The Faithful Spy

He heard Exley sighing softly in the hallway, the neighbors beginning to rustle. Time to move. He grabbed the handcuffs and cuffed the Saudi to the steel radiator in the corner of the room. wells stepped over the bodies in the door and walked into the hall. He felt as though he had recrossed the River Styx. Exley lay pale and quiet, her eyes closed, the left leg of her pants dark with her blood. Wells tore off his shirt and tied a crude tourniquet around her leg to stanch the bleeding. Her eyes fluttered open.

“Jennifer. Jenny.” She moaned softly. He leaned down to hug her. She was cold. “You’ll be okay.” He hoped he was right. A cough racked him and he turned away. Though she was surely already infected, thanks to their kiss in Kenilworth. “We did it, Jenny.”

“Nobody but you calls me Jenny,” she whispered. “Why is that?”

“They don’t know you like I do.” He smoothed her hair. “I have to go.”

“Khadri?”

“Promise me you’ll hold on.”

She nodded, weakly.

“Promise,” he said.

“I promise.” He kissed her on the cheek as she closed her eyes. wells checked the clip on Ghazi’s pistol to see how many bullets were left. Six. Should be plenty. He had just one man left to kill. He popped the clip into the pistol and tucked the gun into his jacket. If he told the neighbors about the plague, they would panic. There would be time to get them antibiotics. He would call the police from the Ranger. He could already hear distant sirens through the walls of the tenement. As quickly as his poisoned lungs would allow he ran down the stairs.

18

t h e s t r e e t was empty, the sky above just beginning to break. The sirens were at least a half mile off; at this hour even the New York police department, with its thirty-five thousand cops, was spread thin. Wells shivered in the night air and trotted for his Ranger.

In the truck he reached into his bag and with a shaking hand grabbed a clean shirt and his medicine kit. He pulled the shirt over his head. Then he found his Cipro bottle and tipped four, five, six of the big white pills into his mouth. He swallowed them dry and sat up straight. Cipro was a potent, broad-spectrum antibiotic; Wells couldn’t be sure that it would work against the plague, but he hoped that he had just bought himself a few hours. Still, he would need to get to a hospital soon.

He remembered seeing The Price Is Right as a kid, watching Bob Barker tell the contestants they had to guess the price of the prize as best they could without going too high. “Whoever is closest without going over,” Barker always said. Wells figured he was playing that game with the plague now. As close as he could without going over. Wells twisted his key in the ignition and the Ranger kicked into life. He pulled into the street. At the first light he turned right—

south — then right again. West. Toward Manhattan. He was sure that Khadri would try to blow up the Yellow dirty bomb, whatever it was, as soon as he learned what had happened to his men. Which would be very soon. The media would be all over the bloodbath in apartment 3C.

wells crossed over the Willis Avenue Bridge into Manhattan as the sun rose in his rearview mirror. Time to call in the cavalry. He grabbed his cell and punched in 911. As he did the phone beeped. Low battery.

“Nine one one emergency.”

“There’s been a shooting on One Forty-sixth Street in the Bronx.”

He could hear the dispatcher clicking on her keyboard. “Yes, sir. Emergency units are on the scene.”

“Make sure they have biohazard gear. The apartment’s contaminated with plague.”

“Plague?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, are you certain—”

“Yes.” Wells hung up.

He didn’t know how to reach Shafer or Duto, but he hadn’t forgotten the number for the Langley crisis desk, which was always staffed. He punched it in. After a single ring a man picked up.

“Station.” An odd tradition that had lasted almost since the agency’s creation.

“This is John Wells.”

“And how may I help you, Mr. Wells?”

“I need to talk to Vinny Duto.” Again his phone beeped.

“There’s no one here by that name,” the man said smoothly. “Are you sure you have the right number?”

Wells punched the steering wheel in frustration. Of course the guy wouldn’t just put him through. He had probably never heard Wells’s name before. And Wells no longer had the emergency codes that agents used to prove their identities to the desk. He coughed viciously and spat a fat glob of phlegm onto the Ranger’s passenger seat. It was still gray, at least. If he started coughing blood even the Cipro couldn’t save him.

“Hello? Hello?” The man had hung up. Wells called back.

“Station.”

“Please. Get Duto for me. Or Ellis Shafer.”

The man hesitated. Duto’s name was public record, but Shafer’s wasn’t. “Tell me your name again?”

“John Wells. I’m an agent. My EPI is Red Sox.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wells. I have no way of checking your EPI. Whatever that is. If you have something else to tell me, please do it.”

“Look, I don’t have the codes anymore, but please believe me.”