The Counterfeit Agent (2 page)

He tugged out a metal strongbox, led her back into the wine cellar. He huffed and puffed and sat on the stairs, the box in his lap. His hair was matted to his head, his cheeks the bright red of a stop sign. She wondered if he was having a heart attack. He handed her the strongbox, a simple steel cube. After all the security, the case had no lock, just a latch. She flipped it open.

Inside, a cylinder of dull yellow metal smaller than a soda can, its surface flat and smooth. She had never seen anything so perfectly machined. Her mouth went dry. Her heart jumped in her chest. The room seemed ten degrees warmer. She would need to test it, of course, but she
knew
. Witwans had told the truth.

She reached inside the box—

“There are gloves in the safe room,” Witwans said. “This close, there is some radioactivity. At my age it doesn’t matter, but for you it might.”

She’d come this far. She could wait a few more seconds. She found the gloves.

She knew uranium was very dense, but even so, the cylinder’s weight surprised her when she lifted it from the box.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Witwans said.

From her bag, she pulled out what looked like a steel cube with one wall missing and a flat-panel screen on the side. She touched the screen. It came to life, blinked
0.000
.
Ready.

“What is that?”

She put the cylinder into the cube, pushed the button
.
The LED screen went dark for a few seconds. Then it flashed red:
93.82 U-235. 1296.14 g.

The last piece of the puzzle. Salome didn’t think of herself as a religious woman, but at this moment, she felt God touch her. The air itself vibrated.
This was meant to be.

“I told you.” Witwans had to spoil the moment. “One-point-three kilos HEU.”

During the apartheid era, Witwans had worked on and eventually run South Africa’s nuclear weapons program. The government in Pretoria shared the cost of research and development with Israel. Two pariah nations teaming up. The Israelis ultimately built more than one hundred nuclear weapons. But South Africa never went past enrichment.

“All that talk about how you would never give the
bliks
power, and then you chickened out.”

“I wanted to build. But it wasn’t my choice, and in the end I’m glad we didn’t. Apartheid would still have ended. We couldn’t live with the sanctions, the world sneering. At least now the ANC doesn’t have it.”

“No one noticed you stealing a slug of HEU?”

“By the time we called off the project, we had fifteen kilos. It sat in a safe for a decade. By 1990, everyone knew the regime wouldn’t survive. The stuff had to disappear. But no one would touch it. They thought the ANC would want revenge for anyone who was involved because it was under the same department as the chemical and biological programs. I knew they were wrong. We never made any weapons, so why would the blacks care? I said I would handle it. I asked the Israelis if they wanted it. Of course. I left our labs with 15.3 kilos of HEU. I passed the Israelis 14 kilos. Then I destroyed the records. No one I worked with ever asked me what had happened, and the new regime never knew.”

“That simple.”

“I know it must seem strange that I kept it. Not enough to make a bomb. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you want it for.”

“I’m glad to tell you, if you don’t mind my cutting out your tongue after.”

“I built the cellar, and all these years I’ve left it here. Maybe I knew that someone like you would come along.”

“Lucky it was me. Someone else would have taken it for nothing.”

“Five million dollars is a bargain.”

She knew he was right. “I have the million in cash in the car. I’ll make a phone call and the rest will be in your accounts in a few minutes.”

He stood, turned up the stairs. “Let’s celebrate, then.”

She grabbed his arm, wrenched it behind his back, pushed him down. His legs folded easily. He sat down hard, his mouth forming a surprised
O
.

“You’ll get your drink. First you listen. Tell anyone I’ve been here—”

“Natalie, don’t be ridiculous. What would I say? That I sold a kilo of bomb-grade uranium that I stole twenty years ago?”

“
Listen.
Maybe you get drunk. Brag to one of your whores. I promise. I’ll come back. I’ll shoot your servants and your dogs. I’ll cut off your shriveled cock and your tiny old-man balls, stuff them in your mouth. Then I’ll tie you to a chair, set the place on fire, burn you alive.”

As she spoke, she saw the flames licking at the house, the blood pooling beneath Witwans’s chair. She knew he believed her, that he saw the truth of the words in the set of her mouth.

“I’ve kept my secret all these years. I’ll keep yours.” He reached for the banister, pulled himself up, his arms shaking.

“Let’s celebrate, then.”

“The offer’s rescinded. Make your call, I’ll check the accounts, then you can go.”

She wanted to be sorry for him. But she felt only triumph.

—

Twenty minutes later, she stepped into the Toyota, the steel box cradled in her arms, the afternoon sun gentle on her skin. Witwans stood on the edge of the porch, the German shepherd beside him. Salome knew he would close his gates tight and hope never to see her again.

He needn’t worry. As long as he stayed quiet she wouldn’t hurt him. Let him live out his country squire’s life. If he died violently, intelligence agencies might wonder why the former head of South Africa’s nuclear program had been murdered. Alive, he was no one.

“Back to Johannesburg?” Jan said. She had a safe house there. In the morning she would drive to Kruger, South African’s giant national park. A two-day safari. Stick to her cover story.

She closed her eyes, let herself drift. She’d spent years building her team, finding everything she needed. The uranium was the last piece, and the most important. By itself, it was a piece of metal. As Witwans had said, 1.3 kilograms of uranium wasn’t nearly enough for a bomb. But if she did her job, it would be more than enough. She couldn’t help but feel that providence had guided her during the last few years. She didn’t always believe in God. But God seemed to believe in her, to have chosen her as the agent of this plan.

Salome closed her eyes and dreamed of war. In black and white, like a newsreel from World War II. Silver-bodied propeller planes dropping strings of bombs as flak exploded around them. Tanks rolling through rubble, crunching shapeless bits of metal and concrete. Soldiers shouting, raising their rifles, running through a thick forest, dying one by one.

But nothing she saw frightened her, and when the Land Cruiser reached the Johannesburg suburbs and stopped beside her safe house, she felt relaxed, almost tranquil.

If she brought war, then let war come.

ATLANTIC OCEAN, 100 MILES EAST OF MIAMI

T
he
Norwegian
Epic
had everything.

Not just cruise-ship necessities like a casino, pools, and an all-you-can-eat buffet. Two bowling alleys. A seven-hundred-seat theater. A gym with rows of gleaming and rarely used treadmills.

After six days, John Wells couldn’t wait to leave. On the cruise’s final afternoon, he and Anne sat on their balcony as the
Epic
chased the sun toward Miami. The sky was a bright subtropical blue, marred only by the diesel exhaust unfurling from the
Epic
’s smokestacks. Like the ship was giving the ocean an inky middle finger. The
Epic
was as big as a skyscraper, a thousand feet long, with four thousand passengers and two thousand crew. It was the third-largest cruise ship ever built. Wells couldn’t imagine numbers one and two.

Anne, Wells’s girlfriend, had proposed the trip weeks before. The New Hampshire winter had been crueler than usual. Snow poured down by the foot. Drifts piled above the windowsills of their farmhouse in North Conway. Even Wells’s dog, Tonka, a shepherd mutt who usually liked cold weather, went outside only long enough to take care of necessities.

Wells spent hours every day tending the fireplaces. He carried armfuls of wood from the garage, layered on logs until he’d built blue-flame blazes hot enough to warp steel screens. He watched as the hearths filled with glowing red coals that inevitably turned to gray-black soot.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust . . .
the keeping of fires touched a chord in him primitive and true.

Anne spent her days on patrol in North Conway, waiting to join the New Hampshire state police. They’d offered her a job, but the state had a hiring freeze as deep as the winter. Wells found himself inward-turned, dreaming of the heat and dust of East Africa. One morning he woke to find Anne sitting beside him, her laptop open. “What we need.”

“Summer.”

“A cruise.” She tilted the screen toward him. A gleaming white ship passed—barely—under a giant gray bridge.

“How does that thing even float?”

“There are last-minute sales.”

“This is new.”

“John, I know you think you don’t belong on a cruise ship. Trained killer, savior of the unknowing masses, blah, blah, blah. It’ll be fun.”

She had him. If he complained, he’d sound self-satisfied and ridiculous.

“And I don’t want to hear about carbon. You’ve put half the trees in this state up the chimney this month.”

She had him there, too.

“Maybe terrorists will take it over. Like
Speed 2
.”

“There was a
Speed 2
?”

“An excuse to relax. Besides, I’d like to have sex on a ship. Bet it’s like a giant waterbed.” She stroked his neck.

“That supposed to work? Throwing sex around as a treat so I’ll do what you want?”

“Yeah.”

He pushed the laptop aside and grabbed her. “It does.”

—

So they went. Despite himself, Wells enjoyed the first couple days, if only for the sunshine. But as the cruise continued, he found its wastefulness gross. The way the crew scraped before passengers also bothered Wells. No doubt many sailors were desperately poor and glad to make five hundred dollars a month for twelve-hour days polishing and mopping. No doubt the cruise was a hard-earned luxury for many people on board, a vacation they had saved for years to enjoy. Still, Wells started to see the
Epic
as something like a floating plantation.

Anne wouldn’t admit she felt the same, but she and Wells spent most of the cruise’s last two days sunning on their balcony, avoiding the rest of the ship. Now, with Miami hours away, Wells had a decision to make. A big one. He wondered if he should take a walk on the decks. He had developed a hint of flab this winter. After a week of all-you-can-eat meals, the hint had become a suggestion. An insistent suggestion.

Anne leaned over. “You’ve had enough of this.”

“David Foster Wallace was right.” Before setting sail, they had both read Wallace’s 1996 article about his miserable week aboard a cruise ship. Now Wells was rereading Wallace’s book
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
, which contained the piece.

“No more David Foster Wallace for you. He’s a depressing depressive. Was.”

Wells clutched the book to his chest, an exaggerated gesture.

“I agree it’s all a little much,” she said.

“Everest is a little hill.” Wells raised his sunglasses, wraparound Oakleys that had replaced the vintage Ray-Bans she’d given him. He’d lost those in Somalia. He was still sorry to have given them up, though he’d had no choice.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t enjoyed parts of this. I saw you scarfing down ice cream at the buffet like a
Lifetime
special on bulimia.”

In retrospect, Wells had gotten excited at the sundae bar. He poked at his stomach. “It’s going to take about a million hours of running to lose this. Past forty, it doesn’t come off so easy.”

She cuffed his cheek, peaceably. “The world doesn’t know it, Mr. Wells, but you’re as vain as a supermodel.”

“I have practical reasons. The life you save may be your own.”

“If an inch around your waist is enough to get you killed, you’ve pushed your luck way too far.”

“Look tough enough and maybe you won’t have to fight at all.”

“You boys check out each other’s abs before you get to it?”

“On occasion.” Wells knew that when he got home, he would lose the pounds he’d gained, no matter how many hours it took. But he was more aware than ever that time was the ultimate victor. He had once been gifted with the coordination and hand speed of a professional baseball player. Now his reflexes had slowed. He’d gone to a batting range a few weeks before for his usual once-a-year test, found himself swiping hopelessly at fastballs he’d once crushed. He was still strong, but close-quarters combat was more about quickness. To compensate, he worked his shooting, putting in an hour a day at the local range. More than a year had passed since East Africa. Too long. He needed to get back in the field.

“Have you thought any more about the training thing?” Anne had suggested he approach the agency about working at Camp Peary, known to the world as The Farm, where the agency taught new recruits.

Wells had no intention of begging the CIA for something to do. “They come to me, I’ll think about it.” He went back to the Wallace book. After a minute, she walked into their stateroom. Wells watched her go. She had a sturdy New England body, not fat but solid, with supple legs, muscled arms.

A few minutes later, she emerged wearing a solid black one-piece swimsuit that favored her and carrying a pitcher of iced tea. “Put on some trunks. One last trip to the pool.”

He held up the book.

“You’ll regret it when we’re back at the North Pole.”

“I’ll find you there.”

“Want tea?”

“Sure.” She poured him a glass. He reached for it and she grabbed the book. She cocked her arm, tossed the book off the balcony. They watched in silence as it tumbled end over end into the water. It must have splashed, but from this height Wells couldn’t tell.

“Unnecessary.”

“I’m not looking to that guy to tell me how to live my life.”

“He was right. Cruises are the ultimate sign of late capitalism.”

“You want the ultimate sign of late capitalism? Deciding you’re too tortured to work. Too much of a genius. Then ditching your wife and everyone who loves you and hanging yourself.” As Wallace had done.

“He was depressed.”

She sat on the lounge chair beside him, rested a hand on his forearm. “People fight like hell to stay alive, John. No one knows that better than you.”

At that moment Wells knew he had been right to bring the ring. He pushed himself up.

“Are we going?”

“Don’t move.”

—

He found the box at the bottom of his suitcase. Inside, a simple white-gold ring set with a diamond, not huge, but flawless. Only a connoisseur would know how much it had cost. A foolish luxury, but Wells had little use for money. He’d seen what it could not buy. He’d ordered the ring months before, after realizing how happy he was every afternoon to see Anne. How his days didn’t begin until she walked into the kitchen and put her arms around him and mocked his half-assed cooking.

He pulled off his Oakleys, hid the box in his hand, walked back onto the deck.

“Take off your glasses.”

“I’ll go blind.”

She took them off. Wells dropped to one knee. He felt like he was going into combat, all his senses heightened. The sun scoured his skin. A warm breeze roughed his eyes. Before Wells could lose his nerve, he opened his hand and lifted the box toward her. “I know I should have done this years ago, but I wanted to be sure. About me, not you. I’ve always been sure about you. You’re smart and funny and gorgeous. I’m happy to fall asleep next to you and happier to wake up. You’re right about everything except this cruise, and I even forgive you for that. I love you and I want us to be together for the rest of our lives. Marry me, Anne.”

She was crying when he finished. He knew the tears weren’t joy even before she shook her head.

“John.” She took the box from him, opened it. “That is some diamond.” She flipped it shut. “Like staring into the sun.”

He couldn’t pretend this was the lowest moment of his life. Waiting in the hospital to learn if Exley would die had been worse. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt more shocked. He hadn’t imagined she would say no.

He’d underestimated her.

“Throw it over, I’m going to be pissed. It cost a few bucks more than the book.” He was croaking. His voice hardly worked, but he had to say something. She gave the box back to him.

“That’s no, then?”

“It’s not yes. I know you enjoy my company, John. I know you care about me. But I’m not sure you love me. I’m sure you want to love me, but I’m not sure you
can
. I’m not sure you don’t still love Jennifer—” This was Exley, his former fiancée, his former handler at the agency.

“I love you.”

“Let’s say you do. I hope it’s true. Because I
do
love you, and I want more than anything for it to be mutual. But you love your missions more. More than any of us. Even Exley. Wasn’t that why she left?”

Wells didn’t answer. To hear Anne dissecting him, so coolly, so accurately, made him wonder how long she’d waited to give this speech. How much hurt she’d swallowed on the way.

“So I would marry you, and I’d hope everything you say is true. Or might come true eventually. But I want kids, John. I’m closer to thirty-five than thirty now, and you may have noticed North Conway isn’t long on marriageable prospects. I can’t have kids with a man who’s waiting for his next big chance to get killed.”

“You want me to retire?”

“There are risks and
risks
, John. I’m not saying you want to die. But when you’re on a mission, I’m not sure you care.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“You know why I wanted us to take this cruise?”

She looked at him until he got it.

“You made me go on the
Norwegian Epic
planning to dump me when we got home?” Wells pulled himself up, turned away. He stared at the ocean, fighting the foolish urge to toss the ring. He wasn’t sure if he was angry with her or himself. He’d never felt more foolish. Or less perceptive. He’d brought an engagement ring to a good-bye party.

“I wanted to remember you lying out in the sun, getting good and brown.”

He turned toward her, flipped her the box. She caught it, pure reflex.

“I don’t want to die,” he said again.

“But do you want to be a father? A real father this time, present.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded.

“Enough to walk away from an operation that’s too dangerous.”

He nodded again. Though he wasn’t sure he knew what those words meant.

“I don’t believe you. But okay.” She set down the box. “I’ll give you thirty days. If you truly believe you’re ready to be a father, you come back to me with this.”

“You’ll say yes?”

“If I believe you.”

So he stowed the diamond in his suitcase and they went for a swim. Neither of them wanted to be in the suite anymore.