The Wolves

by Alex Berenson

  Or maybe he just didn’t care about Wells.

  —

  THE BELL 206 was a single-pilot, four-passenger bird, reliable, used by police departments all over the world. The pilot flew beneath the cloud cover into an easterly wind that kept them under a hundred knots and sent whitecaps scudding over the South China Sea nine hundred feet below.

  Ten minutes after they left Hong Kong, Wells caught his first glimpse of Macao, a neon smudge beneath the clouds. Minute by minute, the territory took shape, the city’s hills to the north, the artificial island of Cotai to the south. The top of Duberman’s new tower was at the southern end of the island, lost in the mist.

  When they were close enough to see the marquees of each individual casino, the pilot pushed the Bell southwest, giving a wide berth to the ferry terminal and its immigration officers. A few seconds later, the radio squawked in Chinese. The pilot ignored it.

  Below, the sea’s flat gray waters gave way to Cotai’s engineered borders. Dead ahead, the Sky loomed. The tower was not just extraordinarily tall, but wide and deep, a glass-sheathed mountain. A quarter mile from it, the pilot pushed the cyclic stick between his legs to the right while raising the collective lever at his left side. The twin maneuvers put the Bell into a rising, declining-radius loop around the tower, like the helicopter was wrapping it in Scotch tape.

  A couple of hundred feet up, the clouds began, lacy, then thicker, swirling around the building, blurring its edges. Four loops brought them over the top of the tower. The pilot maneuvered them until the Bell hovered directly above the roof, a hundred feet or so up, though the clouds were thick enough that Wells couldn’t be sure. Spotlights on the building’s corners tunneled through the mist.

  “You got this?”

  “Easy.” The pilot flicked on the helicopter’s own spotlight and lowered the collective.

  The clouds cleared enough for Wells to glimpse a white circle with an H at its center. The pilot feathered the pedals to control yaw while gently working the collective. The Bell came down as smoothly as an elevator and Wells wondered why he’d worried—

  Ten feet above the roof, the wind shifted, drove them west, left, toward a concrete block topped with steel brackets, an anchor for window-washing risers. The pilot saw the danger, raised the collective, pushed the cyclic right. But the helicopter didn’t respond right away. The wind drove the Bell toward the concrete. The block was at least ten feet long, six or seven feet high, fifteen feet back from the edge of the roof. Wells wondered if it was big enough to tip them sideways, spin them down the side of the building—

  Finally, the helicopter responded, bit into the wind, pulled up and away, its left skid just scraping the block, leaving a jagged black line of paint on the concrete. Three hundred feet above the roof, the pilot cut the spotlight and put the Bell into a slow loop. The clouds parted and Wells saw the whole massive roof, nearly two hundred feet on each side, vents and window-washing equipment and pipes and fire exits surrounding the helipad. Wells wondered where Duberman’s chopper was, realized he had probably set down at his other casino and driven over rather than risking a landing here.

  “That’s easy, hate to see hard.”

  “Ready for another try or you need fresh underwear?”

  The pilot came to a hover and again began to bring them down. For a while, they barely descended. Wells figured the pilot was trying to get a sense for the frequency and rhythm of the wind gusts. About two hundred feet up, a big one caught them, but this time the pilot was ready and the helicopter recovered much more quickly.

  “Not by the book, but I’m putting us down quick this time.” He lowered the collective and Bell dropped fast toward the very center of the H. “Brace for landing,” he said, when they were maybe thirty feet up. Wells folded his right arm over the sling that held his left and leaned forward. The helicopter banged hard against the pad, bounced, landed again, both skids down now. The jolt tore at Wells’s wrist and set his arm aflame.

  “Good times,” the pilot said.

  Wells unbuckled himself, leaned forward, swiped his fingers over the butt of his pistol like a lucky charm. “I’m not back in ten, get out of here.”

  The pilot grinned: You think I needed you to tell me that?

  —

  WELLS STEPPED ONTO THE PAD, turned for the nearest fire stairs, about thirty feet from the edge of the north wall of the roof. Before he reached them—

  The door swung open. Duberman stepped out. After him, Cheung. They must have been in the casino that was just below the roof, heard the helicopter, come up.

  Cheung was a small man, his face red and flushed. Duberman wore a pin-striped gray gangster suit, white chalk stripes and wide lapels. All he needed was a big cigar and a pinky ring. He stopped so fast when he saw Wells that Cheung banged into him, a cheap vaudeville act, the Chinaman and the Pimp.

  Behind them, Gideon.

  Gideon?

  The wet wind sang. For three, four, five seconds, Wells and Duberman stared at each other. Wells had last seen Duberman four months and six thousand miles away, stepping off a plane in Saudi Arabia. They’d both believed at that moment that Duberman had won, the United States was going to attack Iran.

  Instead, Duberman had lost, first his war and then everything else. He stepped forward. “John Wells. I missed you.” He made a cross with his fingers. “That work on you?”

  “Everything ravaged, everything burned,” Wells said.

  Duberman looked back to Gideon, barked a question in Hebrew. Why is he here? Didn’t you say you couldn’t find him? Something like that, Wells imagined.

  So Gideon had escaped the garage. How? Wells flashed on the motorcycle against the wall and knew. Then Gideon outraced Wells to Macao in a helicopter of his own. But why? To protect Duberman? Tell him Orli was safe? Beg him to surrender?

  Gideon stepped out from behind Duberman now, giving himself an angle on Wells. I draw on your boss, what do you do? Wells needed Hebrew. And telepathy.

  “Don’t tell me you’re working with Buvchenko?” Duberman said.

  “Buvchenko’s dead.”

  “Lying.”

  “I killed him myself.”

  Duberman stared at the sky as if the clouds could confirm the news. “What about Orli?”

  Thought you’d never ask. “She’s fine. Safe. Come on. Let’s go home.”

  “So they put me a cage until it’s time for the needle.” Duberman shook his head. Wells stepped toward him, but he turned away, strode to the edge of the tower, pulling the other three with him.

  “You’ve got the best lawyers in the world, Aaron.” Wells wasn’t sure why he was arguing. Maybe after what Shafer had said, he wanted to give Duberman every chance.

  “You don’t mind, I’ll show myself out.” Duberman backed up until he just a couple of feet from the edge of the parapet—

  “Don’t—”

  “I think we both know the game’s over. But before I go, I have something you might want.” He reached into his suit pocket—

  Wells understood a half second too late, Duberman was carrying, a lousy little pocket pistol, a popgun, so small it hadn’t even ruffled his suit. He came out with it as Wells reached under his shirt for his own pistol and felt it snag, the hard landing had caught it in the holster—

  Duberman brought the pistol up and locked eyes with Wells, and Wells saw the truth there—one for you and one for me—and finally Wells freed his own pistol and brought it forward, but he had no chance now, the ball was still in his hand and the horn had sounded—

  He heard two quick pops somewhere behind him—

  Two neat holes in Duberman’s suit—

  Duberman looked down at his chest. His mouth opened and the pistol came out of his hand and clattered on the roof of the four-billion-dollar monument he had built to himself. Wells looked back, saw Gideon in a shooting stance, of
course Gideon, in the end the scales had tipped, he’d chosen Wells over the man who’d saved his son—

  Duberman went to his knees and Gideon ran for him, they were murmuring in Hebrew. Wells stayed back, let them speak. Too soon, Duberman tipped forward. Gideon caught him and put him on his back. By the time Wells reached them, Duberman was gone, staring at the sky with eyes that didn’t see.

  Wells closed them. “Thank you,” he said to Gideon.

  “For her.” Gideon knelt beside Wells and prayed over Duberman, a quiet stream of Hebrew.

  —

  WELLS HEARD FOOTSTEPS scraping the concrete, raised his head. Cheung was coming. Wells raised his own pistol, thinking Cheung might go for the pistol Duberman had dropped. But Cheung trudged past like a sleepwalker. At the edge of the parapet, he reached into his pocket and came out with a shiny black plaque Wells had never seen before.

  Cheung looked at it for a moment, spun it out into the night, a backhand Frisbee flip, like he wanted to be sure gravity still worked. Then he stepped onto the parapet and took one final stride. No hesitation. As if the clouds themselves could hold him. An emperor of the air. He didn’t scream or whisper. Not a sound. When Wells reached the edge and looked over, Cheung was gone, not even a speck in the night.

  —

  GIDEON FINISHED PRAYING, walked to the helicopter. Apparently he didn’t plan to let Wells ditch him this time. Then Wells was alone with Duberman. What was left of him, which was nothing, two hundred pounds of well-groomed meat.

  Wells had won. Yet he wanted more. He had a thousand questions for Duberman, beginning and ending with the simplest, the most important: Why? But the man had taken the answers with him.

  Maybe there were no answers. Maybe human beings never understood themselves, much less anyone else. Wells looked up from the corpse just as the wind blew apart the clouds and opened the sky to the moon.

  His voice rose in his throat, a scream. A howl.

  EPILOGUE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Wells wanted to see the President.

  The feeling wasn’t mutual.

  Wells didn’t care. And he had the whip.

  So once again he found himself in the Oval Office anteroom. He’d landed at Dulles four hours before, just enough time to have his wrist properly set, shower, and shave. He hadn’t brought Shafer or Duto. This conversation belonged to him alone.

  —

  THE FIRST STORIES hit the wires an hour after Wells’s United 777 left Hong Kong. Police in Macao had identified the body of a “senior Chinese official” outside the Sky casino and found Duberman shot to death on the roof. A few minutes later, the South China Morning Post reported that the woman police had found in a garage the night before was Duberman’s wife. We normally do not identify possible victims of sexual abuse without their consent, but given the importance of this case . . .

  For once, Wells was glad to have an airborne Internet connection. The conspiracy theories grew wilder by the minute, though even the craziest couldn’t touch the truth. Wells wasn’t sure if the Chinese would figure out what had happened. The FSB would, but Nemtsov and his masters in the Kremlin might be predisposed to write off their dead officers as the cost of doing business and move on.

  Might.

  No matter. Wells didn’t feel like worrying about who might come after him tomorrow, or the next day. After this meeting, he would disappear. Maybe he’d see Evan again, though he feared he might be pushing his luck with the kid. Maybe Orli, to hear what she had to tell him about Buvchenko and the Russians. He wasn’t quite willing to admit he had other reasons to visit.

  No matter what he did, where he went, he had to spend some time alone with himself, see what he’d become, if Shafer was right. Find his own answer to the question he’d asked Duberman: Why?

  —

  THE PRESIDENT kept him waiting an hour. Pulling rank to show his irritation with this visit. But ultimately he had no choice, and Donna Green opened the door, waved Wells inside.

  The President sat behind his massive desk. He didn’t stand as Wells walked close. Didn’t say hello or put out a hand or ask about Wells’s arm. No courtesies today, false or otherwise.

  Wells sat in the chair on the right, and they looked at each other until the President snapped his fingers. “You wanted to talk. So talk.”

  But the words Wells had planned to say choked him. He wished he’d let Shafer come. Shafer would have enjoyed this moment. Wells turned to Green instead. “Four months ago, you promised to be the truth-teller, right? Tell him the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “He needs to resign.”

  “Here,” the President said. He leaned across the desk, his eyes dark. “You have something to say, say it to me.”

  Wells thought of Cheung, stepping off the building. At last he found his voice.

  “It’s over. Sir.”

  “Who made you king?”

  “Say whatever you like. Terminally ill, whatever.”

  “When I don’t die?”

  “Miracles never cease.”

  A flicker of a smile crossed the President’s face. “I’m not going anywhere. The country needs me.”

  Glenn Mason, Salome, Duberman, now this man. One after the next, they’d fallen to the curse that no gypsy bothered to cast. They stared so hard at their own lies that they could no longer see the truth.

  “Your biggest donor winds up dead with a Chinese four-star at his front door. You don’t think somebody’s going to ask questions about what he’s been doing, make the connection to Iran?”

  “Ask, maybe. Answer, not so much.”

  Wells had anticipated sadness. A valedictory moment. Not this brazen insistence. He felt his temper coming loose. “You’re wrong. But either way, you’re not going to have the chance. I’m not letting you.”

  “You got what you wanted.”

  “We both know I’d still be in that brig if the Russians hadn’t gotten involved. Four months ago, this room, you gave me and Shafer your word about Duberman. You had the chance to keep it. You didn’t.”

  The President stood, turned away from Wells and his desk. He stared out at the Rose Garden, immaculate and perfect. A view not available at any price. “So you punish me. Show off. Petty revenge and the whole country pays. The whole world.”

  “I’m doing now what we should have had the guts to do then.” This time, the guy at the top doesn’t skate. Wells stood, joined the President at the windows. He didn’t understand this compulsion to hang on to power. But then he’d always been outside looking in. “Announce it in the next forty-eight hours. Or I will. Sir.”

  “Public won’t be so great for you, either. How many murder raps?”

  “Guess I’ll have to take that chance.”

  Wells turned away, walked to the door, ready to leave the Oval Office, the White House, Washington, all of it. He couldn’t remember when he’d felt so free. Maybe he couldn’t escape, but he could pretend. For a while. “I’ve always been the survivor type.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Neil, Ivan, Karen, and the rest of the team at Putnam—those books wouldn’t exist without you.

  Bob and Deneen—thanks for the wise counsel.

  Jackie, Lucy, and Ezra—you make it all worthwhile. Family is the ultimate blessing.

  And to all of you, whether you’ve been with John from the beginning or just found him now, thanks for spending your time with us. Without you, John wouldn’t exist. I always appreciate feedback—email me at alexberensonauthor@gmail.com and let me know what you think. If you want more frequent updates, follow me at Facebook.com/alexberensonauthor or twitter.com/alexberenson.

  See you next year!

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