The Faithful Spy

He whipped off his ski mask and ran around the unfinished house and down the driveway to the street where he had parked his pickup. The houses on this side were still dark. A lucky break. He slid inside the Ranger, pulled his Red Sox cap over his head, and drove off. As he turned onto Mount Vernon he could see a police cruiser speeding toward him, flashers blazing, sirens screaming. The officer inside looked hard at him as they passed but didn’t slow down. And Wells drove free into the night.

back at his apartment he sat at the kitchen table, trying to control the faint shaking of his left hand. The adrenaline was gone now and he just felt tired. Beyond tired. Exhausted deep into his bones. In April he had told Walter the interrogator that he didn’t remember how many men he had killed. He had lied. He remembered every one. Now he had two more to add to his list. He thought of that first buck he had shot so many years before. No, he didn’t hate killing. But he was sick of it, sick of being good at it. Sick of knowing that he would have to do it again. He had been around too much death for too long.

Wells forced the thought of death out of his head and balled his hand into a fist. When he opened it again, the shaking was gone. He couldn’t blame himself for tonight. Khadri had put him in an impossible spot. He had played his cards as best he could. He couldn’t have known that West would be with the guard. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he murmured to the empty kitchen, and felt a faint ugly smile cross his face.

He considered calling Exley, turning himself in, trying to explain what had happened. But that was impossible. Things had gone too far tonight. He’d been involved in the killing of a three-star. No way to sweep this under the rug. Even if the agency believed him, it would have no choice but to lock him up. Or just make him disappear. No, he could never redeem himself unless he brought in Khadri, dead or alive. Nothing less would save him from the agency. Nothing less would save him from himself. All this killing had to take him somewhere.

Get the bad guy, save the country, get the girl. Simple, really.

“Yeah, I’m right on track,” he said aloud to the empty room.

.

t h e g o o d n e w s was that the cops and the FBI would have a hard time figuring out what had happened tonight, Wells thought. Plus they would keep the details of the killings out of the media. No sense in ruining West’s reputation.

So Khadri would know only that Qais and Sami had died alongside West and the bodyguard. Khadri wouldn’t trust Wells more than he had before tonight, but he wouldn’t trust Wells any less either. Wells figured he would hear from Khadri soon or not at all. And his next mission, if there was a next mission, wouldn’t be a test run. In the park earlier today Khadri had looked like he was running short on time.

Wells knew just how Khadri felt.

13

the cat was in pitiful shape.

When Tarik picked her up from the animal shelter a week before, she had been runty but healthy, an energetic tabby whose fur was a mottled blend of black, brown, and white. Unlike most strays, she showed no fear of humans. She swiped playfully at him on the drive home. Even when he locked her in the cage in the bubble in the basement, she didn’t fight.

“You’ll really like her,” the woman at the SPCA had told him.

“She’s a great choice.”

and the woman was right, though not for the reasons she would have liked. Three days after being exposed to an aerosolized mist of Y. pestis, the cat lay on her back, mewling quietly. Tarik could hardly bear to look at her. Her fur was matted and greasy with the blood she had vomited. Pus caked her green eyes. Open sores covered her stomach. She could hardly turn her head when he entered the bubble and approached her cage.

Enough, Tarik thought. He sank a syringe into a vial of sodium pentobarbital solution and carefully measured out two milliliters of the liquid. He grabbed the cat’s back left leg and looked for a vein on her stomach. Under normal circumstances, she would have fought. Instead she waved her paws feebly in the air and closed her eyes. Tarik found a vein and jabbed the needle into it. The cat went limp a few seconds later.

“Poor cat,” Tarik said. “I’m sorry.”