“Unless he’s put you and Mason together.”
“So what, some dead CIA officer lost money at my casino. Millions of people do that every year. I never met the guy.”
“But—”
He raised a hand to silence her. “As a rule, I don’t like waiting. I want the other side reacting to me. But right now this war has its own momentum. We keep our heads down a few more days, the United States will attack. After that, John Wells can say whatever he wants.”
“If you’d seen what he did in Istanbul.”
“Then you should have killed him when you had the chance.” He’d made up his mind, she saw. “Assuming you find him again, you watch him. You think he’s getting close, we’ll talk. Those phones you gave me are clean?”
She nodded. He opened the door and let them out of the ridiculous little panic room. Salome had a sudden premonition that she’d never see him again. She wanted to kiss him on the lips. Just once.
“Don’t,” Duberman said.
“What?”
“Don’t go after him, Salome. I can see it in your eyes, that’s what you’re thinking.”
In the living room he hugged her again, lightly this time, for show. Then he walked off to the family quarters of the house. Where he lived. Without a thought of her. She was alone, looking out over Hong Kong.
Why did she let him tell her what to do? She’d devoted her life to this project. Every hour, every day, for years. He hadn’t done anything except reach into his bank accounts and give her orders. Yet somehow, he was the boss. She couldn’t disobey him.
She would do what he said. She would watch Ellis Shafer. She would find John Wells and watch him. She wouldn’t touch them, either of them.
Not yet.
3
The boxy Mercedes Geländewagen waited outside Zurich Airport’s Terminal B, a police placard attached to its front windshield so it didn’t have to circle like everyone else in the world. As Wells emerged from the terminal, an awesomely ugly man slid out of the SUV’s back seat. Blond hair sprouted in random patches from his skull. His eyes were so small they didn’t even qualify as beady. He wore a baggy nylon sweat suit that Wells knew concealed a snub-nosed pistol.
Wells had met him once before. He was a Serb who went by the nickname Dragon. A bodyguard for Kowalski. Wells remembered him as skinnier, more feral, and even uglier. The years living in Zurich had softened him. Though Wells guessed that he still knew how to squeeze a trigger.
“Dragon.”
The man smiled in surprise, touched a finger to his chest. “Goran now.”
“You’ll always be Dragon to me.”
“You have weapon?”
Wells shook his head. “More’s the pity.”
Dragon pulled open the SUV’s front passenger door, waved him in. The windows were cracked, but the Mercedes stank of stale Eastern European tobacco.
“Uncle Pierre know you smoke in here?” Wells said. No answer. “Bad for the leather.”
The driver turned up the radio. Lousy German pop. Not that there was any other kind.
Wells closed his eyes and tried to rest. It was midafternoon in Switzerland, the winter sun disappearing behind the jagged snowcapped mountains west of the airport. Wells had slept a few hours over the Atlantic on the first leg of the trip, his overnight flight to London. Not nearly enough to make up for the sleep he’d lost in the last two weeks. Especially the nights he’d spent chained to a wall in Istanbul. Many Special Forces operatives used amphetamines to keep themselves awake during long missions. Wells had never tried speed, but the idea seemed especially tempting today. He felt dull and slow, gray around the edges.
Zurich was a city of bankers. Yet the global financial crisis hadn’t touched its wealth. Audis, BMWs, and Mercedeses filled the highway from the airport to the center of town. Farther east, in the wealthy neighborhood along the Zürichsee where Kowalski lived, the mansions gleamed, their walls not so much painted as polished.
Wells hadn’t been to Zurich in years, yet he remembered the tiniest details of the place. The city had imprinted itself on him then because his emotions had been so high. On that trip he’d come intending to kill Kowalski. The arms dealer had tried to assassinate Wells, but his shooters had botched the job. Instead, they’d wounded Wells’s fiancée, Jennifer Exley, a CIA officer. Exley, who was pregnant, had lost the baby. From her hospital bed, she begged Wells to stay with her, not seek revenge. Wells went to Zurich instead.
Ultimately, Kowalski bought back his life by giving up information that helped Wells stop a terrorist attack. They would never be friends, but they weren’t exactly enemies. But Exley had never forgiven Wells for leaving her. She’d quit him and the agency both.
In the years since, Wells had met Anne, a New Hampshire cop. Now Anne had left him, too, rejecting his marriage proposal. The two women were very different. Exley was a brilliant blue-eyed pixie who judged herself more harshly than the world ever would. She had worked herself to the brink of exhaustion after 9-11 to punish herself for failing to foresee the attacks, even though no one else had either. Anne was tall, brown-eyed, athletic and strong, practical and cynical. Wells wasn’t sure the two women would have liked each other. Yet they’d both reached the same conclusion about him. That he cared for his missions more than either of them. That he would rather die than leave the field.
He’d been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
And now Wells found himself aching for Exley as the big Mercedes rolled through Zurich’s silent streets. Her absence centered on his shoulders, his upper back, where she had wrapped herself around him on their motorcycle rides. The fact that Kowalski was still in his life while Exley was gone seemed a cosmic joke.
Or maybe not. When she’d needed him most, he had left her. Not exactly proof they were soul mates. Maybe he had preserved his memories of Exley in amber, romanticized a love that would inevitably have faded. Even a child wouldn’t have guaranteed anything. Wells had walked away from a child and a wife once already.
He put aside these unpleasant speculations as the Mercedes pulled up outside Kowalski’s red-brick mansion. He reached for his door, found it locked. Behind him, Dragon slid out, opened it from the outside.
“Step out, turn around, hands on the roof.”
Wells did as he was told. Dragon frisked him thoroughly, an unapologetic and professional job. When he was done, he yelled something over his shoulder and the front door swung open. Pierre Kowalski. He’d gained weight since Wells last saw him. He had a ruddy complexion, two ample chins. He wore a blue polo shirt and folded his thick arms across his chest. His bulk came across as aristocratic. A European trick, one that fat Americans could rarely pull off.
Wells reminded himself to be friendly as he walked up the slate front steps. He needed a favor, and he was short on leverage and time.
“John Wells.”
“Pierre.” Wells extended a hand.
Kowalski took it in both of his. “You must be in trouble if you’re being polite to me.”
The mansion looked as Wells remembered, its walls covered with nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. “You still have that thing in the other room?”
“Romulus and Remus? The AK and the RPG?”
“That’s the one.” The piece consisted of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and an assault rifle preserved for eternity inside a clear plastic box, buffed in a way that made their murderous details hyperreal and beautiful.
“A few weeks ago, a Qatari tried to buy it from me. Seven million dollars. I said no. Probably my favorite piece. I’m surprised you remembered.”