The Faithful Spy

military-grade plastic explosive was available for the right price all over South America and eastern Europe. The junk radioactive material in the bomb didn’t match any of the samples the Department of Energy had on file from Russian nuclear labs.

The Albany investigators had managed to identify the man who’d died in the explosion. He was Tony DiFerri, an unemployed grifter with a half dozen arrests for burglary and cigarette smuggling, nothing that explained how he had ended up blown to bits inside locker D-2471. The best guess from the Joint Terrorism Task Force was that the man called Omar Khadri had duped him into opening the trunk. Unless they caught Khadri they wouldn’t know how. DiFerri sure couldn’t tell them.

IT WAS 5:14. One minute to go. On-screen, the garbage trucks had pulled over and turned off their engines. Exley sipped her coffee. “You think it’s real?” she said to Shafer.

“You know as much as I do.” Probably a lie, Exley thought, but she didn’t argue. Shafer was especially irritable this morning. “Let’s assume it’s real. The problem—”

Shafer broke off. On-screen, men in black flak jackets, Kevlar helmets, and plastic face shields jumped out of the garbage trucks. They halted for a moment at the front door of the tenement, then blasted open the lock and ran inside.

THE RAID WENT smoothly. At 5:22 A.M. four agents came out of the building holding a dazed-looking man in a T-shirt and sweatpants, his hands and feet manacled. They shoved him into an unmarked van and drove off, trailed by two police cars.

Inside the Secure Communications Presentation Center, a small cheer went up.

“Little early to get excited, don’t you think?” Shafer murmured to Exley under his breath. “We don’t even know if it’s the right guy.”

Shafer was probably right, but she didn’t want to hear it. After everything that had gone wrong the last few months, the JTTF needed a break. “Can’t you be happy for five seconds?” she said. “If we’re wrong we’ll cut him loose. He can get a lawyer and sue us. Like everybody else.”

“Assume we’re right. Assume he’s real,” Shafer said. “Somebody set up these cells very carefully—”

“Khadri,” Exley said.

“Sure, Khadri, whoever he is. Somebody. John Wells. Anybody.”

Exley put her hand on Shafer’s shoulder and turned him so that she could see his face. “You don’t really believe that,” she said.

Shafer shook his head. “No. But the more time that passes, the more I wonder. Why doesn’t he just call us?”

Exley could feel her temples throbbing as she thought of Wells. “He knows we’ll bring him in if we find him,” she said.

“Or he’s turned into a damn mole rat. He’s lived underground so long he can’t do anything else. He wants to hide forever.”

“If he had something, he’d tell us. I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be sure of anything about John Wells?”

A very good question, and one she couldn’t answer.

“Forget Wells,” she said. “Go back to Khadri. Or whatever his name is.”

“Whatever his name is, he’s very good. We have no picture, no bio, nothing. And his network is airtight. We’ve had four hundred people working for five months to crack the L.A. bombing. Heck of a diversion, if that’s what it was. What leads do we have? Same for Albany.”

“His network’s not airtight. It sprang a leak today.”

“Even if he’s real, that was pure luck.”

“We caught a break. That’s how it goes, Ellis. And maybe this guy is the thread that unravels everything else.”

“I’ll bet you he isn’t. One dollar. I’ll bet our new friend Alaa has been waiting for a phone call since he got here. That’s why he got sloppy. He got bored. He’s a drone. Khadri’s too smart to give a drone anything important.”

“No more bets, Ellis,” Exley said. “You still owe me a hundred for Wells. And you can say what you like. I’m glad we caught this guy.” She tried to keep her tone even, but she could feel her anger rising.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? The first time we capture an al Qaeda sleeper agent in America and you wish we didn’t?”

“Jennifer, relax.”

“I hate it when men tell me to relax.”

“Then don’t relax. But think it through,” Shafer said. “Khadri can see us closing in. He has to figure the worst case, that we’re right on him, right on Network X. I think he’s going to move very soon.”

“Before he’s ready.”

“You mean before we’re ready. So it’ll be five thousand dead instead of twenty thousand.” Shafer laughed sourly. “Too bad we’re not as close as he thinks we are.”

Exley wanted to beat her head against the nearest wall. “You told Duto this?”

“I told him two days ago we should watch Alaa but not arrest him. Not tip our hand.” Shafer looked at the main screen. The van holding Alaa was speeding over the Brooklyn Bridge toward the federal detention center in downtown Manhattan. “You can see what he thought of that.”

“Let me guess. He said you were speculating. Pure conjecture. That we don’t leave al Qaeda sleepers on the street. Especially after what happened in Albany. And Los Angeles. That there’s no evidence anything we do will cause al Qaeda to change its plans. And that we won’t know what Alaa knows unless we ask him.”

“You forgot the part where he told me I was crying wolf.”

“It’s all true,” Exley said. “Everything he said was true.”

But she felt sick. Shafer was right. Finally, after all these years, the agency and the FBI had bumped against the edges of Network X. They had lit the fuse.

“You’re right,” Shafer said. “I’m just guessing.”

“Like you did in 2001.”

Nothing had changed since then, Exley thought. The agency and the JTTF were still stuck on small, showy operations instead of finding the men who really mattered.

“Duto reminded me that we don’t second guess at the White House anymore. We’re an instrument of national policy. We do what we’re told. I’d forgotten that.”

He pulled out his wallet and counted out five twenty-dollar bills, shoving them into her hand.

“That’s for Wells.”

Exley flushed. “I was just kidding, Ellis,” she said. “I don’t want your money.” She tried to push the bills back to him, but he stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Keep it,” Shafer said. “Maybe it’ll be good luck. Get the mole rat out of his hole.”

“I thought you don’t believe in luck.”

“I don’t.” He walked away.

IN A MARRIOTT in Stamford, Connecticut, Khadri saw the arrest in Brooklyn on the local news from New York. The report was sketchy — the police hadn’t disclosed Alaa’s name or any details — but Khadri knew who had been arrested as soon as he saw the apartment building.

Even worse, he couldn’t figure out how the kafirs had found Alaa. Only two people knew Alaa’s real identity or where he lived. One was Khadri himself, the other the leader of Alaa’s cell, a Lebanese named Ghazi who lived in Yonkers, just outside New York City. Khadri would have to make sure Ghazi was safe. But what if the Americans had already arrested Ghazi and were waiting for Khadri to call?

No. Ghazi’s wife and children had been killed in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1983. He hated the Jews and the United States more than anyone Khadri had ever met. Ghazi would die before he betrayed his al Qaeda brothers. The kafirs had found Alaa some other way. Fortunately, Alaa didn’t know much, just the number of a cellphone Khadri would destroy as soon as he could, and an e-mail address that Khadri would never use again.