“You bastard, no!” Ned yelled. “No!”
I stopped running, aimed carefully, and squeezed the trigger four times.
Chapter 119
THE WOLF KEPT pumping his legs and seemed almost to be running on thin air, but then he started to drop. His arms reached out toward the edge of the other building. His fingers reached for the roof.
Mahoney and I ran up to the edge of our building. Could the Wolf get out of this one? Somehow, he always found a way. Except this time—I knew I’d hit him in the throat. He had to be drowning in his own blood.
“Fall, you fuck!” Ned screamed at him.
“He’s not going to make it,” I said.
And he didn’t. The Russian’s body fell, and he didn’t fight it, didn’t make a sound, never screamed out. Not a sound came from him.
Mahoney yelled down at him. “Hey, Wolf! Hey, Wolfman! Go to hell!”
The fall looked as if it had been shot in slow motion, but then he hit the ground in the alleyway between the buildings. Hit it hard. I stared down at the Wolf’s mangled body, the bandaged face, and I felt satisfied for the first time in a long while. I felt fulfilled and whole. We’d gotten him, and he deserved to die like that, squashed like a bug on the pavement.
Then Ned Mahoney started to clap and whoop and dance around like a complete madman. I didn’t join in, but I knew what he was feeling. The man down there deserved this fate, if anyone ever did. Stone-cold dead in an alleyway.
“He didn’t scream,” I finally said. “Couldn’t even give us that.”
Mahoney shrugged his wide shoulders. “I don’t care if he did or not. Here we are up here, there he is down with the garbage. Maybe there’s some justice after all. Well, maybe not,” Ned said, and laughed, putting his arm around me and squeezing.
“We won,” I said to him. “Damnit, we finally won, Neddy.”
Chapter 120
WE WON!
The next morning I flew back to Quantico in a Bell helicopter with Ned Mahoney and some of his stellar crew. They were celebrating the Wolf’s demise at HRT over in Quantico, but I wanted to get home. I’d told Nana to keep the kids away from school because we were celebrating.
We won!
I let myself decompress for some of the car ride from Quantico to Washington. When I finally got to the house, when I could see it up ahead, I started to feel closer to normal, almost myself, or at least somebody I recognized. No one had come out onto the porch yet, so Nana and the kids hadn’t seen me arrive. I decided to surprise them.
We won!
The front door wasn’t locked, and I went inside. A few lights were on, but I didn’t see anybody yet. Maybe they’re going to surprise me?
Keeping very quiet, I made my way back to the kitchen. The lights were on—plates and silverware had been laid out for lunch—but nobody was there, either.
Kind of strange. Just a little bit off kilter. Rosie the cat came meowing from somewhere, rubbing up against me.
Finally I called out, “I’m home. Your daddy’s home. Where is everybody? I’m home from the wars.”
I hurried upstairs, but nobody was there. I checked for notes that might have been left for me. Nothing.
I ran downstairs. I looked out back, then up and down Fifth Street in front of the house. Not a soul in sight anywhere. Where were Nana and the kids? They knew I was coming.
I went back inside and made a few phone calls to places Nana and the kids might be. But Nana almost always left a note when she went out with the kids, even for an hour or so, and they’d been expecting me.
Suddenly I felt sick. I waited another half an hour before I contacted some people at the Hoover Building, starting with Tony Woods in the director’s office. In the meantime, I’d looked around the house again, found no sign of any kind of disturbance.
A team of technical people arrived, and shortly afterward one of them approached me in the kitchen. “There are footprints out in the yard, probably male. Some dirt was recently tracked into the house. Could have been repairmen, or a delivery service, but it’s definitely fresh.”
That was all they found that afternoon, not another clue, not one.
Sampson and Billie came over in the evening, and we sat together and waited, at least for a call, something to go on, something to give me hope. But no call came, and sometime after two in the morning, Sampson finally went home. Billie had left about ten.
I stayed up all night—but nothing, no contact. No word at all about Nana and the kids. I talked to Jamilla on my cell phone, and it helped, but not enough. Nothing could have helped that night.
Finally, early in the morning, I stood at the front door bleary-eyed and stared up and down the street. It occurred to me that this had always been my worst fear, maybe everybody’s worst fear, to be all alone, with nobody, and to have those you love the most in terrible danger.
We lost.
Chapter 121
THE E-MAIL CAME on the fifth day. I almost couldn’t bear to read it. I thought that I might throw up as I stared down at the words.
Alex, I read.
Surprise, dear boy.
I am actually not as cruel or heartless a person as you might think I am. The really cruel ones, the truly unreasonable ones, the ones we should all fear, are mostly in your own United States and in Western Europe. The money I have now will help stop them, help stop their greed. Do you believe that? You should. Why not? Why the hell not?
I thank you for what you did for me, and for Hana, Daniela, and Jozef. We owe you something, and I pay my debts. To me, “you are a gnat, but at least you are a gnat.” Your family will be returned today, but now we’re even. You will never see me again. I don’t want to see you, either. If I do, you will die. That is a promise.
Klára Cernohosska,
Wolf
Chapter 122
I COULDN’T LET it go, couldn’t and wouldn’t. The Wolf had invaded my house, taken my family, even though they had been returned unharmed. It could happen again.
Over the next few weeks I tested, then strained, the new cooperative relationship between the Bureau and the CIA. I got Ron Burns to put even more stress on the situation. I traveled out to CIA headquarters in Langley more than a dozen times, talked to everybody from junior analysts to the new director, James Dowd. I wanted to know about Thomas Weir and the KGB agent he’d helped bring out of Russia. I needed to know everything that they knew. Was that possible? I doubted it, but that didn’t stop me from trying.
Then one day I was called up to Burns’s office. When I arrived, I found Burns and the new CIA director waiting for me in his conference room. Something was up. This was going to be good—or very, very bad.
“Come on in, Alex,” said Burns, cordial, as he often was. “We need to talk.”
I stepped inside and sat across from the two heavies, both in shirttails, looking as if they had just come out of a long and difficult work session. About what? The Wolf? Something else that I didn’t want to hear about?
“Director Dowd wants to say a few things to you,” said Burns.
“I do, Alex,” said Dowd, a New York lawyer who’d been an unexpected choice for CIA director. He had started in the New York Police Department, then gone into a lucrative private practice for several years. According to rumors, there were things that none of us knew, or wanted to know, about Dowd and his years in private practice.
“I’m just finding my way around out at Langley,” he said, “and actually, this exercise has helped. We’ve spent a great deal of time and effort digging into everything about Director Weir.”
Dowd looked over at Burns. “Just about all of it is good, an excellent record of service. But this kind of digging into old records isn’t appreciated by some of the ‘old warrior’ types out in Virginia. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what they think.
“A Russian by the name of Anton Christyakov was recruited and then brought out of Russia in 1990. This man was the Wolf. We’re fairly sure about that. He was transported to Engla
nd, where he met with a few agents, including Martin Lodge. Then he was moved to a house outside Washington. His identity was known only to a handful of people. Most of them are dead now, including Weir.
“Finally, he was moved to a city of his choosing—Paris, where he met up with his family: mother and father, wife, two young sons, ages nine and twelve.
“Alex, they lived two blocks from the Louvre, on one of the streets that was destroyed a few weeks ago. His entire family was killed there in ’ninety-four, but not Christyakov himself. We believe the attack may have been orchestrated by the Russian government. We don’t know for certain. But somebody leaked where he was living to somebody who didn’t want him to continue living. The attack may have taken place on the bridge across the Seine that was destroyed.”
“He blamed the CIA and Tom Weir,” Burns said. “And he blamed the governments that were involved. Maybe he went mad after that—who the hell knows. He joined the Mafiya and rose quickly. Here in America, probably in New York.”
Burns stopped. Dowd didn’t add anything more. They were both looking at me.
“So it’s not Klára. What else do we know about Christyakov?”
Dowd raised his hands with both palms up. “There are notes in our records, but precious few. He was known by some Mafiya leaders, but they seem to be dead now, too. Maybe the current Mafiya ‘big man’ in Brooklyn knows something. There’s another possible contact in Paris. We’re working a couple of angles in Moscow.”
I shook my head. “I don’t care how long it takes. I want him. Tell me everything there is.”
“He was close to his sons. Maybe that’s why he spared your family, Alex,” said Burns. “And mine.”
“He spared my family to show how powerful he is, how superior to the rest of us.”
“He squeezes a rubber ball,” said Dowd, “A handball. Black.”
I didn’t follow at first. “I’m sorry, what?”
“One of his sons gave him a rubber handball before the boy died. A birthday present. In one of the notes we have, it says that Christyakov squeezes the ball when he gets angry. He’s also said to favor beards. He’s celibate now, according to the rumors, anyway. It’s all pieces, Alex. That’s what we have. I’m sorry.”
So was I, but it didn’t matter. I was going to get him.
He squeezes a rubber ball.
He favors beards.
His family was murdered.
Chapter 123
SIX WEEKS LATER I traveled to New York, my fifth out-of-town trip in a row. Tolya Bykov had been at or near the top of the Red Mafiya gangs in New York, specifically the Brighton Beach area, for the past few years. He had been a Mafiya head in Moscow and was the most powerful leader to come to America. I was going to see him.
On a sunny, unseasonably warm day, Ned Mahoney and I made the journey out to Mill Neck on Long Island’s Gold Coast. The area we drove through was heavily wooded, served by narrow roads, with no sidewalks anywhere.
We arrived at the Bykov compound with a dozen agents—unannounced. We had a warrant. There were bodyguards posted everywhere, and I wondered how Tolya Bykov could live like this. Maybe because he had to in order to remain alive.
The house itself was very large, a three-story Colonial. It had incredible water views across the sound all the way to Connecticut. There was a Gunite pool with a waterfall, a boathouse and dock. The wages of sin?
Bykov was waiting in his den for our talk. I was surprised at how tired, how old, he looked. He had small beady eyes in a pocked face rolling with fat. He was grossly overweight, probably close to three hundred pounds. His breathing was labored and he had a hacking cough.
I’d been told that he spoke no English.
“I want to know about the man called the Wolf,” I said as I sat down across from him at a plain wooden table. One of our agents from the New York office translated, a young Russian American.
Tolya Bykov scratched the back of his neck, then shook his head back and forth, finally muttering several Russian words between a clenched jaw.
The translator listened, then looked at me. “He says you’re wasting his time, and yours. Why don’t you leave right now? He knows ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ no other. Wolves.”
“We’re not going to leave. The FBI, the CIA, we’re going to be in Mr. Bykov’s face, in his business, until we find the Wolf. Tell him that.”
The agent spoke in Russian, and Bykov laughed in his face. The Russian said something, and the sentences mentioned Chris Rock.
“He says you’re funnier than Chris Rock. He likes Chris Rock, political comedians in general.”
I stood up, nodded to Bykov, then walked out of the room.I didn’t expect too much more from the first meeting, just an introduction. I would be back, again and again if necessary. This was the only case I was working now. I was learning to be patient, very patient.
Chapter 124
MINUTES LATER, I was leaving the large house, walking side by side with Ned Mahoney. We were laughing about the first interview—what the hell, might as well laugh.
I saw something, and did a double take—saw it again.
“Ned, Jesus. Look.”
“What?” His head swiveled around, but he didn’t see what I saw.
Then I was running ahead on legs that felt unsteady.
“What? Alex, what is it?” Ned yelled behind me. “Alex?”
“It’s him!” I said.
My eyes were pinned on one of the bodyguard types at the compound. Black suit jacket and shirt, no overcoat. He was standing under a large evergreen, watching us watch him. My eyes dropped to his hand.
In the hand—a black ball, an old one. He was squeezing it, and I knew—I just knew—it had to be the handball given to the Wolf by his small son before he died. The man with the ball had a beard. His eyes looked at mine.
Then he started to run.
I yelled back at Ned. “That’s him. He’s the Wolf!”
I sprinted across the lawn, moving faster than I had in a while. I trusted that Ned was behind me.
I saw the Russian man jump into a bright red convertible; then he started it up. Oh no, God, no! I thought.
But I tumbled into the front seat before he put it into gear. I hit him with a short, powerful punch to the nose. Blood gushed all over his black shirt and jacket. I knew I’d broken his nose. I hit him again, square on the jaw.
I shoved open the driver-side door. He looked at me, and his eyes were coldly intelligent, like no eyes I’d ever seen, nothing so desolate. Inhuman. That was what the French president had called him.
Was he the real Tolya Bykov? It didn’t matter to me now. He was the Wolf—I could see it in those eyes, the confidence, arrogance, but most of all, the hatred for me and everyone else.
“The ball,” he said. “You knew about the ball. My son gave it to me. I congratulate you.”
He gave a strange half smile, then bit down hard on something inside his mouth. I thought I knew what had happened. I tried desperately to force open his mouth. His jaw was clamped tightly shut, and suddenly the Russian’s eyes were wide, incredibly big and full of pain. Poison. He’d bitten into poison.
Then his mouth opened and he roared full voice. White foam and spit ran over his lips and down his chin. He roared again, and his body began to convulse. I couldn’t hold him down any longer. I pushed myself up, backed away from his flopping body.
He began to gag and to claw at his throat. The convulsing, the dying went on for several awful minutes, and there was nothing I could do and nothing I wanted to do, except watch.
And then it happened: the Wolf died in the front seat of the convertible, another of his expensive cars.
When it was over, I bent and picked up the rubber handball. I put it in my pocket. It was what killers I’ve caught call a trophy.
It was over and I was going home, wasn’t I? I had things to think about, and so much to change about my life. I had the uncomfortable thought: I am taking trophies now, too.
But I had another, much more important thought: Damon, Jannie, Little Alex, Nana.
Home.
The Wolf is dead. I saw him die.
I kept telling myself that until I finally believed it.
About the Author
JAMES PATTERSON is the author of the two bestselling new detective series of the past decade: the Alex Cross novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers The Big Bad Wolf, Four Blind Mice, and Violets Are Blue, and the Women’s Murder Club series, including the #1 bestsellers 1st to Die, 2nd Chance, and 3rd Degree. He is also the author of the bestselling love stories Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas and Sam’s Letters to Jennifer. He lives in Florida.
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