THE SUN WAS low in the sky when they reached Montreal. Tarik turned off the highway into a run-down neighborhood. They passed a brightly lit Muslim community center with signs in English, French, and Arabic. A few minutes later Tarik turned into the parking lot of a run-down motel.
“Wait,” he said, and got out. He walked into room 104. Wells figured Tarik had rented the room for a night as a place to store the mysterious package. A dummy location, one Wells couldn’t trace. Smart.
Wells looked around for any signs they were being watched. He saw nothing. The street was quiet. No helicopters floating overhead, no UPS trucks cruising by, no Ford Crown Victorias parked away. On the other hand, if this really was a sting operation, the cops — or the agency — would wait until he had taken the package from Tarik. They might even wait until he got back to Quebec City.
So arrest me, Wells thought. Let this madness be the agency’s doing. At least I’ll know that Langley’s a step ahead of me, and close to catching Khadri. But as he looked around again, he felt sure the agency was nowhere near him. Or Khadri.
Tarik reappeared from room 104 carrying a soft-sided blue travel bag, large enough to hold a week’s worth of clothes, small enough to fit in an airplane’s overhead bin. He carefully placed the bag in the back of the minivan. “It has a briefcase inside. Don’t open it.”
“What if they search it at the border?”
“Omar said that’s up to you. He said he was sure you’d think of something.”
“I’m glad he has so much confidence in me,” Wells said.
Tarik said nothing more on the long drive back to Quebec City, and Wells didn’t press him.
THE GARAGE IN Quebec City was almost empty when they rolled up to the little white pickup. Wells had never been so glad to see the truck. He stepped out of the minivan. To his surprise, Tarik followed. “May Allah smile upon you, Jalal,” Tarik said in Arabic. He tapped his heart. Wells responded in kind.
“On you as well, Tarik.”
“And may he make us victorious.”
“Inshallah.”
Wells offered Tarik his hand. Instead the smaller man gave him an awkward hug. Wells pulled the blue bag out of the Windstar and set it in his pickup. He waved once to Tarik, then leaned against his truck and watched the minivan disappear.
When the Windstar was gone Wells slid behind the wheel of the pickup, but he didn’t bother to start the Ranger for a while. If this was a sting, he’d give the cops plenty of time to arrest him without a fight. But the garage stayed empty, and finally Wells turned the key and rolled out of Quebec City and into the night.
* * *
IT WAS 1:04 A.M. by the Ranger’s clock when Wells rolled up to the deserted border crossing. He felt as if he’d been driving forever, but in truth he’d just begun the journey home.
The guard took a long look at his license. “You have a passport?”
“No sir.”
“When’d you cross into Canada?”
“Just yesterday morning.”
“You from Georgia?”
“Atlanta.”
“Long way for such a short trip.”
“I was visiting a girl in Quebec City,” Wells said. “Met her on the Internet. It didn’t work out so good. She was about twice as big as the picture she sent.”
“Too bad, man.” The guard laughed. “You can never trust those Canadians.” He looked down at the Ranger’s passenger seat. “What’s in your bags?”
“Just clothes. I was hoping to stay a while. Took the week off.”
“No drugs, guns, nothing like that.”
“No sir.”
“Well, better luck next time.” The guard handed Wells back his license. “Welcome home. Drive safe.” Just that easily he was back.
A HALF HOUR later Wells pulled over and pissed by the side of the highway, looking up at the night sky. This far north there wasn’t much pollution. The glow of the stars reminded Wells of Afghanistan. He wondered if he’d ever see those mountains again, or what he would think if he did. Maybe he and Exley would vacation there one day. Adventure tourism.
He found his phone and punched in a number Khadri had e-mailed the previous day. “Leave a message,” Khadri’s voice said.
“I’m through,” Wells said. “I’ll be back in Atlanta tonight. Late.” Click.
IN THE MOTEL room in Chestertown Wells sat on his bed and gingerly unzipped the blue bag. Inside he found a couple of T-shirts…a pair of jeans…some smelly socks and underwear. And a hard-shelled plastic briefcase clasped with a digital lock. Wells wondered how he would have explained it to the border guard. He picked up the case, feeling its heft, maybe twenty pounds. Not nearly big enough for a nuke. But inside there could be enough plutonium for a bomb. Enough anthrax to annihilate a city. Sarin. VX. Smallpox. Anything. Pandora’s briefcase.
Wells poked at it for a minute more, then gave up. He could probably force the lock, but why bother? If Khadri was using him as a decoy, the case would be empty or booby-trapped. On the other hand, if the case held something important, then Khadri would have to get it. And then…. The knife strapped to Wells’s leg throbbed asif it were alive. Khadri wouldn’t survive that meeting.
He lay back on the bed. He would sleep three hours and be on the road by dawn. But first he had a call to make.
EXLEY ANSWERED ON the second ring. “John?”
“Five o’clock this afternoon. Swimmingly.”
“I’ll be there.”
He hung up.
She had said yes without hesitation. He loved her for that.
16
Yonkers, New York
“LEFT AT THE sign,” Ghazi said. “Third house down.”
Khadri stopped his Ford Expedition in front of a neatly kept house in Yonkers, just north of New York City. A black Lincoln Town Car sat in the driveway, in front of the garage.
“You like it?” Ghazi said. He had bought the place three years before, and he was as house-proud as any first-generation immigrant. Ghazi was the only al Qaeda sleeper who lived openly in the United States, a former Lebanese army explosives expert who had emigrated legally in 1999. He had spent the years since building an American life. He drove for a car service, paid his taxes on time, even showed up for jury duty. And he never forgot the day in 1983 when an Israeli artillery shell landed in his living room in Beirut and splattered his family across the walls. Never forgot and never forgave. He blamed the United States as much as Israel. The Jews were nothing without the Americans. Ghazi had waited a very long time for Khadri’s orders.
“VERY NICE,” KHADRI said. In truth, Khadri didn’t care for the house’s green paint or its aluminum siding. But he saw no reason to explain its shortcomings to Ghazi, who would be in paradise soon enough anyway.
Khadri popped the Expedition’s back latch, and the two men dragged a steel trunk out of the SUV. “Heavy,” Ghazi grunted in Arabic.
“It’s lined with lead,” Khadri said. They had picked up the trunk at a storage center outside Hartford. Inside the garage they lowered the trunk to the clean concrete floor. Ghazi clicked the garage door closed. They were alone with the trunk. And the vehicle that Khadri thought of as the Yellow. Khadri walked slowly around the Yellow, examining it. Just as Ghazi had promised. Its tires were worn and its paint faded, but it had a new inspection sticker and the right license plates. No one would look twice at it. Perfect.
“It’s ready?” Khadri said.
Ghazi slid a key into the ignition. The Yellow started without protest. Ghazi let the vehicle run for a minute before turning it off and handing the key to Khadri.
“Have the neighbors ever asked about it?”
Ghazi shook his head. “They know I drive a cab. They think maybe it’s for a new business.”
“So it is.”
FROM THE OUTSIDE the Yellow appeared completely ordinary. But beneath its seats were wooden crates that held thick gray blocks of C-4, twenty-one hundred pounds in all. Khadri had originally expected to use the veh
icle for a conventional bombing like the ones in Los Angeles, but since Alaa’s arrest he had changed his plan.
Inside the Yellow, thick black wires led from detonators on the crates to a battery near the driver’s seat. To prevent any chance of an accidental explosion, the wires were not hooked to the battery. When they were connected the Yellow would become a rolling bomb, smaller but far more powerful than the ammonium nitrate bombs that Khadri had used in Los Angeles. A ton of C-4 could take out a thirty-story building.
Khadri knelt before the trunk and punched a stream of numbers into its digital lock. He knew exactly what was inside, but he wanted to see once more. The lock clicked open. Khadri pulled out a small steel box held shut by a simple padlock. He twisted the lock’s dial and opened the box. There it was. The gift of God. Two sealed jars, the first holding a half dozen pieces of gray metal, the second filled with a dirty yellow powder.
“That’s it?” Ghazi said. He sounded disappointed, Khadri thought.
“It will be enough.”
In truth, before his recent setbacks, Khadri had hoped to add to this stash of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Perhaps even to accumulate enough material to meet his dream of a nuclear weapon. Then Dmitri the Russian scientist had died. Farouk had disappeared. And now the kafirs were closing in. Best to use what Allah had offered before the opportunity disappeared.
Khadri locked the box and returned it to the trunk, where even the most sensitive radiation detectors could not find it. When the C-4 blew, the explosion would vaporize the trunk, scattering plutonium and uranium for miles. A very dirty bomb. In the middle of Manhattan.
“Lift,” he said. The two men lugged the trunk into the Yellow, where it fit nicely among the crates of C-4.
“Allahu akbar,” Ghazi said quietly. God is great.
“Allahu akbar.” Khadri was pleased with their work today. The first half of his plan was ready. The rest would fall into place when Wells delivered his package. Khadri thought briefly of the fate that awaited the American. If Wells’s allegiance to al Qaeda was genuine, he would die a martyr, Khadri thought. If not…he would simply die. Either way, Wells would soon be in Allah’s all-powerful grasp. He should be pleased.
CUT OFF FROM the rest of Washington by river and highway, the Kenilworth housing projects are a world unto themselves, a gravity well of addiction and poverty. The gleaming dome of the Capitol is barely two miles from the low-rise apartments of Kenilworth. It might as well be in another galaxy.
Yet a most unlikely oasis is tucked beside the projects. Created in 1882, the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens are a lush, swampy forest thick with salamanders and snapping turtles and even the occasional armadillo. Wells would have liked to pretend that he’d chosen the gardens for his rendezvous with Exley because of their beauty. In fact he’d picked them because they were the most secluded place in Washington. If Exley planned to turn him in, the agency’s surveillance would be hard to hide.
But as he steered the Ranger down Washington’s Highway 295, closing in on the gardens, Wells felt sure that Exley would be alone. He had believed in her unconditionally since that night in the Jeep. Maybe even since the day they met at the Farm so many years ago, when they were both young and married.
In the end he supposed he had kept his faith after all. Not in the agency or in Allah or even in America, but in her.
HE DROVE UNDER a pedestrian bridge covered with a steel mesh fence, there to protect drivers from the neighborhood kids, who had a habit of dropping rocks onto the road. This was Kenilworth. He pulled the.45 out of his bag, unscrewed the silencer, slipped both inside his jacket. His phone trilled. He pulled it from his pocket, expecting Exley. Instead the number was a 914 area code. Westchester. Just outside New York City.
“Jalal.” Khadri.
“Nam.”
“Where are you?”
“Our nation’s capital.”
“Just so.” Khadri laughed.
“I’ll be home tonight.”
“Unfortunately not. I need you in New York. As soon as possible.”
Wells felt as he had during his first few weeks in the army, buffeted by orders that seemed nonsensical. Khadri surely had a decent idea of his schedule. Why hadn’t he called earlier, before Wells got to New York? But there was no point in arguing.
“New York City?”
“The Bronx.” Khadri named an address.
“See you there,” Wells said. He hung up, and as he did he realized something strange. Khadri hadn’t asked about the package. Hadn’t even hinted at it.
* * *
TEN MINUTES LATER he turned into the gardens’ parking lot. There were no signs of surveillance. He saw her immediately, leaning against a green minivan, arms crossed. She was wearing a navy blue shirt and gray pants that showed off her slim hips.
He parked beside her. She didn’t smile, but when he got out of the truck she stepped toward him and hugged him tightly. “John,” she said. She stepped back to look at him. He pushed her up against the minivan and kissed her, his arms around her. Their mouths locked as easily as two clouds merging and he felt the weight of her body against his, her breasts against his chest. Finally she pushed him away.
“You didn’t come here for this,” she said.
“Not just for this.”
He took her hand and led her into the park. The forest and swamp surrounded them. The sounds of the city disappeared, and the air turned moist and rich. They walked silently toward the Anacostia River, not quite touching, content to be beside each other. Finally the path ended at the edge of the mud-brown river.
“How’d you know about this?” Exley said, watching the water roll lazily south. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“I came here a couple times after the Farm. When I was getting my language training.”
“With Heather.”
“Jealous?”
She smiled. “Now why would I be jealous?”
He shivered as a breeze came off the river.
“You all right, John? You look tired.”
“Too much driving,” he said. “Khadri sent me to Montreal for a briefcase.” He told her what had happened with Tarik the day before, and his suspicions of another courier.
“You don’t know what it is?”
“It’s locked. I haven’t tried to open it.”
“And you’re meeting Khadri here? In D.C.?”
“No. I was heading south, but he just called. Changed the plan. Told me to turn around, go to New York. Something’s about to happen. It’s happening already.”
“Shafer thinks so too.”
He looked at her, then out at the river. “Care to share?”
She half smiled. “I was sort of hoping you would know.”
“It’s like we’re in ancient Rome, sacrificing sheep, reading the entrails. Trying to figure out what catastrophe the gods have planned for us next.”
“They’re not gods.”
“They want to be,” he said. “Angry pagan gods who throw thunderbolts because they can.”
“Do you believe in God, John? Not little-g gods but the big one?”
The question stopped him. He found himself looking at the sparrows flying over the river, thinking about the Koran in his truck, the men he had killed. “Yes,” he said finally. “But I’m not sure he believes in me.”
“I’m serious—”
“So am I. Can you do everything I’ve done and still feel grace? Still feel peace? And that’s God to me. I’m afraid I’ve left Him a long way behind.”
“When I was a kid I believed,” Exley said. “Then my brother went crazy and I stopped. It seemed too cruel, to take someone’s mind away that way. I remember one time, when his meds were working, joking around with him: ‘How come God never just tells you to go shopping? How come it’s always “The water’s poisoned, there’s a chip in your brain, the aliens are coming”?’ He laughed, really laughed, and I did too. It just seemed so futile. But now that I have kids I want to believe again, if not fo
r my sake then for theirs, believe that there’s something more than this.”
“I know what you mean.” Wells touched her arm. “Jenny. Does anybody know I’m here?”
“Back to work, huh? No. Not even Shafer. You’re toxic, John. Worse than toxic. I’m ending my career right now. Heading for jail, maybe.”
“I’m sorry, Jenny.”
“It’s not your fault. Where have you been since April?”
“Sitting on my ass, mainly.”
“Where?”
He didn’t want to tell her, but he knew he couldn’t lie. “Atlanta.”
“Not just sitting on your ass.”
He looked at her sidelong. “Tell your friend Duto I didn’t shoot West,” he said. “I tried to save him but I couldn’t. Khadri set it up. To test my loyalty.”
“And you passed,” she said. “Khadri trusts you. That’s why he sent you to pick up the case.”
“He doesn’t, though. Something’s wrong. He’s playing with me. I think maybe I’m some kind of a decoy.” Wells paused. “Any of this fit with what you’ve got?”
She shook her head. “But we arrested a sleeper last week. In Brooklyn. And we think they have a dirty bomb.” She told him about Farouk Khan, the explosion in Albany, Shafer’s suspicions that al Qaeda planned to move fast.
“So when are you raising the alert level?” Wells said.
“We don’t do that anymore. Not without specific intel. We’re winning this war, remember? No need to upset anyone.”
“A dirty bomb doesn’t count as specific?”
“Not if we don’t know where it is. We already embarrassed ourselves in Albany.”
“Maybe it’s in that briefcase in my truck.”
She shook her head. “The radiation detectors at the border would have picked it up. And if the case was lined with lead you’d know. It’d be heavy as hell.”
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