“Say no more, Jess.”
He wasn’t quite done. “Let’s just say that there’s some space between my boss and those midgets at the State Department. But the President, he wants this deal, you know. This would be a big hit for him. And he doesn’t have a lot of those.”
She came away from the lunch confident that if she could find enough highly enriched uranium and tell a plausible story, the CIA would run with it.
In the year since, she’d spoken with Bunshaft a half-dozen times. She left Iran alone and instead dangled a job with Duberman. At first he denied interest. Then she told him Duberman would sign a seven-figure contract for someone with his skill set.
“My connections, you mean,” he said.
“Look, you ought to meet with him. I’ll set a time. Doesn’t have to be soon.”
“All right.”
So she sent him an email, vaguely worded, but not vaguely enough. Anyone who saw it would understand that Bunshaft was thinking about taking a payday from Duberman. Perfect.
Now Wells was on the loose. Again. Salome needed Bunshaft to see where he stood. From the rancid apartment in Bucharest, she picked the cleanest of the phones that Igor had left. It was early evening in Romania, about noon in Washington.
Bunshaft didn’t answer. Probably he wasn’t in the habit of picking up random calls. She called again, and a third time. Finally, he picked up.
“Jess. It’s Adina Leffetz.”
“This is not a good time.”
“I need your help. Please.” He had a chivalrous streak, or pretended to.
“What’s this about?”
“I think you know.”
A faint grunt.
“Jess?”
“I’ll get out of here, call you in ten.”
Not ideal. He could easily get the NSA involved in ten minutes. But he probably didn’t want anyone listening to this call either. A half hour later, her phone buzzed.
“Adina.”
“My boss is furious, Jess.”
“But we know there’s no truth to it, he has nothing to worry about—”
“He’s not the one who needs to worry.”
“Excuse me?”
“You need to stop this man Shafer who’s running around telling these lies. And everyone who’s helping him. If this goes public, Aaron will lose his mind. He’ll blame me and you.”
“What?” Bunshaft’s voice jumped an octave.
“He’s afraid that Shafer will use the connection between us against him. All those meetings, and me offering you a job—”
“I didn’t take it.” Now he was practically a soprano. “Adina. None of this matters, because what Shafer is saying isn’t true.”
A question in the form of a statement.
“Of course not. But that doesn’t make it any less toxic. People hate Aaron. A rich Jew with a beautiful wife. Any excuse to smear him.”
“I’m telling you, we’re watching Shafer. His email accounts, his phones.”
Not closely enough, since Shafer had learned Rand Witwans’s name without the CIA finding out. But that bit of information was one Salome didn’t plan to share.
“Whatever you’re doing hasn’t stopped him spreading this story.”
“Your name has never come up.”
Wrong again. Wells knew her name, so Shafer surely did, too.
“You need to stop watching and do something. Not just Shafer. His friend, too. John Wells. He was in Russia, and the FSB picked him up and then let him go—”
“How do you know?”
She let the question hang. She had entered dangerous territory. She was playing both sides, insisting that Duberman had nothing to do with the plot and was only worried about his reputation, and at the same time disclosing information she probably shouldn’t have had in order to force Bunshaft to act.
If Bunshaft were stronger, he might have confronted her over the contradiction. But he was afraid. He didn’t want to know how she could be so connected. The reason she’d chosen him for this call.
“What you should be asking, Jess, is why these men are pursuing this crazy agenda. When the only ones who benefit are the Iranians.”
“All right.”
“You understand.”
“Yes.”
“And what it means if my name comes up. For both of us.”
“I said all right.” His voice was soft. Beaten. “I’ll deal with it. I can’t do anything before tomorrow, though.”
“If I hear more, I’ll let you know.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” But his tone suggested he didn’t have much say in the matter.
“Good-bye, Jess.” She hung up. She’d given him a way to handle Shafer: accuse him and Wells of working for Iran, wittingly or not. Now she just had to hope he, and more important his betters on Langley’s seventh floor, would follow it.
Bucharest sank into night. She lowered the bedroom’s blackout shades and watched the news. CNN was calling its coverage “The March to War,” and alternating between shots of American troop transports taking off from North Carolina and the aftermath of the attack in the Bekaa, now eighteen hours old. The United States still wouldn’t confirm it had dropped the bombs. But at a White House press conference, the President’s spokesman said that the United States and India had captured two Lebanese men who had confessed to shooting down United Airlines 49 for Hezbollah.
“Given the relationship between Hezbollah and the Iranian government, we must conclude that Hezbollah carried out this missile strike for its Iranian sponsors,” the spokesman, Josh Galper, said. “Again we call on Iran to agree to the very reasonable terms the United States has set. We do not want war with Iran. But if the Iranians give us no choice, rest assured that we will fight.”
Asked where the men were, Galper would say only that they were “en route” to the United States but might not arrive for some time. “We are trying to learn exactly what they know and whether other aircraft are at risk.”
Salome fell asleep with the television on. She dreamed she was sitting in a plane with Wells and Duberman on either side of her. She knew she was dreaming because they were in economy class, not a private jet. Wells turned to her, opened his mouth. She thought he might kiss her. She raised a hand to block him, but his jaw opened wider, like he was a snake eating a rat, and he stuck his arm down his throat and pulled out a plastic-wrapped brick, the same brick she’d left under the bed in his room in Volgograd. You shouldn’t have done that.
I thought you’d like it.
But her voice was squeaking like Bunshaft’s. They both knew she was lying.The plane raced down the runway, and Salome knew suddenly that the brick was not heroin at all but a bomb. Wells shoved it at her, and she cradled it like a baby.
The plane leapt from the runway and the brick glowed red in her hands and—
She woke. She imagined when she pulled the shades she’d find dawn still hours off. But the sun glowed wanly through the city’s haze. She couldn’t imagine how but she’d slept through the night. She stretched, showered, dressed. And only then checked her emaiclass="underline"
Adina. John Wells here. 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’d sent it about three hours before. Bad luck she’d slept so long.
She read it a dozen times. But the only word that mattered was the first. Adina. He had found her real name. Disaster. Now that Wells knew who she was, he could easily link her to Duberman. She hadn’t advertised the connection, but she hadn’t buried it either. And if Wells knew, Shafer did, too. She wasn’t sure how quickly he could hook her to Bunshaft, but he surely could search the Langley visitor records and figure out how she’d found Glenn Mason.