I hurried down to the first landing. There was a casement window and a window seat there. It was just as I’d remembered. Two small cushions on the floor. I opened the cover of the window seat.
Ned Mahoney groaned out loud. He saw what I’d found. The escape route. The Wolf had gotten out!
“He might still be in here. Let’s see where this goes,” I said. Then I lowered myself into the opening. There were narrow wooden stairs, a half dozen of them. Mahoney held a flashlight on me as I climbed down.
“It’s here, Ned,” I called back to him. I saw how they’d made it out. A window was open. I could see water a few feet below.
“They went into the Intercoastal,” I called up to Mahoney. “They’re in the water!”
Chapter 104
I JOINED THE FRANTIC search in the waterway and the rest of the neighborhood, but it was already dark. Mahoney and I raced up and down narrow estate-lined streets. Then we drove along nearby Las Olas Boulevard, hoping that someone had spotted two men in soaking-wet clothes. But no one had seen the Wolf or his bodyguard.
I wouldn’t give up. I went back to the Isla Bahia estates area. Something was wrong. Why hadn’t anyone spotted two men fitting that description? I wondered if they had diving gear in the cellar alcove. How thoroughly had the Wolf planned his escape? What precautions had he taken?
Then I let my mind go in a different direction: He’s arrogant and fearless. He didn’t believe we’d find him and come here to take him down. He didn’t have an escape route! So maybe he’s still hiding in Isla Bahia.
I passed my ideas on to HRT, but they’d already begun to go door-to-door at the estates. There were now dozens of agents and local police combing the exclusive neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale. I wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t let the others quit. Whatever drove me—perseverance? stubbornness?—had paid off before. But we didn’t find the Wolf, or anyone who’d seen him in Isla Bahia.
“There’s nothing? No sign? Nobody saw anything?” I asked Mahoney.
“Nothing,” Mahoney said. “We found a cocker spaniel on the loose. That’s it.”
“We know who owns the dog?” I asked.
Mahoney rolled his eyes. I didn’t blame him. “I’ll check.” He went away and came back after a couple of minutes.
“It belongs to a Mr. and Mrs. Steve Davis. The Davises live at the end of the street. We’ll bring them their dog. Satisfied?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Let’s the two of us return the dog,” I said. “I don’t know why a dog would be loose this late at night. Is the family home?”
“Doesn’t look like it. The lights are off at the house. C’mon, Alex. Jesus. This is hopeless. You’re clutching at straws. Pasha Sorokin is gone.”
“Let’s go. Get the dog,” I said. “We’re going to the Davis house.”
Chapter 105
WE HAD STARTED TOWARD the Davis house with the brown-and-white cocker spaniel when a report came over the two-way: “Two suspicious males. Heading toward Las Olas Boulevard. They’ve spotted us! We’re in pursuit.”
We were only a few blocks from the shopping district and got there in minutes. The cocker spaniel was barking in the backseat. Fort Lauderdale police patrol cars and FBI sedans had already formed a tight ring around a Gap clothing store. More patrol cars were arriving, their sirens screaming in the night. The street was crowded, and the local police were having trouble stopping pedestrian flow.
Mahoney drove up to the blockade. We left a window cracked for the dog. He and I jumped out and ran toward the Gap. We were wearing flak jackets, carrying handguns.
The store lights were blazing. I could see people inside. But not the Wolf. Not the bodyguard either.
“We think it’s him,” an agent told us when we got up close to the store.
“How many gunmen inside?” I asked.
“We count two. Two that we know about. Could be more. There’s a lot of confusion.”
“Yeah, no shit,” said Mahoney. “I get that impression.”
For the next few minutes nothing useful happened—except that more Lauderdale patrol cars arrived on the scene. So did a heavily armed and armored SWAT unit. A hostage negotiator showed up. Then a pair of news helicopters began to hover over the Gap and surrounding stores.
“Nobody’s answering the goddamn phone inside,” the negotiator reported. “It just rings.”
Mahoney looked questioningly at me and I shrugged. “We don’t even know if it’s them inside.”
The negotiator took up a bullhorn. “This is the Fort Lauderdale police. Come out of the store now. We’re not going to negotiate. Come out with your hands up. Whoever’s in there, get out now!”
The approach sounded wrong to me. Too confrontational. I walked up to the negotiator. “I’m FBI, Agent Cross. Do we need to back him into a corner? He’s violent. He’s extremely dangerous.”
The negotiator was a stocky guy with a thick mustache; he was wearing a flak jacket, but it wasn’t secured. “Get the fuck away from me!” he shouted in my face.
“This is a federal case,” I shouted right back. I grabbed the bullhorn out of his hand. The negotiator went at me with his fists, but Mahoney wrestled him to the ground. The press was watching; to hell with them. We had a job to do here.
“This is the FBI!” I said into the bullhorn. “I want to talk to Pasha Sorokin.”
Then suddenly the strangest thing of the night happened, and it had been a very strange night. I almost couldn’t believe it.
Two men emerged from the front door of the Gap.
They held their hands in front of their faces, shielding them from the cameras, or maybe from us.
“Get down on the ground!” I shouted at them. They didn’t comply.
But then I could see—it was Sorokin and the bodyguard.
“We’re not armed,” Sorokin yelled, loudly enough for everybody to hear. “We’re innocent citizens. We have no guns.”
I didn’t know whether to believe him. None of us knew what to make of this. The TV helicopter over our heads was getting too close.
“What’s he doing?” Mahoney asked me.
“Don’t know . . . Get down!” I shouted again.
The Wolf and the bodyguard continued to walk toward us. Slowly and carefully.
I moved ahead with Mahoney. We had our guns out. Was this a trick? What could they try with dozens of rifles and handguns aimed at them?
The Wolf smiled when he saw me. Why the hell was he smiling?
“So, you caught us,” he called out. “Big deal! It doesn’t matter, you know. I have a surprise for you, FBI. Ready? My name is Pasha Sorokin. But I’m not the Wolf.” He laughed. “I’m just some guy shopping in the Gap. My clothes got wet. I’m not the Wolf, Mr. FBI. Is that funny or what? Does it make your day? It makes mine. And it will make the Wolf’s too.”
Chapter 106
PASHA SOROKIN wasn’t the Wolf. Was that possible? There was no way to know for sure. Over the next forty-eight hours it was confirmed that the men we had captured in Florida were Pasha Sorokin and Ruslan Federov. They were Red Mafiya, but both claimed never to have met the real Wolf. They said they had played the “parts” they were given—stand-in roles, according to them. Now they were willing to make the best deals they could.
There was no way for us to know for sure what was going on, but the deal-making went on for two days. The Bureau liked to make deals. I didn’t. Contacts were made inside the Mafiya; more doubts were raised about Pasha Sorokin’s being the Wolf. Finally, the CIA operatives who’d gotten the Wolf out of Russia were found and brought to Pasha’s cell. They said he wasn’t the man they’d help get out of the Soviet Union.
Then it was Sorokin who gave us a name we wanted—one that blew my mind completely, blew everybody’s minds. It was part of his “deal.”
He gave us Sphinx.
The next morning, four teams of FBI agents waited outside Sphinx’s house until he left for work. We had agreed not to take him inside the house. I would
n’t let it go down that way. I just couldn’t do it.
We all felt that Lizzie Connolly and her daughters had been through more than enough pain already. They didn’t need to see Brendan Connolly—Sphinx—arrested at the family house in Buckhead. They didn’t need to find out the awful truth about him like that.
I sat in a dark blue sedan parked two blocks up the street but with a view of the large Georgian-style house. I was feeling numb. I remembered the first time I’d been there. I recalled my talk with the girls, and then with Brendan Connolly in his den. His grief had seemed heartfelt, as genuine as his young daughters.
Of course, no one had suspected he had betrayed his wife, sold her to another man. Pasha Sorokin had met Elizabeth at a party in the Connolly house. He’d wanted her; Brendan Connolly didn’t. The judge had been having affairs for years. Elizabeth reminded Sorokin of the model Claudia Schiffer, who had appeared on billboards all over Moscow during his gangster days. So the horrifying trade was made. A husband had sold his own wife into captivity; he’d gotten rid of her in the worst way imaginable. How could he have hated Elizabeth so much? And how could she have loved him?
Ned Mahoney was in the car with me, waiting for action: the takedown of Sphinx. If we couldn’t have the Wolf yet, he was our second choice—the consolation prize.
“I wonder if Elizabeth knew about her husband’s secret life?” Mahoney muttered.
“Maybe she suspected something. They didn’t sleep together regularly. When I visited the house, Connolly showed me the den. There was a bed in there. Unmade.”
“Think he’ll go to work today?” Mahoney asked. He was calmly munching an apple. A very cool head to work with.
“He knows we took down Sorokin and Federov. I figure he’ll be cautious. He’ll probably play it straight. Hard to tell.”
“Maybe we should take him at the house. You think?” He bit into his apple again. “Alex?”
I shook my head. “I can’t do it, Ned. Not to his family.”
“Okay. Just asking, buddy.”
We waited. A little past nine, Brendan Connolly finally came out the front door of the house. He walked to a silver Porsche Boxster parked in the circular driveway. He had on a blue suit, carried a black gym bag. He was whistling.
“Scumbag!” Mahoney whispered. Then he spoke into his two-way: “This is Alpha One . . . we have Sphinx leaving the house. He’s getting into a Porsche. Prepare to converge. Vehicle license is V6T-81K.”
We heard back immediately. “This is Braves One . . . we have Sphinx in full sight too. We’ve got him covered. He’s ours.”
Then, “Braves Three in place at second intersect. We’re waiting on him.”
“Should be about ten to fifteen seconds. He’s heading down the street. Making a right.”
I spoke very calmly to Mahoney. “I want to take him down, Ned.”
He looked straight ahead through the windshield. Didn’t answer me. But he didn’t say no.
I watched the Porsche proceed at a normal speed to the next cross street. The Boxster eased into the turn. And then Brendan Connolly ran!
“Oh, boy,” said Mahoney, and tossed away his apple.
Chapter 107
A MESSAGE CAME OVER the shortwave. “Suspect is going southeast. He must have seen us!”
I gunned our car in the direction the Porsche had disappeared. I managed to get the sedan up to sixty-five on the narrow, winding street lined with gated McMansions. I still couldn’t see the silver Porsche up ahead.
“I’m heading east,” I said into the two-way. “I’ll take a chance he’s trying to get to the highway.” I didn’t know what else to do. I passed several cars coming the other way on the quiet street. A couple of drivers sat on their horns. That’s what I would have done too. I was going seventy-five miles an hour in a residential area.
“I see him!” Mahoney yelled.
I stepped down hard on the gas. I was finally making up some ground. I spotted a blue sedan approaching the Porsche from the east. It was Braves Two. We had Brendan Connolly from two sides. Now the question was whether or not he’d give up.
Suddenly the Porsche shot right off the road and into a thicket of bushes that rose higher than the car’s roof. The Porsche tilted forward, then disappeared down a steep slope.
I didn’t slow down until the last second, then I braked hard and went into a controlled shudder and spin.
“Jesus Christ!” Mahoney shouted from the passenger seat.
“Thought you were HRT,” I said.
Mahoney laughed. “All right then, partner! Let’s go get the bad guy!”
I steered the sedan through the bushes and found myself on a steep hill dotted with large rocks and trees. When the first branches cleared, I still had limited vision because of all the other trees. Then I saw the Porsche smack into a midsize oak and carom to one side. The car slid sideways another fifty feet before it finally stopped.
Sphinx was down.
Let’s go get the bad guy!
Chapter 108
MAHONEY AND I WANTED Sphinx, and it was personal with me, maybe with both of us. I let our sedan roll another fifty or sixty yards. Then I braked and the car stopped. Mahoney and I jumped out. We almost slid down the steep hill, which was slippery with mud.
“Crazy son of a bitch!” Ned Mahoney shouted, as we stumbled ahead.
“What choice did he have? He had to run.”
“I mean you. You’re crazy! What a ride.”
We saw Brendan Connolly lurch out of the damaged Porsche. He held a handgun aimed our way. Connolly fired off two quick shots. He wasn’t good with a gun, but he was shooting real bullets.
“Son of a bitch!” Mahoney fired a shot and hit the Porsche—just to show Connolly that we could shoot him if we wanted to.
“Put the gun down,” Mahoney shouted. “Put the gun down!”
Brendan Connolly started to run down the hill, but he was stumbling a lot. Mahoney and I kept gaining on him until we were only thirty yards or so behind.
“Let me,” I said.
Brendan Connolly looked back over his shoulder just then. I could tell he was tired, scared, or both. His legs and arms were pumping in a disjointed rhythm. He might work out in some gym, but he wasn’t ready for this.
“Get back! I’ll shoot!” he shouted—almost right into my face.
I hit him, and it was like a speeding tractor-trailer back-ending a barely moving compact. Connolly went down, rolling crazily. I stayed upright. Didn’t even lose my balance. This was the good part. It almost made up for some of our misses and failures.
Connolly’s ignominious roll finally stopped after twenty feet, but then he made his biggest mistake—he got back up.
I was on him in a second. I was all over Sphinx, and it was where I wanted to be. Mano a mano with this bastard. He had sold his own wife—the mother of his children.
I threw a hard right-handed shot into the bridge of Connolly’s nose. The perfect shot, or close to it. Probably broke it, from the crunch I heard. He went down on one knee—but he got up again. Former college jock. Former tough guy. Current asshole.
His nose was hanging to one side. Good deal. I threw an uppercut into the pit of Connolly’s stomach and liked the feeling so much I threw another. I crunched another right into his gut, which was softening to the touch. Then a quick, hard hook to his cheek. I was getting stronger.
I jabbed his broken nose and Connolly moaned. I jabbed again. I looped a roundhouse at his chin, connected, bull’s-eye. Brendan Connolly’s blue eyes rolled back into his forehead. The lights went out and he dropped into the mud and stayed there, where he belonged.
I heard a voice behind me. “That how it’s done in D.C.?” Mahoney asked from a few yards up the hill.
I looked up at him. “That’s how it’s done, Natty Bumppo. Hope you took notes.”
Chapter 109
THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS were quiet—disturbingly, maddeningly so. I found out I was being assigned to headquarters in Washingt
on, as deputy director of Investigations under Director Burns. “A big fat plum,” I was told by everybody. It sounded like a desk job to me, and I didn’t want that. I wanted the Wolf. I wanted the street. I wanted action. I hadn’t come over to the Bureau to be a desk jockey in the Hoover Building.
I was given a week off, and Nana, the kids, and I went everywhere together. There was a lot of tension in the house, though. We were waiting to hear what Christine Johnson was going to do.
Every time I looked at Alex my heart ached; every time I held him in my arms or tucked him into bed at the end of the day, I thought about his leaving the house for good. I couldn’t let that happen, but my lawyer had advised me it could.
The director needed to see me in his office one morning during my week off. It wasn’t too much of a problem. I stopped in after I had dropped the kids off at school. Tony Woods, Burns’s assistant, seemed particularly glad to see me.
“You’re something of a hero for the moment. Enjoy it,” he said, sounding, as always, like an Ivy League prof. “Won’t last long.”
“Always the optimist, Tony,” I said.
“That’s my job description, young man.”
I wondered how much Ron Burns shared with his assistant, and also what the director had in mind this morning. I wanted to ask Tony about this plum job I was slated for. But I didn’t. I figured he wouldn’t tell me anyway.
Coffee and sweet rolls were waiting in Burns’s office, but the director wasn’t there. It was a little past eight. I wondered if he’d even gotten to work yet. It was hard to imagine that Ron Burns had a life outside the office, though I knew he had a wife and four children, and lived out in Virginia, about an hour from D.C.
Burns finally appeared at the door in a blue dress shirt and tie, with his shirtsleeves rolled up. So now I knew he’d had at least one meeting before this one. Actually, I hoped this meeting wasn’t about another case that he wanted me to dive into. Unless it involved the Wolf.
The Big Bad Wolf Page 21
