James PATTERSON - The Big Bad Wolf

‘Unaccustomed as I am to having things go our way,’ Pollack began and got a laugh, ‘I’ll take this latest development and offer humble thanks to the gods that be. This is a very good break for us. As many of you know, the Wolf has been a key target on our Red Mafiya list, probably the key target. He’s rumored to be into everything – weapon sales, extortion, sports fixing, prostitution, the white-slave market. His name seems to be Pasha Sorokin and he seems to have learned his trade on the outskirts of Moscow. I say seems, because nothing is a sure thing when it comes to this guy. Somehow he maneuvered his way into the KGB, where he lasted three years. He then became a pakhan in the Russian Underworld, a boss, but decided to emigrate to America. Where he completely disappeared.

‘We actually believed that he was dead for a while. Apparently not, at least if we can believe Mr Potter. Can we believe him?’ Pollack gestured in my direction.

I stayed in my seat. I knew I’d already drawn enough attention.

‘I think we can believe Potter. He knows that we need him; he definitely understands what he has to offer us – a possible lead to Sorokin. He also warned me that the Wolf will come after us . His mission is to be the top gangster in the world. According to Potter, that’s what the Wolf is.’

‘So why the white-slave market?’ one of the ASACs asked. ‘There’s not that much money in it. It’s risky. What’s the point? Sounds like bullshit to me. Maybe we’ve been had.’

‘We don’t know why he acts the way he does. It’s troubling, I agree. Maybe it’s his roots, his patterns,’ an agent from the New York office’s Russia group spoke. ‘He’s always had his fingers in whatever he could. It goes back to his days on the streets of Moscow. Also, the Wolf likes women himself. He’s kinky.’

‘I don’t think he likes them,’ said a woman agent from D.C. ‘Honestly, Jeff.’

The New York agent continued. ‘There’s a rumor that he walked into a club in Brighton Beach about a week ago and wasted one of his ex-wives. That’s his style. He once sold a couple of his female cousins from the home country on the slave market. The thing to remember about Pasha Sorokin is that he has no fears. He expected to die young in Russia. He’s surprised that he’s still alive. He likes it on the edge.’

Stacy Pollack took the floor again. ‘Let me tell you a couple of other stories to give you a sense of who we’re dealing with. It seems that Pasha manipulated the CIA to get him out of Russia originally. That’s right, the CIA transported him here. He was supposed to give them all sorts of information, but he never delivered. When he first got to New York, he sold babies out of an apartment in Brooklyn. According to the stories, in one day alone, he sold six babies to suburban couples for ten thousand dollars apiece. More recently he swindled a Miami bank out of two hundred million. He likes what he does, and he’s obviously good at it. And now we know an Internet site he visits. We may even be able to get on the site. We’re working on it. We’re as close to the Wolf as we’ve ever been. Or so we like to believe.’

The Wolf was in Philadelphia that night, birthplace of a nation, though not his nation. He never showed it but he was anxious, and he liked the emotional charge it gave him.

It made him feel more alive. He also liked it that he was invisible, that no one knew who he was, that he could go anywhere, do anything he wanted to do. Tonight, he was watching the Flyers play Montreal at the First Union Center in Philly. The hockey game was one he had arranged to have fixed, but nothing had happened so far, which was why he was anxious, but also very angry.

As the second period was winding down the score was 2–1. Flyers! He was seated at center ice, four rows back behind the penalty boxes, close to the action. To distract himself he watched the crowd – a mix of yuppies in business suits and loosened ties and blue-collar types in oversized Flyers jerseys. Everybody seemed to have plastic tubs of nachos and twenty-ounce cups of beer.

His eyes shifted back to the game. Players flashed around the rink at dazzling speeds, making a slashing sound as the blades of their skates tore into the ice. C’mon, c’mon. Do something! he urged.

Then suddenly he saw Ilia Teptev out of position. There was the shotgun crash of ninety miles an hour slapshot as it left the stick. Goal – Canadians! The crowd erupted with insults: ‘You suck, Ilia! You throwing this game?’

Then the announcer came over the PA. ‘Canadian goal by number eighteen, Stevie Bowen. Time of goal, nineteen minutes and thirty-two seconds.’

The period ended like that, 2–2. The Zamboni chugged out resurfacing the ice between periods. More beer and more nachos were consumed. And the resurfaced ice became a slick glass sheet once again.

For the next sixteen minutes, the game was knotted at 2–2. The Wolf wanted to garrote Teptev and Dobrushkin. Then the Canadian center, Bowen, plowed through a half-hearted check and burst into the Flyer zone. He dropped a pass along the right boards. A shot! Wide! Recovered by Alexei Dobrushkin – who settled behind his own net with the puck.

He skated to his right – then snapped a pass across the ice – across the goal mouth – and it was picked off by Bowen. Bowen slapped the puck into the corner of the net.

Goal – Canadians!

The Wolf smiled for the first time that night. Then he turned to his companion, his seven-year-old son, Dimitri, which would have surprised everyone who supposedly knew him.

‘Let’s go, Dimmie, the game’s over. The Canadians will win. Just like I told you they would. Didn’t I tell you?’

Dimitri wasn’t convinced about the outcome, but he knew better than to argue with his father. ‘You were right, Daddy,’ said the boy. ‘You’re always right.’

That night at eleven-thirty I planned to enter the Wolf’s Den for the first time. I needed the help of Mr Potter, though. Homer Taylor had been moved to Washington for the purpose. I needed his eyes .

The two of us sat close together, Taylor in cuffs, in an operation room on the fifth floor of the Hoover. The professor was nervous, and I guessed that he was having second thoughts about our arrangement with respect to the Wolf. ‘Don’t think that he won’t get to you. He’s relentless. He’s crazy ,’ he warned me again.

‘I’ve avoided crazy men before,’ I said. ‘We still have a deal?’

‘We do. What choice do I have? But you’ll regret it. So will I, I’m afraid.’

‘We’re going to protect you.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘So you say.’

The night had been a busy one already. The top computer experts at the Bureau had tried password-cracking software to get into the Wolf’s Den. So far, everything had failed. So had a ‘brute force’ attack that can often decode encrypted data by feeding in combinations of letters and numbers. Nothing had worked. We needed Mr Potter to get inside. We needed his eyes. The blood-vessel patterns of the retina and the pattern of flecks on the iris offered unique methods of identification. Scanning involved a low-intensity light source and an optical coupler.

Potter set one eye up to the device and then focused on a red dot. An impression was taken and then sent on. Seconds later, we had access.

This is Potter , I typed as Taylor was led out of the operations room. He would be transferred to Lorton Federal Prison for the night, then taken back to New England. I put him out of my mind, but I wouldn’t be able to forget his warning about the Wolf.