The Wolves Read online

  “John—”

  “Please don’t call me John. We don’t know each other that well.” What he needed to say came to him all at once, a speech brewing for years. “You know what’s always the same? The top guys always skate. We never touch them. American, Saudi, whatever, they make their messes and everybody else cleans up. I don’t mean to sound naïve, but I’ve had enough compromises for the greater good. Duberman, we can take him. Nobody’s protecting him.”

  The President nodded. “Somebody spends two hundred million dollars to get you reelected”—as Duberman had done for this President—“he’s not just a donor. He’s a friend. He’s been in this room. Then he tries to fake the United States into a war? Fake me? You think I don’t want him to pay?”

  “Then let me do something about it.”

  “Not you. We’re going to do this the right way, even if it takes time. We have to take him out in a way that doesn’t blow back on us—”

  “On you—”

  “Me and the country, yes. You can have everything else. But not Duberman. You don’t like it, call the papers.” The President reached into his inside suit pocket, came out with an iPhone. “Secret Service lets me keep it as long as I’m in here and can’t lose it.”

  He pressed his thumb to the home button to unlock it, tossed it to Wells. Then sat back on the sofa, as studiously casual as a poker player who had shoved all his chips into the middle of the table. Over to you. Call or fold.

  This guy. He’d humiliated himself and the country. Yet he still acted like he was in charge. Like sheer force of personality would see him through. The world’s best bluffer.

  Wells saw the irony. He complained no one ever held the men in charge accountable. Now he had the chance to make the most powerful man in the world pay. Only he couldn’t do it. He handed the phone back. “You promise me, I stay out of it, you’ll get him.”

  “I will do everything possible. Understand, that doesn’t mean blowing up his mansion or his plane with his family on it. No collective punishment. No civilians and especially not his wife and kids. Him only, and maybe that one bodyguard, the one who’s always with him—”

  “Gideon.” Wells wouldn’t forget Gideon Etra’s name soon. Or ever.

  “Yes. Gideon’s a legitimate target. So? Will you give me a chance?”

  “One condition. Get him out of Israel. Within a week.”

  The President shook his head in confusion.

  “Tel Aviv’s the hardest place to kill him. The Mossad and Shin Bet will know the second you bring in a team. He can hole up in his mansion. And he probably figures you won’t come after him if he has his family around. Flush him, make him move, maybe he makes a mistake. Goes to that island he owns, nice fat target.”

  “They won’t kick him out without a good reason,” Green said. “We’ll have to tell Shalom”—Yitzhak Shalom, the Israeli Prime Minister—“the whole story.”

  What Wells wanted. The more people knew, the more pressure to act the President would face.

  The President and Green whispered briefly.

  “Okay,” the President said. “But he winds up in some underground compound in Moscow where we can’t touch him, don’t blame me.”

  Wells looked at Shafer. “What do you think, Ellis?”

  “I’d like to know what Duto wants.”

  “Nothing you wouldn’t expect,” the President said. “Carte blanche in naming the new DCI. All my donor files, plus all the oppo research we have on every potential candidate, both parties.”

  “You told him no to that?”

  “I told him yes to everything.”

  “You gave him your dirt.”

  “It isn’t that juicy. Politicians are boring these days.”

  “What are you going to do when he tells you he wants you to endorse him?”

  “Truth is, that would barely move the needle. Even in the primary. Nobody cares what I think. I’m the past. The past can’t sign bills. The only way I can guarantee he gets the job would be to make the Veep resign, name Duto Veep, then resign myself. That would be a constitutional crisis in a can. I’d rather have it all come out.”

  “Plus you’d be out, anyway,” Shafer said.

  “Correct. So that’s not happening.”

  “Just don’t underestimate him.”

  “Lesson learned. So? You on board?”

  Shafer tapped Wells on the leg. “Good enough for him, good enough for me.”

  “And vice versa,” Wells said. “For a while.”

  “How long?” Green said.

  “Time limits only cause trouble.” An unsubtle reference to the President’s failed deadline. “Last thing. I don’t want anyone on me. I find out you’re watching, it’s off.”

  “Fine.”

  Then they had nothing else to say. Green gave Wells and Shafer cards without names, just numbers on the front and back. “Cell and home. Call anytime.”

  “Let’s go to Shirley’s,” Shafer said, when they were finally off the White House grounds. A run-down bar in northeast D.C., left over from the District’s bad old days as the Murder Capital. It sold two-dollar shots of no-name booze, and its bathroom sent customers to the back alley. The perfect place for a defeat celebration.

  “Your wife won’t mind?”

  “My wife is just happy I’m out of jail.”

  “Drinkers wanted—inquire inside” read the sign taped to Shirley’s front door. The room inside it was dirtier than ever. Like going downmarket was a strategy. Wells wanted to summon some nostalgia for the place, irritation for the eight-dollar-a-beer gastropub that would replace it as Washington’s gentrification spread ever farther east. He couldn’t. It could have been cheap and local and still have had pride.

  Wells ordered a Budweiser and didn’t drink it. Shafer ordered whiskey and did. One shot, a second, a third. Shafer wasn’t a big drinker, and the shots added up. A rheumy film blanked his eyes. After his fourth shot, he poked Wells in the side, his finger hardly denting the muscle over Wells’s ribs. “I ever tell you about Orson Nye? My first COS?” Chief of station. “In Congo? That first posting in Africa, back in the day, I had the worst case of Nile fever.”

  “West Nile?”

  Shafer smirked. “No, like Potomac fever.” Washington residents used the term to describe the naïve excitement that young arrivals to the city displayed over their proximity to power. That intern’s got Potomac fever so bad, we could have him research the weather service budget for a month and he’d love it.

  “Hard to imagine.” Wells peeled the label from his Budweiser and sloshed the liquid inside back and forth. Muslims didn’t drink. He was Muslim. Thus, he didn’t drink. The rules were the rules.

  He missed beer, though.

  “Oh, but I did. Loved it, all of it. The embassy parties. Chartering a plane so some twenty-year-old could fly me into the jungle for a meeting with the Angolan rebels. The weekly briefings in the secure room. The safe with the gas masks and the mines and the grenades. All the coms protocols we had to use, back then it wasn’t just some encrypted phone. Our secretaries practically needed Ph.D.s. Checking out the surveillance photos we had of the KGB residents, knowing that they had the same photos of us. Spy versus spy. So glamorous.”

  “I’m waiting for the but.”

  “But. Took me maybe a year to figure out that everything we did was for show. Mobutu was all that mattered in Congo.” Mobutu Sese Seko, the country’s president for thirty-two years, until just before his death in 1997. “And all he cared about was money. Carter talked a good game about human rights, but he kept the man’s palms greased. Reagan didn’t even pretend to care.”

  Shafer raised his glass and the bartender shuffled over.

  “One more?” The guy looked like he belonged in a nursing home, not a bar.

  “At least. Your name’s Ed, right?”
r />   “Depends who’s asking.”

  “You’ll never guess where we were today, Ed.”

  “Got that right.” The bartender filled Shafer’s glass, swiped a pair of dollar bills from the counter, walked away.

  “Gonna miss this place,” Shafer said.

  “Makes one of us. Mobutu?”

  “Back then, nobody worried about terrorism; the COS and the ambassador threw parties all the time. Open bar, wide open. One night, I’m drunk, I start spouting to Orson, the people of Congo are starving, Mobutu’s stealing with both hands. We’re standing by, letting him; why don’t we do something about it? He’s drunk, too, big guy, old-school agency, country-club type. Pretty wife. He puts his hands on my shoulders, leans in—he smelled great, by the way—”

  “I’m not sure what to make of the fact you remember that.”

  “I can’t say a man smells good? And he said, ‘Look, you want me to send a cable, Time to get rid of MSS? We’ll go to the secure room, do it right now. Just promise me one thing.’ And I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘Whoever comes next will be better. At least Mobutu’s greedy first and a sadist second. At least I can go over to the palace, ask him to lay off the fingernail pulling and leg breaking when it gets too bad.’”

  Shafer had delivered this monologue in a Jimmy Cagney–esque voice that apparently was meant to be Nye’s. He raised his glass. “Here’s to you, Orson. You shut me up good. You know what I said back to him? Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay, my oh my—”

  Wells didn’t like seeing Shafer drunk. “Had to have been guys who were better.”

  “And worse. We couldn’t tell ’em apart. Whoever we picked would say the right things until he took over. Then maybe we’d find out the truth. And plenty of broken glass along the way. Plenty plenty. Even after only a year over there, I was sure of that.”

  “So Mobutu stayed in power for another twenty years, almost, and destroyed Congo.”

  “Sure did. Hasn’t improved since he died, though.”

  “How come you never quit, Ellis?”

  “I have a good marriage, right?”

  “I don’t know much about marriage, but it looks that way.”

  “Great family. All the drama I didn’t have in my personal life, it went to the agency. I always thought of the CIA as a woman. A beautiful woman. She cheats, she fights, she lies, but you get addicted to the drama. Of course I only went out with three women in my life, so what do I know?” Shafer downed what was left of shot number five and reached for the bottle in front of Wells. “May I?”

  “Please don’t.”

  Shafer took a pull, belched. “Nectar of the gods. Though not Allah.”

  “You think we did the right thing by letting him skate? The President, I mean.”

  “Heck if I know, John. I know you weren’t ready to do it, and I wasn’t, either. Let’s see what happens. Donna Green was right about one thing. We can always change our minds.”

  Wells was done with this crusty bar. And with Shafer. “Let’s get a cab.”

  “One more.”

  “No more.” Wells lifted Shafer off the stool. He was light as an empty sack and Wells wondered if he might be sick.

  Not that. Not Shafer, too.

  “You want to stay over?”

  “So you can watch me sleep, report my nightmares to the President?”

  “It happened.”

  “Once. You poured it on thick enough.”

  Outside, Wells led Shafer south and west until they found a taxi.

  “Get out of this town,” Shafer said, as he slid inside. “It doesn’t agree with you. Sort out your love life. If you can’t do that, at least go see your kid. Give our fearless leader a chance to keep his word.”

  “He can’t get away with this.” Wells wasn’t sure whether he was talking about Duberman or the President.

  “You’ll know when it’s time. We all will.” Shafer hauled the door shut. He didn’t look back as the cab rolled away.

  PART ONE

  1

  HONG KONG

  Aaron Duberman owned estates all over the world. But since marrying Orli Akilov, an Israeli supermodel, he had spent more and more time in Israel. After the President’s speech, he was glad he had. Since its very beginnings, Israel had been a haven for Jews who faced persecution. A “law of return” gave all Jews the right to gain Israeli citizenship. Duberman wondered if he should take advantage.

  At the least, he planned to stay inside Israel indefinitely. The United States would hesitate to kill him here without telling the Israeli government of its plans. And Duberman doubted the government would let another country kill a Jew inside Israel. Especially him, especially under these circumstances. The Prime Minister would surely see that Duberman had done what he’d done to protect Israel from Iran.

  Five days after the President’s speech, Duberman learned how wrong he was. He was eating dinner with Orli and their twin sons at the mansion when his gate guard called.

  “Yaakov Ayalon is here.” The guard’s voice carried unmistakable respect. Ayalon headed the Israeli Security Agency, the famous Shin Bet, Israel’s FBI. “He asks you meet him at the gate.”

  “Tell him I’ll be glad to see him inside.”

  The response came back seconds later. “He asks you meet him at the gate.”

  “I have to go,” Duberman said to Orli.

  “At dinner?” She treated dinners with the twins as close to sacred. Even on nights when they ate out, they often had a first meal at home. Duberman had joked she wanted him to become bulimic. Just like your friends in the business.

  He kissed her and the boys, wondering if he’d ever see them again, stepped through his cavernous mansion, past the Jeff Koons balloon-animal sculptures and the Keith Haring paintings. Fifty million dollars’ worth of modern art in the front gallery alone. Barely a rounding error in his thirty-billion-dollar fortune.

  What good was any of it now?

  Outside, the night was calm, the air fresh and clean. Three Ford Mondeos sat nose to tail, two men in each. Ayalon waited by the gate. He was a bantam of a man, with black nerd-chic glasses, a neatly tailored suit, close-cropped gray hair. He looked like a psychiatrist with a rich clientele.

  “Your phone, please.”

  Duberman handed it over. Ayalon turned it off, tucked it in his pocket.

  “You can come with me.”

  Surely the Israelis wouldn’t pluck him from dinner to put a bullet in his head. But then what exactly was the protocol for an assassination?

  Ayalon led him to the middle Ford. “I know it’s less fancy than what you’re used to.” Within minutes, they were on Highway 1, headed southeast, toward Jerusalem. Whenever Duberman made this drive, he was struck by how small Israel was. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were barely forty miles apart. The whole country was about the same size as New Jersey, though longer and narrower, less strategically defensible. When the Muslims threatened to push the Jews into the sea, they weren’t speaking rhetorically.

  Yet the hills outside Jerusalem were beautiful, even in the dark. For one short stretch, the highway coursed through a canyon that offered the illusion of being wild country. Then it turned and rose toward the glowing lights that marked the newest western tendrils of the ancient city.

  Minutes later, they turned onto the road that led up the hill that was home to Israel’s central government complex. “Knesset?” Duberman said, the name of the Israeli parliament. Ayalon didn’t answer.

  Instead, they turned into the parking lot of the Israel Museum, a low cluster of modern buildings that occupied prime real estate near the parliament. A loading bay big enough for a tractor-trailer was open. The lead and chase cars waited outside as the Ford carrying Duberman drove to the back of the bay. Duberman reached for the door.

  “We wait inside,” Ayalon said. Fifteen minutes la
ter, a five-car convoy sped into the bay, an armored Cadillac limousine in the center.

  “Out.”

  Duberman stepped out as the Caddy stopped beside the Ford. A burly bodyguard emerged from the right back door. “Fine,” he said, and a tall man unfolded himself from the back seat. Yitzhak Shalom. Ayalon and the guards walked away, leaving Shalom with Duberman. The two men were about the same height, but Shalom was painfully thin. His breath carried the oily smell of grape leaves. They’d met dozens of times. Duberman had donated millions of dollars to Shalom’s political party. But Shalom’s face suggested that neither the money nor their friendship nor Duberman’s marriage to Orli would help him.

  “Mr. Prime Minister—”

  “I’ve spoken to your President.” A slight emphasis on your, a reminder that Duberman was American, not Israeli. “You need to leave.”

  “But Tel Aviv is just getting nice.”

  “You joke?”

  “The right of return.”

  “Doesn’t apply to murderers.”

  “If you’ve spoken to the President, you know I only aimed at Israel’s enemies.”

  “What about the Americans your people killed?”

  Duberman couldn’t deny the accusation. As part of the plot, his operatives had killed a CIA station chief and his bodyguards, hoping Iran would be blamed.

  “When he told me what you’d done, I nearly offered to solve the problem myself.” Shalom lifted his head and huffed, a single short exhale, like a witch casting a spell. This close, Duberman smelled his stomach bile. “Please don’t think about begging your right-wing friends for help. Yaakov and I are the only ones who know the truth. If that changes, you won’t benefit.”

  “Don’t you see that what I did, I did for Israel?”

  “If you think that, you’re an even greater fool than I thought. You have forty-eight hours. Of course you can keep your properties here, but you can never come back.”

  Me and Moses. Banished from the Promised Land. Duberman feared the Prime Minister wouldn’t appreciate the comparison. “What about Orli?”

  “Did she know?”