“I mean, honestly, you look like crap, like you’re in agony when you twist that leg wrong, but it’s good to see you. Really good.”
“You always know just how to make a girl smile, Ellis.”
“Sorry.” Shafer gave her the abashed smile of a five-year-old caught with a handful of Oreos, a face she’d seen him make before, more than once.
“Did you ask me to come in just to make me feel good about myself ?”
“I need your brain.”
Exley had a glimmer of how Wells must feel.
I try to get out, but they keep pulling me back in.
Even before the shooting, she’d been trying to escape this madness-making job, seeing if she might convince Wells to escape with her. Maybe not all the way out. Maybe they could move to the Farm for a couple of years, train the bright young things who would be the next generation to keep the world safe for democracy and capitalism. Though not necessarily in that order.
Then Kowalski had reached out and touched them and Wells had proven what she’d always known, that he couldn’t be housebroken no matter how hard she tried. She’d begged him to wait, and even so he’d bared his fangs and counterattacked as instinctively as a pit bull tossed into a ring. Maybe Wells was so confident in his own ability to get through the worst situations that he didn’t see the danger he faced. Or maybe he simply didn’t care whether he lived or died.
But she did. If not for herself, then for her kids. When she saw them at GW Hospital the day after the shooting, she couldn’t stop crying. Twice in two years, they’d stood beside her hospital bed and held her hand and told her they loved her and everything would be all right. As if they were responsible for her and not the other way around. Whether God or fate or sheer luck had kept her alive, she didn’t know. But she couldn’t take more chances. She couldn’t imagine not seeing her kids again. That day, she’d promised herself she would quit.
But quitting meant giving up Wells forever, and she couldn’t imagine that either. To take her mind off the impossible choice, she’d pressed her rehab as hard as she could. If her nurses asked her to walk, she went until her legs and her spine burned and she had to lie down to recover. If they asked for fifty leg lifts, she gave them a hundred. They’d told her more than once that she wasn’t helping herself by pushing so hard. But the pain distracted her from thinking about Wells.
This morning, Shafer had called and asked her to come in. He’d made the request as casually as if he were asking her if she wanted an extra ticket to a Nationals game. Even so she’d hesitated. But then her curiosity took over; she wondered how being back would feel. As she and her bodyguards rolled by the truck-bomb barriers that guarded the main entrance to Langley, she was overcome with a strange nostalgia, as though she were visiting her old college campus for the first time a year after graduating. She loved this place and understood these people and wanted to be one of them and yet she didn’t feel connected to them.
Now, in Shafer’s office, Exley felt different, more engaged. Shafer was her rock at the agency. He’d hardly changed in all the years she’d known him. He was rumpled, energetic, a bad dresser and messy eater, but most of all brilliant, sometimes too brilliant. For years, she’d wondered if Shafer deliberately played up his eccentricities to add to his mystique as an absentminded genius. Today, for example, a big coffee stain covered his right shirt cuff. Could he really have done that accidentally?
Shafer had never fit in with the agency’s buttoned-up bureaucracy. He’d been on the verge of being marginalized before Exley and Wells saved New York. Now he and Duto had reached an accommodation. Duto let him and Wells and Exley run their own shop. In return, Shafer did his best to control Wells. So far, the deal had worked for both sides, though Exley didn’t believe it would last. Shafer didn’t trust Duto, and the feeling was mutual.
“You need my brain,” Exley said now. “Don’t you know I’m done?”
“Just desk work. I’ll bet after six weeks at home, you’re ready for some excitement. Take your mind off things. So—” and before she could object, Ellis filled her in on the missing uranium, and then on the way that Kowalski had connected Wells with Bernard Kygeli.
“John and Kowalski are buddies now?” Exley said when Shafer finished.
“Strange world,” Shafer said. “But Bernard’s a dead end. The BND, the Hamburg police, nobody has anything on him. He pays his taxes, keeps his Mercedes polished. He probably buys Girl Scout cookies, if they have Girl Scouts in Germany—”
“I get it,” Exley said. “Did they talk to the harbormaster?”
“The port authorities don’t know much about him. He’s been there a long time but he’s small-time and it’s a giant port and he’s never been in trouble, so . . .”
“What about customs records?”
“Nothing unusual. Cabinets and rugs from Turkey. Also he sent some silverware two months ago from Poland to South Africa. The Poles checked and the factory confirms the sale.”
“He ship to the United States?”
“Not so far as we can tell.”
Exley could hardly believe how easily she was slipping back into this routine. But a few minutes of thinking out loud didn’t obligate her to come back forever. Anyway, Shafer was right. No one had ever gotten shot at a desk at Langley. “What about the general?” she said. “This Nigerian that Bernard bought the AKs for? Any chance he’s in on it?”
“Doubt it. Those look like real deals. Then when Bernard was looking for beryllium, he went to Kowalski since he had the connection already.”
“And we can’t figure out where he’s getting his money?”
“He makes a decent living legitimately through the business. We could go in, turn his house upside down—”
“But then he’ll know we’re looking and—”
“He’ll tip the guys who are making the bomb. Exactly. We can’t take a chance on spooking him. Same reason we haven’t talked to any of his workers or gone at that law firm in New York yet. We could try to talk to them quietly, pull the national security card, but if they call him we’re in trouble.”
“What law firm in New York?”
“I didn’t mention this?” Shafer explained how Wells had gone to Bernard’s house and found the bill from Snyder, Gonzalez, and Lein.
“Have we checked his ships?”
“He doesn’t own ships. At least they’re not in his corporate record or registered in Germany or anywhere else we can find. We looked. And the harbormaster didn’t mention them.”
“Come on, Ellis. He has a decent-sized ex-im business, he makes regular runs, he must own a boat or two. They’re not in his name, that’s all. Some shell company in the Caymans or Gibraltar is holding them, with a lawyer as the corporate nominee.”
“And you think that law firm in New York is the connection?”
“I don’t know,” Exley said. “But we ought to pull the suits they’ve filed, see what turns up.”
“I missed you,” Shafer said.
BESIDES NEW YORK,
Snyder, Gonzalez, and Lein had offices in Baltimore and Miami. The firm specialized in representing ship and aircraft owners against insurance companies and boatyards. Most of the suits were straightforward, and Exley didn’t see any connections to Hamburg. Certainly none to Bassim Kygeli. By the end of the afternoon, her back was aching so badly that she’d been reduced to lying on Shafer’s floor. “All right, Ellis,” she said. “I’m not sure I can stand, but it’s time for me to go.”
“Give it a few more minutes. Don’t you like reading about all these rich guys whining because they ordered a helicopter pad for their yacht and got an extra Jacuzzi or vice versa?”
Another half-hour crawled by. And then Shafer stood and clapped his hands. “Check this out. Two years ago, our friends at Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe filed suit against AIG. On behalf of a company called YRL Ltd.”
“AIG, the world’s biggest insurance company?”
“The one and only,” Shafer said. “YRL looks to be a shell. Based in the Caymans. But the suit was filed in New York because that’s where AIG is headquartered. YRL wants AIG to pay a four-million-dollar insurance claim for a freighter called the
Greton
, registered out of Liberia. About two years ago, the
Greton
burned up off the Nigerian coast.”
“Anybody die?”
“Doesn’t look that way. Anyway, AIG won’t pay. It says the
Greton
didn’t have a decent fire-suppression system or an adequately trained crew. Basically that it was an accident waiting to happen.”
“So who won?”
“The lawyers. Two years gone, a dozen claims and counterclaims already and they’ve barely started discovery. By the time they’re done, they’re going to spend more on the suit than the boat was ever worth. But—” Shafer stepped out from behind his desk and stood beside Exley and jabbed at the filing he was reading. “Lookee here.”
“Lookee here?”
Shafer tossed the filing to Exley. “Page eight.”
On page eight, a description of the
Greton
: “used primarily to bring cargo from Turkey to ports in Western Africa. Frequently chartered by Tukham, Ltd., an import-export company based in Hamburg.” Tukham, Ltd. was Bernard Kygeli’s company.
“You are one smart girl,” Shafer said. “And I say that in the most sexist way possible.”
“Guess we should find out who owns YRL.”
“And what other boats YRL owns.”
Exley checked her watch: 6:30. “The corporate registry in the Caymans is closed for the night. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning.”
“We? That mean you’re coming in tomorrow?”
Exley didn’t bother to answer.
THE INCORPORATION PAPERS
that YRL Ltd. had filed with the Cayman Secretary of State’s Office were only two pages long. But they told Exley and Shafer everything. YRL’s president was one Bassim Kygeli, of Hamburg, Germany.
Within the hour, they’d checked ship registries worldwide for boats registered to YRL. They found one more: the
Juno
, also registered in Liberia. YRL had bought it two years before, presumably as a replacement for the ill-fated
Greton.
It had been built in Korea in 1987 and displaced 22,000 tons, a pipsqueak compared to the newest and largest container ships. But more than big enough to carry a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium. Exley couldn’t find pictures of the
Juno
online, but AIG would have some and a quick call from Langley would shake them loose.
“If the
Greton
is out of commission, that’s got to be the one,” Shafer said.
“Assuming that Bernard shipped the stuff on his own boat.”
“What’s the point of owning a boat if you can’t use it for something like this?” Shafer said. “Anyway, it’s the first place to look.”
Exley checked the Hamburg port records. “Shows up only twice in Hamburg in the last two years. Once last summer. And on December 31. Happy New Year. It left Hamburg with a load of used car parts. No mention of Tukham or Kygeli. It’s supposedly being managed by a company called Socine Expo.” Exley looked up Socine on the D&B corporate database. “Socine’s offices are at the same building as Tukham, 29 Josefstrasse.”
“Wouldn’t you know,” Shafer said. “No wonder the German port records don’t connect Bernard and the
Juno.
Where’s it headed? I’ll bet New York.”
“Close,” Exley said. “Dock records say Lagos, Nigeria.”
“Then it should have gotten there already.”
“Think the Nigerians have their port records online?” With a few keystrokes, Exley sniffed out the records. “Amazing but true. They do. Arrivals and departures in Lagos. In English. I’m not surprised about the Germans, but the Nigerians?”
“Nothing about the Internet surprises me anymore.”
“Well, this won’t surprise you either,” Exley said. “There’s no record of the
Juno.
”
“Which means it’s either in port here or somewhere in the Atlantic. We’d best tell Duto, get the navy looking for it. How hard can it be to find a two-hundred-foot-long boat? The Atlantic’s only a couple of million square miles.”
“You going to tell John about this?”
“Not yet. At this point, the less he knows, the better off he is. He seems to be handling Bernard decently so far.”
“How is he, Ellis?”
“Oh, no. I’m not playing matchmaker. You want to know, you ask him yourself.”
26
E
ven waiting for the
Juno
in Newfoundland, Bashir had never been this cold. A front had blown in from Canada and encased the entire Northeast in frigid polar air. He and Nasiji and Yusuf needed heavy gloves and thick jackets for the half-minute walk between the Repard house and the stable.
But inside, the stable was as hot as Iraq in July. The gas-fired furnace at its center roared as Bashir melted steel in a thick-walled tungsten carbide pot. The steel glowed as red as the devil’s own soup. Bashir stood four feet from the furnace, but even so the flames scorched his hands.
“Are we close?” Nasiji said.
“A few minutes. No wonder hell is supposed to be hot. Imagine spending eternity in those flames.”
“We won’t be the ones in them.”
Bashir wished he could be so sure. As they moved close to finishing the bomb, his doubts were growing. Two nights before, with Thalia asleep, he’d crept to his laptop and read about nuclear explosions, looked at photographs of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The violence these bombs unleashed was unimaginable, though it didn’t have to be imagined. It had already happened.
Most civilians assumed that the lethality of a nuclear bomb resulted from the radiation it produced, the gamma rays and neutrons that caused leukemia and other cancers. But radiation, though terrifying, was not the deadliest part of the blast. Even a small bomb—like the ones dropped on Japan, like the one they were making—created a fireball hundreds of feet around, with a temperature of seven thousand degrees Celsius, hotter than the surface of the sun. The fireball could burn the skin of people standing two miles away. The most horrifying pictures from Hiroshima came from the triage tents where the burn victims had gathered to die, their skin torn off, their clothes melted to their bodies.