“I saw you on TV a couple weeks ago, Evan,” Shafer said. “At Fresno State. That one-three must have been thirty feet out.” He’d checked YouTube highlights the night before.
Evan looked at Shafer the same way Shafer had looked at Rick the used-car salesman. “Where is he?”
“Flying from Russia to Germany, or he may already have landed.”
“What’s he doing?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Then he should tell us himself.”
Evan’s voice was cool. Composed. Maybe he was more like John than he seemed, snarky T-shirt and all.
“He can’t call. He’d have to come here, and he can’t spare the time.”
“Because of the NSA?”
“Among other things.”
“That woman in there, she’s FBI, yes? And you’re CIA.”
“Yes.”
“So why are we worrying about the NSA?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Enough of that.”
“I wish it weren’t.”
“Ellis. I haven’t forgotten what John did in Kenya. But this, we’ve been here a week. You know she won’t let us leave the house? Haven’t even been outside until now.”
“A few more days.”
“Give us something, Ellis.”
Shafer had known they would reach this point sooner or later. Now he realized he wanted to tell them. Everything. He shouldn’t, but he did. If only to unburden himself.
“You want to know?”
“Yes,” Evan said.
“No,” Heather said.
“Go inside, Mom.”
“Don’t do this. It’s not fair.” She looked at Shafer with wide pleading eyes. He understood. She had lost Wells to this shadow war. She feared Evan would be next.
“Fair’s got nothing to do with it,” Evan said.
The kid was eighteen. Old enough to enlist, if he wanted. He had the right to know.
Heather turned away, walked into the house. So Shafer told Evan the story. It took an hour. He didn’t mention Duberman by name, but he gave up everything else. Evan looked at him in disbelief when he finished.
“This mysterious billionaire might kill us to get at John?”
“Your father’s lots of things. Not crazy. Neither am I. It’s all true. And we would both feel better if you stayed here until we figure out where the uranium came from.”
“Or we, the country, I mean, invade Iran,” Evan said. “This guy won’t care after that, right?”
“Probably not.”
“So John’s running to every country that ever had this stuff, and they’re all blowing him off. And in another week, we’ll attack and it’ll be moot.”
Something about what Evan had said bugged Shafer. And it wasn’t the dig, either.
“Say that again.”
“I said, John’ll be in Libya, chasing some guy who worked at some reactor in 1983”—as if the year was the dawn of recorded history—“and meanwhile the President will come on television to tell us all about Operation Irani Freedom or whatever. And Richie Rich will buy himself a new spaceship because he’s so excited his plot worked.”
Some reactor in 1983. That fast, Shafer saw what he’d missed. He was a fool. It had taken an eighteen-year-old kid to spot the hole.
A country running an active nuclear weapons project would track its HEU to the milligram. It wouldn’t sell the stuff at any price. But what about a country that had stockpiled a chunk of weapons-grade uranium and then ended its program? The material instantly would be a liability. It would be locked in a vault and after a few years forgotten. Waiting for someone — for Salome — to find it and pry it out for the right price.
A long shot, sure. But no longer than the possibilities that had taken Wells to Russia and Duto to Israel. Plus Shafer had an edge. Of all the countries that had walked away from enrichment programs over the years, South Africa had gotten the furthest. It was the natural place to start. Shafer’s first agency posting had been in Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire — the country now known as Congo. This was the late seventies. Kinshasa was rife with officers for the South African Bureau of State Security — infamously known as B.O.S.S. All over Africa, the CIA worked hand-in-glove, white-hand-in-white-glove, with South Africa. It saw the white-run government in Pretoria as a buffer against the Communist-supported African National Congress.
In Kinshasa, Shafer had worked with a dozen South African intelligence officers. They were for the most part unapologetically racist, especially after a few drinks. The blacks can’t be trusted to manage their own affairs, one told Shafer. You don’t let the animals run the zoo. Yet when they weren’t talking politics, they were pleasant enough. And Shafer, cynical to his core, nonetheless believed that some forms of government were worse than others. Communism would make Africa even poorer and more miserable. Eventually, sooner than they expected, white South Africans would have no choice but to give the vote to the black majority. Meantime, he would work with them when the need arose.
So Shafer told himself. Though he wondered if he was just making excuses.
The white regime took longer to fall than he expected. But it did. And in the mid-nineties a couple of the guys he’d known in Congo emigrated to the United States. Shafer couldn’t remember where they’d wound up, but he could find out easily enough. Lucky for him, they all had these weird Afrikaner names. He wouldn’t need fancy databases to track them. He was guessing the United States had only one Joost Claassen.
A poke in the ribs from Evan brought him back to Provo.
“I gotta go. Promise you’ll stay.” If Evan sat tight, so would Heather. “Even if you think it’s BS.”
“For that story, I’ll give you a week. On two conditions. One for you, one for my dad. First. Whatever happens, promise when it’s over you’ll give me the after-action report.” The kid raised his eyebrows, at once acknowledging and mocking the lingo.
“Done. What’s the other?”
“You tell John, I want him to come out here, come skiing with me. If I’m stuck in Utah, I might as well get to Alta. Pow-pow.”
“What about basketball?”
“I’m already out of the rotation.”
“All right, I’ll tell him. Though I bet he hasn’t skied in at least twenty years.”
Evan grinned, and Shafer saw he’d chosen the sport for exactly that reason. An easy way to show his superiority over the old man. Shafer turned for the gate. “Tell your mother I had to run.”
“I’d like to see that,” Evan said.
Shafer found a copy shop that had workstations with Internet access. In forty-six seconds, he found Joost and Linda Claassen, in Henderson, Nevada. He bought himself a phone card, hoping Joost hadn’t moved. Or gone unlisted. Or died.
“Hallo?” The voice was thirty-five years rougher than Shafer remembered, but the accent was unmistakable.
“Joost.”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Ellis Shafer. We knew each other back in Kinshasa.”
“I never lived in Kinshasa.”
Shafer wondered if he had the wrong man. But no. Old spy habits died hard. “Come on, Joost. Remember that party you threw, Christmas, you brought in the witch to cast spells on us? Betty Nye, she hid in the closet. Orson had to drag her out.” Orson Nye had been Shafer’s first chief of station.
Joost laughed. “Okay, then. I remember. Where is Orson these days?”
“Nursing home in Virginia. Alzheimer’s.”
“That is unfortunate.”
Shafer had forgotten how Afrikaners talked, these oddly flat statements. “Sure is. I need to see you, Joost.”