The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson

  EPILOGUE

  ONE MONTH LATER

  “CERVEZA, POR FAVOR. NO, MAKE IT TWO. DOS.” Keith Robinson held up two fingers, watching them float in the bar’s murky air as if they weren’t connected to his body. Keith Edward Robinson, late of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now at liberty and seeking other employment.

  “Anybody need an expert in counter-counterintelligence?” he murmured to the empty room. A soccer match played on a television high in one corner, two local teams kicking the ball around halfheartedly.

  The bartender, heavy and dark-skinned with a long white scar down his right arm, plunked down two Polars. They joined the half-dozen other bottles—all empty now—in front of Robinson. “Ten dollars,” he said in English.

  “Ten dollars? Last time it was two bolivars”—a bit less than one dollar.

  “Ten dollars.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m a lover, not a fighter.” More than anything, Robinson wanted to relieve the pressure on his bladder. Drain the main vein, as they said in the trade. What trade? The room swam as he extracted a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from the dollars and pesos stuffed in his wallet. Robinson wished he hadn’t brought so much money. The sight of the cash had undoubtedly provoked the sudden price increase. The bartender plucked the bill out of Robinson’s wavering fingers and turned away.

  “Don’t forget my change.” Robinson tapped the bar. “Hey, I’m serious.” But the little brown man was gone. “I don’t like your attitude,” he mumbled. “Don’t cry for me, Venezuela.”

  He tipped the beer to his mouth and took a long swallow. Better. He was drunk, drunk as the drunkest skunk. At this point he didn’t even know why he was drinking. More alcohol wouldn’t make him any more intoxicated. Intoxicated. A good word, from the Latin for wasted. But he was awake, and these days, consciousness seemed to be reason enough.

  He wasn’t even having fun anymore. Getting this drunk was work. Every morning he felt as though someone had taken a hammer to his skull. Soon enough the feeling would be more than metaphorical, he knew. He’d pick the wrong bar, the wrong whore, the wrong hotel. Wind up with a knife between the ribs. Like he cared. He was a wanted man. Even down here he’d been in the papers. A few days ago, he’d felt the shock of seeing his picture on television. A celebrity at last. He’d rather die in a hotel room in Caracas than rot in solitary in the Supermax.

  Of course, somewhere in his mind he had a plan. Not so much a plan as a single word: Cuba. The Cubans would love him. Anything to piss off the American government. Heck, even the Venezuelans might refuse to extradite him. They hated America too. But making his presence officially known would turn him into a bargaining chip, to be traded in the moment his hosts wanted better relations with Washington. For now he’d decided to lie low.

  And with that thought, he lost his balance and toppled sideways, knocking his beers over in the process. A golden river of beer ran down the bar.

  “!Puta!”the bartender said. “Out!”

  “Show a little mercy, hombre,” Robinson said. “I just wanted a cocktail.”

  But the bartender said nothing more, only pointed at Robinson, then the door, like God evicting Adam from Eden. Robinson shuffled onto the narrow street. He checked his watch—9:40. How could it be only 9:40? He had hours to drink away before he’d be exhausted enough to pass out.

  A hand touched his shoulder. To his right stood a brown woman in a denim miniskirt. She had legs like a linebacker’s. A fading shiner poked through the makeup under her tired eyes. The girl of his dreams.

  “Date, mister?” Her breath stank of pisco, a grape brandy that burned like turpentine. Even Robinson avoided it.

  “You had me at hello.” He took her arm and away they went.

  THE STYLIST BRUSHED A HAND over Pierre Kowalski’s head. “You see, Monsieur Kowalski,” he said. “I promised the blemish was only temporary. Et voilà. Use the ointment and all will be well.”

  Indeed, Kowalski’s hair was growing back, sparsely and cautiously, like grass after a long winter. As a boy, he’d been handsome. He still thought of himself that way, despite his triple chin, C-cup breasts, and size 50 waist. But no one could convince him his skull looked good at the moment. When the duct tape had come off, it had taken most of his hair with it. He looked like a chemotherapy patient, only fatter and less sympathetic.

  “Fine, J.P.,” Kowalski said. He waved a hand. The stylist flounced out of Kowalski’s office, a square wood-paneled room decorated with famous weapons. Rommel’s personal Luger. A saber that Napoleon had carried.

  Alone now, Kowalski stared out at Lake Zurich and the mountains behind it. Peace at last.

  But not for long. Steps outside his office. Fast young steps in high heels. Natalia, his current favorite. “Not now,” he said, not bothering to turn around, as she walked in.

  “Pierre—”

  “Not now. If you need a check, tell Jacques.”

  She walked off.

  Kowalski had nearly gone into hiding after the Chinese announced that they’d arrested Li Ping for unspecified “crimes against the state.” He’d guessed, correctly, that the United States had discovered how Li had used him to help the Taliban and passed the evidence to Li’s enemies on the Standing Committee.

  For two anxious days Kowalski wondered whether the United States would come after him too. Then he heard from friends at Langley and the Pentagon that he was safe. Both America and China wanted to pretend that their confrontation had never happened. China apologized for torpedoing the Decatur—Beijing called the attack a “tragic and unnecessary accident”—and agreed to pay $1 billion in reparations to the United States and sailors on the ship. The Chinese also ended their nuclear aid to Iran, and—in a move that offered ironic proof of China’s new military prowess—gave the American navy a fully functioning Typhoon torpedo to reverse-engineer. In turn, the United States was paying millions of dollars to the families of the students who had drowned when the Decatur rammed the fishing trawler. Neither side wanted to dredge up Kowalski’s involvement and admit that Li had funded the Taliban. After all, Li had manipulated the United States as badly as his own government. More disclosure would only mean more embarrassment for both sides.

  KOWALSKI KNEW HE OUGHT to let the matter rest there. He’d escaped retribution. As a rule, he prided himself on staying above the fray. His vainglorious clients fought the wars. He sold tools, nothing more. But this time reason failed him. Presidents and generals begged him for the weapons they needed. He was no one’s servant, no one’s whore. No one touched him without his permission.

  Yet when he closed his eyes each night he felt thick silver tape across his face, hands squeezing his neck tight. Insolence. Beyond insolence. A stone in his shoe, irritating him with every step. He couldn’t allow it. He needed to know the name of the man and the woman who’d done this to him.

  Of course, they worked for the United States. The arrest of Li Ping proved it. But even his best sources, two former CIA agents who now ran a boutique lobbying firm in Reston, hadn’t been able to crack the secrecy surrounding the China case. Every morning the question gnawed at Kowalski. Then Anatoly Tarasov, a former KGB agent who ran his security, found the answer.

  “We want to know who attacked you in East Hampton. Why are we asking in Washington? Let us ask the police in East Hampton.”

  Kowalski knew Tarasov was right. They should have realized before. Of course the police had known all along. That was why they’d taken so long to get to the mansion that night. Why they hadn’t pushed harder to keep him and his men inside the country.

  “I don’t mean ask them directly—”

  “I understand, Anatoly.”

  And after two days of drinking beers with off-duty East Hampton cops, a Long Island private detective found the answer that had eluded Kowalski’s expensive informants in Washington.

  The detective passed the name to the lawyer in Queens who’d hired him. From Queens it jumped over the East River to a white-shoe law firm in Manhatta
n, made a U-turn, and crossed the Atlantic, landing at the offices of an investigator in Geneva. Only then, properly washed, did John Wells’s name arrive at Kowalski’s Zurich château.

  KOWALSKI HEARD SOFT STEPS APPROACHING. He turned as Tarasov walked in. The Russian was under six feet, close to two hundred pounds, with a cruiserweight’s broken nose and solid chest, which he showed off under tightly tailored white shirts. He had a nasty temper, especially when he was drunk. Kowalski had seen him beat a bouncer in a Moscow club nearly to death after the bouncer stared too long at his girlfriend. He was a very good head of security, and Kowalski paid him enough to assure his loyalty.

  “John Wells,” Tarasov said. “I’m very sorry I didn’t get to meet him.” Tarasov had stayed in Zurich to mind the estate when Kowalski went to the Hamptons.

  “As am I, Anatoly.”

  “So what would you like me to do?”

  Kowalski shook his head. He couldn’t possibly go after John Wells. And yet. No. It was madness.

  Tarasov stood next to Kowalski. Side by side they looked at the placid lake. Tarasov tilted his head forward and wrinkled his smashed-up nose like a pit bull that wanted off his leash. “John Wells,” he said again.

  “And the woman? Who was she?”

  “I don’t know yet. Another from the agency, no doubt. We’ll find out.”

  “Would you say I’m a man of my word, Anatoly?”

  “Of course,” Tarasov said.

  Kowalski opened the drawer desk where he kept his personal pistol, a Glock 19. Simple, effective, not too expensive, nothing like the fancy toys he sold the Africans. He hefted the gun, pointed it out over the lake, then slipped it away.

  “I made a promise to the man who attacked me. And I think ... I must keep it.”

  AT THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS in the corridor, Li Ping dragged himself off his cot and stood before the heavy steel door that covered his cell. A panel slid open and a plastic tray popped into Li’s hands.

  “Thank you.”

  As an answer the little slot clanged shut. Li looked at his lunch. A cup of lukewarm tea, an overripe orange, a bowl of rice soup. And the pills, of course.

  Li was in isolation in a concrete cell in a maximum-security military prison just outside Beijing. The jailers had laughed when he’d asked to see his wife. But for the last few days, they’d given him copies of China Daily, the official Party paper, as well as a couple of the semi-independent Beijing dailies.

  Showing him the papers wasn’t an act of charity. Zhang and the Standing Committee wanted him to know his position was hopeless. They had united to portray him as a rogue general who had brought China to the brink of war for his own benefit. During the last days of the crisis Li had illegally ordered the attack on the Decatur, they said. They had even hinted that Li might have acted on behalf of Russia to weaken China. Of course, they were lying. They’d approved the Decatur attack, and they knew he wasn’t working for Russia or anyone else.

  But no matter. Zhang had won. Li would never forget the moment when Zhang showed the Standing Committee the papers that proved Li had used army money to help the Taliban. Zhang’s triumphant look. The anger of the committee members, the shock on the faces of men who hated being surprised more than anything. Soon enough they found their voices. They ranted and raved, accusing him of treason, telling him he’d nearly destroyed all China’s progress. Zhang merely smiled as they denounced him. Li didn’t bother to deny what he’d done. He’d been trying to save China. If these cowards wanted to punish him, so be it.

  ZHANG HAD COME TO HIS CELL a few days earlier, just after the newspapers started to arrive. With Li’s lunch that day were three oversized pills, two white and the third blue. They were unmarked, but Li understood their purpose. He left them untouched, finished his lunch, and handed back the tray.

  A few minutes later his cell door opened. Zhang stepped inside. “General.”

  “Minister. Did you come for the pills? You’re welcome to them.”

  “You’ve always been generous.”

  “And you’ve always been a thief.”

  “If you weren’t such a fool you’d be dangerous, Li. Don’t you see you almost caused a war? Bones turned to ashes for your fame.”

  “The Americans would have backed off. Now, thanks to you, they’ve humiliated the Chinese nation.”

  “Do you really think SO! Has anything changed? Every day they buy our steel and televisions and computers. Every day they send us more money. Every day our economy grows faster than theirs.”

  “And every day you steal more from the people. Every day peasants die from hunger because of your crimes. Don’t judge a hero by victory or defeat.”

  “Hero?” Zhang laughed. “You’re a deluded old ox we should have ground up years ago. Why do you think the people didn’t riot when we announced your arrest? Why do you think they went home from Tiananmen quietly when we told them to?”

  “Because they were afraid.”

  “Because they’re satisfied with their lives. With the economy.”

  “The economy is shrinking.”

  Zhang shook his head. “Growth is rising again, Li. The people are smarter than you. They respect the Party. They know that soon enough China will be even more powerful than America. We’ll sell them cars, airplanes, everything. And then we’ll rule. There was no need for what you did.”

  “One day the people will storm the gates of Zhongnanhai and you’ll see.”

  Zhang smiled, the tolerant smile of a man who’d heard a crazy uncle’s crazy arguments and wasn’t listening anymore. “General. The world won’t end if a few migrants go hungry. Not everyone can be rich. Now. If you don’t want to take the pills, don’t. The choice is yours. But don’t forget your family. For now, the party doesn’t believe Jiafeng”—Li’s wife—“knew of your treasonous acts. But if this situation persists, we may reach another conclusion.”

  Zhang stepped out of the cell, into the concrete corridor. Li was silent. He wouldn’t plead for his life. He wouldn’t give Zhang the satisfaction. He should have known these cowardly bastards would use his family against him.

  “Be sure to take the blue pill first, General.” Zhang walked away as the cell door slammed shut.

  ZHANG HADN’T BEEN BACK SINCE. But today’s China Daily proved that he hadn’t been bluffing. A front-page story explained that the Standing Committee had opened a “wider corruption investigation” into Li’s affairs. They wanted him gone, without a messy public trial, and they would destroy his family if he resisted.

  Li finished his tepid tea, drank the last of his watery soup. He’d been so close to success. Even now he was sure that the Americans would have backed off, pulled their ships out of the East China Sea. He would have ruled China.

  How could Cao have betrayed him? Bitterness upon bitterness.

  Li wanted to talk to his wife and sons again, explain what he’d done. He wanted to see Tiananmen one last time, go for one more run along the lakes of Zhongnanhai. But he’d lost the chance to choose his fate. None of his wishes would come true. Only the pills were true. He gathered them off the tray. They were almost weightless. Hard to believe they could destroy the body that he had spent so many years building, this body that had survived war unscathed.

  The blue pill first. Li popped it into his mouth and took it down in one clean swallow. He closed his eyes and counted to thirty, seeing Mao in his tomb in Tiananmen. When he opened his eyes again, the concrete walls of the cell seemed to be melting. Now, before his brain melted too. He slipped the other two pills into his mouth and choked them down. And then he could do nothing except wait.

  THE BLACK CB1000 ROLLED DU Memorial Drive, its engine burbling, and stopped beside three Harleys festooned with POW/MIA stickers. Two riders hopped off. Wells and Exley. They picked up a map at the visitors’ center and made their way to Section 60, among the newest parts of Arlington National Cemetery.

  Inside the gates the green, rolling hills glowed in the sunlight with an unearthly beaut
y. Clean white headstones rose from the earth like dragon’s teeth. Oak trees offered pockets of shade. The sweet smell of fresh-cut grass filled the air. A city of the dead, 300,000 graves in all. The ugliness of war turned splendid, as politicians—and civilians in general—preferred, Wells thought.

  Every day, fifteen to thirty funerals were held at Arlington, mostly veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, but some soldiers killed in action in Iraq as well. Wells and Exley walked over a rise and came on mourners waiting for a ceremony to begin. Six people sat under a canopy, five women and one man, all in their eighties, the man painfully thin, his forearms narrow as chewed-up corncobs. World War II, Wells assumed.

  Over a rise, they came upon another tent. This time the crowd overflowed the canopy. In the front row, two children clung to a woman in a long black dress. The woman stared at the coffin before her, her body rigid with grief. Iraq? Afghanistan? How many children would come to Arlington this year? Wells wondered. And the next? And the next? And how would history judge the leaders who’d sent their parents to die?

  FINALLY THEY FOUND THE PLOT. Greg Hackett. The young sergeant who’d bled to death in Afghanistan. Gregory Adam Hackett. He had died honestly, doing his duty. More than most men could say.

  More than Pierre Kowalski could say, Wells thought. As his ribs had knitted together these last four weeks, he’d found himself thinking about the arms dealer. Part of him hoped that one day he’d have a chance to see Kowalski again, end the man’s dirty business once and for all. Though there’d just be another Kowalski, and another, as long as men wanted land or money or power.

  Forever.

  Anyway, he hadn’t come here to think about Kowalski. He wanted to remember Hackett. Instead his mind slid sideways, to the Talib whose brains he’d blasted on the night that Hackett died. He could see, actually see, the man’s skull shattering, as if he were in Afghanistan instead of Virginia, as if he were living the night over again. He closed his eyes and sagged down.