The Faithful Spy

At a hospital supply store near Atlanta General, he had put together an emergency medicine kit: Ace bandages, Betadine, clotting agent, gauze dressings, latex gloves, scalpels, splints, sterile solution, surgical scissors, syringes. Even Cipro, Demerol, and Vicodin, ordered from an Internet pharmacy in Costa Rica. His Delta training had included advanced battlefield medicine, and during the fighting in Chechnya Wells had set bones and treated shrapnel wounds. He had bought a couple of books on emergency medicine to refresh himself.

He was getting ready, all right. He only wished he knew what for. Wells looked at the Makarov in his hand, feeling the metal stubble of its grip. The Makarov was smaller and lighter than the Glock and sometimes got lost in his palm. Still, Wells liked having a pistol he could slip into his waistband. He pulled back the Makarov’s slide, chambering a round, and sighted the target, imagining Khadri’s face at its center.

The first shot pulled right about three inches. The Makarov just wasn’t as smooth as the Glock. Wells sighted again. This time he was straight but high. Wells exhaled and stood utterly still, visualizing the bullet’s path, seeing it plow into Khadri’s cheek, just under the eye, blood trickling out, Khadri crumpling as quickly as gravity could pull him down. He squeezed the trigger. Bull’s-eye. He practiced for another half hour, then unloaded the pistols and slipped them into their carrying cases. On his way out, he bought oil and a chamois cloth. He didn’t think they needed to be cleaned, but he wanted to break them down anyway, just to be sure.

“Good shooting today?” This from the owner, a tall, bearded guy named Randall.

“Just getting back into it.”

Randall smiled. “Look like a pro to me.”

back at his apartment Wells broke apart the pistols and wiped them down. He whetted his knives until their blades seemed ready to bleed. Finally he made himself stop. Khadri — or his men — were due to arrive tomorrow at Hartsfield, and Wells couldn’t ever remember feeling so anxious before a mission. He didn’t care if he died, but he could not fail. He could not fail. He had failed to stop September 11, failed to stop the Los Angeles bombings. Not this time.

He had kept to himself since his ill-fated night out with Nicole, the bartender from the Rusty Nail. He had even quit working as a day laborer to get ready for Khadri. Money wasn’t a problem; even after buying the guns and the gear, he had a couple of thousand dollars left from his stash. As far as he knew, Nicole had never called the cops; he had swung by the Kermex lot to check if anyone was looking for him, but nobody was. He wondered sometimes if Nicole had gotten back together with her ex-boyfriend. If they had, Wells figured he deserved the credit.

He was praying five times a day again too, examining the Koran with the intensity he had shown during his years on the frontier. In truth, his faith was weak. But he couldn’t let Khadri see any cracks in his fervor. He wanted to be sure he had recovered the daily rhythm of the religion by the time his fellow jihadis arrived. Mainly he worked through possible scenarios: What if Khadri’s carrying a vial of smallpox? What if he says Qaeda has a nuclear weapon but won’t say where? What if he comes with a dozen other men? Do I kill him on the spot? Try to play along with him so he’ll open up? Turn him over to the agency? Wells wished he could talk things through with Exley. But he knew that calling her would only get her in trouble. When he had more information for her he’d reach out. He needed to be ready, because the show was about to start. Khadri’s style seemed to be to wait, then move fast. He struck Wells as a man who would share information only at the last moment. When they’d met in Peshawar Khadri hadn’t even hinted at the Los Angeles bombings. But at some point he would have to explain his plans, and then Wells would have a chance to stop him. wells didn’t expect to sleep that night. But he did, a dreamless sleep, and when his alarm buzzed he came alert immediately, just as he had on those crisp fall mornings in Montana, hunting beside his father. He brewed himself a pot of coffee and bowed his head before Allah. Then he strapped the stiletto to his leg and headed for Hartsfield, the giant airport on Atlanta’s southwest edge. The morning traffic on 285 was even worse than he’d expected, but he had given himself plenty of time. He clicked on the pickup’s radio. Lately he had amused himself by listening to WATK, a crackly right-wing station far up the AM dial whose morning host, Bob Lavelle, was fond of conspiracy theories. For the last week Lavelle had talked about nothing but the explosion in Albany, the one that everyone else had already forgotten.

“Then why’d they evacuate the city?” Lavelle said. “I’m telling you, there’s a lot we don’t know about this.” Lavelle’s voice rose.