3
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The capital placed strict height restrictions on its buildings, a way to keep the primacy of the Washington Monument on its skyline—and make sure no sniper could gain a shooting angle over the White House. The rule meant that the downtown streets were heavy with fifteen-story office buildings, concrete-and-glass boxes, each more boring than the next. With their marble lobbies and power-washed exteriors, they captured the city’s character. Bureaucracy with a shiny coat.
Wells walked down K Street, head bent. Washington left him wanting a concealed carry holster. The lobbyists and lawyers descended from their lairs as the afternoon fled. They brushed past Wells, slipped into their black cars to ride to their Georgetown town houses. They strolled to fifteen-dollar-martini bars to invent new tax loopholes. They weren’t all white. And they weren’t all men, not anymore. But they all looked prosperous and confident. Too bad they devoted so much drive and intelligence to scalping the other three hundred twenty million Americans.
Wells tried to stay out of politics. Strange to think, considering he’d just spent an hour at the White House. But he wondered if the whole system needed to be turned upside down. Though he had no idea how to fix it. Until the robots took over, governments would need people to run them. Call them courtiers, bureaucrats—whatever—those folks would find ways to take advantage of their position.
He had to call Shafer. He called Anne first.
“How’s the big man?” she asked.
“Almost had me feeling sorry for him.”
“Really?” She knew how Wells felt about Duto.
“He’s taking Dallas hard.”
“Maybe he’s just worried about his approval rating.”
“You’re even more cynical than I am. Anyway, he has an errand for me.”
“Of course he does.” She didn’t have to ask if Wells had said yes. “Days, weeks, months?”
“Not months. South America. How are you?”
“They still call it morning sickness if you have it all day?”
“I’ll ask my OB,” Wells said. “The little lady?” Emmie, his daughter. Now insisting she was three and a half. She wasn’t even three. Why three and a half and not four? Or ten? Or a million? Only she knew. Maybe three and a half seemed achievable.
“She asked me where you were, and I said Washington. Asked me why, and I said changing into your cape. Mistake. Now she’s obsessed. She asked me what color. I said pink with yellow dots. So you can look forward to that when you get home—”
She yelped.
“Anne?”
“Don’t get killed. Your son wants to meet you. He just kicked me.” Another yelp. “Hey there, buddy— I gotta go, John.” She hung up. The fact she hadn’t shown more concern about where Duto was sending him nettled Wells. But he could only blame himself. He’d proven too many times that his loyalties lay in the field, to the field. No matter that he might stay home for years. If the call came, he’d answer.
Wells reached the more modest streets around Logan Circle. On Sixteenth, he settled on a bench, called the Colombia number Duto had given him.
“Ricky?”
“Who is this?” Who ees thees? The accent moderate, understandable.
“My name’s John. We have a mutual friend. A muy important friend. When can I see you?”
A pause. “It’s not me. Someone I know.”
Wells wondered if Martinez had told Duto he didn’t have any information himself and was only arranging the meet. Duto rarely revealed all his cards, but Wells couldn’t see why he’d hide that one. Unless the someone was particularly unsavory.
“This person have a name?”
“I promised him I wouldn’t say.”
Martinez was already irritating Wells. “But he’s ready to meet?”
“You come down here?”
“Say the word.” Wells realized Martinez didn’t understand the expression. “Yes. Whenever.”
“Come as soon as you can. Call me when you’re here.”
“Enrique.”
“Sí.”
Wells had plenty of questions. Why not go through the CIA station? Did your contact insist, or did you come up with this plan all by yourself? And: What are you getting out of this? He doubted he could sweat Martinez from three thousand miles away, but he had to try.
“You know what this guy has? Now would be a good time to tell me.”
“Have a safe flight, señor.”
The second number from Duto was picked up after one ring.
“Tarnes here.”
“This is John Wells.”
“Hello there, John Wells.” Her voice brightening. Wells wondered what she knew about him. “I’m working late tonight. Can we have coffee in the morning? I live in Shaw—”
Shaw was a D.C. neighborhood north of the Convention Center. East of there. It was gentrifying, like everything else in Washington, but it still had rough patches. The choice surprised Wells. As a rule, CIA employees lived in suburban Virginia. “Sure.”
“Seventh, between P and Q. Compass Coffee. Seven forty-five.”
Then she was gone, and Wells was out of excuses. He called Shafer.
“John. An unexpected pleasure.” A slight ironic weight on unexpected. Wells supposed Shafer had figured this call would come after Dallas. “You down here to see the big man?”
“How’d you know?”
“Tracker on your phone.”
“I hope you’re joking.”
“Me too. We having a drink? Usual spot?” Shafer chortled.
“No way, Ellis.” The usual spot was Shirley’s. The worst bar in D.C. Shafer dragged Wells there whenever he could. The bottles were watered, the bartender was eighty and grumpy, and the hamburgers were . . . the less said about the hamburgers, the better.
“What do you care? You don’t drink. See you at nine-thirty.”
“Why so late?”
But Shafer was gone. Apparently, no one said good-bye anymore.
Wells arrived at 9:15 to find Shafer sitting by himself at the bar. The only other people in the room were the bartender and four oldsters at a table littered with empty Bud Light bottles. The jukebox was for some reason playing Cyndi Lauper. When the working day is done . . .
“Place went downhill.” Shafer’s face was pouchy as a crumpled topographical map. Sprigs of white hair curled off his skull. An old-school Baltimore Bullets T-shirt hung limp off his scrawny shoulders. Seeing him immediately made Wells feel better.
“If Purgatory has a bar, it looks like this.” Wells picked Shafer off the stool. “Gimme a hug, old man.”
Shafer struggled like a raccoon in a trap, and about as effectively. “When did you start hugging?”
When I had a daughter. “So cute and cuddly. A Jewish koala.”
“Anti-Semite.”
“I’m anti-everything.”
The bartender lurched over. “What you want?”
“Coke.”
The bartender mumbled his disapproval but thumbed a spray of Coke into a smudged glass with two sad pieces of ice. “Four dollars.”
“For a Coke?”
“What’s the sign say, man?”
Wells instantly regretted talking back. “Shirley’s?”
“It says bar. I don’t trust anyone who comes in here and doesn’t drink. And now it’s five.”
Wells fished in his wallet for a five.
“You don’t tip?”
“Sorry about my friend,” Shafer said. “He was dropped on his head as an adult.” To Wells: “No, no, allow me. Please.” He added his own five-dollar bill.
The bartender took the money and shuffled off.
“Flat?” Shafer muttered.
Wells sipped the Coke. “Completely.”
“Admit it. There’s pleasure in having your worst expectations confirmed. How’s the Granite State?”
“Anne’s pregnant.”
Shafer raised his eyebrows. “You two need a television.” He raised his glass. “Salud. I’d ask if you have any idea what you’re doing but I know you don’t, John. I guess you figured out where to put it, though.”
“Be nice or I’ll hug you again.”
Suddenly the bartender muted the music, switched the television in the corner to CNN, the crawl at the bottom of the screen reading SENATOR PAUL BIRMAN, SPEAKING IN TENNESSEE . . . IN WAKE OF DALLAS ATTACKS, CALLS FOR TIGHTER RESTRICTIONS ON MUSLIM IMMIGRATION . . .
“We gotta watch this?” Shafer said.
“He spits it straight,” the bartender said. “You don’t like it, go on. Plenty places in this town got ESPN.”
Wells had never seen Birman speak before. Now he understood why Duto was nervous. Birman was handsome, a crowd-pleaser. A populist with a preacher’s drawl. Everything Duto wasn’t. Anybody who could win over both the bartender at Shirley’s and an arena of business owners could be president.
“Not at home,” the bartender said when Birman was done. “That’s right. No more nonsense.”
“Watching that speech was thirsty work—” one of the guys in the booth said.
“Yeah, I got it.” He brought them four fresh beers.
“Car accidents kill thirty-five thousand people a year in this country,” Shafer muttered. “Alcohol a hundred thousand. This guy wants to turn our foreign policy upside down because idiots with AKs got loose at a basketball game. Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.”
“People want to be safe.”
“Closer I get to the cliff, the more I see that’s an illusion.”
“Everyone dies, so why bother? That today’s special, Ellis? Hope Duto’s got something better.”
“Guess a mosque will have to get firebombed before you hear the dog whistle. Birman’s dangerous.”
“Think he’s going to introduce a war resolution like he says?”
“Yes. Might pass, too. So what’s Duto want?”
Wells explained.
“Bogotá,” Shafer said. “Long way from Dallas. You think it’s real?”
“I can’t figure why anyone down there would know anything. I think Duto’s grasping at straws.” As soon as he spoke, Wells knew he was right.
“What do you need from me?”
The moment Wells had dreaded. “Know an ops officer named Julie Tarnes?”
“She’s all right. What about her?”
“Duto wants me to go through her from now on.”
Shafer shook his head. “Et tu, John-nus.”
“I said only if it was okay with you.”
“No you didn’t. Because you knew it wouldn’t be.” Shafer poured himself more rotgut from a mysterious brown bottle. “How’d he sell it?”
“You can guess.” Strange to think that only a couple years ago, Shafer had seemed unstoppable. But then, a couple years made a real difference at seventy.
“They’re sick of us being right, John. Want to pretend that we didn’t save their asses in Paris. They can’t make me retire. Not even Duto.”
“No one’s making you retire, Ellis. He just wants me to use her for the operational stuff.”
“You think Duto’s looking out for you? Tarnes is his. This puts you under his thumb even more than you already are. You don’t care if it means you get a fake passport five minutes early. Let me tell you, you get yourself stuck in a French jail, you think this woman’s gonna save you?”
“I’ll tell her no.”
“You had your chance.” Shafer slipped off his stool, strode out, leaving the door to slam.
The bartender turned at the noise, frowned at Wells. “Hey . . .”
“Don’t worry. I got his tab.”
“What’d you do to him, man?”
Wells walked up New York Avenue, a depressing slog past train yards and strip clubs. Finally, he found a Holiday Inn Express, where he spent the night staring at the ceiling. He’d committed no shortage of sins. But he’d never thought of himself as disloyal. Until now. He told himself Shafer had no cause for complaint. Wells couldn’t help the fact Shafer had angered so many people at Langley. Or that Shafer was old.
But the words didn’t stick.
Not how he wanted to start this mission.
Around 5 a.m. he gave up on sleeping and went down to what passed for the hotel’s gym. Two rickety treadmills and a cheap weight machine. He nearly tore a cable out of its socket working his lats. Birman’s speech was the lead story on every channel. The Republican Party has a new front-runner . . . President Duto has always said he couldn’t go to war against the Islamic State even if he wanted to because Congress hasn’t given him the power. This resolution would change that . . . What does Birman’s rise mean for Muslims in the United States? We’ll talk to two imams . . .
All this after just one attack. What about next time?
Wells arrived at Compass Coffee showered and scrubbed and wanting to be angry at Tarnes. She stood out front, a tall woman, mid-thirties, short blond hair flat against her skull, a prominent chin, the start of sun damage around her brown eyes. She wore a gray pantsuit that showed off her long legs. A striking woman. Wells imagined she’d had to deal with her share of unwanted advances in Pakistan and Iraq.
“Should we walk?” Her voice was quiet and confident. Husky. She led him east down P Street, past a giant school, uniformed kids running for the doors.
“How do you know Vinny?” Wells said.
She gave him a searching look. He wondered if she and Duto were lovers. Duto was thirty years her senior, but presidents got what they wanted. Then Wells realized they weren’t. But the question had come up before, and Tarnes was tired of hearing it. All this without a word spoken.
“Every few months, a bunch of us go across the river for a chat.”
“Rising stars.”
“Something like that.”
“I’m sure Ludlow appreciates Vinny pretending he’s still DCIA.” Peter Ludlow was the agency’s director. He’d failed to catch a traitor who had betrayed the CIA to the Islamic State, but Duto had let him stay on. In part because the mistake belonged to Duto, too.
The traitor was gone now, his secrets buried with him. Even within the agency, only a handful of officers knew what had happened. Wells didn’t know if Tarnes was among them. The agency was a gossipy place, but some stories didn’t spread.
“I have no idea what the director does or does not appreciate. But last week the President brought me in again, asked me if I was ready for a special assignment.” Another hard look: Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.
“Any idea why he chose you?”
“None.” The denial a touch too fast. She had an idea. Wells let the hint go.
“You were in Pakistan?”
“I was.”
“What was that like?”
“You know.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I don’t think I had an honest conversation in three years.”
“No different than Langley, then.”
She gave him a smile and then whisked it off. “I actually preferred being at the combat outposts with the operators. At least out there we knew who the enemy was.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe. You really Muslim?”
“Indeed I am.”
“I have a hard time seeing you in a mosque.”
“Now you’re just being argumentative.” Wells couldn’t help himself, he liked this woman. “So you’re my fixer now, Julie?”
“Call me what you like.”
“And still have your day job. So what happens if I need you, you’re in Islamabad or whatever?”
“You’re my priority, John. The President made that clear.”
“Can you call him Vinny for me?”
“I cannot.”
“Will you be asking me why I need what I need? Gear, cash, op support, anything else?”
“I will not. Tell me or don’t, your choice.”
“And if I choose to tell you and you think I’m making a mistake—”
“I will tell you so and then deliver what you’ve requested.”
“Sounds perfect. Except for the part where you tell Vinny everything.”
“You think he doesn’t find out if the ask comes from Shafer? You think all that cash and all those guns don’t get logged?”
Point, Tarnes. Wells liked to pretend the agency’s help came for free. It didn’t.
“You do what I ask before you tell Vinny. You okay with that?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t say yes unless you’re sure.”
A pause. “Okay.”
Wells decided to trust her. A little. “Vinny tell you anything specific about what I might need?”
She shook her head.
“Clean pistol, a clean passport, and, say, fifteen thousand dollars delivered to a hotel in Bogotá tomorrow.”
“I thought you were going to ask for something complicated.” She tapped his hand with two elegant fingers, her touch light enough to mean anything he wanted. “Any preference on the pistol?”
“Loaded.” Wells thought of Anne, pregnant with his son. Was he flirting with this woman? He didn’t want to be, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.
“The best kind. You have the hotel yet?”
“I’ll let you know.” He stood. “Nice to meet you, Julie. Don’t screw me.”
She saluted. And grinned.