The Silent Man (4 page)

“At best you’ll have only a few days. After Tajid and I don’t show up at work, they’ll open the boxes as a matter of course. Certainly, by the middle of next week they’ll sound the alarm. We’ll be the most wanted men in Russia.”

“That will be plenty of time.
Inshallah.
” Yusuf stood. “You aren’t a believer, Grigory. I hope one day you will be. In the meantime, this will prove our sincerity.” He reached into his pocket for an envelope like the other one he’d given Grigory. He tossed it beside the chess set where Grigory traced out positions from his books. “Go with God,” he said.

In return, Grigory said . . . nothing. This man takes my tongue along with everything else, he thought. Without a word he reached out for the envelope.

 

 

 

NOW THURSDAY HAD COME,
far too quickly. Maybe he’d be lucky. Maybe the convoy would already have arrived, and the steel boxes would be locked in the depot where he couldn’t get to them.

Yet somehow Grigory knew he wouldn’t escape so easily. He wasn’t a superstitious man, and he certainly wasn’t religious. He was a scientist. But the devil had tapped his shoulder and asked him for a game of chess, and he had no choice but to play. He had to see this through.

He finished his microwaved pizza and cleaned his plate. He pulled on his pants and found a clean blue shirt in his closet. He turned on the taps to wash his face and found the usual trickle of lukewarm brown water. He clipped on his badge, grabbed his thick winter coat, laced up his boots. And as he walked out the door, he felt almost relieved. What would be would be.

T
hey sat in a circle in the basement room, crutches and prostheses laid by their chairs. The night outside was cold and clear, but the narrow baseboard heaters, and the body heat of a dozen men, kept the room uncomfortably warm. A refrigerator stocked with soda sat in one corner, and the men held Cokes and coffee cups.

They’d been silent for almost a minute when a young man in a gray T-shirt whispered a single word: “Overpasses.”

Grunts of recognition from the rest of the circle. The man looked around uncertainly, as if he’d surprised himself by speaking at all. His name was Paul Redburn, but he’d introduced himself as Stitch, tribute to the seventy stitches sewn into his stomach. And so Stitch he was.

“Tell us, Stitch.” This from the group’s informal leader, Kyle Stewart, a marine sergeant who’d come home two years before—against his wishes—after taking a sniper’s bullet in the neck in Ramadi.

“How you were talking about stuff that makes you crazy,” said Redburn. “All out of relation to what it should. Like when somebody from high school says how they almost signed up and then they got some lame bullshit why they didn’t.”

“I want to wreck them,” Stewart said. “Not afraid to say it.”

“For me it’s overpasses. Every half-mile on 202, there’s an overpass. And every time I drive under one . . . every time . . . I wonder if some haji’s watching, gonna grab his phone, call his buddies so they know I’m coming.”

“Or just toss a grenade down on the roof,” said the man to Redburn’s right. Freddie Sanchez, an army private who had lost his right leg when a bomb blew out his Humvee in Baghdad.

“That is so,” Redburn said. “And you know, some days are easier, some days I can just about do it. Then some days I have to pull off, find another way to get where I’m going.” He fingered the small silver cross that hung from his neck. “Just like everything else.”

“I almost wrecked a few months ago,” Sanchez said. “On the Beltway. First time on a highway since I got back. I was in the slow lane, taking it easy. It was fine for a while and then I spotted this bag of trash on the side. And I thought . . . I didn’t think at all. Just went left. Put some space between me and that IED.” Sanchez ducked his head, looked at the space where his leg should have been. “I’m saying I was back there. Not like I was imagining it. I was
there.
I almost took out this Toyota, chick driving, two kids in the back.”

“You didn’t, though,” Stewart said.

“No. I didn’t. But the worst part was, when I saw what I done, I was so damn mad at that chick in the Toyota. My heart was taking off in my chest. My head, I wanted to—” Sanchez broke off. Sweat glowed on his forehead under the fluorescent lights. The room was silent again as the group waited for him to say what he had to say. These men were used to waiting.

“I’m just glad my gun’s locked up in my closet,” Sanchez said finally. “If I had that thing on my hip, everybody on the road would be in a lot of trouble.”

Every week, they met in a church in downtown Silver Spring. The Central Maryland Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Group, a big name for a simple organization. Between twelve and twenty guys showed up, usually. A half-dozen regulars. The rest floated in and out. They came here to talk about the things they didn’t want to say to their wives or girlfriends, the things that only other soldiers could understand. They had plenty to say, John Wells thought.

Most soldiers came back from Iraq and Afghanistan basically intact. But ten thousand men and women had been hurt badly enough to require serious surgery. Others had memories they couldn’t shake, of buddies blown apart, civilians killed in raids gone wrong. The wounds in their minds didn’t necessarily match the injuries the world could see. The amputees sometimes joked that life was easier for them. No one ever doubted their sacrifice. They never had to apologize for having bad days.

“Thanks, Freddie,” Stewart said. “Hour’s almost up, got to give back the room. But before we do—”

He turned to Wells. “Jim, you been here a bunch of times, but you don’t say much. Anything you’d like to get off your chest?”

Wells shook his head. “I guess not,” he said. To avoid distracting the other men, Wells used a fake name at these sessions. Everyone in America had learned his name two years before, when he stopped a terrorist attack on New York, but his face was still a mystery to most people. The CIA had managed to keep pictures of him out of general circulation, though a few old ones were floating around the Web.

Stewart leaned forward, offering Wells a deceptively soft smile. “Mind if I ask, Jim, where’d you serve? Reserves? Guard? You’re a little gray for active duty.”

“If it’s all the same, I’d rather not say.”

Stewart slid his chair a half-foot closer to Wells. A couple of the other regulars leaned in, too. They’d planned this, Wells thought.

“Can’t let you off that easy, Jim. Can’t have men who aren’t vets in here.” Stewart wasn’t smiling anymore. “Can’t have accountants sneaking in, listening so they got something to say on singles night at the Marriott. Man might get hurt that way.”

“No one ever accused me of being an accountant before,” Wells said. He searched for a way to be honest without saying too much. “I was a Ranger back in the nineties and that’s the truth,” he said.

“No war then.”

“I’ve seen war.”

“You ever been to Iraq?”

“Afghanistan,” Wells said. He didn’t add that he’d fought for both the Taliban and the United States. “Listen, Sergeant, it does me good being here. But I understand. You don’t trust me, I won’t come back.”

“Just tell us something,” Stewart said. “So we know.”

All right, Wells thought. You want me to talk—

“I’ll tell you about a dream I have,” he said. “I’m in an apartment. Over there. Windows taped over. And I’m supposed to be a hostage. Wearing an orange jumpsuit. And my throat’s getting slit when the clock hits midnight.
I know this.
I know what’s meant to happen.”

Now Wells was the one sweating. He wiped a hand across his forehead.

“Only I’m not the hostage,” he said. “I’ve got the knife. And these guys, these four guys, they’re the ones tied up. They’re begging me. And I hear Johnny Cash singing.
‘I hear the train a-comin’, it’s rollin’ round the bend.’
‘Folsom Prison Blues.’ And then the clock hits midnight and I start cutting.”

Wells took a breath. “I’m cutting, and it’s slow going. You ever put a knife in someone? And I’m trying to make myself stop, but I can’t. And then I look at the guy I’m cutting. And—”

Wells broke off. A few seconds later, Stewart spoke, very quietly. “You?”

“Yeah. Me. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that when I wake up, I look over at my fiancée and I—”

Again Wells found himself unable to speak.

“You want to hurt her?” Stewart said.

The men in the circle looked at him steadily. Wells knew they would wait as long as he wanted. He felt their patience under him, holding him, and then he could speak.

“I would never . . . It’s not even a thought. It’s more like a word.
Knife. Cut.
”

“Does it keep you up?” Stewart said.

“It’s not like I have it all the time.”

“You ever said anything about it to her?”

Wells shook his head.

“You think she knows?”

The question surprised Wells, but he knew the answer. “She knows. Maybe not exactly, but she knows.”

 

 

 

THE FLORISTS WERE CLOSED,
but on his way home Wells found a dozen roses at Whole Foods. When he opened the front door, he heard Exley singing to herself in the kitchen. He padded in, hiding the bouquet behind his back, and found her at the table, surrounded by travel guides for South America. She was wearing a red sweater that matched the roses.

He tipped back her head, kissed her, handed over the bouquet as smoothly as he could. She put a hand to his face, ran it down his neck. He felt his pulse against her fingertips.

“When did you turn into such a romantic?” she said.

“About halfway home.” He still couldn’t get used to the idea that they lived in a house, their house, one they owned together, with an eat-in kitchen and rooms for her kids when they visited. An upstairs and downstairs. A garden.

This was the first house, the first piece of real estate, he’d ever owned. Exley had pushed for it. So had the agency, which said they needed a detached house, someplace a security detail could watch them full-time without bothering the neighbors too much. Wells hadn’t argued, and now they owned a house and were planning romantic get-aways to South America. Yuppies. And still Wells’s restlessness—and his dreams—showed no signs of fading.

Wells was beginning to think they never would. He’d spent the better part of a decade working undercover to infiltrate al-Qaeda for the CIA. He’d come back to the United States to stop a massive al-Qaeda attack with Exley’s help. More recently he and Exley had helped avert war between the United States and China. The missions had saved untold lives.

But Wells didn’t know the men he’d saved, only the ones he’d killed. Some had been villains by anyone’s definition, terrorists targeting civilians. But others had merely been doing their jobs, protecting themselves, following orders they didn’t necessarily agree with or even understand. Chinese policemen. Afghan guerrillas. He couldn’t pretend they were his enemies. He’d killed them all because he’d had no choice. He’d killed them—

“For the greater good,” he said aloud.

“What greater good?” Exley said.

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Now he was trying to put his head back on, gather his strength. Because he knew. The world wouldn’t stay quiet very long.

Exley stood, busied herself cutting rose stems, putting the flowers in a cut-glass vase. “How were the guys?” she said.

“I finally talked a little,” Wells said.

“Anything you want to tell me?”

As an answer, he stood, wrapped an arm around her and another under her legs and picked her up. Wells was six-two and muscular, twice Exley’s size, and he lifted her easily. She cupped his face in her hands, locked her blue eyes on him.

“Got the trip all planned yet?”

“Close,” she said. “You sure you don’t want to help?”

“I’m not making decisions these days,” he said. “I’m in a decision-free mode.”

“No decisions at all? So I can do what I like with you.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then why don’t you take me upstairs?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

 

 

HE’D JUST PUT HER DOWN
on the bed when the doorbell rang.

“Ignore it,” she said. She pulled her sweater off. Underneath she was wearing only a thin white T-shirt that clung to her nipples. She tugged him down. He’d begun to slip off her T-shirt when the bell rang again.

Downstairs he flipped on the porch lights and peered through the front door’s bulletproof glass. A tall black man in a long blue overcoat stood on the porch. Adam Michaels, the head of the CIA security detail that watched the house.

Wells didn’t particularly like the idea of being guarded this way, but he understood the need, especially when Exley’s kids visited. Anyway, Michaels and his guys were discreet.

“Sorry to bother you, John,” Michaels said.

“No bother.”

“Can I ask you and Ms. Exley to come outside, take a look at somebody?”

 

 

 

THE MAN STOOD
under a streetlight. He was white, wearing jeans, a Yankees cap, black gloves, and a thin leather jacket that didn’t look like much good against the cold. Two of Michaels’s men watched him, their hands close to the pistols on their hips.

Wells looked him over, carefully. “Never seen him before.”

“Me, neither,” Exley said.

“Who is he?” Wells said.

“Nobody, probably,” Michaels said. “But we’ve seen him five, six times the last couple days. Walking by the house, front and back. Slow and careful. Like he’s casing it. This time we stopped him, asked him what he was doing.”

“It’s a free country,” Wells said.

“That’s what he said,” Michaels said.