If that prospect worried the President, he wasn’t admitting it publicly. “We will fight, we will win, and we will destroy the factories that you use to build weapons of mass destruction,” he’d said at the end of his speech. “Do not doubt our resolve. The United States can never allow Iran to threaten it with nuclear attack. My fellow Americans, of every faith and creed, may God bless us all.”
—
Her phone buzzed with a message, a single word from Frankel: Here.
Me, too, she wrote.
An hour later, after an unexpected and frustrating wait for immigration to open, she and her men stepped out of a taxi outside the safe house. She had never seen the place before. She had set up safe houses all over the world, but in cities like Cape Town, where she had no operations and no plans for any, she sometimes let real-estate agents choose their locations. In this case, she’d made a mistake. The neighborhood was anonymous and close to highways and the airport, as she liked, but the house was small and run-down. Worse, it stretched almost to the edges of the lot.
She preferred bigger houses in gated communities. Still, the place should be fine for a night, and Wells couldn’t possibly find it. Of course, she couldn’t find him either, not yet. But tomorrow morning, she would make Witwans call Wells, tell him they needed to meet. Wells would be suspicious, but he would know that the FBI and CIA were closing in on him and that Witwans was his only hope. He would take the chance. This time Salome wouldn’t leave Wells to Russian cops or Glenn Mason. She would pull the trigger herself. And after Wells was finally gone, Witwans would get what he deserved, a bullet in the back of the head.
Then she would rest.
—
Frankel barely looked up when she walked into the house. He sat on the couch, a pistol on the coffee table in front of him, a bag at his feet stretched by the shotguns inside. The scars on his chin shone and he stank of cheap coffee and too many hours behind the wheel.
“Amos.” She knelt on the couch, wrapped an arm around him. “Long drive?”
“Fine.”
“Wells—”
“No way could he have followed me.”
“Rand?”
“In the bedroom. He was all right. Spent most of the ride with his tongue hanging out.”
“Once he gets us Wells, you can do whatever you like with him.”
Frankel smiled. Put his head against Salome. Almost that quickly, he slept.
She gave him two minutes, then extricated herself and unzipped the bag. Inside, she found a pistol and two shotguns. She kept the pistol, gave the shotguns to Binyamin and Gil, the reinforcements Duberman had sent down with her.
“There shouldn’t be any problem, but just in case.”
—
Wells opened his eyes and found himself in a tunnel. Not a metaphorical tunnel, a real one, cut through rock, with headlights speeding uncomfortably close. He couldn’t see entrance or exit, but the grumbling in his stomach assured him he was very much alive and not in purgatory.
“Where are we?”
“Huguenot Tunnel, it’s called. We get out, we’re fifty klicks from Bellville.”
Seconds later, the exit came into view, a white speck that grew steadily. Wells felt his pulse kick up. Past 8 a.m. now, 1 a.m. in Washington. Twenty-three hours to go. Plenty of time.
Only it wasn’t. South Africa was a long way from anywhere, and a very long way from North America. The eight-thousand-mile flight from Cape Town to Dulles would take at least sixteen hours, more if the Atlantic headwinds were strong, plus a refueling stop in Dakar that added another hour.
Seventeen hours minimum, less a seven-hour time difference. If everything went right and they captured Witwans with no hitches and took off from Cape Town by 11 a.m., they still wouldn’t arrive at Dulles until at least 9 p.m. Washington time. And at some point during that flight, they would need to convince Donna Green to talk to them rather than send the FBI to arrest them on landing. The equation was simple but punishing. They had used every inch of their slack and could no longer afford a single misstep. Even an error as small as a botched refueling in Senegal might destroy their chances.
“What are you thinking?” Duto said.
“That I wish we had some silencers.”
“And a teleporter.” Duto could count, too.
They sped out of the tunnel, and Wells saw Table Mountain in the distance, the famous thirty-five-hundred-foot plateau that rose behind Cape Town and offered a perfect view of the city and ocean. A must-see destination, by all accounts, but Wells wouldn’t. The world’s worst tourist. He always missed the big sights.
“You have a plan?” Duto said. “Or pretty much the same as last time?”
“Pretty much. Loop around the block, once, see what we can see. If the houses are as close as they look on the map, maybe we try to come in from the side.”
“What about me?” Jacob said.
“You’re the wheelman. You know what that means?”
Jacob shook his head.
“Means we get Rand out, throw him in the back of the car, and you drive us to the airport.”
“You want me to stay in the car?”
“That’s what the wheelman does.”
“You think I can’t handle a gun? Covered you easy enough.”
“Let’s talk about it after we see the place.”
—
After the tunnel, the N1 became a true divided highway, two lanes each side. Duto sluiced the Audi through the morning commuter traffic. Twenty-five minutes later, they reached Durban Road, which led into Bellville’s commercial center, ten- and fifteen-story office towers.
South on Durban, east on another arterial, then south again on the M10, Robert Sobukwe Road, the big boulevard that connected Bellville to the airport. On the right, west, they passed a massive train yard. They were nearly on top of the Mercedes now, less than a kilometer away. It was parked in the residential neighborhood just east of Sobukwe.
“Left here.”
Duto turned, and they were in Bellville Lot 3, not a slum but certainly scrappier than the city center to the north. The houses sprouted clotheslines, the cars rust. The neighborhood looked to be mainly coloured, the term South Africans used for people of mixed race. The Audi stuck out. The car’s conspicuousness wouldn’t matter before the attack, but it might afterward, when the neighbors made emergency calls. Wells wondered if they ought to park around the corner, but then they would have to drag Witwans from the house to the car. Street kidnappings were rarely a good idea.
“Right here,” Wells said, as they reached Industry Road, which marked the district’s eastern edge. The neighborhood had been laid out in an imperfect grid. Its east–west streets stacked neatly, but the north–south roads started and stopped. The GPS showed the Mercedes parked on one of the north–south stubs, Octovale Street between Kosmos and Lily Roads.
“You know where we’re going?”
Even with time desperately short, Wells wanted to spin through the neighborhood’s main streets once. They might see a parked police cruiser, or road construction that blocked an escape route. “Just drive. Right here—”
“On Mimosa? Mimosa?” Mimosa marked the south end of Octovale.
“Calm yourself, Vinny.” Though Wells did like the jumble of names. He couldn’t imagine a neighborhood back home having a similarly random set—American developers were too careful.
“Here. Right. Slow.”
If the tracker was correct, then they would see the Mercedes almost two short blocks up, on the right side. “We’re only going to take one pass, so go easy—”
“You think you’re the only one who’s ever been in the field?”
Wells focused on the street. He liked what he saw. American building codes wouldn’t allow houses built as closely as these. In some cases, their eaves almost overlapped. If Witwans was
inside one like that, Wells could jump roof to roof and break in from the back while Duto attacked from the front.
Duto touched his brakes as they rolled through the intersection of Octovale and Lily. The GPS showed the Mercedes just a few houses ahead. Duto eased the Audi up the street at twenty miles an hour. And—
“There,” Jacob said. The car was parked nose-out for an easy getaway, in the gated driveway of a squat yellow house. Eighty-four Octovale. The house nearly touched its neighbor to the right, but it was a relative fortress, with gated front windows, high walls on both sides, and a five-foot-tall fence in front of a short front yard. Thick white curtains blocked Wells from seeing who might be inside, but he glimpsed lights.
Then the house was behind them. Duto turned left on Kosmos, and Wells considered what he’d seen. Despite the possible roof access, the setup wasn’t ideal. Duto would have no way to reach the front door easily. The back door was sure to be locked, the back windows gated. The pack that Duto had brought from Virginia included Wells’s auto lock picker, a tool that had saved him before. Even so, Frankel would hear him enter.
“Fortress Octovale,” Duto said.
“Maybe.” Wells looked back at Jacob. “You said you wanted in. That still true?”
Jacob nodded.
“Sure about this,” Duto muttered.
Wells ignored him. “You’re going to distract them. You go next door, the house to the left, one up from Rand.”
“Over the wall?” A four-foot-high concrete wall separated that house from the street.
“That Ford is parked right in front. You step over the wall, no problem.”
“Then what?”
“Then you knock on the door, hammer it. You yell, I know you’re in there, come out. Not in English. In Afrikaans. You speak Afrikaans?”
“No problem. But Rand next door—”
“We want to make them wonder what’s going on. Get them looking the wrong way, toward you, while I’m coming from the other side. If we’re lucky, Rand will recognize your voice and stick his head out the front door. He won’t be able to see you because of the wall, but he’ll wonder why you’re there. He’ll know what you’re saying, but Amos won’t. If we’re really lucky, Amos’ll come out himself and make himself a target.”
“Don’t know who’s inside that house next door, what biscuit he got.”
“You don’t want to, you don’t have to. In or out?”
Asked that bluntly, the question could only have one answer.
“In.”
—
Duto made a right, north, driving slowly away from the house. “And while Jacob is yelling nonsense and hoping he doesn’t get shot, what about you?”
“I’m going to the house on the other side, one down. With the carport on the right side. I’ll pull myself up that, run across the roof—”
“They might have a biscuit, too,” Duto said. “Even a gat.”
“Thank you for that, Vinny. I didn’t see any cars, so I’m guessing whoever lives there is at work. Even if they’re home, by the time they figure out what’s going on, I should be on top of Witwans’s house.”
“Where am I?”
“The way the timing works, Jacob and I will get out of the car at Mimosa and Octovale”—the intersection almost two blocks south of the house. “We’ll walk up Octovale to Lily”—one block up—“while you circle around up to the top of the street, the Kosmos intersection. When we see you there, Jacob goes ahead of me, runs up, jumps the fence at the house on the left. Just about the time he starts yelling, I’ll be scaling the carport. It shouldn’t take me more than a few seconds to get across. By then, Vinny, you’ll have swung the Audi onto Octovale to give yourself a view of the front door of Rand’s house. If it opens and anyone comes out, you’ll honk to let me know. If it’s Amos, I’ll pop him from the roof and jump down. It’s only one story. Then I’ll grab Witwans from the house and throw him in the Audi. If Witwans comes out instead, I’ll have to decide whether to grab him right away or go in the back door. And if nobody comes out, I’m going in the back for sure.”
“What do I do then?” Jacob said.
“No matter what, you go back to the car after two minutes.”
“Let me make sure I have this right,” Duto said. “This all hinges on whether Amos opens the front door when Jacob starts yelling? What if he doesn’t? You think you’re going to get across the roof of a one-story house and then in the back door without him hearing?”
“I think Amos, who hasn’t slept all night, is all of a sudden going to have to figure out what’s going on when the neighbors start yelling and the dogs start barking. His first thought is not going to be that someone’s on the roof coming for him. If he goes outside, I can blow off his head, and if he doesn’t, I’ll just creep along the house while he’s distracted and go through the back.” Wells knew that he was trying to convince himself as much as Duto. A plan so crazy it just might work.
“Give me best case, John.”
“Best case, Jacob shouts for a minute, Amos comes out, I pop him with one shot. It takes me thirty seconds to get in the house and grab Rand, another thirty to get him to the car. That’s two minutes and one shot and we’re gone. The cops won’t even be close. By the time the first car responds, we’re at the airport. Worst case, nobody opens the door after a couple minutes and I have to go in the back and it takes a little longer.”
“Worst case, you and Rand both get killed.”
“That would be worse. You have anything better? I’m open to suggestions.”
Duto pulled over. They sat for two long minutes as cars rolled by. In the distance a train whistled, but inside the Audi no one spoke.
“SOG team would be nice,” Duto said. “Real surveillance. A magical unicorn. How did I get myself into this?”
“You know exactly.”
“True. And I still can’t figure it. If you get caught in there, what then? I grab the Mossberg and come over the fence? Not entirely senatorial. But I guess I burned that bridge a while ago.”
Duto folded his hands across his chest as the Audi’s clock counted off another two minutes. Wells wished Shafer were here. He’d understand the absurdity of the situation better than anyone. America’s fate depends on three men in Bellville, South Africa. Two can’t stand each other. The third is a civilian they met the night before. Will they kidnap the old racist drunk in time to fly him to D.C.? Or get killed trying?
But long experience had taught Wells that too much second-guessing at these moments was not just pointless but dangerous. Climbing a carport to jump a roof to kidnap Witwans might seem bizarre, but they had no better option, and no time to find one. The choices they had made over the last few weeks had led them here, and without a time machine those choices couldn’t be undone.
Wells had rock climbed a few times in his teens and twenties. The best climbers weren’t necessarily the strongest, the most agile, or even the bravest, though those qualities helped. They were the ones who resisted the temptation to look down, who spidered up the face, always recognizing where they were and looking for the best solution, and with luck, the best after that.
“Time’s a-wasting,” Wells said.
Duto put the car in gear. “What a cluster.”
“So it’s a go?”
“Like our friend in Tel Aviv would say, shuffle up and deal.”
28
BELLVILLE
Salome was sitting in a wrinkled leather chair in the living room, watching the deadline clock tick away on CNN International: 21:35:42 . . . 21:35:41 . . . when the party started. Fists banging metal, a man screaming in a language Salome guessed was Afrikaans. He seemed to be at the next house over, on the other side of the wall to the north. Seconds later, a woman began yelling back.
Maybe screaming fights were common in this neighborhood. And Frankel had been sure Wells coul
dn’t have tracked him here. But in moments like these, she didn’t believe in coincidence. She drew the curtain a few centimeters, peeked into the yard and the street beyond. Something was different, though she couldn’t figure what.
“Go look,” she said to Binyamin.
“Take the gun?”
“Yeah.”
He grabbed the shotgun and stepped out as a dog on the other side of the house added its howl to the chorus. Salome looked at Frankel, still sleeping on the couch. “Amos!”
A car honked, once, long and loud. She realized what had bothered her outside. The car. She tugged aside the curtain to double-check. A white Audi was parked across the street, diagonally north, twenty or twenty-five meters away. She couldn’t see if it was running or anyone was inside, but she was sure it hadn’t been parked there when she came to the house.
“What’s happening?” Frankel said behind her.
“I think Wells. Go check Rand for a phone.”
“I already did—”
She flapped her hand, Don’t argue, just do it.
Outside, Binyamin stepped toward the people yelling next door.
“This wall. I can’t see anything—”
—
When Duto honked, Wells crept to the front of the roof. Eureka. The play had worked.
Only, it hadn’t. The man in the yard wasn’t Frankel. Even from the back, Wells knew. He’d seen Frankel in that Volgograd hotel room. This guy was much taller and broader.
Maybe Frankel had found the tracker and shucked the Mercedes overnight. He and Rand were a thousand miles away, and Wells was about to cut down a sucker paid by Frankel to drive the Mercedes here.
Or else Frankel had brought in reinforcements somehow. In that case, Wells was about to start a gunfight without knowing how many guys he faced. Either choice was bad, but the first was worse. Wells couldn’t shoot an innocent man. And just because the guy had a shotgun didn’t prove he worked for Duberman. The man stepped close to the wall and the Mercedes, yelled back to the house—
In Hebrew.
Twelve Days Page 37
