The Faithful Spy

The door creaked open, a chain holding it in place. An old black woman in a housedress peeked out, her eyes glazed with cataracts behind thick plastic glasses. “Where’s Howard?”

“Ma’am, please go back to sleep,” Exley whispered, thinking, Please don’t raise your voice.

“Why’d you knock on my door?”

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Howard?”

“No ma’am. Someone else. A man.”

“Join the club.” The woman smiled, a big toothless grin.

“A man in this building. Upstairs.” Exley pointed up. “Maybe you heard him come in tonight. Not too long ago.”

The smile turned into a scowl. “They was banging up and down before.”

“Can you think what floor?”

“The third. Maybe the second.”

“Goodnight, ma’am. Thank you.”

“If you see Howard—”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

The door closed, and Exley was alone again. she walked up the stairs noiselessly. Until now, she had never been grateful for the ballet lessons that her mother had forced on her in grade school. She would have to thank Mom properly tomorrow. If she got the chance. At the top of the stairs she stopped. Up here both overheads were working, throwing their harsh light on the dirty yellow walls of the hallway. A dozen cigarette butts lay in a pile at her feet. Someone had been sitting here tonight, smoking. Waiting.

The floor was silent, the apartments dark. Outside a car rumbled by, its speakers pumping bass. Exley found herself shrinking against a wall. Then the noise faded, and the tenement was still. She looked down at the cigarette butts again. Of course. Cigarettes meant smoke. She sniffed for a moment. There. The faint odor of smoke grown stale after hours in this hallway. She moved forward slowly, following the scent, as obvious to her now as a trail of bread crumbs.

When she turned up the stairs to the third floor, the smell grew stronger. She slipped her hand inside her purse and found the.45. Without taking the pistol out of the purse, she slid down the safety. Slowly, silently, she climbed the stairs.

“jer-ry! jer-ry!”

A woman. In the hall. She knocked once, paused, then hammered furiously on the door of the apartment as if her fists could break the door off its hinges. “Jerry, you come out right now! Jerry!”

Wells recognized her voice immediately. How had she found him? No matter. He leaned forward, moving his hands closer to his knife. He could feel the adrenaline rising in his blood, overcoming the germs. Ghazi pulled out his pistol and leaned over Wells. Too close, Wells thought. He doesn’t know he’s too close.

“What do you know about this?” Ghazi said in Arabic.

“Nothing.”

Ghazi smashed his Makarov into Wells’s skull, just above the ear. A starlit pain flashed through his head. He grunted and leaned back but kept his arms forward.

“Is she with you?”

“I swear I know nothing.”

“It’s just one woman,” Abu Rashid said, his eye at the peephole.

“There’s no one else out there.”

“Jer-ry!” Exley screamed outside. “Leave that whore and come out RIGHT NOW or I’m calling the cops!”

The knocking began again, then a crash.

“She’s drunk,” Abu Rashid said. “She dropped her bag.”

“Fuck,” Ghazi said. “Crazy American woman. Get rid of her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Just get rid of her.”

a bearded arab man opened the door. A second man stood just behind him, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

“You’re not Jerry,” Exley said. Shoot first. She leaned over her bag and reached inside, feeling the pistol.

“This isn’t the apartment you’re looking for,” the man said. He began to close the door.

n ow. w e l l s c o u g h e d, leaned over, reached down with his right hand for his knife. As he came up he flicked open the knife. With his other hand, he grabbed Ghazi’s arm, pushing the gun away.

“Exley!”

Ghazi fired. Too late. The bullet missed Wells, blew through the couch, lodged in the wall. Wells forced the stiletto into Ghazi’s belly, feeling the fat and muscles tear underneath the blade, then ripped the knife upward, tearing viciously through Ghazi’s stomach. When the knife had gone as far as it could go, Wells reversed downward, widening the wound into the intestines. Ghazi screamed, dropped his gun, pressed his hands to his stomach, the blood already pouring out, black in the dim light.

w h e n w e l l s s h o u t e d Exley’s name, the man at the door looked back for a moment. She heard an unsilenced shot from the apartment. Without hesitation she lifted her purse and squeezed the trigger of the.45. The pistol fired through the bag, its echo muffled by the silencer and the leather. The round tore into the man’s hip, pushing him into the door.