would have surprised him. These shows were all exactly the same, whispered confidences, manufactured emotion, the tiniest of struggles.
As he watched, the mole wondered what he would do if George warned him that the agency was on him. The sad truth was that he didn’t even like China all that much. He certainly didn’t want to spend the rest of his life there. And what about Janice? Would George let her come? Would she want to go? He could tell her this was the big foreign adventure she’d always wanted.
Maybe he should just disappear, head for Mexico and points south, with or without Janice. He had enough money hidden away to make a go of it, especially if he wound up someplace like Thailand, where twenty bucks got you a blow job instead of a three-minute dance. But he didn’t speak Thai. And wherever he went, he’d spend the rest of his life waiting for the knock on his door that meant the agency — or maybe the Chinese — had found him. He wasn’t sure which side scared him more.
Anyway, aside from the polygraph he had no reason to worry. He needed to relax. He’d never even met Wen Shubai. The mole reached into his briefs and massaged himself, watching the lithe California goddesses on MTV, knowing that the whiskey and the wine would keep him from what the Thai bar girls called full release, but feeling halfway decent for the first time in a month. Soon enough, he’d know where he stood. And finally he felt his eyes droop closed.
23
“YOU ALL RIGHT?” Wells said across the Escalade to Exley.
“Fine. Just do what you have to do.”
“Pull the van forward so it’s less visible. Then wipe it down. Anything you’ve touched. The wine cooler bottle too. No DNA.”
“I got it. Now go.”
Now the next step. Wells looked at his watch: 3:07 A.M. Twenty-three minutes left. He would need every one. He dumped Fred the guard onto the driveway and stepped into the Escalade. The German shepherd lay dead in the back, the dog’s skull torn in half by two rounds from Wells’s Glock, his blood pooling over the floor mats. Wells hadn’t wanted to kill the dog, but he had had no choice.
Wells tucked himself in the driver’s seat, slipped the Escalade into reverse, eased down on the gas. The big SUV tugged apart from the Sienna with the groan of metal scraping metal. A piece of the Toyota’s hood hung from the Cadillac’s grille like a battered Christmas ornament. Wells wheeled around, swung up the curving gravel driveway toward the mansion. The Escalade’s tinted glass would work in his favor now.
The mansion, a gargantuan version of a rustic Cape Cod beach house, complete with weathered shingles, stood two hundred feet from the gate. As Wells drove toward it, a man ran at the Escalade.
“Jimmy — what—”
Wells twisted the Escalade toward the guard and gunned the gas. The guard’s mouth dropped open. He reached into his waistband for his pistol, then gave up on the gun and dove awkwardly out of the way. He landed face-first on the lawn as Wells skidded the Escalade to a stop beside him and jumped out, pistol in hand.
“Down,” Wells said, not too loud. “Hands behind your back.”
The guard hesitated. Wells fired the silenced Glock, aiming a couple of feet left of the man’s head. The round dug into the turf and the guard clasped his hands behind his back. Wells cuffed the man and dragged him up, standing behind him. “What’s your name?”
“Ty.”
“Who else is awake?”
“Nobody.”
Wells jabbed the Glock in his back. “You already got your warning shot, Ty. Where’s Hank?”
Ty hesitated, then: “Second floor, watching the bedrooms.”
“Any others?”
“They’re out with Anna. Takes five guys to watch her.”
A Nextel push-to-talk phone on Ty’s waist buzzed. “Ty?” a man said.
Wells grabbed it. “Tell him a drunk driver hit the Escalade but nobody got hurt, cops are coming, you’ll be right in. Yes?”
Ty nodded. Wells held the Nextel to Ty’s mouth and pushed the talk button.
“Hank. Some drunk hit Jimmy, but everyone’s okay. Cops are on the way. I’ll be back in five.”
“Got it. Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
Wells tossed the phone away. “Good boy. One more question. Where’s he sleep? Kowalski?”
Ty hesitated. “Anna’s got the master bedroom. He’s second floor, left side, in the front.”
Wells pulled a syringe from his pocket and jabbed it in the guard’s neck. His eyes widened and he pulled against his cuffs, twisting toward Wells. Then his breathing slackened and he fell like a penitent at Wells’s feet.
One to go, Wells thought. He looked at his watch: 3:11.
WELLS JOGGED TOWARD THE BACK of the house, the direction Ty had come from, past an Olympic-sized slate-tiled pool with three diving boards — low, medium, and high. He took the granite back steps of the house two at a time. The patio doors were open. He stepped in and found himself in a gleaming kitchen. Burnished copper pots hung from the ceiling; a Viking stove stood beside a pizza oven. The house was silent. Wells stepped through a corridor lined with hundreds of bottles of wine and up the long back staircase.
Halfway up Wells slowed, pulled the second air pistol from his backpack. He’d brought two, both loaded, so he wouldn’t waste precious time on reloading the syringes. He stopped just shy of the top step. The stairs formed the stem of a T with a long corridor that ran left and right along the spine of the mansion. Wells poked his head above the top step. Sure enough, twenty feet down the hall, a man stood before a closed door, a pistol in his waistband.
“Ty,” he said urgently into his phone. “Come in, Ty… Jimmy? Dammit.” He strode toward the staircase. Wells shifted to get a clear shot with the air pistol and fired at the man, ten feet away.
Wells stepped over him to the white wooden door at the end of the corridor. Locked. He pulled his pistol and took aim at the lock. He fired twice, hearing the grunt of metal as the rounds smashed the lock, and popped the door with his shoulder.
Wells stepped through and down the hall. To his left an open door revealed an empty bedroom. On the other side, a closed door. Wells put an ear to it. Silence. At the end of the hall, another door. Wells heard a steady, heavy snore as he approached.
He opened the door and flipped on the lights. An antique silk rug, its yellows and blues dazzling, reached to the corners of the oversized bedroom. Kowalski, a fat man with little pig eyes, slept alone in the oversized four- poster bed, white silk sheets draped around him like icing on a lumpy cake. He grumbled in his sleep at the lights.
“Pierre,” Wells said.
The snoring stopped mid-breath. Kowalski jerked up his head. His eyes snapped open. With surprising quickness, he rolled toward a little nightstand—
But Wells, even quicker, stepped toward the bed and covered him with the pistol. Kowalski looked at the gun and stopped.
“Hands up,” Wells said. Kowalski raised his hands tentatively. “Reach out your arms, grab the posts with each hand.” The fat man hesitated. “Now.” Wells squeezed the Glock’s trigger, put a round in the wall beside the bed.
“Please stay calm,” Kowalski said. He lifted his arms. Wells cuffed him to the bed, one wrist to each post. The sheets sagged off Kowalski, exposing his flabby belly and oversized silk boxers. Still, his face showed no
