Alex Berenson - The Silent Man

Two days later, he was back in Zurich. When he appeared at his father’s office on Bahnhofstrasse, Frederick smiled.

“Come to join me?”

Pierre nodded, feeling slightly abashed. Until now he hadn’t considered the possibility that he might have waited too long, that his father might be angry at him, might even reject him.

“What took so long?” Frederick said.

The business became Kowalski père et fils a few years later, and Kowalski took over when Frederick suffered a stroke in 1999. Besides his daughter, Anna, a regular in the pages of the fashion magazines, Kowalski fils had two sons from his first and only marriage. So far, neither had shown interest in becoming part of the trade. But Kowalski expected they’d change their minds soon enough.

Like his father, he ran the business on a few simple principles. He never promised customers weapons he couldn’t deliver. He never stored his merchandise on Swiss soil. He always made sure he was paid up front. He never worked twice with anyone who tried to burn him.

And he never made threats he didn’t intend to keep.

Several months before, John Wells had attacked Kowalski at a rented mansion in East Hampton, New York. Wells had. Kowalski didn’t even like to remember what Wells had done. Handcuffed him, shocked him with a stun gun, covered his head with duct tape. He was lucky he hadn’t suffocated. Wells had worn a mask, but Kowalski had learned his identity a few weeks later. Now he wanted revenge, the revenge that he had promised the masked man in his bedroom that night. On Wells, and Exley, too, who’d helped Wells.

“You must know you’re making a terrible mistake,” Kowalski had said at the time. “Whoever you are. Even if you think you’re safe. I’ll break the rules for you.” Now Kowalski meant to keep his promise. Wells would pay for what he’d done.

A HAND TOUCHED his shoulder, snapping him out of that summer night. Nadia stood beside him. “Pierre, are you all right? Your face was so. black.”

He kissed her cheek. “Too much cottage cheese.”

A light knock on the door. Anatoly Tarasov, Kowalski’s head of security, a former Russian Spetsnaz officer, entered. A walking tornado, capable of extraordinary violence.

“Have you finished?” Kowalski said to Nadia.

“Yes.” Her lunch had consisted of two pieces of melon and a boiled egg, and yet she seemed satisfied. He couldn’t imagine how.

“Then wait for me in the drawing room. Today we’ll go for a shop.”

She kissed him and glided out. Tarasov waited until she was gone, then closed the door and sat beside him. “You like her.”

“She’s sweet,” Kowalski said. “Sweeter than most of them.”

“Or a better actress.”

“Perhaps. Have you news on our friend?”

“You won’t wish to hear it. The CIA has two teams, two men each, watching the house where he and the woman live.”

“Around the clock?”

“Around the clock. One team in front, one in back. There’s a third in plainclothes that comes and goes.”

“What about their vehicles?” Putting a bomb underneath a car was the easiest way to assassinate someone.

“Garaged. They travel to work in separate cars most days. The woman drives a Dodge minivan, and Wells a Subaru. Sometimes he rides a motorcycle, but not in the winter. Two of the guards follow in a chase car.”

“Are their cars armored?”

“It doesn’t seem so. At Langley, they’re untouchable, naturally. They also have a private office in a place called Tyson’s Corner. But they spend most of their time at the agency now. And the private building has its own security. One of the CIA guards has a post outside the door and the other watches the cars. There’s a third guard in their office.”

“Could we reach them there?”

“They never open the door when there’s anyone else on the floor, and there are cameras on the corridor.”

“How about the elevator?”

“Such a confined space isn’t ideal. If Wells gets a hand up—”

“I understand.” They would have only one chance at Wells and Exley. Kowalski didn’t want to waste it.

“Also, the guards at the house have noticed our scout.”

Kowalski’s stomach began to ache. “They’ve blown it already? Markov said these were his best men.”

Ivan Markov was recently retired from the FSB. Kowalski had given Markov $2 million up front to kill Wells and Exley, with the promise of another $3 million for a successful job.

“Nothing’s blown, Pierre. Our man was asked an idle question by the agents outside the house. He gave an idle answer. Nothing more. We shouldn’t underestimate the CIA. Perhaps they cannot catch bin Laden, but they are perfectly capable of watching a house in Washington.”

For a moment Kowalski wondered whether he ought to call off this assassination. He had known all along that Wells and Exley were not ideal targets. They were high-profile, and Wells was more than capable of defending himself. Still, Kowalski had figured that Markov’s men would finish the task quickly.

A few days of watching, then a few pounds of explosive attached to the undercarriage of Wells’s car. A three-man team. No elaborate surveillance required. And when he’d given Markov Wells’s name, the general had actually smiled. The Russians didn’t like Americans much these days, Kowalski thought.

But now. this job was turning messy.

“What do you think?” he asked Tarasov.

“I think that once you begin a mission like this. ” Tarasov trailed off. But Kowalski understood. The Russians respected strength. Bombings, poisonings, assassinations, Siberan prison camps — Russian leaders used every weapon at their disposal to remain in power, without apology. If Kowalski backed off, Markov would not be impressed. He would pass the word to his old bosses in the Kremlin: Pierre Kowalski has gone soft. The Russians were Kowalski’s most important business partner. He couldn’t afford to look weak to them.

And yet. he had built this mansion, built his empire, by thinking clearly, never letting emotion cloud his business dealings. Only women had the luxury of setting reason aside in their decisions.

He didn’t need to kill John Wells. Why take this risk?

“Thank you, Anatoly.” Kowalski nodded to the door. “Come back in a quarter-hour.” He needed a few minutes alone. A few minutes to think.

TARASOV REAPPEARED fifteen minutes later.

“So the home is impossible,” Kowalski said. “And also the office.”

“Not impossible, but—”

“Then we will hit them in between, I think.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“Will Markov want more men?”

“He believes in three-man teams.”

“And these men?”

“The best, Pierre. I know them myself.”

“Good,” Kowalski said. “Now let me find that girl before she gets herself into trouble.” He pushed himself from the table and padded toward Nadia. In the desperate weeks to come, he would ask himself more than once whether he would have made a different decision if he hadn’t been so damned hungry.

Wells awoke to Exley’s hands on his back, sliding across the base of his spine, over his hips, up to the thick muscles in his shoulders. Outside their bedroom the sky was dark, no sign of dawn in the winter night.

“Time is it?”

“Five-thirty.”

“Have you been awake long?”

“Hush, John.”

He tried to turn on his side, but she pressed him down.

“I’m treating you. Close your eyes.”

Wells closed his eyes and tried to float, though weightlessness had never come easy to him. Except on his motorcycle on a good clean road. And hiking through the Bitterroots growing up, leaves crunching under his feet, the comforting weight of a rifle on his shoulder, the sky blue and wide and cloudless, the tips of the mountains painted with snow that never melted. Above him eagles and falcons circling, spreading their wings to catch thermals. Exley’s hands pulled him up and Wells left his gun behind and rose to meet the raptors. He made great mile-wide loops, peering at the mountains below until the sky turned black. He wondered what had happened to Exley. But no matter where he turned, she was gone.