The Silent Man

driver in the cars behind the shooter—

And missed.

The rider turned toward Wells and fired. The round smashed through the van’s window—

And missed.

Wells sprang left, looking for a cleaner shot, a shot that wouldn’t be blocked by the van’s second row of seats. The rider reached under his jacket with his left hand. Wells fired, separated from the guy only by the width of the van—

The 9-millimeter slug from Wells’s Glock caught the guy full in the chest, tore open his leather jacket. Its force jerked him back, standing him upright. But he didn’t go down. Bulletproof vest, Wells thought. He ducked as the guy lifted his pistol and fired two shots, wild and high, then threw down the pistol and again reached into his jacket.

Wells slowed himself. Last chance. If he missed this time, the guy would toss a grenade under the van and cook Exley.

He aimed carefully through the van and squeezed the trigger.

Crack. Through the van, Wells saw the rider’s face-plate shatter. The guy fell backward, his helmet cracking against the roof of the BMW behind him, dead already.

WELLS RAN AROUND THE VAN to the driver’s side. Exley lay in the front seat, moaning, slumped forward.

“John.”

“Just stay still.”

Already he could hear sirens. Behind them, the Suburban crackled and burned, throwing off gobs of smoke that stank of gasoline and charred flesh. The agents inside were surely dead. Five dead here this morning. As long as it wasn’t six.

He didn’t see the wound. He pulled up her sweater. There it was, blooming red on her white shirt, the right side, just above the waist. Maybe the liver, Wells thought. If it was the liver, they’d better get her to a hospital quick before she bled out. He pressed down on it and she moaned again. Her warm blood seeped between his fingers. A bad one.

He put his hand to her cheek and listened to the sirens draw close. And he wondered who’d done this to them. He wondered who would pay.

6

BLACK SEA

In the dark, Grigory Farzadov couldn’t see the waves. But he could hear them, banging against the hull like living beasts. Thump. Thump. Thump-thoomp. In the last hour, their intensity had steadily increased. And yet Grigory didn’t mind. He’d grown up thousands of kilometers from the ocean. He’d never seen the Pacific or the Atlantic. He didn’t even know how to swim. But all his life he’d envied those lucky souls who lived on the water. Now he was one of them. Sort of.

His cousin wasn’t so sanguine. As the Tambulz Dream—the little fishing trawler that had been their home for a day — rocked sideways, Tajid laid a hand on his stomach and gripped the dirty steel rail that ran around the cabin. He’d already vomited once. Meanwhile Yusuf sat in a corner, cursing under his breath, his eyes dead and flat as ever. Grigory was sure that if he looked hard enough he would see smoke coming off Yusuf ’s head, and smell the faint stink of sulfur.

Though maybe the smell was just the Black Sea, a famously dank waterway. The sea lay between six countries — Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine — and had possessed a bad reputation for at least three thousand years. Technically, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean formed a single body of water, linked through the Bosphorus, the narrow strait that divided Istanbul. But the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean had little in common with the Black Sea. The complex currents that connected the two left the Black Sea’s depths a toxic stew, thick with salt and hydrogen sulfide, poisonous to fish.

The sea’s surface was hardly more pleasant, regularly racked by storms powerful enough to split oil tankers in half. Even so, anchovy and sturgeon lived in the sea’s upper layer, and fishing trawlers set out each day to catch what they could. This ship was one of them, a simple vessel, about a hundred feet long, its hull a faded blue, its one-story cabin white. Grigory knew nothing about boats, but even he could see that this one had seen better days. One of its cabin windows was missing, replaced with wooden planks. The engines growled madly when the captain pushed the throttle forward. Besides Grigory, Yusuf, and Tajid, the trawler carried a crew of three, the captain and two younger men who seemed to be his sons.

More than that, Grigory didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure where they were headed, though he assumed somewhere on the Turkish coast. Yusuf wasn’t saying, and Grigory had learned the hard way not to ask.

STILL, their escape had gone smoothly so far, Grigory had to admit. When he arrived at his apartment building at 5 a.m. on the night of the theft, the sun still hours from rising, there was Yusuf, sitting in an old Nissan sedan. As soon as Grigory parked, Yusuf was at his window.

“You have them.”

“A pleasure to see you, too.”

“You have them.”

“It was more trouble than I expected.” Grigory was enjoying himself now.

“If you don’t have them, you’d better tell me now.”

“Of course.”

“Of course, you have them? Or of course you don’t? Grigory, I swear—”

“They’re in the trunk.”

To Grigory’s surprise, Yusuf clapped his hands. “Congratulations, Grigory.” Yusuf pulled the Volga’s door open and tugged Grigory out. Grigory wondered whether the little Arab planned to cut his throat. Instead, Yusuf hugged him, wrapping his arms around Grigory’s bulk like a circus clown trying to saddle an elephant.

“Ready to go?”

“My bag is upstairs.”

“Then get it.”

Grigory hadn’t found much in his apartment worth taking. In a cheap nylon bag, he’d packed a half-dozen books, two pornographic DVDs starring the American Jenna Jamison, a few shirts and sweaters and long underwear, and both of his chess sets, his good wooden one and a little magnetic travel set. He’d taken his passport, though he couldn’t see what use it would be. Soon enough he’d have a new name and nationality. Or be dead.

Grigory rode the creaking elevator downstairs for the final time and tossed the bag into the backseat of the Volga. Yusuf grabbed his arm. “Show me, Grigory.”

Grigory popped the trunk of the Volga and moved aside the junk to reveal the toolboxes. Yusuf flipped open the boxes and stood in silence over the trunk. “They don’t look like much,” he said at last.

“What did you expect? A ticking clock? Something glowing?”

“They’re real?”

Grigory laughed, a crazy giggle that set his flabby stomach bouncing. All he’d gone through, and now this.

“They don’t impress you, Yusuf? They’re real. More real than anything else in this stupid world, I’d say.”

“All right.” Yusuf snapped the boxes closed. “We’ll put them in my car, leave this heap.”

“Whatever you like.”

They shifted the bombs to the Nissan, and Grigory threw his bag in as well. “Shall I drive?” Grigory said. “Since we’re partners now?”

“You’ll drive if I’m dead. Maybe not even then.”

“I was joking, Yusuf. You’ve heard of jokes?”