If that prospect worried the President, he wasn’t admitting it publicly. “We will fight, we will win, and we will destroy the factories that you use to build weapons of mass destruction,” he’d said at the end of his speech. “Do not doubt our resolve. The United States can never allow Iran to threaten it with nuclear attack. My fellow Americans, of every faith and creed, may God bless us all.”
Her phone buzzed with a message, a single word from Frankeclass="underline" Here.
Me, too, she wrote.
An hour later, after an unexpected and frustrating wait for immigration to open, she and her men stepped out of a taxi outside the safe house. She had never seen the place before. She had set up safe houses all over the world, but in cities like Cape Town, where she had no operations and no plans for any, she sometimes let real-estate agents choose their locations. In this case, she’d made a mistake. The neighborhood was anonymous and close to highways and the airport, as she liked, but the house was small and run-down. Worse, it stretched almost to the edges of the lot.
She preferred bigger houses in gated communities. Still, the place should be fine for a night, and Wells couldn’t possibly find it. Of course, she couldn’t find him either, not yet. But tomorrow morning, she would make Witwans call Wells, tell him they needed to meet. Wells would be suspicious, but he would know that the FBI and CIA were closing in on him and that Witwans was his only hope. He would take the chance. This time Salome wouldn’t leave Wells to Russian cops or Glenn Mason. She would pull the trigger herself. And after Wells was finally gone, Witwans would get what he deserved, a bullet in the back of the head.
Then she would rest.
Frankel barely looked up when she walked into the house. He sat on the couch, a pistol on the coffee table in front of him, a bag at his feet stretched by the shotguns inside. The scars on his chin shone and he stank of cheap coffee and too many hours behind the wheel.
“Amos.” She knelt on the couch, wrapped an arm around him. “Long drive?”
“Fine.”
“Wells—”
“No way could he have followed me.”
“Rand?”
“In the bedroom. He was all right. Spent most of the ride with his tongue hanging out.”
“Once he gets us Wells, you can do whatever you like with him.”
Frankel smiled. Put his head against Salome. Almost that quickly, he slept.
She gave him two minutes, then extricated herself and unzipped the bag. Inside, she found a pistol and two shotguns. She kept the pistol, gave the shotguns to Binyamin and Gil, the reinforcements Duberman had sent down with her.
“There shouldn’t be any problem, but just in case.”
Wells opened his eyes and found himself in a tunnel. Not a metaphorical tunnel, a real one, cut through rock, with headlights speeding uncomfortably close. He couldn’t see entrance or exit, but the grumbling in his stomach assured him he was very much alive and not in purgatory.
“Where are we?”
“Huguenot Tunnel, it’s called. We get out, we’re fifty klicks from Bellville.”
Seconds later, the exit came into view, a white speck that grew steadily. Wells felt his pulse kick up. Past 8 a.m. now, 1 a.m. in Washington. Twenty-three hours to go. Plenty of time.
Only it wasn’t. South Africa was a long way from anywhere, and a very long way from North America. The eight-thousand-mile flight from Cape Town to Dulles would take at least sixteen hours, more if the Atlantic headwinds were strong, plus a refueling stop in Dakar that added another hour.
Seventeen hours minimum, less a seven-hour time difference. If everything went right and they captured Witwans with no hitches and took off from Cape Town by 11 a.m., they still wouldn’t arrive at Dulles until at least 9 p.m. Washington time. And at some point during that flight, they would need to convince Donna Green to talk to them rather than send the FBI to arrest them on landing. The equation was simple but punishing. They had used every inch of their slack and could no longer afford a single misstep. Even an error as small as a botched refueling in Senegal might destroy their chances.
“What are you thinking?” Duto said.
“That I wish we had some silencers.”
“And a teleporter.” Duto could count, too.
They sped out of the tunnel, and Wells saw Table Mountain in the distance, the famous thirty-five-hundred-foot plateau that rose behind Cape Town and offered a perfect view of the city and ocean. A must-see destination, by all accounts, but Wells wouldn’t. The world’s worst tourist. He always missed the big sights.
“You have a plan?” Duto said. “Or pretty much the same as last time?”
“Pretty much. Loop around the block, once, see what we can see. If the houses are as close as they look on the map, maybe we try to come in from the side.”
“What about me?” Jacob said.
“You’re the wheelman. You know what that means?”
Jacob shook his head.
“Means we get Rand out, throw him in the back of the car, and you drive us to the airport.”
“You want me to stay in the car?”
“That’s what the wheelman does.”
“You think I can’t handle a gun? Covered you easy enough.”
“Let’s talk about it after we see the place.”
After the tunnel, the N1 became a true divided highway, two lanes each side. Duto sluiced the Audi through the morning commuter traffic. Twenty-five minutes later, they reached Durban Road, which led into Bellville’s commercial center, ten- and fifteen-story office towers.
South on Durban, east on another arterial, then south again on the M10, Robert Sobukwe Road, the big boulevard that connected Bellville to the airport. On the right, west, they passed a massive train yard. They were nearly on top of the Mercedes now, less than a kilometer away. It was parked in the residential neighborhood just east of Sobukwe.
“Left here.”
Duto turned, and they were in Bellville Lot 3, not a slum but certainly scrappier than the city center to the north. The houses sprouted clotheslines, the cars rust. The neighborhood looked to be mainly coloured, the term South Africans used for people of mixed race. The Audi stuck out. The car’s conspicuousness wouldn’t matter before the attack, but it might afterward, when the neighbors made emergency calls. Wells wondered if they ought to park around the corner, but then they would have to drag Witwans from the house to the car. Street kidnappings were rarely a good idea.
“Right here,” Wells said, as they reached Industry Road, which marked the district’s eastern edge. The neighborhood had been laid out in an imperfect grid. Its east — west streets stacked neatly, but the north — south roads started and stopped. The GPS showed the Mercedes parked on one of the north — south stubs, Octovale Street between Kosmos and Lily Roads.
“You know where we’re going?”
Even with time desperately short, Wells wanted to spin through the neighborhood’s main streets once. They might see a parked police cruiser, or road construction that blocked an escape route. “Just drive. Right here—”
“On Mimosa? Mimosa?” Mimosa marked the south end of Octovale.
“Calm yourself, Vinny.” Though Wells did like the jumble of names. He couldn’t imagine a neighborhood back home having a similarly random set — American developers were too careful.