photocopies of classified documents — she wouldn’t get the originals. She would have pictures of her kids and maybe some drawings they had made for her. He hoped so.
She wasn’t married anymore. If she had a boyfriend, a lover, she might have a picture of him. But Wells was sure it would be discreet. She wasn’t the type to bring her life into the office. Did she bring the office home? Nearly everyone at the agency was married. He couldn’t picture her having some awful workplace affair, the kind that the secretaries know will happen even before it starts and the bosses figure out in a week. The kind that inevitably ends with the husband back at home with wife and kids. Exley was smarter than that. Had to be. But Wells knew better than anyone that loneliness in large doses could twist people so badly that eventually even they couldn’t recognize themselves.
So did she have a lover? A boyfriend? After the way she’d opened up to him in the Jeep he couldn’t imagine she was seriously involved with another man. Nobody lived with her, anyway. When he had called her that morning a month ago, she had picked up. And she hadn’t sounded surprised. As if she had been waiting for his call. As if she had been thinking about him as much as he’d been thinking about her. He closed his eyes and imagined her, alone in her bed, sleeping nude beneath a thin cotton sheet, her windows open to the humid Washington night and a fan spinning slowly overhead. The vision made him shiver, and for a moment he could almost touch her.
Wells opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Eleven-forty. In five minutes Khadri would arrive on Delta flight 561 from Detroit.
THE FLIGHT CAME in on time. But Khadri wasn’t on it.
The man who stepped off the escalator was younger, early thirties, tall, clean-shaven, wearing slacks and a loose-fitting polo shirt. He couldn’t do anything about his olive skin and wiry black hair, but otherwise he blended nicely with the crowd of midday business travelers. Right down to his laptop. A professional. He glanced around, saw the Atlanta Jazz Festival T-shirt that Wells had promised to wear in his e-mail — a simple, foolproof way to make contact in public — and walked straight over.
“You must be Jack,” the man said in clean, soft English with just a hint of a Saudi accent. “I’m Thomas.”
The names were right. Khadri might not be here, but this was his man. “Good to meet you,” Wells said. “How was the weather in Detroit?” A simple question, just to confirm what he already knew.
“Cloudy last night but clear this morning.”
Wells extended his hand, and they shook.
THEY WERE SILENT until Wells swung onto 285, heading east, back toward his apartment. The man who called himself Thomas leaned forward to peek at the right side mirror, checking for tails. “Can you drive faster, in the left lane?” Thomas said. Wells did.
A few minutes later Thomas told him to move right and slow down. Then to speed up. Wells followed every instruction.
“Where do you live?” Thomas said as they reached the intersection of 285 and I-20.
“Doraville. Northeastern Atlanta. About fifteen miles. Should be there in twenty minutes.”
“Where exactly?”
“The address?”
“Yes.”
Wells told him.
“We’re not going to your apartment. Get off here and go west on Interstate 20.”
“Toward downtown.”
“Yes.” Thomas said nothing more. And Wells knew his wait wasn’t over yet.
WELLS PULLED INTO the parking lot at a beat-up Denny’s in southwest Atlanta. He’d been driving for hours, making endless loops on the highways that scissored the city. Now they were back practically where they had started, a couple of miles from the edge of Hartsfield. Planes flew low overhead, on their approach to the airport. Wells fought down his rising impatience, telling himself that a few more hours wouldn’t matter.
Wells parked, and Thomas led him to the end of the lot, where a man stood beside a green Chevy Lumina. He was shorter than Thomas and dressed casually, jeans and a Falcons T-shirt.
“This is Sami,” Thomas said. He hugged Sami and murmured something into his ear.
“Sami.” Wells put out his hand. Sami let it hang in the air until Wells finally pulled it back.
“Give him your keys.” Thomas didn’t smile.
Without a word Wells flicked his keys to Sami, who caught them neatly and turned for Wells’s pickup. Thomas got into the Lumina, indicating with a wave that Wells should follow.
Wells stayed cool as he watched his Ford disappear from the parking lot. These men were taking all this trouble for a reason. Khadri was putting him through one last test before finally lowering the drawbridge and letting him into the castle. Or so he hoped.
Again they drove aimlessly. The Chevy’s little digital clock passed five P.M., and the traffic began to thicken. But Thomas showed no impatience. Wells figured he was giving Sami time to search the apartment. Fine. Let them play this game. No matter how hard they looked they couldn’t go deep enough to break his cover.
Finally Thomas’s cell phone trilled. He picked up.
“It’s clean,” Wells said.
“What is?”
“My apartment. Except for the guns. And those are for us.”
For the first time Thomas smiled. “That’s what Sami said.”
THEY ROLLED PAST Turner Field and the golden dome of the Georgia capitol, until Thomas turned right onto Fourteenth Street, into the center of a neighborhood called Midtown, a jumble of tall office towers and low-rise apartment buildings. Thomas found a garage and circled up the ramps, nodding to himself as the floors emptied. Finally he parked on the top floor, in the middle of a sea of empty asphalt.
“Out.”
“Thomas,” Wells said. “Are we friends?” He was speaking Arabic now, enjoying the smooth feel of the words. Aside from prayers, he hadn’t spoken the language since Pakistan.
“I think so,” Thomas said, also in Arabic. “We’re making sure.”
“Then will you tell me your real name?”
“Qais.”
“Qais. Don’t you think I know there’s a gun under the seat? Don’t you think I could take it if I wanted?” Wells smiled tightly at Qais. I’m a professional too, he didn’t say. Give me a little respect.
Qais showed no surprise. “You could try.”
Wells couldn’t help liking the guy’s style. Neither of them said anything else. Wells slid out, and sure enough, Qais locked the doors and reached under the driver’s seat, pulling out a little.22. He tucked the gun under his shirt and got out.
“Put your hands on the hood and spread your legs,” he said to Wells, back in English now. He frisked Wells efficiently. “Good.”
“Were you a cop in a past life?”
“Something like that. Let’s go. Somebody’s waiting. You’ll be glad to see him.”
THE SUN HAD slipped behind the office towers to their west by the time they left the garage. Qais moved easily now, comfortable that they weren’t being tailed. In a few minutes they reached Piedmont Park, a one- hundred-acre expanse of grass and trees around an artificial lake. On the hilly lawn at the park’s edge, shirtless college students tossed a Frisbee around in the twilight. Joggers in sports bras made their way along a path at the bottom of the hill. Beyond them a man sat alone on a bench, quietly reading
Khadri.
He stood as Wells and Qais walked toward him, folding the paper under his arm. He was one hundred yards
