The Faithful Spy

by Alex Berenson

  Exley and Shafer didn’t tell Wells much about the investigation into the Los Angeles bombings either, but he didn’t need to ask. From the Times and the Post he could see that the investigation wasn’t going well. The papers were filled with comments from anonymous FBI agents about the difficulties of cracking a case where the perpetrators couldn’t be identified, much less questioned. On CNN and Fox, the usual talking heads blamed the FBI and the agency for failing to prevent the attacks, and debated whether they signified a new wave of terrorism or were a one-off. Wells figured he knew the answer to that question. And yet after a week of shock and impromptu memorials, most people—especially outside Southern California—already seemed to be putting the attacks behind them.

  “I’m just happy it wasn’t worse,” one man said in an article in the Times. “It’s kind of the price we pay for being Americans.” The guy wouldn’t be so cavalier if he knew what was really happening inside the CIA and the other agencies that were supposed to protect him, Wells thought. The waste, the bureaucracy, the inefficiency…. These attacks didn’t have to happen. They could be stopped. And instead of helping stop them, he was stuck doing nothing in a safe house because he hadn’t kissed Vinny Duto’s ass.

  After two fruitless weeks, he decided to break out. Maybe he was making a mistake, but what choice did he have? What if Khadri had already contacted him and another attack was imminent?

  IT WAS MID-APRIL, and cherry blossoms were blooming across Washington. Already thunderstorms had racked the city, hinting at the torrid summer closing in. But this Friday night was unseasonably cool. Wells pulled on a jacket and left the safe house, walking west toward the Capitol. In his hand he cradled a paper bag that held a hammer and screwdriver he had bought the day before. A black Ford sedan parked three houses down followed him, as it always did when he left the house. A block later another Ford began to roll.

  Wells had walked the neighborhood every night since Shafer had put him here, and he was certain the surveillance ended there—no walkers, no truly undercover cars, no snipers or peepers. He was almost offended. They didn’t seem to know or care how easily he could lose them. At a little convenience store on A Street, he bought himself a Coke, then walked home, the Fords trailing.

  Almost ten o’clock. Wells settled on his stoop and waited for the right cab. Capitol Hill hadn’t completely gentrified this far east; he saw the occasional dog walker, but the street was mostly quiet. Televisions glowed their eerie blue in the windows across the street. Wells sipped his Coke and smiled at the surveillance team in the Ford, fighting the urge to wave. He felt like a kid about to go off the high dive for the first time all summer.

  A CAB WITH tinted windows rolled up. Perfect. Wells flagged it. “Okay if I sit in front?”

  The driver, a black man in his fifties, sized him up. On the radio an Orioles–Red Sox game had just gone into the eleventh inning. “Sure. Watch my hat.” A brown fedora lay on the seat.

  Wells slid in.

  “Where to?”

  “East Cap. Benning Road.”

  “Get out.” East Cap, two miles east on the other side of the Anacostia River, was one of D.C.’s poorest neighborhoods, nearly all public housing. Cabbies didn’t like going there even during the day.

  Wells handed the guy a twenty. “There’ll be more.”

  The guy eyed him suspiciously. “Looking for rock?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause I won’t help you.”

  “No drugs, I swear.”

  “Pussy?”

  “No pussy.”

  They rolled off.

  “What’s your name?” Wells said.

  “Walter.”

  Wells laughed involuntarily, a short sharp bark.

  “My name funny?”

  “I just met another Walter. He didn’t trust me either.”

  “You strange, you know that?”

  On the radio an Oriole batter doubled. “You like the Orioles over the Nationals?” Wells said.

  “Been rooting for that team too long to change now. Yourself?”

  “Gotta tell you I’m a Red Sox fan. But I love extra innings, any game.”

  “Better than the Yankees.”

  They swung past RFK Stadium onto the viaduct that crossed the Anacostia and 295, a busy commuter highway that paralleled the river. The Fords followed. The Friday-night traffic on East Cap was heavy in both directions, Wells saw happily.

  “You know somebody’s following us?”

  Wells handed Walter another twenty. “Two of ’em. They’re friends. We’re playing a game.”

  “Game.” Walter looked at Wells.

  “It’s called lose the man.”

  “I want no part of this shit.”

  “How ’bout for another hundred?”

  Walter flopped open his jacket to show Wells a battered revolver. “You starting to piss me off.”

  Wells shook his head. “What about two hundred? That’s all I got.”

  They came off the viaduct and up a hill. Walter looked hard at Wells. “Man…you get in my cab…” Walter shook his head. “You not a cop.”

  “I’ll get out now if you want.”

  Walter pursed his lips. He seemed to be flipping a coin in his mind. Then he nodded. “A hundred’s fine. What next?”

  “How well you know East Cap?”

  “Better ’n you, I suspect. I grew up here.”

  They cruised down toward the light where Benning and East Capitol intersected. Beyond that another hill led up to the city’s worst projects. To their right an overgrown park, really an urban forest, loomed over the road like a bad dream. Here there be dragons.

  “Okay. Stay on East Cap. Come out of the light fast. When we get up the hill, find a break in traffic they can’t make. Be sure about that. Swing left, through the traffic. When we’re out of sight I’ll roll out. Should only take about three seconds. When I’m gone close the door and keep moving. If they find you, let ’em pull you over, but don’t make it easy.”

  “You gonna roll out.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  They waited at the light, the Fords a couple of cars behind. Wells reached down for the screwdriver. He slid it under his ankle bracelet and twisted. The plastic strained and gave. No turning back now.

  “What’s this about?” Walter said.

  “There’s this song. From sometime in the nineties, I don’t know,” Wells said, more to himself than Walter. “‘Time is all the luck you need.’”

  Walter shook his head in disgust. “Just gimme the hundred, man.”

  Wells did. The light changed. Walter went.

  WELLS ROLLED OUT of the taxi, paper bag in hand. He landed smoothly on his shoulder and popped to his knees, then scuttled behind a beat-up black Jeep Cherokee. The taxi disappeared. Walter had already closed the door, Wells saw. The two Fords came by, flashing their emergency lights, no sirens. Then they too were gone.

  The Cherokee would do. No alarm. Wells swung the hammer at the front passenger window, breaking it with a satisfying crunch. He swung again to widen the hole, reached through, and unlocked the driver’s door. He jogged around the Jeep and slid inside. He popped open the steering column with the screwdriver and twisted together a pair of wires. The engine started on the second try. Wells looked down the road. The Fords were nowhere in sight. He rolled away.

  HE CALLED EXLEY’S apartment from a pay phone on Massachusetts Avenue. “Hello,” she said on the second ring. Her voice was quiet and slightly smoky; she had smoked when Wells knew her last, but she must have quit. A pleasant shiver passed through Wells.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “John?”

  “Be on your front steps in five minutes.” He hung up. Calling her was a mistake. He should be on the road to New York already. There he would ditch the Jeep, pick up the money he had hidden, and find a Greyhound that would get him to Atlanta without coming through D.C. She could stop him with a ten-second phone call. But he needed to say good-bye to her.
He needed to believe there was at least one person he could trust.

  SHE TROTTED OVER to the Jeep. He popped open the door and reached out a hand.

  “Watch the glass.” He’d tried to sweep it onto the floor but hadn’t completely succeeded. He was surprised to see she was wearing a knee-high skirt. She ought to wear skirts more often, he thought. Even the Talibs would approve. Well, maybe not.

  She swept off the window fragments and arranged herself gingerly on the seat. He drove off, north on Thirteenth Street.

  “You stole this?”

  “Borrowed.” He held up the Jeep’s registration. “I guess I owe Elizabeth Jones a few bucks.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re not going anywhere. I just wanted to see you. For a minute.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away.”

  “John—”

  AND SUDDENLY EXLEY understood. Shafer had set this up, like he’d set up Wells’s trip to the camps so many years before. Shafer had known that Duto, out of stupidity or spite, would shut down anything Wells tried to do. So Shafer had taken Wells for himself. Then he’d let Wells twist until Wells believed he had no choice but to run. That was why they hadn’t told Wells he’d passed the poly, why they’d kept him at arm’s length. Why Shafer had put Wells at that safe house instead of someplace more secure. It was the only way to get Wells out.

  “It’s so risky,” Exley said aloud. What if Duto called out the dogs? But he wouldn’t. He didn’t think Wells was dangerous, and he’d be happy to let Shafer twist over the loss of his prize pet.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Wells said.

  Do you, John? Exley wondered. She put her hand on his arm.

  AT HER TOUCH Wells wanted to pull the Jeep over and have her there, on the side of the street. Let the neighbors watch. Let them call the cops. And then Langley can bail you both out, he thought. She took her hand from his arm.

  “John? There’s something I’ve been wondering.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why’d you go see Heather?”

  “It wasn’t Heather I wanted to see. It was Evan.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, and Wells wondered if he’d understood the question properly: Do you still love her? Then Exley put her hand on his arm again, and he knew he was right.

  “Tell me a story,” he said. To distract himself. To hear her voice for a little while more before he disappeared.

  “What kind of story?”

  “Anything. I don’t care. Something personal.”

  SHE WONDERED WHAT to tell him. All she did was work. Should she explain how her son had yelled at her the last time she’d seen him, told her he liked Randy better than her? About how she kept the radio in her bedroom tuned to sports talk, not because she cared about the Nationals but because if she woke up at three A.M. she could turn it on and be sure of hearing a man’s voice?

  “You want a story,” she said. “Okay.” And before she could stop herself she said, “So, the night I lost my virginity. I was fifteen—”

  “Fifteen?” Wells sounded surprised, she thought. He didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into. She wasn’t sure she did either. She’d never told this to any man before, not even her husband.

  “You want me to keep going?” She wanted to keep going.

  “Please.” His voice was steady again.

  “Anyway, I was fifteen. My family was going through a rough patch. My dad, he was always a drinker, but about then he started to head off the cliff. Took him five more years to hit bottom, but we could see where he was going. And my brother, Danny, he’d just gotten kicked out of freshman year at UCLA. He was hearing voices and he hit his roommate in the head with a Tabasco bottle.”

  “A Tabasco bottle?”

  She laughed, with an edge. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it wasn’t one of those little ones you see in restaurants. It was big enough to do some damage. He got brought up on aggravated-assault charges. He would have gone to jail if we hadn’t convinced the judge he was schizo. Which he was.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a brother, Jenny.”

  “He killed himself a few years after that. I don’t talk about it.”

  Wells slowed down, put his hand on her shoulder. “Exley.”

  “Lots of them do, you know. Schizophrenics. He just couldn’t bear it.” She shook his arm off her. They were still heading north on Thirteenth. The apartment buildings had turned into two-story houses, indistinguishable in the night.

  “You’re gonna have to drop me off soon,” she said. “They’re going to call my cell to tell me you’re gone, and they’re going to wonder if I don’t answer. So you want to hear the rest of my story or not?”

  “You still want to tell it?”

  “Yes. Strange but true.” She didn’t know why, or maybe she did. Because it would be his when she told him, a gift she wouldn’t give anyone else, in its way more intimate than any other. “So I’m fifteen, cutting school, smoking pot, acting out. Wearing black. The whole deal. You know, my brother’s crazy, my dad’s an alkie, and I’m just ignoring my mom, who’s doing her best. And I decide a couple weeks before my birthday that there’s no way—no way—I’m still gonna be a virgin when I’m sixteen. Great plan, right, John?”

  “Lucky boyfriend.”

  “Only—no. I didn’t have a boyfriend back then. And I didn’t want a high school boy. I wanted a man. Somebody who would fuck me. I didn’t even know what that meant, but my new girlfriends, the ones I cut class with, they were always talking about guys who fucked them, really fucked them. And some of it was crap, maybe most of it, I knew that. But some of it wasn’t. So, about a week before my birthday, Jodie, who was a couple years older, the nicest of them, told me about this party she was going to, in Oakland, across the bay, with some college guys. She said I should go. And then the next day she told me she couldn’t go, but I made her give me the address. And so I told my mother I was going to some concert—I remember I was so happy I put one over on her, my poor mother—and I got all dolled up and I went.”

  He slowed down. “Is it wrong for me to imagine how you must have looked back then?”

  “I looked good. I mean, I can say it now that I’m old and decrepit: I was hot. And I was wearing this thigh-high skirt and these boots…. My mother had a lot on her mind or she never would have let me out of the house.”

  “You’re not old, Jenny.”

  “Too kind. So, anyway, I catch the BART to Oakland, ’cause I’m not even legal to drive, remember. And I start walking around this kind of crummy neighborhood, because this is before every square foot in the Bay Area is worth a million dollars, and I’m starting to get nervous, and then I find it. And it’s loud, amped up, a big party in a big run-down house. There were some Berkeley students, but there were grad students too, and some guys from the neighborhood who’d come by and even some bikers, because that’s what Oakland was then. If you were having a party you’d better invite the locals. The girls were a little younger, but they were all in college at least. And I grab myself a beer and take a couple bong hits from this bong that must have been about four feet long. And I start looking for Mr. Right.”

  “Jenny—”

  “Too late. Let me finish.” She knew she had to tell him everything. To provoke him, to arouse him, she wasn’t even sure. “And I see a blond guy, surfer type, tall, cute. Not rough. Maybe twenty-one, twenty-two. I start heading toward him, but before I can get to him, this guy in a black T-shirt grabs my arm. He’s got a couple tattoos on his arms. And he’s holding me pretty close. He asks me if I want a beer or maybe something harder, and he’s practically sticking his tongue down my throat while he says it. But I shake him off and head for the surfer.

  “And Blondie’s interested, and it only takes about half an hour before I get him to a bedroom upstairs, and we’re making out, and he’s good and hard, and I say something dumb, like ‘Put it in me, stud.’ He looks at me and says, ‘What did you say
?’ Then he looks again, and says, ‘How old are you, anyway?’ and he’s out the door like that, moving even faster when I say, ‘But I want you to fuck me. I don’t wanna be a virgin anymore.’”

  “So you didn’t lose it that night after all.”

  “Let a girl finish, John. So I go back downstairs, and I find Mr. Tattoo. And I say, ‘How about that drink?’ And ten minutes later he’s fucking me on this pool table in the basement, with a towel under me because that was his main concern about my virginity, that I not bleed all over the felt, ’cause he knew the guys who rented the house. He probably only went about five minutes, but it seemed like a long time. I was lucky I was still a little wet from the surfer, or it really would have hurt.”

  “Jenny—”

  “And the kicker is, when he’s done, and I’ve bled all over that towel, he tosses his condom next to me, pulls up his pants, turns around, and leaves without a word.”

  WELLS PULLED THE Jeep to the side of the road. A light rain had just begun, misting the windshield, putting halos on the streetlights. Cars cruised by slowly, driven by men and women who worked in malls or hospitals or offices downtown and lived decent quiet lives. People he would never know.

  Why, Jenny, he almost said aloud. Why would you? But he held back. She’d done it because she wanted to, and told him because she wanted to, and who was he to judge? His career choice didn’t exactly give him a lot of moral authority. “So were you glad you did it?” he finally said.

  She moved closer to him in her seat, and he knew he’d asked the right question. “Yeah. Even though I never did anything like that again. It’s like dropping acid. A little goes a long way. But the truth is, I was giving something to the guy, even if he thought he was taking it from me. I did it how I wanted to. Maybe it sounds crazy, but it’s how I felt. And I never talked to him again. Never even knew his name. Though I’m pretty sure I spotted him years later in Berkeley, when I was back from college. Luckily I was in my car, and I just kept driving. So there’s your story, John, and I hope it keeps you warm wherever you’re going.” She laughed her low smoky laugh.