flex-cuffs even sooner. She was strong and angry and Wells hadn’t bound her very tight.
The private security car was gone when Wells emerged on the street. Good. He would have to leave Dubai on the first flight he could book. He had left a trail that even Mr. Magoo could follow. The Dubai police would call the local security guards as soon as they got inside the house. In hours, Jalal Haq would be a wanted man.
So Wells headed for Dubai International. Along the way he made two phone calls, one to Air India, the other to Singapore Airlines. Getting out at this hour was easy. Most long-haul, fully fueled flights took off from Dubai after dark to avoid the desert heat. The airport was as busy at midnight as at noon. Reserving seats was no problem, once Wells explained that he would be happy to buy a first-class full-fare ticket.
At the airport, he dumped the Toyota in a short-term lot and checked into the one a.m. Singapore Airlines flight under his Jalal Haq passport. He headed straight for passport control. He’d left the house barely forty minutes before. Even if the police had already arrived and gotten Jalal Haq’s name from the guards, Wells couldn’t believe the immigration agents would have it yet. “You didn’t stay long, Mr. Haq.” The agent was polite, vaguely puzzled. Nothing more. Dubai was the ultimate stopover. Plenty of visitors stayed only a few hours.
“I’ll be back.”
“Please do.” Then Wells was through, down the escalator and onto the moving walkway that ran to Terminal 1. The place was as absurdly diverse as a Coke ad. Two blue-eyed Russian hookers in miniskirts stood next to a half dozen women in full burqa. An African man, tall and thin and ebony dark, towered over three Japanese tourists who were, yes, taking pictures of one another. A cliche in three dimensions.
The police would be looking for a Saudi in a robe. Wells stopped at a duty-free store and bought an overpriced button-down shirt — long-sleeved, to hide the bruises on his arm where the housekeeper had bitten him — and a pair of jeans and reading glasses and a blue baseball cap with the logo of the Burj Dubai. He found a men’s room and went back to being John Wells. At a newsstand, he bought a copy of Michael Connelly’s newest paperback. A trick from the Farm. Books hid their readers’ faces almost as well as newspapers, and were a far less obvious disguise.
He found the gate for his Air India flight to Delhi and presented himself to the agent. “Name’s John Wells. Wanted to double-check my seat. Think it was two-A, but I lost my boarding pass.” The no-nonsense American businessman, skipping pronouns to save time.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wells. You haven’t checked in.”
“Sure I did.”
She tapped her keyboard doubtfully. “I can’t find it in the system. But I guess you must have or passport control would have stopped you. No matter. I’ll recheck you.”
Wells took his boarding pass and settled in to read Harry Bosch’s latest adventures. Connelly was always reliable. A half hour later, he looked up to see three airport police officers walking briskly past. The Singapore flight boarded ten gates down.
Five minutes later the Air India flight opened for boarding. Wells was first in line. As he walked onto the jetway, he heard the terminal’s loudspeakers announce, “Mr. Jalal Haq, please report to security. Mr. Jalal Haq, please report to security.”
Wells would have to remember for future reference that the Dubai police didn’t waste time. Jalal Haq had managed to clear passport control, but he’d have no way to get on a plane. Without the spare passport, Wells would have been stuck. When cops looked over the surveillance videos, they would realize that Jalal had gone into a bathroom and hadn’t come out. Meanwhile, though, the police weren’t about to shut down one of the world’s busiest airports to look for one Saudi who’d tied up a housekeeper.
DELHI WAS SUPPOSEDLY a fascinating city. Wells didn’t care. He checked into the hotel closest to the airport, a Radisson. As soon as the door to his room closed, he booted up Miller’s laptop and scanned its files, which consisted mainly of photos of Miller with different women. Plenty of the pictures were what Internet gossip sites called Not Safe for Work. Wells also found spreadsheets and tax returns. For a drug dealer, Miller kept good financial records. Wells didn’t see any hint of Miller’s drug trafficking or his connection with Thuwani. Of course, he was no expert at recovering hidden files. He would send the laptop to Shafer and hope the Langley geeks could find more.
The miniature black notebook held a handwritten list of figures and dates that stretched back years. Wells guessed he was looking at Miller’s record of his drug deals. On the last page of the notebook, Wells found three phone numbers, another crumb for the NSA.
Finally, Wells turned to the legal pad. Its top sheet was blank. Wells wasn’t even sure why he’d taken it, except that it had been directly under the laptop. He flipped through it, not expecting anything.
But there it was. About three pages from the end, Miller had written,
Everywhere else, Miller’s handwriting had been careful and precise. Here he’d swiped the words across the page. His desperation was obvious. Wells puzzled over the sheet for a while and then called Shafer. Who answered on the first ring, though it was midnight now in Virginia.
“What are you doing in Delhi?”
Wells didn’t ask how Shafer knew the city code for Delhi, much less the country code for India. “Long story.”
“You all right? Did the stuff work?”
“Yes, but I had some trouble.”
“Anybody die?”
“No.” Wells hesitated.
“Out with it.”
“I had to punch a woman in the head. A civilian in the house.” Wells couldn’t bring himself to say
“As long as you didn’t kill her.”
“I’m comforted to hear you think I’m capable of killing a random woman. How was Chicago?”
“Not much. The wife hasn’t heard from him in a while. Besides punching women, did you get anything?”
“His computer. I didn’t see anything on it, but I’ll send it to you. And I want to fax you something he wrote. There’s some kind of code on it.”
“Code.”
“You’ll see.”
Ten minutes later, Shafer called back. “Where’s the code?”
“Dragon? Stryker?”
“You never heard of Strykers? Big armored trucks? Badly designed, lots of problems, but the Army bought them and by God it’s going to use them even if they get guys killed. Ring any bells?”
“Now that you mention it.”
“And guess what. The 7th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, also known as Task Force Dragon, is based east of beautiful Kandahar City in Zabul province at Forward Operating Base Jackson. About four thousand soldiers there. Now all you have to do is figure out which of them are big-time heroin smugglers. Don’t worry. I’m sure they have a big sign over their cots.”
“Four thousand is better than a hundred thousand,” Wells said. “What about Daood?”
“You’ve got ideas on where to find him, I’m open. But I suspect he’s up in the mountains with Amadullah, and I think you’d be pushing your luck to go back there.”
“I can’t disagree.”
“Plus, the way I read this note, Daood was trying to figure out who was running him just like we are.”
“Stan?”
“There’s no one with that first or last name at Kabul station. I checked. And doesn’t it strike you as awfully coincidental? Like, Afghani-stan?”
“Nice.”
“Nice. So I’ll put the NSA onto the new phone numbers and e-mail addresses you got. But I’m betting they won’t go anywhere. Anyway, soon as Miller comes out of the mountains and hears what happened in Dubai and Chicago, he’ll know we’re looking for him. He’ll know the game is almost over. I’ll bet he reaches out to us.” Shafer
