He wasn’t even having fun anymore. Getting this drunk was work. Every morning he felt as though someone had taken a hammer to his skull. Soon enough the feeling would be more than metaphorical, he knew. He’d pick the wrong bar, the wrong whore, the wrong hotel. Wind up with a knife between the ribs. Like he cared. He was a wanted man. Even down here he’d been in the papers. A few days ago, he’d felt the shock of seeing his picture on television. A celebrity at last. He’d rather die in a hotel room in Caracas than rot in solitary in the Supermax.
Of course, somewhere in his mind he had a plan. Not so much a plan as a single word: Cuba. The Cubans would love him. Anything to piss off the American government. Heck, even the Venezuelans might refuse to extradite him. They hated America too. But making his presence officially known would turn him into a bargaining chip, to be traded in the moment his hosts wanted better relations with Washington. For now he’d decided to lie low.
And with that thought, he lost his balance and toppled sideways, knocking his beers over in the process. A golden river of beer ran down the bar.
“!Puta!”the bartender said. “Out!”
“Show a little mercy, hombre,” Robinson said. “I just wanted a cocktail.”
But the bartender said nothing more, only pointed at Robinson, then the door, like God evicting Adam from Eden. Robinson shuffled onto the narrow street. He checked his watch—9:40. How could it be only 9:40? He had hours to drink away before he’d be exhausted enough to pass out.
A hand touched his shoulder. To his right stood a brown woman in a denim miniskirt. She had legs like a linebacker’s. A fading shiner poked through the makeup under her tired eyes. The girl of his dreams.
“Date, mister?” Her breath stank of pisco, a grape brandy that burned like turpentine. Even Robinson avoided it.
“You had me at hello.” He took her arm and away they went.
THE STYLIST BRUSHED A HAND over Pierre Kowalski’s head. “You see, Monsieur Kowalski,” he said. “I promised the blemish was only temporary. Et voilà. Use the ointment and all will be well.”
Indeed, Kowalski’s hair was growing back, sparsely and cautiously, like grass after a long winter. As a boy, he’d been handsome. He still thought of himself that way, despite his triple chin, C-cup breasts, and size 50 waist. But no one could convince him his skull looked good at the moment. When the duct tape had come off, it had taken most of his hair with it. He looked like a chemotherapy patient, only fatter and less sympathetic.
“Fine, J.P.,” Kowalski said. He waved a hand. The stylist flounced out of Kowalski’s office, a square wood-paneled room decorated with famous weapons. Rommel’s personal Luger. A saber that Napoleon had carried.
Alone now, Kowalski stared out at Lake Zurich and the mountains behind it. Peace at last.
But not for long. Steps outside his office. Fast young steps in high heels. Natalia, his current favorite. “Not now,” he said, not bothering to turn around, as she walked in.
“Pierre—”
“Not now. If you need a check, tell Jacques.”
She walked off.
Kowalski had nearly gone into hiding after the Chinese announced that they’d arrested Li Ping for unspecified “crimes against the state.” He’d guessed, correctly, that the United States had discovered how Li had used him to help the Taliban and passed the evidence to Li’s enemies on the Standing Committee.
For two anxious days Kowalski wondered whether the United States would come after him too. Then he heard from friends at Langley and the Pentagon that he was safe. Both America and China wanted to pretend that their confrontation had never happened. China apologized for torpedoing the Decatur—Beijing called the attack a “tragic and unnecessary accident”—and agreed to pay $1 billion in reparations to the United States and sailors on the ship. The Chinese also ended their nuclear aid to Iran, and — in a move that offered ironic proof of China’s new military prowess — gave the American navy a fully functioning Typhoon torpedo to reverse-engineer. In turn, the United States was paying millions of dollars to the families of the students who had drowned when the Decatur rammed the fishing trawler. Neither side wanted to dredge up Kowalski’s involvement and admit that Li had funded the Taliban. After all, Li had manipulated the United States as badly as his own government. More disclosure would only mean more embarrassment for both sides.
KOWALSKI KNEW HE OUGHT to let the matter rest there. He’d escaped retribution. As a rule, he prided himself on staying above the fray. His vainglorious clients fought the wars. He sold tools, nothing more. But this time reason failed him. Presidents and generals begged him for the weapons they needed. He was no one’s servant, no one’s whore. No one touched him without his permission.
Yet when he closed his eyes each night he felt thick silver tape across his face, hands squeezing his neck tight. Insolence. Beyond insolence. A stone in his shoe, irritating him with every step. He couldn’t allow it. He needed to know the name of the man and the woman who’d done this to him.
Of course, they worked for the United States. The arrest of Li Ping proved it. But even his best sources, two former CIA agents who now ran a boutique lobbying firm in Reston, hadn’t been able to crack the secrecy surrounding the China case. Every morning the question gnawed at Kowalski. Then Anatoly Tarasov, a former KGB agent who ran his security, found the answer.
“We want to know who attacked you in East Hampton. Why are we asking in Washington? Let us ask the police in East Hampton.”
Kowalski knew Tarasov was right. They should have realized before. Of course the police had known all along. That was why they’d taken so long to get to the mansion that night. Why they hadn’t pushed harder to keep him and his men inside the country.
“I don’t mean ask them directly—”
“I understand, Anatoly.”
And after two days of drinking beers with off-duty East Hampton cops, a Long Island private detective found the answer that had eluded Kowalski’s expensive informants in Washington.
The detective passed the name to the lawyer in Queens who’d hired him. From Queens it jumped over the East River to a white-shoe law firm in Manhattan, made a U-turn, and crossed the Atlantic, landing at the offices of an investigator in Geneva. Only then, properly washed, did John Wells’s name arrive at Kowalski’s Zurich château.
KOWALSKI HEARD SOFT STEPS APPROACHING. He turned as Tarasov walked in. The Russian was under six feet, close to two hundred pounds, with a cruiserweight’s broken nose and solid chest, which he showed off under tightly tailored white shirts. He had a nasty temper, especially when he was drunk. Kowalski had seen him beat a bouncer in a Moscow club nearly to death after the bouncer stared too long at his girlfriend. He was a very good head of security, and Kowalski paid him enough to assure his loyalty.
“John Wells,” Tarasov said. “I’m very sorry I didn’t get to meet him.” Tarasov had stayed in Zurich to mind the estate when Kowalski went to the Hamptons.
“As am I, Anatoly.”
“So what would you like me to do?”
Kowalski shook his head. He couldn’t possibly go after John Wells. And yet. No. It was madness.
Tarasov stood next to Kowalski. Side by side they looked at the placid lake. Tarasov tilted his head forward and wrinkled his smashed-up nose like a pit bull that wanted off his leash. “John Wells,” he said again.