The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson

  Wells tucked himself in the driver’s seat, slipped the Escalade into reverse, eased down on the gas. The big SUV tugged apart from the Sienna with the groan of metal scraping metal. A piece of the Toyota’s hood hung from the Cadillac’s grille like a battered Christmas ornament. Wells wheeled around, swung up the curving gravel driveway toward the mansion. The Escalade’s tinted glass would work in his favor now.

  The mansion, a gargantuan version of a rustic Cape Cod beach house, complete with weathered shingles, stood two hundred feet from the gate. As Wells drove toward it, a man ran at the Escalade.

  “Jimmy—what—”

  Wells twisted the Escalade toward the guard and gunned the gas. The guard’s mouth dropped open. He reached into his waistband for his pistol, then gave up on the gun and dove awkwardly out of the way. He landed face-first on the lawn as Wells skidded the Escalade to a stop beside him and jumped out, pistol in hand.

  “Down,” Wells said, not too loud. “Hands behind your back.”

  The guard hesitated. Wells fired the silenced Glock, aiming a couple of feet left of the man’s head. The round dug into the turf and the guard clasped his hands behind his back. Wells cuffed the man and dragged him up, standing behind him. “What’s your name?”

  “Ty.”

  “Who else is awake?”

  “Nobody.”

  Wells jabbed the Glock in his back. “You already got your warning shot, Ty. Where’s Hank?”

  Ty hesitated, then: “Second floor, watching the bedrooms.”

  “Any others?”

  “They’re out with Anna. Takes five guys to watch her.”

  A Nextel push-to-talk phone on Ty’s waist buzzed. “Ty?” a man said.

  Wells grabbed it. “Tell him a drunk driver hit the Escalade but nobody got hurt, cops are coming, you’ll be right in. Yes?”

  Ty nodded. Wells held the Nextel to Ty’s mouth and pushed the talk button.

  “Hank. Some drunk hit Jimmy, but everyone’s okay. Cops are on the way. I’ll be back in five.”

  “Got it. Keep me posted.”

  “Will do.”

  Wells tossed the phone away. “Good boy. One more question. Where’s he sleep? Kowalski?”

  Ty hesitated. “Anna’s got the master bedroom. He’s second floor, left side, in the front.”

  Wells pulled a syringe from his pocket and jabbed it in the guard’s neck. His eyes widened and he pulled against his cuffs, twisting toward Wells. Then his breathing slackened and he fell like a penitent at Wells’s feet.

  One to go, Wells thought. He looked at his watch: 3:11.

  WELLS JOGGED TOWARD THE BACK of the house, the direction Ty had come from, past an Olympic-sized slate-tiled pool with three diving boards—low, medium, and high. He took the granite back steps of the house two at a time. The patio doors were open. He stepped in and found himself in a gleaming kitchen. Burnished copper pots hung from the ceiling; a Viking stove stood beside a pizza oven. The house was silent. Wells stepped through a corridor lined with hundreds of bottles of wine and up the long back staircase.

  Halfway up Wells slowed, pulled the second air pistol from his backpack. He’d brought two, both loaded, so he wouldn’t waste precious time on reloading the syringes. He stopped just shy of the top step. The stairs formed the stem of a T with a long corridor that ran left and right along the spine of the mansion. Wells poked his head above the top step. Sure enough, twenty feet down the hall, a man stood before a closed door, a pistol in his waistband.

  “Ty,” he said urgently into his phone. “Come in, Ty ... Jimmy? Dammit.” He strode toward the staircase. Wells shifted to get a clear shot with the air pistol and fired at the man, ten feet away. Psst. The dart smacked into his stomach. The man sighed softly. The phone slipped from his hand as his knees buckled. Wells jumped to catch him before he hit the carpet and laid him down softly.

  Wells stepped over him to the white wooden door at the end of the corridor. Locked. He pulled his pistol and took aim at the lock. He fired twice, hearing the grunt of metal as the rounds smashed the lock, and popped the door with his shoulder.

  Wells stepped through and down the hall. To his left an open door revealed an empty bedroom. On the other side, a closed door. Wells put an ear to it. Silence. At the end of the hall, another door. Wells heard a steady, heavy snore as he approached.

  He opened the door and flipped on the lights. An antique silk rug, its yellows and blues dazzling, reached to the corners of the oversized bedroom. Kowalski, a fat man with little pig eyes, slept alone in the oversized four-poster bed, white silk sheets draped around him like icing on a lumpy cake. He grumbled in his sleep at the lights.

  “Pierre,” Wells said.

  The snoring stopped mid-breath. Kowalski jerked up his head. His eyes snapped open. With surprising quickness, he rolled toward a little nightstand—

  But Wells, even quicker, stepped toward the bed and covered him with the pistol. Kowalski looked at the gun and stopped.

  “Hands up,” Wells said. Kowalski raised his hands tentatively. “Reach out your arms, grab the posts with each hand.” The fat man hesitated. “Now.” Wells squeezed the Glock’s trigger, put a round in the wall beside the bed.

  “Please stay calm,” Kowalski said. He lifted his arms. Wells cuffed him to the bed, one wrist to each post. The sheets sagged off Kowalski, exposing his flabby belly and oversized silk boxers. Still, his face showed no tension. He seemed vaguely bemused, as if he couldn’t believe anyone had the audacity to break into his house.

  “You must know you’re making a terrible mistake.” Kowalski spoke flawless English, with a vaguely British accent. He’d learned it in a Swiss boarding school, according to his dossier. He was half French, half Polish. He’d followed his father into the arms business. “You must know who I am.”

  “Too bad you can’t say the same about me,” Wells said. “For a million and a half, you should have splurged for some security cameras. Answer me five questions and I’ll leave.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  Wells put a hand over Kowalski’s mouth, pulled a stun gun from his pack, and jabbed it into Kowalski’s neck. The fat man’s head jerked sideways and his tongue shuddered obscenely against Wells’s gloved palm. Wells counted five before he pulled the gun away. “Why did you send Spetsnaz to Afghanistan?”

  Kowalski didn’t hesitate. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Wrong answer.” This time Wells counted ten before he pulled the stun gun from Kowalski’s neck. He didn’t have time to be subtle and he knew Kowalski was lying.

  IN THE END, Sergei, the Russian special forces officer, had told Wells his story without much prompting. He had been working security in Moscow for Gazprom, the Russian natural gas company, when the call came. The colonel who had commanded his unit in Chechnya told him he could get $500,000 for six months’ work with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

  “I said this money seemed to be too good to be true. He promised me it was real, that they needed a hundred of us to go, the best Spetsnaz, and they would pay. He said it was coming from Pierre Kowalski. And then I knew it must be true.”

  “You trusted your commander!”

  “In Chechnya he saved my life many times. He wouldn’t lie about this.” They arranged for special precautions so the money couldn’t be traced, he said. Each man got a hundred thousand dollars in cash as a signing bonus. Every month, fifty thousand was wired to a bank account of a family member, with a final hundred-thousand-dollar bonus to be paid at the end of the six months.

  “We knew the risks going in,” Sergei said. “But the money was too good. Everyone agreed.”

  “What if the Afghans turned on you?”

  “We talked about that. But we knew we’d be here together. We could protect one another. Anyway, we made them better fighters, so they had no reason to hurt us. We were worried about your side.”

  “Did you know who Kowalski was working for?”

  “No. That was part of the
arrangement. When we arrived, the Talibs told us that it wasn’t their money. No surprise.”

  “Could Kowalski have been doing it himself?”

  “Our commander said no, that he was working for someone else. And taking a rich fee.” Sergei spat. “That was all we knew. All we wanted to know.”

  “And where is your commander? How can I find him?”

  “You found him already. In there.” He pointed at the cave.

  “WRONG ANSWER,” WELLS SAID NOW, in the bedroom in the Hamptons. “Try again. Why were you helping the Talibs?”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  Wells again covered Kowalski’s mouth. Kowalski twisted his head helplessly. “No one’s coming for you, Pierre. It’s you and me now.”

  Kowalski’s pig eyes squinted at Wells. “Yes. I hired them. The Spetsnaz.”

  “To fight the United States?”

  “Of course.” His voice betrayed no emotion. “A man called me. A North Korean I’d worked with. He asked me to arrange it. He knew I had contacts with the Talibs and the Russians. He wanted the best fighters, ones who would make a difference.”

  “How much did he pay?”

  “Five million. No big deal.”

  Wells punched Kowalski in the stomach, twice, a quick left-right combination, his fists disappearing into the big man’s belly. “You spent fifty million just on the men.”

  Kowalski’s mouth flopped open as he struggled for breath.

  “How much?” Wells said again.

  “Calm, my friend.” Kowalski’s cultured voice had turned into a thin wheeze. “It was twenty million a month for six months. For the men and some weapons, SA-7s, RPGs. A good deal, lots of profit. My contact said his side might extend the offer when the six months was over.” A hundred twenty million, Wells thought. No wonder Kowalski had been able to pay $500,000 a man.

  “Where was the money from?”

  “I didn’t ask. My contact was North Korean. I don’t know who was behind him. Perhaps the North Koreans, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too expensive for them. Anyway, what do they care about Afghanistan?”

  “The Saudis? The Iranians?”

  Kowalski looked at the stun gun. “I don’t know. Really.”

  “You never asked? Considering the risks?”

  “I’m paid not to ask. I make the arrangements and I don’t ask. Like you.”

  “It was safer not to know.”

  Kowalski didn’t try to hide his contempt. “What have I been saying?”

  “Where did the money come from?”

  “Wire transfers from a Macao bank account.”

  “Macao? Why there?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Which bank?”

  “Banco Delta Asia.”

  Wells recognized the name. The bank had gotten into trouble before, accused of laundering dirty money for the North Korean government. “Account number.”

  “I don’t have it here. Come to Zurich and I’ll look it up for you. I promise the same hospitality you’re showing me.” This time Wells didn’t bother with the stun gun but simply locked a hand around Kowalski’s neck and squeezed through the fat. To Kowalski’s credit, he didn’t beg, even as his face grew red and his arms shook against the wooden bedposts. “I tell you I don’t have it here,” he repeated.

  Wells choked him long enough to be sure he was telling the truth and then let him go. Kowalski coughed—short, dry puffs.

  “Where can I find your contact?”

  “His name was Moon. But he won’t be talking to you. He died last month. Nothing to do with this. He had a sideline in the heroin business. He ran across some very bad men.”

  “But you’re still getting paid.”

  “Of course.” Kowalski’s face was dark pink, the color of medium-rare steak, and his arms hung heavily from the posts, but still he sounded confident. “Let me tell you something. Whoever you are. Even if you’re U.S. government, CIA, Special Forces, whatever. You’ll pay for this, what you’ve done tonight. Even if you think you’re safe. I’ll break the rules for you.”

  More than anyone he’d ever come across, even Omar Khadri, Wells wished he could kill this man. But he couldn’t take the chance. And anyway he didn’t kill prisoners. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from his backpack and plastered a piece over Kowalski’s mouth.

  Then, for no reason he could name, Wells began wrapping the silver tape around Kowalski’s skull. The fat man tried to twist away, but Wells held him steady. He draped the tape over Kowalski’s eyes, over his forehead and his cheeks, loop after loop, until the big man looked like a modern-day mummy, Tuten-Duct, the Egyptian god of electrical tape. He made sure to leave Kowalski’s nostrils open so he wouldn’t suffocate. Then Wells clapped a hand over Kowalski’s nostrils and squeezed them shut. He counted aloud to ten, nice and slow, before letting go.

  “Don’t forget to breathe.” And with that, Wells ran.

  IT WAS 3:29. Exley was sitting in the minivan. “Got your helmet?”

  Exley grabbed her motorcycle helmet from the van and they ran for the bike. Three minutes later, they were at the corner of Newton Lane and Main Street, the Honda purring smoothly beneath them. A police car turned past, its emergency lights flashing, but no siren and not speeding. The chief had kept his word, even given Wells a couple of extra minutes.

  Route 27 was empty and quiet, and once he’d picked through the traffic lights of the Hamptons and reached the highway, Wells wound down the throttle of the CB1000 and watched the speedometer creep up and the highway unspool before him. Exley wrapped her arms around him and gripped him tight, from fear or joy or both, and he was as happy as he knew how to be. Everythingdies, baby, that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back, he sang as loudly as he could, knowing that no one, not even Exley, could hear him.

  Only when he saw the red-and-blue lights of a police cruiser ahead in the distance did he slow. An hour later, they were on the outskirts of Queens, the traffic on the Long Island Expressway just starting to pick up with the morning’s earliest commuters. Wells pulled the Honda off the highway and they found the Paris Hotel, not particularly clean but happy to take cash.

  ROOM 223 OF THE PARIS had a faded gray carpet and a soft moist smell.

  “Nice,” Exley said. She poked at the rabbit ears atop the television. “I haven’t seen these in a while.”

  “We’ll always have Paris,” Wells said.

  “We did it. Am I allowed to say it was fun, John? Because it was.”

  “Sure it was.”

  Exley settled onto the mattress, ignoring the spring poking at her butt. “I can’t believe we’re already back in New York City.”

  “Told you the moto comes in handy sometimes.”

  “You have to slow down, John. Didn’t you feel me hitting you?”

  “Thought you wanted me to go faster.”

  Exley couldn’t believe they were fighting about this, after what they’d just pulled off, but they were. “Such a child. If you’re gonna get us killed, do it for a halfway decent reason. You don’t have to prove to me you have a big dick.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.” Wells lay next to Exley, his face almost touching hers. The bed sank under him. “Think this is one mattress or a bunch stitched together?”

  Exley had to laugh. Wells could be impossible, and more than once lately she’d thought that he planned to push his luck until he wound up in a wooden box. But she couldn’t pretend she didn’t love him. “So what did he say? Kowalski?”

  “Not much.” Wells recounted the conversation. “But there was one thing. He said he was getting paid out of a bank in Macao. Which doesn’t really make sense. Of course, the money could have been coming into that bank from anywhere.”

  “Think he was telling the truth?”

  Wells propped himself up on an elbow and stroked Exley’s hair. Finally, he nodded. “Yeah. He didn’t know who I was, but he knew no matter wha
t, I couldn’t use it in court. He wanted me out of there and he didn’t know how much I knew. Honesty was his best bet.”

  “He’s going to come after you. Us. In a way, he was flaunting what he’d done.”

  “If he’s smart, he’ll let it go, be happy I didn’t shoot him. He can’t track us anyway. And if he does figure out it was us ...”

  Exley understood. They were untouchable. Or so Wells thought.

  “Why did you tape him up that way at the end, John? He was angry already.”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  She waited, but Wells was silent, his breathing steady, and she knew he wouldn’t say anything more. “Roll over,” she said.

  He turned his big body and Exley snuggled up and ran her hands around him. She pushed up his shirt and touched the raised red scar high on his back. He sighed softly, happily, and reached back for her. She closed her eyes and kissed his back.

  “So who do you think was paying for those guys?” he said.

  She lifted her mouth from his skin. “Don’t know. And that’s real money. A hundred and twenty million.”

  “But think on it. We spend a couple billion bucks a month in Afghanistan. For a fraction of that, somebody’s making it a lot harder for us. Not a bad investment.”

  “Syria. Libya.”

  “Iran?”

  “Maybe.”

  Wells sat up and leaned against the bed’s battered headboard. Exley traced her hand over his chest, the muscles solid as iron.

  “You close on the mole?” he said.

  “We’d be closer if I hadn’t come up here. But we’ll get him soon. Shubai gave us enough. In a way it doesn’t matter, though. He’s already done the damage. We don’t have one Chinese agent we can trust.”

  “Not a good time for it either,” Wells said.

  “No. Any day now, China and Iran are about to announce something big. They aren’t even denying it. There’s all this trouble in Taiwan. And Shubai says there’s a power struggle in Beijing. Says the hard-liners want to prove how tough they are, that we have to stand up to them, that showing any weakness will just make them push us harder.” Exley closed her eyes and felt weariness overtake her.