“Of course. A whole cabinet, pistols, rifles. Out here you can’t be too careful.”
For the first time since he’d arrived in South Africa, Frankel felt a smile crease his lips.
18
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
Hey Adina!
The subject line was strangely cheery. But the sender’s name was what froze her.
John Wells.
Some part of Salome had known this moment was coming. Even wanted it, maybe. She clicked the email open.
—
She had come to Bucharest the night before, from Istanbul, after Buvchenko told her that the FSB had let Wells go. The Romanian capital was unpleasant at the best of times. In winter, when the sidewalks and buildings and sky blended into the same pallid gray, the city induced despair and an overwhelming desire to flee to Brazil.
But Bucharest also had some of the best hackers around. So Salome had a safe house here, occupied by a young man named Igor. He wore cheap leather jackets and heavy cologne that didn’t hide his disinterest in showering. Online, where he spent most of his life, he called himself IbalL.
“Didn’t expect to see you again,” he said over his shoulder as she walked in. She didn’t need to wonder how he knew who she was. No one else came here. In her experience, hackers were either compulsively neat or crazily messy. Igor was the latter. Like he’d moved his consciousness onto the Internet already and no longer cared about the space his body occupied. Empty Red Bull cans and pizza boxes covered the scuffed wood floor. Dozens of partly disassembled laptops filled the couch and the coffee table. Generations of PlayStations, Xboxes, Nintendo Wiis occupied the kitchen. Amazingly enough, the place was bug-free. Igor had sprayed it a few months before with an insecticide banned everywhere in the world except Romania and Africa.
“I missed you,” Salome said.
“I think one day you come to kill me.”
“Never.”
“No. You send your boyfriend.” What Igor called Frankel.
Good call. She stood behind him, but he didn’t look up. He was simultaneously playing online poker, Gchatting with four different people, and on the third and highest-resolution screen watching truly foul pornography.
“Is that a dog?”
“Be glad it’s not a horse.”
“Off, Igor.” He hated when she used his real name. “And get out.”
“I’m in a tournament—”
“A tournament—”
“Poker.” He pointed at the first monitor. “See, a horse.” Indeed, a stallion was now being led onto the third screen. “Always a horse sooner or later.”
Salome kept a pistol and silencer in a safe in the apartment’s bedroom. She was tempted to blow out the monitors and the boy-man sitting at them. Maybe the fanatics were right. Maybe the modern world was so mired in sin that God needed to wipe it away, start anew. “Igor—”
“Fine.” He flicked off the screens. She knew he didn’t want to make her too angry. He liked her, or at least liked the jobs she offered, more interesting than credit-card scams. He dragged himself up. He spent so much time on his rear and so little on his feet that he sometimes seemed unacquainted with gravity, his bones brittle as needles.
“Not far. I may need you.”
He nodded.
“If I want to get online—”
“They’re all clean. Safe to use, I mean. I wouldn’t touch the one in the bathroom.”
“Lovely. Phones?”
He walked into the kitchen, came back with three. “These.”
She opened the windows as he left. The Bucharest air wasn’t great, but at least it didn’t coat her mouth like the inside of a paint can.
—
Thirty hours before, she had left Volgograd assuming she was done with Wells. But even before Buvchenko’s private jet landed at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, she’d learned she was wrong. She and Buvchenko went to their backup plan, convincing the FSB to pick Wells up. She’d much preferred the local police. Buvchenko had told her the plan couldn’t fail. When they find the heroin—he drew a hand across his throat.
What about a bribe?
Buvchenko shook his head. This colonel, he’s the only clean police officer in all of Russia.
But somehow Wells had gotten out, and they were stuck with the FSB, which acted solely in its own interest. She wasn’t sure how the FSB would view Wells. But she imagined it would keep him at least a couple days while it sorted him out.
And from what she saw when she landed in Istanbul, Wells was very short on time. Though the city was fifteen hundred kilometers from the Iranian border, the Turkish police and army were gearing up for war. Soldiers stood at the terminal doors, their faces hard and ready. Five-ton army trucks were lined up along the runway fence and outside the airport’s main gate. Plainclothes police officers looked over every vehicle coming in and out.
The security made sense. Turkey was run by conservative Sunni Muslims who supported the rebels in Syria and didn’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. The Turkish government was letting the United States use its mountainous eastern border with Iran as a base for the invasion. It had every reason to fear that Tehran would respond with terrorist attacks.
Salome’s safe house was in the city’s wealthy Nisantasi District. By the time she and Frankel reached it, the winter sun had slid behind the luxury apartment buildings that dominated the area’s narrow streets. At this hour, shoppers and commuters should have filled the sidewalks. Instead, they were nearly empty. A neighborhood full of Western luxury brands was a ripe target for a Hezbollah bomb.
“They think it’s coming,” Frankel said.
“Looks that way.”
“Let’s hope they’re right.”
Frankel had never before expressed an opinion about what they were doing. “Now you tell me,” Salome said.
He smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “Everyone loves a good war.”
—
The apartment was a big two-bedroom with a view that stretched over central Istanbul from the Bosphorus Bridge to Topkapi Palace. All the wealth of a country in these blocks. Frankel brought up her bags and was about to leave when her phone buzzed.
Rand Witwans.
“Natalie.” His voice slurred, a day of drinks clogging his tongue.
Frankel opened the door to leave. She shook her head. She was sure Witwans would have unpleasant news. She was right. He didn’t want to tell her, but ten minutes later she had teased the story out of him. Ellis Shafer had found his name from a man in Nevada, some other South African fossil named Joost. Then Joost called Witwans like the tattletale he was. Playing all sides. Why couldn’t the old Afrikaners have the good sense to die?
“Don’t worry about it,” she said when he finished. Keeping him calm was her first priority. “What does he know about the program?”
“That I ran it. Nothing more.”
“Then you’ll be fine. And has anyone contacted you?”
“Besides Joost?”
“Yes. Called or come to the house.”
“The manor?” Even now he insisted on playing a country gentleman. “No.”
She had questions, but she wasn’t asking them over the phone. “I’m going to send someone to you.”
“There’s no need, Natalie.”
“Would you rather I come myself?” They both knew she terrified him. She clicked off, checked schedules. Turkish Airlines had an overnight flight to Johannesburg that left in a few hours. A lucky break. Frankel wanted to stay with her, as she knew he would, but she ignored his objection. She told him he was not to kill Witwans. He was there to watch the man, keep him from calling the police or doing anything dumb. If the police came, Frankel was to leave Witwans to them. Killing him would raise a red flag that even the CIA couldn’t ignore.
If Wells showed up, on the other
hand . . .
—
Her mood darkened after Frankel left. She sat in bed, watching Italian game shows, big-breasted hostesses leering at the contestants. They didn’t soothe her. She was conscious of a creeping feeling that she pretended she didn’t recognize. The hole. Strange that her brain’s sickness began with physical symptoms. Her peripheral vision furred, as if the world’s edges were coming apart.
She shouldn’t be depressed right now. Excited. Or fearful that the tide was turning. Not depressed. All the years of scheming and hiding and lying were almost over. But, of course, the end of the mission was the problem. If she lost, she knew what would happen. A bullet to the temple, a needle in her arm. The prospect scared her only theoretically. But what if she won? What would replace the mad beauty of this double-triple-quadruple life? Nothing. She should have asked Wells in Volgograd how he walked away when his missions were done.
Of course, Wells had his own problems. No doubt the FSB interrogators were working him over at this moment. She imagined him enduring his punishment, blaming her, knowing that she had put him there. Would he ask for mercy if she came to Lubyanka? She would bet everything she had that he wasn’t the begging type.
Thinking of him chased the black from her mind. She settled back in her bed, turned off the television, closed her eyes, and slept.
The buzzing of her phone woke her. In her confusion, she imagined that Wells was calling. But the number was Israeli and included three eights, the code that meant it belonged to Duberman. She sat up, fully awake. 4:40 a.m. Outside, Istanbul was as dark as it would ever be.
“Shalom.”
“Did you hear?” he said in Hebrew. As soon as he spoke, she knew the news was good. When Duberman was pleased, his voice turned soft and guttural, like a late-night radio host’s. “They took the bait. The Americans. In Lebanon. You’ll see.” Then he was gone.
Duberman now had a half-dozen ex–Mossad agents on his staff, mainly to protect Orli. Salome assumed that one had passed along gossip about the United States attacking Lebanon. Meaning Hezbollah. The hit must have been big enough for Israel to find out quickly.
She gave up on sleep and spent the predawn hours flipping through news channels. By 6:30 a.m., the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation had live footage of a building smoldering in the Bekaa. Soot-coated men tossed broken bricks into piles.
We are told that at least two senior Hezbollah officials were killed in an attack on this warehouse in Zahle early this morning. No word yet on who is behind this attack. Stay with LBC for more . . .
No wonder Duberman was excited. The FSB had Wells. Now the United States was bombing Hezbollah’s leaders, a move just short of attacking Iran outright.
They were going to win.
—
A few hours later, Buvchenko ruined her mood. Wells had talked his way free of the FSB. “They just wanted to be rid of him,” he said. “They didn’t know what he wanted or why he’d come, and they decided he was more trouble than he was worth.”
“I know the feeling.”
“They sent him to Amman. Not sure why. But don’t even try looking for him there. He speaks Arabic. Unless he wants you to find him, you won’t. Not there.”
She asked a few useless questions, hung up. She assumed Wells would land in Amman and board the next plane to Istanbul, less than two hours by air. He could easily track Buvchenko’s jet to Istanbul. He knew she had a safe house in Nisantasi.
She’d underestimated him too many times. She decided to hop to Bucharest, just a ninety-minute flight from Ataturk. Wells wouldn’t look for her there, and she could play the card she’d been holding for just this moment.
Jess Bunshaft.
She had nurtured her relationship with Bunshaft for three years. He had no idea she was behind this plot. But he knew who she was and that she worked for Duberman. She had met him years before. At the time, he was a mid-level civilian aide to Hebley, who had just earned his fourth star. Salome saw he was sensitive about his role. The Marines treated him like they treated all their male civilian employees, as a eunuch who didn’t have the guts to do what they did.
She took Bunshaft to lunch every few months, usually at the Capital Grille, which she couldn’t stand but he seemed to like. She was careful never to ask him for war stories from Afghanistan. Instead, they traded Jerusalem and Washington gossip, and she begged his opinions on geopolitics. No, Jess, I want to hear what you think . . . In all her years, Salome had never met a man immune to that flattery. She always kept her work for Duberman vague. I’m a consultant. A problem solver. Bunshaft never asked. He was more interested in talking about himself than hearing about her.
A year before, she pushed the conversation to Iran. At the time, nuclear disarmament talks were progressing in Vienna. “You know what my boss thinks about the ayatollahs,” Salome said. “Trusts them about as much as the Hitler Youth.”
“Scott feels the same.” Bunshaft loved to call Hebley Scott.
“But your side must believe the Iranians want a deal or you wouldn’t be going ahead with these talks. Your Guard sources—”
“Our Guard sources?” Bunshaft’s tone was ironic. “All those Guard sources.”
“That bad.”
He nodded.
“You know I can’t go into details—”
“Say no more, Jess.”
He wasn’t quite done. “Let’s just say that there’s some space between my boss and those midgets at the State Department. But the President, he wants this deal, you know. This would be a big hit for him. And he doesn’t have a lot of those.”
She came away from the lunch confident that if she could find enough highly enriched uranium and tell a plausible story, the CIA would run with it.
In the year since, she’d spoken with Bunshaft a half-dozen times. She left Iran alone and instead dangled a job with Duberman. At first he denied interest. Then she told him Duberman would sign a seven-figure contract for someone with his skill set.
“My connections, you mean,” he said.
“Look, you ought to meet with him. I’ll set a time. Doesn’t have to be soon.”
“All right.”
So she sent him an email, vaguely worded, but not vaguely enough. Anyone who saw it would understand that Bunshaft was thinking about taking a payday from Duberman. Perfect.
—
Now Wells was on the loose. Again. Salome needed Bunshaft to see where he stood. From the rancid apartment in Bucharest, she picked the cleanest of the phones that Igor had left. It was early evening in Romania, about noon in Washington.
Bunshaft didn’t answer. Probably he wasn’t in the habit of picking up random calls. She called again, and a third time. Finally, he picked up.
“Jess. It’s Adina Leffetz.”
“This is not a good time.”
“I need your help. Please.” He had a chivalrous streak, or pretended to.
“What’s this about?”
“I think you know.”
A faint grunt.
“Jess?”
“I’ll get out of here, call you in ten.”
Not ideal. He could easily get the NSA involved in ten minutes. But he probably didn’t want anyone listening to this call either. A half hour later, her phone buzzed.
“Adina.”
“My boss is furious, Jess.”
“But we know there’s no truth to it, he has nothing to worry about—”
“He’s not the one who needs to worry.”
“Excuse me?”
“You need to stop this man Shafer who’s running around telling these lies. And everyone who’s helping him. If this goes public, Aaron will lose his mind. He’ll blame me and you.”
“What?” Bunshaft’s voice jumped an octave.
“He’s afraid that Shafer will use the connection between us against him. All those
meetings, and me offering you a job—”
“I didn’t take it.” Now he was practically a soprano. “Adina. None of this matters, because what Shafer is saying isn’t true.”
A question in the form of a statement.
“Of course not. But that doesn’t make it any less toxic. People hate Aaron. A rich Jew with a beautiful wife. Any excuse to smear him.”
“I’m telling you, we’re watching Shafer. His email accounts, his phones.”
Not closely enough, since Shafer had learned Rand Witwans’s name without the CIA finding out. But that bit of information was one Salome didn’t plan to share.
“Whatever you’re doing hasn’t stopped him spreading this story.”
“Your name has never come up.”
Wrong again. Wells knew her name, so Shafer surely did, too.
“You need to stop watching and do something. Not just Shafer. His friend, too. John Wells. He was in Russia, and the FSB picked him up and then let him go—”
“How do you know?”
She let the question hang. She had entered dangerous territory. She was playing both sides, insisting that Duberman had nothing to do with the plot and was only worried about his reputation, and at the same time disclosing information she probably shouldn’t have had in order to force Bunshaft to act.
If Bunshaft were stronger, he might have confronted her over the contradiction. But he was afraid. He didn’t want to know how she could be so connected. The reason she’d chosen him for this call.
“What you should be asking, Jess, is why these men are pursuing this crazy agenda. When the only ones who benefit are the Iranians.”
“All right.”
“You understand.”
“Yes.”
“And what it means if my name comes up. For both of us.”
“I said all right.” His voice was soft. Beaten. “I’ll deal with it. I can’t do anything before tomorrow, though.”
“If I hear more, I’ll let you know.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” But his tone suggested he didn’t have much say in the matter.
Twelve Days Page 26
