Wells leaned against the wall and looked at the houses around him, broad and tall, with three- and four-car garages attached. Each one probably had fifteen rooms. For one family. Amazing, he thought. Someone would be glad to live here, or ought to be.
THEY FINISHED UP around five o’clock, with the clouds thickening, promising a heavy summer downpour. “Anybody want a cigarette?” Kyle asked. He walked over to his truck — and suddenly hopped in and pulled away. “Later, bitches,” he said. Just like that he was gone. The Guatemalans chased the truck but gave up as it disappeared down Mount Vernon.
This had happened to Wells once before. Most contractors kept their word, because they were honest or because they knew that word would get out if they didn’t. But some were real pricks. Wells wanted to put a rock through a window of one of these fancy houses. But Dale might show up at the Kermex lot with the cops, and nobody could risk that. Least of all Wells. He tossed the box of fried chicken on the lawn — maybe the smell would attract raccoons.
They walked for miles down Mount Vernon in rain that turned into a full-on thunderstorm. Wells forced himself to stick with Eduardo and the others, though he worried that a cop might pick them up. Sandy Springs was the richest suburb in Atlanta, and its police didn’t look kindly on brown men wandering the streets. For long stretches, the road had no shoulder or sidewalks, and twice they were forced to jump into brush to avoid speeding SUVs.
Finally they reached 285 and waited interminably for a bus. From now on Wells was bringing twenty bucks and his cell phone on these jobs, so he could call a cab if he got ditched. He had been colder and hungrier plenty of times, but he couldn’t remember being quite so furious. He expected more from his country. Beside him the Guatemalans chattered away until finally Wells tapped Eduardo’s shoulder. “You speak English?” Wells said.
Eduardo smiled. “Good as you speak Spanish.”
“Then can I ask you something? You like it here?”
“Every month I send my family seven hundred dollars. They building a house in Escuintla, where I’m from,” Eduardo said. “When it’s done, I go home.”
“You don’t want to stay?”
“You really want to know?”
“I asked.”
Eduardo looked at Wells, considering.
“Then I tell you, man. I know all about America before I come. So big, so rich. And also you have demo-cra- cy and free-dom—” English might not be Eduardo’s first language, but he understood irony just fine, Wells thought.
Eduardo coughed and spat at the traffic. “You act like this is the only place in the world. And everybody should be sad they don’t live here. So I’m glad I came, man. Now I seen America for myself. I won’t miss it. This place, for me, it’s a job. That’s all.”
DARKNESS HAD FALLEN when Wells finally reached his apartment. Tired as he was, he remembered to check the sliver of tape he’d fastened to the top of the doorsill and the thin black thread at the base; both were intact. He’d escaped his pursuers for another day. If anyone was bothering to pursue him.
His living room looked even duller than usual. A dingy futon and a wooden coffee table marred with cigarette burns. A particleboard bookcase and a television-DVD combo with a few discs, mainly westerns like
“Hello, Lucy,” he said to the tank. “Hello, Ricky.” He had never particularly liked fish, but he was glad to have something alive in his apartment. Half alive, anyway — the fish had been swimming slower and slower the last few days.
He knelt on his prayer rug and unenthusiastically flipped his Koran to the first sura. “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful,” he murmured in Arabic. “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful—”
Wells broke off and set the Koran down. He tried to pray every morning and night, but he couldn’t hide from himself the truth that his faith had deflated like a leaky tire since the morning when he’d knelt hopelessly before his parents’ graves. He still believed — or desperately wanted to believe, anyway — in God and charity and brotherhood. But he had told Duto the truth when he’d said Islam had been a way of life as much as a religion for him. Being Muslim meant praying five times a day, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the mosque every Friday, not necessarily believing that Mohammed had risen to heaven on a white horse. Now he prayed alone, and without the comforts of the
In a way the distance made him glad. He knew that when the moment came to stop Khadri, he wouldn’t have any doubts. Still, he wished he could believe in
He wouldn’t have guessed he’d be lonelier in the United States than in the North-West Frontier. He supposed he believed in Exley. Jenny. He dreamed of her every couple of weeks. Sometimes he was back in the Jeep with her. Sometimes he was with her on the night she lost her virginity. Always he woke with an erection swollen against his boxers. He didn’t have a picture of her, but he could almost see her blue eyes and translucent white skin. The hitch in her walk. He was sure he could pick her out of a crowd from a hundred yards away. And he was sure she felt the same about him.
Though what did he really know about her? She might even have made up that story, faked feelings for him on orders from somebody higher up. The agency had used sex as a weapon before. Wells shook his head. If that story was fake, she belonged in Hollywood, not Langley. He had to trust his instincts, or he would wind up seeing FBI agents around every corner. No, Exley wanted him as much as he wanted her. They would see each other again. For now he had to do his job, and that job was to be ready for the moment when Qaeda finally came to him.
With that thought he put Exley aside and for the hundredth time tried to guess why Khadri had sent him to Atlanta. The Centers for Disease Control was a few miles south of his apartment, with freezers full of smallpox and Ebola. But the CDC campus was a fortress, with motion sensors, armed guards, and biometric locks. Khadri was fooling himself if he imagined they could get inside. And Khadri didn’t strike Wells as dumb. A sadistic fuck, for sure. The L.A. bombings proved that. But not dumb.
Then what did Khadri want here? Centennial Park, home of the 1996 Olympics? Nobody cared about the 1996 Olympics. The regional Federal Reserve Bank? Ditto. The Coca-Cola building? Sure, the Coca-Cola building. Coke stood for American imperialism. Or maybe Khadri had big plans for Fort Benning, a hundred miles south of here. In truth, Wells had no idea what Khadri was planning, or if Khadri would ever contact him again. Every couple of days he went to the Doraville library to check his gmail account, and every couple of days he found it empty.
Wells rolled his neck, an old habit. Sulking in here with his dying fish wasn’t doing him any good. He headed for the door. “Sorry, Lucy,” he said, looking at the tank. “Sorry, Ricky. But at least you’ve still got each other.”
The fish said nothing.
WELLS’S FORD RANGER had seen better days; its air conditioning hardly worked, and someone had torn out the glove compartment. But the truck was utterly anonymous, a little white pickup like one hundred thousand others in Georgia. Even if he got pulled over he should be okay; the name on his insurance and registration, Jesse Hamilton, matched the name on his driver’s license. He also had an old Honda CB500 motorcycle, bought three
