The Silent Man Page 6

  Like his father, he ran the business on a few simple principles. He never promised customers weapons he couldn’t deliver. He never stored his merchandise on Swiss soil. He always made sure he was paid up front. He never worked twice with anyone who tried to burn him.

  And he never made threats he didn’t intend to keep.

  Several months before, John Wells had attacked Kowalski at a rented mansion in East Hampton, New York. Wells had . . . Kowalski didn’t even like to remember what Wells had done. Handcuffed him, shocked him with a stun gun, covered his head with duct tape. He was lucky he hadn’t suffocated. Wells had worn a mask, but Kowalski had learned his identity a few weeks later. Now he wanted revenge, the revenge that he had promised the masked man in his bedroom that night. On Wells, and Exley, too, who’d helped Wells.

  “You must know you’re making a terrible mistake,” Kowalski had said at the time. “Whoever you are . . . Even if you think you’re safe. I’ll break the rules for you.” Now Kowalski meant to keep his promise. Wells would pay for what he’d done.

  A HAND TOUCHED his shoulder, snapping him out of that summer night. Nadia stood beside him. “Pierre, are you all right? Your face was so . . . black.”

  He kissed her cheek. “Too much cottage cheese.”

  A light knock on the door. Anatoly Tarasov, Kowalski’s head of security, a former Russian Spetsnaz officer, entered. A walking tornado, capable of extraordinary violence.

  “Have you finished?” Kowalski said to Nadia.

  “Yes.” Her lunch had consisted of two pieces of melon and a boiled egg, and yet she seemed satisfied. He couldn’t imagine how.

  “Then wait for me in the drawing room. Today we’ll go for a shop.”

  She kissed him and glided out. Tarasov waited until she was gone, then closed the door and sat beside him. “You like her.”

  “She’s sweet,” Kowalski said. “Sweeter than most of them.”

  “Or a better actress.”

  “Perhaps. Have you news on our friend?”

  “You won’t wish to hear it. The CIA has two teams, two men each, watching the house where he and the woman live.”

  “Around the clock?”

  “Around the clock. One team in front, one in back. There’s a third in plainclothes that comes and goes.”

  “What about their vehicles?” Putting a bomb underneath a car was the easiest way to assassinate someone.

  “Garaged. They travel to work in separate cars most days. The woman drives a Dodge minivan, and Wells a Subaru. Sometimes he rides a motorcycle, but not in the winter. Two of the guards follow in a chase car.”

  “Are their cars armored?”

  “It doesn’t seem so. At Langley, they’re untouchable, naturally. They also have a private office in a place called Tyson’s Corner. But they spend most of their time at the agency now. And the private building has its own security. One of the CIA guards has a post outside the door and the other watches the cars. There’s a third guard in their office.”

  “Could we reach them there?”

  “They never open the door when there’s anyone else on the floor, and there are cameras on the corridor.”

  “How about the elevator?”

  “Such a confined space isn’t ideal. If Wells gets a hand up—”

  “I understand.” They would have only one chance at Wells and Exley. Kowalski didn’t want to waste it.

  “Also, the guards at the house have noticed our scout.”

  Kowalski’s stomach began to ache. “They’ve blown it already? Markov said these were his best men.”

  Ivan Markov was recently retired from the FSB. Kowalski had given Markov $2 million up front to kill Wells and Exley, with the promise of another $3 million for a successful job.

  “Nothing’s blown, Pierre. Our man was asked an idle question by the agents outside the house. He gave an idle answer. Nothing more. We shouldn’t underestimate the CIA. Perhaps they cannot catch bin Laden, but they are perfectly capable of watching a house in Washington.”

  For a moment Kowalski wondered whether he ought to call off this assassination. He had known all along that Wells and Exley were not ideal targets. They were high-profile, and Wells was more than capable of defending himself. Still, Kowalski had figured that Markov’s men would finish the task quickly.

  A few days of watching, then a few pounds of explosive attached to the undercarriage of Wells’s car. A three-man team. No elaborate surveillance required. And when he’d given Markov Wells’s name, the general had actually smiled. The Russians didn’t like Americans much these days, Kowalski thought.

  But now . . . this job was turning messy.

  “What do you think?” he asked Tarasov.

  “I think that once you begin a mission like this . . .” Tarasov trailed off. But Kowalski understood. The Russians respected strength. Bombings, poisonings, assassinations, Siberan prison camps—Russian leaders used every weapon at their disposal to remain in power, without apology. If Kowalski backed off, Markov would not be impressed. He would pass the word to his old bosses in the Kremlin: Pierre Kowalski has gone soft. The Russians were Kowalski’s most important business partner. He couldn’t afford to look weak to them.

  And yet . . . he had built this mansion, built his empire, by thinking clearly, never letting emotion cloud his business dealings. Only women had the luxury of setting reason aside in their decisions.

  He didn’t need to kill John Wells. Why take this risk?

  “Thank you, Anatoly.” Kowalski nodded to the door. “Come back in a quarter-hour.” He needed a few minutes alone. A few minutes to think.

  TARASOV REAPPEARED fifteen minutes later.

  “So the home is impossible,” Kowalski said. “And also the office.”

  “Not impossible, but—”

  “Then we will hit them in between, I think.”

  “I thought you might say that.”

  “Will Markov want more men?”

  “He believes in three-man teams.”

  “And these men?”

  “The best, Pierre. I know them myself.”

  “Good,” Kowalski said. “Now let me find that girl before she gets herself into trouble.” He pushed himself from the table and padded toward Nadia. In the desperate weeks to come, he would ask himself more than once whether he would have made a different decision if he hadn’t been so damned hungry.

  5

  Wells awoke to Exley’s hands on his back, sliding across the base of his spine, over his hips, up to the thick muscles in his shoulders. Outside their bedroom the sky was dark, no sign of dawn in the winter night.

  “Time is it?”

  “Five-thirty.”

  “Have you been awake long?”

  “Hush, John.”

  He tried to turn on his side, but she pressed him down.

  “I’m treating you. Close your eyes.”

  Wells closed his eyes and tried to float, though weightlessness had never come easy to him. Except on his motorcycle on a good clean road. And hiking through the Bitterroots growing up, leaves crunching under his feet, the comforting weight of a rifle on his shoulder, the sky blue and wide and cloudless, the tips of the mountains painted with snow that never melted. Above him eagles and falcons circling, spreading their wings to catch thermals. Exley’s hands pulled him up and Wells left his gun behind and rose to meet the raptors. He made great mile-wide loops, peering at the mountains below until the sky turned black. He wondered what had happened to Exley. But no matter where he turned, she was gone.

  HE WOKE AGAIN to the blare of the radio by their bed: 6:45. The sky outside had turned gray and the WTOP announcer was promising a blustery cold day. Exley was gone, and the shower was running. He wandered into the bathroom.

  “Come in here. I’ll wash you.”

  Exley liked to mother him sometimes, pretend he couldn’t take care of himself. Wells wondered sometimes whether all women had this instinct. Maybe she did it to cut him down, make him more manageable. Or ma
ybe she just liked him clean. Living in Afghanistan, he’d gone weeks, even months, without washing himself properly. Old habits died hard.

  “I can handle it.”

  “Get in here.”

  “Why is it I think you’re looking for more than a shower this morning?”

  At that, a hand reached out from the curtain and tugged him in.

  AFTERWARD, she sat beside him on the edge of the bed. She was flushed and pink, her mouth open, her lips swollen. Wells was breathing hard, too.

  “So good today,” she said.

  “You always say that.”

  “No, it’s true. I’m just glad we have our own house now. So I can make all the noise I want.” She kissed his cheek.

  “Let’s get dressed. Or we’ll never get out of here.”

  “Then let’s not. Let’s stay in here forever. Make a little world, just us.” She wrapped her arms around him. Her blue eyes shone and he knew she was serious. Like him, she’d devoted her life to the agency, given up everything—her first husband, her kids, her friends.

  But since Wells had come back from China, she’d begun to pull away from the CIA. She was more engaged in planning their vacation than with anything happening at Langley. She kept extending the trip, too. First they were going to South America for two weeks. Then a month. Now she was talking about visiting Africa, too, six weeks in all. He’d joked that she should look into Antarctica.

  Wells couldn’t blame her, not after everything that had happened over the last two years. But quit? Retire? He couldn’t imagine it. The job was all he knew how to do.

  The job was all he was. He disentangled himself from her.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll stay in here forever.”

  “You promise, John.”

  “I promise.”

  EXLEY HEADED BACK into the bathroom to put her face on. But do you love me, John? Do you really? Do you even know what the word means? Loving Wells was like throwing quarters down a mineshaft. She could hear the faint echo when the coins hit bottom, but she had to listen hard.

  Not that she could complain. She’d made this choice, or more correctly the choice had made her. She couldn’t imagine ever being with anyone else. She would take as much of him as he could give. And maybe, one day, she’d find the key and he’d be hers for good.

  Not likely.

  BACK IN THE BEDROOM, Wells was doing push-ups, the scar on his back twitching with each rep. He was nearly forty, and he’d taken a lot of abuse the last two years, but physical therapy and constant exercise and his natural strength had saved him. He still looked like the football player he’d once been, his muscles laced atop one another like illustrations in an anatomy textbook.

  “Come on, sit on my back,” he said.

  “What are you, fourteen? You just showered. Now you’re going to be sweaty again.” Nonetheless she kneeled atop him while he finished another twenty reps. Wells was showing off, she knew, but she couldn’t help herself. He was never more endearing than when he was acting like a big kid. And she found touching him this way nearly irresistible. He finished and she stayed on him, not wanting to move.

  “Up,” he said. “You’re going to break me.”

  “You asked for it.” She ran a finger across the sweat on his back. “Come on. Let’s get dressed, go to work. Such as it is.”

  EXLEY’S DODGE CARAVAN was six years old and had a deep dent in its back fender from a tailgating cabbie. Inside, the carpets were grimy and cluttered with broken pens, coins, half-filled bottles of diet soda. Its heaters poured out an indefinable but vaguely unpleasant odor.

  “You ever going to get something nicer?” Wells said. “A seventy-two Pinto, maybe.”

  “Didn’t you used to say that Western materialism disgusts you?”

  “Western materialism? Western? Have you checked out the Indians and the Chinese lately? I give up.”

  “Really?”

  “No, but I make an exception for cars. So sue me.” In fact, Wells had just bought a Subaru Impreza WRX, a turbocharged rice rocket that didn’t look special but could go from zero to sixty in just over four seconds. “Seriously, you’ve got to do something about this thing. It belongs on Pimp My Ride. Maybe I’ll send them a video.”

  “How do you know about Pimp My Ride?”

  “I’m hip.”

  At that, Exley laughed. “You are many things, John, but hip isn’t one of them.”

  WASHINGTON WAS NOTORIOUS for its traffic, but even by those standards the city was having a miserable morning. Constitution Avenue went bumper to bumper at 18th Street, a full five blocks from the ramp to the Roosevelt Memorial Bridge, one of the main routes connecting D.C. and Arlington.

  Wells flicked on the radio only to hear that someone had ditched a car at the end of the bridge, by the exit ramp to the George Washington Parkway. The 14th Street Bridge was messed up, too, thanks to a car fire that had started around 6 a.m. The fire had quickly been put out, but the incident was still being investigated. Wells turned off the radio. “We should have stayed in bed.”

  “Told you so.”

  A Ducati zipped by on the left, a beautiful bike, low and red, sailing through the narrow aisle of asphalt created by the stopped cars in each lane. The driver and passenger were bundled against the cold, wearing thick gloves and black helmets with mirrored face-masks. They peered at the minivan as they rolled by.

  “I believe they’re laughing at us,” Wells said. “That bike is probably worth ten times as much as this thing.”

  “Let them laugh. It’s freezing out there.”

  “If we’d taken my bike we’d be there already.” Harley and Honda sold the romance of the open road in their ads, but cutting through traffic jams was one of the underappreciated pleasures of riding.

  “Who rides a motorcycle when it’s thirty degrees?”

  “You’ve got me to block the wind.”

  “Nothing blocks the wind in weather like this.”

  Wells’s cell phone rang—Steve Feder, who ran their security detail during the day. Feder was riding shotgun in their chase car, a black Chevy Suburban directly behind them. “Should I turn on my flashers, get us out of here?”

  “Not unless there’s something you think we need to be concerned about,” Wells said. He looked back and Feder gave him a little wave, Queen-of-England style.

  “Nothing specific.”

  “Then it’s all right. We can wait like everybody else.”

  “Fair enough.” Click.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, they’d gotten only to the block between 20th and 21st Streets, the Federal Reserve building filling the block to their right, protected by big concrete stanchions. Wells didn’t pretend to understand what went on in there. The light ahead turned green and they shuffled forward a few car lengths.

  “Maybe they finally got it out of the way.”

  “Maybe,” Exley said. “What’re you thinking?”

  Wells nodded at the Fed. “Looks solid, doesn’t it? All these big, gray buildings.”

  “It’s held up awhile.”

  “Maybe we’ve just been lucky.”

  “It’s a solid ship. And there’s a lot of us running around looking for leaks.”

  “Is that what we are? Sounds glamorous.”

  In the distance behind them, Wells heard a motorcycle engine. Then another.

  And suddenly he knew.

  Who rides a motorcycle when it’s thirty degrees?

  Accidents on two bridges.

  Too many coincidences this morning.

  If he was wrong . . . no harm no foul. He’d call it paranoia and have something to talk about at the support group this week. But he knew.

  He looked back, but his view was blocked by the bulk of the Suburban. He leaned forward and examined the passenger-side mirror. There. A red sportbike on his side, cutting between the traffic and the curb. Maybe ten cars back, three hundred feet in all, including the gaps between vehicles. Closing, slowly and steadily.

  �
��Jenny. Check your mirror. Do you see a motorcycle?”

  Exley leaned forward, peeked at her mirror. “Sure. A black bike. Back a ways.”

  The red bike was 150 feet away, five car lengths. With his left hand, he unbuckled his seat belt. Then Exley’s. With his right, he reached under his jacket. He carried his Glock in an armpit holster under his left shoulder.

  The traffic inched forward. On his side, the red bike was now only about three car lengths behind. Wells pulled the Glock, the big pistol solid in his hand. Time seemed to slow, a good sign. His reflexes were accelerating. Because he was right-handed, he’d have to get out of the van, expose himself, if he wanted a clean shot. Not what he wanted. But he had no choice.

  “Open your door, Jenny. NOW.”

  Wells couldn’t take the time to look at her, but he heard her door open. He reached across his body and opened his own door with his left hand, blocking the path of the bike.

  In one smooth motion, he swung himself out of the minivan, left leg over right, and dropped to his knees, the gun in his right hand. He knew he had almost no time to decide. If he was wrong, he was about to kill a couple guys who were trying to beat traffic.

  The bike was a red Ducati carrying two men. Just like the one that had passed them before. It was maybe fifty feet away, rolling slowly beside the Suburban chase car, nearly stopped, and then—

  Then the passenger on the bike reached down and flicked something under the body of the big SUV.

  “Grenade!” Wells yelled.

  The Ducati revved toward him. He fired. The bike came fast, but the bullet was faster. The shot caught the rider in his right shoulder and the bike twisted right but stayed up, its front wheel barely ten feet from Wells. Wells shifted his aim and fired again. The mirrored face-plate of the helmet shattered. The rider’s head jerked back and his body slumped in death and his hands came off the bars. The bike started to go down—