The Silent Man jw-3

by Alex Berenson

  “What? You think she shouldn’t have said? She has to pretend you’re a robot, too?”

  “I’m fine, Ellis.”

  “She had to tell someone.”

  “And who did you have to tell?” Wells hated being talked about this way.

  “No one. It ends with me. But ask yourself this: Will going to Moscow put the dreams away, give you an honest night’s sleep? Let the rest of us handle it.”

  “Wise advice from the desk jockey of all desk jockeys. You know better than anyone that if I don’t push, it won’t happen.”

  “We lost two of our own. You’re wrong.”

  “We won’t piss off the Kremlin.”

  “Give it some time. Us. Me.”

  Now Wells stood, pushed past Shafer, moving the smaller man out of his way with an easy hand on Shafer’s shoulder. He opened the door.

  “Let me know when we get that name, Ellis.”

  A DAY LATER the NSA reported that both numbers led to the same six-story office building in central Moscow. The building had four tenants, all connected to the Russian military, the FSB, or both. One was a security company that provided protection for American multinationals doing business in Moscow. Another seemed to be a front company for the Russian army, like the ones the Defense Department used to hire software programmers who didn’t want to work full-time for the government. The third was little more than a shell corporation, probably used to move money out of Russia. None of them were likely to have been involved in the attack.

  But the fourth caught Wells’s attention. Helosrus Ltd. The agency’s file on Helosrus was slim but damning.

  “Helosrus is owned by Ivan Markov, former assistant chief of operations for the FSB. Markov maintains a close relationship with current FSB officers, some of whom are said to be silent partners in Helosrus. The company’s legitimate business consists of providing guards for executives at companies with close ties to the Russian government, such as the natural gas monopoly Gazprom. Its agents have a reputation for being aggressive and eager to use force.

  “Helosrus is willing to accept jobs that other security companies will not, including extra-legal operations. A confidential source within the Russian government reports that the FSB has used Helosrus operatives to harass Russian opposition parties. The extent of this harassment is unknown.

  “Helosrus also conducts operations outside of Russia. The nature of these operations is unknown. In July, a confidential source for another foreign intelligence service reported that Helosrus operatives were responsible for the plane crash that killed Sasha Kordevsky.” Kordevsky had made, or stolen, billions of dollars in the Russian oil business before losing the Kremlin’s favor and being forced into exile in London. His Gulfstream had crashed into a mountain following the World Economic Forum, the annual meeting of business, financial, and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland. “The source offered no evidence to back his claim. Of note, Swiss aviation authorities ruled the crash an accident after a thorough investigation.”

  The pieces fit, Wells thought. Kowalski got his weapons from Russia. Of course he would know Markov. They’d probably done business together. And Wells knew firsthand from his previous run-in with Kowalski that Kowalski looked to Moscow when he needed help on dangerous jobs.

  But this time Kowalski had overreached — and left fingerprints. As he read over the Helosrus file, Wells wondered why Kowalski had made such a foolish mistake. Presumably, he’d figured that his hired assassins would escape cleanly and that the CIA and everyone else would assume that Muslim terrorists were behind the attack, given Wells’s history with al-Qaeda.

  FOR THE NEXT TEN DAYS, Wells readied himself for Moscow. As a rule, he hated trying to disguise his identity, but this time he had no choice. He couldn’t exactly show up at the Helosrus offices and ask to see Markov.

  So he dyed his hair black and didn’t shave. He bought an unlimited pass to Solar Planet in Washington, and every day he stood inside a tanning booth for three ten-minute sessions. Wells was a quarter-Lebanese by birth, and two weeks under the UV rays turned his skin nearly as dark as it had been during his years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. With his dark hair, scruffy beard, and olive skin, he suddenly looked more Arab than American.

  Along with the tanning, Wells started eating as he never had before, junk and more junk — French fries, chocolate bars, double cheese-burgers, doughnuts, ice cream, milkshakes. The first couple of days were fun, and then his body rebelled and he had to force the food down his throat. After one particularly greasy piece of fried chicken he found himself doubled over a toilet.

  But he gained more than a pound a day, sixteen pounds total, and wound up with the beginnings of a double chin and a spare tire. Between his new face and the flab on his chin and his gut, he became a new person. Of course, Exley and Shafer and anyone who really knew him wouldn’t be deceived. But Ivan Markov had never seen him, except in photographs. And he didn’t have to fool Markov or his men for long. Just long enough to get a meeting with them, somewhere nice and private.

  On his ninth day of eating and tanning, Wells stopped by the basement offices of the agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology. He left with several unusual pieces of gear — not available in stores, as the engineers liked to joke — as well as five new passports in five different names. Two were American, one French, one Lebanese, and one Syrian.

  He drove into D.C. and gave one of the American passports to a courier service that charged him $400 and promised a Russian tourist visa in two days or less. His new Lebanese passport came with a fake Russian visa and entry documents of its own. Those couldn’t get him through Russian immigration, but for what Wells was planning they would be handy anyway.

  AFTER THREE DAYS at George Washington, Exley was moved to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where she could be more easily guarded. Her back and her left leg hurt terribly from the damage to the nerves in her spine, and she could stay on her feet for only a few minutes at a time. Wells visited her every day, spending hours with her in the afternoons, after her rehab sessions, which she refused to let him watch. He turned her on her side and rubbed her back for as long as she would let him.

  Despite her pain, she quickly weaned herself from the morphine drip and Vicodin that the doctors offered her. She didn’t need to tell Wells why. Her father had been an alcoholic, and she feared becoming addicted to anything. But she couldn’t conceal the price she paid for refusing the medicine. Her eyes were wet with tears when she came back from rehab sessions.

  As her second week in the hospital began, he brought in Bonfire of the Vanities, one of her favorite books, and read aloud for her.

  “As if reading his mind, Maria said, ‘You’re behind the times, Sherman. Real estate brokers are very chic now.’”

  Exley smiled wanly. “Maria’s supposed to sound southern, John. Not retarded.”

  “I was going for southern.”

  “I hope your Arabic’s more convincing.”

  “So do I.”

  She raised a hand to his face and ran it over his scruffy beard. “You’ve been going native for a week now and I’ve been pretending not to notice. Want to tell me?”

  Wells put the book aside and looked into her tired eyes. “Want to know?”

  “I want you to shave off that beard and stay here and work on your southern accent.”

  Wells didn’t say anything.

  “You think you’re doing this for me, but you’re not. You’re like an addict. It tears you up, but you can’t stop.” She looked at him, and he found he couldn’t meet her eyes. “Argue, John. Yell. I don’t care. Just let me know somebody’s in there listening.”

  She was right and she wasn’t. Wells had never felt quite this way before. Even if he was wrong, and he probably was wrong, he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted these men to pay for what they’d done to Exley. Even if she didn’t. And he’d told Shafer the truth. These men deserved to die more than most of the men he’d killed. They’d set out to murder him,
and they’d failed. When he came for them, they would know exactly why he’d targeted them. And that would be a great relief.

  “I can’t let this pass, Jenny. I know I should, but I can’t.” Wells reached for the book. “Come on, let’s read some more.”

  “All right, John. We won’t talk about it anymore.” Exley closed her eyes. “But promise me. You won’t tell me when you’re leaving. No heads-up.”

  He squeezed her hand.

  “No heads-up,” she said. “I mean it.”

  THE VISA CAME THROUGH the next morning, and he booked himself a first-class ticket on that afternoon’s Aeroflot flight 318, Dulles to Moscow nonstop. It was round-trip, with the return two weeks away, though Wells hoped he wouldn’t need that long. He drove home, packed, made his way to Langley to see Shafer. He’d talked with Shafer only in passing in the days since their argument, mainly so Shafer could update him on the progress of the official investigation into the attacks. The FBI was working to trace the path the assassins had taken between Atlanta and Washington and determine whether they’d had support from conspirators inside the United States. Meanwhile, the WSI and the agency were trying to find out how the assassins had entered Poland and where they had lived in Warsaw while they waited for their fake Polish passports. The task force was aiming to find conclusive evidence that the assassins were Russians, so that the White House could demand the Kremlin’s cooperation without having to reveal how the NSA had unearthed the Helosrus phone numbers. Unfortunately, progress had been slow so far. The FBI hadn’t found any evidence of conspirators in the United States, and the Poles hadn’t been able to track the men’s movements in Warsaw. Going directly to the Russian government with the information from the cell phone would have been far simpler. But Russia could make life difficult for the United States in innumerable ways, from covertly supporting Iran’s nuclear program to reducing its oil output and driving crude prices even higher. And so the White House had let Duto know that it wasn’t anxious to confront the Kremlin unless the FBI and CIA came up with hard proof of Russian involvement in the attack. Wells felt a familiar bureaucratic stasis settling in. In situations as complex as this one, any action carried risks. Doing nothing was the safest course.

  “I’M ON MY WAY TO DULLES, ” Wells said to Shafer.

  “You’re losing her, John,” Shafer said. “She’s disappearing before your eyes.”

  “Can we not talk about that?”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I may need your help in Moscow.”

  “Why would I help you when I don’t want you to go at all?”

  “Because you’d rather I don’t get killed.”

  “Maybe. So sit for a minute, tell me what you’re planning.”

  Wells explained. When he was done, Shafer shook his head vigorously, sending a small cloud of dandruff flying. “You’ve got no shot,” Shafer said.

  “You must know someone. You always do.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Shafer said.

  “Tell her I’m gone,” Wells said. “She asked me not to tell her.”

  “John—”

  Wells walked out.

  THERE WAS NO TRAFFIC on the way to Dulles. And the flight to Moscow left exactly on time.

  PART TWO

  9

  ZURICH

  The sapphire nestled in the V of Nadia’s black silk dress, glowing as blue as her eyes.

  “Pierre,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

  “Perfect,” the Tiffany’s saleswoman purred.

  “Perfect.” What else could Kowalski say? Perfect was the perfect word to describe the necklace, the stone perfectly settled between Nadia’s perfect breasts. He could survey the bankers strolling down Bahnhofstrasse to their 100-franc lunches. Nine out of ten would agree that Nadia and her sapphire were perfect. The tenth would be blind.

  Kowalski steered the saleswoman — Frederica, middle-aged and trim, her brown hair neatly bobbed, a more suitable match for him than Nadia would ever be — to the counter in the back room, where Nadia couldn’t see them. Unlike lesser items, the necklace had no price tag.

  “Six cent mille,” she said, knowing the question. Six hundred thousand francs translated into about $570,000. Absurd, even by the standards of the $5,000 handbags and $10,000 dresses he regularly bought Nadia.

  “But the stone is flawless,” she said. “It will never lose its value.” Frederica cocked her head and peeked into the front room. “And look at her.”

  Kowalski followed Frederica’s gaze. Nadia caught him looking and smiled and folded her white swan arms across her stomach, lifting her breasts slightly so that the sapphire settled between them like a newborn about to suckle. She was jaw-dropping, breathtaking, all of her. The irony, of course, was that she would have looked just as good in a potato sack. The jewelry and the couture dresses helped less beautiful women, but they were wasted on her.

  This thought had occurred to Kowalski before. Normally it pleased him enormously. But not today. Nothing was pleasing him today. For weeks, nothing had pleased him. Not since—

  Frederica laid a hand on Kowalski’s arm. “What do you think, monsieur?”

  “It is beautiful,” Kowalski admitted. He handed Frederica his black Amex card, idly wondering how much she would make on the sale. “Run it through, madame,” Kowalski said. “But quickly.”

  Kowalski didn’t like being in public anymore. Not even in the heart of Zurich, one of the safest cities in the world. Not even with the door to Tiffany’s locked and his bodyguards outside. After all, John Wells had gotten to him in the Hamptons when he’d had five guards protecting him. And that was before Wells had a real reason to hate him.

  Frederica disappeared into the back. The Tiffany’s on Bahnhofstrasse didn’t do anything as déclassé as conducting business where customers might see it. Kowalski walked back to Nadia, who wrinkled her nose at him as if she didn’t know what he’d decided.

  “Pierre? Did you decide?”

  “Kitten. Even I have limits. But I spoke to Frederica and we’re getting you a very nice charm bracelet. You know, the silver.”

  Nadia’s hands fluttered up to her neck.

  “But it’s so pretty, Pierre. And you said—” She broke off. She looked like a puppy whose favorite toy had suddenly gone missing. Kowalski reached for her and squeezed her against him.

  “Of course it’s yours. You know I don’t deny you.”

  “Pierre.” She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. They stood that way, a parody of a diamond ad, the fat middle-aged man clinging to the young sylph, until Frederica came back with the receipt.

  KOWALSKI WAS IN HIS OFFICE that afternoon when Tarasov, his head of security, appeared. “May I?”

  “Come.”

  Tarasov walked in, followed by a tall, thin man in a red and blue tracksuit. The man was one of the ugliest creatures Kowalski had ever seen, with patchy blond hair and tiny deep-set eyes. “This is Dragon, the man I mentioned. Dragon, meet Monsieur Kowalski.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Dragon mumbled in sixth-grade French.

  “You prefer I call you Dragon, or Monsieur Dragon?” Kowalski knew he shouldn’t mock this man, his newest employee, but he couldn’t help himself. Dragon. Had anyone ever looked less like a dragon?

  Dragon tucked his hands under his arms. “Dragon is fine,” he said. “There’s no need for formality.”

  “Dragon it is,” Kowalski said.

  “I’ve explained the terms to Dragon and he’s agreeable,” Tarasov said.

  “It will be an honor,” Dragon said.

  “Bon,” Kowalski said. “Please wait outside, Dragon. And close the door.”

  Dragon left, and Kowalski turned to Tarasov.

  “That’s him? Your famous shooter? He doesn’t look like much.” Kowalski had told Tarasov to beef up security, and not with the muscle-bound cretins who had been so useless in the Hamptons. Tarasov had come back with Dragon, supposedly the deadliest shooter anywhere between Zag
reb and Athens. Not just one of the deadliest, the deadliest. Kowalski wondered how he’d gotten the title. It wasn’t as if the Serbian paramilitaries could have held a competition. Or maybe they had, back in the 1990s, during the nasty little wars that had torn up the Balkans.

  “He’s the best,” Tarasov said.

  “Didn’t you say that about Markov’s men? Let’s hope he’s more successful with Wells than they were, if it comes to that.”

  “I’ll take responsibility.”

  “Anatoly. You take responsibility for nothing but spending your salary. If I want empty words, I’ll turn on the television. Just get that Dragon some suits. I don’t want him running around like a Serb gangster. Even if that’s what he is.”

  Tarasov left, and Kowalski was alone. He stared at the Zürichsee — Lake Zurich — and the mountains that rose gently behind the lake to the south. The sun had already disappeared to the west, behind the city. Across the lake, factories and homes glowed placidly in December twilight. But the view didn’t soothe Kowalski.

  In 1980, not long after he joined his father in the firm, Kowalski had struggled to close his first major deal, with a cocky general from Suriname who’d brought his mistress along with him for the trip. The general didn’t want to negotiate, he told his father.

  “I’ve put together a package that suits his needs, but he insists it’s too expensive.”

  “Yes?”

  “The list is thirty-two million, but I’ve told him we’re flexible. We could go as low as twenty-seven and still make a profit. I don’t see why he won’t negotiate. Too busy with his mistress.”

  “Pierre, I could have handled this myself. You know why I let you?”

  “No, Father.” Kowalski had wondered himself.

  “What’s our most powerful weapon?”

  The question puzzled Kowalski. “I suppose the APCs with the mounted cannons—”

  “Pierre. I see they taught you nothing at Lazard. Our most powerful weapon is information. How big is General Pauline’s budget?”