He’d made enemies of some of the most dangerous men in the world. Then he’d refused to take the most elementary precautions. He and Exley drove unarmored cars, took the same route to work most days. If he’d been on his own, his happy-fool act wouldn’t have mattered . . . but he wasn’t.
When he reached the hospital, Exley was already in surgery. No one would be able to tell him anything for at least an hour, the nurses said. So Wells walked the halls, expecting someone would tell him to stop moving, sit down. But the orderlies looked at his agency identification and the blood on his hands and his empty shoulder holster and didn’t say a word.
A HAND TOUCHED
his shoulder. He turned to see Ellis Shafer, his boss.
“John.” Shafer gave Wells an awkward half-hug and led him to a door marked by a brass sign that said “Family Room B.” Inside, they sat on uncomfortable plastic chairs around a battered wooden table. Wells wondered at the conversations that had taken place in here, well-meaning doctors and their hard truths.
I’m sorry, but we’ve tried everything . . .
“What happened, John?”
Wells told him.
“Was the Russian there today?” Wells had told Shafer about the strange incident with the Russian outside their house.
“They were wearing helmets.”
“You didn’t check? Afterward?”
“I had to keep pressure on her so she didn’t bleed out.”
A light knock. The door opened—Michaels, the head of Wells’s security detail. He squeezed Wells’s arm, set a laptop on the table.
“I’m sorry, John. We should have done a better job. My guys—”
“Your guys never had a chance.”
Michaels grimaced. Wells balled up his hands, dug his fingernails into his palms. “Didn’t mean that how it sounded. Just that it all went down so quick. They were pros, whoever they were.”
Michaels pulled up a photograph on the laptop. A fleshy face, black eyes shiny and dead, hair still tousled from the helmet he’d been wearing. The collar of his leather jacket was just visible at the bottom of the screen. Then a second photo, a full-body shot, the corpse curled against the curb where Wells had shot him two hours before. Blood trickled from a corner of his mouth. Wells knew him immediately. The Russian who’d come to the house the week before.
“He was on the red bike,” Michaels said. “The passenger.”
“We have a name?”
“Not yet. We’re running their prints against immigration.” Michaels pulled up more images, the other two men that Wells had shot. “You know them?”
Wells shook his head.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because maybe you want to settle this yourself, but I’ve got a stake. Two of my guys. Even if they never had a chance.”
Wells said nothing. At this point, he didn’t plan to tell Michaels that though he didn’t know his assassins, he had a pretty good idea who’d sent them.
“Any of them carrying ID?” Shafer said.
“No. But the bikes had temporary Georgia tags. And one of the guys had a Marriott keycard in his pocket. We’re checking every hotel within a hundred miles and we’ll go from there. The first guy was carrying a key to a Pathfinder. We haven’t found it yet.” Michaels drummed his big fingers on the table. “We don’t have to do it now but we’re going to need an official statement, John. For us, the D.C. police, the FBI.”
“Sure.”
“Shouldn’t take long. With all the weapons we found on them—”
“I told you it’s no problem.”
“I’ll let you know when I hear more. I’m sorry, John. I mean it. We owed you better.” Michaels disappeared into the hall.
Shafer waited until the door was closed.
“You think you know who did this, don’t you?”
Wells said nothing.
“Don’t play with me, John. I’ve known her longer than you have.”
“Yes, I think I know.”
“So tell me.” Shafer waited. “Of course. I get it. Your fault and you’re the only one who can fix it. The man of steel. Don’t you see this is how you got into this mess?”
“You just love being the smartest guy in the room, don’t you, Ellis.”
“Let me help you.”
Wells shook his head. The silence stretched on as an ugly fifties-style clock above the table clicked away the seconds. Finally, Shafer stood, reached for the door.
“All right. Play it your way.”
“Pierre Kowalski. I think.”
Shafer sat. “Why? He’s lucky we didn’t bust him for helping the Chinese.”
“I never told you what I did when I broke into his house.” Wells explained how he’d tied Kowalski up, humiliated him.
“You wrapped his head in duct tape,” Shafer said when Wells was done.
“I made sure he could breathe.”
“That was thoughtful.”
“So you see.”
“Yeah, I see why he might be pissed.” Wells saw the unasked question on Shafer’s face:
Why? What were you thinking?
Even now Wells couldn’t fully unlock his motivations. He knew only that he hated Kowalski. To sell weapons, to profit from death, couldn’t be denied or explained away.
“Even so, maybe it wasn’t him,” Shafer said. “Maybe it was al-Qaeda.”
“Qaeda would have put a truck bomb in front of the house. Kowalski was furious that night I taped him up. Told me he’d get me no matter what. And we know he’s got contacts in Russia. These guys this morning, they were pros. You get it now, Ellis? You see why I think I may have to do this myself?”
“I get it.”
Neither of them needed to say the obvious: These days, Russia was going out of its way to prove that it didn’t need the West. In 2006, when a former KGB operative was poisoned at a London restaurant, the Kremlin had basically refused to help Scotland Yard investigate. If the connection between Kowalski and today’s assassination ran through Moscow, the CIA would have a tough job convincing the Russians to cooperate.
“It’s not so bad, John,” Shafer said. “Two of our own died today. Practically in front of the White House. We can’t ignore that kind of provocation. If we can lock it down, find the link, the big man will put a lot of pressure on the Kremlin.”
“If we can lock it down.”
“Promise me one thing. Whatever you do, tell me. Ahead of time. At least give me a chance to give you some advice. Since I am the smartest guy in the room.”
“All right.”
“Now let’s find out how your girl’s doing.”
“Our girl,” Wells said.
“Our girl.”
But the nurses had no news. Exley was still in surgery.
“What does that mean?” Shafer said.
“It means she’s still in surgery. Are you a relative, sir?”
Wells leaned into the nurse. “Ms. Exley is my fiancée. So, please, if you have any information—”
“I don’t. You probably won’t hear much for a while more.”
“Thank you.”
“Fiancée?” Shafer whispered as the nurse walked away. “Was it a special invisible ring? Because I didn’t see it.”
“She didn’t care about the ring.”
“You really don’t understand women at all.”
And you don’t understand Exley, Wells didn’t say. She would have been happy with a Cracker Jack ring. Though maybe Shafer was right. He’d managed to stay married for thirty years; Wells had barely lasted two.
“Were you going to make it official?” Shafer said. “Or did she not care about that part either?”
“New Year’s, we were saying. Something simple, our way. Just before the South America trip. The trip was the honeymoon.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“We didn’t tell anyone. Just her kids. Not even our exes yet.” Wells turned away from Shafer, leaned his head against a wall, closed his eyes. The white plaster was cool and reassuring.
“Ellis, what am I gonna say to her kids?”
“That you love her. And that she’s going to be fine.”
WHEN WELLS OPENED HIS EYES,
Vinny Duto, the CIA director, was beside him. Around Duto stood five sides of beef, the director’s security detail.
Duto extended a hand, and Wells saw no alternative but to take it. Since the Times Square mission, when Duto had questioned Wells’s loyalty, Wells could barely stand being in the same room as the man. The feeling was mutual, he supposed. Duto viewed him as arrogant, untouchable, a loose cannon. Maybe Duto was right.
“I’m sorry, John. Truly. How is she?”
“Still in surgery.”
Duto gently rested a hand on Wells’s shoulder. “Mind coming out to the car so we can talk in private?”
The car was a heavily armored Suburban with run-flat tires, a specially raised undercarriage, and inch-thick glass that could stop an automatic rifle round. Wells followed Duto into the backseats.
“John,” Duto said. “I want you to know that we will do everything we can here. Everything possible to catch whoever did this.”
Wells stared out the Suburban’s smoked windows, watching as a heavyset woman picked her way down the sidewalk toward the hospital. A thin cold rain was falling, and the media hordes had already arrived, the camera trucks and long-lens photographers. The D.C. police had set up a block-long perimeter around the hospital to hold them at bay. Good. Wells had no appetite for their nonsense.
“You have a pretty nice ride here, Vinny. I was just telling Jennifer this morning we needed to trade up.”
Again Duto put a hand on Wells’s shoulder. This time Wells shook him off. “Whatever it takes, we’ll get these guys.”
“Or have a good excuse if you don’t.”
Duto’s mask slipped for a moment and Wells saw the anger underneath it, the tightness around his eyes and the angry curl of his mouth. The agency’s job was to predict chaos, and prevent it wherever possible. The lawyers, the top-secret classifications, the chains of command, all of them were efforts to bring order to a world that insisted on anarchy. More than anything, Duto hated to be surprised, hated unexpected questions from his bosses. This morning, he’d gotten lots of those, Wells was sure.
“What I’m saying is, if the Russians are involved we’ve got to play this carefully. But it will be our highest priority.”
“I get that part,” Wells said. He bit his lip to stifle his next sentence: And when Medvedev tells you to stuff it, that he’ll never let an American investigative team on Russian soil, what will you do then? Threaten to nuke Moscow if he doesn’t change his mind?
“Any ideas who did this?” Duto said.
“There’re a lot of people who don’t like me.”
“So let us investigate, get the evidence.”
The evidence is dead, Wells didn’t say. It’s lying on Constitution Avenue. I killed them a little too good. Should have let one live so we could talk to him.
Wells looked out at the camera trucks. “The media’s gonna go crazy on this. You going to tell them that this was aimed at Jennifer and me?”
“No,” Duto said. “And we’re going to ask anyone who figures it out to keep you out of it. Your name will just add to the fire here.”
“You want to tamp it down as quick as possible so you can investigate better,” Wells said.
“This isn’t just from me. The president told me directly, fifteen minutes ago, that he values our relationship with Russia. And that he wants us to be on firm footing, whatever we do. Assuming you’re correct about the nationality of the men.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Let us figure out who was paying these guys,” Duto said. “Build a case. Do it the right way. And then we’ll nail whoever did this.”
“I hear you,” Wells said. “On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll share everything you get with me.”
“Of course, John.” Duto extended his hand and they shook. Wells wondered if Duto knew that Wells had no intention of sitting back and letting the agency and FBI screw this up. Probably. He might not even care. He’d sent the message, officially. The Suburban was probably bugged. Just in case anyone ever wanted proof of this conversation. Now Duto was safe, whatever Wells did.
BACK INSIDE THE HOSPITAL
the hours passed miserably. David and Jessica, Exley’s kids, showed up, along with Randy, Exley’s ex-husband, had brought them. The kids hugged Wells, but Randy didn’t even shake his hand. He was everything Wells wasn’t. Wearing business casual, a little paunchy, with close-cropped hair and a black laptop bag. He’d loved Exley, Wells knew. Maybe he still did. He stared across the waiting room at Wells, his eyes shouting an accusation:
You did this. Your fault.
Finally, around 2 p.m., a man in clean blue scrubs emerged from the double doors that marked the entrance to the emergency rooms. His surgical mask dangled from his neck and his eyes were tired, but he moved confidently.
He looked around the waiting area and signaled to Wells. Randy also rose and the three of them stood in an unfriendly huddle.
“I’m Dr. Patel. Are you both relatives?”
“I’m John Wells. Her fiancé.”
“When did that happen?” Randy said.
“We were planning to tell you.”
“And you are?” Patel said to Randy.
“Her ex-husband.” He pointed to David and Jessica. “Those are our kids.”
“In that case, Ms. Exley’s injuries were quite severe. She’s fortunate she arrived at the hospital so quickly. The bullets were fired from behind, at an angle. They entered through her back.” Patel touched his back to indicate where the wounds had been. “One damaged her lower spine, the L-two and L-three vertebrae. The other pierced her liver. That was our immediate focus, since liver injuries bleed heavily. Indeed, Ms. Exley lost several pints of blood, but we’ve now stanched the bleeding and I believe she’s out of immediate danger. We’ve left the damaged vertebrae alone. She’ll need a second operation to repair her spine tomorrow. But I would say her long-term prognosis is favorable. As you may know, the liver is adept at renewing itself.”