Twelve Days (25 page)

“She goes by Salome now.”

“Never spoken to her, but she worked for a right-winger in the Knesset who takes money from your friend Duberman. Daniel Raban. Raban’s on the Defense Committee, which means he gets regular briefings from the Mossad.”

“Worked? Or works?”

“I haven’t heard her name come up for a few years, so I doubt she still works for him. But Raban’s dumb enough to keep talking to her even if she isn’t on his staff anymore.”

Another mystery solved. Salome hadn’t needed a source at Langley giving her information, as Wells and Shafer had always assumed. The CIA and Mossad worked closely on Iran, so she would have heard plenty through Raban. Of course, Wells still couldn’t figure out how she’d found Mason, but that question was less important.

Rudi reached down, picked up the crumpled-up photo, unfolded it. “Lot of ifs. You’re sure that’s her.”

“Yes. Can you get me her mobile number? An email?”

Rudi fell silent as an Israeli fighter jet passed northeast, tracing the line of the border.

“Number, yes. But I’m not going to find her for you. That you have to do yourself.”

“Thank you.” Wells paused. “I have one more question. Not about her.”

“What, then?” Rudi looked exhausted, with Wells and himself. Wells reminded himself the man had spent his whole life stealing other people’s secrets while keeping his own. Trading information was fine, but in this case Wells had nothing to give. Yet another reason Rudi must find this conversation painful.

“You remember, in the nineties, a deal where the South Africans transferred all their highly enriched uranium to you? Gave it or sold it, I’m not sure which.”

Rudi nodded. “This was ’90, maybe ’91. The Afrikaners
knew they couldn’t hold on much longer. They just wanted to be rid of the stuff. The Defense Minister brought us in, asked us if we saw any reason not to take it. We said no.”

“You know how much it was?”

Rudi shook his head. “Not much. Maybe enough for one bomb. It wasn’t like we needed it. We didn’t even pay for it.”

The story matched what Shafer had said. Another dead end.

“But the deal did have one odd bit,” Rudi said. “Probably why I remember it after all this time. The South Africans insisted on bringing us the stuff themselves. In fact, one of their guys literally flew the stuff up in a shielded trunk on a commercial jet. HEU, you know, it’s not that dangerous.”

“Why do it that way?”

“If they gave us a reason, I wasn’t close enough to hear. My
impression was that the South Africans wanted the stuff to disappear quietly, and we were fine with that.”

“Can you find out exactly who brought it, not who did the deal, but who actually brought it, and how much he brought? I know it’s a long time ago—”

Rudi coughed, lightly, then harder. Harder. His eyes bulged and his veins strained at his throat. Finally, he opened his mouth and spat a peach pit of phlegm and blood, beige and brown and crimson, liquid and fibrous. As rich and repulsive as an alien life-form that demanded to be vaporized by a plasma rifle.

Rudi raised his hands like a magician:
See what I’ve given you?

“The ladies must love that.”

Rudi’s eyes were wide with hate. Wells wasn’t sure if it was meant for him, or the world. “I’ll try to get you what you ask. It may take a day or two. But we all have so much time.”

Rudi opened the gate, stepped in. Wells wasn’t sure whether to follow.

“You plan to stay out there?” Rudi said.

“I didn’t know if Israel would have me.”

“I’ll take you to Taba—” The station on Israel’s border with Egypt, about ten kilometers south of this one. “Walk you through with no stamps on our side. What you do from there is up to you. I hear you get on fine in Arabic countries. But I want no record you were here. This dies with me.”

“Shokran,”
Wells murmured. The Arabic word for “thank you.”

“
Shokran
yourself.”

—

On the way to Taba, Rudi made three quick phone calls. When he was done, he scribbled an Israeli phone number and an email address on a notepad and pushed it at Wells without explanation.

“The email is strong, the phone not so much,” Rudi said.

“Hers?”

“Smart boy.”

“You ever meet Ellis Shafer, Rudi?”

Rudi shook his head.

“You two would get along.”

Rudi marched him to the Taba exit gate. In place of good-bye, his last words were:
Please don’t try to
come back this way after I’ve left. It won’t go
well.

Getting into Egypt wasn’t a problem. The border guard was far more concerned with making sure that Wells had the proper entry fee than his lack of an Israeli exit stamp. Wells bought yet another fresh phone, called Shafer.

“I’ll call you back.”

Thirty seconds later, Wells’s new phone buzzed, another number. Burner to burner. “Go,” Shafer said.

“First, Vinny’s friend confirms what you said about the stuff. Enough for one bomb. He says there was one odd part. Whoever delivered it insisted on bringing it in person. As in, flying up with it.”

“Like in an icebox? A kidney to transplant.”

“He didn’t have details, but yes, more or less.”

“He know who flew it up?”

“He didn’t have a name. I asked.”

“Even before he comes back with an answer, I think you should go down there, talk to Witwans.”

“Every time we guess wrong, we lose another two days.”

“You have a better idea?”

“I have the woman. Her real name.” Wells hesitated, decided that if the NSA was already up and listening on these new phones they had less than no chance. “Adina Leffetz. A-D-I-N-A—”

“Nice Jewish girl.”

“L-E-F-F-E-T-Z. She worked for an Israeli MP named Raban. Who was in the pocket of our friend in HK.”

“You’re sure?”

“I showed Vinny’s friend her picture. He knew right away.”

“You did good, John. I’ll find her.”

“I want to shake her. Make her play defense.”

A pause.

“That business or pleasure?”

Sometimes Wells wondered if Shafer was psychic. Despite everything, Wells couldn’t stop remembering Salome’s hand on him in that hotel bathroom. He hated her, but even hate meant something. “You have anything better?”

“I made my suggestion. South for the winter.”

“I’ll consider it. Anything else I should know?”

“Just that our friend from Pennsylvania burned his last bridge with POTUS. More than burned. Nuked. We’ll need something airtight to get another audience over there.”

Wells wanted to ask Shafer what he meant, ask about the Bekaa, too. But even on a new burner three minutes was too long. And the men around him were giving him odd looks. With his perfect Arabic, Wells could pass for Jordanian or maybe even Egyptian under the right circumstances, but right now he was whispering in English. “I gotta go.”

Wells hung up, considered his next move. Cairo. A five-hour drive west from Taba. Cabbies were happy to make the trip. From Cairo International, he could be in Western Europe in four hours or South Africa in eight. He could hide in Cairo, too. He had before. The city had no shortage of hostels and one-star hotels that were happy to take cash and not picky about identification. Worst case, he could sleep on the street.

—

Meantime, Wells decided to press his luck. He found another Internet kiosk. Set up another dummy email account. She could probably trace it here, but by the time she did, Wells would be gone.

He typed:
Adina. John Wells here. You weren’t nice to me in Volgograd but I’m the forgiving sort.
He reread the last sentence. No. Less whiny, more vaguely menacing. He deleted it, replaced it with—

Sorry you had to run in Volgograd, but now that I know how to find you I look forward to seeing you soon. Maybe I’ll even drop by.

He looked it over. Just so. Send.

FREE STATE PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA

T
he job was babysitting, and Amos Frankel hated it.

Frankel was Salome’s bodyguard, the man who’d drawn on Wells in Volgograd. He’d never been to South Africa before. If he wanted lions and elephants and giraffes, he would go to the zoo. Right now he belonged at Salome’s side, not a twelve-hour plane ride away. He’d told her so. She disagreed.

For that matter, he wished she had let him shoot Wells in Volgograd. A simple trigger squeeze. A few kilograms of pressure with his index finger. Nothing Wells could have done. They could have left the body in the hotel, been gone from Russia in two hours. Buvchenko had a jet at the airport. But Salome wouldn’t let him. Duberman didn’t want them to kill Wells, and anyway the drugs they’d planted would destroy him, she said.
By the time the Russians are finished with him, he’ll
wish he was dead
.

Frankel believed Salome had other reasons, ones she wouldn’t admit. He’d seen how they looked at each other in Volgograd. Alpha males provoked her. Years before, Frankel had caught her staring at a photo of Duberman’s supermodel wife Orli in a bikini. Frankel wondered
sometimes if Salome had proposed this whole scheme to impress Duberman.
She may be the stuff of a million slack-jawed teenage fantasies, Aaron, but can she start a war for you?

Lust and love and lust chasing each other in a circle without end, as Frankel watched the follies from afar. A decade before, he’d skidded his motorcycle onto gravel to avoid a stump-tailed dog, sliding off the blacktop at one hundred thirty kilometers an hour. He’d broken his jaw and his hip. Worse, the stones had scraped his legs and face past raw. The pain from the accident and the botched surgeries afterward unwound his interest in sex. He hadn’t been with a woman since. He saw himself as almost a eunuch now, emotionally if not physically.

He loved Salome, but without heat. He felt at once close to her and a million kilometers away, like the childhood friend of a famous actor. He knew what drove her, or thought he did. Yet what she’d achieved shocked him. Her intensity and focus unnerved him. They’d grown up together in the Tel Aviv suburbs. After the accident and the surgeries, she had come to his hospital bed and sat with him in silence. By an alchemy even Frankel did not fully understand, he belonged to her now.

Frankel didn’t know if she understood his feelings for her. He didn’t plan to ask, not ever. When she’d asked for his help with this scheme, he’d figured that they wouldn’t last long. The CIA or Mossad would discover their plans. But somehow they’d survived long enough for Frankel to imagine that they might succeed. He tried not to think what Salome might become then.

—

First they had to make sure that Wells didn’t blow up their plan at one minute to midnight. The man had escaped the trap Salome had set in Volgograd. Talked his way out of Lubyanka. He was harder to kill than a Negev spider. And Salome was worried that he’d heard about Rand Witwans.
They
might have found him,
she said. She didn’t explain how she knew.

Can’t we trust Witwans to be quiet?
Frankel said.

He’s a whipped old man. We can’t trust him with anything. He drinks.

Why don’t I just kill him, then?

If I let you, you’d kill everyone in sight, Amos.

Only the ones who deserve it.

Long as he’s alive, no one cares about him. If he dies suddenly, the CIA and the Mossad will notice.

What about Wells? What if he comes for you?

I can handle Wells.

So Frankel took an overnight flight from Istanbul to Johannesburg and drove to the Free State province, the rural heart of South Africa, where Witwans had an estate.

—

Now Frankel arrived at the man’s front gate, two meters of wrought iron set between two brick pillars. “Witwans Manor,” a bronze plaque announced. Atop a hill behind the gate was a tall brick house that wouldn’t have been out of place in the fanciest London suburbs, set on a manicured lawn where two beautiful brown horses munched grass. In truth, the Free State was too dry for such greenery. The estate radiated a dedication to appearance at any cost. Frankel hated it on sight. He pressed the gate buzzer, rang it long and hard. Nothing happened. He rang again, this time gluing his finger to the buzzer.

His patience was gone by the time Witwans walked down the driveway, a shotgun slung over his shoulder, a German shepherd trotting beside him. The gates swung about a half meter and Witwans stood between them. Up close Frankel could see that the dog and the weapon were both more annoyance than threat. Witwans was a gnarled old man, mid-seventies at least, with a drinker’s red nose.

Frankel stepped out of his rented SUV, keeping both hands visible. “Rand.”

“Who are you?”

“From Natalie.” Natalie was the name Salome used with Witwans.
“She told you I’d be coming.” A moment later, the gates swung open. Had Witwans really been too frightened or stupid to remember? Frankel saw why Salome had sent him here.

—

They sat on Witwans’s back porch, drinking coffee, eating fresh blueberries and clotted cream.
He’s old-style Afrikaans,
Salome had told Frankel.
Thinks the natives exist to serve him. Even worse, thinks they
want
to. Don’t talk politics with him or you’ll throw up. Just ask him what I told you and put the taps on his phone and wait.

Babysitting.

“So what’s happened?”

Witwans raised the porcelain cup to his lips with a shaking hand. “I’ve told Natalie all this. One call from my old friend Joost. Two days ago. Wish I’d never mentioned it. Natalie asked me to call if anything seems wrong, so I called. I didn’t tell her to send
you
. I take care of myself.”

As far as Frankel could see, all Witwans could take care of was a bottle of scotch. “Since Joost called, has anything out of the ordinary happened?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“No calls from the police.”

“Of course not.”

“Has anyone come around? The electrician. The plumber—”

“The plumbing’s fine.”

“You know what I mean. Has anyone shown up who shouldn’t be here?”

“Only you.”

Frankel reached out, squeezed Witwans’s biceps. He forced himself to be gentle, though he wanted to tear the old man’s arm clean off.

“You haven’t told anyone about Natalie? Or what you sold her?”

“Never, never.”

“Your children.”

“You think I want them mixed up in this? You know, Natalie told me she’d burn all this down if I did. With me inside.”

If the tremor in his voice was any indication, the threat had stuck.

“John Wells?”

“Who?” Witwans’s face registered genuine surprise.

“And there’s no way anyone could know what you’d done?”

“No. I told Natalie when she bought the stuff. We produced fifteen-point-three kilos, I brought the Israelis fourteen, stored the difference here. One HEU ingot, thirteen hundred grams in all. It was in a safe downstairs. I destroyed the records. Back then, everything was paper. No computers. There were three sets of files, two with us, one at the Defense Ministry. I took them all, burned them. No way for anyone on either side to know.” Witwans rubbed his hands together,
gone like this.

“No one asked questions about you destroying the files.”

Nobody wanted anything to do with them. They were afraid the blacks would take revenge on all of us in the secret services.”

“You’re sure there were only three copies.”

“I suppose it’s possible the Defense Ministry made another set, they’re in an archive somewhere. But I don’t think so. And all the years the blacks have been in power, no one’s ever asked me about the program. Until Natalie. You see?”

“Sure.”

Though Frankel saw only that Witwans was lucky. If Frankel had been in charge instead of Salome, he would have put a round in the man and sent him and his story to the grave.

“She seems to have put what I sold her to good use.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t say another word about that. Not even dream about it.”

“Of course. Now what? You go back to Natalie, tell her everything is fine.”

“Oh no, Rand. I’ve come all this way. I’m staying.”

“No need—I promise—”

Frankel shook his head and Witwans trailed off.

“That’s fine, then.” Trying to play the country squire. “I have plenty of room.”

“What about weapons? Beyond your shotgun.” Because he’d flown commercial, Frankel had needed to leave his pistol in Istanbul.

“Of course. A whole cabinet, pistols, rifles. Out here you can’t be too careful.”

For the first time since he’d arrived in South Africa, Frankel felt a smile crease his lips.