The Silent Man

“Come on.”

Yusuf carried a pistol to go with his knife. Grigory knew he couldn’t escape. The sea surrounded them. And he couldn’t swim. So he pushed himself up and took the two steps to the storage room. Yusuf closed the door behind them. A single bulb lit the space, which was empty aside from a rusty anchor and a few nets balled up in the corner, stinking faintly of the sea’s sulfurous brine. A fitting place to die.

“Lie down,” Yusuf said.

“Is this about the chess?” Grigory couldn’t stop himself. “We can play again. As much as you like. You’ll win, I promise.”

“Lie down. On your stomach with your hands above your head.”

“I will. But tell me. Was what you said about blackmail true, or do you plan to use them?”

“You think we’ve gone to this much trouble to give them back?”

“Then what about the video? Why did you make me do that?”

“Down, Grigory.” Yusuf’s voice was at once soothing and commanding, as if Grigory were an unruly dog who needed a firm master.

“But you don’t have the codes.”

“Lie down.”

And Grigory did. A plastic tarp covered the floor. For him. His coffin.

“Do you want to pray, Grigory? It’s never too late. Allah is always listening.”

“Fuck you and your crazy Allah.”

“I want to read you something. A poem that was written for Sheikh bin Laden.”

Grigory heard Yusuf unfold a piece of paper. Then:

How special they are who sold their souls to God,
Who smiled at Death when his sword gazed ominously at them,
Who willingly bared their chests as shields.

Grigory’s heart pounded wildly. He was dying for this? For a moment, he wanted to stand and fight. But he knew he wouldn’t even reach his knees before Yusuf finished him.

“Are you ready to bare your chest?”

Grigory turned his head and spat on the tarp. Not much of a protest and half the saliva rolled down his cheek, but at least he would die a man, not a beggar. “Fuck you, I said.”

“Your choice. Close your eyes.”

At the base of his skull, where his hair touched his neck, Grigory felt the tip of the pistol graze his skin. It pulled back, then touched him again, higher this time. Yusuf must have done this before; he was placing the pistol so Grigory’s skull wouldn’t deflect the bullet. To his surprise, the pistol was warm, not cold, and then Grigory remembered it had been lying in Yusuf’s armpit. Such a strange last thought—

THE PISTOL BARKED, and Grigory Farzadov was dead. Tajid followed. To Yusuf’s annoyance, where Grigory had accepted his fate with a certain poise, Tajid blubbered like a child. He moaned about his family and promised that if Yusuf just let him be, he would never ever say anything to anyone. It was all the same, though, all the same in the end, because Yusuf had the gun.

When he was done, Yusuf and the fishermen wound up the two bodies in the tarp and wrapped thick steel chains around them and threw the whole package into an old anchovy net. They put the luggage that Grigory and Tajid had brought with them into another net and weighted that one down as well. Then they dumped both nets overboard. Yusuf could have prayed for the cousins, but he didn’t. Grigory didn’t deserve Allah’s blessing and Tajid’s whining had irritated him. The nets sank into the water and the waves kept coming, as if Grigory and Tajid had never existed at all. And the boat and its cargo turned south and made for the Turkish coast.

7

Wells stalked the first-floor corridors of George Washington Hospital, long strides cutting through the clean white halls. He reached the double doors that marked the entrance to surgery, turned, paced back to the entrance.

The hospital was on 23rd and I, seven blocks from the shooting. The first ambulance had come in five minutes, the first cops two minutes later. Wells flashed his identification at them, shook off their questions, told them they could find him at GW if they needed him. Then he sprinted up 21st, wishing all the while that the hospital was farther away so he could keep running.

He’d made enemies of some of the most dangerous men in the world. Then he’d refused to take the most elementary precautions. He and Exley drove unarmored cars, took the same route to work most days. If he’d been on his own, his happy-fool act wouldn’t have mattered. but he wasn’t.

When he reached the hospital, Exley was already in surgery. No one would be able to tell him anything for at least an hour, the nurses said. So Wells walked the halls, expecting someone would tell him to stop moving, sit down. But the orderlies looked at his agency identification and the blood on his hands and his empty shoulder holster and didn’t say a word.

A HAND TOUCHED his shoulder. He turned to see Ellis Shafer, his boss.

“John.” Shafer gave Wells an awkward half-hug and led him to a door marked by a brass sign that said “Family Room B.” Inside, they sat on uncomfortable plastic chairs around a battered wooden table. Wells wondered at the conversations that had taken place in here, well-meaning doctors and their hard truths. I’m sorry, but we’ve tried everything.

“What happened, John?”

Wells told him.

“Was the Russian there today?” Wells had told Shafer about the strange incident with the Russian outside their house.

“They were wearing helmets.”

“You didn’t check? Afterward?”

“I had to keep pressure on her so she didn’t bleed out.”

A light knock. The door opened — Michaels, the head of Wells’s security detail. He squeezed Wells’s arm, set a laptop on the table.

“I’m sorry, John. We should have done a better job. My guys—”

“Your guys never had a chance.”

Michaels grimaced. Wells balled up his hands, dug his fingernails into his palms. “Didn’t mean that how it sounded. Just that it all went down so quick. They were pros, whoever they were.”

Michaels pulled up a photograph on the laptop. A fleshy face, black eyes shiny and dead, hair still tousled from the helmet he’d been wearing. The collar of his leather jacket was just visible at the bottom of the screen. Then a second photo, a full-body shot, the corpse curled against the curb where Wells had shot him two hours before. Blood trickled from a corner of his mouth. Wells knew him immediately. The Russian who’d come to the house the week before.

“He was on the red bike,” Michaels said. “The passenger.”

“We have a name?”

“Not yet. We’re running their prints against immigration.” Michaels pulled up more images, the other two men that Wells had shot. “You know them?”

Wells shook his head.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”