was Nasiji who had decided to bring the bombs in through Canada, where Bashir and his wife would pick them up, ferry them to Nova Scotia, and truck them over the United States border. In a big SUV filled with ski equipment and suitcases, the bombs wouldn’t stand out. Bashir had wondered about the scheme, which seemed to him too complicated by half, but Nasiji was the boss.
Now they’d suffered disaster, no way around it. Nasiji had always told Bashir they’d have two bombs to work with. Two into one, he called the plan. And though Bashir wasn’t a nuclear physicist, he understood that being short of material made their task immensely more complicated.
Well, at least they’d gotten the one bomb across the border. After the pickup, Bashir and Thalia had driven across Newfoundland through the night and caught a ferry to Sydney, Nova Scotia, a roiling two-hundred-mile trip. From Sydney they drove to Montreal. They told the border guards on the New York State Thruway that the skiing on Mont Tremblant had been great but promised that next time they’d try Lake Placid. Then they were through.
Meanwhile, Nasiji and Yusuf had taken the easy way in. After resting for a night in St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland, they’d hopped a Continental flight that conveniently enough went nonstop to Newark. From there they would rent a car and drive to the farm. And the real work of making the bomb would begin.
16
Zurich was calm and rich and Wells disliked it immediately, for no good reason. Maybe because Kowalski lived here. Maybe that was enough. Wells hadn’t taken any great precautions for this trip. He’d even checked into the hotel under his own name. He had his Glock and the agency knew he was here, all the protection he needed. He couldn’t imagine Kowalski had invited him just to take another shot at him.
Wells was staying at the Baur au Lac, a five-star hotel downtown. The place stank of endless wealth, fortunes that would last until the sun exploded and its flames swallowed the world. Perversely, Wells had taken a suite, handing over his agency credit card, imagining an auditor at Langley choking on his coffee as he saw the $3,000-a-night room.
As soon as the bellhop left him in the room, he reached for the phone. Kowalski answered on the first ring. “Hallo?”
“I’m at the Baur au Lac.” Come and get me, Wells thought.
“Mr. Wells. Shall we meet in the bar in the lobby, tonight at six?”
“I’ll be there.” Wells hung up.
THE BAR WAS REALLY a sitting room, a fifty-foot square with dark wood walls and a faded gold carpet. Men in dark suits and white shirts sat at tables sipping beers, reading
Kowalski sat in the opposite corner, slumped on a sofa behind a low coffee table. He was wearing a rumpled blue suit, cream shirt, no tie. He seemed smaller than when Wells had seen him last, though hardly svelte. Two men flanked him, one about Wells’s size, the other tall and thin and ugly. They stood as Wells walked near, and Wells recognized the big one, Anatoly Tarasov, Kowalski’s head of security. He was shorter than Wells but thicker in the shoulders. He had the cauliflower ears and flattened nose of a boxer. Wells figured he could go twelve rounds with Tarasov, but he wasn’t sure he’d get the decision. The other man stood to the side and didn’t bother with eye contact, focusing instead on Wells’s hands. His own hands were slipped under his jacket. He was the dangerous one. He was the shooter.
As Wells reached the table, Kowalski grunted and stood and extended a hand. Wells let it dangle in the air until Kowalski pulled it back and lowered himself down to the couch.
“Mr. Wells. I hope you don’t mind my bringing friends. This is Anatoly, and the gentleman in the corner is called the Dragon.” Kowalski raised his glass. “Would you like a drink? I’m having Riesling, very dry. Very nice.”
Wells saw no reason to speak.
“You know where the word
“And hostels became hotels.”
“Exactly. Consider this such a place. Don’t be afraid to have a drink. Take my glass if you like.”
“You think I’m afraid?” Wells said. “I didn’t come here for your hospitality. Or history lessons.”
“Besides, your bosses know you’re here, and if I touch you all the bodyguards in the world can’t protect me,” Kowalski said. “A Black Hawk full of Deltas will come to my house and grab me and toss me into the Zurichsee from a thousand meters up.”
“You have a vivid imagination.”
“Maybe a drink later, then. When we know each other better.” Kowalski sipped his wine. “You like Zurich, Mr. Wells? Each year we win the award for the best quality of life. Though for a man of action such as yourself, it must be boring.”
Wells wouldn’t have guessed he could feel anything other than hate for Kowalski. But he did, a profound irritation that sat atop his disgust like barbed wire on an electrified fence. Kowalski reminded Wells of George Tyson, the agency’s head of counterintelligence, another fat man who could never get to the point and who took more than he gave when he finally did.
“And our women are beautiful, of course,” Kowalski said. “The Swiss misses.”
Wells thought of Exley, crying silent tears as she levered herself down the hospital hallway. Kowalski, no one else, was to blame for those tears. And now he was joking about the women of Zurich? Wells’s throat tightened. Instantly, the room was twenty degrees cooler and the conversations around them no longer existed. The universe had shrunk to this corner.
Wells looked at the Dragon, the shooter, and then at Tarasov, calculating geometries. Could he get to his Glock and get two shots off, take out the Dragon first and then Tarasov? Doubtful. He’d need two guns, a cross- draw, Jesse James style. Those only worked in the movies.
The other men seemed to sense that Kowalski had pushed Wells too far. The Dragon reached under his jacket for his own weapon, a little snubnose that he held now beneath his waist, under his clasped hands. Kowalski didn’t move, but his eyes opened slightly.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wells. I was impolite. But let’s not disturb the peace of our neighbors.”
Wells leaned back, rested his hands in his lap. Kowalski nodded at the Dragon and the snubnose disappeared.
“Do you have something to tell me? Because now’s the time.” Wells pushed back his chair. “Now or not at all.”
“First, sincerely, I’m sorry about last month. I made a terrible mistake. What you did to me in the Hamptons, it unsettled my equilibrium. I overreacted.”
Wells stood. Kowalski raised a big hand to hold him off.
“I want peace between us. I have something for you.”
For the first time since he’d seen Kowalski, Wells smiled. “This isn’t a bribe, right? Even you aren’t that stupid.”
“A bribe, yes. But not money. Information.”
Wells sat.
FOR THE NEXT FEW MINUTES, Kowalski filled Wells in on the call he’d gotten from Andrei Pavlov, the
