The Counterfeit Agent (John Wells, Band 8) - Hardcover

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PROLOGUE


JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA


All private planes were not created equal. The woman who called
herself Salome usually rode a Gulfstream G550, a jet that could
jump nonstop from Zurich to Johannesburg. But her boss had commandeered
the 550 a week earlier. Busy month. Take the IV. The G-IV
was a fine aircraft, but it would have run out of fuel over the jungles
of Congo.

And the meeting could not be postponed.

So Salome made a virtue of necessity, overnighting in Nairobi. She
added a pistol and extra ammunition to the deposit box at the Standard
Chartered. She checked the alarm in the safe house in Westlands.
True, she had nothing planned in Kenya. But better to have and not
need . . .

Salome was pretty, when she wanted to be. Not exactly beautiful,
but outright beauty was not an asset in her line of work. Beautiful
women were memorable. She preferred to be forgotten. She was in
her thirties, slim, with shoulder-length hair, light brown eyes. Her
least attractive feature was her nose, which seemed imported from a
bigger face. She could have been Spanish or Italian, but she wasn’t.
Her English was flawless, but she wasn’t American or British. She
wore a simple gold band on her ring finger, but she wasn’t married.
Men paid much less attention to married women.

To say she called herself Salome was not exactly correct. None of
her passports used the name. She rarely spoke it aloud. More accurate
to say she thought of herself as Salome. Lately the name had become
more real than the one her mother and father had given her.
Salome, who danced for Herod and demanded the head of John the
Baptist as her reward. A biblical vixen up there with her better-known
cousins, Jezebel and Delilah. A stagy name. Spoken too often, it might
sound foolish. Yet she couldn’t deny its power over her.

So. Salome.

The jet left Wilson Airport in Nairobi a few minutes after sunrise, following
a grimy Cessna that Salome suspected was CIA. She restrained
the urge to wave. The G-IV was too showy for this airport. The 550
would have been worse. Something to remember for her next visit.
She closed her eyes and counted to ten. At six she was asleep.

She woke only when the flight attendant touched her shoulder.

“Ms. Kerr? We land in ten minutes.”

She was Helen Kerr today, according to her passport—which
happened to be Kenyan. The choice wasn’t as odd as it first seemed.
Thousands of British colonists and their families had kept their
Kenyan citizenship. Plus South Africa didn’t require a visa for Kenyans,
making it a good place to use the passport. Salome rotated her identities
carefully. Airports were tricky places for her, surveillance funnels
that tightened each year. Entry and exit records were permanently
saved, passports checked against transnational databases. Some
countries now took digital head shots of every arriving passenger.
The National Security Agency had access, overt or covert, to every
record.

Fortunately, most countries did not routinely fingerprint passengers.
Not yet. When that day came, Salome’s trips would become
even more complicated. Fewer private jets. More border runs, train
rides, and chartered ships. She would become a smuggler, with herself
as her only cargo. She didn’t look forward to the change.

Today, though, the immigration agent barely glanced at her photo.
“Purpose of trip?”

“Safari.”

“You don’t safari in Kenya?”

“I hear Kruger is better. Wanted to see for myself.”

The agent smiled. “Length of stay?”

“Three days.”

That quickly he stamped her passport, nodded her along. As she
walked through the nothing-to-declare line at customs, she felt the
familiar relief that came with escaping the funnel. She could never
be sure. She didn’t underestimate the NSA’s abilities. Their computers
could trace a signal through a trillion bits of noise. But they needed a
place to start. Helen Kerr’s safari wasn’t it.

She emerged from the terminal at eleven a.m. and blinked her
eyes against the bright sun. Winter in the northern hemisphere, summer
in the south. A perk of this trip. Her driver, Jan, stood beside a
Land Cruiser, holding a sign with her name. He was a white man,
thickly muscled.

“Ms. Kerr. Pleasure to meet you.” He had a strong South African
accent, the words spoken slowly, the syllables mashed together. Pleashuh.
He grunted a little as he lifted her bag into the Toyota. “Heavy.”
He didn’t dare ask what was inside.

She ignored him, ignored him again when he asked if her flight
had been smooth. Best if he knew nothing about her. Not even her
accent. For two hours they drove west on a divided highway filled
with square Mercedes trucks and pickups overloaded with furniture.
South Africans loved auto racing. The drivers on this highway seemed
to think they were auditioning for Formula One. They sped, tailgated,
sliced between lanes without signaling—sometimes all three at once.

Finally, a sign proclaimed the Free State province, featuring the
suitably Orwellian motto Success Through Unity. After another hour
Jan steered the Toyota north onto a rutted two-lane road that cut
through rich farmland, sunflower and wheat fields. “Another forty,
forty-five minutes.” Nothing more. Good boy, she almost said. You’re
learning.

During apartheid, this province had been among the most racist
areas in South Africa. Blacks without the proper pass cards had a
nasty habit of disappearing, their bodies turning up months later. Of
course, apartheid had ended decades before. Blacks could live wherever
they chose in South Africa. Yet many avoided the Free State.
Because of men like the one Salome had flown five thousand miles
to see.

His estate was small and manicured. Two gray mares grazed behind a
low brick wall topped with a wire fence. Every few meters, pictographs
of a lightning bolt hung from its mesh. To warn off anyone
who couldn’t read “Danger: Electricity,” Salome supposed. The entry
gate was eight feet of wrought iron watched by twin security cameras.
Behind it Salome glimpsed a handsome brick house with a columned
front porch. “Witwans Manor,” a bronze plaque proclaimed.
Rand Witwans had stolen even more money than Salome had imagined.
Or his wife had been an heiress. Or both.

The gate swung open as the Land Cruiser arrived. They were
expected. The Toyota rolled up the gravel driveway as a German
shepherd trotted alongside. Like everything else here, the shepherd
was a model of the breed, tall and imposing, with dark, broody eyes:
That bite hurt me more than it hurt you. Salome preferred cats to dogs.
Cats were more subtle. Deadlier, too. The average house cat killed
hundreds of birds and mice every year if its owners were kind or foolish
enough to allow it outside. Though Salome had neither cat nor
dog. Nor husband nor child. Years before, she’d imagined she would.
No longer. This project had become her life.

As the Cruiser stopped in front of the house, the shepherd barked
an urgent warning. In a window on the second floor, a steel-gray
Great Dane looked down on them, jowls quivering. A thief who
feared dogs had best find another house.

The front door swung open. A tall man wearing a blue blazer and
khakis stepped onto the porch. Rand Witwans. In his mid-seventies,
he still aspired to be an English country gentleman. He had most...