“You know her?” A break. At last. For the first time since he’d seen Glenn Mason in Istanbul, Wells was doing more than groping blindly in the dark.
“I didn’t think of her, because she was never Mossad. Name is Adina Leffetz. Adina means ‘gentle.’”
“She goes by Salome now.”
“Never spoken to her, but she worked for a right-winger in the Knesset who takes money from your friend Duberman. Daniel Raban. Raban’s on the Defense Committee, which means he gets regular briefings from the Mossad.”
“Worked? Or works?”
“I haven’t heard her name come up for a few years, so I doubt she still works for him. But Raban’s dumb enough to keep talking to her even if she isn’t on his staff anymore.”
Another mystery solved. Salome hadn’t needed a source at Langley giving her information, as Wells and Shafer had always assumed. The CIA and Mossad worked closely on Iran, so she would have heard plenty through Raban. Of course, Wells still couldn’t figure out how she’d found Mason, but that question was less important.
Rudi reached down, picked up the crumpled-up photo, unfolded it. “Lot of ifs. You’re sure that’s her.”
“Yes. Can you get me her mobile number? An email?”
Rudi fell silent as an Israeli fighter jet passed northeast, tracing the line of the border.
“Number, yes. But I’m not going to find her for you. That you have to do yourself.”
“Thank you.” Wells paused. “I have one more question. Not about her.”
“What, then?” Rudi looked exhausted, with Wells and himself. Wells reminded himself the man had spent his whole life stealing other people’s secrets while keeping his own. Trading information was fine, but in this case Wells had nothing to give. Yet another reason Rudi must find this conversation painful.
“You remember, in the nineties, a deal where the South Africans transferred all their highly enriched uranium to you? Gave it or sold it, I’m not sure which.”
Rudi nodded. “This was ’90, maybe ’91. The Afrikaners knew they couldn’t hold on much longer. They just wanted to be rid of the stuff. The Defense Minister brought us in, asked us if we saw any reason not to take it. We said no.”
“You know how much it was?”
Rudi shook his head. “Not much. Maybe enough for one bomb. It wasn’t like we needed it. We didn’t even pay for it.”
The story matched what Shafer had said. Another dead end.
“But the deal did have one odd bit,” Rudi said. “Probably why I remember it after all this time. The South Africans insisted on bringing us the stuff themselves. In fact, one of their guys literally flew the stuff up in a shielded trunk on a commercial jet. HEU, you know, it’s not that dangerous.”
“Why do it that way?”
“If they gave us a reason, I wasn’t close enough to hear. My impression was that the South Africans wanted the stuff to disappear quietly, and we were fine with that.”
“Can you find out exactly who brought it, not who did the deal, but who actually brought it, and how much he brought? I know it’s a long time ago—”
Rudi coughed, lightly, then harder. Harder. His eyes bulged and his veins strained at his throat. Finally, he opened his mouth and spat a peach pit of phlegm and blood, beige and brown and crimson, liquid and fibrous. As rich and repulsive as an alien life-form that demanded to be vaporized by a plasma rifle.
Rudi raised his hands like a magician: See what I’ve given you?
“The ladies must love that.”
Rudi’s eyes were wide with hate. Wells wasn’t sure if it was meant for him, or the world. “I’ll try to get you what you ask. It may take a day or two. But we all have so much time.”
Rudi opened the gate, stepped in. Wells wasn’t sure whether to follow.
“You plan to stay out there?” Rudi said.
“I didn’t know if Israel would have me.”
“I’ll take you to Taba—” The station on Israel’s border with Egypt, about ten kilometers south of this one. “Walk you through with no stamps on our side. What you do from there is up to you. I hear you get on fine in Arabic countries. But I want no record you were here. This dies with me.”
“Shokran,” Wells murmured. The Arabic word for “thank you.”
“Shokran yourself.”
On the way to Taba, Rudi made three quick phone calls. When he was done, he scribbled an Israeli phone number and an email address on a notepad and pushed it at Wells without explanation.
“The email is strong, the phone not so much,” Rudi said.
“Hers?”
“Smart boy.”
“You ever meet Ellis Shafer, Rudi?”
Rudi shook his head.
“You two would get along.”
Rudi marched him to the Taba exit gate. In place of good-bye, his last words were: Please don’t try to come back this way after I’ve left. It won’t go well.
Getting into Egypt wasn’t a problem. The border guard was far more concerned with making sure that Wells had the proper entry fee than his lack of an Israeli exit stamp. Wells bought yet another fresh phone, called Shafer.
“I’ll call you back.”
Thirty seconds later, Wells’s new phone buzzed, another number. Burner to burner. “Go,” Shafer said.
“First, Vinny’s friend confirms what you said about the stuff. Enough for one bomb. He says there was one odd part. Whoever delivered it insisted on bringing it in person. As in, flying up with it.”
“Like in an icebox? A kidney to transplant.”
“He didn’t have details, but yes, more or less.”
“He know who flew it up?”
“He didn’t have a name. I asked.”
“Even before he comes back with an answer, I think you should go down there, talk to Witwans.”
“Every time we guess wrong, we lose another two days.”
“You have a better idea?”
“I have the woman. Her real name.” Wells hesitated, decided that if the NSA was already up and listening on these new phones they had less than no chance. “Adina Leffetz. A-D-I-N-A—”
“Nice Jewish girl.”
“L-E-F-F-E-T-Z. She worked for an Israeli MP named Raban. Who was in the pocket of our friend in HK.”
“You’re sure?”
“I showed Vinny’s friend her picture. He knew right away.”
“You did good, John. I’ll find her.”
“I want to shake her. Make her play defense.”
A pause.
“That business or pleasure?”
Sometimes Wells wondered if Shafer was psychic. Despite everything, Wells couldn’t stop remembering Salome’s hand on him in that hotel bathroom. He hated her, but even hate meant something. “You have anything better?”
“I made my suggestion. South for the winter.”
“I’ll consider it. Anything else I should know?”
“Just that our friend from Pennsylvania burned his last bridge with POTUS. More than burned. Nuked. We’ll need something airtight to get another audience over there.”
Wells wanted to ask Shafer what he meant, ask about the Bekaa, too. But even on a new burner three minutes was too long. And the men around him were giving him odd looks. With his perfect Arabic, Wells could pass for Jordanian or maybe even Egyptian under the right circumstances, but right now he was whispering in English. “I gotta go.”
Wells hung up, considered his next move. Cairo. A five-hour drive west from Taba. Cabbies were happy to make the trip. From Cairo International, he could be in Western Europe in four hours or South Africa in eight. He could hide in Cairo, too. He had before. The city had no shortage of hostels and one-star hotels that were happy to take cash and not picky about identification. Worst case, he could sleep on the street.