Twelve Days

by Alex Berenson

  “Absolutely.”

  Wells pulled Duberman up. “Your job is to make sure your guards don’t do anything dumb so I don’t have to gut you. Understand?”

  Duberman wiped the spittle from his lips, nodded.

  “Say it.”

  “I understand.”

  “You have your passport in this office?”

  “Yes.”

  Wells looked at Salome. “And you have yours on you, I’ll bet.”

  She nodded.

  “Good. We’re taking a ride in that Range Rover outside. The four of us only. Guards and phones stay here. Salome drives, Vinny sits up front with her, I sit in back with you. We’re going to Ben Gurion. Anyone tries to stop us, we kill you. You ask anyone for help, we kill you. At the airport, we go through the general aviation side. Vinny has a jet there. You two are coming with us. We’ll fly to Cyprus and drop you off there.”

  “No,” Salome said.

  “Why would we agree to this?” Duberman said.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

  “Another bluff.”

  Wells shook his head. “You think I want this? It’s our only play. We can’t leave you here. Soon as we go, you make a call, we’re done. We have to keep you close until we’re off Israeli soil. I just proved I won’t kill you if you’re my prisoner. But if you won’t come, we’ll shoot you and take our chances, see how far we get.”

  “Not a hundred meters.”

  “Probably. But you’ll be dead already. Your choice.”

  Duberman looked Wells over, seemed to see he wasn’t bluffing. “Fine. Cyprus. And Gideon?”

  “He stays. Make sure he understands what happens if he calls anyone.”

  Duberman and Gideon spoke in Hebrew, and Duberman laughed.

  “He says after you land there, he hopes you have a rocket to the moon, because nowhere in the world will be safe.”

  —

  Thirty-five minutes later, they reached the general aviation terminal at Ben Gurion Airport. At the security checkpoint, Duto flashed his diplomatic passport, walked around the metal detector. A guard reached for him, and Duto shrugged him off.

  “I’m sorry, sir—”

  “I’m a United States senator.”

  “Not for long,” Duberman muttered.

  “I flew twelve hours here for a meeting, now I have to turn around. My back is killing me. Don’t touch me.”

  “Sir—”

  “You can walk me straight to my plane if you like, but don’t put a finger on me.”

  The guard reached for a phone at the X-ray station, but Duberman said something in Hebrew and he stopped.

  Five minutes later, they stepped into the G650. The blond-haired pilot poked his head out of the cockpit. “Four passengers? For Cyprus?” Duto had called on the drive over.

  “Correct.”

  “No weather, no line, we should be airborne in five minutes. On the ground in forty-five.”

  As he closed the cockpit door, Wells pulled two pairs of plastic flex-cuffs from the bag that Duto had brought him. “I need you both to put your wrists together in front of you.”

  “Are we such a threat to a trained killer?” Duberman said. He let Wells cuff him and settled into his seat, his smirk wider than ever. He’d shaken off the mock execution and pistol-whipping in record time. Wells knew what he was thinking. That he would call his guards when they landed and be back in Israel within hours. That he had this jet’s tail number and could track it. That he would either have Wells arrested right away or, more likely, let him flail until the deadline passed and then put Gideon on him. Most important, that Wells and Duto didn’t have any idea where Salome had gotten the HEU and didn’t have the time to find out.

  Duberman was thinking that he’d won.

  Wells feared he was right.

  Where could they go after Cyprus? Their best bet would probably be to fly to the United States, see if they could shake Shafer loose from CIA custody. Maybe he’d come up with something before the seventh floor grabbed him.

  And if they lost? When they lost? Being a senator gave Duto protection, though it wasn’t unlimited. Wells would have to decide whether to take his chances with the Justice Department or go off the grid. Maybe a year or two in the mountains would do him good. Catching steelheads and salmon for supper. Sleeping in a one-room cabin without electricity or a toilet. Chopping wood or going to bed cold. Good old-fashioned basic survival. Maybe this life had made him too hard and too soft at the same time. Or maybe he was deluding himself, pretending life as a fugitive would be anything but exhausting and lonely. He’d fall asleep each night wondering whether the FBI or Duberman would find him first.

  A song he’d first heard lying in bed with Anne came to him:

  If you can’t hold on

  If you can’t hold on

  Hold on

  The singer’s voice breathy and quiet. The band was called The Killers, Wells remembered now, the song “All These Things That I’ve Done.” Both about right.

  He wasn’t beaten. Not as long as he breathed. Let the world break him. He wouldn’t surrender.

  He settled into his seat and waited for Cyprus.

  24

  BEN GURION AIRPORT, NEAR TEL AVIV

  The Gulfstream’s engines spooled up.

  And Wells felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. An Israeli number. Had the Mossad tracked them already? He sent the call to voice mail.

  The phone buzzed again. Same number. Wells knocked on the cockpit door. “Hold tight a minute.” He stepped to the back of the jet. “Yes?”

  “The question you asked me.” Rudi’s rasping voice. “About the stuff. The man who brought it, his name was Witwans.”

  “Rand Witwans?”

  “That’s right. First name R-A-N-D. The amount was fourteen kilos.”

  “One-four?” Wells’s heart drummed a mad song in his chest.

  “Yes, dummy. Fourteen. Fourteen exactly. Does that help?”

  “Maybe.” Yes, yes, yes.

  “No more questions. No more favors.”

  “Thank you, Rudi.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I’ll see you at my funeral. Unless yours comes first.” Click.

  —

  Joost Claassen had told Shafer that South Africa produced 15.3 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. Joost remembered the amount because the program had beaten its goal of 15 kilos. But Rand Witwans had brought only 14 kilograms to Israel. He’d held on to those missing 1.3 kilograms all those years. Until Salome found him.

  Witwans held the answer, if they could track him down in time. Cyprus was the wrong move, the wrong way. Wells needed at least twelve hours. To fly to South Africa, find Witwans’s house. He’d be alone there, only his servants for company—

  No. Wells suddenly realized why Salome’s personal bodyguard hadn’t been at their meeting. She’d sent him to watch Witwans. He needed to put Salome and Duberman someplace they couldn’t immediately call the guard. Wells could think of only one place in the world from which Duberman couldn’t use his billions to free himself immediately. The last card in the deck. His last play.

  He reached for his phone.

  —

  “Again?” Abdullah said. “And after our conversation last week. Truly?”

  “I know I’ve stretched your generosity, King.”

  “What you did for my family, I didn’t think I could repay it, not in the time I had left. But maybe I’ve lived longer than I expected. What is it now?”

  Wells explained.

  “This is one of the richest men in the world, not some maid from Pakistan,” Abdullah said. “You think no one notices?”

  “A day, two at the most—”

  “An American. A diplomatic nightmare. And what’s our excuse? No, it’s not possible.”
<
br />   “How about this? Not even a day. Just until the afternoon tomorrow, and then put him on a plane back to Amman.” Amman was less than a hundred kilometers from Jerusalem, close enough that Duberman and Salome could find their way back to Israel without trouble. At the same time, the jet would stay outside Israeli airspace, so Abdullah wouldn’t have to worry that it or its pilots would be detained. “Say it’s a terrible mistake. Blame me.”

  “Of course I’ll blame you.”

  The King laughed, and Wells knew he would agree. “All right. In return, I want a promise.”

  Wells waited for the inevitable.

  “This repays our debt. Now and forever.”

  “It’s already repaid, King.”

  “I know.”

  Wells came forward, ignored the others, knocked on the cockpit door.

  “Ready to push?” the pilot said.

  “Can I come in?”

  The cockpit was sleek and black and angular, with four big flat-screen panels side by side under the windshield. It looked like a cross between a BMW dashboard and a video game.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Mind if I ask your name?”

  “On these sorts of missions, I go by Captain Kirk,” the pilot said.

  Fair enough. “We have a new destination. And I’d rather you not call it in until we’re in the air.”

  “Where’s that, sir?”

  “Riyadh.”

  “We can get cleared to land? From Tel Aviv?”

  Wells scribbled down the number for Abdullah’s private secretary. “He’ll arrange it. All he needs is the tail number and an ETA.” Wells hesitated. “I don’t suppose you can turn off the transponder.”

  Civilian jets carried transponders so that air-traffic control systems could track them and distinguish them from military aircraft. In response to radio signals from ground stations, a transponder emitted a unique call sign that included the location and altitude of the plane carrying it. Public tracking services like flightaware.com now tracked the transponder signals of planes worldwide in real time, which meant that Duberman’s guards could easily follow this flight and would know when it changed course and turned away from Cyprus.

  But pilots could turn off transponders from the cockpit, as had famously happened in the case of Malaysia Airlines 370. They were supposed to do so only in extraordinary circumstances, such as a malfunctioning transponder that was sending the wrong altitude, or an electrical fire. Any plane that wasn’t sending transponder signals was presumed to be a military aircraft and risked being shot down.

  The pilot shook his head. “Not in this neighborhood. The Israelis get squirrelly. In fact, even with it on, they won’t like the change of plans. We’ll have to give them plenty of room, go over the western Sinai and the Red Sea before we make the turn into Saudi airspace.”

  “How about when we get over the Kingdom?”

  “I trust you, sir, but not that much.”

  Not what Wells wanted to hear, but he could hardly argue.

  “I gotta ask.” The pilot nodded at the door. “Do they know about this little course correction?”

  Wells hesitated, all the answer the pilot needed.

  “I can lock this door, get you where you need to go, but if you can’t control them—”

  “We can control them.”

  “Sure about this? Because it’s about five felonies.”

  Just put ’em on my tab. “Ask the senator if you like.”

  “I don’t even know who you’re talking about. What happens in Riyadh?”

  “We’ll leave the two we brought now and go straight to Johannesburg.”

  The pilot shook his head. “By the time we land, it’ll be midnight local, we’ll have been flying about twenty-four hours straight. I’ll do my best for you, but Spock and I have to sleep a few hours before we go. Can’t be flying over Africa on a route we’ve never seen in the middle of the night with no rest.”

  More bad news. Wells would have to check, but he imagined Riyadh was at least eight hours from Johannesburg. If they left the Kingdom tomorrow morning, they wouldn’t reach South Africa until midafternoon at best. By the time they found Witwans’s mansion, night would have fallen. Even if they could grab him quickly, they’d have barely one full day left before the President’s deadline, and South Africa was a sixteen- or seventeen-hour flight from Washington. Wells was sure that they would have to bring Witwans to the President or Donna Green in person to have any chance.

  “You can’t sleep in Joburg?”

  The pilot shook his head. “Everyone thinks these things fly themselves, but there’s a reason for the rules. We’re over the duty limits already. And I’m guessing that won’t be our last stop, that you’ll want us to come back here or the U.S. or somewhere else pretty soon, maybe even tomorrow night.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Even more reason, then. If you have a relief crew in Saudi—”

  Wells shook his head. He was out of favors with Abdullah.

  “Then we need seven hours minimum in Riyadh.”

  Wells couldn’t argue. The pilot had already done as much as Wells could have hoped. By changing his destination after takeoff, he was essentially kidnapping Duberman and Salome. “Thanks.”

  —

  Back in the cabin, Duto, Duberman, and Salome waited expectantly.

  “You’ll be happy to hear that was Shafer,” Wells said to Salome. As he’d expected, she shook her head, not possible. “If I can talk my way out of Lubyanka, you don’t think he can outsmart those mouth breathers on the seventh floor?

  “And that’s why you went to the cockpit?” Salome said.

  “He told me we had to talk on a clean phone. I asked the pilot for his, but he told me I had to wait until Cyprus. Anyway, I’m sure whatever he has to tell me is bad news for you.”

  The explanation didn’t even qualify as paper-thin, but the engines went to full power before anyone could argue. “Buckle up,” the pilot said through the intercom. “We should be in Cyprus in about forty-five minutes.”

  Ten minutes later, the G650 was high above Israel’s coast. The plane turned slowly right, to the northwest, and soared uneventfully toward Cyprus for fifteen minutes. And then they settled into an easy left turn. They were more than one hundred kilometers offshore already, with a thin scrim of clouds before them, nothing to provide any perspective. Even so, Salome figured out what was happening.

  “What is this?”

  This G650 had been equipped with two seats per row, one on each side of the aisle. Salome and Duberman were in the third row from the cockpit door. Wells was one seat up. He unbuckled his belt, stepped into the aisle, put one big hand on each of their shoulders.

  “Change of plans. We’re going to Riyadh.”

  “You think that’s going to save you?” Duberman said. “You think Gideon can’t track this plane? He’ll find you even before you land. You think they don’t know who I am in the Kingdom? Half the royal family has spent time at my tables. Those Gulf Arabs, they like roulette and baccarat. The classy games. Never craps. They don’t like to touch the dice that the infidels have touched. They have such funny rules.”

  Wells had seen enough of the royal family to know Duberman was telling the truth. “Sure.”

  “They’re not great gamblers, they get bored, don’t size their bets, blow through their bankrolls. They want big comps, too, always the fanciest brands, the biggest suites. One of Abdullah’s grandsons, he lost three million dollars in Macao in a week, we gave him a Ferrari convertible, a Spider 458, a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car. You know what he said? ‘Not bad, but I like the Bugatti.’ Which runs more like a million, a million-one.”

  “Sounds like we’re doing you a favor,” Wells said. “You can set up shop in Riyadh.”

  “Or are you hoping they won’t care
who I am, they’ll lock us up because we’re Jews?”

  A cheap shot, though Wells supposed he had it coming. “You’ll be safe enough. I want a decent head start”—let Duberman think he was running—“and they’re going to keep you for a couple of days.”

  “All the head start in the world won’t help you.”

  “Then maybe I should just kill you now.”

  Duberman waved his hand, dismissing Wells, a remarkable gesture under the circumstances. “Whether I’m alive or dead, Gideon will hunt you down. And after what you did he won’t be satisfied with just putting a bullet in you.”

  —

  Wells sat back next to Duto, whose unhappiness was plain. He grabbed a pad, scribbled, That really Shafer on the phone?

  Wells shook his head. But good news, he wrote.

  What happens in Riyadh?

  Tell you when we get there. Wells wasn’t asking permission. Whatever Duto had expected when he came to Cairo, he was committed now. Duto shook his head, but wrote only, Hope you know what you’re doing. Wells did, too.

  Outside, the sky turned orange-pink for a few glorious minutes before night came. They were all silent as the jet followed the course the pilot had outlined to Wells, over the Sinai and the Red Sea. After almost two hours, the G650 turned left, over the Arabian Peninsula, the desert’s blackness broken only by a few small outposts. Mecca and Medina were down there somewhere. Wells wondered if he’d ever see them properly. He thought not.

  He stood, faced Duberman.

  “That offer you made me, Aaron—”

  “Off the table.”

  Wells smiled. “But you were serious?”

  “You would have had to stay with me until after the war started. But yes.”

  Wells believed him.

  “You should have taken it. You know I’ve seen you at my casinos a dozen times.”

  “I don’t—”

  “All the years I’ve been doing this. You come and you’re lucky, and you’re lucky, and you’re lucky. And it starts to feel like something more. Even the dealers, the bosses, the shift managers, they start to believe. That’s when they call me. Guy came in with ten thousand last night, he’s been playing craps, now he has six hundred K and the whole casino wants to bet with him. He’s hit six straight blackjacks and let it ride every time, he wants to do it again for a quarter million.”