Twelve Days Read Online Free Page B

five-man forensic team permanently in Delhi. They’ve flown in, along with some of our guys. Bad news is that there are a bunch of slums around theairport. Very dark at that hour, no security cameras. It’s just possible whoever did this was dumb enough to leave the firing tube on the ground. Otherwise.” Duto raised a mock missile to his shoulder. “Drive in, pow-pow, drive out.”
    “Pow-pow,” Wells said.
    Shafer grunted at him:
You made your point, now lay off.
    “White House planning anything?”
    “If they are, they’re not telling me. But at the moment, I don’t think so. They suspect Iran, but they’ve got no evidence. I think for us the best bet is to stay away from Mumbai, stick with the original plan.”
    —
    That morning, before the attack, the men had met at Duto’s office in Philadelphia and agreed that finding the real source of the Istanbul uranium was their only chance to stop the plot. They were caught in the world’s worst game of chicken-and-egg. With the President already having launched a drone strike against Iran, the CIA wasn’t about to chase new theories. Especially one that accused the President’s largest campaign donor of treason.
    Wells, Shafer, and Duto would have to find their own proof. But they were stuck on their own. They couldn’t have NSA crack open the servers at Duberman’s casino company. They couldn’t go to the CIA for surveillance or Special Operations Group help.
    But if they could prove that someone other than Iran had supplied the uranium, then the President and CIA would at least have to consider their theory about Duberman. And no matter how careful Duberman and his operatives had been, the agency and NSA could unravel what he’d done if they focused on him.
    Unfortunately, at the moment they had no idea who might have supplied the uranium. They faced the same blank wall that had led the agency to conclude that Iran had been the source. And they were short on time to find out. The President had given his speech, with itstwo-week deadline, almost three days earlier. They had less than twelve days left, if they were lucky.
    Wells saw that Duto was right. Mumbai was a blind alley. Let the FBI and CIA work it. Their first plan was still their best option.
    “Fine,” Wells said. “Zurich it is.” Zurich was home to Pierre Kowalski, an arms dealer, both friend and enemy to Wells over the years. Kowalski was dirty enough to know who might have been sitting on a stash of weapons-grade uranium. Wells could only hope he was clean enough to want to stop this war.
    “You going tonight?”
    “Through London.”
    “He know you’re coming?”
    “He knows.”
    “He gonna help?”
    “He said he’d see me. Not sure he knows anything.”
Must we do this?
Kowalski had asked when Wells called. To which Wells had said,
Yeah. We must.
And hung up before Kowalski could object.
    “But he’ll
see
you? How sweet.”
    Before Wells could swipe back, Shafer intervened. “You talk to Rudi, Vinny?” Ari Rudin, who had run the Mossad until two years before, when the Israeli Prime Minister forced him out.
    “Yeah. He tried to tell me he was too sick to meet.”
    “Sick?”
    “He has lung cancer. Been keeping it quiet. Told him I’d come to Tel Aviv. I’m not expecting much. I fly out tonight. Twenty-two-hour round-trip for a ten-minute meeting.” Duberman’s wealth and his importance in Israel meant that the Mossad must have watched him over the years.
    “Too bad you don’t have lung cancer, too,” Wells said. “You could make him meet you halfway.”
    “What about you, Ellis?” Duto said. “You going to look for the leak?”
    The final thread. Duberman’s team seemed to have a source inside Langley. Wells, Shafer, and Duto weren’t sure whether the leaker knewthe truth about the plot or had simply been fooled into giving up bits of information that Duberman could use. In any case, they saw the leaker as an opportunity as well as a threat. He was another