Alex Berenson - The Silent Man

Finding the source of the financing for the plot proved more complicated. After several false starts, analysts at the CIA and Treasury linked a bank account that Nasiji had used to a twenty-thousand-barrel oil shipment from the Yanbu terminal in Saudi Arabia. But despite extraordinary pressure from the White House, the Saudi government insisted that it could not determine who had authorized the shipment. A few weeks later, Ahmed Faisal, a minor Saudi prince, burned to death when his Land Rover exploded in a fiery crash on the desert road connecting Riyadh and Jedda. The accident surprised Faisal’s friends, who’d always known him to be a careful driver.

NONE OF THIS MATTERED to Wells, though he did vaguely wonder what would happen to Bernard Kygeli’s family. For three days, he stayed at Langley, where he was interviewed by the investigators who were working to pull the weeds of the rest of Nasiji’s network. There was no word from Exley, and all along he had only one question: Where is she? Finally, Wells lost patience and told them that they’d gotten all he knew and that if they had specific questions they knew where to find him. He showered and shaved and drove off campus in a standard-issue agency Pontiac G6. He insisted on no protection, no chase cars or spotters, and they seemed to agree; as far as he could tell he was alone.

When he got to their house, the usual tinted-glass Suburban was parked in front. But the windows were dark and her minivan was gone. Wells let himself in, knowing before he did that the house would be empty.

“Jenny?” he said. “You there?”

Upstairs the bed was neatly made, an envelope tucked under his pillow. In her neat script, nine words:

“I love you. I miss you already. Be safe.”

Wells sat on the bed and turned the note over and over in his fingers as if hoping to make the words disappear, vanish like a shaken Etch A Sketch drawing. But they didn’t, and after a while he tucked the note in his pocket and looked in her closet. Her suitcases were gone and so were most of her clothes. He couldn’t stay in this room anymore. He walked downstairs and turned toward the kitchen, then to the front door, wanting to be out of the house.

He knocked on the SUV’s windows.

“Where is she?”

The guard shook his head apologetically.

Wells leaned into the truck. “I need to talk to her.”

“She requested that we not tell you, sir.” The guard looked embarrassed, Wells thought, embarrassed to be seeing the famous John Wells this way, like a lovesick high school senior dumped the night before the prom.

“Is she with her kids?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Wells turned away before he could humiliate himself further. He slipped into the Pontiac and screamed off with no good idea where he was headed. A half-hour later he found himself at Dulles looking at a departure board full of choices, none he wanted to take. Should he go to Zurich, see Kowalski? And then what? Thank the man for saving the world? Shoot him and break the last promise he’d made? Try to forget Exley in Nadia’s cool blue eyes?

Or Missoula to see Heather and Evan, his ex-wife and son? This time insist on meeting his boy, whatever Heather said?

Or somewhere else?

No. Montana or Switzerland it was. Neither made sense. But all he really wanted was a place to go, a place that wasn’t here. He pulled a quarter from his pocket, picked heads and tails. Heads, Zurich. Tails, Missoula.

All around him the hall bustled, arrivals and departures, purposeful motion. Wells flicked the quarter high into the air and watched it spin, watched it catch the lights overhead as it rose and rose and finally topped out and fell. He should have reached out to catch it but instead watched it land at his feet and spin neatly around until it plopped over. Heads? Tails? He leaned down and looked at the quarter as if it could give him an answer that mattered.

At the end of The Ghost War , I encouraged readers to e-mail me at alexberenson@gmail.com with comments, suggestions, and complaints. I had no idea I would get so many responses. More than five hundred of you wrote, and I learned some things that I should have known already — I can promise I will never again use the phrase “knots per hour”—as well as some things that I don’t think anyone who wasn’t a C-130 pilot could have known.

Best of all were the notes from soldiers, both active-duty and veteran, some of whom said they identified very much with Wells, for better and worse. Wells isn’t real, and yet his emotions are: his sense of duty, his loneliness, his anger at injustice in all its forms, his strength, his patience, his ability to keep his emotions under wraps for as long as necessary. He is a soldier as much as a spy, and I hope I have rendered him honorably.

I tried to reply to every e-mail, and I’m sorry if I missed anyone. Please keep the notes coming, and I will try to continue to respond individually to each one, though if the volume of e-mail continues to grow exponentially I may not be able to keep up. Let me know also if you’d like to see improvements to my Web site — I’m considering a forum for people to discuss the books and other spy novels, but if it won’t be used I won’t bother. (Few sights are sadder than a message board with three entries.)

Now, on to the actual acknowledgments (which haven’t changed much since The Ghost War , a sign of either stability or ossification).

Ellen and Harvey, my parents and closest readers.

David, my brother and best bud.

Neil Nyren, whose suggestions are always on point — and the rest of the folks at Putnam and Berkley, who somehow made The Faithful Spy a number-one bestseller in paperback.

Heather Schroder, who makes the deals that keep John Wells alive, and Matthew Snyder, who is still working to get Wells his close-up.

Tim Race, Larry Ingrassia, and the rest of the fine folks at The New York Times , who are far more patient than I have any right to expect.

And: Jonathan Karp, Douglas Ollivant, Deirdre Silver, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Mark Tavani, all of whom have helped nurture John Wells along the way. Thanks to all of you.