadri specified that Wells had to drive — to Montreal. Pick up a package at a hotel. Drive back. Khadri had included a phone number for the contact he would meet in Montreal. The meeting was barely twenty-four hours away. He would need to move fast.
Back home Wells packed an overnight bag with the essentials: His field medicine kit. His flashlight. His black leather gloves. His knife, strapped to his leg. The.45 he had taken from Sami. He wrapped the pistol and silencer in plastic and packed them in a separate bag. He would have to hide them before he reached the border, but for this trip he wanted a gun. He left his other weapons in the apartment. He had gotten rid of his Glock the week before, tossing it into a deserted stretch of the Chattahoochee River fifty miles north of Atlanta. The gun had splashed into the black water and disappeared without a trace. Wells wished he could forget Qais and Sami as easily.
Wells slipped his Koran into the bag as well. After everything that had happened, everything he had done, he wasn’t sure what he believed. Still, the book was like an old friend he hadn’t seen in a while. Maybe they didn’t have much to talk about anymore. But they had understood each other once, and that counted for something.
He looked around the apartment one last time as he headed out. Lucy had died, but Ricky was still alive, swimming listlessly. Wells decided to give the fish a last meal. Somehow he didn’t expect to see the place again. No great loss. It had served its purpose.
On his way out, Wells knocked on the door of his next-door neighbor, Wendell Hury, the old man whose television blared game shows through the walls of Wells’s apartment every day. They weren’t exactly friends, but Wendell was the only person in all of Atlanta who might notice that he’d gone. Wells felt oddly compelled to say good-bye. But though Wells could hear Wendell’s television through the door, the old man didn’t answer his knock. Wells waited a few seconds, then turned away.
WELLS ROLLED DOWN his windows as he passed through the suburbs and into the lush green woods of northeast Georgia. The September air was warm and humid, with thick clouds in the air promising a late-afternoon shower. Wells could feel sweat running down the small of his back. He flicked on the radio and skimmed between stations, not really sure what he was hoping to hear. Then he caught the fiddles of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” a great hokey country song from the Charlie Daniels Band that Wells hadn’t heard at least since high school.
The devil went down to Georgia
He was looking for a soul to steal
The song brought a grin to Wells’s face, his first real smile in weeks. He stomped on the gas for a moment, feeling the Ranger’s little engine rev and the pickup jump forward, then pulled his foot away and reminded himself not to speed. Even after the highway narrowed to two lanes outside the Atlanta suburbs, traffic was heavy and state troopers a constant presence. But the oversized signs and the road’s smooth macadam soothed him. Through South Carolina he hummed “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” wondering what his comrades in the North-West Frontier would think of the song. Not much, probably. For the first time since he had come back to the United States he felt truly American.
IN NORTH CAROLINA the skies darkened. Rain broke against the windshield in sheets, and the traffic crawled forward through foot-deep puddles. Outside Durham Wells stopped at a giant Mobil station. As the Ranger’s tank filled he punched Exley’s number into his cellphone. He should tell her about the message from Khadri. He could hear the purr of her voice as he dialed. But before the call went through he canceled it. Khadri’s message was too vague to be useful. The hotel could be a dead drop. As he had for their Atlanta meeting, Khadri would surely take precautions to make sure Wells wasn’t being trailed.
Wells didn’t want to involve the agency until he had something concrete, like the package — or, even better, Khadri. In any case no one at Langley would believe him. Even Exley would just tell him to come in, give himself up. No. To redeem himself he needed the package, whatever it was. He slipped the phone back into his pocket.
The rest of the drive went quietly. South of Washington, Wells turned east on 495, the route that would give him the widest possible berth around Langley. Again he fought down the urge to call Exley. He would have time later to tell her everything he wanted…if he lived.
THEN, FOR THE first time in weeks, Wells thought of his son. He squeezed the wheel as he remembered again that day almost six months before when his ex-wife forbade him to see Evan. Heather had been right. Wells had chosen to forsake his family, and nothing he said or did could salve that wound. For a moment he closed his eyes. When he opened them he had pushed his family out of his mind and resolved to think only of the job ahead.
He drove on, escaping the storm behind him, his little white truck passing silently through the night. When he reached the George Washington Bridge the Ranger’s digital clock read 2:47 and the air outside was cool and moist. Wells was tired and sore from the hours on the pickup’s hard bench seat, but he knew that if he needed to he could go at least one more day without sleeping. In Afghanistan he had once stayed up sixty-five hours straight. Though he had been younger then.
The girders of the giant steel bridge glowed white in the night. To his right, to the south, the towers of Manhattan shone over the Hudson River. In the distance he could just see the Statue of Liberty. Wells understood why Khadri had called the city beautiful. He did not doubt that Qaeda would do everything possible to destroy it.
He turned north on I-87, following the signs for Albany. A few minutes later, he reached the Tappan Zee Bridge, stretching across the Hudson like a snake floating on the water. Wells smiled to himself as he recrossed the river, realizing he could have stayed on the Hudson’s west bank all along. Well. He would remember that shortcut the next time Khadri sent him from Atlanta to Mon
treal to pick up a secret package.
NORTH. THE EXITS came farther and farther apart. Wells rubbed his eyes and fought the temptation to speed. After Albany, the highway had an eerie, postapocalyptic emptiness. Wells turned up the Ranger’s radio to fill the void, smiling to himself as he found a Springsteen song playing low on the FM dial:
I’ve got my finger on the trigger
tonight faith just ain’t enough
But as the miles flowed on, the static worsened until Wells could no longer understand the voices he heard and finally he flicked off the radio and rode in silence.
The sun rose, revealing the Adirondacks, low mountains covered with the thick forests he remembered from his years at Dartmouth. By January these hills would be as cold and cruel as the eleven-thousand-foot peaks in Montana. But for now they looked gentle, easily manageable. Like so much else in the world, they were a trap for the unwary. At Chestertown, a hundred miles south of the border, Wells pulled off and found a no-name motel whose red neon light flashed VACANCY. He had made good time, and he wanted to nap before the border crossing. He paid for a room for four days up front, then flopped on the bed and slept a black sleep for three hours, until the alarm woke him. He showered, shaved, and dressed, then shoved the bag holding the.45 inside the room’s cheap wooden bureau.
On his way out he hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. The gun would be safe until he got back. Even if a housekeeper did look inside, Wells was sure she wouldn’t do more than change the towels.
HE PASSED CHAMPLAIN, the last exit on I-87 before the U.S.-Canada border. The highway divided, and Wells slowed as he approached the border checkpoint. He looked at his watch: eleven-fifteen. The sun gleamed in the clear blue sky. A perfect warm September day, a reminder that summer hadn’t ended quite yet. He felt fresh and strong and ready.
The Canadian border doesn’t require a passport. Wells handed over his driver’s license.
The guard glanced at it, then looked him over idly. “From Georgia? Long drive.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Is the purpose of your trip business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure, I hope.” Wells smiled. “Meeting a woman I been e-mailing. Jennifer’s her name. In Quebec City. Hope she’s as pretty as the pictures she’s been sending.”
The guard nodded. “How long do you plan to stay?”
“A couple days. It’ll depend on how things go.”
“Do you have a hotel?”
“I’m hoping I won’t need one.”
“Well, good luck. Have fun.” The guard handed back Wells’s driver’s license and waved him through.
WELLS’S PHONE RANG as he piloted his Ranger across the Champlain Bridge and over the Saint Lawrence River, closing in on the skyscrapers of Montreal’s downtown. He clicked on the phone. “Nam.”
“This is Richard.” The man’s voice quivered. But he had the right name, the one that Khadri had e-mailed Wells to expect.
“Karl,” Wells said.
“Yes. Good. Are you close?” Wells couldn’t place the accent.
“Yes.”
“Good. It’s a new plan.”
No surprise there.
The man coughed lightly. “Drive on to Quebec City. Next to the Hôtel de Ville, the city hall, is a big parking garage. You shall find it easily. Meet me there on the second level at four o’clock. I have a white minivan.”
The words were proper, but the phrases were off. English wasn’t this guy’s first language, or his second. “I’ll find it. I’ve got a pickup truck. Also white.”
Click. An amateur, Wells thought. Or a pro playing an odd game.
TARIK WAITED FOR his hands to stop shaking, then slid the phone into his pocket. Jalal had come, just as Khadri had promised. Now Tarik needed to keep his own promise and deliver his package.
He had taken care of his wife, sealing her body in thick plastic bags and leaving her in the basement of the gray house. A temporary solution, sure, but Tarik was thinking short-term these days. The police had knocked on his door again this morning. He hadn’t answered, but they knew he was home. They wouldn’t wait much longer before they came back with a warrant.
But by then Jalal would have his package. The plan should work, Tarik thought. Technically, the delivery mechanism was simple. The germs were ready. Yes, the plan should work. As long as he could keep his nerve.
SO MY LIE at the border about Quebec City turned out to be true, Wells thought. He stopped for gas, picked up a map, and sighed as he saw that his new destination was another 150 miles away. Well, another couple of hours of driving hardly mattered. “Giddyup,” he said as he turned the Ranger’s ignition.
The garage in Quebec City was huge, and mostly empty. Wells drove through it slowly, doubling back twice. As far as he could tell he wasn’t being trailed, but he knew the limits of countersurveillance. Finally he parked. He tilted his head back and immediately fell asleep. Best to conserve his energy.
WELLS JOLTED AWAKE. He snapped his head up to see a white Ford Windstar, a young man behind the wheel pressing the horn. The man swung open the minivan’s passenger-side front door. Wells slid out of the pickup and into the van.
The driver was small and thin, rings around his dark brown eyes, a twitch in his cheek. He licked his lips nervously as they shook hands. “So you like jazz,” he said.
“I listen to it every afternoon,” Wells said, completing the code. The driver seemed to relax a little. He put the minivan into gear and they rolled slowly away. Wells slung his bag behind him in the van.
“I am Tarik.”
“John. Or Jalal. As you like.”
“Salaam alaikum, Jalal.”
“Alaikum salaam.”
Tarik guided the minivan out of the garage, turning toward Canada 40, the highway connecting Quebec City and Montreal. He was a careful driver, constantly checking his rearview mirror and signaling long before he switched lanes.
“Back to Montreal?” Wells said. “You sure you don’t work for Exxon, all this gas we’re burning?”
The muscles in Tarik’s skinny forearms jumped. If he wasn’t scared he was doing a great job of acting. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“It was a joke…forget it.”
Tarik looked at Wells. “Can you put on your seat belt, please?”
Wells clicked in without comment.
“Could I turn on the air conditioning? I like the cool,” Tarik said.
“You’re driving, Tarik. You can do whatever you want.”
Tarik flicked on the air and they rode for a few minutes in silence.
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” Wells said casually.
“Kept me waiting? No, no,” Tarik sputtered. “I just got there when you saw me.”
Then why did we meet in Quebec City instead of Montreal? Wells wondered. Tarik wasn’t using any countersurveillance tactics to lose potential pursuers. In fact, he drove so cautiously that anyone could follow him. “Where are you from, Tarik?”
“I grew up outside Paris.” That explained his accent, at least.
“Now you live here?”
“Yes. Montreal.” They were having an interview, not a conversation. Tarik was too nervous to ask any questions of his own. Wells could have switched to Arabic but decided to stay with English, to keep the kid off balance.
“You work there?”
“I’m a graduate student.”
“In?”
“Neuro — neuropsychology.” Again the muscles in Tarik’s forearms twitched. Wells began to wonder if the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would be waiting for them in Montreal.
TARIK WAS TRYING his best to act scared, though he hardly needed to act. Khadri had warned him that Wells would probe him, and walked him through how to respond. If he kept the lies to a minimum he would be fine, Khadri said. All he needed to do was stay calm for a few hours, give Wells the package, and send him along.
Tarik desperately hoped Khadri was right.
“DO YOU LIKE
it?” Wells said.
“What?”
“Graduate school.”
“Yes.”
“Are you married, Tarik?”
“Not anymore.” He seemed to smile, though Wells was no longer sure about anything this kid did.
“Sorry it didn’t work out,” Wells said.
Wells waited, but Tarik said nothing more. “Tarik. You know who sent me. Is something wrong?” He switched to Arabic.
“Nothing is wrong. Everything is cool.” The phrase sounded ridiculous coming from Tarik’s mouth. He shook his head mulishly, like a sixth grader caught passing a note in class.
Wells shifted gears. “What’s in the package, Tarik?”
“I don’t know. They came yesterday. I didn’t open them.”
Again Wells waited. Still Tarik said nothing. Finally Wells asked, as smoothly as he could: “They? There’s more than one package? How many?”
“I’m not allowed to talk about this.”
“Where’d they come from? Who delivered them?”
“Jalal, please.”
“Is there another courier, Tarik?”
But Tarik shook his head and said nothing.
SET THE HOOK and don’t say too much, Khadri had told Tarik. I don’t care what he thinks is happening. As long as he has the package when he leaves.
KHADRI WAS PLAYING games, Wells thought. As usual. Why hadn’t he sent the packages, whatever they were, straight to the United States? Why use this kid, who looked like he wanted to vomit? Why multiple couriers?
Tarik sat rigidly in the driver’s seat, his hands clenching the wheel. Wells could see that he was done talking, unless Wells put a knife to his throat. And as much as Wells wanted to take control, force the situation, he had to be patient. Tarik was only a courier. Wells would take the package, cross the border, and wait for Khadri.
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