The Faithful Spy (36 page)

There were just three problems with all this activity.

No one had a picture of Khadri.

No one knew what the Yellow was.

And they were all too late anyway.

AT
7:43
, KHADRI
swung the Yellow from Central Park South onto Seventh Avenue. The traffic was hardly moving, but even the worst New York gridlock couldn’t keep him from his target, he thought. He looked out through his vehicle’s high square windshield at the
kafirs
elbowing one another on the sidewalks, rushing to their offices so they could fatten their pockets.

If they only knew the fate that awaited them, the fire and ash, the deadly smoke. Then they wouldn’t be so worried about getting rich. But it was too late for them. He looked back at the trunk, then at the detonator, hidden at his feet, where it couldn’t be seen. These people would have to hope for mercy from Allah, he thought. They would get none from him.

The light at Fifty-eighth Street turned green. Khadri eased down on the gas. The Yellow rolled ahead.

WELLS LEANED AGAINST
the western edge of the TKTS booth, in a traffic island on the northern edge of Times Square, on Forty-seventh Street between Seventh Avenue and Broadway. In the afternoons the booth sold discount Broadway tickets to tourists, but in the morning it was closed, the only empty space in the maelstrom that stretched from Forty-seventh to Forty-second. Instead of fighting the crowds, Wells had decided to conserve his strength and wait at the booth, where he could cover the vehicles heading south into the square on Broadway and Seventh Avenue.

He knew he wouldn’t be out here much longer anyway, and not just because of the plague. In the last five minutes police sirens had been screaming to the east, the north, the south, all over. As Wells watched, two cops pulled their pistols and ordered the driver out of a cab double-parked by the Morgan Stanley headquarters on the corner of Forty-seventh and Broadway. The word was out. He would soon be irrelevant. But not just yet. Wells shivered and turned his attention to Seventh Avenue.

He knew, somehow, that Khadri was very close. The Yellow. It had to be some kind of vehicle, Wells thought. A cab made sense, but it was too obvious. Khadri had been so pleased when he’d said those words in the apartment. Not a cab. And not a truck. A truck was too big, too hard to hide. The Yellow was something else, something that was big enough to hold a good-sized bomb without attracting attention. But what?

A police car turned onto Forty-seventh Street and stopped in front of him. The officers inside looked curiously at him. The driver rolled down his window.

“You okay, buddy? You look a little sick.”

“Fine,” Wells said. He tried not to cough.

FIFTIETH STREET…
Forty-ninth…Forty-eighth…

Khadri kept both hands on the wheel and tried to contain his adrenaline as the Yellow headed south. The traffic was so heavy that the people on the sidewalks were walking as fast as he was driving, but that didn’t matter now. Nothing could stop him. His hands were shaking, but not from fear. He should have been scared, he knew, but instead he felt only excitement. The world would long remember this day.

THE TRAFFIC CAME
to a stop on the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. Three black Lincoln Town Cars, a UPS delivery van, a Range Rover, a battered Volkswagen Jetta, and a little school bus—what the kids in Montana called a short bus. The bus was empty except for the driver, but it was riding low on its wheels, like it was carrying a heavy load.

Wells looked at it and knew. Khadri. The ironist. Of course. And no one would look twice at a school bus.

The Yellow was second at the light, on the west side of Seventh Avenue, behind a Lincoln. Maybe sixty feet away. Three seconds if he ran. Ten if he walked. Wells tucked the cap down on his head and began to walk east, toward Seventh Avenue. Khadri was half right, he thought; they were meeting again, but not in paradise. In Times Square.

“Hey, buddy,” the cop said. Wells kept walking, crossing behind the police cruiser and through the taxis that were moving slowly across Forty-seventh.

Forty feet. He coughed, a vicious rib-shaking eruption he didn’t try to cover. If he didn’t get to the bus, the people around him would have bigger problems than plague.

“Hey. I’m talking to you.” The cop wasn’t yelling, not yet.

Wells reached the north side of Forty-seventh and turned right, cutting between clots of men in suits who were scurrying west toward the Morgan Stanley headquarters. Thirty feet. Not close enough, not yet. Khadri would surely have the detonator in his lap. Wells slipped a hand into his waist and grabbed his gun, holding it under his jacket.

He peeked back and saw that the cops were getting out of their cruiser. He began to trot toward the bus.

Twenty feet. “Stop!” he heard the cops yell, but an enormous honk from a UPS truck drowned them out. He could see Khadri now behind the driver’s seat of the otherwise empty bus, sitting straight up, head held high, as if he could already see paradise.

Ten feet.

A FEW SECONDS,
Khadri told himself. This light would turn green, he would drive two blocks, and in the heart of the square, at Forty-fifth Street…he would be complete. A few seconds. Two blocks. The detonator was still at his feet. He wasn’t allowing himself to touch it, so he wouldn’t have the temptation to blow it too early. He wanted this to be perfect.

And then he saw the man in the Red Sox cap, running toward the bus, a gun in his hands.

Khadri screamed, pure animal rage. He reached for the detonator—

Wells’s first shot ripped through his chest, knocked him back toward the window. Khadri felt no pain, just enormous anger. He wouldn’t let the
kafirs
take this from him. He reached down for the detonator that was so very close. But Wells kept coming, firing, and as he kicked open the door of the bus and jumped inside Khadri knew he had failed.

Wells leaned over Khadri, his hot feverish filthy breath in Khadri’s face, and Khadri knew. Wells was the angel of death. He tried to stay angry, but the black wind came for him and he closed his eyes. A dribble of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. A final agonal breath rattled his chest. He died.

WELLS FELT THE
shot even before he heard it. The muscles in his back seemed to explode. He twisted and fell forward. Onto Khadri. The cops. Doing their jobs. Getting the bad guy. So they thought. No. He had to live. He had come too far to die. He’d done his job too. All those years in the wilderness. He tried to lift his hands, but the effort overwhelmed him.

Wells could feel his blood, his hot dirty blood, pumping slowly down his back. As he closed his eyes and the world went black his last thought was Exley.

EPILOGUE

EXLEY WOKE. HER
left knee burned as if a shark had bitten off half her leg. But when she opened her eyes she saw her foot in the air. A sling held her leg in place. A hospital bed. Two women stood beside her, one wearing a white doctor’s coat, the other a nurse’s uniform. Surgical masks hid their mouths.

As consciousness found her, the pain in her leg turned to agony. The electrical fire inside her burned endlessly, every nerve in her knee sending an individual message of grief to her brain. “Hurts,” she choked.

Beyond her leg, the rest of her body ached terribly. And though she’d just woken she felt enormous fatigue, as if she’d been running for days on end. Exley clenched her fists against the pain and the nurse ran a hand down her arm, carefully avoiding the intravenous line plugged into her elbow.

The doctor stepped forward. “You were shot,” she said. “Do you remember?”

Now Exley did. “In the hall.”

“Would you like some ice?”

Exley nodded. Even talking was an enormous effort; her mouth seemed to lack any moisture. With her gloved hand, the nurse slipped a chip of ice into Exley’s mouth. Exley sucked on it, a cold piece of paradise. She began to remember more, her hours in the van, Wells shouting her name

“What happened?” Panic rose in her, under the pain. Wells. Where was he? Her last memory of him, leaning over her in the dirty yellow hallway.

“Can you tell me your name?” the doctor said.

“Jen. Exley.”

The doctor nodded. “I’m Dr. Thompson. Julie. I have some good news for you, Ms. Exley. Your children are here.”

“Where’s here?” She licked her lips, dry again.

“The infectious disease unit at Bellevue. New York. You’ve been here about sixteen hours. But we want to be sure you’re not contagious before we bring David and Jessica in.”

At the doctor’s second mention of her children Exley felt a strange sorrow overtake her. They shouldn’t see her like this. She had come so close to dying, giving them up. She had been absent from them for too long. The drugs and the pain and the shame melded in her mind and she felt hot tears running down her cheeks. The doctorExley had forgotten her name alreadypulled off her glove and put a cool hand on Exley’s forehead.

“There’s no reason to worry,” she said. “You were infected with some nasty stuff, but it looks like we caught it in time. You can probably see them tomorrow.”

Exley thought again of Wells. “Where’s John?”

The doctor glanced at the nurse. “Also here. He’s very sick.”

Very sick.
Exley closed her eyes.

“I know you’re in a lot of pain,” the doctor said. “We need to be careful about how much medication we give you, but if it hurts too much, tell us. When you feel better there are a lot of people who want to talk to you. To thank you. In the meantime try to sleep. Please.”

 
THE NEXT DAY
passed in a haze, Exley slipping in and out of consciousness as the nurses adjusted her medication. The doctors briefly brought in her kids and her mother, and Exley’s joy at seeing them overcame her shame. Still, she was glad when they left. She saw in their faces that they were shocked by the way she looked. The effort of trying to smile for them exhausted her. She passed out almost as soon as the door closed behind them.

When she woke again Shafer was crouched beside her bed. “Ellis,” she croaked. For the first time she felt a trace of energy returning, although her knee burned as if it were being torn apart from the inside out.

“Jennifer.” For once he seemed at a loss for words. He wrung his hands together and hopped around the room on his spindly legs.

“What happened out there?” she said. “They won’t tell me.”

“It was close, but you did it, Jennifer,” he said. “You and Wells.”

“What did they mean when they said I might be contagious?”

“I’m probably not supposed to be the one to tell you this, but Wells infected you with plague.”

Plague. Exley’s body ached at the word. Shafer rubbed her shoulder. “It’s okay. We think we’ve tracked down everyone who was exposed, here and in Canada.”

Canada? Exley decided not to ask.

“I need to see him, Ellis.”

“He’s in bad shape,” Shafer said. “He was exposed a lot longer than you, and he was shot in the back.”

“Khadri shot him?”

“No. The police.” A strange half smile crossed Shafer’s face. “Things got messy at the end, but it worked out all right. Our boy’s a hero and you must be too. The president’s coming up here next week. Meanwhile Duto’s taking all the credit, and I’m letting him.”

Duto’s name provoked a flare of anger in Exley, but the emotion faded as quickly as it came. She was just too tired. Shafer seemed to read her mind. “Don’t waste your energy, Jennifer. If it’s not him it’ll be someone else.”

“He’s going to make it. Right, Ellis?” In her haze she imagined trading her leg so Wells would live. Or both legs. Sure. Who needed legs anyway?

“I’m not going to lie. They’re saying fifty-fifty. But that’s better than yesterday.”

THE NEXT MORNING
she felt stronger, and she asked that they take her to his bed. They told her no, but she insisted. So they rolled her in her bed to a room watched by four New York City police officers wearing blue dress uniforms and white gloves. An honor guard.

Wells lay on his side, an intravenous drip in his arm, oxygen tubes in his nose, a catheter poking out from the sheets by his waist. He was pale and gaunt and his breath came slowly, but the steady beeping of the pulse monitor and oximeter above his head reassured Exley.

“I know he doesn’t look great, but he’s doing much better,” Dr. Thompson said. “He’s been trying to say something, mumbling. We think he could regain consciousness today.”

In the bed Wells twitched and sighed.

“Can you bring me closer?” Exley said.

WELLS STOOD OUTSIDE
a gleaming white skyscraper, the biggest he had ever seen. Its marble walls seemed to have no end. He wanted badly to get in though he didn’t know why. Something was impelling him, something he couldn’t fight. He was too tired to fight anyway. He looked for an entrance but the building had no doors or windows, only a single push-button entrance bell. He pressed the bell. It began to beep and a man in a blue blazer and a surgical mask materialized in front of him.

Please, Wells said without speaking. Yet he knew the man would understand.

The man pointed at Wells’s belt, where a dozen pistols hung. Makarovs, .45s, Glocks, even a couple of old revolvers. As Wells watched, the pistols morphed into each other. They were alive, he realized. He’d never seen living guns before. Yet the sight didn’t surprise him.

Take them off, the man thought-said.

I can’t, Wells replied. He looked down. A vast pit lay beneath him, filled with men and cranes and earthmovers building a neon city. You don’t know what it’s like down there.

Take them off, the man said again. Behind him the marble skyscraper lost its shine and began to fade. Wells desperately reached for the man in the blazer, but the man raised a finger, a single finger, and pain flooded Wells, radiating from his back into his shoulders and then across his body.

Wells looked up. The skyscraper was almost gone. He knew he would never get in if he kept his guns. He tried to pull them off but couldn’t: they were bound to him like leeches.

The building disappeared. The man shook his head and waved his hand angrily. And Wells fell.

HE LANDED ON
his back on hard, rocky ground. The neon city had vanished, and the sky above was black. Wells closed his eyes and saw stars, but dimly, like fireflies. He was looking at his own brain through a thick gauze curtain. Again he felt a surge of pain in his back. He looked at the stars. They were dim, too dim. They weren’t the stars he remembered from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan.

And once he understood that word everything came back, everything, all of it, all at once, as bright and wicked as a fever dream, only real; he could remember everything, and the pain from the hole in his back scorched through the morphine or fetanyl or whatever it was that they were giving him and

he opened his eyes. And there she was.