Alex Berenson: The Ghost War

“Off the bike. Now.”

Wells wondered if Exley would appreciate the irony of his being shot in a traffic stop after getting the bike to 125 without a scratch. Probably not. The statie crouched behind the door of his cruiser, hand on the butt of his pistol. He was young, Wells saw. Maybe twenty. He had a thick, square face, but even so, he hadn’t lost all his baby fat. “Don’t look at me, sir! Look straight ahead!”

Wells looked straight ahead, wondering why he always got sideways with the cops.

“Helmet on the ground.”

Wells pulled off his helmet. His eyes burned from the wind. Next time he’d wear goggles under the face plate. Next time?

“You have a wallet? Identification?”

“Yes, Officer.”

“In your pants or your jacket?”

“Pants.”

“Take it out. Slowly.” Wells pulled off his gloves and fished at his wallet. “Put it on the ground and kick it to me with your foot.”

“Kick it with my foot? Not my hand?”

“You’re talking back, asshole?” The trooper no longer sounded scared, just pissed. “I have you on the gun at one eighteen.”

Wells dropped his wallet on the ground, and kicked it toward the trooper. The kid was about to get the surprise of his life, he thought.

“Lean forward and put your hands on the bike.”

The metal of the gas tank was cool under his fingers.

“Do not, don‘t, move.” The statie grabbed the wallet, flipped it open.

“Mr. Wick? James Wick? That your name?”

“Not exactly, no, Officer.” Might as well tell the kid. When he got brought in, the truth would come out anyway.

“You’re telling me your license is fake?”

“There’s an ID card inside.”

A few seconds later: “Is this real? Is that you?”

“I’d be awful dumb to lie about it.”

“Turn toward me. Slowly.” The officer looked at the CIA identification card in his hand — the one with Wells’s real name on it — then at Wells. “You expect me to believe this crap?”

Then Wells heard the faint thump of a helicopter’s blades. A few seconds later, the trooper heard it too. Together they looked up as the helicopter closed on them, dropping through the night, landing on the side of the highway, a black two-man bird with a long narrow cockpit. The passenger door opened and a man Wells had never seen before stepped out.

The trooper’s mouth dropped open. Wells was just as shocked. The agency had been watching him? Watching these rides? Did he have no privacy left?

“Officer,” the man shouted over the whirr of the rotors, “do you know who this man is?”

The trooper bolstered his pistol. “Well, he said — I mean, he said — but I wasn’t sure—”

“You believe him now? Or do I have to get somebody with stars on his collar to talk to you?”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean yes, I believe him.”

Without another word, the man walked back to the helicopter. As it rose off the side of the highway, the trooper rubbed his eyes like a kid waking up from a dream.

“Damn.” The statie shoved the identification card into the wallet and tossed it back to Wells. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wells.”

“You don’t have to apologize. Pulling rank on you like that was a real jerk move.”

“No, no. If I’d known it was you, I never would have pulled you over. That’s the absolute truth.” The officer stepped over to him and extended his hand. He didn’t seem bothered at all by what had just happened.

Can’t even get arrested, Wells thought. When did I turn into such a saint? But he knew exactly when. The moment he shot Omar Khadri in Times Square. Wells wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. If he had a hundred more chances to kill Khadri, he’d take them all. But he was sick of being a hero. He shook the officer’s hand, feeling the sweat on the young man’s palm.

“Won’t you get in trouble, letting me go?”

“Radar gun’s been on the fritz all week. Says one eighteen when it means fifty-eight.” The trooper turned back to his car, then stopped. “Be careful out there, Mr. Wells. We need you safe.”

“You too, Officer. Lot of crazy drivers out there.” Wells meant it ironically — crazy like me — but the trooper didn’t laugh. Wells thought sometimes that no one except Exley would ever laugh at him to his face again, no matter how much he deserved it. No one laughed at heroes. How could he trust a world that took him so seriously?

The trooper returned to his sedan. Wells got back on his bike. At the next exit he turned back to Washington. He kept the Honda at an even sixty-five the whole way home.

WHEN HE GOT BACK to Logan Circle the black Ford sedans with tinted windows were waiting, one on Thirteenth and the other on N. Two men in each, their engines running. As always. Security guards from Langley, there to watch out for him. And watch him, evidently. Wells hadn’t liked having them around before tonight. He liked them even less now. But Vinny Duto had insisted. If nothing else, they would keep the other residents in the building safe, Duto said. He promised that the guards wouldn’t follow Wells or Exley without their permission. Until tonight, they seemed to have kept their side of the bargain.

Wells parked his bike in the building’s garage and went upstairs. As quietly as he could, he opened the door to Exley’s apartment. Their apartment, he supposed, though he had trouble thinking of it that way. Down the narrow hall filled with black-and-white pictures of Exley’s kids, past the little open kitchen. His boots smelled of grit and oil and the highway. He tugged them off. Exley’s looked child-sized next to them.

“Jennifer?” he murmured. No answer. She was asleep, or more likely too angry with him to answer.

Exley’s old Persian rug scratched his toes as he walked toward the bedroom. She’d picked up the carpet during her posting in Pakistan. It was one of the few possessions she really cared about, its reds faded but the weave still tight. The apartment had only three rooms — this living room, their bedroom, and a spare bedroom where Jessica, Exley’s daughter, slept when the kids stayed over.

Exley and Wells had talked about finding something bigger, maybe a row house on Capitol Hill so her kids could have their own bedrooms. David, Exley’s son, was ten, too old to sleep on the lumpy couch in the living room. Maybe someplace with a garden for Wells to weed and plant. Someplace they could keep a Lab, a big happy mutt that would slobber all over the house. They had even called a broker, gone to a few open houses. But everything they saw was too expensive, or too run-down, or too big, or small, or… The truth was that the house-hunting filled Wells with dread. He had run so long that he could hardly imagine being penned in by four walls and a roof.

Left unsaid was the possibility that the new house might be a place for him and Exley to have a baby of their own. Wells didn’t know how he felt about becoming a father, though somehow it seemed less scary than buying a house. He didn’t even know if Exley could get pregnant. She was on the wrong side of forty, but women that age had babies these days. Didn’t they?

He stepped into her — their — bedroom. The lights were out, but an infomercial for an all-in-one barbecue grill played silently on the little television on her desk. Outside, the sky was just starting to lighten.

“Jenny? You awake? You won’t believe what happened tonight.” Even as he said the words, he wondered if he should tell her. He didn’t want to admit how fast he was going. Maybe he’d just have to take this up with Duto himself, though he hated visiting the seventh floor of the headquarters building, where Duto had his offices.

Exley stayed silent as he turned off the television, kissed her forehead, smelling the lemon scent of her face wash. He could tell from her uneven breathing that she was awake, but if she didn’t want to talk he didn’t plan to push. He put the helmet on the night-stand and pulled off his jacket.