The Wolves

by Alex Berenson

  “If I wanted to see her—”

  “Go to Hanoi.”

  “Hanoi has ten million people.”

  “We’re partners now, Aaron. We have to trust. I tell you the girl is fine, she’s fine.”

  Duberman made himself ignore the voice in his head: She’s dead. You know she’s dead.

  “Our turn to keep our promise. Our ambassador calls the White House today, makes sure they understand, you are one of us.”

  One of us. I’m one of you now. “It can’t be that easy.”

  “Let them complain. It means nothing. Just like Ukraine.”

  “Wells?”

  Buvchenko waved Wells away. “We’ll take care of him, too, if he’s dumb enough to try. Bonus for you. Smile, Aaron. You’re free.”

  “Arbeit macht frei.”

  Buvchenko reached into a paper bag, came out with a high-necked bottle of Grey Goose, two shot glasses. Buvchenko handed Duberman the bottle, held up the glasses. “Why Grey Goose, not Smirnoff, Stoli? Because Smirnoff is dermo, and Stoli I couldn’t find.”

  Duberman poured two glasses.

  “Budem zdoroby,” Buvchenko said. “To our health.”

  They clinked and drank. Buvchenko took the bottle, poured two more. “We have a saying, between the first toast and the second, a bullet doesn’t pass.”

  “It’s a stupid saying.” Duberman raised his glass. “L’chaim.”

  “First the German, now the Hebrew. Be glad Nikolai and Sergei don’t hear you talk like a Yid.”

  “Not everyone is as cosmopolitan as you, Mikhail.”

  Again they drank.

  “You’ll let me know what the White House says?” Duberman set his empty glass down, turned for the door. And felt Buvchenko’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Aaron. Before you leave. One request. You go to Beijing in, let’s say, a week.”

  “I don’t—”

  “No don’t, no can’t, you can and you will. The general expects you.”

  Duberman closed his eyes. Why had he expected anything else? A nightmare, I just need to wake up. When he opened them again, nothing had changed. “What’s my excuse?”

  “88 Gamma wants new planes. With so many of your best customers Chinese, what better way to show your respect than to buy this new Chinese plane—”

  “The average Chinese billionaire would rather ride a Gulfstream.”

  “You are investing in the community.” Buvchenko grinned, the smile that said, I’m smarter than I look. But not quite smart enough to keep that fact to myself. “Anyway, it’s just an excuse for you to meet. You give him something, take something back—”

  “They catch me, they’ll kill me.”

  “No one catches you. No one even looks. Everyone likes your casinos, and besides, you’re richer than they are. All they care about, the Chinese. The famous Aaron Duberman, the thirty-billion-dollar man. You have a nice meeting with Cheung, he takes you up in one of those stupid planes, you give him this.” Buvchenko tossed Duberman a thumb drive, gray and anonymous. “He gives you the same thing, that’s it. I probably don’t need to tell you this, but don’t open them, please. Or lose them. When you’re back, you call me.”

  A nice meeting.

  “How do I look him in the eye after what happened? And vice versa?”

  “Chinese, you barely see their eyes, anyway.” Buvchenko grinned. “Probably don’t talk about his last little trip to Macao. Don’t worry, he won’t, either. The past is for God, the future is for the tsars.” He poured himself another shot and drank it down.

  “You’re full of advice today.”

  Buvchenko shrugged.

  “Tell me again about the girl.” Duberman knew he sounded like a child asking for reassurance.

  “The girl’s fine. Promise.”

  An answer Duberman chose to accept. Because, truly, what else could he do?

  He walked out to find Gideon standing as far from the Russians as the room would allow. “Everything all right, boss?” An unsubtle emphasis on the last word. The distance between them widening by the day. The FSB hadn’t destroyed him, not yet, but it had destroyed their friendship. The lies and elisions were corroding his life with Orli, too.

  What happened with the general? she’d asked, as they lay in bed after he came back from Macao.

  It’ll need a few days to sort out, but it worked.

  You sure you know what you’re doing?

  He’d nodded and she’d reached for him. But he couldn’t help feeling that for the first time in his life, he was about to be the recipient of pity sex.

  What would he tell her now? Nothing. He’d tell her nothing.

  —

  BEIJING. He’d never liked the city, choked with smog and traffic and twenty million Chinese. Yet here he was, to pick up secrets for the FSB. From a man who had probably raped a ten-year-old girl. Gideon wasn’t coming, his excuse that he needed to travel with Orli. Her agents had called two days before with the surprising news that a director who wasn’t Michael Bay wanted her to come to Tokyo to talk about a part. She hadn’t wanted to leave the boys again on short notice, but decided that she couldn’t miss the chance. Anyway, Tokyo was only about five hours from Hong Kong. She could be there and back in less than a day. He’d encouraged her. She needed the distraction.

  As Duberman walked down the Jetway, Cheung stepped out of a waiting Mercedes limousine. He wore full dress uniform, a general’s stars and wings on his shoulder boards. He was composed, relaxed, nothing like the madman Duberman had seen the week before. He extended a hand. Duberman tried to imagine that he felt skin and not scales as they shook.

  “Mr. Duberman, I’ve heard so much about you,” Cheung said, through the interpreter beside him.

  “Call me Aaron.”

  “Aaron, then. You know I’ve been to your casinos. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

  Smoothwind’s factory was clean as a three-star kitchen. Duberman found to his mild surprise that Cheung had a professional presentation prepared for him on the jet, mocked-up cabins and 3-D renderings. The Smoothwind was thirty percent cheaper than the Gulfstream it copied, with better fuel efficiency. For a few minutes, Duberman immersed himself in the presentation and forgot the thumb drive that lay in his pocket like a cyanide capsule.

  “Have I convinced you?”

  “I like what I see. But none of this matters until we fly it.”

  “I hoped you’d say that.” Cheung stood. “Please, come with me.”

  Outside, the jet waited, long and sleek and painted a shocking red. “Not the usual color, but we wanted to make a statement.”

  The interpreter bowed to Duberman. “The general asks me to stay here. He says that if you have any questions, save them for later. For now, he wants you to relax and focus on the flight experience.”

  “The flight experience. Yes.”

  —

  THEY SAT SIDE BY SIDE in the Smoothwind’s brown leather seats. As the jet rolled down the runway, Duberman couldn’t shake the feeling that it would crash. A fitting end. But it rose easily. As it leveled off, Cheung extracted a gray thumb drive and placed it on the armrest between them as carefully as an addict chopping a line. Duberman fumbled in his pocket, handed over his own drive.

  They passed the rest of the flight in silence. Duberman had a thousand questions, but wouldn’t have asked a single one even if Cheung spoke perfect English. The answers no longer mattered. All he and the man beside him needed to know was that they had both chosen the same master.

  17

  TOKYO

  Orli couldn’t help feeling disloyal. But she was glad to escape. From Hong Kong, from the mansion, from her husband most of all. Three months ago, when he’d told her, the giddiness she’d felt had surprised her. He’d tried to start a war. Spectacular insanity. What no one understood abo
ut Aaron was that for all his calculation, at heart he was a dreamer. Greedy dreams, but then weren’t the best dreams greedy? I want riches beyond measure, a beautiful woman half my age, the sun never to set on my empire . . .

  So they had to leave Israel. For a while. It would take them back. After all, Aaron had done what he’d done to save it. Meantime, they would be the world’s richest refugees. No overloaded ships or internment camps for them. They would live in splendor, an army of bodyguards watching over them.

  —

  BUT IN THE MONTH since Wells had shot Uri and Avi, the reality of her new life had set in. Even a thirty-room mansion could be a prison. She wasn’t scared, not exactly. But she woke in the deep of the night wondering what Wells or the Americans or the police would do next. The Chinese, too, now that Aaron was making them his enemy. His and hers and their sons. She didn’t care what happened to her, as long as the boys were safe.

  Aaron had always carried himself like a stallion who’d just won the Kentucky Derby, head high, eyes bright. Now a shadow shaded his face, mold inching into an abandoned house. He no longer strode. He walked. Slowly. For the first time, he seemed old. He hadn’t given up, she knew. He was still fighting. But he seemed to fear that his struggling was only tightening the knots that bound him. He was lying to her, too, or, if not lying, not telling the whole truth. She wondered if he had already made a deal with the Chinese or the Americans.

  They hadn’t had sex much lately, but a couple days before, she’d felt nauseated and wondered if she might be pregnant. When she saw the single line on the stick—not pregnant—she felt nothing but relief.

  Why not leave, then? Take the twins, go home to Tel Aviv? But she couldn’t abandon Aaron yet. She’d never told him, or anyone, but during those last months with Jamie, she’d started to use. To keep up, to stay cool—cool being the ultimate prize for any rocker not named Chris Martin. Needles scared her, thank God. Even so, by the end, she’d been more than dabbling. She had her own stash.

  Then Aaron came along, with his energy and cars and money, yes, all that money. The whole getting-high-and-lying-in-a-dark-hotel-room thing seemed ridiculous as it was. Plus he was the best lover she’d had in years, unashamed, almost gleeful for the pleasure they had. She knew he’d been around, but all that sex seemed to have taken him past cynicism to an innocence of sorts: We’re here, we’re doing this, might as well enjoy it.

  She’d flushed the Baggies down the toilet after their first time together. A bad few days, and then the itch faded. After a couple of months, she hardly thought about the stuff. When she did, she tried to remember it like the most terrible flight she’d ever had, London to Rio in July, suffering through hour after hour of mid-Atlantic turbulence so terrible she couldn’t believe the 747 would survive. Thank God I got through.

  Still, she feared the pull of the drug enough to turn down an epidural when she delivered the twins. Aaron didn’t deserve the credit for her quitting. He hadn’t even known. Yet she gave it to him, anyway. She worried that leaving him might open the door to a relapse. Stupid. She hadn’t been a mother back then. Children changed everything.

  Knowing the fear didn’t make sense didn’t help her shake it.

  So she stayed. But with each day, the negatives grew more obvious, the positives harder to see. The scale had nearly tipped. Under the circumstances, the call from CAA had come as a godsend, a clean excuse to get away for a day. A Spanish director who went by a single name, Inaguyo, wanted to talk to her about a sci-fi adventure he would be shooting later in the year. Even better, he was in Tokyo promoting his Godzilla remake. She wouldn’t have to go across the Pacific.

  “Can you send me a script?” she asked her agent, who had the only-in-Hollywood name of Tiffany DeBeers. Orli had never asked if it was real.

  “You have to meet him first. If he likes you, he’ll show you some pages, ask you to read.”

  “Sketchy.”

  “I promise you, whatever he’s got will be a big step up from Grown Ups 2. Look, he’ll only be in Tokyo until the end of the week—”

  —

  NOW HERE SHE WAS, at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the hotel Sofia Coppola made famous in Lost in Translation, one of her all-time favorites. A good sign, surely. Even better, Inaguyo had the Presidential Suite, where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson had flopped around without ever having sex. Orli looked forward to seeing the room, though she knew that even the most luxurious hotels couldn’t offer anything she didn’t have already. One of the hidden disappointments of the billionaire’s life.

  The meeting was scheduled for 8 p.m. Good timing. She spent the morning with the twins before putting them down for their after-lunch nap and heading for Tokyo.

  Normally, she traveled with two bodyguards. This time, Gideon had insisted on coming, too, instead of sticking with Aaron, who was flying to Beijing to meet the general he was trying to trap.

  How can you be sure this guy won’t lock you up? Orli had asked him the night before.

  I have something on him he can’t beat.

  Three months ago, even a month, she would have demanded details. Instead she rolled away and tried to sleep.

  At the Hyatt, she followed Gideon off the elevator. The suite’s door was propped open with a black binder with a white label on which the single word INTERGALACTIC was written. Orli picked up the binder, found it empty. Strange. Gideon knocked, led her inside.

  The living room was ten meters long and nearly as wide, and featured dark wooden floors and a spectacular view over central Tokyo, the city’s neon coming alive as the day ended. Water bottles sat on a coffee table near the windows. The room was empty, the doors to the bedrooms closed.

  “Inaguyo? Mr. Inaguyo?” Orli hoped she was pronouncing his name right.

  “Be right out. Make yourself comfortable.” He sounded American to Orli, no trace of a Spanish accent.

  “This is wrong,” Gideon said. He pulled his pistol, stepped between Orli and the bedroom door as it opened and a man in a white shirt and jeans stepped out.

  “Easy,” he said, in Hebrew. “We just want to talk.” Another man followed him, a little guy, older than Aaron, nearly bald. The bags under his eyes made Orli want to call her makeup artist.

  Behind them, two more men walked into the suite. Now her other guards drew their pistols, too. Gideon put an arm around Orli, backed her toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  “Orli, I promise you’ll want to hear what we have to say,” the old man said.

  She did. Whoever these men were, she was sure they didn’t plan to shoot her in the Park Hyatt Tokyo Presidential Suite. “Put the gun away, Gideon.” He hesitated. “Now.”

  Gideon holstered his pistol. The door to the second bedroom opened. A man stepped out, tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, the faintest touch of gray in his brown hair.

  “Wells,” Gideon said, the single word conveying an encyclopedia’s worth of disgust.

  “Chai-chai.” Wells and the old guy sat down. Orli took the couch across from theirs, with Gideon standing behind her.

  “I’m sorry we lied.” Wells sounded like a cowboy at a campfire, his voice low, almost guttural. She had to lean in to hear. Wells was responsible for all their trouble. He’d killed Uri and Avi. She’d expected to hate him on sight. But she didn’t. He looked at her almost shyly, like an old friend who didn’t want to break bad news.

  “For what it’s worth, we hear Inaguyo’s a jerk,” the old man said. “Handsy type. I’m Ellis Shafer. I work for the agency.”

  The first agency that came to mind was CAA. Then she realized he meant the one with the I in the middle. “Did Tiffany know?” She couldn’t believe her agent would lie to her this way. Though why not? Agents lied all the time.

  “We told her we needed a safe way to contact you without your husband finding out.”

  “This is crazy. You make up this story, drag me to Tokyo,
why?” Maybe she’d have the chance to act in this room after all. She prepared to be surprised when they told her about the Iran plot.

  “We know you know,” Shafer said.

  “I know what?”

  “It’s okay,” Wells said.

  “I’m telling you I have no idea—”

  “William Roberts—”

  “Who?”

  “Now you’re just being stupid,” Shafer said, and a flare bloomed in her stomach. People so often assumed she was dumb because of the way she looked. “Of course you know Roberts. Your head of security in Hong Kong until he stopped coming to work.”

  “Sure.”

  “Roberts told me you said I was stalking you,” Wells said.

  “I’ve never even met you—”

  “Exactly,” Shafer said. “So we know you know. Otherwise, why say something so stupid?” He emphasized the last word, and she knew he was baiting her. “You knew the real reason that John was after your husband and wanted to give Roberts a halfway decent excuse for all the extra security.”

  Gideon started yammering in Hebrew at the mention of Roberts’s name. “Quiet,” she said. “Give me a minute.” The interruption gave her a chance to regroup, but she couldn’t imagine how to explain what she’d told Roberts.

  “It’s a lie.” The lamest possible excuse.

  “We’ll call him,” Shafer said. “You two can discuss.”

  They weren’t guessing. They knew.

  “Okay, you got me, Aaron gave Roberts that story and I went with it.” Not a quiver in her face. After so many years in front of a camera, she could control every muscle. She wasn’t going to show weakness. Or ask forgiveness. Even if that was what they wanted. Especially if that was they wanted.

  “Why?”

  She’d known what the world thought when she married Aaron. And her friends. How long’s the prenup? Bet you already have a divorce lawyer picked out . . . She didn’t care, they were wrong, she meant her vows. To betray him now—