“I’m probably not supposed to be the one to tell you this, but Wells infected you with plague.”
Plague. Exley’s body ached at the word. Shafer rubbed her shoulder. “It’s okay. We think we’ve tracked down everyone who was exposed, here and in Canada.”
Canada? Exley decided not to ask.
“I need to see him, Ellis.”
“He’s in bad shape,” Shafer said. “He was exposed a lot longer than you, and he was shot in the back.”
“Khadri shot him?”
“No. The police.” A strange half smile crossed Shafer’s face. “Things got messy at the end, but it worked out all right. Our boy’s a hero and you must be too. The president’s coming up here next week. Meanwhile Duto’s taking all the credit, and I’m letting him.”
Duto’s name provoked a flare of anger in Exley, but the emotion faded as quickly as it came. She was just too tired. Shafer seemed to read her mind. “Don’t waste your energy, Jennifer. If it’s not him it’ll be someone else.”
“He’s going to make it. Right, Ellis?” In her haze she imagined trading her leg so Wells would live. Or both legs. Sure. Who needed legs anyway?
“I’m not going to lie. They’re saying fifty-fifty. But that’s better than yesterday.”
THE NEXT MORNING she felt stronger, and she asked that they take her to his bed. They told her no, but she insisted. So they rolled her in her bed to a room watched by four New York City police officers wearing blue dress uniforms and white gloves. An honor guard.
Wells lay on his side, an intravenous drip in his arm, oxygen tubes in his nose, a catheter poking out from the sheets by his waist. He was pale and gaunt and his breath came slowly, but the steady beeping of the pulse monitor and oximeter above his head reassured Exley.
“I know he doesn’t look great, but he’s doing much better,” Dr. Thompson said. “He’s been trying to say something, mumbling. We think he could regain consciousness today.”
In the bed Wells twitched and sighed.
“Can you bring me closer?” Exley said.
WELLS STOOD OUTSIDE a gleaming white skyscraper, the biggest he had ever seen. Its marble walls seemed to have no end. He wanted badly to get in though he didn’t know why. Something was impelling him, something he couldn’t fight. He was too tired to fight anyway. He looked for an entrance but the building had no doors or windows, only a single push-button entrance bell. He pressed the bell. It began to beep and a man in a blue blazer and a surgical mask materialized in front of him.
Please, Wells said without speaking. Yet he knew the man would understand.
The man pointed at Wells’s belt, where a dozen pistols hung. Makarovs, 45s, Glocks, even a couple of old revolvers. As Wells watched, the pistols morphed into each other. They were alive, he realized. He’d never seen living guns before. Yet the sight didn’t surprise him.
Take them off, the man thought-said.
I can’t, Wells replied. He looked down. A vast pit lay beneath him, filled with men and cranes and earthmovers building a neon city. You don’t know what it’s like down there.
Take them off, the man said again. Behind him the marble skyscraper lost its shine and began to fade. Wells desperately reached for the man in the blazer, but the man raised a finger, a single finger, and pain flooded Wells, radiating from his back into his shoulders and then across his body.
Wells looked up. The skyscraper was almost gone. He knew he would never get in if he kept his guns. He tried to pull them off but couldn’t: they were bound to him like leeches.
The building disappeared. The man shook his head and waved his hand angrily. And Wells fell.
HE LANDED ON his back on hard, rocky ground. The neon city had vanished, and the sky above was black. Wells closed his eyes and saw stars, but dimly, like fireflies. He was looking at his own brain through a thick gauze curtain. Again he felt a surge of pain in his back. He looked at the stars. They were dim, too dim. They weren’t the stars he remembered from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan.
And once he understood that word everything came back, everything, all of it, all at once, as bright and wicked as a fever dream, only real; he could remember everything, and the pain from the hole in his back scorched through the morphine or fetanyl or whatever it was that they were giving him and—
— he opened his eyes. And there she was.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been written without my brother David, who helped conceive the idea of a CIA agent inside al Qaeda and think through ways to tell this story. He too is a writer, but when I asked him if I could take a shot at this book, he told me to go ahead. For that encouragement, and for the ideas he offered each step of the way, I cannot thank him enough.
Thanks also to:
Ellen and Harvey, my parents
Mark Tavani, an editor who edits
Heather Schroder, who somehow convinced Random House to sign a contract on three chapters and an outline, giving me the confidence (and legal responsibility) to finish, and Matthew Snyder, who performed a similar trick with the movie rights
Jonathan Karp, who bought in early
Pilar Queen, Deirdre Silver, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Jennifer Vanderbes, who offered wise and gentle criticism on the first draft
Dorian and Eric Nerenberg, who showed me the Buford Highway
Douglas Ollivant, Kelly Pippin, and other soldiers and officers too numerous to mention, who shared their stories (and their chow halls) in Baghdad and Najaf
Zaineb Obeidi and all the translators and drivers at the Baghdad bureau of the
And, finally, all the war reporters and photographers who risk their lives every day. I worked with them for only a few months, but my respect for them grows daily.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALEX BERENSON is a reporter for
