The Faithful Spy

Exley, Shafer, and Duto sat across from him at a conference table in a small windowless room that wasn’t quite standard-issue office space. No clocks, for one. Then there were the cameras in each corner that had deliberately been left visible, and the acoustic padding covering the walls. In theory, the padding was meant to defeat any efforts to listen in on conversations in the room. In reality, it and the cameras were signals, Wells knew: This is a serious room and you’re in serious trouble. A man in a suit sat against the far wall. He hadn’t introduced himself, but Wells figured him for a lawyer. He didn’t have to guess about the no-neck plainclothes security officer who stood by the door, his hand resting on the Glock on his hip. No one had even pretended to be friendly. The gate guards had searched him head to toe before they’d let him in. He’d been searched again before he’d been allowed to see Exley and Shafer, who had met him with handshakes, not hugs, like he was back from a three-day sales trip to Detroit. Wells couldn’t say he was surprised.

“John,” Shafer had said. “We’re gonna have some questions for you.” Wells had picked up a flicker of something more in Exley’s eyes when she’d first seen him, but the look had disappeared fast. If she was glad to see him, she was hiding it. After leaving the YMCA, he had bought a Greyhound ticket from Missoula to Washington, one last chance to be alone before the world started to turn again. He planned to call the agency when he reached D.C. He had met Zawahiri in Peshawar two weeks before. Two weeks of freedom seemed fair after all his years at the edge of the world.

On the bus Wells felt heavy and tranquil, as if his blood had been replaced with something cooler, his veins filled with embalming fluid. He thumbed through his Koran and cataloged what he had lost during his time away. His mother. His ex-wife. His son, though not forever, he hoped. But he still had the chance to protect his country from men who believed that Allah had given them a license to destroy it.

now he was furious with himself. The world had been turning all along, and he hadn’t noticed. Three hours after the Greyhound pulled into Washington’s rundown bus station he heard the bulletins about Los Angeles. He knew immediately he should have checked in as soon as he’d reached Hong Kong. The attack would make the agency’s doubts about him boil over.

He promised himself he would stay calm, whatever they said to him. He had to convince them to trust him, or they would never give him another chance. So he sketched out his years in the North-West Frontier, walked them through the weeks since he’d left Islamabad: where he’d stayed, how he’d traveled, the name he’d used to clear immigration at Kennedy. He told them about his meeting in Peshawar with Zawahiri and Khadri and Farouk, how they had sent him to America without a specific mission.

“It wasn’t Los Angeles,” Duto said.

“No.”

“You didn’t know anything about Los Angeles.”

“Of course not.”

In the most even tone he could muster, he apologized. For entering the country without telling them. For not reaching out when he was in Pakistan. For not killing bin Laden. He explained as best he could. But he knew he didn’t have what they really wanted: information about the last attack, or the next. ac ro s s t h e ta b l e, Exley felt her stomach clench. Duto had never met Wells before, so he couldn’t tell how much Wells had left over there. But she could. It wasn’t just the lines on his face or the scar on his arm. The confidence in his eyes hadn’t disappeared, but it was mixed with something else, a humility she hadn’t seen before. And Wells’s story made sense. He had wanted to visit his family, to be alone for a few days. Maybe Duto couldn’t understand that, but she could. Those weren’t crimes. She wanted to grab Duto’s arm and say, Can’t you see he’s on our side? But she didn’t. She couldn’t conceive of a quicker way to lose what little influence she had. Duto had clearly decided that Wells was worthless even if he was still loyal. He hadn’t stopped 9/11 or Los Angeles, so screw him. Telling Duto that she could see the truth in Wells’s eyes would earn her a transfer straight to Ottawa, for the glamorous job of watching the Canadian Parliament. So she kept her mouth shut and listened as Duto fired away. Then the door opened, and Duto’s assistant walked in and murmured something in his ear. “Be right back,” Duto said, and walked out.

with duto gone, Wells looked at Exley and Shafer. He would have liked to know whether they hated him as much as Duto did. But he wasn’t going to ask in here, with the tapes rolling and the lawyer scribbling. He didn’t want to compromise them. Besides, he might not like the answer.

Exley leaned toward him. “John,” she said.