The Faithful Spy jw-1

by Alex Berenson

  “Shall we say the maghreb?” Wells asked, using the Arabic word for the evening prayer.

  “What about your neighbors?” Qais said. Through the walls they heard a television blaring in the next apartment, the jokes and canned laugher running together monotonously.

  “Wendell’s almost eighty,” Wells said. “And almost deaf. As long as we’re quiet.”

  He laid out a rug, and the three men said their evening prayers. Then they ate. On the way home Wells had stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought premade sandwiches and quart-sized tankards of coffee. He was ravenous, and he figured Qais and Sami must be too. But he felt no pleasure as he chewed his stale turkey hero, just the knowledge that the clock was winding down. He swallowed his last bite and looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. He had four hours, six at the most. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see a way clear. He couldn’t kill West. Yet Khadri would never trust him if West lived.

  With a week of notice, even a day, he could have warned Exley. Then the agency and the FBI could have set their own trap. They could have snatched up Qais and Sami and let Wells go. They could even have announced that Qais and Sami had been killed in the house, and that West had been shot and wounded. Khadri would have to accept that; he had no way to check.

  But Wells couldn’t get a warning to West now. Qais and Sami weren’t going to leave him alone tonight. They knew that the real point of the mission was to test Wells’s loyalty. Of course, he could just kill Qais and Sami now. But then he would lose whatever information they had, and the trail to Khadri would end. Turning them in would be better, but that was no sure bet either. They wouldn’t exactly sit back and smile if he picked up the phone and called 911.

  Wells wondered whether he should just let West die, pull the trigger himself if Qais asked. This was a war, and West had been a soldier once. Not just a soldier. A general. He was close to seventy. He had lived a full life. He might even understand.

  Wells shook that thought from his mind. He had to make sure West lived tonight. For his own sake as much as the general’s. There were some lines he could not cross. He couldn’t murder the people he had been charged with protecting. He couldn’t play God and sacrifice one of his countrymen in the hopes of saving others. No. He had to save West without blowing the cover he had worked so hard to build.

  YET HE COULDN’T see a way out, no matter how hard he tried. Call 911? Can’t. Shoot Qais? Can’t. Kill West? Can’t. Warn West? Can’t. Call Exley? Can’t. Call 911? Can’t…

  He pulled his attention back to the kitchen as Sami spread a street map of Buckhead over the table. Technically, the area was part of Atlanta, the northwestern corner of the city. In reality Buckhead was a lush suburb where the city’s corporate gentry lived in oversized houses set back from winding tree-lined streets. Wells had done lots of landscaping work there.

  “He’s here.” Sami pointed to a red sticker, a few hundred feet from the intersection of Northside Drive and Mount Vernon Road.

  Qais slid a manila folder from his laptop case. “The property records say he bought it for two point one million dollars in 2001,” Qais said. “Three floors, with a guest cottage on the side.”

  “Two point one million? The army pays better than I remembered. Do we have pictures of him?”

  Qais pulled out pictures of West taken from the Internet. Wells recognized the general, a tall, bald man with thick, rubbery lips and a mass of wrinkles for a forehead. “How do we know he’ll be there tonight? He must be on the road a lot.”

  Qais looked at another paper. “He’ll be there. The Georgia Defense Contractors Association is giving him its lifetime achievement award at a dinner tonight. A town called Roswell.”

  “That’s north of here.”

  “And tomorrow afternoon he’s speaking at the City Club downtown. He’ll be home.”

  Wells couldn’t disagree. “What about bodyguards?”

  “Only one,” Sami said.

  “You sure?”

  “I’ve been watching him. When he’s out he rides in a Jimsy”—Arab slang for a GMC Suburban. “The driver doubles as his bodyguard and sleeps at the house.”

  “More likely in the cottage,” Qais said.

  THE GLIMMER OF a plan took shape in Wells’s mind. Maybe he could split Qais and Sami up, after all.

  “Yeah,” Wells said. “Probably in the cottage.” He turned back to Sami. “You’re sure West doesn’t have more protection?”

  “I’ve only seen one guard ever.”

  Khadri really did want them all to survive, Wells thought. He was surprised that West had so little security, but the guy had been retired for a while, and anonymity was his best defense.

  “The house has a fence and a gate,” Sami said. “I took pictures last week.” He spread them across the table. The fence had a brick base topped with low ornamental spikes. Behind it, up a hill, a big Georgian house sat back about one hundred feet. A driveway separated the house from the guest cottage. Sami pointed to the fence.

  “But only about six feet high, and no barbed wire.”

  “Not in Buckhead,” Wells said. “The neighbors wouldn’t approve. How big’s the property?”

  “A hundred and twenty meters long, sixty meters wide.” Four hundred feet by two hundred feet, Wells mentally translated. About two acres.

  “Big enough to give us a little privacy,” Wells said. “What about dogs?”

  “I think one. I’ve heard it a couple of times.”

  Wells shook his head. Dogs were a real problem, the biggest one yet. Dogs meant noise. “He married? Any family?”

  “He’s divorced,” Qais said. “About a year after he retired. His wife lives in Houston.”

  “Only one wife?” Wells joked.

  Qais smiled. “Only one.”

  Good. Fewer chances for mistakes. “And Khadri wants this tonight? It has to be tonight?”

  Qais nodded. “He said you would understand.”

  Wells could only nod. “I do.”

  He pointed at the map. “I know this part of town from my landscaping work. The place looks more private than it is. Mount Vernon, that’s a big road, a lot of traffic — we can cut across a couple of lawns and leave that way if we have to. Get back here in time to get a good night’s sleep and get Qais back to Detroit.”

  FOR TWO HOURS, they talked through the mission. Wells would have liked more time to plan and a lot more information. Floor plans of West’s house, including the room where he slept. The number of police cars and private security patrols that covered the neighborhood, and their usual routes. Whether West had a gun, and if so where he kept it. Instead they didn’t even know whether the house had an alarm, or whether it was keyed to the fence.

  They would need to move fast, making up with speed what they lacked in intel and firepower. They had to get out before the police arrived to pin them down. Wells figured they had five minutes at most from the moment they got to the house, even if the place didn’t have an alarm. They should plan on being done in three. Escape was basically impossible once the opposition arrived in force. Especially in unfriendly territory, which Buckhead was.

  “If we hear a siren, we go,” Wells said. “Immediately.”

  Slowly, he guided Qais and Sami to his plan, letting them work out the details so they wouldn’t realize how much of the idea was his.

  “Enough,” Qais said finally. “I feel like I’m back at your FBI. You know everything will turn to shit anyway once we get inside. These things always do.”

  “Sure,” Wells said. “But we have to pretend it won’t.” Despite himself, Wells liked these guys. And when they woke up tomorrow on a flight to Guantánamo, they would have only themselves to blame.

  SAMI HAD BROUGHT clothes for himself and Qais, black pullovers and black pants like the ones that Wells had bought at the army surplus store.

  “We look like a mime troupe,” Wells joked when they had dressed.

  “Mime troupe?” Sami said.

  “The guys who wear a
ll black and — forget it.”

  Sami had brought his own guns too, 45s with silencers as well as an H&K machine pistol, a short-barrel automatic rifle with a thirty-two-shot clip. The H&K was inaccurate and showy but a nasty weapon nonetheless. Jihadis couldn’t resist machine pistols, Wells remembered; they had seen too many action movies. The.45s were the real prize; they fired subsonic rounds, and with the silencers screwed on they were as quiet as a gun could be.

  Wells didn’t ask where Sami had gotten the guns. They looked brand-new, and for a moment he wondered whether the agency might be behind this, testing his loyalty with this crazy plot. Maybe Vinny Duto would be waiting for him at the house instead of West.

  But Khadri had sent Qais and Sami to him, and if Khadri was an agency mole the United States would have captured bin Laden and destroyed Qaeda a long time ago. No. The guns were real and they were loaded and West was alone in that house. He would die tonight unless Wells could save him.

  * * *

  THEY WOULD TAKE both the Ranger and the Lumina, which Qais promised couldn’t be traced if they had to ditch it. Sami had wiped it down to erase fingerprints. They would leave the pistols and ski masks in the Lumina’s trunk in case they were stopped, though Wells figured the cops might find an excuse to search the car in any event. Three men, two Arab, cruising around Buckhead after midnight, dressed like a SWAT team…. No, they had better drive carefully.

  “Do me a favor,” Wells said to Sami. “No speeding.”

  “Nam.”

  They prayed once more, asking Allah for his blessing, for the chance to bring the wrath of Islam upon the infidel general. Wells hoped that Allah paid no more attention than He had to the prayers that Wells had offered beside his parents’ grave.

  Just before one A.M. they rolled out, Wells and Qais in the pickup, Sami following behind in the Lumina. Despite the danger — or because of it — Wells’s hands were steady on the steering wheel, his breathing slow and easy. How he had gotten to this place no longer mattered. He no longer mattered. Only the mission counted.

  THEY MADE THEIR way west on 285, the wide highway mostly empty aside from the eighteen-wheelers burning through the night. Then southwest on Mount Vernon and southeast on Powers Ferry and southwest again on Mount Paran. The traffic got lighter with each turn they made, until finally they were alone. They made one slow winding loop around the block that surrounded the general’s house, looking for security patrols or houses with too many lights on, listening for dogs barking or husbands yelling. But the good citizens of Buckhead were all asleep, or pretending to be.

  Wells looked at his watch. One thirty-three. They wouldn’t have a better chance.

  “Now,” he said to Qais.

  “Now.”

  Wells held his left hand out the window, the sign that they were on, and parked his pickup in front of a half-built brick mansion around the corner from West’s house. Sami popped the Lumina’s trunk. They reached for the guns and the masks. Wells took his Glock and a silenced.45 for Sami; Qais grabbed the other.45 and the H&K. They slid into the Chevy. Sami rolled around the corner and stopped in front of West’s house.

  SAMI PUT THE car in park but left the engine running. They pulled on their masks and gloves. Wells tucked the Glock into a holster on his hip. Sami slung the H&K across his chest like the villain in a Steven Seagal movie. “Five minutes maximum,” Wells said. “And if we hear sirens we’re out.”

  “We know,” Qais said.

  “Nam.”

  Wells looked again at his watch: 1:34:58…1:34:59…1:35:00.

  “Allahu akbar,” Wells said. “Go.”

  They were out of the car. They closed the doors silently and ran for the fence.

  Wells was the first to reach it. He pulled himself up and over in one fluid motion, then jumped down, landing easily. If the fence had an alarm, it was silent, a lucky break. The neighbors would sleep a few seconds longer. Qais followed quickly, but Sami was temporarily stopped when his H&K got tangled in the crown of the fence, something that never happened in the movies.

  The lawn was as lush and green and perfectly cut as a football field before the season’s first kickoff. Wells looked around for a dog, but the grass was empty. Then he heard the barking. The noise grew louder as Wells ran up the hill toward the big white house.

  He reached the front porch and looked at his watch: 1:35:20. He would give himself fifteen seconds to pick the lock on the front door. If he couldn’t, they would have to break a window. But when he grabbed the doorknob it turned smoothly. The door was unlocked. Weird, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. The dog was yammering loudly now, one bark rushing into the next. He sounded like he was at the door. And he sounded like he was big. They would have to take care of him quickly.

  Behind him Qais reached the porch just as Sami finally got over the fence, a delay that was fine by Wells. Sami ran up the hill, angling away from the house and toward the cottage, as they had planned.

  “The dog,” Wells said. Qais nodded and raised the.45. Wells turned the knob and kicked open the door.

  The dog came flying out, a big beefy Rottweiler, leaping for Qais with his jaws wide open. Qais’s first shot caught the dog in the chest and knocked him down. He whimpered and yet kept coming, protecting his turf. Qais shot him again between the eyes, the big round smashing the Rottweiler’s skull, splattering fur and brains and blood across the porch. He collapsed and was still. Qais’s eyes glittered behind his black mask.

  THEY STEPPED OVER the dog’s carcass and into the house. Wells closed the door and they both took a moment to let their eyes adjust. Qais turned toward Wells—

  — and Wells was swinging the Glock toward him, holding the heavy pistol by its barrel. Qais tried to get a hand up to deflect the blow, but the Glock came too fast. The butt of the gun crashed into his temple just behind the eye, the softest spot on the skull.

  “La,” Qais said. No. His face went slack. He wavered but didn’t go down.

  So Wells hit him again. The same spot. This time Wells could feel the pistol dislodging bone. Qais grunted, a sound not unlike the one the Rottweiler had made, and tottered over, unconscious before he hit the ground.

  WELLS’S PLAN WAS simple. Split the jihadis up. Take out Qais, leaving him alive for interrogation if possible. Take out Sami before he got to West’s bodyguard. Disarm the guard before he started shooting, and then find West and explain what was happening. Call Exley and tell her everything. Have the agency put out a cover story to convince Khadri that Qais and Sami had died in the raid. Maybe even fake West’s death too. Do it all before the Atlanta cops showed up and blew his head off.

  Well, “simple” might be the wrong word for the plan. But it was the best he could do under the circumstances, and so far it was working. “FBI!” he shouted up the stairs, hoping West wouldn’t freak out and come down the stairs shooting. Or worse, drop dead of a heart attack.

  “FBI! General, please stay calm—”

  But there was no answer.

  “General—”

  The house was silent. Maybe West was hiding in his bedroom, calling 911…though that wasn’t how Wells expected a three-star to act, even one old enough to collect Social Security. Doesn’t matter now, Wells told himself. I have to move. He turned and ran toward the guest house.

  AS HE CROSSED the lawn he heard the rattle of Sami’s H&K from the cottage, a half dozen shots, a break, and a half dozen more, echoing through the humid Georgia night.

  He arrived at the cottage a few seconds later to find Sami grinning at him, the H&K held loosely in his hands. Wells could see lights flicker on in the neighboring houses. So much for the plan.

  “Sami—”

  “You’re never gonna believe it, man,” Sami said in Arabic. “Where’s Qais?”

  “In the house, looking for West.”

  Sami turned toward the house. “Take a look,” he said to Wells.

  Wells walked into the cottage.

  Sami was right. Wells couldn’t be
lieve it. Even in his wildest imagination he wouldn’t have expected this. But there they were. No wonder the front door had been unlocked. No wonder the house had been silent. And no wonder West’s wife had divorced him when he retired.

  A dozen rounds from H&K had done a lot of damage to West and the bodyguard, but not enough to obscure what had been happening in the cottage before Sami arrived. The bodyguard lay naked across the bed. A lubed-up condom hung on the end of his flaccid penis. West wore a studded black leather dog collar and what looked like a leather corset. One of his arms was handcuffed to the bed; the other hung limp at his side. Evidently the bodyguard had been trying to unlock him when Sami arrived. He had failed. And so had Wells.

  * * *

  WELLS GLANCED AT his watch once more: 1:36:43. Not that it mattered. West, dead. The bodyguard, dead. He would never be able to explain to the police what had happened here tonight. He would never be able to explain to Sami what had happened to Qais. He had only one way out of this mess, and no time to spare. He stepped out of the cottage. Sami turned toward him.

  “Can you—”

  Wells raised the Glock and shot him. Once in the chest, and then in the head, just to be sure. He left the H&K but grabbed Sami’s.45. A good silencer might come in handy.

  Wells ran to the house. In the distance he heard a siren. He had to finish Qais off. Qais would know now that he wasn’t loyal to Qaeda, and so Qais would try to blame this attack on Wells to get the agency after him. The agency might be able to figure out that Qais was double-crossing him, but not if Qais gave up Wells just a little at a time, like he really wanted to protect him. No, Wells couldn’t take that chance. Qais had to die.

  Wells stepped over the dead Rottweiler and into the entry hall. Qais lay unconscious on the floor where Wells had left him. As Wells looked down Qais sighed faintly, as if he had already accepted his fate. “Inshallah,” Wells said quietly.