The Faithful Spy

“When we’re done,” she said.

“When we’re done.”

They turned and walked back from the river, toward the parking lot. Toward New York.

17

WELLS TURNED OFF the Major Deegan Expressway into the heart of the South Bronx, long dark blocks only beginning to share in New York’s renaissance. The open-air drug markets were gone, but women in skirts the size of handkerchiefs leaned against cars, looking for business. Outside brightly lit bodegas, men stood in clumps, sipping oversized bottles of malt liquor.

He wended his way through streets made narrow by double-parked cars, battered American sedans with tinted windows and NO FEAR stickers plastered on their windshields. Finally he found the address Khadri had given him. As he pulled over he saw in his rearview mirror that Exley had stopped a block behind. Not great tradecraft. She should have driven past and parked farther down. The slipup reminded him that she hadn’t been in the field for a long time. She didn’t belong anywhere near this.

But he had let her come, and now he was responsible for her, a complication he didn’t need at this moment. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to think of her promise. “When we’re done.” If they made it through tonight, they would find a quiet room and a big wooden bed and make love until they both were sated. That would take some time.

He shivered and coughed, a thick gurgle from deep in his lungs. The driving had gotten to him; he felt as if he’d been awake for three days straight. And he had developed a nasty headache somewhere in New Jersey. Adrenaline would have to carry him the rest of the way.

He opened his door, coughed again, spat a wad of phlegm onto the asphalt. He had given up trying to predict what Khadri had planned. Tonight he would end Khadri’s games. He cocked his head left and right. The street was empty. He stepped out of the Ranger and walked to the building, one slow step after the next.

The tenement was battered and gray, its bricks covered with sprawling whorls of graffiti whose meaning Wells could not decipher. Its front door was set back from the street, black with a porthole-shaped window, the glass reinforced with chicken wire.

The door opened easily, the brass knob loose as if the lock had been forced. Wells stepped inside and found a narrow hallway dimly illuminated by flickering fluorescent lights.

“Jalal.”

A man Wells did not recognize sat at the top of a narrow set of stairs, cigarette in his mouth, gun held loosely in his lap.

“Nam.”

“Come.”

Without another word the man stood and turned away.

Wells let the front door fall shut behind him and walked up the steps.

EXLEY SAT IN her minivan, fighting the impulse to run into the tenement and bang on every apartment door until she found him. She had covered the digital clock in the Caravan to stop from being maddened by its slow march; she had never been so bored and so anxious at the same time. Wells had gone inside around midnight. Now four hours had passed with no sign from him. Or anyone else. The building had been silent since he went in. Where was he? she asked herself. What was he doing? She couldn’t wait much longer. Another hour? Until dawn? Perhaps she should have gone in already, but she didn’t want to blow his cover, the cover he’d worked so many years to build.

If only the agency hadn’t alienated Wells. If only he’d been able to convince Duto of his value. If only he hadn’t disappeared for so long. He ought to be wearing a wire. These blocks ought to be swarming with FBI agents and police. Though even that wouldn’t lessen the danger he faced. He was on the other side now, in a place where no one could get to him quickly enough to make a difference if something went wrong. Khadri — or whoever was up there — could put a gun to his head and pull the trigger in a second. All the cops in the world couldn’t stop that. No wonder Wells didn’t have much use for Duto and the rest of the Langley paper pushers.

Exley looked up as a black Lincoln Town Car rolled past her van. The Lincoln stopped in front of the apartment building and double-parked, its blinkers flashing. She held her breath. The Lincoln’s door opened. A man wearing a blue blazer — an unlikely sight in this neighborhood at this hour — walked out, looked around quickly, and stepped into the building.

APARTMENT 3C was small and shabby, a railroad flat with a windowless living room and a tiny bedroom that looked into an airshaft. Mold stained the peeling orange wallpaper, and the refrigerator produced a maddening electric hum. On a broken coffee table, a small television silently played a DVD of the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. But even the jihadis around Wells looked bored with the tape.

Wells sat on a sagging couch in the living room, his hands cuffed in front. He had fallen asleep briefly after they cuffed him, fatigue overtaking him until the thought of Exley downstairs jolted him awake. Now he was hardly talking, harboring his energy while he waited for Khadri. The men with him didn’t seem to mind. There were seven, but only two had introduced themselves. Ghazi was the oldest and seemed to be the leader, a heavy man with a close-cropped beard and dark pouches under his eyes. The man who had been waiting for Wells called himself Abu Rashid — father of Rashid. He smoked constantly, flicking ashes onto the floor, putting his cigarette down only to spit into the sink. In fact all seven men smoked, and the room’s air was stale and heavy, worsening Wells’s nagging cough. He wished someone would crack a window.

With the possible exception of Ghazi, the seven men in here had never been professionally trained, Wells could see. They weren’t nearly as aware as Qais and Sami had been. Only three of them had pistols, the guns tucked loosely into their pants: Ghazi and Abu Rashid and a dark-skinned Arab with a long beard whose name Wells didn’t know. Most importantly Abu Rashid hadn’t found Wells’s knife because he hadn’t patted down his legs.

But Wells wasn’t about to make a move. Not yet. Not until he saw Khadri.

“Water?” Ghazi asked him.

“Please,” Wells said.

Ghazi looked him over with concern. “Are you all right? You seem unwell.”

“I could use a good night’s sleep.” Wells sipped the water Ghazi offered and closed his eyes, shutting out the room’s dim light. Around him the men spoke quietly in Arabic about the World Cup; for an hour they had debated Jordan’s prospects.

“Is Khadri coming?”

“Soon, my friend, soon.”

And then Wells heard the steps on the stairs.

KHADRI TOOK A single step into the apartment and closed the door. A surgical mask covered his nose and mouth. “Jalal.”

“Omar. My friend. Salaam alaikum.” Wells began to stand. A wave of dizziness passed through him. Why the mask? he wondered.

“Don’t get up,” Khadri said. “You need your strength.”

Wells stood anyway. A violent cough shook him.

“I’m sorry about Qais and Sami—”

“You’re here now. That’s what matters. And you have the package?”

“There.” The briefcase sat on the kitchen counter.

Khadri smiled. “I knew they wouldn’t keep you at the border.” Khadri punched numbers into the briefcase’s digital lock. The latch popped open.

“Your secret’s in there,” Khadri said. “See for yourself.”

He sent the case skittering toward Wells across the pocked wooden floor of the living room. My secret isn’t in this apartment, Wells thought. She’s sitting outside in a green minivan.