The Wolf (11 page)

“Did you expect me to marry her?” I asked. “Would it have made it easier if we combined the families?”

Uncle Carlo took a deep breath. “You married who you were meant to be with,” he said. “What it means for me doesn’t matter. Not now, not then. I’ve never been one for arranged marriages. More often than not, they’re more trouble than they’re worth—easy as hell to get into, tough as shit to get out of. You and me have both been lucky and unlucky with the women we married. Lucky we found somebody we were crazy about and unlucky in that we lost both before their time.”

I stared at my uncle. “I need her to go against Raza,” I said. “There are other ways in, but she’s the best option. She can get the information we need about his operation and then help me burn it to the ground.”

“Let me talk to Jannetti,” Uncle Carlo said. “He might be open to the notion of the two of you working together more than he might have been back a year or two.”

“What makes you say that?”

Uncle Carlo shrugged. “You’re single now. He might figure to play that card again. See if it comes up aces. Meantime, you get your ass on a plane and go see the Strega.”

“It’s a business deal,” I said. “Nothing more.”

Uncle Carlo shrugged. “Either way, she’ll be good for you. Help get your mind straight and keep you on your game. And you can leave with no worries about Jack. Between me and Jimmy, we got him covered at every base.”

I leaned over and kissed my uncle on the cheek and started to walk out of the room. “You know how she got that name?” I asked, turning back to face him, hand on the doorknob.

“She made sure everyone heard,” Uncle Carlo said. “Invited half a dozen rival crime bosses over for a sit-down. She had a feast prepared, from baked clams to pasta with artichokes to steak pizziaola. And they ate it up like they were just let out of the state pen, every one of them.”

“And they all died, right there at that table,” I said, shaking my head, still amazed by the story. “Rat poison. Angela sitting at the head, sipping red wine, watching them drop one at a time. Overnight, with one meal, she helped her father take over the streets of Naples.”

Uncle Carlo smiled. “Do yourself a favor when you’re over there, would you?” he asked.

“What?”

“Eat alone,” Uncle Carlo said. “You’ll live longer.”

Chapter 14

Paris, France

Raza and Vladimir sat with their backs to a setting sun, each holding a bottle of mineral water. They ignored the noise of the early evening traffic, the blared horns, the shouts from frustrated drivers.

“This should be the only time you and I meet,” the Russian said. “It’s how I conduct business.”

“You’ve never done business with me,” Raza said, his voice cool. “I like to know who my partners are before I complete a mission.”

Vladimir gazed at Raza. He was impressed by the young man’s confidence and manner but put off by his disrespect. Someone like Raza lacked the skill needed to reach the heights of the Russian syndicate. He might be a rising young power in terrorist circles, but in the bare-knuckle world of international organized crime he would be a low-end operator at best, a hired hand and nothing more.

Vladimir had gone over Raza’s background with care, paying close attention to how he planned and executed his attacks. The young man was meticulous and trusted as few as possible. He had no entourage or circle of advisors. Raza worked with a small and efficient team, was brutal beyond measure, could be counted on to pull off daring attacks, and never showed remorse.

“I am not your partner,” Vladimir said. “I have deposited $25 million in clean money into your accounts. And there will be an additional $25 million deposited three weeks from today. Since the money is coming from me to you, I believe it safe to consider you my employee.”

“Is an employee entitled to ask questions?” Raza asked.

Vladimir shrugged. “I need these operations to go off without glitches. It was one of many reasons I chose you. I want each mission to make a statement, and you don’t do that by putting bombs in a man’s shoe or his underwear.”

“Yet you seek no credit for the attacks,” Raza said. “These will be high-end operations with hundreds if not thousands of casualties. That puts a bull’s-eye on my back, one not even $50 million can erase. Now, I don’t take issue with the bull’s-eye. I wouldn’t be doing what I do if I were concerned with such matters.”

“What then?”

“The attention. These jobs will bring with them increased police presence and surveillance,” Raza said. “That will make subsequent jobs more difficult.”

“Are you up to this or not?” Vladimir said, growing impatient with the conversation. “Anyone can be a headline terrorist. It takes nothing more than dynamite and a ticking clock. I’m giving you an opportunity to be immortal. Isn’t that what you want?”

Raza stood and glared out at the traffic. “And what is it
you
want?” he asked.

Vladimir stood and tossed his water bottle into a receptacle. “You have work to do and money to do it,” he said. “Focus on that. But know this—if you fail me in any way, then that death you are so eager to embrace will be upon you in a most unpleasant way.”

Vladimir walked off toward the center of the city.

Raza watched the Russian disappear into the crowd. He sat down, closed his eyes, and tilted his head toward a darkening sky.

Chapter 15

Northeast Yemen

The compound was well-lit and guarded, armed men and women walking the upper and lower perimeters, dressed in fatigues designed to blend with the bland landscape. All wore scarves or bandanas and had been in hard skirmishes since they were old enough to raise a weapon. There were forty guards in all, trained to fight to the death.

The compound—four small houses and one two-story structure—was the headquarters of Anwar Al-Sabir, the number two in Raza’s terrorist organization and its main operator. He considered a bomb in a town square a waste of an explosive, preferring missions that called for catastrophic destruction.

Al-Sabir was also the man the group turned to when the goal involved a takeover of a passenger airline or cruise ship. It was said he wept with joy when he heard the news of the 9/11 attacks.

I needed to speak to Al-Sabir and find out what he knew of the flight that killed my wife and daughters. I needed to know if his prints were on the plan.

In order to do that, I had to get him out of the compound alive. Which would require killing the majority of his guards, capturing him and getting him through hostile terrain. It was a job that required very little chatter; the fewer who knew, the better its chance to succeed.

That meant the plan had to be kept hidden from any of the organizations that signed on in the war against the Russians and the terrorists. I couldn’t even bring it to the members of my own crew. My people were good, but they didn’t have the skills such a mission would require. Besides, this job had to be done under mob radar, since I had gone to such lengths to tell all involved that the war was not a vendetta but a business move.

I was about to wage a war on two fronts and for two reasons.

If you know your history, you know such plans often end in defeat. From the Romans to Civil War generals to the Nazis, battles fought on dual fronts have low rates of success. But none of those undertakings had been waged for personal reasons. In none of those wars was there a single leader who went into battle because he had lost a family member. They went in because they were told to go in, or to further a cause, or some other vague purpose. At no time was any of it personal.

It is my strength and my weakness.

Which is why I called in my own group of assassins—four men and two women who had been part of my private team for nearly a decade. I recruited each myself, choosing them from the elite ranks of the military and intelligence arenas. I went looking for those who had seen heavy combat, hand-to-hand, street-level. I also went for those with a combination of academic excellence and street-smarts. I didn’t want anyone eager to do the work only for the impressive salary and benefits I offered. I prize loyalty above all else and wanted these six to be beyond reproach in that regard. I needed them to be color-blind when it came to politics or patriotism. The work I had in mind would call into account neither. They had spent years training to do as they were told, and I was relying on that discipline. I also needed them to be a group of stone-cold killers bound by honor who would never betray me, no matter how seductive the offer.

It was no easy task and took three years to accomplish.

I logged thousands of air miles and talked to hundreds of contacts—from deep cover intelligence operatives to mercenaries to some of the best assassins in the international organized crime universe. And before I contacted the six chosen for the job, I had extensive background checks done and psychological profiles drawn up. I left nothing to chance. I took the selection of my Silent Six as serious as any endeavor I had undertaken in my years as a crime boss.

They are the best at what they do and they do it only for me.

They operate in complete secrecy; no one is aware they exist. They are my invisible army, sent to make the impossible possible.

That is why, on this night, they were situated inside the walls of a compound in northern Yemen, ready to take out forty combatants and bring me a man I needed for a hard conversation.

The team was equipped with microscopic night-vision cameras, strapped to their backpacks and the sleeves of their jackets. They also had high-def audio equipment wrapped around their gun belts. This allowed me to see and hear what they did from a penthouse apartment thousands of miles away. It was like watching a video game of my own creation, played before my eyes.

“We can make our move any time from here in.”

It was the voice of team leader David Lee Burke. He was huddled in a corner of the outer perimeter of the compound, his muscular body coiled and braced.

“You have confirmation our guy is in the house?” I asked.

“Yes,”
Burke responded.
“Both from high-level intel and our own street informants. If he left here, he did it on a cloud. No one has seen him come out since he went in three days ago.”

“When he does come out, I need him to be breathing,” I said. “Anything less and it’s a burnt mission.”

“Can’t guarantee he won’t take a bullet,”
Burke told me.
“We’ll do our best not to hit him, but sometimes, well …”

“A guy turns the wrong way,” I said.

“Something along those lines,”
he said.

I liked David Lee Burke and always appreciated his candor and lack of airs. He was a decorated Green Beret, expert in hand-to-hand combat and as close to a ninja warrior as anyone this side of the Yakuza. He was also a husband who had lost a wife to cancer, and a father who had buried a teenage daughter. A man who sought his comfort in the day-to-day skirmishes of war.

In my line of work we have associates we like and associates we pretend to like. We have more than our share of enemies and have forged alliances with factions from every part of the world. What we don’t have are many friends outside the life, and that is one mob rule that will never change. But there were a few I knew I could count on, and David was in that small circle.

“It’s time,” I said to this man waiting at the other end of the world to kill as many people as he needed in order to bring back one man alive.

One I knew would bring me closer to the identity of the person who murdered my wife and daughters.

Chapter 16

East Hampton, New York

I sat in the brick-lined backyard of my uncle’s main house on a bench beneath a weeping willow. Jimmy was at my side, his electronic wheelchair equipped with more devices than I would find in an airline cockpit. I caught the look of concern on his face as the morning sun warmed his already tan features. “You understand why this needs to be done,” I said to him.

Jimmy nodded.

“Then you also understand how dangerous it will be,” I said. “But we don’t have a choice. Maybe we can put it off for a year or two, but what would be the point? We grow older and weaker and the other side bolder and stronger. The time is now. Win or lose.”

There was no one I trusted more than Jimmy. I loved him as much as I did my own son. Jimmy, locked inside a silent world since birth, spoke to me in a way I could understand. As I said, if health had permitted, he would have been chosen to take the reins of the business. He had all the mental tools, and mettle.

Jimmy was by my side through the funeral mass for my wife and daughters, then sealed himself away and refused to see anyone for a week. My daughters loved spending time with him, and he doted on them and was the only member of the family my wife allowed to spoil them. He was the first one I went to with my plan, and I knew he would be there to guide me through the difficult days that would follow. In many ways, I thought of Jimmy as my secret weapon—the one person I could count on to stand beside me no matter how dark the tide.

“Is it the Strega?” I asked.

Jimmy nodded.

“You never trusted her,” I said, catching the tilt of his head and the rise of his eyebrows. “But she’s always come through for us when we needed her help. And we need her help now, Jimmy. This Raza is working out of her turf, and if we’re going to wipe his plate clean, we need her.”

Jimmy leaned his head back against the thick black leather of his chair and looked up at a clear blue sky. I had been in his company for a long time and could pick up on every gesture he made.

“Nobody rides with us for free,” I said. “She’ll want something in return. That doesn’t make her different than any of the other crews. Nobody is in this because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. They’re in it because of the damage the terrorists and Russians will do to their bottom line. No different than us.”

Jimmy lifted his head and gave me a hard stare.

“Right,” I said. “Maybe it is different for me. It may take a while to find the truth, but I’ll find it. I’ll do whatever I have to.”