wired to detonate if it was moved or opened without the proper key.
After two days of debate, the president decided to leave the bomb where it lay and signed an executive order nationalizing the storage center on the vague grounds of a “national security emergency.” Not even the White House Counsel’s Office believed the order was legal, and Joey O’Donnell, the owner of Capitol Area Self Storage, had balked at giving up his property. But Kijiuri, the FBI deputy director, had not-so-politely explained to Joey that he had an easy choice. He could be a good American and accept the $1 million the government was offering, twice what the place was worth. Tax-free, too. Or he could protect his constitutional rights by filing a lawsuit and pissing off everyone from the FBI to the president himself. “You just won the lottery, Joey,” Kijiuri said. “Take the check and take a vacation. You want us looking at your taxes?”
Joey took the check and a vacation. Even before he signed over the building, a combat engineering team had arrived to reinforce the walls and ceiling around D-2471 with six-inch-thick lead-and-steel plates. By the end of September the entire building would have a new roof and walls thick enough to trap the fallout from an explosion.
ALONG WITH A new ceiling, Capitol Area Self Storage got a new workforce. None of the previous staff complained about being fired; they had all received severance checks bigger than they’d expected. The Delta Force commandos who replaced them were unfailingly polite to customers, though their mid-South accents didn’t quite fit in upstate New York. Meanwhile, FBI and CIA technicians engaged in a not-very-subtle competition to see who could install fancier surveillance equipment in the center. Because of the rules preventing the CIA from operating on American soil, the agency should have left the job to the Feebs. But that restriction had been lifted by the presidential order that created Earnest Badger, or so Duto insisted.
The dueling teams of techies had locked up Capitol Area Self Storage tigher than — tighter than any cliche imaginable, Exley thought. Four hundred cameras, heat sensors, and motion detectors had been installed in and around the building. A roach couldn’t get within twenty feet of the bomb without setting off silent alarms. And God help the person who opened, asked about, or even looked too long at locker D-2471.
Too bad the Joint Terrorism Task Force had no idea who that person might be. The room had been rented two months earlier by a man who had called himself Laurent Kabila, the name of the late and unlamented former president of the Congo. “Laurent” had paid in advance and in cash for a three-year rental. He hadn’t come back since his initial visit. Not surprisingly, neither the locker nor the bag had revealed any fingerprints or traces of DNA. Anyone capable of smuggling nuclear material into the United States was presumably also capable of wearing gloves.
So Duto and Kijiuri had decided that whoever came for the bag would be arrested only if he removed it from the center. Otherwise he would be allowed to leave and would be tracked. Of course, by allowing the courier into D-2471 instead of arresting him immediately, the task force ran the risk that he would blow up the bomb inside the storage center. But if they arrested the courier right away, the trail to the rest of the cell would end. And they desperately needed more information about al Qaeda’s operations in the United States. On the other hand, they couldn’t risk allowing the bomb outside the center.
Exley understood the decision. As an analyst, she wanted as much information as possible. But if her family lived in Albany, she’d have wanted to try the president for treason if he allowed al Qaeda even an outside shot at taking control of a dirty bomb.
EXLEY HAD RESOLVED to leave the office before dark at least once this week, give herself a chance to get some exercise outside, maybe walk down the Mall. Not today, though. She wanted to read Farouk’s transcripts again, cover to cover.
At that moment she realized that something really bad was happening to her. No point in lying to herself. Since coming back from Diego Garcia she had turned a mental corner. She had always been obsessed with her job, but as the stakes rose she was
You’re just a cog, the little voice in her head told her. You gave up your life to be a cog. Now you’re giving up your morals too. But for once she ignored the voice. Fine, I’m a cog, she thought. But I’m a cog in the most powerful machine in history, a machine that reaches everywhere in the world, that can snap you off a roof in Iraq and make you disappear before anyone knows you’re gone, that can see through clouds and hear through walls.
Ugh. What nonsense. What shit. And yet her pride was real. At least now I know how it happens, she thought. I know how power corrupts.
A KNOCK ON her door startled her. She looked up to see Shafer twisting his little body inside her office.
“Ellis. I was just thinking about you.”
“Only happy thoughts, I hope.”
“Always.”
Exley stifled a sigh. Shafer’s oldest son had been studying Spanish all summer. Now Shafer had gotten into the act, dropping Spanish phrases at random into his conversations. Every mangled word grated on Exley, reminding her of her distance from her own kids. Plus, as someone who had worked hard to learn three languages, she found Taco Bell — style linguistic ineptitude deeply annoying.
She held up the report. “Wondering if I should sell my apartment. Whether a dirty bomb will hurt property values.”
“Probably not,” Shafer said. “September eleventh was the best thing that ever happened to Washington real estate.”
“You’re not supposed to say things like that.”
“True though.”
And it was. The agency and the Defense Department had added tens of thousands of jobs after the attacks, propelling house prices in the D.C. area into the stratosphere. Another unintended consequence of September 11. Bin Laden surely hadn’t expected that he would make government bureaucrats rich when he hit the Pentagon.
“Catch anything on the hundredth reading you didn’t see on the first ninety-nine?” Shafer asked. “Anything brilliant?”
“I leave the brilliance to you, Ellis. However…” She fell silent, unsure if she wanted to talk about Wells right now.
Patience was not one of Shafer’s virtues. “What? What?”
“Tell me something. We fix up customs and immigration. We’ve got gamma-ray detectors at the ports. We spent, what, ten billion dollars on this stuff last year? So why can you still walk in from Mexico?”
“Is this a rhetorical question? Because you know the answer as well as I do,” he said. “We want an open border so Mexicans can come in and do the jobs we’re too lazy to do ourselves.” He cocked his head. “Now, what were you really going to say? That wasn’t it.”
“You never let me get away with anything, do you?” Shafer knew her well. She had to give him that.
“Out with it.”
“You’ll think I’m obsessed.”
“You are obsessed. That’s why I like you.”
“I think this stuff from Farouk proves that Wells told us the truth.”
At the mention of Wells’s name Shafer wrinkled his nose like he’d stepped in a broken sewer. “John Wells?” Shafer said. “Mr. Invisible? The biggest mistake of my career?”
“He’s the first one who told us about Khadri. Farouk confimed it. And Farouk confirmed meeting Wells in Peshawar last spring.”
Shafer shook his head. “Great. So where’s he been since he ran away five months ago?”
“He didn’t run away. He escaped.” Because you let him, she didn’t say.
“Escaped, ran away, whatever. He’s gone. I fear the great Vincent Duto may be right about Mr. Invisible. I don’t think al Qaeda trusts John Wells any more than we do.”
