The Silent Man (22 page)

Haxhi beached the lifeboat and killed the engine. The SUV, a big Ford, sat at the inner edge of the cove. The Ford rolled forward on the big flat stones that formed the beach and stopped beside them. Bashir, a tall man with thick black hair, emerged and walked toward the boat as Yusuf and Nasiji jumped out. “My brothers,” he said.

T
he steak filled Kowalski’s plate, a cowboy’s wet dream, an inch thick and marbled through with rich fat. A slab of grass-fed Kobe beef straight off the Swiss Air nonstop that connected Tokyo and Zurich. Seared in butter on the oversized Viking range in Kowalski’s kitchen, delivered directly to the dining room, still cooking in its own juices, sizzling and succulent, medium-rare.

Kowalski had dreamed of this piece of meat ever since that infernal dietician Rossi arrived in his life with his broiled fish and his tofu salads. Today he had decided to defy Rossi and indulge himself. A steak, the best money could buy, and a bottle of burgundy.

So why wasn’t he hungry?

Kowalski cut off a tiny corner of the steak and lifted it to his lips. And yet as he looked at his plate, he saw nothing but Roman Yansky’s corpse, his neck sawn nearly in half, his body drenched in so much of his own blood that he seemed to have been painted red. Kowalski had asked Markov to e-mail him the photographs that the FSB and the Moscow police had taken of the scene. Now he wished he hadn’t. He felt like a condemned prisoner eating his last meal. He choked the steak down with a swig of wine and pushed his plate aside. Maybe he ought to become a vegetarian.

“Pierre,” Nadia said soothingly. “Are you all right?”

Her fingers fluttered involuntarily to the sapphire necklace he’d bought her from Tiffany’s, as if she needed to remind herself why she was here with him.

“It’s that fool Rossi,” he said. “I hear him in my head. Fish, fish, and only fish. Nonsense, I know. But I can’t shake it.”

“You’ve been good,” she said. “There’s no harm in a steak now and then. I’ve been reading this book called
The Secret,
an American book—”

Kowalski stifled a groan at the thought of Nadia reading.

“Alessandra gave it to me.”

“What is this, Models’ Book Club?”

“And it says that the secret to happiness is to wish for what you want, to realize and self-actualize—”

“Please, Nadia. I have enough trouble actualizing anyone else, much less myself.”

“Hush. Yes, realize and self-actualize and your dreams will come true. Like this.” She lifted the necklace, and despite himself Kowalski was stunned by its brilliance. “I walked by Tiffany’s and wished for it a dozen times, and now . . . here it is.”

A dozen wishes and 600,000 francs,
Kowalski thought. “Only a dozen wishes? Imagine what you could have had for a hundred.”

“No, Pierre. This was what I wanted.” She spoke unironically and with absolute certainty. He wasn’t sure whether she didn’t get the joke or simply refused to engage it. Or maybe she believed every word she was saying. After all, the sheer genetic good luck of having been born beautiful had carried her from a village in eastern Ukraine to this mansion.

She seemed to read his mind. She smiled, a brilliant open smile that had sold lipstick from Sydney to Stockholm. “Why not wish for a necklace? If I don’t get it, I’m no worse off than before.” She reached across the table and pushed his plate toward him. “Now you’ve wished for your steak and it’s come and you must enjoy it. Before it gets cold.”

It was a philosophy both idiotic and irrefutable. Kowalski couldn’t help but eat. As long as he kept his mind off Roman Yansky, the meat actually was quite tasty. He had nearly finished it when his phone trilled. Tarasov.

“Yes, Anatoly?”

“We’ve just landed.”

“Good.” Tarasov’s flight from Moscow had twice been delayed by heavy snow in Zurich. “Be in my office in an hour.”

 

 

 

KOWALSKI AND TARASOV
stared in silence at the Zürichsee. A thick white blanket of snow covered the ground, hiding the southern shore of the lake and giving the illusion that the water extended to infinity.

Finally, Tarasov cleared his throat.

“Where should I begin?”

“He killed those men as if they were children.” Somehow Kowalski couldn’t bring himself to say Wells’s name, as if the mere act of speaking it would make Wells appear in this room like a genie.

“Not children, Pierre. I knew Roman fifteen years.”

“Then
how
?”

“He and they are the only ones who know for sure. And they can hardly tell. So it’s only guessing now. They were ready for trouble. They weren’t sure who he was but they didn’t trust his story, even though the Frenchman had vouched for him. He was frisked at the club, the Ten Places, before he met Roman. The doorman is certain he wasn’t carrying a knife. Yet somehow he got to Roman, cut him open. Shot the other two with Roman’s pistol.”

“He’s very quick,” Kowalski said, remembering that night in the Hamptons. “He sees and decides and moves all at once—”

“Put me in a room with him and we’ll see who is quicker,” Tarasov said. But his voice wavered.

“You don’t even believe your own words,” Kowalski said.

“He didn’t get what he wanted. Markov’s still alive.”

“I’m sure that’s comforting for Roman and the bodyguards. You encouraged this, Anatoly. Last summer you told me to go after him.”

“And last week you told me that my only responsibility was spending my salary.”

Kowalski’s chest clenched. Was this the heart attack Dr. Breton had promised him? Finally the pain faded, though he felt flushed and short of breath. Tarasov laid a hand on his arm.

“If I die of a heart attack, do you think our American friend will call us even?”

“Shall I call your doctor?”

Kowalski sat down heavily. “Forget it. Just tell me what Markov told you.”

“Well, he disappeared quickly,” Tarasov said. “He was probably on an American passport. The Frenchman who vouched for him left the day after the attacks, on a diplomatic passport. They’ve both vanished.”

“So what has Markov done? Gone to the FSB?”

“He doesn’t feel he can.”

Markov was in a tough spot, Tarasov explained. He couldn’t finger Wells for the murders without admitting that he and Kowalski had been behind the attack in Washington. He feared if he confessed that attack, his friends at the FSB would be furious. They’d surely want revenge, but on whom? Wells, for killing Russians in the middle of Moscow? Markov and Kowalski, for the initial attack? All three?

So Markov was keeping his mouth shut. He’d told police investigating the attack that he had no idea who had targeted his men. Everyone knew he had plenty of enemies. As a result, the Moscow police, not the FSB, were leading the investigation, and were naturally focusing inside Russia. Anyway, the FSB had other concerns at the moment, Tarasov said.

“Other concerns?”

“I’ll get to those.”

“So Markov’s bought some time. For him and us. Does he know how Wells found him?”

Tarasov shook his head. “He thinks the American investigation must be further along than anyone knows.”

“Does Wells know about me?”

“Markov has no idea. He thinks we should just keep our mouths shut for a while. Let Wells be. He says Wells must know that he can’t get to us now,” Tarasov said. “And if he keeps on, the results will be disastrous for America and Russia both. Markov killed two CIA men in Washington, Wells killed three of Markov’s in Moscow, so they’re even.”

Kowalski considered. “Maybe Wells would agree that he’s even with
Markov.
But he won’t feel that way about me. If he thinks I ordered the attack, he won’t stop until I’m gone. In fact—”

Kowalski broke off as Markov’s next step became obvious to him. He wondered if it was equally obvious to Markov. Probably. Probably Markov was trying to find Wells even now. To confess. To apologize. And to give Wells a name. Pierre Kowalski. You remember him, naturally? Yes, he hired me. Perhaps you’d guessed already. But I thought you would want to be certain.

And after that call . . . Wells would have only one target left. He couldn’t get to Markov. He’d pushed his luck in Moscow too far already. But Zurich wasn’t Moscow, and Kowalski didn’t have the Kremlin protecting him. Worst of all, Kowalski didn’t have anything to give to convince Wells to quit hunting him. Maybe he ought to try Nadia’s suggestion and just wish for Wells to disappear.

Kowalski reached into his desk for a battered pack of Dunhills. He hadn’t smoked for years, but tonight seemed like a good time to start again. Maybe he could smoke and eat his way into a heart attack and deny Wells the pleasure of killing him.

“So no one knows where Wells is?”

“Probably Washington. Maybe your friends there can find him?”

The Dunhill was stale, and after a single puff Kowalski tossed it aside. “Not yet. One thing I’m sure of, now that he’s on the scent, he won’t let up. We won’t have to go after him. He’ll come to us.”

“All right,” Tarasov said. “As for the other thing—”

“What other thing?”

“The uranium.”

“Of course.” Kowalski had been so focused on Wells that he’d forgotten the reason he’d sent Tarasov to Russia in the first place. “What about it?”

“No one’s talking much. Not even my oldest friends. But I think you were right. They’ve had a bad loss, more serious than they told you.”

“How bad? A kilo? Two kilos?”

Tarasov rubbed his neck tiredly. “It seems impossible. But I think they might have lost a bomb. Or at least enough material to make one.”

For the second time in five minutes Kowalski felt as though a big hand had reached through his ribs into his chest and given his heart an unfriendly squeeze.
A nuclear weapon was missing?

“You said lost. Lost or stolen?”

“Stolen.”

“Are you sure?”

“No one will tell me for sure. But they’re going full-blast down around Chelyabinsk. Half the FSB is there. Lots of arrests, lots of Muslims getting knocked around.”

“What else?”

“They’ve put all their bases on lockdown. And the Mayak plant. They’re inventorying all their weapons. This I know for sure. And on the highways into Moscow they’ve set up rolling roadblocks. Not constant. I don’t think they want to frighten people.”

“No one’s noticed?”

“You know the media there. If the Kremlin says don’t talk about something, they don’t.”

“Anything else?”

“They’ve asked Interpol and even the United States to look for a man named Grigory Farzadov. They’re saying he’s a smuggler. But he’s not a smuggler. He’s a manager at the Mayak plant. He and his cousin disappeared several weeks ago and haven’t been seen since. The cousin also works at the plant. Or worked.”

“Are they Russian?”

“They must be, to have worked at the plant.”

“Anything else?”

“Not just now.”

“All right. Thank you, Anatoly. Leave me now. I need to think about this.”

At the door, Tarasov turned. “Do you think it’s possible?”

“Don’t we both know by now that anything’s possible?”

 

 

 

A FEW MINUTES LATER,
Nadia peeked in.

“Are you all right, Pierre?”

“Yes, angel. Come in.”

She sat beside him on the couch and ran a hand over his face. She wore yoga pants and a tight black wool sweater. If Kowalski hadn’t been so worried about a heart attack, he would have popped open the bottle of Viagra he kept in the desk drawer and taken her right then. Tried to, anyway. “I know I’m not supposed to ask about business, but is something wrong?”

“I’m dealing with a very unpleasant man,” Kowalski said.

“You’ve tried to talk with him.”

“It isn’t like that.”

“You should try. You’re very persuasive, you know.” She kissed his cheek.

“But in business, Nadia, you need leverage. You understand?” Kowalski wasn’t sure why he suddenly felt the need to explain himself, but he did.

“Sure. You give him something, he gives you.”

“And I don’t have anything to give him.”

But even as he spoke, Kowalski realized he might be wrong. If Tarasov was right, he might have something very valuable indeed for Wells.

W
ells wound down the handle of his Honda and poured west on 66 through the Virginia exburbs at eighty miles an hour. Tonight he had become tiresome even to himself. The burned-out cop downing whiskey at an empty bar, moaning that he’d never make detective. The third-rate poet sipping cappuccino in Starbucks, bitching how he’d never get published. And Wells tonight, the world-weary spy sucking down gasoline and ruing his fate.
I saved the world and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
Usually he heard songs in his head as he rode, but tonight even the asphalt and the wind were too bored with him to talk.

To complete his misery, Wells hadn’t dressed properly for the cold. He could barely keep a grip on the handlebars. The scar tissue in his back had turned into a solid block of ice, and his bad left shoulder—worked over by the Chinese a few months before—felt about ready to pop loose. He wasn’t a machine. Though he pretended he was. And everyone seemed to believe him.

In the Honda’s lone eye Wells saw a sign for an exit a mile ahead. He closed his eyes and counted ten. Then five more. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five. Before the darkness could take him too far, he looked up. He’d ridden blind almost a half-mile. He laid off the gas, gearing down into fourth. The bike was solid and quick under him. Whatever his sins, he still knew how to ride. At the bottom of the ramp, he swung left under the highway. He’d seen a Denny’s sign on the other side of the highway and that sounded about right.