“If you didn’t it’s only because you didn’t want to,” Shafer said. “Protect yourself from the scandal.”
“Don’t be such a cynic, Ellis,” Duto said. “Karp and Murphy never told me, and Whitby shut me down after we got that letter.”
It was at these moments that Wells felt his limits most keenly. These raw power games left Wells cold, and so he refused to play them. That attitude was a strength, but a weakness, too. It left him as a pawn for men like Duto.
“So, you called us,” Shafer said.
“I knew, I wound you up, you wouldn’t stop spinning until you solved the case.”
“And you figured the answer had to be bad for Whitby. Whatever it was. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to interfere.”
Duto twisted the champagne cork until it exploded across the room. Bubbly sunlight poured from the bottle. He poured the glasses full. Duto was in an expansive mood, Wells saw. His triumph filled the office like fog. Wells didn’t think he’d ever be able to drink champagne again.
“From the beginning, I should have been more involved with the Midnight House,” Duto said. “I knew we had to be in the mix, but I didn’t like the setup. Thought it could all blow up.”
“You figured, let the Pentagon handle it.”
“Then they hit the lottery, find this tape. And Fred Whitby rides it all the way to DNI. You think that’s good for the agency?”
“Now Whitby’s gone,” Wells said. “You’re right back where you belong. Top of the anthill.”
“Justice has been served, John. The killer caught. Congratulations. Have a drink. Well deserved.”
“A couple years ago, after China, I was so beat up. Exley, she told me, if I wanted to quit, I could. No one would judge me. Back then I thought,
“John—”
“Because it’s not about being weak. I’m sick of this game, that’s all.”
“Is this about Exley? I wouldn’t count on her taking you back.”
Exley. The magic word. Just hearing her name when he wasn’t prepared was enough to suck the air out of Wells’s lungs. “This has got nothing to do with Jenny.” Which was true in the strictest sense. Wells still hadn’t called Exley; he was headed for New Hampshire. Though everything was always about Exley. “This is about the stench coming off you. This is about the Midnight House. And that we know who killed Benazir Bhutto. And we’re not going to do anything about any of it.”
“Okay. You’re in charge, John. You’re the President. What do you do?”
“I go public.”
“And when there’s riots in Pakistan? And the nukes go missing?”
“We have to do something. We can’t let the ISI get away with murder.”
“What if we could do something? What if
TOO LATE, WELLS UNDERSTOOD that Duto had been leading him down this path all along. The floor seemed to twist under his feet. Was this what Duto thought he’d become?
He put a hand on Shafer’s skinny shoulder. “Did you know about this? ”
“Can’t swear to God, because I’m an atheist, but no.”
“I’m going to forget you ever asked me this,” Wells said to Duto.
Duto sipped his champagne. “You said it yourself. The ISI, they’re getting away with murder. And Tafiq is at the heart of it.”
“It doesn’t even make sense. We have a deal with him. Why would you want to get rid of him now?”
“We’d rather have someone we can trust running the ISI.”
“And killing the guy in charge is the way to get there?
Wells wasn’t sure whether Duto was testing him or this offer was genuine. He no longer cared. More than anything, he wanted out of this office, out of this whole sick business.
“No problem. You’d have to quit. You couldn’t be connected with us at all, not for this.”
“Good-bye, Vinny.” Wells looked at Shafer. “If you had any guts, you’d come, too.”
Wells turned away, walked out of Duto’s office, slammed the big wooden door behind him.
But he couldn’t get away fast enough to escape the director’s last words. “Don’t kid yourself. You’ll be back.”
And the Lord said to Moses, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ‘I will assign it to your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross there.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my family for their thoughtful criticism; to Neil, Ivan, Leslie, Tom, and everyone else at Putnam and Random House UK for all their hard work making these books real; to Heather and Matthew for their advice; to Larry and the
And, finally, thanks to every reader who came this far. John Wells wouldn’t exist without you. As always, e-mail me with comments, suggestions, or criticism at [email protected]. With the volume of e-mail I’m now getting, I can’t promise to respond to every note, but I pledge to read them all.
