The Wolves

by Alex Berenson

  Unfortunately, the video surveillance was as ubiquitous as Wells had feared. Cameras were mounted to the sides of buildings, over doorways, on traffic lights. At a minimum, Wells would need to hide his face with a Unabomber-style hood and oversized sunglasses. An actual Halloween mask would be better. But masks drew stares and camera phones. If he used one, Wells would have to discard it immediately in a blind spot without cameras.

  Ultimately Wells decided the simplest solution was one he had used before, a motorcycle. Not just because bikes were far more maneuverable than cars. Motorcycles meant helmets. No one looked twice at a rider in a full-face shield. Even better, many of the skyscrapers nearby had underground parking garages open to the public. Instead of risking a chase, Wells would race for a garage a few blocks away. Inside, he would ditch the bike and his helmet and jacket. He would be back on the street before the police even reached the shooting. The plan wasn’t foolproof, but no plan was.

  Of course, ditching a motorcycle meant Wells needed one that couldn’t be connected to him. He could try to steal one. Many older models had simple locks that could be broken open and turned with a screwdriver. Wells could also try Craigslist again, see if he could find another kid willing to trade keys for cash. But this time, going to the agency seemed simpler. Wright had already given him a pistol, after all. He could hardly object to providing a motorcycle.

  Wells hoped.

  It was nearly dawn. Wells decided to wait until morning to call Wright, ask the favor. Instead he stopped at his banker apartment to pick up the necessities: his pistol and suppressor, knife, a change of clothes. As he looked through his closet, he would have traded all the fancy suits for a pair of broken-in motorcycle boots. In retrospect, Wells felt dumb for thinking that he could disguise himself from Duberman, or fit into the world of the ultra-rich in Hong Kong, with a few expensive outfits.

  The clean white sheets on the king-sized bed looked tempting. But as the night turned from black to gray, Wells left the luxury behind. If Duberman was looking for him on the island, he belonged in Kowloon.

  The rain started just as he reached the crash pad. Wells catnapped for a couple of hours, then called Wright. Who got straight to business. “You talk to the man?” Meaning Roberts. Wells reminded himself that Wright was still a move behind.

  “Yeah. Didn’t get far.”

  “Now what?”

  “Maybe I was calling to hear your voice.”

  “Ever deeper in the favor bank.”

  “Lucky I have good credit.” Wells wondered about setting a face-to-face meet, decided not to waste the time. These burners were safe enough to risk asking straight out. “I need a motorcycle.”

  “Touring the countryside, are we?”

  “Best if nobody can connect it to you.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Today, if you can.”

  “You think I can just snap my fingers on something like that?”

  Yes, as a matter of fact. It’s a motorcycle. Not a Trident sub. Wells waited.

  “Keys for you tonight,” Wright finally said. “Back where we first met. Don’t expect anything fancy.”

  “As long as it’s not a moped.”

  “Don’t give me any ideas.”

  —

  WHATEVER WRIGHT thought of Wells or this mission, he seemed to have decided that playing along was in his interest. The bike was a black Honda CB600F, a common sportbike, probably about a decade old, with a legal Hong Kong plate. The tires were worn but useable and the odometer read sixty-eight thousand kilometers. Wright had even thrown in a helmet with a tinted face shield.

  By midnight the rain had blown through. For a change, the air felt clear and clean. Wells took the Honda for a run on the airport highway. If it was going to blow a cylinder or a tire, he preferred to find out now. And every bike had its own quirks. Some responded to only the lightest toe taps or throttle pulls, while others needed real pressure. If you understood women half as well as motorcycles, Anne had once told him . . .

  Wells and the Honda got along fine. The bike was lighter than the one-thousand-cubic-centimeter monsters he favored but had plenty of pull. On the bridge to Lantau, he rolled the throttle and it surged to one hundred fifty kilometers an hour. It had more kick left, but Wells didn’t press. The Honda handled nicely, too. Wells felt connected to the road in a way that he didn’t on bigger machines. He leaned side to side, dancing over the rain-freshened asphalt, black and gleaming in the moonlight. After about three minutes, he forced himself to ease up. The bike might be legal, but he didn’t have a local driver’s license, much less a motorcycle endorsement. He rode slowly back to Kowloon, the engine’s song buzzing in his head. If Wells could have found an excuse, he would have ridden all night. Instead he took the bike to the bottom level of a massive garage in Kowloon, four levels underground.

  Wells had brought the pistol and suppressor with him on the ride. He walked to the back wall of the garage, looked for surveillance cameras. He didn’t see any and fitted the long black tube to the end of the barrel. He aimed at a metal sign that read PL 4 twenty feet away, squeezed the trigger. The pistol let out a soft wheeze, a weirdly human sound, and a single hole appeared inside the P. Good. Wright had done his job. Wells didn’t doubt Shafer would do his.

  The rest would be up to him.

  —

  IN THE MORNING, Wells picked up the Honda, took his place in the heavy commuter traffic making its way through the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, the bike burbling happily. He got to the island just past 10 a.m. Weirdly, he now faced the same problem as Peretz and Makiv. He couldn’t hang around the Central MTR station without attracting attention. But he had to be sure he was no more than a couple minutes away when Shafer’s text came.

  He burned two hours with two slow loops around the island, countersurveillance if nothing else. Then he found a parking lot off Queen’s Road East, barely a mile from the district where Peretz and Makiv usually ate. So far, he’d carried the pistol and suppressor in his backpack. Now he hid them inside a dark green nylon bag that he tucked between his legs.

  At 12:45—earlier than he’d expected—the burner phone buzzed. Yung Kee. A big restaurant on Wellington Street near D’Aguilar. Famous for its gold-painted exterior and its roasted goose. Not the name Wells had hoped to see. Wellington Street lay in the very heart of downtown, and Yung Kee was popular with tourists, increasing the crossfire risk. Still, Wells switched off the phone and rode out, down Queen’s Road East to Queensway, surrounded by heavy midday traffic, buses and Bentleys and taxis. Ahead, a light turned yellow, but Wells accelerated through, then slowed as the nylon bag juggled between his legs. Just another messenger on a motorcycle, speeding between deliveries. Queensway became Queen’s Road Central. Ahead Wells saw D’Aguilar Street.

  He turned left on D’Aguilar, gave the bike more juice as he came up the hill. Wellington was not even a hundred yards up. Wells turned right and saw the big gold-colored façade of Yung Kee directly ahead. A dozen people milled outside. Wells edged the bike to the curb, kicked it into neutral. He was now twenty-five feet from the front door. He unzipped the bag, reached inside, wrapped his right hand around the pistol. No one gave him a second look.

  With the traffic, he’d needed almost five minutes to reach Wellington. Too long. Peretz and Makiv might already have left. Unlikely but not impossible, depending on how quickly the NSA had picked up the card authorization and sent it to Shafer. He’d wait five minutes more and then go.

  Three minutes passed before two white men stepped out of the restaurant’s front door. Medium-height, the telltale bulk of bullet-resistant vests just visible under their sport coats. Brown-eyed and curly-haired. Peretz and Makiv. Side by side.

  They turned right, toward D’Aguilar. Toward him.

  Wells locked his hand around the pistol in the bag—

  And froze.

 
He couldn’t draw. The thought of shooting them on the street in cold blood, with a lunchtime crowd around them, tourists waiting their turn to eat roast goose—

  Never. Never never never had this happened before.

  They stepped toward him. Still, he couldn’t move. Then Peretz tilted his head, and Wells saw the realization, knew almost before Peretz himself did that Peretz had recognized Wells from the way he was standing or the nylon bag or the tinted faceplate itself.

  Peretz said something to Makiv and reached back under his coat, and Wells knew if he didn’t move he would die, here on the street, rounds bursting through him—

  Then, only, with the threat real, did the spell break—

  Fill your hand, you son of a bitch—

  As Peretz’s right arm emerged, Wells pulled the pistol from the bag, squeezed the trigger easy and smooth, a perfect shot that gave Peretz a third eye and killed him instantly. He fell forward face-first, his nose crunching the concrete, a terrible sound—

  As a middle-aged Chinese woman standing a few feet behind Peretz screamed, Wells turned the pistol onto Makiv, fired twice, forgetting the vest, automatically aiming center mass. The shots punched Makiv backward, but didn’t him take down. He fired back wildly. Finally, Wells remembered to aim high. He pulled the trigger and Makiv’s head jerked sideways like he’d been hit with the world’s hardest right cross and gravity took the pistol from his nerveless hands and he toppled backward, dead before he hit the pavement.

  Wells slid the pistol into the bag and kicked the motorcycle into gear and sped down Wellington. On the closed-circuit cameras, it would look like a perfect assassination. Seven seconds start to finish, two men dead.

  Only Wells knew the truth, how close he’d come.

  12

  First the FSB. Now the Hong Kong police. Duberman was sick of uninvited guests.

  Uninvited, but not unexpected. The bulletins about the killing of two men outside Yung Kee restaurant started around 1:30 p.m. Shocking Daylight Shooting in Central—Police Seek Motorcycle Assassin, the South China Morning Post reported on its website.

  The biker had disappeared in the chaos after the shooting, the Post said. Police were searching the area and reviewing surveillance footage for clues to his identity, a spokesman said. He urged calm, saying that the murders appeared targeted and that neither victim was a Hong Kong resident.

  Duberman and Gideon followed the reports from Duberman’s study, both men as glumly silent as campaign volunteers watching their candidate lose on Election Night. Duberman tried to tell himself that Peretz and Makiv might not be the victims. Sure, we lost New York, but Ohio could turn everything around. But after two hours, he could no longer hide the truth from himself. Peretz and Makiv would have broken the no-calls rule if they were still alive.

  “I can’t believe it.” Stupid words. The universe didn’t care if he could believe what had happened. Doubly stupid because Duberman could believe. Once again, Wells had done what he did best. Culled the flock.

  “You think Wells?”

  “Who else?”

  “Buvchenko, the FSB. To pressure you.”

  “You really hate them.” Duberman considered. “No. This puts the police on me, and why would they want that? Also, one man on a motorcycle, that’s Wells all the way.”

  “I don’t know how he could have found them. Or even knew what they looked like.”

  “Let me ask you, Gideon. How can your men protect me when they can’t even protect themselves?”

  “He’ll make a mistake.”

  A lame answer, but Duberman appreciated the effort. “And in the meantime?”

  “We wait for the police. It shouldn’t take long, since Uri and Avi listed this as their local address. Maybe they’ll even catch him for us.”

  “The Hong Kong police? That’s funny.”

  “He’s not Superman.”

  “He’s super-something.”

  “I’ll talk to the gate guards, make sure they know what’s going on.”

  “You mean you don’t want to sit with me anymore.”

  Gideon offered an opaque smile and left Duberman to his thoughts. The afternoon passed bitterly slowly. Orli might have distracted him, but she was shooting a bikini ad on the Great Barrier Reef. Maybe he ought to be glad. He didn’t want her to see him like this.

  The call came from the front gate just before 6 p.m. “The police are here.”

  —

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Gideon led two men into the study. They were older than Duberman had expected, in their fifties. Both wore pressed dark blue uniforms, with identical white shirts and black ties. They carried themselves with the quiet confidence of men who had legions of armed men at their disposal. Duberman knew at once they were very senior, and that their fast appearance meant trouble.

  “Assistant Commissioner Tsang Tung-Kwok,” the taller man said, his English slow and careful. “In charge of police on Hong Kong Island.”

  “Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hargrove Lo, chief of detectives.” Lo carried a manila envelope. His English was better than Tsang’s. Duberman suspected he’d do the talking.

  “Commissioners. How can I help you?”

  “You don’t know?” Lo shook his head. “You hear about the shooting today?”

  “Of course.”

  “When you came to Hong Kong, fifteen men came with you. Bodyguards?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Usually, you come with only three or four men. Why so many this time?”

  “We knew we’d be staying longer.” Duberman didn’t want to tell the stalking story. He’d have to mention Wells, and he feared where that thread might lead.

  “And you have,” Lo said. “More than three months, leaving only for Macao. Usually you come only two, three weeks.”

  They’d obviously spent time checking his immigration records. Another bad sign. “The competition in Macao is brutal. My customers want to see me.”

  “Avi Makiv and Uri Peretz were two of your guards—”

  “Were?” Duberman reminded himself not to overdo the surprise. “You mean—”

  “I must regret to inform you that they were killed today.” Lo offered a single nod that matched the strangely formal notification. “We need you for official ID.”

  “Of course.”

  Lo pulled two Polaroids from the envelope, handed the first to Duberman. “Uri Peretz?”

  Peretz lay on his back, staring blankly at death through the hole between his eyebrows. Black-red blood dribbled out of his nose. The Polaroid’s colors were flat, washed-out, and the image looked cheap. Posed, almost.

  “Yes. That’s him.” Duberman felt the need to add more, a three-sentence eulogy. “He was a good guy. Funny. Liked the ladies.” He reminded me of myself.

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry.

  “His nose.” Duberman handed back the Polaroid. “Did someone hit him?”

  “No, he fell after he was shot, it broke. We turn him over for the picture.” Lo gave the second Polaroid to Duberman. “This one worse, I warn you.”

  An understatement. The bullet had split Makiv’s skull, airing bone and brain matter. Duberman could put himself in Makiv’s place only too easily. Three months ago, Wells had put a pistol to his head and threatened to pull the trigger.

  “Yes, Avi.” Now Duberman didn’t have to fake the tremor in his voice. “Their families live in Israel.”

  “Now we have ID, we ask police there to notify the parents.” Lo stared at him. “Do you have any idea who did this, Mr. Duberman?”

  JohnWellsJohnWellsJohnWells . . .

  “No.”

  “Professional. Most likely meant as a message to you.”

  “I can see that’s how it looks.”

  “You can’t think of suspects? Not one?”

  “These men work
ed for me for years. Protected me and my family. If I knew who’d done this, I would tell you.”

  “Maybe the killer waiting for you, expecting you to eat with them.”

  “I doubt it. I mean, I mostly eat here. If he’d been watching them, he would have known that.”

  “What they doing in Central?”

  “I don’t know.” Duberman turned to Gideon. “Do you?”

  “I think they had the day off.”

  The answer provoked a conversation in Chinese between the cops. Duberman wished he’d had the foresight to turn on the recording system in the study. He could have taped the men, had their words translated.

  The men finished talking. Tsang looked at Duberman. “You have enemies.”

  “You don’t get to thirty billion dollars without making enemies.”

  Tsang shook his head. Wrong answer.

  “As soon as the Israelis tell us it’s okay, they’ve told the parents, we will announce the names,” Lo said. “And their connection with you. Many questions for you.”

  “I get it.”

  “You like Hong Kong?” Tsang said. “Feel safe?”

  “Until today, more or less.”

  “What about your bodyguards?” Lo said.

  “You’d have to ask them, but I think so.”

  “Yet these men were wearing vests.”

  “Vests?” Duberman knew they’d caught him.

  “To stop bullets,” Lo said. “Not normal, for men who have nothing to be scared of.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Also carrying pistols.”

  “Well, yes. They were both in the Israel Defense Forces. Experienced with firearms.”

  “On their day off.”

  Ouch.

  As Duberman searched for an answer, Tsang grabbed his arm. “They have permits?”

  “I’m not sure. Gideon might know. Gideon?”

  “I don’t think they had Hong Kong permits.”

  “Right. No permits. What about other bodyguards?”