Twelve Days (28 page)

Worst of all, even Shafer’s wife wouldn’t know exactly where he was. She would figure he’d gone to Langley this morning, but she couldn’t be sure. He had left the house while she was still asleep.

No running, then. But Shafer needed someone he trusted to see him, to know what was happening. He didn’t have much time. No doubt they had put sensors on his car and had the guards looking for him. They would be confident he couldn’t escape the campus. Still, they wouldn’t wait long. When they realized after a few minutes that he hadn’t taken the bait, they’d come for him. At this hour, only one person he
absolutely trusted was likely to be here. He hated to drag her into this mess, but he didn’t see any choice.

—

The lights of her office suite were on. He knocked and without waiting for an answer stepped inside. “Lucy.” Lucy Joyner, the CIA’s human resources director, among Shafer’s oldest friends at Langley. She was a brassy Texan who had handled the agency’s most thankless jobs for thirty years. A month before, she’d helped him uncover Mason’s role and start this roundelay. They both knew the seventh floor was looking hard at her.

“Ellis.”

She sounded worse than wary.

“Why do I feel like I’m your crack addict kid and you’re waiting for me to beg twenty bucks?” he said.

“Twenty doesn’t buy much crack.”

“Take my picture.”

“Why would I do that?”

Shafer raised an imaginary iPhone to his eyes. “Snap snap. And sometime today tell my wife you saw me this morning.”

“Why?”

“So she doesn’t worry.”

Joyner nodded, as if requests like this came her way all the time. “That all?”

“Yes. No. One more thing.” Shafer tore a page from a sexual harassment reporting handbook on Joyner’s desk, wrote
Salome-Jess Bunshaft-DCsuperparty.com
in the margin. “Give this to Vinny—”

“Duto—”

“Of course Duto. And do yourself a favor, don’t look at it—”

“What’s going on?”

“Long story.”

“No one’s going to disappear you, Ellis.”

“They might misplace me for a few days.”

“This ends badly for both of us.”

“I don’t know. Truly.” Shafer tapped the nonexistent watch on his wrist. “Yes or no on the picture? Places to go, people to see.”

She reached for her phone. “Smile.”

He raised both middle fingers.

“Perfect. Everyone will know it’s you.” The phone clicked.

“I think you left your lipstick at home, Lucy. Better get it.” Meaning: leave Langley and store the photo somewhere safe.

“That bad?”

Shafer turned for the door, blew a kiss over his shoulder at Joyner. “Later, my love.”

“I’m not even your like, Ellis—”

—

His mood swung between grim and weirdly jaunty as he made his way back to his office. Whatever Carcetti had planned would not be pleasant. On the other hand, now that Joyner had seen him they wouldn’t be able to make him vanish.

He was not at all surprised to find Carcetti and Bunshaft waiting at his desk. As a lieutenant three decades earlier, Carcetti had been a heavyweight on the All-Marine boxing team. His gut had thickened notably since then, but his legs and shoulders were still solid. He looked like a bouncer at a biker bar.

“Mr. Shafer—” Bunshaft said.

“Jess. Max. Call me Ellis. As far as I’m concerned, it’s first names for us.”

“Where were you?” Carcetti said.

Shafer smirked.

“Believe it’s known in the trade as dropping the kids off at the pool.”

“We’ve been here fifteen minutes.”

“I’m an old man.” Shafer tapped his belly. “Things get stuck—” Shafer
grinned, not even hiding what he was doing, riffing like a drunk comedian at the late show on Friday night. Carcetti had followed his boss Hebley up the Marine Corps ladder. He’d retired with three stars on his collar and the nickname Mad Max, a commander who shouted and intimidated subordinates into submission. Shafer had learned over the years that playing the fool worked surprisingly well against that personality type. He hoped to drive Carcetti into useless and counterproductive rage, as he had Duto a dozen times.

“Least you can’t say I’m full of—”

“Enough.”
Carcetti’s voice was level, but his eyes bulged like a blocked artery.

Now Shafer needed to shift gears, remind Carcetti that he wasn’t a fool after all. “You think this is still the Corps, General? You have me confused with a terminal lance?” A Marine who ended his enlistment as a lance corporal, the lowest possible rank after four years. “You think you say jump and I say how high, sir?”

Carcetti grabbed Shafer’s arm. “I think you’re coming with us.”

—

Carcetti and Bunshaft had detained Shafer briefly a month before. Back then, they’d locked him in a cell disguised as an executive suite, a room meant to preserve the illusion of dignity. Not today. Today Carcetti led him through a tunnel that connected the New Headquarters Building with its older cousin, the Original Headquarters Building. Down a grimy fire staircase that dead-ended on a subbasement that Shafer had never seen before in all his years at Langley. Through a maze of corridors lined with aging air handlers. Carcetti seemed to know the layout by heart. Finally, they reached a room whose concrete floor and grease stains suggested that it had once housed a furnace. Now it was stagnant and empty but for a steel table and three chairs, two on one side, the third on the other.

Carcetti shoved Shafer into the third chair. “Where’s John Wells?”

Good. He’d asked a question Shafer couldn’t answer. “Dunno.”

“We suspect him of aiding the Iranian government. And we suspect you of aiding him.”

Shafer felt the ground shift. The accusation was desperate, proof of the pressure Carcetti and Hebley felt. But if they could convince the President to sign a finding that Wells was aiding a foreign government, the agency would be authorized to snatch Wells without warning. The finding wouldn’t specifically call for Wells to be killed, but once black-ops teams were involved, anything could happen. If Wells pulled a gun, and he probably would, they’d shoot him in the street. A tragic accident.

And Shafer had no way to warn Wells.

“You can’t seriously believe that.”

“He’s a Muslim convert.”

“You know there’s a difference between Sunni and Shia, right?”

“I know that about twenty-four hours ago the FSB released him from Lubyanka following a call from Iran’s Foreign Minister to the Russian Interior Minister.”

“Two things that have nothing to do with each other.”

“I know he got on a plane from Moscow to Amman. And I know he hasn’t been seen since. You tell us where he is, we can pick him up safely. Nobody wants him to get hurt.”

“Why don’t you check the files, find out what Wells has done for this agency, this
country
, before you accuse him of treason?”

“Like those Deltas he killed in Afghanistan, you mean? Or when he was five minutes late in Mecca?”

Shafer didn’t think he was naïve. But he had never imagined anyone spinning Wells’s record that way.

“Max—”

“Look, maybe he’s got the best of intentions here, but he’s acting as a foreign agent whether he means to or not.” Carcetti nodded like a salesman trying to close a deal. “Do everyone a favor. You don’t want to tell me where he is, I get it. Just tell him, go to an embassy. Somewhere safe for him and our guys, so nobody makes a mistake.”

“Somewhere safe.” The line a parody of good-cop reasonableness. In reality, the offer was poison. Wells would never agree to come in, and Shafer’s phone call would give the agency and NSA a chance to pinpoint him.

Shafer closed his eyes, like the pressure was getting to him. Let Carcetti believe he’d won. He needed time to think through his next move, get Carcetti back inside the lines so that Wells wasn’t at risk.

Carcetti’s hand squeezed his wrist. “You know I’m right.”

Shafer looked at Carcetti and Bunshaft. Their posture was telling. Carcetti sat forward, eager. Bunshaft was back, arms folded. Nervous. Shafer ticked his head at Bunshaft.

“Jess. You’re sweating.” The furnace room’s harsh overheads highlighted the sheen of perspiration-occupying territory ceded by Bunshaft’s receding hairline. “You on board with this? Bringing me someplace with no cameras. No warrant, nobody watching. Your boss doesn’t like the law much.”

“Exigent circumstances,” Carcetti said. “National security exception.”

“He’s got to do it this way, because even Taylor wouldn’t come near this.” Cliff Taylor, the agency’s new deputy legal counsel, handpicked by Hebley. Bunshaft glanced at Carcetti. Cleared his throat like he’d forgotten how to talk.

“Worry less about us, more about yourself,” Carcetti said. “Maybe you’ve forgotten. Duto’s a senator. He’s protected. Not you. All those leaks to Wells and he doesn’t have a security clearance—”

“We’ve gone from treason to leaking in two minutes. Next you’ll accuse me of parking in a handicapped spot.”

“This kind of leaking
is
treason. And, your age, twenty years in jail is a life sentence. Bright side, your wife’s old, too. No worries about her leaving you.”

—

Carcetti went silent and Shafer found that he, too, had nothing to say. They were both breathing hard. Like the bell had rung and they’d gone
back to their corners to sit on their stools, get ready for the next round, the arena empty, only Bunshaft watching, a silent, unreliable referee.

Shafer realized he’d forgotten the most important question of all. He opened his palms and dropped his head like he was ready to surrender. Rope-a-dope.

“All right, General. I’d like to ask something. Tell me the truth, I’ll call Wells.”

“Why would I trust you?”

“Because I don’t want him to get shot.”

An answer Carcetti would believe. He nodded.
Now we’re getting somewhere.

“You really think Iran produced that HEU?”

Carcetti hesitated for half a second. “Yes. I mean, that’s what our experts concluded—”

“Translation, you have no idea. And the worst part is
you don’t care.
Like the Gulf of Tonkin or WMD.” The excuses that Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, respectively, had offered for Vietnam and Iraq. “You’ve decided that invading Iran is the right war. Even if it’s for the wrong reasons.”

“You rather they get the bomb, Mr. Shafer? That what you’re telling me?”

“Do the President and Donna Green agree?”

Carcetti’s thick black eyebrows rose, the movement as surprising as an Easter Island statue coming to life. They came down fast, but Shafer saw that he’d scored. Carcetti didn’t know what Hebley was telling the White House. Shafer suspected that Hebley was keeping his doubts, if he had any, to himself.

Shafer looked at Bunshaft. “Hebley’s taking all of you over Niagara Falls. Except he’s the only one with a barrel.”

“If only you and Duto had actual evidence for this crazy theory you’re peddling. Aaron Duberman, right? Who just happened to give two hundred million dollars to the same President who fired Duto.”

“That’s a feature, General. Not a bug.”

“What?”

“Ask your friend here about Adina Leffetz.”

Another score. Carcetti’s big Marine head wobbled a fraction on his big Marine neck.

“You don’t know her, but she ran the job for Duberman. Used to work for a Knesset member named Daniel Raban. Nice guy. One of those Jews who think Israel should treat the Palestinians like crap for the next two thousand years to make up for what happened in the last two thousand. I can say that because I’m Jewish. You can’t.” Shafer shifted his attention to Bunshaft. “Come on, tell the general about her.”

Bunshaft shook his head.

“I still don’t hear any evidence,” Carcetti said.

Shafer wondered if he should mention Witwans and decided to hold off.

“You can do the right thing, General. You can walk this back.”

“They blew up a plane.” Carcetti tapped the table, clanking metal against metal.

For the first time, Shafer noticed that in addition to his heavy yellow gold wedding ring, Carcetti wore a thick platinum ring etched with the Marine Corps insignia. On his right hand was yet another ring, this one dull steel, almost black with wear. Intentionally or not, the rings looked like makeshift brass knuckles on Carcetti’s meaty hands.

Carcetti caught Shafer’s glance. He tapped the steel ring. “This was my granddad’s. He died on Tarawa. November 22, 1943. My dad lost his right eye at Khe Sanh, March 7, ’68.”

“And now you get to start your own war, kill somebody else’s father. Circle of death. Congratulations.”

A crimson flush spread up Carcetti’s neck. His big hands bent into fists. Shafer knew he’d gone too far.

“General,” Bunshaft said.

Carcetti exhaled long and loud. “An angel on my shoulder. Lucky for
you.” He took a phone from his pocket. “I answered your question. Time for you to do your part.”

“Call John, you mean? You get service down here?”

“We’ll go outside.”

If he hadn’t just almost talked himself into a beating, Shafer would have laughed. “I don’t know his number. He’s on a different burner every time we call—”

“So email him, tell him you have to talk to him—”

“More important. Did you really think I’d call him for you?”

—

Bunshaft broke the silence that followed.

“But you
promised
.” The shock in his voice sounded genuine.

Carcetti looked from Shafer to Bunshaft like he was trying to figure out which one to shoot first. He grabbed Bunshaft’s arm, tossed him off his chair. Bunshaft was hardly skinny, but he flew like a bag of sticks.

“Get out,” Carcetti said. “Close the door. And walk. Until you can’t hear anything.”

Bunshaft opened his mouth and closed it again and did what Carcetti had told him. Shafer and Carcetti waited in silence as Bunshaft’s footsteps receded down the hall.

When they were gone, Carcetti stood. “People fall down stairs.” He swung his head side to side, rolled his shoulders like a boxer trying to get loose.

Shafer realized he needed to make sure Carcetti knew that Lucy Joyner knew what was happening. She had to have cleared the campus by now.