The Silent Man jw-3

by Alex Berenson

  A dozen wishes and 600,000 francs, Kowalski thought. “Only a dozen wishes? Imagine what you could have had for a hundred.”

  “No, Pierre. This was what I wanted.” She spoke unironically and with absolute certainty. He wasn’t sure whether she didn’t get the joke or simply refused to engage it. Or maybe she believed every word she was saying. After all, the sheer genetic good luck of having been born beautiful had carried her from a village in eastern Ukraine to this mansion.

  She seemed to read his mind. She smiled, a brilliant open smile that had sold lipstick from Sydney to Stockholm. “Why not wish for a necklace? If I don’t get it, I’m no worse off than before.” She reached across the table and pushed his plate toward him. “Now you’ve wished for your steak and it’s come and you must enjoy it. Before it gets cold.”

  It was a philosophy both idiotic and irrefutable. Kowalski couldn’t help but eat. As long as he kept his mind off Roman Yansky, the meat actually was quite tasty. He had nearly finished it when his phone trilled. Tarasov.

  “Yes, Anatoly?”

  “We’ve just landed.”

  “Good.” Tarasov’s flight from Moscow had twice been delayed by heavy snow in Zurich. “Be in my office in an hour.”

  KOWALSKI AND TARASOV stared in silence at the Zürichsee. A thick white blanket of snow covered the ground, hiding the southern shore of the lake and giving the illusion that the water extended to infinity.

  Finally, Tarasov cleared his throat.

  “Where should I begin?”

  “He killed those men as if they were children.” Somehow Kowalski couldn’t bring himself to say Wells’s name, as if the mere act of speaking it would make Wells appear in this room like a genie.

  “Not children, Pierre. I knew Roman fifteen years.”

  “Then how?”

  “He and they are the only ones who know for sure. And they can hardly tell. So it’s only guessing now. They were ready for trouble. They weren’t sure who he was but they didn’t trust his story, even though the Frenchman had vouched for him. He was frisked at the club, the Ten Places, before he met Roman. The doorman is certain he wasn’t carrying a knife. Yet somehow he got to Roman, cut him open. Shot the other two with Roman’s pistol.”

  “He’s very quick,” Kowalski said, remembering that night in the Hamptons. “He sees and decides and moves all at once—”

  “Put me in a room with him and we’ll see who is quicker,” Tarasov said. But his voice wavered.

  “You don’t even believe your own words,” Kowalski said.

  “He didn’t get what he wanted. Markov’s still alive.”

  “I’m sure that’s comforting for Roman and the bodyguards. You encouraged this, Anatoly. Last summer you told me to go after him.”

  “And last week you told me that my only responsibility was spending my salary.”

  Kowalski’s chest clenched. Was this the heart attack Dr. Breton had promised him? Finally the pain faded, though he felt flushed and short of breath. Tarasov laid a hand on his arm.

  “If I die of a heart attack, do you think our American friend will call us even?”

  “Shall I call your doctor?”

  Kowalski sat down heavily. “Forget it. Just tell me what Markov told you.”

  “Well, he disappeared quickly,” Tarasov said. “He was probably on an American passport. The Frenchman who vouched for him left the day after the attacks, on a diplomatic passport. They’ve both vanished.”

  “So what has Markov done? Gone to the FSB?”

  “He doesn’t feel he can.”

  Markov was in a tough spot, Tarasov explained. He couldn’t finger Wells for the murders without admitting that he and Kowalski had been behind the attack in Washington. He feared if he confessed that attack, his friends at the FSB would be furious. They’d surely want revenge, but on whom? Wells, for killing Russians in the middle of Moscow? Markov and Kowalski, for the initial attack? All three?

  So Markov was keeping his mouth shut. He’d told police investigating the attack that he had no idea who had targeted his men. Everyone knew he had plenty of enemies. As a result, the Moscow police, not the FSB, were leading the investigation, and were naturally focusing inside Russia. Anyway, the FSB had other concerns at the moment, Tarasov said.

  “Other concerns?”

  “I’ll get to those.”

  “So Markov’s bought some time. For him and us. Does he know how Wells found him?”

  Tarasov shook his head. “He thinks the American investigation must be further along than anyone knows.”

  “Does Wells know about me?”

  “Markov has no idea. He thinks we should just keep our mouths shut for a while. Let Wells be. He says Wells must know that he can’t get to us now,” Tarasov said. “And if he keeps on, the results will be disastrous for America and Russia both. Markov killed two CIA men in Washington, Wells killed three of Markov’s in Moscow, so they’re even.”

  Kowalski considered. “Maybe Wells would agree that he’s even with Markov. But he won’t feel that way about me. If he thinks I ordered the attack, he won’t stop until I’m gone. In fact—”

  Kowalski broke off as Markov’s next step became obvious to him. He wondered if it was equally obvious to Markov. Probably. Probably Markov was trying to find Wells even now. To confess. To apologize. And to give Wells a name. Pierre Kowalski. You remember him, naturally? Yes, he hired me. Perhaps you’d guessed already. But I thought you would want to be certain.

  And after that call. Wells would have only one target left. He couldn’t get to Markov. He’d pushed his luck in Moscow too far already. But Zurich wasn’t Moscow, and Kowalski didn’t have the Kremlin protecting him. Worst of all, Kowalski didn’t have anything to give to convince Wells to quit hunting him. Maybe he ought to try Nadia’s suggestion and just wish for Wells to disappear.

  Kowalski reached into his desk for a battered pack of Dunhills. He hadn’t smoked for years, but tonight seemed like a good time to start again. Maybe he could smoke and eat his way into a heart attack and deny Wells the pleasure of killing him.

  “So no one knows where Wells is?”

  “Probably Washington. Maybe your friends there can find him?”

  The Dunhill was stale, and after a single puff Kowalski tossed it aside. “Not yet. One thing I’m sure of, now that he’s on the scent, he won’t let up. We won’t have to go after him. He’ll come to us.”

  “All right,” Tarasov said. “As for the other thing—”

  “What other thing?”

  “The uranium.”

  “Of course.” Kowalski had been so focused on Wells that he’d forgotten the reason he’d sent Tarasov to Russia in the first place. “What about it?”

  “No one’s talking much. Not even my oldest friends. But I think you were right. They’ve had a bad loss, more serious than they told you.”

  “How bad? A kilo? Two kilos?”

  Tarasov rubbed his neck tiredly. “It seems impossible. But I think they might have lost a bomb. Or at least enough material to make one.”

  For the second time in five minutes Kowalski felt as though a big hand had reached through his ribs into his chest and given his heart an unfriendly squeeze. A nuclear weapon was missing?

  “You said lost. Lost or stolen?”

  “Stolen.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No one will tell me for sure. But they’re going full-blast down around Chelyabinsk. Half the FSB is there. Lots of arrests, lots of Muslims getting knocked around.”

  “What else?”

  “They’ve put all their bases on lockdown. And the Mayak plant. They’re inventorying all their weapons. This I know for sure. And on the highways into Moscow they’ve set up rolling roadblocks. Not constant. I don’t think they want to frighten people.”

  “No one’s noticed?”

  “You know the media there. If the Kremlin says don’t talk about something, they don’t.”

  “Anything else?”

&
nbsp; “They’ve asked Interpol and even the United States to look for a man named Grigory Farzadov. They’re saying he’s a smuggler. But he’s not a smuggler. He’s a manager at the Mayak plant. He and his cousin disappeared several weeks ago and haven’t been seen since. The cousin also works at the plant. Or worked.”

  “Are they Russian?”

  “They must be, to have worked at the plant.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not just now.”

  “All right. Thank you, Anatoly. Leave me now. I need to think about this.”

  At the door, Tarasov turned. “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “Don’t we both know by now that anything’s possible?”

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, Nadia peeked in.

  “Are you all right, Pierre?”

  “Yes, angel. Come in.”

  She sat beside him on the couch and ran a hand over his face. She wore yoga pants and a tight black wool sweater. If Kowalski hadn’t been so worried about a heart attack, he would have popped open the bottle of Viagra he kept in the desk drawer and taken her right then. Tried to, anyway. “I know I’m not supposed to ask about business, but is something wrong?”

  “I’m dealing with a very unpleasant man,” Kowalski said.

  “You’ve tried to talk with him.”

  “It isn’t like that.”

  “You should try. You’re very persuasive, you know.” She kissed his cheek.

  “But in business, Nadia, you need leverage. You understand?” Kowalski wasn’t sure why he suddenly felt the need to explain himself, but he did.

  “Sure. You give him something, he gives you.”

  “And I don’t have anything to give him.”

  But even as he spoke, Kowalski realized he might be wrong. If Tarasov was right, he might have something very valuable indeed for Wells.

  14

  Wells wound down the handle of his Honda and poured west on 66 through the Virginia exburbs at eighty miles an hour. Tonight he had become tiresome even to himself. The burned-out cop downing whiskey at an empty bar, moaning that he’d never make detective. The third-rate poet sipping cappuccino in Starbucks, bitching how he’d never get published. And Wells tonight, the world-weary spy sucking down gasoline and ruing his fate. I saved the world and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Usually he heard songs in his head as he rode, but tonight even the asphalt and the wind were too bored with him to talk.

  To complete his misery, Wells hadn’t dressed properly for the cold. He could barely keep a grip on the handlebars. The scar tissue in his back had turned into a solid block of ice, and his bad left shoulder — worked over by the Chinese a few months before — felt about ready to pop loose. He wasn’t a machine. Though he pretended he was. And everyone seemed to believe him.

  In the Honda’s lone eye Wells saw a sign for an exit a mile ahead. He closed his eyes and counted ten. Then five more. One. two. three. four. five. Before the darkness could take him too far, he looked up. He’d ridden blind almost a half-mile. He laid off the gas, gearing down into fourth. The bike was solid and quick under him. Whatever his sins, he still knew how to ride. At the bottom of the ramp, he swung left under the highway. He’d seen a Denny’s sign on the other side of the highway and that sounded about right.

  The restaurant was empty, aside from a table of teenagers joking loudly about whatever teenagers joked about these days. The boys had tight haircuts and the girls wore sweatshirts that even Wells could tell weren’t fashionable. No doubt they lived farther out on 66, maybe even somewhere on 81. To the south and west of here, Virginia turned country fast.

  One of the kids was dipping, spitting into a Coke can under the table. He wore a U.S. Marines T-shirt stretched tight across his chest. Wells wanted to ask the kid if he was really enlisting, and if so why he’d decided to sign up, what he hoped to find. But he kept his mouth shut. The world needed soldiers, and if the kid wanted to become one, Wells could hardly tell him he was making a mistake.

  No one in the place noticed Wells, and for that he was happy.

  The waitress came over, fifty-five, with a smoker’s lined face and brown eyes and heavy shoulders and sensible black shoes. She smiled at him, a big creased smile, as she placed a glass of water on the table. And Wells felt even more of a fool. This woman was probably living in a trailer up in the hills trying to make ends meet, and she was taking care of him.

  She looked at the helmet. “You all right? Cold night for riding.”

  “That it is.”

  “Well, you know you can stay in here till you get warm. As long as you like.”

  “I look that bad?”

  “Tired, is all. What can I get you?”

  Wells ordered coffee and scrambled eggs and hash browns. No Grand Slam for him, he didn’t eat pork, the last trace of his Muslim identity. Then he indulged himself with a chocolate milkshake. The food came fast. The ride had left him with an appetite, and he inhaled the shake and ate every scrap of food. The waitress — Diane was her name — kept her word, filling up his coffee cup but otherwise leaving him alone, leaving him to think over the last few days.

  GETTING OUT OF RUSSIA the morning after the murders had been easy. The agent at Sheremetyevo flipped through his American passport and looked him up and down, taking in his freshly pressed shirt and the TAG Heuer watch he was wearing to complete his cover. Just another American. Without a word, he stamped the passport and Wells was free to go.

  But his arrival in New York was another story. As soon as the immigration agent at JFK scanned his passport, Wells knew something was wrong. Her smile faded, then returned at higher wattage. To keep him happy until the guards arrived, he assumed. Sure enough, a door at the end of the long hallway opened and three big men in blue uniforms strode his way.

  “Can you come with us?” the lead uniform said.

  Wells didn’t argue. They frisked him, took his shoes, wallet, belt. Then they shunted him to a narrow holding cell, windowless and concrete. A guard checked him every hour, peeking through a steel panel in the door. Wells didn’t mind the holdup. He closed his eyes and napped on the narrow steel cot. He found himself in a crumbling mosque, looking through a crack in the ceiling at the blue sky above. He knelt to pray and saw beside him Omar Khadri, the terrorist whom Wells had killed in Times Square. Khadri finished his prayers and turned to Wells. You’ve lost your way, Khadri told him. You’ve lost the faith and you’ll pay. Khadri’s teeth were fangs and he—

  Wells tired of the dream. He knew he was dreaming and decided to wake and did. Instead of sleeping, he examined imperfections in the concrete, looking for patterns in the meaningless whorls.

  “Waiting for me to pass a baggie?” Wells said to the guard about six hours on. “May take a while.”

  “Someone’ll be here soon enough.” The guard clanked the panel shut.

  Two hours more passed before the door finally opened. Wells popped up. Shafer and two guards stood outside. Wells shrank into a corner. “Noo!” he yelled. The guards took a half-step back.

  “Send me to Guantánamo,” Wells said. “But don’t leave me with him.”

  “John, enough,” Shafer said.

  “This guy’s into crazy stuff. I’m serious. Cattle prods, nipple clamps—”

  “If you don’t shut up, I’m leaving you here.”

  “Fine,” Wells said sulkily.

  “This is John Wells,” Shafer said to the guards as Wells slid into his shoes. “Bet you didn’t think he’d be such a jackass.”

  NEITHER OF THEM SPOKE until they reached the New Jersey Turnpike and Shafer said, “Duto wanted to teach you a lesson, leave you in the Hotel JFK for a couple of days. I told him it wouldn’t be much of a lesson.”

  Wells didn’t respond. Shafer was right, of course. Shafer knew that ten years in the Northwest Frontier had taught him patience.

  “You stepped in it this time, John.”

  “Ellis, watch the road.” Shafer was driving a black agency Suburban, and, illegally, flashin
g the red lights mounted in the grille as he cut through traffic. “As far as I can see, the agency still owes me a couple of favors.”

  “I’m not talking about the agency.”

  “Please, no Exley advice, Ellis. Stick to Duto. Does he know where I was?”

  “Of course he knows.” Shafer sounded irritated at the question. “And he knows about Markov.”

  “What about the Russians? Have they fingered me?”

  “Strangely enough, no. At least they haven’t said anything to us.”

  “Markov’s staying quiet.”

  An eighteen-wheeler blasted them with its airhorn as Shafer cut in front of it.

  “You’re the worst driver I’ve ever seen. And that includes the jihadis.”

  Shafer slowed down, turned his head, stared at Wells. “I hope this little trip of yours was worth it.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “I know.” Shafer flicked on the radio, WCBS 880, the all-news station in New York, and they listened to the world’s hum. Two dead soldiers in Iraq, a big oil find off the coast of Brazil, some starlet arrested again, the Giants getting ready for the NFC finals. Last and least, a triple murder in the South Bronx, drug-related, the police said. No news on Wells’s own triple murder in Moscow, but why would there be? Every minute, people everywhere died too soon. Three dead in Moscow, two in Bangkok, four in Johannesburg, one in Newark, an endless tide of mayhem, far too much for a single radio station to track. The police would always be in business.

  “Not much happening,” Wells said aloud.

  “Maybe there is.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’ll let Duto tell you.”

  WHEN THEY REACHED the Beltway, Wells thought Shafer would swing east, toward 295, the feeder road that led to central Washington and Exley. Instead he turned west, the highway to Langley. It was near midnight and the road was nearly empty and they made good time. In barely fifteen minutes they’d crossed the long flat bridge that spanned the Potomac and turned onto the Georgetown Pike.

  “Now?” Wells said.

  “Duto wants to see you.”