Wells looked at Duto. “Can I talk to you outside?”
In the lot, Wells handed over the Audi’s keys.
“I’m going to have to do something I don’t like. Get in and keep it running.”
“You’re not—”
“No.” Gun store robbers were instant Darwin Award finalists. Sir, I see that you believe deeply in your right to use firearms to protect yourself, but please stand aside while I take these. “I’m going to ask. Politely. Even so, he might make a citizen’s arrest.”
“Good luck with that,” Duto said.
The manager conspicuously laid a pistol on the counter when Wells reappeared. “More questions, brother?”
Wells had two choices here, wink-and-a-nod—We’re hunting, but not dik-dik, see what I’m saying—and straight-up desperate. This guy didn’t strike him as the wink-and-a-nod type. “My friend and I, we’re in a bind.”
“I wish I could help.” Though his tone implied the opposite.
“If you know anyone. A friend who needs cash.”
“What’s your name?”
“John.”
“Looking for anything in particular, John?”
A pop quiz to see whether Wells knew what he was talking about. “I used to be partial to Makarovs. I know they’re junk, but they were popular where I operated. Plenty of ammo and spare parts. Then, a couple years ago, my girlfriend made me switch to a Glock. Which I admit is more accurate, more stopping power.”
“What about your friend?”
“Never asked him.”
The man shook his head. Wells felt weirdly negligent. You’ve known him all these years and you can’t even name his favorite pistol? What do you two talk about, anyway?
“What were you doing, in the places you needed the Mak?”
So he still had the guy’s interest. “About what you’d expect.”
“And this? Today?”
Wells shook his head. “Better if I don’t say.” You’d never believe me anyway.
“You look like the real deal, John. But you can’t trust me, I can’t trust you. You’d best go.”
Never argue with a man standing in front of an arsenal. Wells turned away.
“Where will you try next?”
“Soweto, maybe.” The district lay on the other side of the city. Decades after the end of apartheid, it remained ninety-eight percent black and desperately poor.
“Foolishness. By the time you get there, it’ll be dark. They’ll take your money and your car and leave you in a ditch. That’s if you’re lucky. Otherwise, they’ll just—” The man raised his index finger, pop-pop.
“My friend has a Sig if it comes to that.” Wells barely kept himself from adding You racist prick as he opened the front door.
“John—”
Wells stopped.
“I can’t help you. My boss finds out, he’ll sack me on the spot. But Soweto, no. I know a man who might have something.”
Now the guy’s racism was working for Wells.
“In Roodepoort. West of here. Your saloon has a navvy?”
Wells needed a second to understand—Does your car have a GPS? “Yes.”
The man scribbled a phone number and address, handed it over. “Name’s Pieter. Tell him Marion sent you. Make sure you have plenty of geld.” He rubbed his fingers together.
“Thank you.”
“You look like you need a break.”
Outside, Wells plugged the address into the GPS. “Twenty minutes. Let’s go.”
“Great.” But Duto didn’t sound happy.
“What?”
“I just talked to Roy Baumann. My chief of staff. Had to be sure my events are canceled for the next couple of days.”
Chief of what? Wells almost said. With everything that had happened in the last day, he had nearly forgotten that Duto was still a senator. “So?”
“FBI came to my office yesterday. This morning they showed up at Roy’s house. Six a.m. Four guys, wanting to know if he had any idea where I am.”
“Does he?”
“Dummy. It doesn’t matter. I’m traveling under my own name. On a diplo passport. They don’t even have to ask the NSA to look, those get tracked automatically. And as soon as they look at the Tambo landing logs, they’ll find the plane.”
“So they know where you are—”
“Know what else they asked? Whether Roy knew who I was traveling with or what I was doing. He said no, which is true, because he’s been smart enough not to ask. Then they brought up Shafer, did Roy know when I’d last spoken to him, what we’d talked about. Of course he said no to that, too. They asked him if he’d be willing to tell them if he got a call from me. That’s when he told them that they’d gotten their three free questions at the top of the mountain and if they wanted more they’d better come back with a subpoena.”
“Sounds like he handled it.”
“He’s been around. But you get what’s happening here, right? They’re looking to put us on Shafer’s indictment, an excuse to bring us in as material witnesses. Or just arrest us.”
“We knew it could happen.”
“Difference between knowing it could and seeing that it has.”
“So they track you to Tambo. You dead-end there. I rented the car, not you. If they’re smart, maybe they figure I’m with you, look for the alias I used to clear immigration. But that means getting the NSA involved to see who else arrived when you did. And correct me if I’m wrong, Vinny, that’s a big step. Way bigger than sending the FBI to talk to your chief of staff. If that blows up, they just say they were worried that Shafer and I duped you, they wanted to give you a friendly heads-up. But that excuse won’t wash with the NSA. Before it starts chasing a U.S. senator, it’ll want paperwork. An active criminal investigation.”
“At this point the AG”—Attorney General—“or even the President will have no problem signing off on that.”
“Fine. Let’s say they make that move today and NSA figures out who I am right away. Even then, they won’t get the car that fast.”
“Credit cards,” Duto said.
“You may not have noticed, but the credit card I used didn’t exactly match the passport.”
“That’s why the rental guy was giving you a hard time?”
“Yes. Used my middle name instead of my first and misspelled the last by one letter, Ishmael Jeferson instead of Michael Jefferson.” Shafer had taught Wells the trick. Amazing how big a difference a one-letter change could make.
“Then how come he let you rent it?”
“Because Ishmael’s my middle name on the passport, and I gave him an extra five hundred bucks as a cash deposit. But the NSA isn’t looking for Ishmael.”
“If he hadn’t bit—”
“I had a card with the right spelling if I needed it. Point is, it won’t come up right away. They’ll have to start canvassing hotels and car companies in person, and you can’t do that from Langley. In fact, they can’t do it without local help, no matter what. And guess what, it’s past five here already and this is a tricky story for the chief of station to be giving South African intel. Much less the local cops. Way I figure it, we have at least until tomorrow morning, probably the afternoon, before we have to worry about this car being hot. If we can’t find Witwans by then, we’re done anyway. And if we do, and he confirms he sold Salome the HEU, it won’t matter how many Feds are waiting when we land at Dulles, the White House has to listen.”
Wells watched in silence as Duto considered the case he’d made.
“Starting to understand how you’ve lasted so long,” he finally said.
“Let’s just hope that Pieter in Roodepoort doesn’t prove me wrong by shooting us both.”