The Wolves (23 page)

“I worried about it. But the psychiatrist I talked to, she said she thought it was thrill-seeking.
Environmental
, I think that was the word.
A fancy shrink word for you being bored, hanging out with idiots with more money than sense.”

More money than sense.
He’d actually just said that. Oh, the irony. She held her tongue.

“You were so beautiful, I liked you so much, I figured it was worth the chance. You know me, I like to gamble. Anyway, I started paying your dealer so that if you ever called him again, I’d know.”

I started paying your dealer?
He’d gone mad, she saw. From fear or the wish to escape what he’d done, the choices he’d made, or some insistence that he couldn’t lose, or all three. Or maybe he’d always been mad and she hadn’t known. Either way, the conversation had turned inside out. They couldn’t talk about how he was holding their kids hostage, or spying on China for the Russian government, or
had
played pimp for a ten-year-old girl
, because he had out of nowhere made her years-old drug use the issue.

“I know you’re scared, Orli, but we’re all right. I’m not going to tell you these Russians are nice people, but they need me now.”

“Let me just take the kids to Tel Aviv, Aaron.” She put a hand on his shoulder, an obvious trick, but one that had worked for her before. She stroked his arm, tried to remember what she’d liked about him. “You’re right, I’m scared. I’ll feel better there.”

His phone rang. He shook her off and hurried into the hall.

“No, Mikhail, sorry. She’s right here.” He came back, pushed the phone on her. The phone’s screen was broken, spiderweb-shattered like a bad-luck mirror. Nevertheless, she took it. Let Aaron believe she was listening. Being reasonable, as he would say. She would accept the humiliation if it calmed him down, brought an end to this bizarro world where she was an addict and he was the defender of their realm. Then maybe she could find a way out. Maybe the Israeli consulate
could issue replacement passports secretly. Maybe she could ask the Hong Kong police for protection. At least they knew part of the truth.

“Orli. Your husband says you’re upset.” Buvchenko’s English was better than she expected, accented but understandable. He made the word
upset
seem ridiculous, a euphemism for
premenstrual
. “May we meet?” Like he was a barista offering a free refill.

“No, thanks.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere, I’ll come to you—”

She couldn’t listen any longer, and she feared what Aaron might do if she hung up again. She passed the phone back to her husband. “Yes . . . Fine . . . We’ll wait. I think that makes sense for everyone, too.” He hung up. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

“Aaron, you can’t be serious.”

“We should get ready.”

—

T
HE MINUTES PASSED
in something like a trance. She was awake, conscious. Yet her will was gone. She watched herself pull on her clothes, tell the nannies to give Boaz and Rafael breakfast. She remembered the feeling from her heroin days. But the drug’s detachment came with euphoria, like her brain was too busy enjoying itself to work. This morning she felt only dread.

She wondered if she should call Wells, but her phone had vanished. Probably in the closet safe with the passports. Anyway, what she’d told Wells the night before still held. She couldn’t count on the Americans. They would use her to get to Aaron. Once she gave him up, they’d discard her. She couldn’t trust Gideon, either. If he hated what Aaron had done so much, why hadn’t he told her? Some leftover loyalty to her husband.

In the end, the fear of making another bad choice overwhelmed her. In what seemed like no time at all, she found herself standing next
to Aaron in the mansion’s driveway as a white van rolled inside, one of the tall ones that tradesmen used. The two gate guards stood a few meters behind them. She didn’t know where Gideon was. She suspected Aaron had given him an errand, sent him outside the mansion for a few minutes so he wouldn’t be here when these men came.

The van made a quick U-turn so its nose faced the gate. Even before it stopped, its back doors swung open. Three men were inside, Buvchenko and the two FSB operatives whose photos Wells had shown her. The FSB men squatted on their heels like monkeys, monkeys with pistols. Buvchenko sat on the edge of the van’s cargo compartment and waved them closer, deeper into the quicksand.

“Aaron. I believe you have something for me.”

Aaron pulled a gray thumb drive from his pocket, gave it to Buvchenko. In turn, Buvchenko passed it to the Russian squatting to his left, then handed Aaron a thumb drive of his own. “For your next meeting.” He looked at Orli. “My God. As beautiful as your pictures.”

She cursed at him, softly, in Hebrew.

“Let me tell you that Aaron is doing excellent work for us and we intend to keep our bargain. However, if you insist on interfering, I can’t guarantee the safety of your family.”

There it was. “These are your partners?” she said to Aaron. “Threatening my
children
?”

“If you hadn’t interfered—”

He even used the same words as Buvchenko now. “Please go away.” She wasn’t sure if she was talking to the man beside her or the one in the van. “Go away, please.” Maybe if she moved the words around enough, they’d hear.

“A better idea,” Buvchenko said. “Come with us. Your husband can send your children back to Tel Aviv to stay with your family until it’s settled—”

As if the thought had just occurred to him, as if it wasn’t the reason he’d come here.

“Settled, what’s settled? You’ll never stop.”

“This is temporary.”

She knew he was lying, of course he was lying. Yet she wanted to believe. She’d visited the Holocaust Museum on school trips, part of the curriculum for every Israeli child. Now she saw for herself how the Nazis had convinced her people to shuffle without argument into the gas chambers.
It’s only a shower, you’ll be fine, all of you, clean after the train . . .
Lies that everyone knew were lies, so many had died already. Yet the words papered over the panic, offered escape from the truth of extinguishment.

“You don’t need me.” But of course they did. She was the one who could blow up whatever they were planning. Aaron was no threat. They already owned Aaron.

“Don’t take her,” he said. “I’ll go.” She looked at him and saw
him
again, afraid, trying to be brave, as if the threat to Boaz and Rafael had shocked him to reality—

“Generous, but you’re doing such important work. You stay. Don’t worry, we’ll give her back soon enough, we just need you to meet the general again.”

“I can pay, whatever you like—”

Buvchenko no longer pretended to listen to her husband. He flashed his hand sideways, enough. “Orli, we don’t have much time. Decide now,
now
.”

“You think people won’t notice I’m gone?”

“It won’t be long.”

She believed that much, anyway. The Russians couldn’t be thinking more than a few days ahead. The game was moving faster than the
players. Wells had warned her.
I’m afraid you’ll start something you can’t stop.

“Don’t,” Aaron whispered in Hebrew.

“Why did you bring me out here, then?”

He had no answer. She turned to Buvchenko. “I don’t care what you do to me as long as you don’t hurt my boys.” The best way, the only way, she saw now. Maybe she’d live.

Maybe those underground chambers really were showers.

“Then let’s go.” Buvchenko reached out a hand.

A moment later, Aaron grabbed for her. She stepped toward him until they were not even an arm’s length apart and grabbed the outside of his shoulders to brace herself and brought up her left knee between his legs as hard as she could, no hesitation, the Krav Maga training taking over, driving the softness there up and into his hips. He groaned and crumpled.

Behind her, the guards raised their assault rifles and then lowered them and ran for her. She turned toward Buvchenko and grabbed his titanic hand, big as a bear’s paw. He tossed her over his shoulder and into the van. The FSB man next to him yelled in Russian and the driver gunned the engine. The gate began to close, but too late, the van was through. Buvchenko reached for the doors and pulled them shut. Her last glimpse was her husband, still writhing on the ground.

—

T
HE VAN TURNED LEFT
and sped east along Lugard Road and then left again, down the switchbacks etched into the side of the Peak. The Russians barked at one another, their language fast and harsh, vaguely like Hebrew. She caught the English word
drone
a couple of times, it popped out of the Russian like a cork.

At a light near the bottom of the road, Buvchenko turned to her. “Is it true, what your husband told me? That the Americans are coming?”

“Yes.” She felt oddly relaxed. She’d made her choice, and the boys would be safe. She was proud of herself, too, though she knew thinking those words cheapened what she’d done.

“Wells?”

She decided to pull his chain. “You’re scared of him, too. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Go ahead.” Buvchenko’s eyes slipped half closed, like he was burrowing into himself, a memory he’d never share. “If thinking that makes you feel better.”

The van crawled through the crowded streets near the harbor, skyscrapers on every side.

“Anyway, whatever you’re doing, you don’t have long. Wells will kill Aaron now, he doesn’t care.”

“Da.”
The prospect didn’t seem to ruffle Buvchenko.

“So that’s it? All this effort for one general?”

“Cheung knows everything there is to know about the Chinese air force.”

“But when the Chinese figure out what you’ve done, they’ll be furious with you.”

“You’re an expert on international politics?”

She bit back the curse on her lips.

“No, actually you make a good point. I wasn’t going to tell you, but why not? Our little secret.” He ran his hand down her arm, a proprietary touch, a wordless reminder that she belonged to these men now. “The general thinks he’s working for the Americans.”

For the first time in a long, long time, maybe since that afternoon in Paris, she felt naïve. A child in a grown-up world. “I don’t—”

“When we came to Cheung in Macao, after the girl, we told him we were CIA.”

“He believed you?”

“He doesn’t speak English, he doesn’t know where he is, what he’s done, we could have told him we were from Mars and he would have believed us. And why would Cheung think your husband would work for Russia? He’s American.”

“So when the Chinese find out what Aaron did with Cheung—”

“They’ll blame the Americans for spying on them. You’re right, they’ll be furious. Not with us.”

“But the Americans are trying to
kill
Aaron. Why would they kill their own spy?”

“You think they’re going to admit they did it if they kill him?”

“Even so, they’ll deny they recruited Cheung. They’ll tell the Chinese—”

“What? Some crazy story about Aaron Duberman wanting to become a Russian? Who would believe that?”

Nobody. Especially since her husband wouldn’t be around to explain the truth. The FSB would kill him if the Americans didn’t. The fact that Buvchenko was blabbing to her didn’t say much for her own life expectancy. Or maybe he knew that if the Russians ever let her go, she’d be smart enough to keep her mouth shut forever.

The plan’s boldness amazed her. “No wonder you don’t care what happens to him.”

“Who knows what the Chinese will do to retaliate? And in the future, every American company in China, the government will wonder if they’re working for the CIA. So, yes, it would have been nice to have longer with Aaron, pick up some more Chinamen, but this works fine.”

The van turned into a parking garage, swung down a level, stopped. Buvchenko pushed open the back doors, tugged her out. He
was so big that he could move her without having to hurt her. Fighting him would have been like trying to stand up to a tidal wave.

A BMW sedan waited, engine running, trunk lid up. Buvchenko led her to the back of the sedan. “Inside.” The trunk was lined with the soft sound-dampening acoustic foam she recognized from Jamie’s studio; too late she understood why he’d talked to her as they drove through the city: He hadn’t wanted her to scream or bang on the walls of the van, which weren’t deadened. People were so much crueler than animals. At least animals didn’t lie to their prey—

“No way.”

“A little while.”

She couldn’t help herself, she screamed.

His face changed, they weren’t friends anymore. He picked her up like she was made of straw, covered her mouth with his hand. “You remind me of my sister.” The words made no sense. At first Orli thought she’d misheard. She was still trying to understand when he threw her into the trunk, slammed the lid. The darkness was total, and the panic rose in her as the car rolled away. She couldn’t help herself, her nerve broke, and she put her fingers in her ears and told herself,
This isn’t real this isn’t real.

W
ells cleared Hong Kong immigration without a second look from the officer at the diplomatic/VIP station. Whatever happened with this mission, he was taking home boxes of finger molds as souvenirs. But the lift of successful tradecraft lasted only until Wells saw Wright in the arrivals hall. The station chief’s arms were folded and his nose wrinkled like he’d just stepped on a cow patty. He might as well have worn a sandwich board reading
Bad news!

Shafer and Wright exchanged the shortest handshake in history before Wright led them to a black SUV at the curb.

“Sure she wasn’t playing you?” Wright said without preamble, as soon as the doors were closed.

“Absolutely.”

“An hour ago, our drone caught her taking a ride with your Russian friends.”

“Voluntarily?”

“You know the security at that place. They opened the gates, a van came in, she got in, they left. It’s even weirder than that, you’ll see—”

“Where’d they go?”

“Down the hill. Had to let them go after that. Too many skyscrapers, too much weather.”

“You lost her?”

“Did I stutter?” Wright passed them the laptop. “See for yourself.”

—

C
LOUDS BLURRED
THE FOOTAGE
, but Wells recognized Orli and Duberman standing near the mansion’s gate as the van arrived. The back doors opened, revealing a man who could only have been Buvchenko. The three spoke for about ninety seconds, according to the drone’s timer. Then Duberman reached for Orli, who turned to him—

And kneed him in the crotch. Not lethal, but no fun, either. She grabbed Buvchenko’s hand and jumped into the van as her husband fell. The van sped off before the gates could close. The guards milled around their fallen master and didn’t pursue. Wells replayed the crucial seconds on slow motion, then super-slow. He had to agree with Wright. Orli had left on her own.

“They threatened her. No way was she working with them. If you’d seen her yesterday—”

“Never say never,” Shafer said. “Any audio?”

“From six hundred feet up?” Wright said.

The feed continued as the drone followed the van down the side of the Peak and into the skyscraper canyons below. It lost altitude as it tried to keep the van in sight, then abruptly turned around—

“You didn’t lose her. You left her.” Wells found himself unaccountably angry. Maybe Shafer was right about his supermodel crushes.

“Easy, killer. We only had the one bird up and maybe you’ve forgotten, Daddy’s the one we want. We have no static surveillance up there, it’s impossible. I didn’t want him to disappear, too.”

“She’s not part of this.”

“Funny, not how I see it. For what it’s worth, I have guys watching the consulate in case they show there.”

“You should have stuck with her,” Shafer said. “Not for her, for Buvchenko. But forget it now. Here’s what doesn’t make sense. Say she went voluntarily, she’s working for the FSB—”

“She went voluntarily.”

“Enough, Garry.”

Wells still wasn’t used to hearing that throat-slitting tone from Shafer.

“Again. Say she did. If she’s working for them, when she got home, she would have told Duberman and the Russians what we told her. The other scenario is that they coerced her somehow. But even then, he only would have let them take her if she got mad and blurted everything out. Either way, he knows we met her.”

“Point?” Wright said.

“Point is he has to know we’re after him. Which means the FSB must know, too. So what’s the play? Why take her? All she does is add to the mess.”

“Aside from her obvious charms.” Wright smirked.

But Wells didn’t take the bait. As usual, Shafer had cut to the most important question. If the Russians knew the United States was actively chasing Duberman, then they knew that their plan to turn 88 Gamma into a worldwide honey pot had backfired. Why bother to take Orli?

“Point two,” Shafer said. “This was predictable.”

“‘This’ meaning what?”

“Meaning all of it. Why waste so much effort on something that was likely to blow up this fast? They had to know, once they told us they were giving Duberman diplomatic protection, we would have to come back at them. Unless, after the way they’ve pushed us around in
the Ukraine and Syria, they think they can do whatever they want and the White House won’t respond.”

“Maybe that
was
the point,” Wright said. “See how far they can shove it down the President’s throat before he finally gags.”

“Or maybe they have a game we aren’t seeing.”

“Anyway, it’s not like they didn’t get anything. Cheung’s a four-star general—”

“I’d be happy to run him, too, but he’s not Uncle Xi. Not even a minister. And the FSB couldn’t have counted on getting someone at his level right away, they couldn’t know Duberman had him lined up. Something’s missing.”

Outside, the rain that the clouds had promised all morning began to fall, tentative drops and then without warning a downpour, a classic subtropical drenching. Wells stared into the thick gray sky. Duberman was hidden up there somewhere.

“You aren’t so dumb, Ellis,” Wright said.

“Tell my wife.”

“What next, then? Go up the hill, see the man himself?”

“And offer him what for his cooperation? A one-way ticket to the Supermax?”

“Better than a bullet.”

“He may feel different.”

The idea of confronting Duberman carried more than a little appeal. Except for the dozen squads of Hong Kong police who would no doubt come scrambling up the mountain. Even so . . . Wells felt the space low on his back where a pistol ought to be. “Before we do anything else, we need to get strapped.” He expected pushback, but Wright nodded.

“Truer words were never spoke.”

—

O
N THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HARBOR
, Duberman sat in his kitchen, a bag of ice clamped between his legs. He’d dismissed his guards. He didn’t want them seeing him this way. He reached for his phone, called Buvchenko, got no answer. He even wasn’t sure why he was calling, what he’d say if the Russian picked up.
Let her go, I’ll do what you say?
Like he wasn’t already. Anyway, why did he want Orli back? She’d shown her colors this morning, threatening to take the boys from him. His sons. His heirs. After everything he’d given her. She should have trusted him, understood he’d done what he’d done for their family. Still, disloyal as she’d been, he didn’t want the Russians to hurt her.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,
Kierkegaard had said. But he was exactly wrong. Duberman had understood every one of his choices while he made them. Only in retrospect did he question them. His life was a bridge, falling away behind him as he walked. The regrets came from looking back. So no more looking back. He would escape this mess. With or without his wife.

His phone’s cracked screen lit up. A blocked number.

“Aaron.” Buvchenko, of course.

“Where is she? What have you done with her?”

The words sounded absurd as they came out of his mouth. Buvchenko apparently agreed. “Don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Just listen. You need to meet our friend again.”

The word
friend
was so incongruous that Duberman didn’t understand straightaway. Then he did:
Cheung
. “When?”

“Tonight. Very late. One in the morning, say.”

“I only got back last night. He won’t possibly agree.”

“Have your man call him, the one who set it up last time. Tell him
whatever you like, that you’ve decided to finalize your order and you’d like him to visit. The new casino again.”

“I’m not sure he’ll want that—”

“Worry about yourself, not him. You hand him something, he hands you something, same as before.”

“Then he goes.”

“Not right away. Play cards for a while. Four a.m., he goes back to Beijing.”

“After you meet us? You have a message for him?”

Buvchenko didn’t answer, as if the question was beneath him. In the silence Duberman heard a muffled
thump
behind Buvchenko, the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.

“I need to know my children are safe.”

“Of course.”

“You don’t need to keep her, Mikhail, I can handle her—”

“One last thing. If the Americans call you, try to meet, you tell me immediately. Yes?”

“Are they here?”

“Keep your heart strong and nothing will stop you.”

This last bit of motivational advice was too much. Luckily, Buvchenko hung up before Duberman had to answer.

Yet, ultimately, he didn’t blame the Russians for his fall. They were doing what they did, pouncing on weakness. He didn’t even blame Orli. She was a stupid girl who’d panicked, as stupid girls did. No, the villain here was the same man as always. John Wells. Wells had undone Duberman’s plans from the very start. He had made a mission of destroying Duberman’s life, and Duberman had let him.

Now Duberman heard Gideon, coming out of the garage, shouting, “Aaron! Aaron!”

“In here, Chai.”

A week before, Duberman had hired a lawyer to arrange a forty-million-dollar credit line at Two Typhoon Finance, a Kowloon bank with a shady reputation. Money-laundering experts joked that the initials
TTF
stood for The Triads’ Favorite. In place of the usual guarantees, the line was secured by fifty million dollars in gold ingots deposited at Two Typhoon’s headquarters. Thus the bank happily extended the line even though its only named beneficiary was a company called Reddie Super PLC, which existed only in a Kowloon post office box.

This morning, with Buvchenko on his way up the Peak, Duberman had sent Gideon with a letter instructing Two Typhoon to draw the line for Reddie Super and wire all forty million to an account in the Cayman Islands, a payment for “services rendered.” Through a series of prearranged commodities trades, three-quarters of the money would make its way to a Panamanian front company that Duberman controlled. Thirty million dollars. Enough money to disappear. Yes, fleeing would be the ultimate act of desperation, what he’d promised himself he’d never do. But he needed to keep his options open.

In any case, the letter provided the excuse he needed to make sure Gideon wasn’t around when the Russians came.

Gideon walked into the kitchen. He wore his usual suit, and to a casual observer would have looked like a middle-aged lawyer. Only the way his eyes roved the kitchen betrayed his agitation. Like he was on enemy territory. “Eric”—the head gate guard—“said Orli—”

“Did you do as I asked?”

“They gave me this.” Gideon pulled an envelope from his suit.

Inside, a confirmation of the transfer. “Orli’s gone. Buvchenko came and she went with him. I tried to stop her, but she kicked me—” Duberman held up the ice bag—“and ran.”

“Why?”

“He threatened to kill the kids if she didn’t go.” Duberman would rather have lied, but he couldn’t come up with anything plausible.

“You sent me away because you knew he was coming.”

“I worried you wouldn’t control yourself around him, yes. After that show in the garage.”

“You wanted them to take her.”

“
You’re
the one who didn’t tell the truth, Gideon, not me. She told me what happened in Tokyo, how you saw Wells.”

Gideon sagged slightly, and yet his lips tightened. Shame and defiance.

“You were in the same room with him and you didn’t do anything, after all he’s done to us—”

“It was impossible, Aaron. He had men there, too. Anyway, I was more concerned with Orli.”

“You want to know about this morning? She insisted on meeting the Russians, hear for herself about what I was doing with them. When Buvchenko came, she got mad. He threatened the kids and she panicked. I told her to trust me, but she wouldn’t—” Duberman found himself believing his own words. The story was hardly a lie, merely a revision of the truth.

“I can’t imagine why.”

Forget Orli. She’s gone. Wells, Wells is the problem we have to solve.
But Gideon wouldn’t agree, and Gideon was no longer accepting his orders without question. The ingrate.

Suddenly the lie, no, the solution, jumped to Duberman’s mind.

“I haven’t told you the rest. Buvchenko just called me. He promises he’ll give Orli back. But he has errands for both of us first. He’s ordered me to meet Cheung in Macao tonight. One a.m.”

“And what does he want from me?”

“I’m not sure if what he’s asking is FSB business or personal. I suspect the latter.”

“What, Aaron?”

Duberman paused, letting Gideon’s curiosity build. Even now he understood how to work an audience. “Did Wells give you a way to reach him?”

Gideon nodded.

“Buvchenko wants you to set a meeting. And kill him.”

Gideon clasped his hands, sank into himself. Duberman wasn’t sure how to read the pose.

“Mikhail Buvchenko asked for this. In return for Orli.”

“This and Cheung, yes. I thought you’d
want
this.”

Gideon stepped so close that they were almost touching. “What’s the endgame, Aaron?” His voice was a whisper, yet every syllable of Hebrew was clear. Duberman could see him, thirty years ago, more, a young sniper in South Lebanon, whispering to the soldiers around him as he lined up his next kill.

“I don’t know.” The right answer. Gideon would think him either a liar or a fool if he promised anything more. “But I’ll bet they don’t want to keep her, either. They’re holding her for leverage. Let’s give it to them. Then maybe I disappear, leave her and the kids.” He forced out the words, though he knew that after this morning, he would never, ever leave his children for
her
to raise alone. He wouldn’t let her win that way.

“I still don’t see—”

“Tell you what. Consider this your chance to repay whatever it is you owe me. When it’s done, we’ll go our own ways. What the Russians do to me won’t be your problem.”

Gideon reached into his suit, his eyes unreadable. Almost sleepy. For a half second, Duberman wondered if he might be pulling his pistol. But, no, his phone. “If you say so.”

—

W
ELLS FELT HIS PHONE BUZZ
just as he followed Shafer and Wright into the one-room apartment in Mong Kok, Wright’s safe house.