The Faithful Spy

by Alex Berenson

  In case they had, he had done his best to change his looks. He didn’t put much stock in elaborate disguises, which usually attracted attention rather than deflected it. But he had grown out his hair since the spring, and today he was wearing a Red Sox cap and wire-rim glasses with clear lenses. As long as he didn’t do anything dumb, he ought to be fine. The TSA officers were overwhelmed and mainly worried about keeping the lines moving. To protect himself further, he had told Khadri that he would wait in Hartsfield’s main concourse instead of the terminal, which would have required him to go through a checkpoint. After a few minutes of pacing the halls, he settled down with a Journal-Constitution and tried to read about the Braves’ latest win—six in a row—but he couldn’t focus.

  Eventually he gave up and let his mind roam. It settled on Exley. At this hour she was probably in her office. He had never seen where she worked, but he could picture it. She would try hard to keep her desk neat, but it would still be messy, thick with unclassified reports and maps and transcripts. In her safe she would have photocopies of classified documents—she wouldn’t get the originals. She would have pictures of her kids and maybe some drawings they had made for her. He hoped so.

  She wasn’t married anymore. If she had a boyfriend, a lover, she might have a picture of him. But Wells was sure it would be discreet. She wasn’t the type to bring her life into the office. Did she bring the office home? Nearly everyone at the agency was married. He couldn’t picture her having some awful workplace affair, the kind that the secretaries know will happen even before it starts and the bosses figure out in a week. The kind that inevitably ends with the husband back at home with wife and kids. Exley was smarter than that. Had to be. But Wells knew better than anyone that loneliness in large doses could twist people so badly that eventually even they couldn’t recognize themselves.

  So did she have a lover? A boyfriend? After the way she’d opened up to him in the Jeep he couldn’t imagine she was seriously involved with another man. Nobody lived with her, anyway. When he had called her that morning a month ago, she had picked up. And she hadn’t sounded surprised. As if she had been waiting for his call. As if she had been thinking about him as much as he’d been thinking about her. He closed his eyes and imagined her, alone in her bed, sleeping nude beneath a thin cotton sheet, her windows open to the humid Washington night and a fan spinning slowly overhead. The vision made him shiver, and for a moment he could almost touch her.

  Wells opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Eleven-forty. In five minutes Khadri would arrive on Delta flight 561 from Detroit.

  THE FLIGHT CAME in on time. But Khadri wasn’t on it.

  The man who stepped off the escalator was younger, early thirties, tall, clean-shaven, wearing slacks and a loose-fitting polo shirt. He couldn’t do anything about his olive skin and wiry black hair, but otherwise he blended nicely with the crowd of midday business travelers. Right down to his laptop. A professional. He glanced around, saw the Atlanta Jazz Festival T-shirt that Wells had promised to wear in his e-mail—a simple, foolproof way to make contact in public—and walked straight over.

  “You must be Jack,” the man said in clean, soft English with just a hint of a Saudi accent. “I’m Thomas.”

  The names were right. Khadri might not be here, but this was his man. “Good to meet you,” Wells said. “How was the weather in Detroit?” A simple question, just to confirm what he already knew.

  “Cloudy last night but clear this morning.”

  Wells extended his hand, and they shook.

  THEY WERE SILENT until Wells swung onto 285, heading east, back toward his apartment. The man who called himself Thomas leaned forward to peek at the right side mirror, checking for tails. “Can you drive faster, in the left lane?” Thomas said. Wells did.

  A few minutes later Thomas told him to move right and slow down. Then to speed up. Wells followed every instruction.

  “Where do you live?” Thomas said as they reached the intersection of 285 and I-20.

  “Doraville. Northeastern Atlanta. About fifteen miles. Should be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Where exactly?”

  “The address?”

  “Yes.”

  Wells told him.

  “We’re not going to your apartment. Get off here and go west on Interstate 20.”

  “Toward downtown.”

  “Yes.” Thomas said nothing more. And Wells knew his wait wasn’t over yet.

  WELLS PULLED INTO the parking lot at a beat-up Denny’s in southwest Atlanta. He’d been driving for hours, making endless loops on the highways that scissored the city. Now they were back practically where they had started, a couple of miles from the edge of Hartsfield. Planes flew low overhead, on their approach to the airport. Wells fought down his rising impatience, telling himself that a few more hours wouldn’t matter.

  Wells parked, and Thomas led him to the end of the lot, where a man stood beside a green Chevy Lumina. He was shorter than Thomas and dressed casually, jeans and a Falcons T-shirt.

  “This is Sami,” Thomas said. He hugged Sami and murmured something into his ear.

  “Sami.” Wells put out his hand. Sami let it hang in the air until Wells finally pulled it back.

  “Give him your keys.” Thomas didn’t smile.

  Without a word Wells flicked his keys to Sami, who caught them neatly and turned for Wells’s pickup. Thomas got into the Lumina, indicating with a wave that Wells should follow.

  Wells stayed cool as he watched his Ford disappear from the parking lot. These men were taking all this trouble for a reason. Khadri was putting him through one last test before finally lowering the drawbridge and letting him into the castle. Or so he hoped.

  Again they drove aimlessly. The Chevy’s little digital clock passed five P.M., and the traffic began to thicken. But Thomas showed no impatience. Wells figured he was giving Sami time to search the apartment. Fine. Let them play this game. No matter how hard they looked they couldn’t go deep enough to break his cover.

  Finally Thomas’s cell phone trilled. He picked up. “Nam.” He hung up and slipped the phone into his pocket.

  “It’s clean,” Wells said.

  “What is?”

  “My apartment. Except for the guns. And those are for us.”

  For the first time Thomas smiled. “That’s what Sami said.”

  THEY ROLLED PAST Turner Field and the golden dome of the Georgia capitol, until Thomas turned right onto Fourteenth Street, into the center of a neighborhood called Midtown, a jumble of tall office towers and low-rise apartment buildings. Thomas found a garage and circled up the ramps, nodding to himself as the floors emptied. Finally he parked on the top floor, in the middle of a sea of empty asphalt.

  “Out.”

  “Thomas,” Wells said. “Are we friends?” He was speaking Arabic now, enjoying the smooth feel of the words. Aside from prayers, he hadn’t spoken the language since Pakistan.

  “I think so,” Thomas said, also in Arabic. “We’re making sure.”

  “Then will you tell me your real name?”

  “Qais.”

  “Qais. Don’t you think I know there’s a gun under the seat? Don’t you think I could take it if I wanted?” Wells smiled tightly at Qais. I’m a professional too, he didn’t say. Give me a little respect.

  Qais showed no surprise. “You could try.”

  Wells couldn’t help liking the guy’s style. Neither of them said anything else. Wells slid out, and sure enough, Qais locked the doors and reached under the driver’s seat, pulling out a little .22. He tucked the gun under his shirt and got out.

  “Put your hands on the hood and spread your legs,” he said to Wells, back in English now. He frisked Wells efficiently. “Good.”

  “Were you a cop in a past life?”

  “Something like that. Let’s go. Somebody’s waiting. You’ll be glad to see him.”

  THE SUN HAD slipped behind the office towers to their west by the time they left the garage. Qais mo
ved easily now, comfortable that they weren’t being tailed. In a few minutes they reached Piedmont Park, a one-hundred-acre expanse of grass and trees around an artificial lake. On the hilly lawn at the park’s edge, shirtless college students tossed a Frisbee around in the twilight. Joggers in sports bras made their way along a path at the bottom of the hill. Beyond them a man sat alone on a bench, quietly reading The New York Times.

  Khadri.

  He stood as Wells and Qais walked toward him, folding the paper under his arm. He was one hundred yards away now, fifty, twenty-five, ten. And then he was close enough to touch. Kill him now, Wells told himself. Drop him and break his neck. Or take the gun from Qais and shoot them both.

  Instead Wells merely smiled and held out his hand, as Khadri had at their initial meeting. Wells thought he could probably take Qais, but he couldn’t be certain of getting them both. Khadri might have a gun too. Again he remembered those hunts growing up. He would have only one shot at Khadri. He had to be sure.

  To Wells’s surprise Khadri ignored his outstretched hand and hugged him instead, gripping him close, running his hands down Wells’s back in a quick frisk.

  He let go of Wells and stepped back. “Jalal.” No one had called Wells that name since Peshawar. “Salaam alaikum.”

  “Alaikum salaam.”

  “You look different.”

  “I, ah—I grew out my hair. To blend in, you know.”

  Khadri looked at Wells’s shirt. “Did you go to the jazz festival?”

  His perfect English accent grated on Wells’s ears. “For a couple of hours. They have it in this park, over there.” He pointed west.

  “You like jazz?”

  Wells shrugged. “Sure. It was fun. It was something to do.”

  “While you waited?”

  “While I waited.”

  “And Qais? No problems at the airport?”

  Qais merely shook his head. He had retreated a couple of steps, but his hand was on his hip, casually, a few inches from his pistol.

  “Shall we stroll, Jalal? Such a nice evening.”

  They walked slowly along the jogging path, Qais a few steps behind, out of earshot.

  “It’s pretty, this place,” Khadri said. “I read it was designed by the sons of the man who built Central Park in New York. But Central Park is much bigger.”

  Wells wished he knew if Khadri was probing for something or just thinking out loud.

  “You passed through New York on your way here, Jalal.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think?”

  “New York? I thought it was one big target,” Wells said truthfully. He wanted to grab Khadri’s neck and squeeze until the man’s face turned gray and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  “Didn’t you think it was exciting? Times Square?”

  “Sure. It was exciting.”

  “But not your kind of place.”

  “I grew up in Montana, Omar. I had mountains to myself.”

  “How about this?”

  “It’s pretty, like you said.” Khadri was just talking, Wells realized. Chatting about America. Even he must need a break sometimes.

  “It’s strange that some places are so—pretty—and others so awful, isn’t it, Jalal? Your people, they live so easily.”

  “Too easily,” Wells said. “They ought to notice the world’s misery. So much ignorance is evil. And they’re not my people.”

  “You always say the right thing, Jalal. Just right. You always sound like one of us.”

  This was the moment, Wells knew. If he couldn’t convince Khadri now he never would. “Because I am. I don’t know what else to say. Whatever you ask, I’ll do.”

  Khadri stopped walking and turned toward Wells. “I want to trust you, Jalal. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come here. Do you believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can be incredibly valuable to me, to us. We have big jobs ahead. And I have so few good men—” Khadri broke off. He had problems he didn’t want to reveal, Wells thought.

  “In any case,” Khadri went on. “You are unique. You fit in here”—Khadri waved his hand at the city around them—“in a way that I never will, Qais never will. It is a great gift.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve never given us reason to doubt you. In Chechnya, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan.”

  “I’ve always tried to do what’s necessary.”

  “And yet. I don’t understand you, Jalal. I have talked about you with the sheikh himself. And after we sent you here, I asked the men who knew you on the frontier about you. For all those years you studied and prayed and trained. You were never impatient—”

  “I was impatient,” Wells said.

  “If you were you never let anyone see it. You never complained. You never took a drink or a smoke or had a woman. The perfect soldier. But I see that discipline and it frightens me. I wonder, how do I know whether you are fighting for us—or them?”

  Wells gripped Khadri’s arm, pulling the smaller man toward him. Qais strode toward them, but Khadri waved him off.

  “Omar. I’m not the perfect soldier. The men who died in Los Angeles, who sacrifice themselves in Iraq every day. The martyrs. They are. All I’ve done is wait. I only want the chance to serve. And if I must I’ll wait forever—”

  Wells stopped. He had made his point. No need to go further. He let Khadri go, but Khadri did not step away. Instead he leaned toward Wells, looking up into Wells’s face. Finally he nodded. “You want the chance to serve? Then you will have it.”

  Wells bowed his head. The drawbridge had dropped. He was in. All the years, all the waiting, they’d finally paid off. Was this how it felt to rise from the dead? “Thank you, Omar.”

  Khadri tapped his chest. “I must go. Qais will explain the mission. He speaks for me.”

  “Thank you,” Wells said again. “Allahu akbar.” God is great.

  “Allahu akbar.”

  Khadri walked away, up the hill. He crossed out of the park and disappeared.

  “He looks like he knows exactly where he’s going,” Wells said quietly to Qais.

  “He always does.”

  AT THE GARAGE Sami waited in Wells’s pickup.

  “Salaam alaikum,” Sami said.

  “Alaikum salaam.”

  “So you’re with us.”

  “Inshallah.”

  Sami smiled and tossed Wells back his keys.

  WELLS DROVE THE Ranger, Qais in the passenger seat. Sami followed in the Lumina.

  “Where’s your hotel?”

  “No hotel. We’re staying at your apartment.”

  “The neighbors will wonder.”

  “We aren’t staying long.”

  Wells waited for something more, but Qais didn’t explain further.

  “Who trained you, Qais?”

  “The Saudi Mukhabarat. And I spent six months at Quantico with your FBI.”

  “No wonder.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So…” Wells said in Arabic. “You and Sami didn’t come to Atlanta just to see me, did you?”

  Qais laughed. “No. Nor just to waste gasoline.”

  “Then would you like to tell me the mission? Or should I guess?”

  “You won’t guess.” Qais was much more relaxed now that Khadri had given Wells his okay.

  “The CDC? Centers for Disease Control?”

  “No.”

  “CNN Center? The Coke building?”

  “No. Anyway, Omar likes Coca-Cola. It’s all he drinks.”

  “Me too,” Wells said. “The Georgia Dome? Turner Field?”

  “I don’t even know what those places are,” Qais said. “Look, it’s only you and me and Sami. And this isn’t a martyrdom mission. Omar needs us alive.”

  “Then…it must be something simple. An assassination.”

  “Very good. Who?”

  Wells had no idea. The mayor of Atlanta? A CDC scientist? One of the senators from Georgia? Nobodies. And anybody really import
ant would have a ton of security.

  “You’re right, Qais. I can’t guess.”

  “You’ve heard of Howard West? The general?”

  Howard West had run the army’s black ops and counterterrorism units during the 1990s. Wells had met him once, at a memorial service for a Delta officer who’d died. West had spoken briefly, then disappeared into a helicopter to do whatever it was that three-stars did.

  He had retired a few months after that—Wells couldn’t remember exactly when. Now he worked as a “consultant.” That meant he collected six-figure checks from companies that peddled spy gear. In return, he connected them with his old friends at the Pentagon. He kept a low profile. Wells hadn’t even known he lived in Atlanta.

  Attacking him was a brilliant way for Qaeda to declare its equality with the United States. You hunt our leaders? We’ll hunt yours. And since he was retired, West would have much less security than an active general. But killing West wasn’t the big job that Khadri had planned, Wells thought. “Omar needs us alive,” Qais had said. The assassination was a diversion. The drawbridge was only halfway down. Khadri was offering Wells a bargain: Kill West, or die trying, and I’ll trust you. Kill West and you’re in. If not, you’ll never see me again.

  An ache creased Wells’s back. He felt like a puppet whose strings had been pulled too hard. Khadri had outsmarted him again. But maybe he could find a way out.

  “We can get to West,” Wells said to Qais. “It’ll take some planning, though. When does Omar want it done?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Tonight.” As he said the word Wells felt the trap snap shut.

  12

  WELLS OPENED HIS apartment door to find that Sami had laid out his arsenal on the kitchen table, the guns and knives an invitation awaiting an answer. Aside from that, the place looked undisturbed, which didn’t surprise Wells. Like Qais, Sami was a professional, a former Jordanian cop.