Twelve Days

by Alex Berenson

  Duffy didn’t bother to hide his pleasure. His cynicism was so deep that it had molted into something like optimism. Why shouldn’t I get rich? Everyone else is.

  And he was right, more or less. Duffy had put in twenty-four years at the agency, retired at fifty-one. If he wanted to make a few bucks now, have all the egg-white omelets he can eat, Shafer understood.

  Sometimes he wondered if he should have taken that path himself. Though it had never really been open to him. Years before, Duto had told Shafer that he was the ultimate agency loyalist, that as much as he claimed to stand apart, he couldn’t exist without the CIA. Shafer had wanted to disagree, but in his heart he knew that Duto spoke true. In his twisted way, Duto was a keen judge of character.

  “How about you, Ellis? How are you?”

  “Getting by. Day at a time.” Waiting for the blade to drop. “I have to ask, Ian. We ever work together?”

  Duffy shook his head.

  “Then why did you agree to meet me on such short notice?”

  Duffy grinned. “I figured it’d be interesting, that’s all. And I thought maybe you wanted to come work for me. It’s not too late.”

  “I don’t know anything about China.”

  “You wouldn’t have to. The companies I work for do business all over.”

  “Not why I called. Though I appreciate the thought.”

  The waiter returned, bearing their breakfast, and they sat in silence until he left.

  “You remember Glenn Mason?”

  “Sure. Weirdest episode I had in all my years.”

  “You know what happened to him?”

  “After we got rid of him, you mean? He flaked. Disappeared.”

  “You never heard that he drowned in Thailand?”

  “When?” Duffy sounded genuinely surprised.

  “A few months after you fired him. Rented a boat near Phuket and fell overboard.”

  Duffy busied himself cutting a piece of omelet. “And it was never reported to us?”

  “So it seems. Best I can tell, no one cared enough to bother. His parents were dead, he never married, no kids. And I’m guessing he didn’t have anyone in Hong Kong.”

  “Not at the station, anyway. I’d like to tell you I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him, but I haven’t. Maybe once a year.”

  “You don’t sound too cut-up.”

  “I hardly knew him. He had a breakdown in Baghdad, and for some reason he decided he wanted Hong Kong, and personnel figured they owed him one. Which they did. But he was burned out even before he started. Didn’t come in half the time and was drunk when he did. He didn’t recruit a single agent.”

  “You knew he lost all that money gambling.”

  “Of course. He didn’t try to hide it. Part of me thought he was proud of it.”

  “At that casino called 88 Gamma? Aaron Duberman’s place?”

  “Yeah. Which, coincidentally enough, I started working for a couple months ago.”

  Bile filled Shafer’s throat. Think. Was this Duffy’s wink-and-a-nod way of telling Shafer that he knew what Duberman had done? Doubtful. Shafer couldn’t imagine that Duffy would risk being charged with treason.

  Much more likely that the woman running the plot for Duberman had hired Duffy and other ex–CIA officers as an early warning system. This way she would hear if Shafer or anyone else went fishing for information about 88 Gamma. And no one would wonder why a casino company was hiring guys like Duffy. Casinos were a rough business, lots of political interference and cash sloshing around.

  “What do you do for them, if you don’t mind my asking?” Shafer had to tread lightly here. If he pushed too hard, Duffy would surely report this conversation back to 88 Gamma. This guy Ellis Shafer was asking about Aaron.

  “They want to be sure they can collect on the credit they extend. Which, if someone is too connected in Beijing, gets tricky.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “So that’s it? You came here to tell me that Glenn Mason was dead?”

  “Not really.” Shafer wondered if he could pull this pivot. Distract Duffy from his interest in Duberman, and at the same time find out if North Korea could possibly have supplied the Istanbul uranium. The odds were hugely against Pyongyang being involved, but the question was still worth asking.

  Shafer slathered butter over his toast, took a bite, buying a few seconds, thinking through the story he was about to tell. “The reason I got onto Mason at all, I’ve been looking into the North Korean nuclear program. We got this weird report that an FBI agent who’d been stationed in Hong Kong defected to North Korea and he lives in Pyongyang now.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither did I. The report came from a North Korean defector talking to the South Koreans. They sent it to the Bureau and they said it was ridiculous. Got filed under C for crazy. But like I said, I was looking at defectors’ reports about North Korea, and I realized that the guy might have said FBI when he meant CIA. So I looked for case officers from Hong Kong station who left in the last few years. That’s how I found Mason. Now I’m wondering if there’s any chance he might have faked his death and defected to North Korea.”

  Shafer worried now that the story sounded a little too real, that Duffy might get interested enough to ask questions of his old friends back at Langley.

  “So he fakes his death in Thailand and then goes to Pyongyang?” Duffy said.

  “I know it seems like a long shot. The defector said this American was working with the North Koreans to look for buyers for nukes and raw uranium. That they’d tried to approach Saudi Arabia and gotten laughed off.”

  Duffy shook his head emphatically. “Makes no sense. On either side. North Korea doesn’t have any nuclear weapons to spare, and if they were trying to sell them, why would they need some burned-out CIA op to help? And Mason, he struck me as desperate, not stupid. He would know that North Korea’s pure roach motel. He would last in Pyongyang until somebody high up got nervous. Then they’d shoot him. If he was lucky. More likely they’d find some even more unpleasant way to get rid of him. You heard about the air force general they fed to a bear?”

  “Nice. So the North Koreans aren’t trying to sell their nukes?”

  “That was really Seoul’s AOR.” Area of responsibility. “But I never heard anything serious.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So. What are people saying inside? Are we really going to war with Iran over this?”

  Shafer thought of the way Duberman had blocked them at every turn, even as the President’s deadline crept ever closer.

  “It’s not looking good.”

  10

  VOLGOGRAD, RUSSIA

  The Yuzhniy Hotel was the best in Volgograd. The faintest praise imaginable. The restaurant beside its bland lobby doubled as a cabaret, complete with techno music, pulsing blue lights, and a smoke machine. Near the front, a single flabby stripper twisted halfheartedly around a pole. A late-afternoon special for bored businessmen.

  At the counter, the receptionist made a copy of Wells’s passport, handed it back with a key.

  “You are in room three-zero-six. We have free breakfast from six a.m. to nine.”

  “In there?” Wells nodded at the restaurant, where the stripper was now jiggling on a low platform. “Sounds delicious.”

  “Yes. If I can help you with anything, please tell me.” Her voice bordered on robotic. Wells sensed that if he presented himself at the desk again in five minutes, she would repeat herself word for word as if they’d never met. He was sorry for mocking her about the restaurant. Russian provinces weren’t the poorest places on earth, but they might have been the saddest.

  He bypassed the hotel’s elevator to walk up the concrete staircase. Halfway between the first and second floors, he smelled cigarette smoke and stopped. Two male voices overhead, quiet, Russian.
Wells was sure the men were here for him. He trudged up. He hoped they wouldn’t feel the need to work him over before taking him to see their boss. But then Russians liked a bit of drama, even when it didn’t serve their interests.

  As their Ukrainian adventure proved. The protesters who’d started the trouble by begging Russia for help had obviously been agents provocateurs paid by the FSB. The entire episode was as badly acted as an elementary school play. Yet Vladimir Putin hadn’t let the West’s disdain stop them. And by the time he finished, he owned much of eastern Ukraine.

  At the third-floor landing, Wells found two twenty-something men dressed in the mandatory uniform of Russian gangsters, black leather jackets and dark blue jeans. Though, weirdly, under their coats they wore thick white wool sweaters that could have come from L.L. Bean. Where the sweaters ended, ornate blue tattoos flared up their necks. Their faces were pouty, their fists meaty. The taller of the two wore an expensive version of brass knuckles, thick gold rings on nine fingers. Wells presumed he would have preferred ten, but he didn’t have the option. His left pinky was missing. Wells’s sudden appearance puzzled him for a moment. Then he dropped his cigarette and pulled his pistol, a snubnose, tiny in his hand. He didn’t look puzzled anymore. “You are Wells.”

  “If you say so. You?”

  “Why you take stairs?”

  “Why not?”

  Apparently, the right answer. The guy tucked away his pistol. “Hands—” He nodded toward the ceiling.

  He stood back while his partner gave Wells an efficient frisk.

  “You come with us.”

  “Mind if I take a shower first?”

  “You come with us.”

  —

  Volgograd was best known for being the place where Russia turned the tide of World War II. A five-month battle in late 1942 and early 1943 reduced the city, then known as Stalingrad, to rubble. In November, with the German Sixth Army near victory, more than a million Soviet soldiers counterattacked. Two months later, as the Soviets encircled the Germans, Hitler ordered his generals not to surrender or retreat. The Sixth Army would fight to the last man, he said. It very nearly did. By some estimates, the Battle of Stalingrad was the deadliest single engagement in the history of war. Nearly a million German soldiers died, along with hundreds of thousands of Russians. Germany alone lost nearly as many soldiers that winter as the United States had in all the wars it had ever fought—combined.

  Stalin wasted no time rebuilding the city that bore his name. But after he died, Khrushchev renamed it Volgograd, part of the effort to end the cult of personality around Uncle Joe. By any name, the city remained a backwater. It subsisted on agriculture and heavy industry, with none of the glamour of St. Petersburg or the wealth of Moscow. The arms dealer Wells was about to meet might be the richest man in the entire province.

  Outside the hotel, a BMW 7 Series waited. Wells’s escorts pushed him into the front passenger seat. They didn’t even bother to take his phone, more proof they didn’t think he represented much of a threat. Dusk was fading into night, and the Yuzhniy’s red neon sign glowed against the blue-black sky.

  Volgograd’s streets were wide and quiet. The BMW quickly left the city behind and sped northwest along a provincial highway. Low apartment buildings and chunky concrete houses gave way to empty fields. Wells’s escorts seemed content to ride in silence, and he didn’t argue.

  Then his burner buzzed. Shafer. They hadn’t talked in more than a day.

  “Ellis.”

  “Evan’s threatening to walk.”

  Wells wasn’t entirely surprised. His son was headstrong and surely hated having FBI agents watching him. Especially since Wells hadn’t told him much about the threat.

  “You told him to sit tight?”

  “He said he has to hear it from you.”

  “I’ll call him.”

  “In person.”

  “You told him that’s not possible?”

  “Of course.”

  “Make him stay, Ellis.”

  “I can’t make him do anything. He’s a grown-up. It gets worse. Our friends are watching me. Our private friends, not the public ones, capisce?”

  Meaning Duberman’s operatives, not the CIA.

  “They come at you?”

  “Not exactly. More like that they wanted me to know that they could find me. I don’t know if it means they think we’re close.”

  “I’m on the way to see the Russian.” Wells kept his voice steady. “So you need to take care of this.”

  “I’ll tell Evan you’ll call him as soon as you can.”

  “And I will. But if there’s heavy hand-holding required, you need to make yourself useful. That means getting on a plane to see him, talk him down, you do it.”

  “All right.”

  “But make sure nobody’s watching. Let’s not give anyone a road map to that safe house by accident.”

  “Save the tradecraft lessons, John.”

  “I’ll let you know if my new friend tells me anything.”

  “Don’t piss him off too much, okay? Files say he has a temper.”

  “Got my knee pads right here, Ellis.” He hung up before Shafer could answer.

  “Everything okay?” the driver said.

  “Perfect.” Wells stared out as dusk fled and the road sank into black.

  —

  The BMW drove an hour before turning onto a dirt track. Stands of fir and pine dotted the hills around them. Wells sensed that when the sun rose the land would be pretty. After a few minutes, the sedan turned onto a paved driveway that ran between twin lanes of spruce trees. What looked like a model of the Arc de’Triomphe straddled the road ahead.

  The BMW passed beneath the arch, crested a low rise. Buvchenko’s mansion lay in the dale below, tall and wide. Imposing. A Russian armored personnel carrier sat out front, its 100-millimeter main gun pointed at the road. The BMW drove past the mansion and finally parked beside a windowless concrete building. It was either a badly designed garage or a firing range. Wells figured on the latter.

  Mikhail Buvchenko waited outside, a pistol strapped to each hip. He was a giant, well over six feet tall. He had hugely defined muscles that came from hours lifting weights every day, augmented with pharmaceutical help. He reminded Wells of a Slavic version of the movie star The Rock.

  Despite the midwinter chill, Buvchenko wore only sweatpants and a black T-shirt that stretched tightly over his deltoids and biceps. His head was shaved and the skin of his face unnaturally smooth. His eyes flickered like he was watching a movie no one else could see. Wells detected a slight theatricality in the pose. Kowalski sold his clients Swiss urbanity to go with their AKs and rocket-propelled grenades. Buvchenko offered the opposite. I strong like bull. Buy my guns, you will be, too. Good for business, as long as he remembered he was only posing.

  Buvchenko reached out, squeezed Wells’s hand, the grip just short of bone-crushing. “John Wells.”

  “Mr. Buvchenko. Pleasure to meet you.”

  Buvchenko smirked. We’ll see about that.

  “You have your own range.”

  “Ranges. Indoor and outdoor. Please, come with me.” He led Wells around the side of the building. “So Pierre Kowalski sent you to me. Very nice of him.” Buvchenko’s accent was almost absurdly thick. Verrri nus ahv heeem. Again, Wells sensed that the Russian was exaggerating for his own amusement.

  “He’s a good guy, Pierre.”

  “You weren’t always so friendly.” Telling Wells he knew their history.

  “I’m more of a people person now.”

  Behind the building’s back wall was the outdoor firing area, a concrete patio lined with sandbags and fronting an open field. An earthen berm a couple of hundred meters away marked the end of the range, which was lit by a bank of halogens.

  Along the left and right edges of the
field, signs marked the distance every ten meters. Wells didn’t get them. Then he saw the buckets of golf balls. Buvchenko had built himself a combined firing and golf range. Cute. A dozen men stood around, smirking and smoking.

  The range had several firing positions, all empty besides one in the center, where a Russian 12.7-millimeter Kord heavy machine gun had been set up. The Kord was comparable to an American .50-caliber, a mean, lethal-looking weapon, belt-fed, with a long black barrel. Wells didn’t know why Buvchenko had brought him here. But the presence of the Kord and the audience suggested he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “Ever fired a Kord, John?”

  “Only an NSV.” An older version.

  “The Kord is far superior. You’re about to have a treat.” Buvchenko whistled. A few seconds later, a horse trotted around the corner. The rider slowed him, walked him over to Buvchenko and Wells. A gelding, its eyes rheumy and its roan coat flecked with gray.

  “As it happens, both the horse and the rider are named Peter.” Buvchenko tapped the horse on its flank. It took a half step back, tilted its head, regarded him warily. Buvchenko grunted a command in Russian, and Peter the rider led Peter the gelding over the sandbags. Wells saw now that a stake with a metal ring attached had been planted a hundred meters away, in line with the Kord’s firing position.

  He and Buvchenko watched in silence as the two Peters reached the stake. The rider hopped off, loosely tied the horse to the ring. He scattered a half-dozen carrots on the ground, gave Buvchenko a lazy salute. Buvckheno yelled, “Go,” in English, and the rider walked off range. Wells expected the horse to be nervous, but the carrots had distracted it. It nosed at them, then picked one up and crunched away.

  “There are two ways to do this,” Buvchenko said. “If you’re more interested in the Kord’s performance, you just open up on old Peter. On the other hand, if you feel like a challenge you can fire a couple in the air. I promise you he’ll take off. And that knot won’t hold him.”

  “No.”

  “Da.”