Free The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson

attendants please be seated for landing,” Captain Hamilton said. In 35A, Angela Smart craned her neck as the jet passed through three thousand feet, two thousand. They broke through a heavy layer of clouds, and she could see thick woods, roads heavy with traffic, the brown waters of the Potomac. The ride was mostly smooth now. One thousand feet. Five hundred.
    Touchdown. The jet bounced once on the runway, then landed for real. A giant cheer erupted across the cabin, whoops and applause. The captain threw on the brakes, and the big Boeing came smoothly to a stop. The cheering continued for a full minute before finally slowing down.
    “We’re glad to have you home,” the captain said, and the applause exploded again.
     
    SHAFER’S PHONE RANG. He listened for a moment, then hung up.
    “They’re down,” he said to Exley. “But something happened on the approach. They want to scrub the hold, talk to some people.”
    An hour later, with the 747 still on the tarmac at Dulles, an FBI agent found the red canvas bag, and the truth of what had almost happened to UA 919 finally became clear.
    Finding the would-be bombers wasn’t hard. Inexplicably, al-Nerzi didn’t even try to get rid of his phone. And the timing of Fahd’s stunt appeared strangely coincidental, as did the fact that both men had bought their tickets the same day, through the same travel agent. Exley had little doubt that both men would end up in federal prison, or Guantánamo. But somehow she didn’t feel any better. Only an incredible stroke of luck had saved the lives of 307 people today.
     
    IT WAS NEARLY midnight when Exley and Shafer shuffled through the agency’s deserted underground parking garage, their heads low. Five cups of coffee had not hidden her exhaustion, just covered it with a layer of jitters.
    “It was too close this afternoon,” she said.
    “We need better intel,” Shafer said. “Turbulence isn’t a reliable fail-safe.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Where’s John Wells when you need him? The great Jalal.”
    After his cryptic note in 2001, Wells had gone silent. The agency had all but forgotten that he existed, but at particularly stressful moments Shafer liked to invoke Wells’s name. He joked of Wells as a magic bullet, a talisman who would reappear when needed to rescue the agency single-handedly. The joke had a bitter edge. Shafer and Exley both knew that the agency desperately needed someone like Wells, someone who could provide reliable information from inside al Qaeda.
    “I still think he’s alive,” Exley said as they approached her Caravan.
    “Prove it.”
    “Prove he isn’t.”
    “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks we never hear from him again.”
    “I’ll take it,” she said. She squeezed her alarm key and the Dodge gave her a friendly blink.
    “See you tomorrow,” he said.
    Tomorrow. Sunday. Another chance to disappoint her kids. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Great.”
    He touched her arm as she slid into the van. “Think more’s coming, Jen?”
    “This was a one-off. Otherwise at least one more plane would have gotten hit today. But—”
    “But?”
    “I think they’re trying to distract us,” she said. “Something is coming. Big. They’re waking up.”
    “Strange, isn’t it?” Shafer said. “Nerzi didn’t even have to be on the plane. He could have made that call from anywhere. He wanted to be there. He wanted to die.”
    “I wish we understood them better.”
    “I don’t know how anyone can understand that.” He started to close her door, then stopped. “You know what, Jennifer? Take tomorrow off. Hang out with your kids. We’re going to have plenty to do.”
    She didn’t argue, just slipped her key into the ignition as he shut the door.
     
    JANET AND LORI were out tonight, Exley saw as she nosed the Caravan down Thirteenth Street to her apartment building. When she and Randy separated, she’d moved into D.C. proper, doubling the length of her commute and subjecting herself to