“What does maybe mean?”
“It means maybe.”
“Your friend have anything to say?”
“Nothing we didn’t know.” Aside from the threat to his family. “Heather and Evan—”
“They’re fine.”
Wells felt a weight real as a barbell come off his shoulders. “Thank you.”
“Thank Robin.” Meaning Shafer.
“Tell me we’re making progress, I’m in Jordan for a reason.”
“Just getting to that. Someone wants to meet you at the Wadi Araba border crossing. That’s down in Aqaba, by the Red Sea. The Israeli side. Eight a.m. tomorrow. He’s not well, so don’t make him wait.”
Meaning Rudi, Duto’s old friend, the former chief of the Mossad. It was now past 9 p.m. in Amman, and Aqaba was several hours south. Another long night.
“You know what he has?”
“No. But I know we have something to ask him, too. Call Robin. He’ll explain.”
“Anything else?”
“I think that’s it.”
Wells hung up without saying good-bye and called Shafer.
“Your Audi 5000?”
Shafer was showing his age. Audi hadn’t made that model in decades.
“They told me not to come back to Mother Russia, and I think that’s advice I’m going to take.”
“You’ll always have your memories.”
Wells could only laugh.
“I saw your favorite hoops player, by the way. And his mommy. They’re fine. Staying put, and they seem safe.”
“Vinny told me. He also told me you had something for me.”
“You know who you’re meeting tomorrow?”
“I think so.”
“Ask him what he knows about a deal his people made a few years back to bring in stuff from South Africa.”
“I assume we’re talking about the stuff we’ve been looking for.”
“No, we’re talking about contraband Viagra,” Shafer said.
“Point taken. Why South Africa?”
“I think closed programs may be our best bet, and they got the furthest.”
Wells couldn’t argue the logic. “You know how much?”
“I have on good authority it was just over fifteen kilos. Fifteen point three, to be exact. The guy on the RSA side was named Rand Witwans.”
“I’ll ask.”
“Stay cool.”
“As a cucumber.”
The only cabbie in all of Amman willing to take Wells to Aqaba in the dark had a lazy eye and a habit of steering with his knees. The ride on the Desert Highway proved more frightening than the previous night in Lubyanka. Still, they arrived in Aqaba intact a little past midnight. Despite the lateness of the hour, the town bustled with European and Arab tourists. Wells found an Internet café, emailed Evan and Heather asking for patience. Then he logged on to the account he’d given Nemkov.
There it was.
A photo of Salome and her bodyguard, sent from a Yahoo account in the name of Roger Bishop, Wells’s own pseudonym. The quality was better than Wells expected, Salome’s face clear. Nemkov had cropped it so it couldn’t be directly identified as having come from the hotel, but still he’d taken an enormous risk. I am not sure why but I trust you, the message said. Volgograd hadn’t been a dead end after all. Wells would show the photo to Rudi in the morning. The Mossad and the other Israeli security services were tiny by American standards. If Salome had been part of them, Rudi would know her.
Now Wells walked through the empty space where Israel met Jordan, toward two men who stood at the gate at the edge of the Israeli border station. They could have been a diorama representing the stages of life, the first a soldier, young and strapping, the second withered, barely holding himself upright. As Wells walked close, the second man stepped into the neutral zone, extended a dry hand to Wells.
“Rudi. You’re a legend.” In truth, Wells knew very little about Ari Rudin or the Mossad. He’d never operated in Israel.
“Save it. I’m not dead.” Rudi brought a hand to his mouth, began the impossible process of clearing his throat. “Yet. Since we’re such friends, let me ask you a question. How would you spend your last few weeks? Family? Skydiving? Lying on the beach looking at the beautiful girls you’ll never see in the afterlife? Apologizing for your sins?”
Wells had never heard the question posed quite so baldly. The right answer had to be family, he supposed, even if he was no longer sure who his family was. “Family, sure.”
“Everyone says that. You know what you wind up doing? Nothing. Watching TV. Grunting on the toilet like a monkey because the pills make it impossible to… Bitching at your wife about dinner, the lights she left on, the electric bill, everything, and really what it’s about is you’re dying. All of it. Every last sentence and thought and breath. Family.”
“Tell me how you really feel, Rudi. I’m tired of the sugarcoating.”
Rudi patted his arm. “When your time comes, just hope it’s a bullet in the back of the head. Nice and easy. Meanwhile, I’m wasting time, and we’re both short on that. Tell me, where have you been?”
“Russia. And Saudi.” Duto had arranged this meeting, so Wells saw no reason to lie.
“Find anything?”
“Only that a lot of people don’t like me.”
Rudi laughed. He sounded like he was chewing gravel. “An honorary Jew. You know, we think the Americans are going to invade. Especially after the Bekaa.”
Wells had seen the reports at his hotel in Aqaba. A bomb had killed Hezbollah’s top general. No survivors, no civilian casualties. Sayyed Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, had issued a statement promising revenge on the United States. The Americans have again proven their devilry. Just as they attacked our Iranian cousins last week, so do they turn their weapons on us. We will not be intimidated. We remain the faithful servants of Allah, and we will respond at the time and place of His choosing.
“Hezbollah isn’t even blaming us,” Rudi said. “Unusual for them. If they have more of those SA-24s, I wouldn’t want to be on an American plane anywhere within ten thousand kilometers of here.” His smile revealed brown misshapen teeth. “Though I guess it doesn’t matter so much for me.”
Wells liked this tough dying Jew. “War. Off one kilo of HEU.”
“You’re the American, not me. But it feels like a lot of things coming together. So many reasons to be angry with Iran. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. You have considered that letting it happen would be best, maybe? A new regime.”
“Not my choice.”
“Of course. You can’t be bothered with these big thoughts.”
“Your people say they expect a war,” Wells said. “Seen any casualty estimates?”
“A few thousand dead—”
But Rudi’s voice faded, as if he found the argument too tiring to continue. The sun peeked out from behind the brown mountains east of the checkpoint. Rudi lifted his head like a basilisk. “Sunshine on my face. That I’ll miss.”
“Vinny said—”
“I tried to answer his questions.” Rudi went silent. Wells thought he might explain why he was helping, even at the risk of betraying Israel. But he said only, “I have a few names. I’m not sure any of them are right. Maybe I’m not good at this anymore.”
Wells handed him the photo of Salome he’d printed. “Is she one of them?”
“You’re sure this is her?”
Wells nodded.
Rudi’s face tightened like the cancer had clenched him. He balled up the paper, threw it down on the blacktop. “If I’m this stupid, I might as well be dead already.”