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 made a promise to the man who attacked me. And I think . . . I must keep it.”
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.
ZHANG 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.”
“If you weren’t such a fool you’d be dangerous, Li. Don’t you see you almost caused a war? Bones turned to ashes for your fame.”
“The Americans would have backed off. Now, thanks to you, they’ve humiliated the Chinese nation.”
“Do you really think SO! Has anything changed? Every day they buy our steel and televisions and computers. Every day they send us more money. Every day our economy grows faster than theirs.”
“And every day you steal more from the people. Every day peasants die from hunger because of your crimes. Don’t judge a hero by victory or defeat.”
“Hero?” Zhang laughed. “You’re a deluded old ox we should have ground up years ago. Why do you think the people didn’t riot when we announced your arrest? Why do you think they went home from Tiananmen quietly when we told them to?”
“Because they were afraid.”
“Because they’re satisfied with their lives. With the economy.”
“The economy is shrinking.”
Zhang shook his head. “Growth is rising again, Li. The people are smarter than you. They respect the Party. They know that soon enough China will be even more powerful than America. We’ll sell them cars, airplanes, everything. And then we’ll rule. There was no need for what you did.”
“One day the people will storm the gates of Zhongnanhai and you’ll see.”
Zhang smiled, the tolerant smile of a man who’d heard a crazy uncle’s crazy arguments and wasn’t listening anymore. “General. The world won’t end if a few migrants go hungry. Not everyone can be rich. Now. If you don’t want to take the pills, don’t. The choice is yours. But don’t forget your family. For now, the party doesn’t believe Jiafeng”—Li’s wife—“knew of your treasonous acts. But if this situation persists, we may reach another conclusion.”
Zhang stepped out of the cell, into the concrete corridor. Li was silent. He wouldn’t plead for his life. He wouldn’t give Zhang the satisfaction. He should have known these cowardly bastards would use his family against him.
“Be sure to take the blue pill first, General.” Zhang walked away as the cell door slammed shut.
ZHANG HADN’T BEEN BACK SINCE.
But today’s
China Daily
proved that he hadn’t been bluffing. A front-page story explained that the Standing Committee had opened a “wider corruption investigation” into Li’s affairs. They wanted him gone, without a messy public trial, and they would destroy his family if he resisted.
Li finished his tepid tea, drank the last of his watery soup. He’d been so close to success. Even now he was sure that the Americans would have backed off, pulled their ships out of the East China Sea. He would have ruled China.
How could Cao have betrayed him? Bitterness upon bitterness.
Li wanted to talk to his wife and sons again, explain what he’d done. He wanted to see Tiananmen one last time, go for one more run along the lakes of Zhongnanhai. But he’d lost the chance to choose his fate. None of his wishes would come true. Only the pills were true. He gathered them off the tray. They were almost weightless. Hard to believe they could destroy the body that he had spent so many years building, this body that had survived war unscathed.
The blue pill first.
Li popped it into his mouth and took it down in one clean swallow. He closed his eyes and counted to thirty, seeing Mao in his tomb in Tiananmen. When he opened his eyes again, the concrete walls of the cell seemed to be melting. Now, before his brain melted too. He slipped the other two pills into his mouth and choked them down. And then he could do nothing except wait.
THE BLACK CB1000 ROLLED UP
Memorial Drive, its engine burbling, and stopped beside three Harleys festooned with POW/MIA stickers. Two riders hopped off. Wells and Exley. They picked up a map at the visitors’ center and made their way to Section 60, among the newest parts of Arlington National Cemetery.
Inside the gates the green, rolling hills glowed in the sunlight with an unearthly beauty. Clean white headstones rose from the earth like dragon’s teeth. Oak trees offered pockets of shade. The sweet smell of fresh-cut grass filled the air. A city of the dead, 300,000 graves in all. The ugliness of war turned splendid, as politicians—and civilians in general—preferred, Wells thought.
Every day, fifteen to thirty funerals were held at Arlington, mostly veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, but some soldiers killed in action in Iraq as well. Wells and Exley walked over a rise and came on mourners waiting for a ceremony to begin. Six people sat under a canopy, five women and one man, all in their eighties, the man painfully thin, his forearms narrow as chewed-up corncobs. World War II, Wells assumed.
Over a rise, they came upon another tent. This time the crowd overflowed the canopy. In the front row, two children clung to a woman in a long black dress. The woman stared at the coffin before her, her body rigid with grief. Iraq? Afghanistan? How many children would come to Arlington this year? Wells wondered. And the next? And the next? And how would history judge the leaders who’d sent their parents to die?
FINALLY THEY FOUND THE PLOT.
Greg Hackett. The young sergeant who’d bled to death in Afghanistan. Gregory Adam Hackett. He had died honestly, doing his duty. More than most men could say.
More than Pierre Kowalski could say, Wells thought. As his ribs had knitted together these last four weeks, he’d found himself thinking about the arms dealer. Part of him hoped that one day he’d have a chance to see Kowalski again, end the man’s dirty business once and for all. Though there’d just be another Kowalski, and another, as long as men wanted land or money or power.
Forever.
Anyway, he hadn’t come here to think about Kowalski. He wanted to remember Hackett. Instead his mind slid sideways, to the Talib whose brains he’d blasted on the night that Hackett died. He could see, actually see, the man’s skull shattering, as if he were in Afghanistan instead of Virginia, as if he were living the night over again. He closed his eyes and sagged down.
He had destroyed that Talib as easily as the average person swatted a fly. He’d killed so much that killing had become automatic, a reflex. Only after the action ended could he realize the horror of what he’d done. Only now.
Wells wished he could cry. But he never cried. Instead he put his head to the soft turf and closed his eyes and watched a movie of the men he’d killed playing on the screen in his mind. Forgive us, for we know not what we do.
“John.” He felt Exley’s thin arms around him. He lifted his head and forced his eyes open.
“I don’t know if I can do it anymore.”
“You don’t have to, John. You can always quit.”
But even before Exley’s words rose out of the cemetery and floated south over the Pentagon and into the past, even before they joined everything that had ever happened and everyone who’d ever lived in the place that never was—
Wells knew she was wrong.
He would never quit.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While in Boston on book tour for
The Faithful Spy,
the predecessor to this novel, I was fortunate enough to meet the lovely and talented Dr. Jacqueline Basha, a wonderful woman and a wonderful reader. Without Jackie, John Wells—and his creator—would be a lot more tortured.
Thanks also to:
David, my brother, who was present at the creation.
Neil Nyren, whose suggestions are always on point.