James Patterson - London Bridges

The Wolf kept pumping his legs and seemed almost to be running on thin air, but then he started to drop. His arms reached out toward the edge of the other building. His fingers reached for the roof.

Mahoney and I ran up to the edge of our building. Could the Wolf get out of this one? Somehow, he always found a way. Except this time-I knew I'd hit him in the throat. He had to be drowning in his own blood.

"Fall, you fuck!" Ned screamed at him.

"He's not going to make it," I said.

And he didn't. The Russian's body fell, and he didn't fight it, didn't make a sound, never screamed out. Not a sound came from him.

Mahoney yelled down at him. "Hey, Wolf! Hey, Wolfman! Go to hell!"

The fall looked as if it had been shot in slow motion, but then he hit the ground in the alleyway between the buildings. Hit it hard. I stared down at the Wolf's mangled body, the bandaged face, and I felt satisfied for the first time in a long while. I felt fulfilled and whole. We'd gotten him, and he deserved to die like that, squashed like a bug on the pavement.

Then Ned Mahoney started to clap and whoop and dance around like a complete madman. I didn't join in, but I knew what he was feeling. The man down there deserved this fate, if anyone ever did. Stone-cold dead in an alleyway.

"He didn't scream," I finally said. "Couldn't even give us that."

Mahoney shrugged his wide shoulders. "I don't care if he did or not. Here we are up here, there he is down with the garbage. Maybe there's some justice after all. Well, maybe not," Ned said, and laughed, putting his arm around me and squeezing.

"We won," I said to him. "Damnit, we finally won, Neddy."

We won!

The next morning I flew back to Quantico in a Bell helicopter with Ned Mahoney and some of his stellar crew. They were celebrating the Wolf's demise at HRT over in Quantico, but I wanted to get home. I'd told Nana to keep the kids away from school because we were celebrating.

We won!

I let myself decompress for some of the car ride from Quantico to Washington. When I finally got to the house, when I could see it up ahead, I started to feel closer to normal, almost myself, or at least somebody I recognized. No one had come out onto the porch yet, so Nana and the kids hadn't seen me arrive. I decided to surprise them.

We won!

The front door wasn't locked, and I went inside. A few lights were on, but I didn't see anybody yet. Maybe they're going to surprise me?

Keeping very quiet, I made my way back to the kitchen. The lights were on-plates and silverware had been laid out for lunch-but nobody was there, either.

Kind of strange. Just a little bit off kilter. Rosie the cat came meowing from somewhere, rubbing up against me.

Finally I called out, "I'm home. Your daddy's home. Where is everybody? I'm home from the wars."

I hurried upstairs, but nobody was there. I checked for notes that might have been left for me. Nothing.

I ran downstairs. I looked out back, then up and down Fifth Street in front of the house. Not a soul in sight anywhere. Where were Nana and the kids? They knew I was coming.

I went back inside and made a few phone calls to places Nana and the kids might be. But Nana almost always left a note when she went out with the kids, even for an hour or so, and they'd been expecting me.

Suddenly I felt sick. I waited another half an hour before I contacted some people at the Hoover Building, starting with Tony Woods in the director's office. In the meantime, I'd looked around the house again, found no sign of any kind of disturbance.

A team of technical people arrived, and shortly afterward one of them approached me in the kitchen. "There are footprints out in the yard, probably male. Some dirt was recently tracked into the house. Could have been repairmen, or a delivery service, but it's definitely fresh."

That was all they found that afternoon, not another clue, not one.

Sampson and Billie came over in the evening, and we sat together and waited, at least for a call, something to go on, something to give me hope. But no call came, and sometime after two in the morning, Sampson finally went home. Billie had left about ten.

I stayed up all night-but nothing, no contact. No word at all about Nana and the kids. I talked to Jamilla on my cell phone, and it helped, but not enough. Nothing could have helped that night.

Finally, early in the morning, I stood at the front door bleary-eyed and stared up and down the street. It occurred to me that this had always been my worst fear, maybe everybody's worst fear, to be all alone, with nobody, and to have those you love the most in terrible danger.

We lost.

The e-mail came on the fifth day. I almost couldn't bear to read it. I thought that I might throw up as I stared down at the words.

Alex, I read.

Surprise, dear boy.

I am actually not as cruel or heartless a person as you might think I am. The really cruel ones, the truly unreasonable ones, the ones we should all fear, are mostly in your own United States and in Western Europe. The money I have now will help stop them, help stop their greed. Do you believe that? You should. Why not? Why the hell not?

I thank you for what you did for me, and for Hana, Daniela, and Jozef. We owe you something, and I pay my debts. To me, "you are a gnat, but at least you are a gnat." Your family will be returned today, but now we're even. You will never see me again. I don't want to see you, either. If I do, you will die. That is a promise.

Klára Cernohosska,

Wolf

I couldn't let it go, couldn't and wouldn't. The Wolf had invaded my house, taken my family, even though they had been returned unharmed. It could happen again.

Over the next few weeks I tested, then strained, the new cooperative relationship between the Bureau and the CIA. I got Ron Burns to put even more stress on the situation. I traveled out to CIA headquarters in Langley more than a dozen times, talked to everybody from junior analysts to the new director, James Dowd. I wanted to know about Thomas Weir and the KGB agent he'd helped bring out of Russia. I needed to know everything that they knew. Was that possible? I doubted it, but that didn't stop me from trying.

Then one day I was called up to Burns's office. When I arrived, I found Burns and the new CIA director waiting for me in his conference room. Something was up. This was going to be good-or very, very bad.

"Come on in, Alex," said Burns, cordial, as he often was. "We need to talk."

I stepped inside and sat across from the two heavies, both in shirttails, looking as if they had just come out of a long and difficult work session. About what? The Wolf? Something else that I didn't want to hear about?

"Director Dowd wants to say a few things to you," said Burns.

"I do, Alex," said Dowd, a New York lawyer who'd been an unexpected choice for CIA director. He had started in the New York Police Department, then gone into a lucrative private practice for several years. According to rumors, there were things that none of us knew, or wanted to know, about Dowd and his years in private practice.

"I'm just finding my way around out at Langley," he said, "and actually, this exercise has helped. We've spent a great deal of time and effort digging into everything about Director Weir."

Dowd looked over at Burns. "Just about all of it is good, an excellent record of service. But this kind of digging into old records isn't appreciated by some of the 'old warrior' types out in Virginia. Frankly, I don't give a shit what they think.

"A Russian by the name of Anton Christyakov was recruited and then brought out of Russia in 1990. This man was the Wolf. We're fairly sure about that. He was transported to England, where he met with a few agents, including Martin Lodge. Then he was moved to a house outside Washington. His identity was known only to a handful of people. Most of them are dead now, including Weir.