Meantime, Wells decided to press his luck. He found another Internet kiosk. Set up another dummy email account. She could probably trace it here, but by the time she did, Wells would be gone.
He typed: Adina. John Wells here. You weren’t nice to me in Volgograd but I’m the forgiving sort. He reread the last sentence. No. Less whiny, more vaguely menacing. He deleted it, replaced it with—
Sorry you had to run in Volgograd, but now that I know how to find you I look forward to seeing you soon. Maybe I’ll even drop by.
He looked it over. Just so. Send.
17
The job was babysitting, and Amos Frankel hated it.
Frankel was Salome’s bodyguard, the man who’d drawn on Wells in Volgograd. He’d never been to South Africa before. If he wanted lions and elephants and giraffes, he would go to the zoo. Right now he belonged at Salome’s side, not a twelve-hour plane ride away. He’d told her so. She disagreed.
For that matter, he wished she had let him shoot Wells in Volgograd. A simple trigger squeeze. A few kilograms of pressure with his index finger. Nothing Wells could have done. They could have left the body in the hotel, been gone from Russia in two hours. Buvchenko had a jet at the airport. But Salome wouldn’t let him. Duberman didn’t want them to kill Wells, and anyway the drugs they’d planted would destroy him, she said. By the time the Russians are finished with him, he’ll wish he was dead.
Frankel believed Salome had other reasons, ones she wouldn’t admit. He’d seen how they looked at each other in Volgograd. Alpha males provoked her. Years before, Frankel had caught her staring at a photo of Duberman’s supermodel wife Orli in a bikini. Frankel wondered sometimes if Salome had proposed this whole scheme to impress Duberman. She may be the stuff of a million slack-jawed teenage fantasies, Aaron, but can she start a war for you?
Lust and love and lust chasing each other in a circle without end, as Frankel watched the follies from afar. A decade before, he’d skidded his motorcycle onto gravel to avoid a stump-tailed dog, sliding off the blacktop at one hundred thirty kilometers an hour. He’d broken his jaw and his hip. Worse, the stones had scraped his legs and face past raw. The pain from the accident and the botched surgeries afterward unwound his interest in sex. He hadn’t been with a woman since. He saw himself as almost a eunuch now, emotionally if not physically.
He loved Salome, but without heat. He felt at once close to her and a million kilometers away, like the childhood friend of a famous actor. He knew what drove her, or thought he did. Yet what she’d achieved shocked him. Her intensity and focus unnerved him. They’d grown up together in the Tel Aviv suburbs. After the accident and the surgeries, she had come to his hospital bed and sat with him in silence. By an alchemy even Frankel did not fully understand, he belonged to her now.
Frankel didn’t know if she understood his feelings for her. He didn’t plan to ask, not ever. When she’d asked for his help with this scheme, he’d figured that they wouldn’t last long. The CIA or Mossad would discover their plans. But somehow they’d survived long enough for Frankel to imagine that they might succeed. He tried not to think what Salome might become then.
First they had to make sure that Wells didn’t blow up their plan at one minute to midnight. The man had escaped the trap Salome had set in Volgograd. Talked his way out of Lubyanka. He was harder to kill than a Negev spider. And Salome was worried that he’d heard about Rand Witwans. They might have found him, she said. She didn’t explain how she knew.
Can’t we trust Witwans to be quiet? Frankel said.
He’s a whipped old man. We can’t trust him with anything. He drinks.
Why don’t I just kill him, then?
If I let you, you’d kill everyone in sight, Amos.
Only the ones who deserve it.
Long as he’s alive, no one cares about him. If he dies suddenly, the CIA and the Mossad will notice.
What about Wells? What if he comes for you?
I can handle Wells.
So Frankel took an overnight flight from Istanbul to Johannesburg and drove to the Free State province, the rural heart of South Africa, where Witwans had an estate.
Now Frankel arrived at the man’s front gate, two meters of wrought iron set between two brick pillars. “Witwans Manor,” a bronze plaque announced. Atop a hill behind the gate was a tall brick house that wouldn’t have been out of place in the fanciest London suburbs, set on a manicured lawn where two beautiful brown horses munched grass. In truth, the Free State was too dry for such greenery. The estate radiated a dedication to appearance at any cost. Frankel hated it on sight. He pressed the gate buzzer, rang it long and hard. Nothing happened. He rang again, this time gluing his finger to the buzzer.
His patience was gone by the time Witwans walked down the driveway, a shotgun slung over his shoulder, a German shepherd trotting beside him. The gates swung about a half meter and Witwans stood between them. Up close Frankel could see that the dog and the weapon were both more annoyance than threat. Witwans was a gnarled old man, mid-seventies at least, with a drinker’s red nose.
Frankel stepped out of his rented SUV, keeping both hands visible. “Rand.”
“Who are you?”
“From Natalie.” Natalie was the name Salome used with Witwans. “She told you I’d be coming.” A moment later, the gates swung open. Had Witwans really been too frightened or stupid to remember? Frankel saw why Salome had sent him here.
They sat on Witwans’s back porch, drinking coffee, eating fresh blueberries and clotted cream. He’s old-style Afrikaans, Salome had told Frankel. Thinks the natives exist to serve him. Even worse, thinks they want to. Don’t talk politics with him or you’ll throw up. Just ask him what I told you and put the taps on his phone and wait.
Babysitting.
“So what’s happened?”
Witwans raised the porcelain cup to his lips with a shaking hand. “I’ve told Natalie all this. One call from my old friend Joost. Two days ago. Wish I’d never mentioned it. Natalie asked me to call if anything seems wrong, so I called. I didn’t tell her to send you. I take care of myself.”
As far as Frankel could see, all Witwans could take care of was a bottle of scotch. “Since Joost called, has anything out of the ordinary happened?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“No calls from the police.”
“Of course not.”
“Has anyone come around? The electrician. The plumber—”
“The plumbing’s fine.”
“You know what I mean. Has anyone shown up who shouldn’t be here?”
“Only you.”
Frankel reached out, squeezed Witwans’s biceps. He forced himself to be gentle, though he wanted to tear the old man’s arm clean off.
“You haven’t told anyone about Natalie? Or what you sold her?”
“Never, never.”
“Your children.”
“You think I want them mixed up in this? You know, Natalie told me she’d burn all this down if I did. With me inside.”
If the tremor in his voice was any indication, the threat had stuck.