It was Bolden’s job to keep his ear to the ground for news about companies that were looking to be sold and whisper his discoveries in his clients’ ears. The companies could be publicly traded or privately held. Textiles, finance, consumer goods, or oil. The only thing they had in common was their size. The private equity firms Bolden worked with didn’t buy anything valued at less than a billion dollars.
The special-investments division was the equivalent of the all-star team. Shorter hours. Fewer clients. World-class boondoggles. And of course, the bonuses. No one earned more than the fat cats in SID. And for good reason: The tight relations forged with their clients resulted in at least one executive leaving HW each year for the greener, and infinitely higher-paying, pastures of private equity. A partner at HW stood to earn anywhere from five to twenty-five million dollars. The same position at a sponsor paid five times that. Real money.
“You’re in late,” announced Althea soberly, her suspicious brown eyes giving him the once-over.
Bolden set her coffee on the table, then slipped by her into his office and took the hanger off the door. “Shut the door,” he said.
“In or out?” she asked, meaning should she come in or stay out.
“In.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, stepping into his office. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’ve got a small problem. And I need your help.”
Althea closed the door. “Uh-oh.”
14
It was five minutes past eight. The telephone repairman looked up from his wristwatch and watched as the night doorman left the building and crossed the street toward the corner of Sutton Place and Fifty-fifth. The old Irishman was weaving slightly and the repairman knew it wasn’t just from a long night on the job. He waited until the doorman had disappeared down the block, then left the cozy, heated confines of his truck and entered the lobby of 47 Sutton Place.
Waving to the day man, he was quick to present the work order for his examination. He was dressed in a Verizon uniform. A tool belt hung low on his waist. All the same, he did his best to avoid eye contact and spoke with his face lowered, as if, despite his size, he was congenitally shy. He didn’t want the doorman to spend too much time checking out his swollen nose, or the fresh cuts that striped his chin and his neck. After some small talk, he took the elevator to the basement and checked the junction box where the phone lines entered the building. It took him less than a minute to isolate the line for apartment 16B. The eavesdropping device he’d installed a few weeks earlier remained in place. All calls were transmitted to a base station cached up the block, and relayed via satellite to the organization’s op center in D.C.
Leaving his tools on the floor, he retraced his steps to the elevator and rode to the sixteenth floor. The two Schlage locks were easily defeated. He was inside Thomas Bolden’s apartment a minute later. He removed his work belt and set it on the floor, then slipped on a pair of surgical latex gloves. Paper “galoshes” stretched over his boots prevented the Vibram soles from squeaking on the parquet floor. Carefully, he wiped down the door frame and doorknob for fingerprints.
Meee-owww.
Wolf spun on a heel, a double-edged assault knife bared between his knuckles. Perched on the kitchen counter sat the biggest damn tabby cat he’d ever seen. He lowered his knife and felt his heart rate slow. The cat raised a paw in greeting and cocked its head.
“Jesus F. Christ,” mumbled Wolf as he slid the knife into its sheath. No one had told him about the cat. He spent a minute petting it, though as a rule he didn’t like cats. No loyalty. That was their problem.
He was born Walter Rodrigo Ramirez in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, but he’d called himself Wolf for as long as he could remember. To his way of thinking, a wolf was the noblest creature on earth. He hunted only when he needed food. He looked after his family first. He was loyal to the pack. And he was the baddest motherfucker in the woods.
A full-color, full-face tattoo of a wolf, ready to pounce, covered every square inch of Wolf’s back. If you looked deep in the wolf’s eye, you could see his prey, a hunter standing with his hands in the air. The hunter was pure evil. He, Walt Ramirez, was the wolf.
Protect the weak. Defend the innocent. Strike down thine enemies and vanquish all evil by the right hand of God.
That was Wolf’s credo.
And Bolden was at the top of his list. Bolden was the hunter. Bolden was evil. Soon, he would have his hands raised, begging for mercy. None would be shown. No quarter would be given. No one humiliated the wolf.
Beginning at the point farthest from the entry and working his way back, Wolf searched the apartment. Bathroom. Bedroom. Living room. Kitchen. For a big man, he moved quietly and with sure feet. He had learned his trade at installations with names like the Covert Warfare Training Center and the Special Warfare School. He had honed it to a razor’s edge in places like Kuwait, Bosnia, Colombia, and Afghanistan during sixteen years of military service. His specialty was elegantly termed “enemy extraction.” Less elegantly, he was known as a body snatcher.
It had been three years since he’d worn a uniform, yet he had never left his country’s service. At the urging of his superior officer, he’d retired from active duty to work for a company with close ties to the top ranks of government. The company was called Scanlon Corporation, and it did much of the work that the armed forces could not be seen to do itself. The pay was four times what he’d earned as a sergeant first class, and the company offered a 401(k). There were also excellent health-care benefits and a $250,000 life insurance policy. Taken together, it went a long way toward compensating for the retirement on full pay he’d been four years from earning. Wolf had a wife and three kids under the age of seven to keep clothed and fed. Most important, the work was essential to keeping America strong at home and abroad.
For the past two years, Wolf had hunted terrorists in the purple mountains of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the lawless borderlands that separated the two. Finding a bad guy, he’d call in his team of “wolverines,” set a perimeter, and hunker down until nightfall. Out came the iPod, in went the earbuds, and on went Metallica. When Wolf hit a target, he was fuckin’ pumped, mainlining adrenaline.
But capturing the bad guys was only half the job. The other half was interrogating them. Time was critical. Ten minutes meant a player escaping or being captured. It meant an American soldier living or dying. That was the way Wolf saw things. Black and white. He didn’t hold with any of this bullshit about torture not working. It worked, all right. A man would give up his infant daughter when he was being skinned alive. You cannot lie when a superheated Bowie knife is flaying you strip by strip. Sometimes, he still heard the screams, but they didn’t bother him too much.
Duty. Honor. Country.
That was also his credo.
America had given his father, a Mexican immigrant with no money, no education, and no skills, a chance. Now his papa owned a successful dry-cleaning business in El Paso, and had just opened a second store across the border in Ciudad Juárez. He drove a red Cadillac. American doctors had operated on his sister’s cleft palate, leaving hardly a scar and giving her a beautiful face. Now she was married and had children of her own. The American military had taught him the value of sacrifice for a greater cause. It had made him into a man. The day Wolf received his American citizenship was the proudest of his life. He prayed for the President every morning and every evening.