United States to armies all over the developing world. His father, Frederick, had gotten into the business in the late 1950s, recognizing that the newly liberated nations of Africa would need weapons and that Europe had millions of guns left over from World War II, moldering in warehouses.
The business took off in 1975, when Frederick brokered a deal between France and a young Iraqi dictator named Saddam Hussein. By then, Kowalski was at Oxford, studying political science. A few months before Kowalski graduated, Frederick asked when he would join the firm.
“Never,” Kowalski said.
Frederick looked at his son with the cool dark eyes that were a family trait.
Kowalski felt the need to explain, though he didn’t want to offend his father by questioning the morality of the business. “I want to make my own success.”
Frederick raised his hand. “Pierre.
But his father was right. After five years of working in Paris for Lazard Freres, the investment bank, Kowalski had grown supremely bored. These pompous executives in their hand-tailored suits thought they ruled the world. But the men who really ruled, the generals who held whole nations in their grip, didn’t pay lawyers to squabble at each other. When they saw something they wanted, they took it. If they made a mistake, they didn’t get a fat severance package and a new job a few months later. They paid with their lives.
And those men — they came to his father for help. All over Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Frederick Kowalski was treated like royalty. Pierre was disgusted, too, with the hypocrisy he saw every day in business. These companies, with their trade associations and their codes of ethics, as if they cared about anything but their profits. At least the Africans didn’t hide their greed. On his fifth anniversary, just as his boss at Lazard told him he was on track to become a partner, Pierre handed in his resignation.
Two days later, he was back in Zurich. When he appeared at his father’s office on Bahnhofstrasse, Frederick smiled.
“Come to join me?”
Pierre nodded, feeling slightly abashed. Until now he hadn’t considered the possibility that he might have waited too long, that his father might be angry at him, might even reject him.
“What took so long?” Frederick said.
The business became Kowalski
Like his father, he ran the business on a few simple principles. He never promised customers weapons he couldn’t deliver. He never stored his merchandise on Swiss soil. He always made sure he was paid up front. He never worked twice with anyone who tried to burn him.
And he never made threats he didn’t intend to keep.
Several months before, John Wells had attacked Kowalski at a rented mansion in East Hampton, New York. Wells had. Kowalski didn’t even like to remember what Wells had done. Handcuffed him, shocked him with a stun gun, covered his head with duct tape. He was lucky he hadn’t suffocated. Wells had worn a mask, but Kowalski had learned his identity a few weeks later. Now he wanted revenge, the revenge that he had promised the masked man in his bedroom that night. On Wells, and Exley, too, who’d helped Wells.
A HAND TOUCHED his shoulder, snapping him out of that summer night. Nadia stood beside him. “Pierre, are you all right? Your face was so. black.”
He kissed her cheek. “Too much cottage cheese.”
A light knock on the door. Anatoly Tarasov, Kowalski’s head of security, a former Russian Spetsnaz officer, entered. A walking tornado, capable of extraordinary violence.
“Have you finished?” Kowalski said to Nadia.
“Yes.” Her lunch had consisted of two pieces of melon and a boiled egg, and yet she seemed satisfied. He couldn’t imagine how.
“Then wait for me in the drawing room. Today we’ll go for a shop.”
She kissed him and glided out. Tarasov waited until she was gone, then closed the door and sat beside him. “You like her.”
“She’s sweet,” Kowalski said. “Sweeter than most of them.”
“Or a better actress.”
“Perhaps. Have you news on our friend?”
“You won’t wish to hear it. The CIA has two teams, two men each, watching the house where he and the woman live.”
“Around the clock?”
“Around the clock. One team in front, one in back. There’s a third in plainclothes that comes and goes.”
“What about their vehicles?” Putting a bomb underneath a car was the easiest way to assassinate someone.
“Garaged. They travel to work in separate cars most days. The woman drives a Dodge minivan, and Wells a Subaru. Sometimes he rides a motorcycle, but not in the winter. Two of the guards follow in a chase car.”
“Are their cars armored?”
“It doesn’t seem so. At Langley, they’re untouchable, naturally. They also have a private office in a place called Tyson’s Corner. But they spend most of their time at the agency now. And the private building has its own security. One of the CIA guards has a post outside the door and the other watches the cars. There’s a third guard in their office.”
“Could we reach them there?”
“They never open the door when there’s anyone else on the floor, and there are cameras on the corridor.”
“How about the elevator?”
“Such a confined space isn’t ideal. If Wells gets a hand up—”
“I understand.” They would have only one chance at Wells and Exley. Kowalski didn’t want to waste it.
“Also, the guards at the house have noticed our scout.”
Kowalski’s stomach began to ache. “They’ve blown it already? Markov said these were his best men.”
Ivan Markov was recently retired from the FSB. Kowalski had given Markov $2 million up front to kill Wells and Exley, with the promise of another $3 million for a successful job.
“Nothing’s blown, Pierre. Our man was asked an idle question by the agents outside the house. He gave an idle answer. Nothing more. We shouldn’t underestimate the CIA. Perhaps they cannot catch bin Laden, but they are perfectly capable of watching a house in Washington.”
For a moment Kowalski wondered whether he ought to call off this assassination. He had known all along that Wells and Exley were not ideal targets. They were high-profile, and Wells was more than capable of defending himself. Still, Kowalski had figured that Markov’s men would finish the task quickly.
A few days of watching, then a few pounds of explosive attached to the undercarriage of Wells’s car. A three-man team. No elaborate surveillance required. And when he’d given Markov Wells’s name, the general had actually smiled. The Russians didn’t like Americans much these days, Kowalski thought.
But now. this job was turning messy.
“What do you think?” he asked Tarasov.
“I think that once you begin a mission like this. ” Tarasov trailed off. But Kowalski understood. The Russians respected strength. Bombings, poisonings, assassinations, Siberan prison camps — Russian leaders used every weapon at their disposal to remain in power, without apology. If Kowalski backed off, Markov would not be impressed. He would pass the word to his old bosses in the Kremlin: Pierre Kowalski has gone soft. The Russians
