Twelve Days (37 page)

He’d broken the foot in Afghanistan years before and banged it up again in Istanbul three weeks earlier, but he’d thought he was fully recovered.

Wrong.

He could stand. And he could hobble, if he used his heel and kept all the weight off the front of his foot. But he sure couldn’t run.
What do you call a woman with one leg? Eileen.

Lucky he wasn’t in the middle of a gunfight or anything.

Frankel fired twice more from inside the house. He seemed to be moving closer, coming down the hallway. Wells reached across his body, grabbed the shotgun, fired blindly through the door. One shot and one shot only. Even after grabbing the Remington, he was still far too close to black on ammunition for comfort. He had just three rounds in the shotgun, five in the Glock. The pistol had a seventeen-round magazine, but Wells had already fired eleven rounds, four in front and seven back here. He had a plastic bag with loose ammunition in his pocket, but he couldn’t imagine Frankel would give him the time he needed to reload.

Duto had better get inside before then.

—

Again Wells caught Salome wrong-footed. She was watching the yard, but the shots came from the back, the kitchen. Three. Then a shotgun blast. She turned and ran, trying for the hallway. But Wells stuck a pistol
through the remains of the back door and fired twice more. She skidded into the back wall of the living room to stop herself.

She peeked down the corridor. Gil, the second of the bodyguards she’d brought, lay on the kitchen floor. She couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. “Gil!” she yelled. He turned his head a fraction, but if he spoke she couldn’t hear him.

“Adina,” Frankel said from the bedroom halfway down the hall, just as Wells appeared again in the kitchen doorway.

“Amos, he’s coming for the kitchen—”

Frankel spun out of the bedroom and into the hall and fired as Wells reached down and grabbed the shotgun from Gil’s hands. But Frankel missed, and Wells vanished again. Now Wells had the shotgun and could keep Frankel out of the kitchen. But Frankel had an open shot at the hallway, so he could keep Wells from coming inside. A standoff.

They had to take him down while they knew where he was, before he disappeared again. And Salome saw how.

“We can pin him. You stay, keep shooting, make him think you’re coming down the hall. I go through the window in there”—she nodded at Witwans’s room—“come around the side of the house. The alley’s not even ten meters. He won’t have a chance. I’ll blow his head off.” And once Wells was dead, she and Frankel could grab Witwans and shoot their way out against whoever was outside without worrying that Wells was behind them.

“What if he turns that way?”

“Even better. He’ll run right into me.”

“Unless he figures out what you’re doing and starts shooting around the corner. Then you’ll be the one who’s trapped.”

Five seconds to get through the window, five to get down the alley. Ten in all. “Ten seconds,” Salome said. “Keep him busy back there that long.”

“Let me do it—”

She shook her head. She would kill Wells. No one else.

She fired twice down the hallway toward the kitchen. She pushed past Frankel into the bedroom where Witwans huddled in a corner, his hands over his ears, a seventy-five-year-old child.

“Please,” Witwans yelled in English. “Please.”

She ignored him. A siren sounded somewhere in the distance. Salome pushed up the window, twisted her body into the alley. Ten seconds.

—

Wells heard Salome and Frankel in the hallway, a low conversation in Hebrew. Making a plan. He wondered if he should try to limp out the alley, but he couldn’t possibly move silently or quickly enough. He was furious with himself, with his body for its betrayal. Would this be where the trip ended for him, boxed in behind this ugly yellow house?

He had come too far. Witwans was too close. He needed one more move. One more.

From inside the house Witwans yelled “Please” twice in English. Like Salome was planning to shoot him. But why would she?

Amos shot three times and Wells chanced a peek around the door. Frankel had crouched at the far end of the hall. He was almost taunting Wells, daring Wells to step in with the shotgun and try for him. Wells knew he wouldn’t have a chance even on two good legs. He would have to expose himself for a decent shot. As soon as he moved, Frankel would light him up.

But where was Salome?

Frankel raised his pistol, fired twice more—

And everything clicked. The conversation. Why Witwans had yelled. Wells had used misdirection against Salome. Now she was doing the same to him. She was coming down the alley while he focused on the doorway.

He couldn’t stay on the wall. She would use the corner for cover and he had no defense. And he couldn’t go for the door. Frankel was
waiting. To survive, he needed to give himself an angle to shoot her as she reached the corner.

With his foot wrecked, he had only one play.

He put his weight on his left heel, ignored the screaming in his foot, took one big stride with his right leg toward the rear right corner of the backyard. He planted on his right foot and spun right ninety degrees while his momentum still carried him forward. He pulled up the shotgun just as Salome reached the corner—

—

She took her last step down the alley, ready to flank him. She wasn’t going to shoot him right away, she wanted him to know what she’d done, how she’d beaten him—

Then she saw him moving, he wasn’t against the wall by the door like she expected, or coming flush around the corner of the house, instead he was lunging for the back corner of the yard, spinning toward her, she needed a moment to understand why, he wanted the
angle
, he was raising a shotgun to her—

And she swung the pistol around, knowing she was too late, no time to speak, to curse or beg, she screamed a half-note for her death to come—

Her chest exploded, but she felt no pain, and for a moment she thought he might have missed. But then, why was she lying on her back looking at the concrete walls and the clouded sky? Everyone was wrong about dying, the easiest thing in the world. She didn’t even have to move, didn’t fly anywhere, it was the other way, the world and all the sky raced away from her, faster and faster until a single point of light was left at the end of a million-mile tunnel, the tiniest pinprick—

—

With just one good leg Wells couldn’t handle the Remington’s recoil. It knocked him back and down and the shotgun came out of his hands. He looked up at the doorway to the kitchen and saw Frankel running
toward him, raising his pistol, and Wells scrabbled for his own pistol, but he couldn’t find it, he had tucked it in his waist, but the fall must have knocked it out—

And the
shots came from the house, one-two-three—

But it was
Frankel
whose mouth opened in surprise, Frankel whose body arched forward and windmilled down—

Duto.

Wells forced himself to his feet, hobbled toward the corner of the house. The pain was intense, but if he kept the weight on the heel he could move. Salome was dead, a baseball-size hole in the center of her chest, her eyes open in death. Another second and she would have had him. Wells had never killed a woman before. Funny. And funny that he couldn’t think of a better word, a more powerful word for his feelings. But it wasn’t just his weapons that were low on ammunition. Wells was as exhausted as he had ever been. He supposed he ought to close her eyes, but he couldn’t imagine touching her. He left her on her back staring at nothing as Duto appeared in the back door, his mouth open wide.
Grinning.

“Thank you? Huh? Maestro?”

Wells wanted to shoot him right there, this man who had just saved his life. Six weeks before, Duto had asked Wells to meet a man in Guatemala City. All this madness had started then. Wells hadn’t wanted to go, but he’d owed Duto a favor, and he’d hated the idea of being in Duto’s debt.

So what did he owe Duto
now
?

A second siren joined the first. The question would have to wait. “Thank you.”

“The pleasure’s mine. What happened to your leg?”

“Tell you later.”

—

They found Witwans on the living room couch, staring at the television. His face was flushed, his cheeks swollen, his eyes wide and watery.

“You know why we’re here, Rand?”

His head bobbed
yes
over his slumped shoulders. “Please don’t hurt me. Please.” Thinking about himself to the end. Nothing about anyone else in the house. Hard to believe that this pathetic specimen was their only chance to stop a war. But they didn’t need him to be a hero. They just needed him to tell the truth about what he’d done to the President. Looking at him, Wells knew he would.

Rand Witwans didn’t have the strength to lie.

“Lucky man,” Duto said to Wells. “Going to the White House.”

Without waiting for Witwans to answer, they pulled him off the couch to begin his trip.

ONE HOUR . . .

D
onna Green trudged down the West Wing corridor that led to the Oval Office. The first fighters were about to take off from Incirlik. She ought to be running. But every step came harder than the one before.

What she wanted, more than anything, was to turn the other way. Walk to the Farragut West Metro stop, three blocks away at 17th and I. Step to the edge of the platform. She might have to wait a few minutes. But soon enough a train would come. And before it reached her, she would step off.

She wasn’t a suicidal type. She’d never even considered the act before. But anything at all, even nothing, had to be better than the conversation she was about to have. She remembered the stupid threat Duto had made in the parking lot,
Bend you over so hard you won’t sit for a month,
and how tonight on the tarmac at Dulles, Duto hadn’t bothered to hide his smile as Witwans choked out the truth.

Suddenly, she couldn’t move, not forward or back.

Elizabeth Hoyt, the President’s chief speechwriter, strode past, nearly knocking her down. “Sorry, Donna.”

“How’s the speech?”
Might want to start a rewrite.

“Not bad. Our brave troops. Protecting the homeland. Et cetera. I gotta—”

“Go, go.”

Our brave troops.
Tens of thousands of men and women were about to risk their lives for a lie she should have uncovered. Cowardice now would only compound her failure.

Too soon and too late, she came to the outer office.

“I need to see him.”

“Liz just went in—he’s working on his speech—”

“Now.”

—

“Tell me you’re joking,” the President said three minutes later.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Fuck you, Donna.
Fuck
you
.”

He had never spoken that way to her before.

“You’re sure?”

She squeezed her hands tight, made herself stay steady. “He’s a mess, Witwans, an alcoholic, but not a liar. He showed me the bank transfers. We can trace that money. And I talked to Rudin—the Mossad guy—and he confirms that Witwans is the one who delivered the stuff to Israel.”

What she didn’t say, what she couldn’t make herself say, was:
And it makes sense. It answers a lot of questions that we should have asked but didn’t, because we were so sure that the uranium was from a government.

The President spewed a stream of curses, picked up the five-page speech on his desk, tore it in half. He tore the halves in half again, balled up a piece as if to throw it across the room. Then put it down.

“Okay. Tantrum over. I’m asking for real, any way we go ahead?”

She didn’t want him to rip her again, but the question had only one answer.

“No, sir. Even forgetting about morality, Duto destroys us.”

“Then let’s solve that problem first.” The President reached for his
phone. “I need Belk.” The Secretary of Defense. “Roger. Call it off.” A pause. “No. I am not. Call it off. We are not invading Iran—

“Ask me again if I’m joking, I’ll fire you. Nothing’s happened we can’t undo, right?” He listened.

“Then keep it that way. I promise I’ll tell you why later, but for now just land the drones, unscramble the jets, whatever you do when you change your mind about a war.
Now now now.
Am I clear, Roger?”

He slammed down the phone without waiting for an answer, reached into his desk for the Zippo and the pack of Marlboro Lights she knew were inside. He lit up, offered her the pack. She shook her head.

“You just destroyed my presidency, Donna. My reputation for the next hundred years. You should at least join me in a cancer stick.”

They smoked in silence, the President puffing viciously.

“That was the easy part,” he said. “The hard part is, how do we explain?”

“The truth—”

“They will
impeach
me, Donna. It’s not just that we got suckered. It’s who did it. What did Duto say he wanted, Donna?”

“Nothing specific. He said he knew you would do the right thing.”

“That’s funny.”

“Isn’t it.”

“He say he was going public?”

“He said it would depend. I didn’t push. I was mainly worried about getting back here.”

The President stubbed out his cigarette, lit another.

“He goes public, there’s nothing we can do. Let’s assume he’s keeping his mouth shut. Maybe he thinks I can help him get—” He wagged the cigarette around the room. “Seems to me my only play is to make it look like I blinked at the last minute. Lost faith in the lightfoot strategy.”

“So we pack up the Marines and the Rangers and the Airborne?”

“Soon. For now. We leave them all, but announce a new deadline, a
nice long one, six months. Everyone will know what that means. Congress will pummel me, the media. Say I got scared. But it’s better than the truth. In a day or two, we start to leak concerns about the evidence. And in a week, you go to Tehran and you lick their boots and tell them we don’t want a war—”

“What about the planes?”

“
We
started this, Donna. Two weeks ago. We bombed their capital with no warning, and I don’t care if it was just the airport. You tell them we view the planes as a stand-alone act of terror and we will investigate that way. You make sure they understand that means we aren’t invading them. In a month or so, I fire Hebley and all his boys, they don’t resign, I fire them. We buy time, we pull back, and in a couple more months this becomes the war that wasn’t.”

The consequences would be devastating. The Iranians would be equal parts furious and triumphant. They wouldn’t understand why the United States had picked a fight with them. But they would know that they’d won. They’d believe they had carte blanche all over the Middle East.

“What if we tell the truth, the real truth, the whole story, blame Duberman?”

The President shook his head.

“No. First of all we don’t even have it yet. Second, at best I look like a dupe instead of a co-conspirator. Get impeached anyway. Third, it means admitting our intel on Iran is so terrible that we fell for this. And last, you want me to blame a Jewish billionaire for trying to start a war. The world already doesn’t like Jews much. This takes it to Elders of Zion territory.” The President paused. “I promise. Duberman will pay. The highest penalty. But not now. When the time is right.”

If there was a better answer, she couldn’t see it.

His phone rang.

He picked it up, listened briefly. “Thank you, Roger. I’m sure you must have questions. We’ll talk later.” He hung up, pointed at the door. Like she was a secretary. “Go get Liz. Quickest speech ever written.”

At the door, she stopped. “Who are we telling about this? The truth, I mean?”

“Only Hebley and Carcetti for now. By the way, Donna. I’ll need a resignation letter from you.”

We all fell for it. Not just me. And ten days ago, when I tried to warn you, you shooed me off.

Not fair.

But
not
fair
hardly mattered at this moment. “What about my trip to Tehran?”

“Postdate it three months. Maybe I’ll change my mind.”

He smiled his liar’s smile. She’d seen him use it on other people in this room. Never her. Didn’t he know that she knew? If he did, he didn’t care.

“Of course, sir.”

“Thanks, Donna.”

—

Wells and Duto sat in the library of Duto’s house in Arlington, watching CNN on mute. It was past midnight now and the countdown clock was counting
up.
They’d have to fix that somehow.

Wells didn’t even know why he had come here. Probably because he had nowhere else to be. Shafer was in jail until the morning, and Wells didn’t exactly have a lot of friends in Washington. Or anywhere else. For a moment, he’d considered calling Exley—
hey, babe, remember me?—
but reason had prevailed.

Duto’s house was brick and big. New and built to look old. Full of dark wood and brown leather. A single silver-framed photo of him with two late-twenty-something men who shared his heavy features sat on a bookcase beside the television. The picture looked to have been taken at a wedding. All three men wore tuxedos. Duto offered a politician’s grin. The younger men were hardly smiling.

“Those your sons?” Wells realized how little he knew about Duto’s family.

“Yeah.”

“You’re divorced?”

“Long ago. My first posting was Mexico, she didn’t mind that. But then they sent me to Nigeria and she said no. She kept the boys. I didn’t argue.”

Duto reached for the box of cigars on the table beside him and began the slow clubby ritual of lighting one, examining the band and putting the wrapper to his nose, cutting the cap and sparking a long wooden match, and finally touching flame to the cigar’s tip while spinning and puffing it. Wells suspected Duto had put more thought into lighting the cigar than into his divorce.

“You good with them?”

“Nothing like you and Evan.” Duto smirked. He set aside the cigar, went for the whiskey bottle he’d brought out from the kitchen. “High West. All these small batches now.”

“We ought to send Jacob a case for his help.” The South African had texted them with the news of his narrow escape.

“Please. Guy had the time of his life,” Duto poured himself a slug. “Try some?”

Wells didn’t answer.

“Back to being a good Muslim this month, John.”

“Maybe I just don’t want to end up like Witwans.” Who was sleeping upstairs. Duto had given him an Ativan.

“You know what I told Shafer three weeks ago? After Mason kidnapped you in Istanbul. He had some dumb idea about going over and saving you. I said, ‘You think you can do better than the best field guy ever.’ You are, too. Man. Cutting Gideon’s Achilles. Where did you come up with that?”

Duto sipped his whiskey. Wells waited. A
but
was coming, he was sure.

“But you want it both ways. Do it and feel bad about it. Like this boy of yours, trying to build a relationship with him, you can’t see that all he wants is for you to leave him alone.”

Wells grabbed Duto’s cigar, stuffed it into his whiskey glass. It gave a satisfying hiss as it flamed out. “Save your advice, Vinny.”

The count-up clock ticked forty-three seconds before Duto spoke again. “My mistake. I overstepped. Anyway, it’s not about him. It’s about you. Some part of you feels you have to apologize for what you do out there.”

“Conscience, you mean.”

“We stopped a
war
today. You want it to be clean, John? It’s impossible. You don’t stop beating yourself up, you’ll crack for real. Or that conscience of yours will kick in at the wrong time. Either way, you get yourself killed.”

“And you care because?”

Duto poured himself a new glass of whiskey.

“You’d be tough to replace.”

“The cemeteries are full of indispensable men, Vinny.”

“Not ones who owe me favors.”

Wells had to laugh.

“How psychopaths give pep talks.”

“Then retire, John. That chick cop in New Hampshire will take you back.”

“And who would run your errands?”

“Exactly. You are who you are. Accept it.” Duto sipped his glass. “At least admit the world would be a better place without Duberman. And him, he’s not a Saudi royal, doesn’t have a whole country protecting him. It’ll take some doing, but he’s gettable.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that.”

They sat awhile more.

“Can I ask you something?” Wells said. “Ever been in love?”

Duto’s silence told Wells all he needed.

“If I’m honest with myself, I don’t think so,” Duto said eventually. “I thought I loved Laura for a while, but I look back, it was just that we
screwed pretty good and I wanted to get married. Now you’re going to tell me that’s what all this is about for me, power, filling a void, blah blah blah. Let me tell you, John. Maybe. But maybe I want it because I know I’ll use it
right.
Maybe I love this country, the idea of it.”

“Maybe you just love the idea of being President.”

“And what do you love, John?”

Now Wells had nothing to say. Exley? Anne? He’d left them both easily enough. His son? He would die to protect Evan. But he hadn’t raised the boy, and Evan didn’t even consider Wells his father.

CNN spared him from having to answer. The words
Breaking News: President About to Speak
appeared in massive letters. Duto turned up the sound just as the feed switched to the Oval Office, the President at his desk.

“I know what I am about to say will surprise you—”