The Secret Soldier (13 page)

“Who told you I quit?”

“Word gets around. But I hear also that you’re having a hard time staying away.”

The intimacy in Kowalski’s voice infuriated Wells. As did the fact that Kowalski still had sources at Langley. He shouldn’t have known that Wells had left, and he definitely shouldn’t have known about Keith Robinson. “Do you think we’re friends, Pierre?”

“I would never make that mistake. Your friends have a short life expectancy.”

“Soon I’ll have no one at all to counsel me. Then I’ll decide to settle old scores.”

Kowalski sighed. “Please let me know when that day comes so I can hire more bodyguards. In any case. A friend asked me for a recommendation. Someone who operates with absolute discretion and certainty. Someone not connected to any national organization. Someone who speaks Arabic. I thought of you.”

“I have to tell you, if you want an assassination, I’m going to be seriously upset. People keep asking me to kill other people.”

“I see. And that makes you angry.”

“So angry I could kill somebody, yes.”

“Now you are being ironic, Monsieur Wells. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Do you know what I’m thinking right now? How much I’d like to make you strip naked and pull an oxcart in the middle of Zurich. Give kids rides.”

“That wouldn’t be much fun. For me or the
kinder.
But all this is a digression, and these international calls are expensive. So let me tell you, this job, it’s not an assassination. Undercover work.”

“Be specific.”

“It’s connected to recent events.”

The terrorist attacks in the Gulf, Wells guessed. “Who am I working for? And what do they want from me?”

Kowalski was silent. Then: “As for the first question, the answer is complicated. As for the second, I truly don’t know.”

“Then forget it.”

“These people, they will pay you one million dollars just to meet. Say the word and they’ll send a plane for you.”

That’s insane,
Wells thought. And then said aloud: “That’s insane. Tell me, Pierre. Are they paying you for this introduction?”

“No. But the person who asked for help, I’ve known him a long time. And—you know I don’t care much about these things—but he’s on what you would call the right side.”

“You know what people say about things that sound too good to be true. One million dollars. To work for the right side.”

Kowalski was silent, letting the hook dangle. Wells could truly say he didn’t care about money. Yet the thought of being paid a million dollars for a day’s work was hard to resist. “All right,” he said. “Tell your friends I’m in.”

“But I want the money first.”

“Spoken like a true mercenary. I approve.”

 

 

THAT NIGHT WELLS TOLD
Anne about the offer.

“And who is this guy, Kowalski?”

“Swiss. Lives in Zurich. An arms dealer.”

“You’re friends?”

Wells shook his head.

“But you trust him.”

“Betraying me isn’t in his interest.”

“Why do it? If the money doesn’t matter.”

“For someone who doesn’t understand me, you understand me pretty well.”

“I know what
doesn’t
drive you. And I know you’re going over there. I can almost feel the energy coming off you. You were like this before you went to Jamaica. You can’t wait.”

It’s the only time I feel really alive,
Wells thought. Even unspoken, the words felt like a betrayal. She took his face in her hands, kissed him lightly, her lips just touching his. “I’m not going to say anything dumb, like ‘Stay alive,’ but stay alive, please.”

Wells put his arms around her, pulled her close, kissed her until her mouth opened to him. And without another word he picked her up and carried her to her—their—bed.

AT KENNEDY AIRPORT, THE LIMOUSINE TURNED OFF THE ACCESS
road short of the main terminals and stopped at a gatehouse whose black-painted sign announced “General Aviation.” The driver passed over his license and the gate rose. The limo swung right along a cyclone fence and stopped at an unmarked concrete building.

Wells stepped out of the limo, blinking in the sunlight and wishing for sunglasses. A tall man with close-cropped gray hair emerged from the building, walked toward Wells, extended his hand. “Captain Smith. You must be Mr. Wells. Pleasure to meet you, sir.” His accent was English, surprising Wells, who had somehow expected an ex-flyboy.

“Captain Smith. Not Captain Jones.”

“Yes, sir. Smith, not Jones. Sorry to disturb you, but I must ask. Are you armed?”

“No.” Kowalski had specified no weapons.

“Your passport, please.”

Wells handed it over. His real passport. His real name. He wasn’t used to traveling under his real name, wasn’t used to being a civilian. Smith flipped through it, handed it back. “Do you have any electronic gear with you? Laptop, BlackBerry, phone?”

“Just my phone.”

“I’d like to keep it, sir. Only for the duration of the flight.”

Wells handed over his phone, a cheap silver Samsung. “This way, please.” Smith led Wells to a giant twin-engine passenger jet.

“
That’s
my ride?”

“Correct, sir.”

“Please stop calling me sir. Is anyone else coming?”

“No, sir.”

The jet was a Boeing 777. Normally it would hold about three hundred passengers. “Where are we going, captain?”

“I’m not meant to give you that information until we’re airborne, sir.”

Three flight attendants waited at the top of the jetway. All women. They wore demure jackets and knee-length skirts, but all three could have modeled on their days off. Wells supposed that anyone who could afford this jet could afford whatever crew he wanted.

“Mr. Wells,” the prettiest attendant said. “I’m Joanna. Please come this way.”

At the center of the jet, four leather chairs were arranged before a fifty-inch television and a fully stocked bar. Despite its opulence, the interior was studiously anonymous. No books or flags gave away the name or nationality of the owner. The exit signs were in English. The jet seemed to be part of a fleet. In that case, the pool of possible owners shrank even further. The Russian and Chinese governments were the most obvious suspects. But Wells’s recent adventures hadn’t made him friends in Moscow or Beijing. The Saudi or Kuwaiti royal families. Maybe the French, though in that case this jet ought to be an Airbus. Maybe an oil company.

Nobody very nice. The short answer was that nobody very nice owned a plane like this.

“Mr. Wells,” the attendant said, “we have a video-on-demand library with six thousand movies. There’s also a live satellite feed. Whatever you’d like to watch.” She gave Wells a smile that could be described only as saucy. “If you’d rather sleep, the bedrooms are this way.” She nodded toward the front of the cabin.

“And we’ll be in the air about ten hours?”

“Less than eight, sir.”

Information, of a sort. Eight hours meant Western Europe or South America. “Thank you.”

The jet took off fifteen minutes later. An hour after that, Captain Smith walked into the cabin. “Sir. You asked our destination. It’s Nice.” As in France. “We get in around eight in the morning local time.”

“Who’s waiting for me?”

“I don’t know. Truly.”

“When a man feels the need to say truly, he’s usually lying. And I told you about calling me sir.”

“Yes, Mr. Wells. In any case. We’re expecting a smooth flight. But if you need medicine to sleep, Joanna can help.”

The bedroom was as pointlessly luxurious as the rest of the jet. Wells lay on the white cotton sheets and closed his eyes. But he couldn’t sleep. He found himself thinking of Evan, his son. He wondered how he could be so strong and so weak at the same time. Death hardly scared him, but the idea of picking up a telephone and calling his own blood had paralyzed him for years. Evan was a teenager now, old enough to decide for himself whether to allow Wells in his life. Wells supposed he feared that Evan would reject him, leaving him even more alone. But he had to take that chance. He needed to drop his guard and tell the boy that he’d never forgotten him, not in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

Just as soon as this mission was over. How many times had he made that promise to himself? Too many. He closed his eyes and lay in the dark as the jet crossed the sea.

I N THE MORNING, THE
coffee was strong and black, and the landing was smooth. The jet banked low over the Mediterranean before swinging into the airport at Nice, offering a priceless view of the waves crashing into the Côte d’Azur. Priceless, indeed. In 2008, a villa near here had sold for five hundred million euros, close to one billion dollars. Wells had entered a land of wealth beyond comprehension. He wondered again who had summoned him, and why. As he left the plane, Captain Smith gave him a perfectly correct smile, neither too large nor too small, neither familiar nor dismissive. “Beats coach,” Wells said.

“My pleasure,” the captain said. Wells supposed that the crew never broke character, never acknowledged that they and the passengers they served were members of the same species.

Outside, a breeze whipped off the Mediterranean. A French immigration agent stood on the runway beside a white Renault minivan. Beside him, a second man wore a blue sport coat that flapped open to reveal a shoulder holster. Neither looked happy to see Wells. Their hostility was a relief after the paid-for, painted-on smiles of the plane’s crew.

The agent waved Wells into the Renault, and they sped to the main terminal building. In a windowless office, the agent scanned Wells’s passport. “Are you carrying any weapons, Mr. Wells?” That question again. Wells shook his head. “Raise your arms,” the man in the blue sport coat said. Wells did and was rewarded with a thorough pat-down before the agent handed him back his passport. “Welcome to France, then. Jean will show you to your car.”

Jean, the man in the sport coat, led Wells in silence through the airport’s back halls, windowless corridors lined with banged-up baggage carts. Two men in brown uniforms smoked under a poster that warned,
“Défense de fumer.”
They reached a door with a simple pushbutton combination lock. Jean keyed in the code, pulled it open, waved Wells through. They were near the front entrance of the arrivals level. A black BMW 760 waited at the curb, two men inside. Wells admired the precision of the handoff. Even if he had known he was being taken to Nice, even if he had somehow arranged for a weapon at the airport, he couldn’t have picked it up. He hadn’t been alone since Kennedy. And whoever was on the other side had plenty of juice with the French government.

Wells slipped into the rear seat of the 760, leaned against the cushioned leather. No point in asking. He’d have answers soon enough.

 

 

THEY DROVE ALONG THE
A8, the highway called La Provençale, which tracked the coast to the Italian border. The BMW’s driver sliced through the heavy morning traffic as if he were playing a video game in which the only penalty for an accident was the loss of a turn. Wells loved to speed, but this man was at a different level. “You ever race F1?” he said. He didn’t expect an answer.

“He never made F1,” the man in the front passenger seat said. “Only F2.”

“Where are we going?”

No answer. Wells tried to turn on his phone but found the battery had been drained. Nice touch. West of Nice, the sedan swung onto the coast road, two narrow lanes that rose and fell along the hills. They turned back toward Nice. The precautions seemed pointless to Wells. He had no phone, no gun, not even a change of clothes. The tactician in him admired the way these men had cut him off from any possible support.

Outside Nice, they turned back onto the A8, running east this time, and fast, the driver’s hands high and relaxed on the wheel. Another racing clinic. Wells would have liked to ask for tips. On an overpass ten miles east of Nice, the sedan pulled over.

“Get out.”

Wells didn’t argue, just stepped out and watched the BMW pull away. He didn’t bother getting the plate number. The last twelve hours had left him sick of tradecraft. He wouldn’t have long to wait, he guessed. After going to so much trouble to make sure he was sterile, they’d be foolish to leave him alone for long.

Sure enough, a stretch Mercedes Maybach pulled up almost before he finished the thought. Black? Check. Tinted windows? Check. Runflat tires and armored doors? Check and double-check. Wells raised a thumb, leaned toward the window. “Anywhere east, I’ll take it. I can chip in for gas. Cool?”

The door swung open.

 

 

THE MAN IN THE
backseat had a heavy square face and wore a white
ghutra
low on his forehead. A neatly trimmed goatee covered his jutting chin like black-dyed moss. From a distance, he might have passed for sixty-five. Up close, his face betrayed his age. His skin was as creased as month-old newspaper. Under his thick black glasses his eyes were rheumy and yellow. Wells didn’t recognize him.