“Do you ever think about him?” She couldn’t help herself now. “What it must be like for him. They don’t trust him. We sure don’t trust him.”
“He knew what he was getting into when he signed up.”
“He couldn’t have expected to be undercover this long. Nobody could. I mean, he’s got to be the loneliest guy in the world.” She remembered what Wells had said when he’d called that night:
The disgusted expression on Shafer’s face brought her back to reality. “I couldn’t care less how lonely John Wells is, Jennifer. I want some actionable intelligence from him. As in, intelligence upon which we can act.”
“What if he’s just waiting? Biding his time?”
Shafer sucked in his lip. He leaned into her desk and lowered his voice. “Jennifer, are you trying to tell me something?”
She shook her head. He looked around the office. “Do you want to have this conversation somewhere else?”
“No.” She was sorry she had brought Wells up.
“Then let’s move on to a happier topic,” Shafer said. “Why did Khadri tell Farouk where the bomb was hidden?”
“Why wouldn’t he? Farouk knows more about nukes than the rest of al Qaeda put together. He’ll probably get brought over to put it together.”
“But it’s already together, right?” Shafer said. “It’s sitting in that locker waiting to get picked up.”
Exley felt very dumb. “So al Qaeda—”
“Has at least one other person who knows how to play with plutonium.”
“Then why’d Khadri tell Farouk where it is? That’s a terrible operational breach.”
“Maybe Farouk isn’t the only one who knows,” he said, thinking out loud. “Maybe Khadri wants to be sure the bomb won’t rot in the locker if we catch him.”
“He can encrypt that info a hundred ways. Telling other people is the least secure system of all. It’s not logical.”
“Whoever built that bomb is logical as hell.”
“Interesting choice of words.”
“You want to joke around, fine. I have things to do.” Shafer began to walk out.
“Ellis, relax. I’m sorry.”
He stopped. “I just hate things that don’t make sense,” he said. “And this doesn’t. This guy Khadri is playing with us.”
“There’s something else,” Exley said. “The bomb’s too small.”
“It’s all they have.”
“All the plutonium, maybe. C-4’s easy to find. Why not build something bigger? This thing will kill fewer people than a truck bomb.”
“Maybe it’s for an assassination,” Shafer said. “Put it in the Waldorf during a fund-raiser for POTUS.” For reasons Exley had never understood, everyone in Washington insisted on using the term POTUS — which stood for “President of the United States”—instead of just calling him the president.
“If it’s a target like that, why bother with a dirty bomb? Use a stand-alone package of C-4 and be done with it. Dead is dead, right?”
Shafer frowned and tugged at his hair. Exley wished he wouldn’t. One day he was going to pull off a chunk of scalp.
Finally he nodded. “Dead is dead. Right. No need for plutonium in a bomb this small. So what’s he doing?”
“Maybe he made a mistake.”
Shafer shook his head violently. “He’s too smart to make mistakes,” Shafer said. “I think he doesn’t like anyone to know what he’s doing. Not even his own guys.”
“He’s a control freak.”
“Keeps his secrets as tight as he can. He knows his guys are vulnerable, that we can catch anybody the way we caught Farouk.”
“Then why’d he tell Farouk?”
“I asked you first, Jennifer.”
And Shafer walked out, leaving her with another unanswerable question.
CIGARETTE IN HAND, Tony DiFerri walked into the front office of Capitol Area Self Storage, an unprepossessing room with yellow walls, black plastic chairs, and a vending machine that offered bags of stale Doritos. Major Rick Harris, a trim black man, sat behind the counter, doing his best to look bored as he played solitaire on the old Dell PC where Joey O’Donnell had kept the center’s records.
“Sir, there’s no smoking in here,” Harris said. His sister had died of lung cancer and one of his kids had asthma.
“Sure,” DiFerri mumbled, grinding out the half-finished Marlboro Light under his heel.
“Can I help you?”
“Yeah,” DiFerri said. “I’m looking for locker D-2471.”
Harris nearly fell off his chair. This wasn’t the guy he’d expected. Somehow he kept his face straight. “Sure. That’s the second floor, off the main hallway toward the back. I can show you.”
“I can find it myself.”
“No problem. Lemme see your key.”
Sure enough, DiFerri held up the key. D-2471. Harris pushed the green button, unlocking the steel grate that separated the office from the storage area. A few seconds later DiFerri was inside. Harris waited until he was out of sight, then clicked on the tiny microphone wired to his chest.
“Code Blue active,” he said. “Repeat, Code Blue.
Almost involuntarily, the major found himself looking at the box under the counter that hid his radiological protective suit.
DIFERRI LUMBERED UP the stairs, wheezing as he pushed open the door to the second floor. He didn’t have much wind. Or much time. His new friend Bokar had told him he needed to figure out what was inside the bag and report back by four-thirty P.M.
“I just check it and tell you what’s inside?” DiFerri had asked.
“Precisely.”
“It’s not drugs or nothing illegal.”
“No. Nothing illegal.”
“That don’t sound too hard. And then—”
“I shall give you another fifty dollars and explain your next task.”
DiFerri didn’t totally understand this game, but he figured if he didn’t like what he saw in the bag he would just quit. Even if the whole thing was some joke, he’d already gotten fifty bucks. These Hollywood guys had plenty of cash, for sure. Besides, nothing this interesting had happened to him since the first time he got laid, and that was a long time ago. So after he caught his breath DiFerri started moving again, walking down the halls of the storage center, looking for D-2471.
EXLEY’S PHONE RANG. “Get over to the sports bar,” Shafer said. “Something’s up in Albany.”
Encrypted satellite links gave the agency a real-time view of the storage center, ending up in an auditorium- sized room with three hundred flat-panel televisions, each capable of showing a different satellite feed. Officially, the room was known as the JTTF Secure Communications Presentation Center. But when Duto caught one of the center’s technicians watching his beloved Miami Dolphins in a corner on a sleepy Sunday night, Shafer started calling the place the sports bar. The name stuck.
The sports bar was a ten-minute walk from Exley’s office. Or a five-minute run. She ran.
