The Wolves (19 page)

Not quite. Xi Jinping and his prosecutors would throw Cheung in a
hole for a hundred months. Make him a hungry ghost while he still lived. Then they’d hang him.

Hot tears streamed down his face.
No.
He’d never cried. Not even when he’d woken up in the hospital with every bone in both legs shattered.

“General, you’re looking at this backward. The question you ought to be asking is who
we
are.”

“Please.” He couldn’t hide the truth from himself. They’d broken him. He would do whatever they asked, as long as they made this go away.

The round-eye smiled. “Please, you say. Please.” He pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket, passed it to Cheung. “Wipe your face. You look terrible.”

Cheung mopped at his face. “Who are you?”

“We’re the ones who are going to make all this vanish.” He made two fists, opened them,
poof.
A magic trick. “And save you.”

“Yes?” Cheung hated himself for the hope in his voice.

“But you have to help us first.”

WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN,
ABOARD THE USS
RONALD REAGAN

L
ike any city of six thousand, the USS
Ronald Reagan
came equipped with a jail—a brig, in naval lingo. For three weeks, it had held two prisoners: a petty officer caught with six ounces of methamphetamine in his mattress, and Wells.

His MI6 captors had ferried him out of Hong Kong on a trawler, sent him on a ten-day dogleg across the South China Sea. Finally, they transferred him to a gray ship five times their size, the USS
Sampson
, an American destroyer. They gave Wells no fresh clothes, only one shower. By the time he arrived on the
Sampson
, he looked like he belonged in a Mathew Brady daguerreotype of the Civil War, and the crew treated him like he had Ebola. He spent a night locked in an empty storage room before a helicopter brought him to the
Reagan
, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier a thousand feet long, with a better air force than most countries.

Five petty officers greeted Wells as he stepped onto the carrier’s deck
,
walling him off from the F-18s like he might make a break for them. “Shower, shave, brig,” the one nearest Wells said. “Do not pass go, do not collect your hazard pay bonus. Going to make a fuss?”

Not unless it’ll pay.
After the shower, Wells’s captors put him in a blue jumpsuit and brought him to the ship’s ninth deck, a warren of low corridors and stale air. His cell occupied the end of the brig, its only connection to the outside world a foot-square Plexiglas window. Its bookshelf was empty but for a single volume, a well-thumbed copy of the
Uniform Code of Military Justice
. Wells settled in to read, though he couldn’t decide which section applied. Twenty minutes later, his cell door swung open. Two sailors stepped inside, followed by an officer in a spotless blue uniform with a single gold star and four stripes on each sleeve.

“Mr. Wells,” the gold star said. “Captain Devin Barnett. Commander of the
Reagan
.” More than the other services, the Navy was a family business, proud of its East Coast traditions. Barnett looked the part, with narrow blue eyes, ramrod posture, gray hair trimmed close to his skull.

“You visit all your prisoners?”

“I’m sorry about the circumstances, but I’ll do my best to make your stay comfortable.” Barnett had a genteel Tidewater Virginia twang. “You’ll have fresh clothes, all the books you want, gym access.”

“You sound like you’re running a La Quinta.” Wells was out of patience for false niceties.

The petty officers swarmed him, each grabbing an arm, digging their fingers into his biceps. “You don’t speak to our captain that way—”

“Tell Click and Clack to let go before this gets messy.” Wells felt his anger rising. The cell was narrow, and the petty officers were crowding him, telegraphing their lack of close-quarters fighting experience. Wells could put them both down, but he’d stain his nice new jumpsuit. “
Please.”

“Go on,” Barnett said. “Outside—”

“Captain—”

“And close the door. That’s an order.”

They went.

“I’m trusting you.”

Yeah, with six thousand guys and an ocean on your side.
“Wish I could say the same. Why am I here?”

“I’ve been ordered to hold you—”

“Charges? Authority?”

“You’re a material witness in a classified national security investigation.”

In other words, the White House couldn’t even find a plausible excuse. The material witness label was tissue-thin. No competent federal judge would believe it. But the
Reagan
’s crew didn’t include federal judges, competent or otherwise.

“You know who I am, yes?”

“Broadly.”

“I’d like to make a phone call.”

Barnett shook his head. “Nor email.”

“Captain—”

“I don’t love it, either, Mr. Wells. But these orders come straight from the White House. I give you my word as the commander of this vessel that as soon we reach American soil, I will personally ensure you speak to counsel of your choosing.”

“And when’s that?”

Barnett looked at the floor. “We’re scheduled to dock in San Diego in eight months.”

Eight months.
The President might not have the CIA, but he had sidelined Wells nonetheless. Sure, it was only a delaying action, but eight months wasn’t bad, considering the President had less than two years left in office.
Justice too long delayed is justice denied,
Martin Luther King had written from a Birmingham jail. Wells could see what King
meant. He wondered if he should give Barnett a taste of the truth. But why bother? The guy seemed decent enough, but freethinkers were rarely given aircraft carriers to run.

By now, with Wells out of pocket for ten days, Duto and Shafer would be worried. But they had no threads to follow. Wells hadn’t told Shafer about his plans to meet with William Roberts. He’d planned to, sure, but then Shafer hadn’t answered his call, and he hadn’t left a message—

Stupid. He’d been stupid. Anyway, MI6 had no doubt pulled its own disappearing act for Roberts and his family, given them a paid vacation in the English countryside. Duto would lean on Wright, the Hong Kong station chief. But Wright wouldn’t have any idea where to look. The Brits knew, but they weren’t about to share. Maybe if Duto went to the top of Vauxhall Cross, maybe not even then. As the weeks stretched into months, Duto and Shafer would assume the worst.

And what about Evan?

“You need to let me call my son. You can monitor it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You have children, Captain?”

Barnett grunted.

“What would they think if you vanished? Email him yourself, then. Doesn’t have to come from me.”

“I wish I could, but the IP addresses from the ship are traceable to someone who knows.”

“Then ask somebody at home to set up an anonymous account, I don’t care. Not trying to play games. I just want him to know I’m alive.” Though Wells figured Evan would pass the message to Shafer and Duto. Give them extra incentive to track him down.

Barnett walked out, left the cell door open. The two petty officers in the brig’s corridor shifted leg to leg like they couldn’t decide if they
wanted Wells to start up. “What’s Click and Clack?” From the one nearer Wells.

“Tom and Ray.
Car Talk.
”

“Car what?”

“You never heard of
Car Talk
?”
Man, I’m getting old. Though I could still take you two.

Barnett returned with a pad and pencil. “Write exactly what you want to say. Nothing cute. If it looks weird, I won’t do it.”

Wells played it straight:
Evan: Sorry I haven’t called. I’m safe and healthy but I’ll be tough to reach for a while. What I said that last night holds. You’re still lucky. Love, Pops.
He gave the sheet back to Barnett.

“What did you tell him the last night?”

“What it says. That he’s lucky. Proof of life, as people like you like to say.”

“People like me?”

“Kidnappers.”

Barnett grimaced. “And he calls you Pops.”

“Straight outta Montana.”

Barnett folded away the note. “I’ll let you know what he says.”

—

A
PETTY OFFICER
brought back the note five days later. “The captain asked me to tell you, your son says everything’s copacetic.”

Copacetic
sounded like Evan, all right.

Barnett kept his word about the privileges, too. Every day two sailors brought Wells to the library and the gym and delivered him food from the officers’ mess. As a rule, the escorts didn’t talk to him, but two weeks on, one blurted out, “I don’t get it. Are you a prisoner or a VIP?”

“Ask the captain.”

In fact, aside from the lack of sunlight, the cell had certain
advantages
.
Wells had time to read and pray. And he didn’t have to worry about seasickness. The
Reagan
was so enormous that even the biggest waves barely moved it. He spent a couple days thinking about his near-failure on Wellington Street, then decided it had nothing to teach him. He could promise himself he wouldn’t seize up again, but until the moment arrived, he couldn’t be sure. He did decide that if it happened even once more, he would quit. Walk away, regrets or no.

If the next mistake didn’t kill him.

Still, captivity grated. Wells had grown up among the twelve-thousand-foot Bitterroot mountains and endless blue sky. He’d spent much of his adult life in the Hindu Kush. He’d always been an outsider, literally and figuratively. Free will might be an illusion, but he treasured it nonetheless. Now he was locked in the belly of a steel whale. Even his sleep was not his own. Though the
Reagan
never shut down entirely, the majority of its officers and crew worked days and slept nights, a standard twenty-four-hour circadian cycle. The brig was no exception. Its lights snapped on each morning precisely at 6 a.m. and turned off at 10 p.m.

The lack of news also frustrated him. He had no idea what had happened to Duberman, or the repercussions of the shooting on Wellington. Did the cops know about Wells? Were they even now searching for him? Five minutes on the Internet would have answered every question, but his escorts told him that they’d wind up his neighbors in the brig if they let him near the ship’s computers.

As the days blended into something approaching pure time, Wells took to marking them off as prisoners always had, a new scratch on the steel wall behind his head just before the lights went out. Eight months. Two hundred and forty days, give or take. An unperson serving unpunishment for an uncrime. At the President’s whim.
A government of laws and not of men,
John Adams had written more than two
centuries before, but then Adams had never been sent to molder on a floating island.

—

N
IGHT TWENTY
-
TWO
. Wells closed his eyes, found himself at the Sha Tin track, watching a dozen huge geese race around the turn. Peretz and Makiv were the two lead jockeys. Peretz stood, waved.
Hey, brother—

Not your brother. No one’s brother—
Wells grabbed a pistol and fired—

The pistol let loose a stream of water.

I’ve heard of silencers, but that’s ridiculous—
Peretz grinned and raised his own pistol—

The lights snapped on. The track disappeared in the shine of bare steel.

The brig. The
Reagan
. Awake.
His subconscious hadn’t read the memo about forgetting Wellington Street. Wells rolled to his feet, raised his fists. Good news rarely came this late at night. If Barnett planned to dump him overboard, he’d take as many guys as he could with him.
Six thousand? That all you got?

The door slung open. Barnett stood alone, unshaven, his eyes tired and narrow. He held Wells’s T-shirt and khakis in a freshly folded pile.

“Laundry service, Captain?”

“Get dressed. New orders. Your ride’ll be here in fifteen.”

“At three a.m.? You want me out of here at this hour, better call for backup.”

“Not a trick. I don’t get it either, but there’s a Greyhound with your name on it.”

“A Greyhound?” Wells thought of his cross-country bus trip.

“C-2. Cargo plane. Not the sexiest ride, but it’ll take you to Clark Air Base in Manila—”

“I thought the Philippines kicked us out of Clark—”

“Changed their minds. They don’t like China either.”

“Then where?”

“I don’t know.”

Anyone could be waiting for Wells in Manila. Assuming he made it there. Wells had the momentary certainty that a crew inside the Greyhound was waiting to toss him at thirty thousand feet, see if he could teach himself to fly on the way down. His clothes were a good sign, unless they weren’t. Make him disappear, and his khakis, too.

“This crew brings mail for us all the time. You can trust them.”

“Sure I can.”

“Look, just tell me who to call. Soon as you take off. I give you my word—”

“As commander of this vessel, yeah yeah yeah.”

Barnett pushed Wells’s clothes at him. “Forget it, then.”

Wells had provoked the reaction he’d hoped to see. Barnett was miffed. Because he genuinely believed that Wells would be safe. Wells wondered what had happened. Had someone else killed Duberman? Had Shafer or Duto figured out where he was, forced the President to let him go? Or—

“Has the President resigned?” Wells said.

Barnett looked baffled. “No. Why would you think that?”

“I put a gypsy curse on him and I wondered if it worked.”

“Do me a favor, get dressed.”

—

T
HE
G
REYHOUND
looked like something from World War II, an ungainly twin-engined bird, snub-nosed and wide, four vertical stabilizers and stubby wings. “This thing flies?” Wells said. “From this deck?”

“Greyhounds have run cargo to carriers for fifty years,” Barnett said. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever get the real story on this.”

Not from me.
Wells was the plane’s only passenger.
Good.
An airman checked his seat belts professionally, but without much interest. Barnett had told the truth. Whatever awaited Wells in Manila, this flight would be safe enough.

The cargo bay door whirred shut. The plane shuddered as the engines spooled up and the props spun. The C-2 taxied into position and rumbled across the deck. It didn’t fall into the ocean, so it must have taken off, though Wells couldn’t tell exactly when. It seemed to be aviation’s equivalent of a four-cylinder Accord: safe, reliable, underpowered.

Aside from a brief patch of turbulence, the three-hour flight passed uneventfully. Somewhere along the way, Wells must have slept, because he opened his eyes to find an airman tapping his shoulder. “Clark Air Base. Outie outie.”

Wells followed the airman onto a cracked tarmac. A hangar loomed in the dark, two civilian jets parked just outside. They were CIA specials, both white, both lacking any identification except tail numbers. Two men waited for Wells, the human equivalent of the jets, compact, muscled, and wearing sunglasses around their necks despite the darkness.