The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson

  The light dropped green. Wells eased past the forty-foot-high wooden windmill that marked the end of the town center. A half-mile later, he turned off Route 27 and onto Amity Lane. Besides his standard riding gear of black leather jacket, black helmet, black gloves, and black boots, Wells had on black jeans and a black long-sleeve cotton shirt. He wished he had a pair of black skivvies to complete the package. Tucked in a shoulder holster, he carried a pistol, a Glock this time instead of the Makarov. It was black, naturally, with a silencer threaded to the barrel. He hoped he wouldn’t even have to draw it. His black backpack held two other weapons, the ones he planned to use.

  THE AFTERNOON BEFORE, Wells had for the first time found a way to take advantage of the fame he didn’t want. He walked into the East Hampton village police station, an unassuming brick building on Cedar Street, just behind the center of town.

  “Can I help you?” the cop behind the counter said.

  “I’d like to speak to the chief.”

  “He’s busy. What can I do for you?”

  Wells extracted his CIA identification card, the one with his real name, and passed it across the counter.

  “Hold on.” The officer disappeared behind a steel door, popping out a minute later to wave Wells in.

  The chief was a trim man in his early fifties with tight no-nonsense eyes. Even in East Hampton the cops looked like cops. “Ed Graften,” he said, extending his hand. “It’s an honor, Mr. Wells. Please sit.”

  “Please call me John.” Wells was beginning to feel foolish. Did he really expect this man to help him?

  “What can I do you for? Don’t suppose you locked your keys in your Ferrari or the brats in the mansion next door are making too much noise. The usual nonsense.”

  “Chief—I have a favor to ask. The name Pierre Kowalski ring a bell?”

  “Course. His daughter Anna set a record this year for a summer rental. If the papers were right, it was a million and a half bucks for the house.” Wells had seen the same stories. Anna had spent $1.5 million on a seven-bedroom mansion on Two Mile Hollow Road, just off the ocean. Not to buy the place. To rent it. For three months.

  “Nice to have the world’s biggest arms dealer for your dad,” Wells said. “I have it on good authority ”—in fact, Wells had seen the report in two gossip columns—“ that he is in town this week. I’d like to talk to him. Alone.”

  Graften was no longer smiling. “Mr. Wells. Are you sure you are who you say you are? If not, now would be a good time to leave.”

  “I am, and I can prove it.”

  “Then ... I guess I could put a patrol car out front of his gate. I’m sure his driver speeds. They all do. We could stop him, bring him in here. But his lawyers would be on us in two minutes and we’d have to cut him loose—”

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble. All I need is—” Wells paused, then plunged on. “If you pick up an alarm from his house tonight, take your time getting there. I won’t hurt him, I promise. Or take anything.” Except information, Wells didn’t say.

  “What about his guards?”

  “I can take care of them. But I’d rather keep your men out of it.” Wells didn’t mention Exley’s role in his plan.

  “Don’t suppose you can tell me what you want from him.”

  “Let’s just say I don’t expect him to file a complaint with you about my visit.”

  “You can’t do this officially, Mr. Wells?”

  “I wish I could.” The CIA couldn’t legally operate in the United States. Wells would have to ask the FBI to try to get a warrant for Kowalski. And Wells doubted that any federal judge would sign a warrant based on the secret testimony of a single Russian special forces commando now in prison in Afghanistan. Even if they could find a friendly judge, Kowalski’s lawyers would fight them for months. They’d never even get him in for an interview.

  Trying to move against Kowalski in Monte Carlo or Zurich, where he spent most of his time, would be equally impossible. His homes there were fortresses, much better protected than this vacation house, and the local police would hardly look kindly on a request like this from Wells. No, tonight was his best shot. Maybe his only shot. In any case, Wells didn’t care about arresting Kowalski. He just wanted to know where the trail led.

  Graften sighed. “How long do you need?”

  “Half an hour maybe.”

  “You won’t hurt him.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Graften looked at the ceiling. “All right. If you can prove you are who you say you are, I’ll get you a half-hour. No more. At three A.M., let’s say.”

  “Then let me do that.”

  IT WAS 2:55 A.M. Wells rolled down Further Lane, Exley following. Heavy green hedges hemmed in the road on both sides. The hedges weren’t ornamental. Twenty feet tall and too thick for anyone to see past, much less walk through, they served as walls protecting the mansions behind them. Every couple of hundred feet, the hedges parted for gated driveways. The homes behind the gates were lit up in the night like cathedrals in the Church of Wealth.

  Wells had reconnoitered the Kowalski house four times, once the previous night on his motorcycle and three times during the day on a mountain bike he’d bought at a garage sale in Sag Harbor. He had also examined town maps and satellite photos, so he knew the mansion’s exterior layout and the land around it. Beyond that he would have to rely on instinct.

  He hadn’t wanted to involve Exley. But unlike most of his neighbors, Kowalski had his property protected with more than hedges and alarms. Instead of a gate, his driveway was permanently blocked by a black Cadillac Escalade, lights on and engine running. Two unsmiling men watched the road from its front seats. When Anna or her friends came or went, the men rolled the Escalade back to unblock the entrance to the property. As soon as the driveway was clear, they moved back into place. They couldn’t be avoided.

  The good news was that Wells hadn’t seen closed-circuit cameras around the property. Cameras were rare in the Hamptons. Billionaires didn’t like being watched, even by their own guards. But cameras or not, unless Wells could get the men out of the Escalade, he’d have to shoot them where they sat. He wanted to avoid killing anyone, for both practical and personal reasons. Kowalski was a powerful man with powerful friends. Shooting his men would cause inquiries that Wells would rather avoid. And though Kowalski was in a worse-than-ugly business, Wells didn’t want to play judge, jury, and executioner tonight.

  Wells figured if he could solve the problem of the front gate he’d be okay. This late in the night, only a couple of guards would be awake inside the mansion. They’d be bored, drinking coffee, trying to keep their eyes open. No matter how much they tried to stay alert, they would hardly be able to avoid slacking off. East Hampton wasn’t exactly Baghdad. And if anything really went wrong, they could normally expect backup from the village police. But Wells had taken the cops out of the picture.

  JUST BEFORE THE CORNER of Further Lane and Two Mile Hollow, Wells pulled over and dropped the CB1000’s kickstand, placing a flattened Coke can under the base so the stand wouldn’t sink into the earth and tip the Honda over.

  From the minivan, he pulled out the mountain bike he’d bought two days before. Next to the CB1000, the bicycle looked almost toylike. But the bike had one great advantage over the motorcycle. It was silent. Wells took off his helmet and pulled a black mask over his face.

  “You still want to do this?” he said. “Because we don’t have to—”

  “Please. It’s easy for the world’s hottest single aunt to get lost in East Hampton after she’s had a few.”

  Exley popped open a peach wine cooler and took a swallow, then poured a couple drops onto her blouse, which was open two buttons, enough to reveal a black lace bra that left little about her breasts to the imagination.

  “That ought to distract them,” she said. “Just another overaged drunk chick looking for love.”

  “Jennifer. Be careful. If something goes wrong, I want you to go, ditch me�
�”

  But she’d already rolled off.

  He didn’t fully understand Exley. He supposed he never would. She loved her kids terribly, he was sure. Yet here she was again, risking her life to help him. Was she doing this for him? For the adventure? Both? Wells wished he could ask.

  EXLEY TURNED RIGHT, down Two Mile Hollow, toward the ocean. On the train from Washington the afternoon before, she’d wondered if she should have said no to Wells. Then she remembered the day Wells had attacked the Taliban camp. The afternoon came and went with no word. She felt sure that something terrible had happened, a sniper’s bullet, a helicopter crash. Then she started to believe that her premonition had actually caused Wells’s death, that he would have been fine if only she’d shown more faith.

  That night she’d found herself at the multiplex at Union Station, sneaking between theaters, not even pretending to watch the movies, willing the minutes to pass, waiting for her cell to ring. Finally, at 2:00 A.M., it did. She expected the caller would be Shafer, asking her to come down to Langley so he could give her the news in person.

  Instead the voice on the other end belonged to Wells, cool as ever, telling her that she’d been right about the foreign fighters and that he’d be back soon. After they hung up, she’d promised herself she wouldn’t doubt him again. So when he’d asked for her help for this mission, she couldn’t say no. She knew her thinking was illogical, but so be it. Everyone was entitled to a bit of magical thinking.

  She approached Kowalski’s mansion, swerving a bit from side to side. In her rearview mirror, she saw Wells at the corner, a couple of hundred feet behind her. Then he was gone and she was alone.

  AS HE WAITED, Wells unzipped his backpack and pulled out the gun he’d picked up at Langley, a Telinject Vario air pistol. The Telinject was loaded with a syringe filled with ketamine—the drug that club kids and other fun-seekers called Special K—and Versed, a liquid sedative closely related to Valium. Veterinarians and ranchers used these guns to sedate unruly animals. The CIA kept a handful for its own purposes. Wells had borrowed two, after getting an afternoon’s training from a specialist in nonlethal weapons in the agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology, the unit that handled fake passports, wiretaps, special weapons, and the rest of the trickery that accounted for one percent of the agency’s work but ninety-nine percent of its mystique.

  “Planning to break into the D.C. Zoo, liberate the chimps?” the specialist—an attractive forty-something redhead with the thoroughly Irish name of Winnie O‘Kelly—asked him. “You know they bite.” Wells merely smiled. She handed over the pistols. “Try not to lose them. They’re not particularly traceable, but you never know.”

  Clubgoers took ketamine because at low doses the drug produced what doctors called a “dissociative reaction,” almost an out-of-body experience, giving users the feeling they were in two places at once, watching themselves from a distance. At higher doses, ketamine caused unconsciousness in seconds. Further, ketamine wasn’t an opiate derivative, so it wouldn’t suffocate the guards if Wells accidentally overdosed them. At worst they would wake up stiff and headachy. The Versed in the mix would put the guards to sleep even faster.

  Of course, the syringes couldn’t work their magic unless Exley got the guards out of the Escalade.

  EXLEY DROVE PAST the mansion’s driveway. The Escalade was on the left, three tons of steel deliberately designed to be ugly. Its hood stared out at the street, a gas-guzzling fake tank driven by rich men who liked acting tough while knowing that other, poorer men would do the real fighting for them. Exley passed by slowly, making sure the men in the Escalade saw she was alone.

  A hundred yards farther on, the road dead-ended at the empty parking lot for Two Mile Hollow Beach. Signs warned that any car without a town beach pass would be towed. “So much for free public beach access,” Exley said to herself. But of course anyone paying ten million bucks for a house didn’t want to share the sand.

  She turned the Sienna around, double-checked the syringe in her purse. The reality of what she was about to do filled her. Then she turned the radio up, loud, and drove back down Two Mile Road toward the Escalade, now on her right. Just outside the driveway of the mansion, she stopped and parked in the road, making sure the Sienna was angled toward the Escalade. She stumbled out of the van and walked to the open gate.

  The Escalade’s windows stayed shut as she approached. She rapped hard on the driver‘s-side window. In the background the van’s radio blared.

  Finally the window slid down. “Can I help you?” The man inside sounded distinctly unhelpful. He was big and muscular, and his T-shirt didn’t hide the holster on his hip. Exley noticed a dog in the back seat, a big German shepherd that looked up eagerly at her, its red tongue lapping its teeth.

  “I’m so lost. This guy I met, he told me about this party in Amagansett. This is Amagansett, right?”

  “Lady. If you’re looking for Amagansett, go back to that road up there and make a right. Good luck. This is private property.”

  Exley turned away. “Drunk skank,” one of the men in the Escalade said, deliberately loud enough for her to hear, and the other laughed. “Headed for the drunk tank.” The window slid up.

  Exley got back in the Sienna, buckled her seat belt. Don’t think too much,she told herself. She put the van in gear, floored the gas, and—

  The crash with the Escalade whipped her toward the steering wheel. Her belt tightened and the exploding air bag caught her, knocking her back. Even though she’d known the collision was coming, its force surprised her, and she heard herself scream.

  She gathered herself. She’d wrenched her neck and had a cut on her arm, but she hadn’t broken any bones. The Sienna had taken the brunt of the impact, its hood crumpled, radiator leaking, windshield starred. The Escalade, taller and heavier, had little visible damage, though Exley saw its air bags had inflated. The bottle of wine cooler had broken and the minivan stank of peach. She reached into her bag and grabbed the syringe.

  She unbuckled herself as the doors of the Escalade opened and the men inside stepped out. They didn’t look happy.

  FROM HIS SPOT ON THE CORNER, Wells watched Exley park. When she stepped out of the van to talk to the men, he began to pedal the mountain bike beside the hedge on the east side of the road, the same side the Escalade was on. He stayed hidden in the shadow of the hedge. Unless the men looked directly his way, they wouldn’t see him.

  Wells took his time, not wanting to get close too soon. The grass under his wheels was wet with dew, and this close to the ocean Wells could smell the clean salt air. Under other circumstances, Two Mile Hollow would make a perfect lovers’ lane.

  Now Exley turned around, walked back to the Sienna, her shoulders slumped, her little ass wobbling slightly as she walked. She surely had the undivided attention of the men in the Escalade, Wells thought. Which was exactly what he needed. He was about fifty yards away, close enough that the men would see him if they looked his way.

  They didn’t.

  Bang! The Sienna smashed into the Escalade so hard that the bigger vehicle rocked back and its front end lifted before thunking back down. Wells took advantage of the distraction to throw himself and the bike onto the grass. He was less than twenty-five yards from the Escalade now, on its passenger side. Exley had rammed the Sienna into the left front of the SUV, the driver’s side.

  The Escalade’s doors opened and the men stepped out. Inside the Cadillac, a dog barked madly, its rapid-fire woofing echoing through the night.

  “My door won’t open,” Exley yelled through the night. “Help me.”

  “Dumb cootch,” the Escalade’s driver said. “Fred, radio Hank, tell him what happened.” He yelled to the minivan. “You know whose car you just hit?”

  Fred the guard turned back to the Escalade. Wells aimed the air pistol, bracing it in both hands. He squeezed the trigger. Propelled by compressed carbon dioxide, the inch-long dart took off with a soft hiss and hit the guard in the center of his
back. He yelped, then sighed dully as the syringe pumped anesthetic into him. He raised a hand to the sill of the Escalade to steady himself and slumped into the front passenger seat.

  “YOU ARE ONE DUMB DRUNK SLUT,” the driver of the Escalade said as he reached into it for Exley. She slumped across the passenger seat.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so stupid, please help me,” she said. He grabbed her harshly and tugged her out, making sure to grope her breasts. As he pulled at her, she jabbed the syringe hidden in her hand through his khakis and into his thigh.

  “Goddamn,” he said. “Wha—” But even as he cursed, Exley felt his grip loosen. He crumpled, the deadweight of his arms dragging her down. She freed herself and looked at him, fighting the urge to kick him in the balls. His breathing was slow, but he seemed fine otherwise.

  “Sweet dreams,” she said.

  “You all right?” Wells said from across the Escalade.

  “Never better. Do what you have to do.”

  22

  IT WAS 3:05 A.M. WEDNESDAY. The radio’s bright green LCD lights told the mole what he already knew. He was awake.

  For the last few weeks, he’d found sleep harder and harder to come by. He lay in bed, eyes blinking slowly as a toad‘s, twisting the thin cotton sheets Janice liked. Two bottles of wine at dinner and a hefty snort of whiskey afterward hadn’t been enough to knock him out. Worse, he didn’t seem to sleep even when he was asleep. He had the odd sensation of his mind nudging itself toward consciousness. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, if his eyes were open or closed, until he tapped on the radio and heard a late-night commercial: “We need truckers. Best rates per mile!”

  So he made his way to the spare bedroom to watch reruns of Road Rules and Laguna Beachas Janice snored away obliviously in their bedroom. The mole had a weakness for the bikinied bodies that filled MTV’s version of reality, though he had to mute the sound to spare himself the nonsense that poured from the mouths of the kids on screen.