“It stuck with me. And the art history lesson.”
“Oh yes. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. The tiger shark in the box.”
“You told me it was at the Metropolitan Museum. I tried to see it once when I was in New York, but I couldn’t find it.”
“The man who owned it took it back. Never trust a hedge fund manager.” Kowalski was as smooth as Wells remembered. His practiced finesse no doubt played well with the dictators who bought his weapons. He led Wells into the kitchen, more suitable for a restaurant, twin six-burner stoves and Sub-Zero refrigerators, along with a fleet of copper pans hanging from the ceiling.
Kowalski nodded at the granite-topped island in the center of the room. “Sit, please. Would you like a drink? Something to eat?”
“Nein.”
But Kowalski pulled two Heinekens from the nearest Sub-Zero. “If you change your mind.” He popped them open and they sat catercorner on the island. Dragon lurked at the edge of the room.
“You look healthy, John.”
The phony gentility suddenly irked Wells. Kowalski paid for this mansion and its art by selling weapons to third-world countries. At best, he encouraged poor governments to spend money they couldn’t afford on helicopters and personnel carriers they didn’t need. At worst, he spread untold misery in shabby little wars that rated five minutes a year on CNN.
“We’re such good buddies, how come Dragon had to feel me up before I could see you?”
“Goran. He’s respectable now.” Kowalski sipped his beer. “You came all this way to reminisce. Or no?”
Wells had told him only that they needed to meet as soon as possible.
“It’s about Iran.”
“No surprise.”
“You want the long version or the short?”
“I think the short might be safer. For both of us.”
“Know anyone who might have been sitting on a hunk of HEU?”
“You think Iran is getting it from an outside source?” Kowalski shook his head. “No, not that. You think someone fooled the CIA. The Iranians are telling the truth, the HEU isn’t theirs. Someone wants America to invade Iran. Mossad?”
“I thought you didn’t want the whole story.”
“It’s impossible, John. Even the Mossad couldn’t do it.”
“My question is, if I came to you, said, Pierre, I need weapons-grade uranium, cost doesn’t matter, but it’s got to be enough to make someone sit up and notice, where would you send me?”
“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” North Korea. “If you were crazy enough to go. But they would take your money and put a bullet in you.”
“Plus they can’t enrich to ninety-four percent.”
“That’s right.”
“Where else?”
“Nowhere. Nowhere else.”
Footsteps. Wells turned to see a tall blonde, high cheekbones and full lips. “Nadia,” he said. Kowalski’s girlfriend. She was a Ukrainian model, the most beautiful woman Wells had ever seen. He had met her on his previous trip. She’d kissed his cheek as he left, gently. Even in his rage over Exley, he had felt the pull of her beauty.
Now she looked at him blankly. Wells saw she didn’t remember him. And something else, too. Her arms and legs were as slim as ever, but her belly swelled under a loose T-shirt. She was pregnant. “Congratulations.”
She laid a hand on her stomach. “Thank you.”
“Nadia, do you remember John Wells? You met years ago.”
She looked at him, and he saw the realization in her face. “Yes. Of course.” She smiled, but warily. Wells realized that he reminded her of a time when life hadn’t been quite so certain.
“Nadia and I are married now,” Kowalski said.
“Congratulations again.” Married. And pregnant. Even the arms dealer and the model had moved on with their lives while Wells wasn’t looking. “You’re a lucky lady.”
“I think so, yes.” She came to Kowalski, rubbed his cheek. “Just remember we have the banquet tonight. No snacks.”
She floated off, beautiful as ever. Wells watched Kowalski watching her go.
“I love her,” Kowalski said.
“You want me to applaud for your good taste?”
“You think she’s easy to love because she’s beautiful?”
An odd tack from Kowalski, considering he was the one who’d chosen her. Wells wasn’t in the mood to pursue the argument. “North Korea aside, you have no idea where I might pick up a kilo of HEU?”
“I do not.”
“You want me out of your happy home, give me something, Pierre. You can’t find it for me, send me to someone who might. The dirtiest guy you know.”
“When you say it like that, it’s easy. Mikhail Buvchenko. Russian.”
“I don’t know that name.”
“Spetsnaz, until he figured out he could make a lot more money in my business. He’s in his mid-thirties, connections all up and down the Red Army.”
“You’ve dealt with him.”
“We’ve bumped into each other a few times. He’ll sell to anyone. Assad, Burma, Congo. Places where the Kremlin has an interest but doesn’t want to do business directly. You want chemical weapons, he can help. Even has a little private army.”
“Army?”
“That’s too strong. A battalion, say. Several hundred men. They were the first ones on the ground in Ukraine, a way for Putin to make a low-risk move, see how Europe and the U.S. would react.”
“Or not react.”
“Exactly.”
“But if he’s so connected to the Kremlin, would he deal HEU without their say-so?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think his agreement with them is that he answers when they call. In return, they don’t interfere with his other arrangements, as long as he doesn’t do anything directly opposed to Russian interests.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
“Mistake. He’s not so nice. And he won’t come west. You’ll have to go to Russia.”
“Set it up, Pierre.”
Kowalski drummed his fingers nervously against the granite countertop.
“Even if I vouch for you, I can’t promise he won’t kill you.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you cared, Pierre.” Wells found himself smiling. “You’re afraid if you vouch for me and I kill him, his mercenaries will be here five minutes later. Blowback.”
“Maybe I care a little, too.”
“Maybe you don’t.”
“Maybe I don’t.”
“I promise you, I’m not interested in him. Compared to what’s at stake, he’s nobody.”
“I wouldn’t try that argument with him.”
“Fair enough.”
“I do this, we’re even, John?”
“Sure.” Until the next time I need you.
“It may take a couple days.”
“Sooner is better.” Though Wells didn’t mind getting at least one decent night’s sleep. But he couldn’t wait here. And then, suddenly, he knew his next stop. A city that aside from its wealth was as unlike Zurich as anywhere he could imagine.
4
TEN DAYS…
Room 219, Hart Senate Office Building.
Unlike the White House Situation Room or the Pentagon’s Tactical Operations Center, 219 didn’t show up often in movies. But everyone at the CIA knew its importance. The “room” was actually a suite of offices that housed the staff and hearing rooms of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Unmarked frosted-glass doors hid 219’s real front entrance, which was permanently guarded by Capitol police officers who shooed away tourists and other uninvited guests. Behind the second door, a corridor turned sharply right, a way to keep anyone in the foyer from glimpsing the offices inside, or the staffers who worked in them. At the end of the hall, a biometric lock secured access to the conference room where senators received briefings from the DCI and top intelligence officials. The hearings took place within a huge elevated vault, a larger version of the secure rooms that the CIA operated inside American embassies. The room was mounted on pillars so that technicians could easily sweep its steel walls for bugs. The steel itself blocked noise and electromagnetic signals from escaping. No one had ever managed to spy on the hearings. Information regularly leaked nonetheless, in the simplest possible way — from the committee’s senators to reporters.