It would take too long to explain, and I wasn’t sure how much time I had. Two things seemed urgent right now: the first was getting somewhere safe, somewhere where Nadeem’s associates in the “network,” as he’d called it, could not find me. The second was getting his phone and wallet to someone who could figure out what plot he had been involved with, and how to stop it.
This left me only one alternative. I told the driver to take me to the CIA. I would find Edmund Tusk and tell him what had happened. He would know what to do.
The driver crossed the Potomac and turned onto the same pretty, winding parkway I had taken yesterday to meet Tusk. If I remembered correctly, it would take about fifteen minutes to get there. I pressed my shoulder blades back against the vinyl seat and tried to steady myself. I was safe now. Everything would be all right.
Gingerly, as if it might bite, I slipped Nadeem Siddiqui’s cell phone out of my bag. This was the second phone of his that I had somehow acquired. What secrets might this one hold? He would have e-mails on here, archived text messages, a contacts list at the very least. I turned it on. Password protected.
NADEEM, I typed. Incorrect password, it flashed.
I tried again.
MALIK.
Incorrect.
I chewed on my fingernail. Of course it wouldn’t be his name. What would it be?
NUCLEAR, I typed.
Incorrect.
And now it informed me I had two more tries before the phone was disabled.
It could be anything: the name of his dog, the name of his street, the name of his favorite color . . . Or maybe . . .
BANANAS.
The screen flickered and then a generic picture of a sunset appeared. I clicked on his e-mail in-box. Empty. His address book was too. So much for tracking down his associates. I checked for text messages. Nothing. Then, remembering the phone I’d found in the backpack at Fenner’s gym, I opened the call log.
Here there were two phone numbers. Both looked strangely familiar. I stared at them until it hit me. The first one was Elias’s home number. Nadeem Siddiqui had called there last night, before we got home. I felt queasy. Had he been outside all night, waiting? I rolled down my window and took great gulps of air. It smelled of gasoline and hot tailpipes and swamp. The river was close. On the side of the road a green sign loomed: GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE—CIA—NEXT EXIT. Faintly ridiculous, surely, for a secret spy agency to pinpoint its location with a huge road sign.
I rolled the window back up and forced myself to look again at the call log. The second number was an incoming call, received last night, just twelve minutes before Nadeem had called Elias’s flat.
The area code was 703. Virginia. I pulled out my reporter’s notebook and copied it down. For one wild moment I was tempted just to call it. Who would answer? What would I say? No. I might blow a lead that way. Whoever answered would be expecting to hear the voice of Nadeem Siddiqui, or Shaukat Malik, or whoever he was, the man now dead on the floor of Elias’s kitchen.
We turned right into the front gate of Langley. Steel barriers and barbed wire rose up. I knew the drill from yesterday. Ahead lay a visitors’ checkpoint where I would need to present identification and let them check my name against a list. It occurred to me that I should have called Tusk to alert him I was coming.
I flicked through my notebook to find the page where I had stapled the scrap of paper he’d handed me as I left. The scrap where he’d scribbled his private phone number. My blood froze. I looked at the paper. I looked at Nadeem’s phone in my hand. I looked back and forth between the two, my mind churning.
“Can I help you?” asked a disembodied voice. We had pulled up to a speaker where the guards ask routine security questions before waving cars ahead to the main checkpoint.
I sat still, staring at the phone numbers. They matched. What was this? Was Edmund Tusk already onto Nadeem? Was the CIA way ahead of me? Had they already cracked the plot before I ever got involved? Or had I gotten everything wrong? Was Nadeem somehow a good guy after all? Had I just shot a CIA agent?
“Can I help you?” the disembodied voice asked again.
“Lady.” The taxi driver had turned around in his seat. “They need your name. You got an appointment, right?”
“I—I—my mistake. Wrong day. I have my dates mixed up. Sorry,” I said to the speaker.
I asked the driver to turn around. He sighed and put the car in reverse. “Back to Georgetown? It’ll still be full fare, you know.”
“Sure. Okay.” I couldn’t go back to Georgetown. I didn’t know where to go. I tried to think. Back on the parkway there was no traffic. Trees whizzed past. Hyde. I should call Hyde. I dug for my own phone in my now crowded handbag. It wasn’t there—had I left it on the bed?
Then the phone on my lap vibrated. Nadeem’s phone.
The screen glowed with an incoming message:
Is it done?
The message came from Tusk’s private number.
In the backseat, I made a strangled sound. There must be some explanation—some other meaning—some subtlety I had not grasped. But I could think of only one thing that Nadeem Siddiqui had been supposed to do this morning. He had been supposed to kill me. And there was no benign reason for Edmund Tusk to know that. Is it done? . . . The enormity of evil implicit in that three-word message overwhelmed me.
Then, thankfully, it was as if a part of my brain—the part that held emotion—shut down. A cold impulse for self-preservation took over. I was going to nail these bastards.
Done. All secure now, I typed back.
I waited.
Good. Heading to target now. Inshallah.
I leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Not back to Georgetown, actually. To the White House, quickly please.”
He rolled his eyes and changed lanes. No doubt he suspected I would flake out when we got there, too. But it was all I could think of. The idea of going somewhere “safe” had evaporated; if the clandestine service of the Central Intelligence Agency wanted me dead, I would be in danger even inside the walls of the White House. But I trusted Lowell Carlyle. He had called to warn me. As a father, he had said . . . . For an awful split second I considered the possibility that he was also duplicitous. That he had urged me to run, to unlock the door, knowing a murderer was waiting outside . . . No. It didn’t feel right. Trust your gut, Hyde says. My gut said to trust Mr. Carlyle.
On my lap the phone vibrated again.
Malik: Why are you moving?
My throat closed and it was several seconds before I could breathe. I stared at the phone. The goddamn phone. Tusk was tracking me by GPS. I had to get rid of it. But as I rolled down the window to throw it from the car, a thought occurred to me. This phone held evidence of Tusk’s treachery. Without it I had no proof. It would be his word against mine.
I rolled the window back up. If they could track where the phone was, could they also listen to calls on it? I had no idea how these things worked. I decided not to take a chance.
I leaned forward again.
“I need to borrow your phone.”
“You got your own phone. I seen you typing on it.”
“I can’t use that one. Please. Just one call.”
The driver studied me in his rearview mirror. I was sure he saw my swollen eye. He looked as though he was weighing whether I was completely out of my mind. Then he shook his head. “Come on, lady. How I know who you gonna call? I can’t be lending my phone out to everybody—”
I pulled $100 out of Nadeem’s wallet and shoved it over the seat.
“Please,” I begged.
Now he looked sure I was out of my mind. But he pocketed the money and handed over his phone.
I looked up the number in my notebook and dialed.
Lowell Carlyle’s secretary answered. She did not sound thrilled to hear from me. “He won’t be available at all today. May I take down a message?”
“No. This is an emergency. I am on my way to him right now—”
/>
“That won’t be possible. I can take down a—”
“Tell him my name and that I need to see him. I’ll be there in ten minutes—”
“Miss James, you’re not listening. He’s in a meeting with—”
“RIGHT NOW,” I roared. “Find him. Tell him I have Nadeem Siddiqui’s phone. Tell him he was right. They came after me. Tell him I am on my way.”
I hung up. I tried to catch the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror. He avoided looking at me. “Just one more call,” I said, and punched in Hyde’s cell number. Maybe he could meet me there.
The taxi was crawling along Constitution Avenue. We passed the State Department. Twenty-first Street. Just a few blocks to go, but traffic was bumper-to-bumper. Hyde’s phone rang and rang. Was it my imagination, or was the black SUV several cars behind us weaving strangely?
“I need you to go faster, please. Right now.”
“Yeah, I’d like that too,” the driver replied. “But welcome to DC traffic. Nothing you can do.” He fiddled with the radio.
I looked back. The SUV had disappeared. Something wasn’t right.
“Could you lock the car doors?” The gash on my forehead prickled. A matted stickiness in my hair suggested that it had begun to bleed again.
I craned around, trying to spot the SUV. Then—oh, Jesus. It was mounting the curb. Two tires were fully up on the sidewalk, the other two in the bike lane, and it was surging ahead of the lines of the idling cars.
“GO!” I yelled. “You need to go! That car is coming after us!”
To my utter disbelief, the driver did the opposite. He stuck out his lip and slammed the gear into Park. “You better get out, lady. You got yourself some serious problems.”
I was near to panic. My heart crashed against my rib cage. The SUV was close now. Could I somehow climb over the seat, elbow the driver over, and step on the gas myself?
Then I remembered. I fished in my bag one more time and drew out the gun. I pointed it squarely at his head. When I spoke my voice was steady.
“Put on your hazard lights. Pull across the yellow line, drive down the wrong side of the road if you have to, and get me to the White House. Now. NOW!”
He didn’t argue. The taxi shot into oncoming traffic. Horns blared. I heard a siren start up. I couldn’t see the black SUV. I held the gun in one hand, the car-door handle in the other, and I prayed.
The taxi careened up Seventeenth Street, honking wildly and scattering pedestrians. At the corner of Seventeenth and Pennsylvania he screeched to a stop. Concrete blast barriers prevented us from actually driving right up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The three blocks in front of the White House were always shut to traffic, to try to stop car bombers and sharpshooters and nuts like me from getting close. I would have to run.
I dropped the rest of Nadeem’s money on the backseat.
“I’m sorry,” I shouted. “I’m so sorry!”
And then I was sprinting, my dress hiked up around my thighs, my lungs burning. I could hear noises behind me—more cars slamming on their brakes—footsteps pounding—were they behind me?
I didn’t look back. Would Mr. Carlyle’s secretary have warned the guards at the gate?
“Move! Move!” I pushed at a tourist who stepped in front of me.
I was close. I could see a flag rippling on the green lawn behind the fence. Then the gate, and two Secret Service agents standing in front of it, wearing white uniforms and armed with enormous assault rifles.
“Help! Help me!” I screamed.
“Name?” called the closer one.
“Alex James!”
The guards parted and pushed me roughly behind them. The gate clanged shut. I sank to my knees, gasping for air, amazed that I was still alive.
48
What can you buy for $25 million?
The answer is, not as much as you might think.
Edmund Tusk had spent much of the past two years pondering this precise question, and he had concluded that for a man of his age, $25 million represented a tidy sum but not a vast fortune.
On the plus side, he would not be paying taxes.
On the negative side, he had to factor in the cost of constantly moving, of plastic surgeries and disguises and new identities, of covering his tracks. When you actually ran the numbers, it was clear he would not be living out his retirement on a giant yacht, or amassing a private collection of Ferraris. But that was fine. Better to keep a low profile. And there would be enough. Enough in the bank to pay for good hotels and business-class flights and cases of Barolo, not Budweiser. And, hell—anything beat retiring to a condo in McLean.
On a purely symbolic level, he had been pleased to negotiate a salary that put him on par with Osama bin Laden. Twenty-five million dollars. That was the bounty the FBI had offered for bin Laden all those years. And that was apparently what Tusk’s services were worth as well. Tusk found it fascinating that two such different skill sets commanded the same amount in the global market. Bin Laden, of course, had sought fame. He had wanted to change history, to have his face—his voice—recognized around the world. Such pursuits did not interest Edmund Tusk. His ideology, in the end, boiled down to this: if an event was inevitable, he might as well walk away from it well compensated.
And this is exactly how he had come to view the situation he had now put in motion. When the men had first invited him to meet in Abu Dhabi, he had declined. Sure, he was cynical and disillusioned. But he was no terrorist.
For months, though, they had continued to work on him. To flatter him. The network was compact, and two made the pitch: the money guy (as Tusk thought of him), a Saudi banker claiming to represent a number of wealthy donors; and the religion guy, a pious Pakistani physicist who was both feared and revered by his country’s military and intelligence chiefs. Together they had the funding. They had the bomb. They had a man, whom they called Malik, who had the technical expertise to arrange transfer of the weapon to Washington. All they needed was someone with the right access, at the right levels, inside the US government apparatus. They were willing to pay.
When they came to him, Tusk was serving as CIA station chief in Islamabad, watching the country collapse from the inside. Pakistan’s politicians were rotten, its business leaders corrupt, its middle class decaying, even the military now scared of its own shadow. It didn’t take a wild imagination to put two and two together. Rising extremism plus rising instability equaled the possibility—no, the probability—that the nuclear arsenal would one day fall into the wrong hands.
Most frustrating was that there were no good guys in this game. US policy toward Pakistan was whacked. Tusk’s job as CIA station chief could be described as an elaborate dance: lying to the Pakistanis, letting them lie to him, then returning to the embassy to lie to his own staff. Every so often, in the case of a coup (Pakistan) or an election (Washington), he changed partners. And then the dance carried on. Tusk was not naive. He had run the Agency stations in Kabul and Amman; he knew how this part of the world worked. But in Pakistan he simply could not see the point. An Army general he’d once worked with was fond of asking, Tell me how this ends?
Surprisingly, the money guy and the religion guy had supplied the answer. When they approached him a third time about a meeting in Abu Dhabi, Tusk accepted. Their pitch was blunt: It’s going to happen. We are going to steal a bomb from Pakistan’s arsenal and detonate it inside the United States. Why not help us? Why not get rich and retire to South America, when it’s going to happen anyway?
Slowly he had been drawn in. He was canny enough to ask for the money in installments. A third up front, right after they agreed the terms in Abu Dhabi. A third just this week, when he had been able to confirm the bomb had arrived on US soil. And the final $8.33 million would be wired to a Swiss account today, as soon as detonation was confirmed.
Today. It had been a long time coming. He had encountered and dispensed with numerous bumps and setbacks along the way. People always surprised you. Some proved quite eas
y to manage. Jake Pearson in London, for example: a capable lackey, and so helpfully disinclined to ask questions. Pearson’s little undercover mission to Claridge’s had been rather useful.
Shaukat Malik, on the other hand, had proved an unexpected challenge. Such a quiet, queer man. Fastidious in some ways, but then so careless in others: always losing his phone, and worse, blabbing within earshot of Thomas Carlyle. Malik’s unilateral decision to take out Carlyle had proved the riskiest in the entire trajectory of the project. Tusk’s mouth twisted in fury just thinking about it. So unnecessary. It had brought publicity. It had brought the girl. The reporter. Almost despite herself, Alexandra James had seemed to stumble along in the right direction, asking inconvenient questions so insistently that he had been left with no choice but to eliminate her as well.
He was still not sure what had happened this morning. He had given Malik a gun, for Christ’s sake; surely the man was not so inept as to screw up yet again. The texted confirmation seemed in order. But why had Malik not responded to his last message? Why had his phone GPS shown him moving toward downtown Washington? Those were not his instructions. Tusk didn’t understand and this worried him.
Now he had been waiting an annoyingly long time to be cleared inside the building. It was hot, even with the car air-conditioning at full tilt. Sweat dampened his shirt under the armpits. He needed to piss. Soon he would have been in the car a full hour. Tusk adjusted his protruding gut to a more comfortable position against the steering wheel. He brushed a cat hair off his pants.
At last it was his turn. He rolled down his window.
“Hi, Bill.”
“Hi, Ed. Sorry about the wait. Crazy day, huh?”
“You’re telling me. I gotta get up to this meeting, though. Any chance of speeding things up?”
The security guard nodded. “Just be a sec.” Almost apologetically, he passed the long-handled mirror along the underside of Tusk’s car. Both sides, and around the tires. Routine bomb check.
“You’re all set. Have a good one.”
“Thanks, you too, Bill.”
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