And waited. Rosette showed up forty-five minutes late. Wells didn’t recognize him at first. He was in his early sixties, wearing a finely cut blue suit, his hair a distinguished silver. The beret he’d promised poked from his overcoat pocket. Wells wouldn’t have guessed he was French, but he didn’t look Russian either. German, maybe, or Swedish. Rosette took his time ordering and finally wandered over to Wells’s table. Up close, he wasn’t so impressive; he had a fleshy face and a drinker’s nose, the skin cut with thin red stripes like a contour map.
“Come,” he said to Wells in English.
They walked through the mall, a conspicuous pair. Rosette was nearly as tall as Wells, and better dressed than any other man in the mall. Wealthy Russian women dressed absurdly well — hence the luxury stores at the GUM — but the men tended to favor tracksuits and jeans.
“So why did you bring me up here?”
“I thought you might want to see Moscow, Mr. Wells,” Rosette said. “Besides, I had shopping to do.” He laughed a little French laugh, humph-humph.
So the joke’s on me, Wells didn’t say. “Call me John.”
“Fine. Call me Nicholas. St. Nicholas.”
“Nicholas, then. Let me ask you. If you didn’t know who I was, how long would you need to figure me out?”
“Pretty soon, maybe. The hair, the tan, not bad, and it looks like you gained a few kilos, too, but it only goes so far. What’s your comic book?”
“Comic book?”
“What we French call the cover story.”
Wells explained.
“And you want to meet Ivan Markov. You know this isn’t a good idea. Did Shafer tell you about me?”
“No.”
“I’m a DGSE man”—Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French intelligence service—“for a long time. Too long.”
“Here?”
“Here, there, everywhere. Now here again. Long enough to see the Russians go from strong to weak and back to strong. I liked them better when they were weak. All this”—Rosette looked around the mall—“brings out the worst in them. A suffering Russian is noble. A rich Russian is a pig. A pig with a Rolex who can’t even tell time.”
“If you say so.”
“Any other questions?”
“How do you know Ellis? If you care to tell.”
They’d looped around the mall and were back at the Coffee Bean. Rosette led them to a corner and sat.
“Many years ago Ellis did me a favor,” he said, quietly. The tables around them were empty, but even if they’d been full no one but Wells could have heard. “In the Congo. Though at the time it was called Zaire.”
“Shafer served in Africa?” Wells couldn’t picture Shafer anywhere but the Washington suburbs.
“He told me that one day I would repay him. I thought he was wrong. Now you come here, with your beard and your ridiculous cover. A Lebanese freedom fighter. Truly a comic book. And Shafer says it’s time for his favor. Why Markov? You think he did this attack on you and your girlfriend?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Talk? Is that all?”
Wells shrugged.
“You’re right. I don’t want to know.” Rosette stood. “I’ll set it up. Be sure to get out fast after your talk. These men here, they aren’t nice.”
“I’m used to that.”
“Congratulations.”
“You don’t like me much, Nicholas.”
“You’re complicating my life.”
“Then why help me?”
“Not everyone in Moscow favors Markov. Some people won’t mind if your conversation with him gets heated.”
“So you’re using me.”
Rosette sat back down and leaned into Wells and pursed his thick lips. Wells immediately regretted his words.
“I’m using you?” Though Rosette’s voice stayed quiet, his fury was unmistakable. “You ask for my help and I give it to you and then you pretend I’ve wronged you. Only an American could be so stupid. You’re all the same with your false naïveté.”
Rosette exhaled heavily. Wells smelled the alcohol on his breath, heavy red wine under the coffee.
“Markov has enemies, but he has friends, too. Otherwise he wouldn’t have lasted. If it comes out that I helped you, when it comes out, I’ll be stuck in some foolish Russian squabbles that are best avoided. Not how I meant to end my career.”
“I’m sorry—”
“I haven’t finished yet, Mr. Wells. John. I’m sure you’re very good at what you do. Dressing like an Arab and playing bang-bang. Americans always want to come in with their guns and fix the world and leave. But this game you’ve stuck yourself in, it’s much trickier. It doesn’t end when you say. It goes on and on, and when you’ve forgotten you ever played at all, it comes back to destroy you.”
I’ve done all right so far, Wells thought. And so has the United States. And last I checked, France had a second-rate economy and a third-rate army and got attention mainly for the sex lives of its president. But he kept his mouth shut. He’d said too much already.
Rosette stood for a second time. “Your boss, Ellis,” he said. “He saved me from Mobutu. Maybe you’ve heard of Mobutu? Maybe you skimmed a history book? Maybe you saw a documentary on him on CNN? Between the commercials?”
“You sure can lay it on thick.”
“Mobutu Sese Soko. I made a mistake with a girlfriend of his. He had so many. It was hard to keep track. And even after his men arrested me, I didn’t take it seriously. I thought being white would be my protection. But in those days Mobutu thought he was God. Maybe in Zaire he was God. You understand? He spoke and the rivers filled with blood. That sounds like God to me. Even being white was no guarantee. But that little Shafer saved me. To this day, I don’t know how. And I promised him I would repay him if I could. And now he asks me for this favor for you. And because Markov has enemies as well as friends, it’s possible. So I’ll vouch for you. But if Markov sees through this comic book of yours and puts a bullet in you, a whole magazine, I won’t shed any tears for you. I’ll pour a glass of burgundy and tell Shafer we’re even. Understand?”
“Clear as crystal,” Wells said.
Despite the lecture, Rosette kept his word. The following morning he e-mailed Wells to meet him at 1:30 p.m. at the ice rink at the Hermitage Gardens on Karetny Ryad Street, a mile north of the Kremlin. Wells gave himself plenty of time for countersurveillance, three subway lines, two cabs, and a long walk. He was certain he hadn’t been traced. As certain as he could be, anyway, considering he was in the home city of what was probably the best intelligence service in the world.
The Hermitage Gardens rink was easy enough to find, filled with kids and teenagers who skated endless loops to the cheery lyrics of Rihanna and the Spice Girls. Again, Rosette was a few minutes late. A countersurveillance technique, or just rudeness? Wells wasn’t sure.
“We skating?” he said when the Frenchman finally arrived.
“Alas, no.” Today Rosette was dressed down, a heavy wool coat and a thick fur hat. Now he did look Russian, at least to Wells.
They found a cab and rode in the heavy traffic for half an hour before pulling off the third ring road near a huge stadium. They made a left and a right and stopped outside a subway entrance.
They stepped out and Rosette guided Wells toward the entrance to a huge flea market. All around them women carried plastic bags filled with junk. Their faces were heavy, their skin gray under cheap fur hats, their steps exhausted. The booths of the flea market were endless, but the products weren’t. Every shopkeeper had the same dull gray pots and pans of paper-thin steel, the same dull sneakers, their color fading even before they took a single step, the same dull jeans, dyed a heavy overripe blue. Lenin’s tomb belonged here, not opposite the GUM.
“Don’t let the Ritz-Carlton and the GUM and the Bentley dealership across from the Ministry of Defense fool you,” Rosette said. “This is how most of them live. Especially outside Moscow. A million o
f them steal all the oil money. A few million more get rich servicing the thieves. Everyone else drinks and waits to die.”
“Sounds like fun,” Wells said.
“Not so different than America.”
“You ever been to America?”
“All right,” Rosette said. “We’ll save that for another time. Tonight you meet Roman Yansky. You know him?”
“The name, sure.” Yansky was Markov’s second-in-command, a former commander in the Spetsnaz.
“I called him this morning, gave him the comic book, the whole sad story. I said I knew your family from Beirut and that your father had been a source for me. I said that I’d recommended Helosrus to you. He wasn’t very interested until I told him that you were most assuredly stupid enough to have brought the money with you. He says he will meet you tonight at the Ten Places club but you must bring fifty thousand euros. Eleven p.m. To prove your sincerity, he said. I think he kept a straight face when he said it, but since we were on the phone I can’t be sure.”
“The Ten Places club?”
“A private place on Tverskoy. Not far from the ice skating rink where we met. Very exclusive.”
“All right.”
“You understand he may just take whatever you bring and shoot you. Or he may take you to your hotel to pick up the rest of the money and then shoot you.”
Or you may have blown my cover, and he’ll shoot me whether he gets the money or not, Wells didn’t say. Rosette was proving useful, but Wells was beginning to dislike him as much as Vinny Duto.
They walked out of the flea market. Rosette led Wells to his car, an Opel parked near the metro stop. For the next hour Rosette drove around the quiet streets of Khamovniki, the Moscow neighborhood around the flea market, practicing their cover stories: where and when they’d met, how they’d stayed in touch, the payoff that Rosette expected for setting up the meeting.
“Enough,” Rosette finally said, stopping beside a subway station and waving Wells out. “This foolishness won’t take more than a few minutes. He wants your money, nothing else.”
AFTER HE WAS DONE, Wells headed over to the Petersburg hotel for a nap. He felt refreshed and sharp when he woke. He didn’t know why, but he was sure that he would succeed tonight, convince Roman to get him to Markov. And then? Then he would do what came naturally.
But a few minutes later, his certainty faded. He understood he’d been lying to himself, pushing himself forward despite the obvious flaws in his plan. There’s no such thing as a false sense of well-being. Wells couldn’t remember where exactly he’d read those words, but they weren’t true. It wasn’t too late, he knew. He could still call off the meeting, let Rosette curse him out, fly back to Exley tomorrow.
And leave Markov untouched? Miss this chance?
No.
Wells opened up the false compartment in his Samsonite and counted out fifty of the 500-euro bills, 25,000 euros in all, and stuffed them in his jacket. Then he taped fifty more bills to the bottom of the night table next to the bed. He left the rest of the bills in the suitcase and sorted through the other equipment he’d brought: three ballpoint pens. One was actually a tiny stun gun, capable of delivering a single massive shock. The other two hid spring-loaded syringes filled with ketamine and liquid Valium, a mix that worked as an exceptionally fast-acting anesthetic.
Wells slipped two of the pens — the stun gun and one of the syringes — into his jacket pocket, then grabbed his suitcase and walked down to the lobby and rang the front bell and shivered in the silent lobby until the mustached woman emerged.
“Can you hold this for me?” Wells lifted the suitcase. “Just tonight.”
TEN PLACES DIDN’T HAVE a velvet rope or a sign to mark its entrance. Just two massive men standing in front of a gleaming steel door, and a few unlucky would-be clubgoers standing beside them, stamping their feet against the cold. The bouncers frowned when Wells approached, but when Wells gave them Roman’s name they opened the door and waved him in. Wells found himself in a steel passageway twenty feet long. At the far end, two large men blocked another metal door. To the right, a bottle blonde sat behind a pane of inch-thick glass in a cashier’s office.
“Cover is one hundred euros,” she said.
Wells handed over a 500-euro bill. “Keep the change,” he said, earning only a small smile. A 400-euro tip didn’t go far at this club.
In front of the second door, one of the bouncers patted him down while the other ran a handheld metal detector over him. When they were done, the cashier pressed a red button and the steel door clicked open. The bouncers stood aside to let Wells pass.
Inside, the club was small, but even gaudier than Wells had expected. A half-dozen women in G-strings and pasties shimmied on a platform hoisted over the center of the room. Three more stood behind the bar, serving drinks. The dance floor was in the center of the club, only about twenty feet square, but packed. At 100 euros a head, somebody was getting rich. Rosette sat with Roman, a big man in a black leather jacket, at a table near the back. As Wells approached, Rosette stood and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Jalal,” he said in Arabic. “So good to see you.”
“Nicholas,” Wells replied in Arabic. “My old friend.”
“They don’t have clubs like this in Beirut.”
“No, they don’t. But maybe one day. When the Syrians are gone and peace comes back.”
“We hope.” Rosette nodded to the man in the leather jacket. “Jalal, this is Roman.”
Wells extended a hand and Roman enveloped it in his own giant paw. The Russian was Wells’s height, six-two, and had a boxer’s squashed nose and small ugly eyes. They sat and Rosette lined up three shot glasses and filled them from a Stoli bottle in an ice bucket beside the table.
“A toast.” Rosette spoke in Russian. When he was done, Roman laughed and the three men emptied their glasses. Wells hadn’t drunk vodka straight since college. The liquid was cold and warm at the same time and left a pleasant burn in his throat.
“What did you say?” Wells said to Rosette.
“Old farmer’s toast. I want to buy a house, but I haven’t the money. I have the money to buy a goat, but I don’t want one. So here’s to having wants and needs come together.”
“The wisdom of the Russian serf.”
“Very deep. And now I must go. I hope the marriage is happy, both families approve.”
Rosette disappeared onto the dance floor. Wells sat in silence for a minute, watching the dancers. The worldwide cult of fast money spent stupidly. The worldwide cult of trying too hard. Moscow, Rio, Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York, London, Shanghai — the story was the same everywhere. The same overloud music, the same overpromoted brand names, the same fake tits, about as erotic as helium balloons. Everywhere an orgy of empty consumption and bad sex. Las Vegas was the cult’s world headquarters, Donald Trump its patron saint. Wells had spent ten years in the barren mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He never wanted to live there again. But if he had to choose between an eternity there or in the supposed luxury of this club, he’d go back without a second thought.
Roman the Russian poured another shot for them.
“Drink,” he said in Arabic, rough but understandable.
“You know Arabic?”
“I was in Libya three years. A military adviser.” He raised his glass. “To our friend, the crazy Frenchman.” They drank.
“Do you know why this is called Ten Places? You’re supposed to be a billionaire to be in here. Ten places of wealth. A one and nine zeros. Of course, a billionaire in rubles isn’t the same as a billionaire in dollars, but even so.”
“I’m afraid I don’t qualify.”
“Well, then, let’s go.” Roman stood and Wells followed. They walked through the club, the dancers parting for Roman, careful not to touch him. But instead of taking the stairs to the front entrance, Roman led Wells to an exit behind the bar. They walked up a dimly lit staircase to an unmarked door.
“Go on,” Roman said. Wel
ls pushed it open and emerged into an alley by the side of the club. Outside, a black Maybach waited, the oversized Mercedes limousine, with two men in front.
“Put your hands on the trunk and spread your legs,” Roman said. Wells did. Roman frisked him, thoroughly. “Empty your pockets.”
In his pockets Wells had only his special pens, a cell phone, his Lebanese passport, his packet of euros, and his wallet. All in Jalal’s name, of course.
Roman pocketed the phone and the packet of euros, gave back everything else, opened the Maybach’s door and steered Wells into the back. The sedan rolled off. Roman unzipped his jacket and slouched in the seat beside Wells. His hand hung loosely over a pistol tucked into a holster on his right hip.
“Jalal, tell me what you want.”
Wells did.
“And Rosette recommended us.”
“He said he’d worked with you.”
Roman frowned. “I want to believe you, Jalal. And the Frenchman and I have known each other a long time. But this plan of yours. You ask Russians for help against the Syrians, our allies.”
“Who else should I ask? The Americans? The Jews? Since 1975 the Syrians do what they want to us. We bring a million people to protest in Beirut, one Lebanese in five, it doesn’t matter. Have you ever been to Lebanon? Once it was beautiful. I’ll go to hell itself and ask the devil if he’ll help me.”
Roman pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket and unfolded it. He flicked on the Maybach’s backseat light, looked between the paper and Wells as though he were watching a tennis match. Finally he handed the sheet to Wells.
And Wells found he was looking at—
An old picture of himself. A printout of a photograph available on the Internet. His college yearbook headshot from Dartmouth.
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