The Ghost Agent

by Alex Berenson

  He only hoped the bomb had done its job.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  WELLS THOUGHT HE was dreaming when the sky turned white. Then he heard Cao shouting and knew he wasn’t. He started counting, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, waiting for the sound of the explosion to reach them, trying to calculate how far off they were. On his twelfth ‘Mississippi,’ the blast filled his ears. Maybe fifteen seconds – fifteen to twenty miles, give or take.

  In the last hour the Chinese had put more and more helicopters in the air, and he’d had a bad moment a few minutes before when a helicopter swung by them, its searchlight missing them by no more than a few hundred yards. Now this explosion, which couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. Had a Chinese jet or copter exploded? No, this fire was far too large. It looked to be slightly southeast of them, burning in the night like a beacon.

  Like a beacon.

  Cao was steering the boat north, away from the blast. Wells tapped his shoulder. He pointed to the white fireball, already losing its shape, melding into the clouds, but still burning brightly. ‘Go toward it.’

  ‘Toward?’

  ‘It’s for us.’

  Unfortunately, the Chinese seemed to have come to the same conclusion. Helicopters were buzzing toward the crash site, their spotlights shining over the waves. Jets too. Wells couldn’t see them, but he could hear the whine of their engines. As they made their way west, the sky lightened, the giant fire producing a muddy yellow glare. No way could a helicopter cause such a big explosion. Maybe a 747 had been shot down by accident. Or maybe it wasn’t a plane at all. Maybe it was some kind of oil tanker.

  The good news was that the Chinese didn’t seem to have any boats in front of them. And the heat of the blast would make it hard for the helos to get too close.

  Not that Wells wanted to get too close either. As they moved toward the site of the explosion, the air grew heavy with the stench of burning gasoline and something else too, some kind of plastic, though Wells couldn’t figure out exactly what. Farther on, the air was alive with burning embers that looked like sparks from a backyard barbecue. The strange part was that they kept burning when they landed on the water. As Wells shielded his eyes and looked toward the fireball, he saw patches where the sea itself seemed to have caught fire.

  ‘Napalm,’ he said aloud.

  Cao swung the boat hard left, north. Wells braced himself against the side of the hull and gritted his teeth as his ribs reminded him they were still broken.

  Then a huge secondary explosion, maybe a fuel tank, lit the night. The boat rocked in the blast wave and Wells covered his mouth against the fumes. In the sudden glow Wells knew they were obscenely visible. Even as the firelight faded, a jet swooped toward them, hard and low, its running lights blinking red, the wash from its engines kicking up waves and rattling the boat.

  ‘Close,’ Cao said.

  The fighter screamed off.

  Three minutes later it came back for another pass. This time red flares popped off the wings, not directly on top of them but close, too close, dimly visible through the thick black smoke that was flooding the air. Two helicopters – one from the north, the other from the south – began to converge on the flares, closing like scissor blades.

  And then Wells saw the lights of a ship, barely visible through the smoke. Toward the east, not the west. Toward South Korea.

  ‘Cao.’ Wells pointed at the lights.

  ‘Could be Chinese.’ Nonetheless, Cao swung the tiller, turning the boat east, into the depths of the filthy black soot. The helicopters closed, but they couldn’t fly blind. Wells closed his eyes and tried not to breathe. Then the wind shifted. The smoke lightened and the helicopters closed again. The spotlights swung at them, and one caught the hull of the boat in its glare. Behind them, a heavy machine gun opened up, kicking up flumes on the right side of the boat and then on the left. Cao swung the boat hard right, toward the center of the inferno, the heaviest smoke, and Wells ducked down, all he could do.

  The spotlights swung over them and again the machine gun raked the waves around them, an angry hard rattle that blocked out every other sound, until Cao screamed, a short sharp cry. He collapsed, his body slumped over the outboard.

  The engine lifted out of the water and the boat slowed to a creep. A lucky break, since the helos were now ahead of the boat and the wind was shifting direction again, catching the helicopters in the smoke. Wells crawled across the boat to Cao. The general was dead, his neck and chest torn open. ‘Damn you,’ Wells said to nothing and no one, knowing that he’d be joining Cao soon enough, as soon as the wind turned enough to give the helos a clear shot. He pushed Cao aside and dropped the engine into the water. He couldn’t see where he was headed and he supposed it no longer mattered.

  Then, from above, the grinding sound of metal on metal. Followed almost instantly by an enormous explosion, two hundred yards ahead, and a second even closer. Wells bowed his head as sizzling bits of metal crashed around him.

  They’d collided. The wind shift had left the helicopters blind. In their eagerness to get the kill, they’d come too close. They had crashed into each other in the dark and gone down, both of them. This filthy cloud had saved his life. Wells lifted the engine out of the water and looked around, trying to orient himself in the dark, thick air. Distant helicopters behind him. Somewhere overhead, a jet.

  And ahead, a voice. Amplified. American.

  Calling his name.

  He closed his eyes and lowered the engine into the water and steered for it.

  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-counter-intelligence?’ 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 si
ngle 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 Manhattan, 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 told the man who attacked me that I would make him pay. No matter who he was. And I think . . . I must keep my promise.’

  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.

  Zang 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.’