The Silent Man

chest and given his heart an unfriendly squeeze. A nuclear weapon was missing?

“You said lost. Lost or stolen?”

“Stolen.”

“Are you sure?”

“No one will tell me for sure. But they’re going full-blast down around Chelyabinsk. Half the FSB is there. Lots of arrests, lots of Muslims getting knocked around.”

“What else?”

“They’ve put all their bases on lockdown. And the Mayak plant. They’re inventorying all their weapons. This I know for sure. And on the highways into Moscow they’ve set up rolling roadblocks. Not constant. I don’t think they want to frighten people.”

“No one’s noticed?”

“You know the media there. If the Kremlin says don’t talk about something, they don’t.”

“Anything else?”

“They’ve asked Interpol and even the United States to look for a man named Grigory Farzadov. They’re saying he’s a smuggler. But he’s not a smuggler. He’s a manager at the Mayak plant. He and his cousin disappeared several weeks ago and haven’t been seen since. The cousin also works at the plant. Or worked.”

“Are they Russian?”

“They must be, to have worked at the plant.”

“Anything else?”

“Not just now.”

“All right. Thank you, Anatoly. Leave me now. I need to think about this.”

At the door, Tarasov turned. “Do you think it’s possible?”

“Don’t we both know by now that anything’s possible?”

A FEW MINUTES LATER, Nadia peeked in.

“Are you all right, Pierre?”

“Yes, angel. Come in.”

She sat beside him on the couch and ran a hand over his face. She wore yoga pants and a tight black wool sweater. If Kowalski hadn’t been so worried about a heart attack, he would have popped open the bottle of Viagra he kept in the desk drawer and taken her right then. Tried to, anyway. “I know I’m not supposed to ask about business, but is something wrong?”

“I’m dealing with a very unpleasant man,” Kowalski said.

“You’ve tried to talk with him.”

“It isn’t like that.”

“You should try. You’re very persuasive, you know.” She kissed his cheek.

“But in business, Nadia, you need leverage. You understand?” Kowalski wasn’t sure why he suddenly felt the need to explain himself, but he did.

“Sure. You give him something, he gives you.”

“And I don’t have anything to give him.”

But even as he spoke, Kowalski realized he might be wrong. If Tarasov was right, he might have something very valuable indeed for Wells.

14

Wells wound down the handle of his Honda and poured west on 66 through the Virginia exburbs at eighty miles an hour. Tonight he had become tiresome even to himself. The burned-out cop downing whiskey at an empty bar, moaning that he’d never make detective. The third-rate poet sipping cappuccino in Starbucks, bitching how he’d never get published. And Wells tonight, the world-weary spy sucking down gasoline and ruing his fate. I saved the world and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Usually he heard songs in his head as he rode, but tonight even the asphalt and the wind were too bored with him to talk.

To complete his misery, Wells hadn’t dressed properly for the cold. He could barely keep a grip on the handlebars. The scar tissue in his back had turned into a solid block of ice, and his bad left shoulder — worked over by the Chinese a few months before — felt about ready to pop loose. He wasn’t a machine. Though he pretended he was. And everyone seemed to believe him.

In the Honda’s lone eye Wells saw a sign for an exit a mile ahead. He closed his eyes and counted ten. Then five more. One. two. three. four. five. Before the darkness could take him too far, he looked up. He’d ridden blind almost a half-mile. He laid off the gas, gearing down into fourth. The bike was solid and quick under him. Whatever his sins, he still knew how to ride. At the bottom of the ramp, he swung left under the highway. He’d seen a Denny’s sign on the other side of the highway and that sounded about right.

The restaurant was empty, aside from a table of teenagers joking loudly about whatever teenagers joked about these days. The boys had tight haircuts and the girls wore sweatshirts that even Wells could tell weren’t fashionable. No doubt they lived farther out on 66, maybe even somewhere on 81. To the south and west of here, Virginia turned country fast.

One of the kids was dipping, spitting into a Coke can under the table. He wore a U.S. Marines T-shirt stretched tight across his chest. Wells wanted to ask the kid if he was really enlisting, and if so why he’d decided to sign up, what he hoped to find. But he kept his mouth shut. The world needed soldiers, and if the kid wanted to become one, Wells could hardly tell him he was making a mistake.

No one in the place noticed Wells, and for that he was happy.

The waitress came over, fifty-five, with a smoker’s lined face and brown eyes and heavy shoulders and sensible black shoes. She smiled at him, a big creased smile, as she placed a glass of water on the table. And Wells felt even more of a fool. This woman was probably living in a trailer up in the hills trying to make ends meet, and she was taking care of him.

She looked at the helmet. “You all right? Cold night for riding.”

“That it is.”

“Well, you know you can stay in here till you get warm. As long as you like.”

“I look that bad?”

“Tired, is all. What can I get you?”

Wells ordered coffee and scrambled eggs and hash browns. No Grand Slam for him, he didn’t eat pork, the last trace of his Muslim identity. Then he indulged himself with a chocolate milkshake. The food came fast. The ride had left him with an appetite, and he inhaled the shake and ate every scrap of food. The waitress — Diane was her name — kept her word, filling up his coffee cup but otherwise leaving him alone, leaving him to think over the last few days.

GETTING OUT OF RUSSIA the morning after the murders had been easy. The agent at Sheremetyevo flipped through his American passport and looked him up and down, taking in his freshly pressed shirt and the TAG Heuer watch he was wearing to complete his cover. Just another American. Without a word, he stamped the passport and Wells was free to go.

But his arrival in New York was another story. As soon as the immigration agent at JFK scanned his passport, Wells knew something was wrong. Her smile faded, then returned at higher wattage. To keep him happy until the guards arrived, he assumed. Sure enough, a door at the end of the long hallway opened and three big men in blue uniforms strode his way.

“Can you come with us?” the lead uniform said.

Wells didn’t argue. They frisked him, took his shoes, wallet, belt. Then they shunted him to a narrow holding cell, windowless and concrete. A guard checked him every hour, peeking through a steel panel in the door. Wells didn’t mind the holdup. He closed his eyes and napped on the narrow steel cot. He found himself in a crumbling mosque, looking through a crack in the ceiling at the blue sky above. He knelt to pray and saw beside him Omar Khadri, the terrorist whom Wells had killed in Times Square. Khadri finished his prayers and turned to Wells.