The Wolves

by Alex Berenson

  But truth seemed the only option. “What you said. He told me what he’d done, the whole plot, told me you might come after him.”

  “When was that?”

  She had an odd impulse to plead guilty, though she was innocent. If not for the twins, maybe she would have. Just to see how they’d respond. “If you’re asking if I knew before, the answer’s no. This was after. The Prime Minister met him, said we had to leave Israel.”

  “He told you, and you went with him to Hong Kong anyway.”

  “I wanted my boys to be close to their father.”

  Wells craned his head at those words like a dog who’d heard a whistle meant only for him.

  “Life lessons for the kiddies?” Shafer said. “How to start a war in three easy steps.”

  Wells reached into the binder, slid a picture to her. “You know him?”

  Inside, surveillance photos of a man who was almost cartoonishly large. He had Slavic features, cruel eyes and thin lips. Russian. She couldn’t be sure how she knew, she’d never seen him before, but she did. Her parents had fled men like him. Maybe the revulsion that she felt was in her genes.

  “Mikhail Buvchenko,” Shafer said.

  “Nice guy,” Wells said. “Likes shooting horses.”

  “Mikhail works for the FSB,” Shafer said. “For the last month or so, he’s been in Hong Kong. He and his buddies have something going with your husband.”

  A lie, surely. Yet for the first time, she wondered if she had misjudged Aaron. “Not the Russians, Aaron knows what I think of them—” She looked over her shoulder at Gideon. He wouldn’t meet her eye.

  “Something else you don’t know. Last week the Russian ambassador to the U.S. told the White House that one Aaron Duberman has applied for political asylum in Russia—”

  “That’s not possible—”

  “Not possible, certain. It happened. Don’t believe me, ask your husband. For him, his loving wife, kids, too. The Kremlin’s already warning us not to interfere. So how about that, the twins speaking Russian, going back to the homeland? Back in the USSR, you don’t know how lucky you are—”

  A low grunt escaped her. Surprise that sounded like pleasure and came from the same root, I didn’t know I could feel this way. To think that a minute before, she’d blamed herself for betraying Aaron.

  At least now she understood why he was so sure that he could use whatever the Chinese general gave him. She stood, looked at Gideon. “Is it true?” He didn’t answer, and she knew. She knew, and still she wanted him to say so. “Is it?” Her voice rose, echoed off the windows.

  “I warned him,” Gideon said. “I told him, when Buvchenko came, he wouldn’t listen—”

  “This man came to our house? And you didn’t tell me.”

  “You know what I owe him.” His voice a whisper.

  “Go. Go.”

  “He should stay,” Shafer said. “We have questions for him.”

  She wanted to argue, but what difference did Gideon make, anyway? He was no one. Not after this. She sat down again. Wells slid across more photos.

  “More Russians?” She didn’t know them, either.

  “Correct. We figure your husband and the FSB made a deal, protection in return for access to the people who come to his casinos,” Shafer said. “Gideon, know anything about that?” The third American, the one who spoke Hebrew, translated.

  Gideon didn’t answer.

  “You can’t save him now, it’s over,” Shafer said.

  Orli heard these words in a strange stereo, English and then Hebrew, as if some cruel god wanted to pound the truth into her—

  “Tell him.” Speaking to Gideon in Hebrew, but looking at Wells. “Whatever you know, tell him.”

  Then all at once she felt motion behind her. Wells put his hands up. She turned to see that Gideon had pulled his pistol on Wells. Meanwhile, the two other Americans by the door had drawn their own guns on Gideon, and her guards on the Americans. She imagined bullets stretching the air, winking at each other as they passed. She knew she should be afraid, but she was only annoyed. Men. Any excuse to whip out their guns.

  Everyone in the room was itchy and wide-eyed except for Gideon and Wells, who stared at each other like two bucks about to lower their heads and charge. Wells had nothing in his hands, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “This what you want?” he said. “Gunfight at the Hyatt.”

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t. For Avi, Uri, Adina, and all the others—” Gideon spoke Hebrew to Wells’s English. They couldn’t possibly have understood each other, but they did all the same.

  “They paid their money, they took the ride.” The words not cruel, but matter-of-fact. For the first time, Orli saw the steel under Wells’s skin, saw why Gideon, who didn’t fear anyone, feared him.

  “You think you’re going to live forever?” Gideon said. “That you won’t be judged—”

  “Enough,” Orli said. “Put that little thing back in your pants before I get up and take it from you. Then tell them what you know.”

  “You don’t want to hear what I know.” An ironic smile curled Gideon’s lips. She knew he was right, she would regret whatever he had to say. But they had all gone much too far to turn back.

  “Now.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Duberman. Whatever you like.” Gideon stuffed the pistol inside his waistband. After a moment, the other men nodded at one another and holstered their weapons, their faces half embarrassed, half relieved.

  Gideon sat next to Orli, leaned toward Shafer. “You’re right. Buvchenko came to us, offered this bargain, Aaron took it. He’s already delivered his first fish. A Chinese air force general, Cheung is his name, Cheung Han, very senior—”

  “He turned a PLAAF general?” Shafer said, after the other American translated. “In a month? How?”

  “Cheung likes little girls—”

  “You misunderstood.” Orli’s voice sounded strange in her own ears. “He wouldn’t.” Speaking not of Cheung, but her husband. “He’s a good father—”

  “I’m sorry, Orli, it’s true. He brought Cheung to the new casino, the VIP room.”

  “It’s not even open.”

  “Exactly. Brought him where no one could see and convinced him to admit what he wanted and gave him to the FSB. What happened after that, I don’t know, but it must have worked or the Russians wouldn’t be protecting him.”

  “How little?”

  “What?”

  Gideon was silent. “The girls, how little?”

  “Gideon, I’m not sure exactly. Not, you know, developed.” The shame made his voice a whisper.

  “Prepubescent, you mean. Children.”

  “It was only one—”

  “Oh, good. Only one. And Aaron gave her to this general?” What had he said to her after he helicoptered back from Macao that night? It worked.

  “Orli, I swear, I don’t know what happened exactly. I didn’t want to be part of it. That’s why I wouldn’t go to Beijing with him today.”

  What had her husband become? One step, another, the next . . . a man looked in the mirror and a wolf looked back. Now the tears came, and she was crying, not for herself but for him, the choices he’d made, the life he’d thrown away.

  Yet beneath the sadness, fury. Aaron had no right to do this, betray her after what she’d told him about that day in Paris, make himself a criminal . . . to throw away the billions that belonged to their children. She hated thinking of the money so soon, but how could she not? It was overwhelming.

  Though it hadn’t saved her husband.

  She was finished with him. She wiped the tears, knew she wouldn’t cry again.

  “I’m sorry,” Wells said. “People go crazy when they’re cornered.”

  “Go to hell.”

  The room was quiet for a moment.

  Then Sh
afer stood. “Now that we’ve all had a chance to tell each other how we feel—”

  “You, too, old man—”

  “Gideon, when was the last time Aaron met Buvchenko?”

  Gideon waited for the translation. Then: “A few days ago. Four or five.”

  “After Macao.”

  “Correct. That was when Buvchenko told him to go to Beijing.”

  “Do they have a contact number, a regular drop, anything like that?”

  “I don’t think so. Buvchenko came to the mansion the first time, but that wasn’t set up, Aaron didn’t know he was coming. Since then, Aaron calls him or he calls Aaron. They saw each other a few times in Macao to arrange this thing with Cheung. Last time, at an office Aaron has in Kowloon.”

  “You go every time?”

  “So far. Two other FSB guys come to the meetings, too.” Gideon picked out two photos from the stack that Wells had shown Orli. “These two. Nikolai and Sergei. Nikolai’s the boss.”

  “But Buvchenko handles Aaron?”

  Gideon nodded.

  “Do you have Buvchenko’s number, his email? Or the others’?”

  “No. Probably on Aaron’s phone, but I’m not sure. Maybe he memorizes it.”

  “If you asked him for it—”

  “He’d wonder. He knows what I think of Buvchenko. You don’t have eyes on the Russians already? You have these pictures—”

  Shafer ignored the question. “What about you?” To Orli. “Can you get his phone?”

  “Sure. I know his passcode. No secrets in our family.” A smile died on her lips.

  “Could he have a burner? A spare phone?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  Shafer looked away from her. His exasperation might have been real, she couldn’t tell.

  “Get his phone for us. At least tell us if you hear him call Buvchenko.”

  She wanted to be out of this room, away from this man Shafer, his obnoxious questions, his demands.

  “What if I don’t?”

  “We can help you, too,” Wells said. “Protect you.”

  “How long? A month? Six months? I betray my husband, betray the Russians. You forget about what I’ve done soon enough. They never do.”

  “You don’t want to help us, don’t,” Shafer said. “Either way, it might be best if you took your children to Israel as soon as possible.”

  “And you kill Aaron?”

  “We won’t be inviting him to any Fourth of July parties.”

  She shook her head: Answer me.

  “It’s a long shot, but if we can find a way to work with him we will,” Wells said.

  “Use him against the Russians and the Chinese, you mean.” She was surprised how little she cared. “Something I don’t get. My husband told me you used to work for the CIA, but you don’t anymore.”

  “You can assume we speak for the government,” Shafer said.

  Now she saw. “The President wants to kill him without making the Russians mad.”

  “The President prizes flexibility.”

  “And nobody’s more flexible than we are,” Wells said.

  She stood. “I’m going home, to talk to my husband—”

  “That’s a mistake.”

  “You’re afraid he’ll tell me you’re lying?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll start something you can’t stop.”

  “You can’t seriously expect I’ll desert him without talking to him.”

  “I thought he was in Beijing to meet the general, anyway,” Shafer said to Gideon.

  “Yes,” Gideon said, after the translation. “But not staying over. Home tonight. He might be back already.” He looked at Orli. “I’ll pick up the boys. You go to Tel Aviv.”

  “You’re a bigger fool than he is if you think I’d trust you after this.” Anyway, she wanted to hear what Aaron had to say for herself. After five years and two kids, she owed him that much. Maybe Shafer and Wells had lied.

  Though she knew they hadn’t.

  “When you decide what to do—” Shafer handed her a card, two mobile numbers, two email addresses. “Friendly advice. Sooner is better than later.”

  “For me or my husband?” She walked out without waiting for the answer.

  —

  AFTER SHE LEFT, Shafer dismissed the other Americans, grabbed his phone.

  “I need a report on a Chinese general named Cheung Han, PLAAF, yes . . . Glad you’ve heard of him, that’s your job. I’d like everything we have. In one hour . . . Yes, an hour. Pull your thumb out of your ass.” He hung up without waiting for an answer.

  “Channeling Duto?” Though Wells couldn’t entirely blame Shafer for the attitude. After so many years on the margins, they finally had the full weight of the agency behind them. They’d had seven operatives on this floor, and they could have had more. They would leave Narita just after midnight on an agency charter, clear HKIA in the morning with clean passports—and, even more impressive, clean fingertips.

  The Hong Kong immigration checkpoints had fingerprint scanners, of course. But the agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology had found a way to beat the scanners, millimeter-thick molds made of a combination of silicon and gelatin. The molds carried real prints from the FBI’s fingerprint database. The agency used prints only from people who had died before 2000, a ghoulish but effective way to be certain that the prints weren’t already in immigration databases.

  The agency’s engineers vacuum-packed the molds in sterile plastic containers about the size used to store contact lenses. They could be carried in a diplomatic pouch or even mailed and stored at room temperature for years. The molds were single-use, but the agency made dozens of copies of each unique print. That way an operative could clear immigration repeatedly with the same print and thus the same passport and identity.

  Because the molds were so thin, they easily warmed to human body temperature, and the gelatin had conductive properties similar to human skin. The combination meant that they could easily fool even third-generation fingerprint scanners that measured temperature and electrical resistance—though most airports still relied on basic devices that did little more than photograph prints and check their whorls and ridges against their databases.

  With more and more immigration agencies deploying scanners, the molds had proven incredibly useful. Every station now carried them. Best of all, an operative who ran into border trouble for some other reason could simply put finger to tongue. The gelatin and silicone dissolved within seconds and left no trace. Of course, he’d then be stuck with his real fingerprints.

  Wells had tested the molds at Langley before coming to Tokyo. As far as he could tell they were foolproof. And as much as working for the agency had frustrated him, he had to admit that its technical wizardry made life in the field easier.

  In the morning, they would meet with Garry Wright, who was even now trying to find Buvchenko. Unfortunately, the Russian seemed to have gone to ground. As always, language skills remained a problem for the agency, and Hong Kong station had only three field officers who spoke Cantonese. They were watching the Russian consulate in downtown Hong Kong, but they hadn’t spotted Buvchenko in a week. Another technical problem, this one easily solvable if they could convince Gideon or Orli to give them Buvchenko’s phone number. The NSA’s ability to track mobile signals was astonishing, and the FSB was using rudimentary techniques to communicate with Duberman. Maybe because it didn’t expect him to last long.

  But of course Shafer had alienated Orli, their best lead.

  “You didn’t need to push her that way,” Wells said.

  “She wasn’t exactly jumping to help us.”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t been such a jerk.”

  “You and your supermodel crushes. He told her what
he’d done and she got on a plane and went halfway around the world with him. Don’t give me that kids-need-Daddy crap. She thought they were untouchable.”

  “She doesn’t think that anymore.”

  “Yeah, and she’s not the only one. Gideon’s awful twitchy for a pro. Get the feeling he’s had it with the boss man?”

  “Wonder what he meant about owing him.”

  Shafer reached for his phone. “I’ll ask the geniuses if they can find anything.”

  “We shouldn’t have let her go, Ellis. She’s in way over her head.”

  “She’s free, white, and twenty-one, she can do what she likes.”

  “Think she’ll call?”

  “No way she goes down with him. But maybe she just takes the kids and goes back to Israel on her own, says to hell with all of us.”

  “I don’t have any problem with that.”

  “Don’t get too hooked, John. We may need to squeeze her yet.”

  18

  HONG KONG

  Orli spent the flight from Tokyo turning over what that ridiculous little man Shafer had told her, trying and failing to find some answer for her husband’s behavior. She landed at 6 a.m., seeing spots from exhaustion, not sure how she could face him, knowing she had no choice. “You should have told me,” she said to Gideon, as he led her onto the helicopter that would bring them to the Peak.

  “Try not to judge him. He was desperate.”

  As if desperation absolved her husband’s sins. His betrayal. We’re partners, she’d told him in Tel Aviv. All she’d asked, in return for running across the globe with him. Instead he’d turned to the Russians. Though he knew she hated them.

  Then the girl.

  She didn’t understand how he could have betrayed her so completely. Or how she could have known so little about him.

  —

  ANOTHER STORM WAS FORMING off the coast and the winds shoved their helicopter sideways as it flew over the bay and toward the Peak. As they bounced, Orli thought of a model she’d known, Renee. A surfer’s body, short spiky hair, real muscles. She worked mostly for alternative brands that specialized in girl power. They didn’t compete for the same jobs, no jealousy, so they were real friends, rare in the business. They got married within a month of each other, tried to get pregnant around the same time, too. A friendly competition.