briefcase, he extracted two brick-sized blocks of light gray metal carefully wrapped in plastic. Five kilograms — about eleven pounds — of beryllium each. Wells laid the bricks on the coffee table. The metal came straight from a Department of Energy stockpile in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, though it of course bore no markings. Wells had told Shafer that he needed to get Bernard enough beryllium to buy some time, convince the guy he was serious. Shafer had gotten Duto to sign off after the weapons designers at Los Alamos agreed that ten kilograms of beryllium wouldn’t be enough to make a meaningful difference to the bombmakers even if Bernard somehow got it to them.
Wells tapped the bricks. “Don’t touch,” he said to Bernard’s wife. “
She nodded. “Good,” he said. “Tell Bernard I’ll call him tonight.” Wells pantomimed putting a phone to his ear.
WELLS STEPPED into the Mercedes he was now thinking of as his own — or at least Roland Albert’s — and cruised past a Deutsche Telekom service van parked about fifty yards from the house.
Twenty minutes later, he left the Mercedes with the valet at the Kempinski, pulled out his satellite phone. Shafer picked up on the second ring.
“Ellis. I thought you said no static posts.” Wells had insisted that he work entirely apart from the BND agents monitoring Bernard’s movements. But Shafer had assured him that the Germans would be cautious. Rather than watching the house from fixed positions, they would rely on drive-bys with a dozen anonymous cars, each passing the house every fifteen minutes or so.
“I did.”
“Then why is a telco van sitting down the block from Bernard Kygeli’s house? Subtle.”
“Maybe somebody wants DSL.”
“Ellis—”
“I’ll look into it.”
“Anything else I should know?” The BND had tapped Bernard’s phones — home, cell, work — and thrown a replicator on his fiber-optic connection that allowed them to see the Web traffic that came into and out of his house and office. His trash was being searched and his tax records for the last decade examined.
“He may be an amateur, but he’s cautious,” Shafer said. “Two days ago, he bought a prepaid cell, made a couple of calls, tossed it in the river. Yesterday he went into an Internet cafe off the Reeperbahn for three minutes, but he was gone before we knew what terminal he was at. And that traffic isn’t stored anyway. I don’t think he’s in charge. He’s just checking in with whoever has the stuff, letting them know he’s working on getting the beryllium.”
“How about the money?”
“The business looks legit. And there’s been no transfers from Dubai or Saudi or anyplace. But we don’t see anything like four million euros loose. In fact, it looks like he’s been slipping a little bit the last year or two. We don’t know why. But his bank balances have been trending down. Anyway, he’s got a million-five stashed away in the accounts we can see, plus the house is worth another million. If he’s got it, it’s in a Swiss account or a safe box somewhere. Or maybe he’s not planning to pay you at all.”
Was Bernard crazy enough to plan on killing Roland Albert after he got the beryllium? “I can’t see it,” Wells said. “He’s not a fighter.”
“Pride goeth, John. You leave him the package?”
“Yes. Took a look around his house, too. See if you can find any connection to a law firm in New York. Snyder, Gonzalez, and Lein, it’s called. They did some work for him last year. Something to do with insurance.”
“New York? Weird. All right, spell it for me.”
Wells did.
“I’ll check it out,” Shafer said. “Be safe.”
“Aren’t I always?” Wells hung up.
HE WENT BACK to the Kempinski, worked out for almost two hours, weights plus eight miles on the treadmill. He showered, dressed, reached for his phone to call Bernard, then changed his mind and decided to let the man stew for a few hours more. He lay on the bed and napped—
And woke to a heavy knock on his door.
“Yeh?” Even muzzy-headed with sleep, Wells remembered that in this room he was Roland Albert.
“What do you want?”
Rap! Rap! “Open the door, Mr. Albert!” This in English.
The voice sounded like Bernard’s. Wells wished he could look through the peephole, but doing that was an easy way to get a bullet in the eye. Whoever the guy was, Wells wanted him out of the corridor before he attracted other guests’ attention. Wells moved silently to the door, grabbed his Glock, unlocked the door, and in one smooth motion pulled it open with his right hand while holding the pistol across his body with his left.
Bernard stood in the corridor, pistol at his side. He tried to raise it, but Wells lunged through the doorway, knocked his arm up and back, and pinned him against the opposite wall of the corridor as quietly as he could.
Wells jerked Bernard’s arm down so the pistol pointed at the carpeted floor of the corridor. “Drop it,” Wells said.
Bernard hesitated. “Before I break your arm, you bloody idiot.” The pistol landed with a soft plop on the carpet. Wells kicked it away. “Now get inside.”
BERNARD SAT ON Wells’s bed, his shoulders hunched, arms folded, face an angry red. Wells had given him back his pistol after tossing the clip. The gun, the same Glock Bernard had carried in the warehouse, sat uselessly beside him.
“What do you think you’re doing? Eh?”
“You come to my house—”
“Look at me, Bernard.”
Bernard turned his head toward Wells, slowly, as if the motion itself were painful.
“That’s twice you’ve pointed that gun at me. You idiot.
“You insult my wife.”
“I didn’t touch your wife.”
“You involved her in this.
“
“Why did you come to my house?”
“I wanted to see who I was dealing with. You understand? Wanted to make sure you didn’t have a medal from the BND on your office wall. And you weren’t home, so I took a look-see. I didn’t hurt your wife, did I? Instead of coming over here, trying to threaten me, you ought to thank me. You saw the present I left you? Ten kilos, 99.7 percent pure. Assay it if you don’t believe me. I’ll get you the rest in a week, maybe less.”
“Yes?”
“But first tell me how you figured out I was staying here.”
Bernard smiled. “You’re under your own name. This was the eighth hotel I called. When I got here, I told the concierge I was an old friend, wanted to surprise you. I gave him a hundred euros.”
“Not bad. For an amateur. Where’s my money?”
“Your money?”
“I’ve shown you I can come through. It’s your turn now. I want two million euros. Three million more on delivery.”
“I only have four. I told you.”
