Hard work, and slow, but steady and, with the batteries removed, safe enough. Bashir was already calculating how many days they would need before they could remove the secondary and get at the U-235. One? Two? Three at most. Then they’d have the raw material to start building their own bomb.
20
Give me the bad news,” Duto said as soon as Shafer walked into his office.
“How do you know it’s bad? Maybe it’s good.” Shafer wandered to Duto’s bookcase, plucked out
“It’s never good, these chats of ours,” Duto said. “And
“You may be right.” For the next five minutes, Shafer told Duto where Wells was and what had happened with Kowalski. Duto didn’t say a word, the only sign of his anger a faint flush in his cheeks. Years before, when Duto had run the Directorate of Operations, now the National Clandestine Service, he’d been a screamer and sometimes even a thrower. Pens, briefing books, on one infamous occasion a laptop loaded with encrypted files. The techs had needed two weeks to recover everything. But since his promotion to director, Duto kept his anger bottled up. Shafer figured some management consultant had told him that controlled rage was more effective than fist-pounding. It was true, too.
“All right, again, from the top,” Duto said, when Shafer was done.
“Why?”
“I need to hear this twice.”
Shafer did. By the time he was done, Duto’s face had turned a ripe pink, the color of a medium-rare steak. “You’re telling me that Wells already screwed us with the Russians. And then he gets a call from Pierre Kowalski and he dances over to Zurich to see him?”
“I believe he flew. Swiss Air.”
“And you signed off on this?”
“It’s John, okay. You see me telling him what to do?”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“And further that the real reason all this happened with Kowalski, the reason Wells and Exley got hit last month, wasn’t because we screwed up Kowalski’s play in Afghanistan last year. It goes back to Wells taping his head in the Hamptons?”
“Duct-taping, yes.”
“Which you and John and Jennifer, the three of you, didn’t see fit to mention until now. And now Kowalski, to get Wells off his back, gave up a name. A Turkish refugee in Germany—”
“Not a refugee, a legal immigrant, a business owner—”
“Don’t give a damn if he’s the president of the Elks Club, Ellis.” Duto picking up momentum now. “He’s trying to build a
“We don’t know that yet.”
“We know he wants beryllium. Desperate for it. And instead of coming straight to me on this, you tell Wells to meet the guy, Bernard, Bassim, whatever he’s called, on his own?”
“Again, Wells told me.”
“And Wells is pretending to be a mercenary? From
“Correct.”
Duto clenched and unclenched his fists three times, like a basketball coach signaling a play in from the sidelines. “You’re two little kids, kindergartners painting the walls with crayons. You can’t help yourselves. You just push me until I have no choice.” Shafer wondered whether he was going to see an old-time explosion. But Duto breathed deep, ran a hand over his face, controlled himself. “What do we know about the Turkish guy? Bernard?”
“He’s not in the Black Book”—the CIA’s database of 4,500 known or suspected terrorists—“nor the Gray Book”—a broader list, 37,000 names in all, friends, relatives, and associates of the people in the Black Book. “He’s not in the TSC database”—yet another list, this one managed by the FBI Terrorist Screening Center, mainly for the use of local law enforcement agencies.
“Any criminal record at all?”
“Can’t be sure because we don’t have fingerprints, but his name isn’t in the NCIC database”—a list of fifty million names, almost everyone who had ever been arrested, convicted, jailed, or paroled in the United States. “Interpol doesn’t have anything either.”
“The NSA?”
“Still checking.”
“Germans have any files on him? BND, local police?”
“I haven’t asked. Wanted to come to you first.”
“Nice of you. How about his business?”
“I’ve only started to look in public records, but it seems legit. He shows up in the Dun and Bradstreet corporate records for Germany, he’s listed in the Hamburg phone book, he’s in the Hamburg port database. Even got a Web site. Brings in rugs and machinery from Turkey, exports used cars and clothes to Africa.”
“Does he send anything to the United States?”
“Doesn’t look that way, but I’m checking.”
“You’re going to have a lot of other people helping you check, Ellis.”
“So be it,” Shafer said. “Long as they don’t get in my way.”
At that, Duto’s fists opened and closed, three times, another play called in. “Back to Wells. He’s meeting this guy when?”
“A couple hours from now. Six p.m. in Hamburg, noon here.”
“With no backup.”
“None whatsoever.”
“And no way of knowing that Kowalski didn’t triple him up, give his real name to this guy? No way of knowing that besides losing a nuke, we might wind up with a videotape of John Wells, our precious national hero, getting his head chopped off while bin Laden watches?”
“You sure you wouldn’t mind? You gave us that pretty speech about how we’re all on the same team, but your passion seems to have cooled.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t, but the White House would.”
“Kowalski’s on very thin ice and it’s not in his interest to play that kind of game.”
Duto drummed his fingers against his big oak desk, horses on the backstretch, coming around the far turn, lots of race left. Shafer wasn’t good at keeping his mouth shut, hated these silences, but this time he resolved to outlast Duto.
“You know the stakes here,” Duto said finally. “Why don’t you act like it?”
Because I trust Wells a lot more than I trust you, Shafer didn’t say. He’d already pissed Duto off plenty. “Worst case, he doesn’t get anything, we go in, pick up this guy Bernard, we’re right back where we started.”
“Worst case, Wells spooks him, sends him flying, and we miss our chance at his friends. Whoever they are. Wherever they are.”
“Vinny, he’s been in tight before and it’s always worked out. The BND’s more likely to spook this guy than Wells is. I say we give Wells a couple days before we tell the Germans.”
“Are you kidding me?” Duto said. He smiled, a big fake grin. “You are. You’re kidding me. Ellis Shafer, you joker you. I know you and John and Jenny, you have this us-against-the-world thing going, the three musketeers, all of it—”
“But—”
“No. You listen now. Last month, one muskeeter almost got killed and now the other one’s trigger-happy like
