The Silent Man (14 page)

Kowalski steered the saleswoman—Frederica, middle-aged and trim, her brown hair neatly bobbed, a more suitable match for him than Nadia would ever be—to the counter in the back room, where Nadia couldn’t see them. Unlike lesser items, the necklace had no price tag.

“Six cent mille,”
she said, knowing the question. Six hundred thousand francs translated into about $570,000. Absurd, even by the standards of the $5,000 handbags and $10,000 dresses he regularly bought Nadia.

“But the stone is flawless,” she said. “It will never lose its value.” Frederica cocked her head and peeked into the front room. “And look at her.”

Kowalski followed Frederica’s gaze. Nadia caught him looking and smiled and folded her white swan arms across her stomach, lifting her breasts slightly so that the sapphire settled between them like a newborn about to suckle. She was jaw-dropping, breathtaking, all of her. The irony, of course, was that she would have looked just as good in a potato sack. The jewelry and the couture dresses helped less beautiful women, but they were wasted on her.

This thought had occurred to Kowalski before. Normally it pleased him enormously. But not today. Nothing was pleasing him today. For weeks, nothing had pleased him. Not since—

Frederica laid a hand on Kowalski’s arm. “What do you think, monsieur?”

“It is beautiful,” Kowalski admitted. He handed Frederica his black Amex card, idly wondering how much she would make on the sale. “Run it through, madame,” Kowalski said. “But quickly.”

Kowalski didn’t like being in public anymore. Not even in the heart of Zurich, one of the safest cities in the world. Not even with the door to Tiffany’s locked and his bodyguards outside. After all, John Wells had gotten to him in the Hamptons when he’d had five guards protecting him. And that was
before
Wells had a real reason to hate him.

Frederica disappeared into the back. The Tiffany’s on Bahnhofstrasse didn’t do anything as déclassé as conducting business where customers might see it. Kowalski walked back to Nadia, who wrinkled her nose at him as if she didn’t know what he’d decided.

“Pierre? Did you decide?”

“Kitten. Even I have limits. But I spoke to Frederica and we’re getting you a very nice charm bracelet. You know, the silver.”

Nadia’s hands fluttered up to her neck.

“But it’s so pretty, Pierre. And you said—” She broke off. She looked like a puppy whose favorite toy had suddenly gone missing. Kowalski reached for her and squeezed her against him.

“Of course it’s yours. You know I don’t deny you.”

“Pierre.” She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. They stood that way, a parody of a diamond ad, the fat middle-aged man clinging to the young sylph, until Frederica came back with the receipt.

 

 

 

KOWALSKI WAS IN HIS OFFICE
that afternoon when Tarasov, his head of security, appeared. “May I?”

“Come.”

Tarasov walked in, followed by a tall, thin man in a red and blue tracksuit. The man was one of the ugliest creatures Kowalski had ever seen, with patchy blond hair and tiny deep-set eyes. “This is Dragon, the man I mentioned. Dragon, meet Monsieur Kowalski.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Dragon mumbled in sixth-grade French.

“You prefer I call you Dragon, or Monsieur Dragon?” Kowalski knew he shouldn’t mock this man, his newest employee, but he couldn’t help himself.
Dragon.
Had anyone ever looked less like a dragon?

Dragon tucked his hands under his arms. “Dragon is fine,” he said. “There’s no need for formality.”

“Dragon it is,” Kowalski said.

“I’ve explained the terms to Dragon and he’s agreeable,” Tarasov said.

“It will be an honor,” Dragon said.

“Bon,”
Kowalski said. “Please wait outside, Dragon. And close the door.”

Dragon left, and Kowalski turned to Tarasov.

“That’s him? Your famous shooter? He doesn’t look like much.” Kowalski had told Tarasov to beef up security, and not with the muscle-bound cretins who had been so useless in the Hamptons. Tarasov had come back with Dragon, supposedly the deadliest shooter anywhere between Zagreb and Athens. Not just one of the deadliest,
the
deadliest. Kowalski wondered how he’d gotten the title. It wasn’t as if the Serbian paramilitaries could have held a competition. Or maybe they had, back in the 1990s, during the nasty little wars that had torn up the Balkans.

“He’s the best,” Tarasov said.

“Didn’t you say that about Markov’s men? Let’s hope he’s more successful with Wells than they were, if it comes to that.”

“I’ll take responsibility.”

“Anatoly. You take responsibility for nothing but spending your salary. If I want empty words, I’ll turn on the television. Just get that Dragon some suits. I don’t want him running around like a Serb gangster. Even if that’s what he is.”

Tarasov left, and Kowalski was alone. He stared at the Zürichsee—Lake Zurich—and the mountains that rose gently behind the lake to the south. The sun had already disappeared to the west, behind the city. Across the lake, factories and homes glowed placidly in December twilight. But the view didn’t soothe Kowalski.

In 1980, not long after he joined his father in the firm, Kowalski had struggled to close his first major deal, with a cocky general from Suriname who’d brought his mistress along with him for the trip. The general didn’t want to negotiate, he told his father.

“I’ve put together a package that suits his needs, but he insists it’s too expensive.”

“Yes?”

“The list is thirty-two million, but I’ve told him we’re flexible. We could go as low as twenty-seven and still make a profit. I don’t see why he won’t negotiate. Too busy with his mistress.”

“Pierre, I could have handled this myself. You know why I let you?”

“No, Father.” Kowalski had wondered himself.

“What’s our most powerful weapon?”

The question puzzled Kowalski. “I suppose the APCs with the mounted cannons—”

“Pierre. I see they taught you nothing at Lazard. Our most powerful weapon is information. How big is General Pauline’s budget?”

“The dossier said twenty-one million.”

“Correct. And our source told us that was a strict limit. So why are you offering a package for thirty-two million?”

“The Sikorskys I recommended suit his needs better than—”

“He can’t afford them. And when you press him, you make him feel poor. Now call him, before he leaves Zurich. Get him what he needs at twenty-one million.”

“But the Sikorskys—”

“Don’t pretend you can tell the difference between a Sikorsky and a mosquito. You may know all the specs, but you’re not a soldier. Always remember that.”

Until the end of his life, Kowalski’s father could make him feel like a misbehaving child.

“And even if you could tell the difference, do you think General Pauline could? He’s not fighting the American marines. He’s chasing rebels around the jungle until both sides are too bored to keep fighting. Most of what we sell sits in hangars until it’s rusted out. It’s there to make the generals and the defense ministers and presidents feel better about themselves, to puff up their chests. This man has come all the way to Zurich to make a deal. Not to be embarrassed in front of his woman. Let’s use the knowledge we have to accommodate him.”

“Yes, Father.”

Kowalski had never forgotten that lesson. He spent millions of francs a year to cultivate informers in armies and intelligence services all over the world. But at this most crucial moment, his sources in the United States had proven useless. The Americans had kept any information about their investigation into the attack from leaking, not just to the press but to the ex-CIA agents and retired army officers who were Kowalski’s sources in Washington. Had the agency learned of Markov’s involvement? Publicly, the men had been identified only as “foreign nationals,” not Russians. They had been traced to the hotel where they’d been staying, but no further. But was the United States actually further along? And what about Wells? Had he guessed Kowalski’s role in the attack? Too many questions without answers. Damn Markov and his men for their bungling. For his part, Markov had told Kowalski that he wasn’t worried. Easy for him to say. He was holed up in Moscow, untouchable as long as the Kremlin didn’t turn on him.

Markov had the Kremlin. Kowalski had the Dragon, another overpaid Eastern European eating his food and taking up space under his roof. His own fault. He’d made this mess.

His landline trilled. Thérèse, his secretary.

“Monsieur,” Thérèse said. “A call from Andrei Pavlov. Shall I take a message?”

Pavlov was a deputy director at Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency. Two years before, he and Kowalski had sold the Iranian government centrifuges to enrich uranium, a highly profitable deal.

“Put him through.”

The line fell silent. Then: “Pierre, my old comrade.”

“Andrei.”

For fifteen minutes Pavlov blathered about a new Rosatom power plant and the money he’d made trading oil futures. “Of course it would be nothing to you, Pierre, or to the Abramoviches of the world, but for a man like me it’s a real fortune.” Finally, just as Kowalski was about to lose all patience, Pavlov said casually, “So. I don’t suppose you heard about our missing material?”

Missing material?
Rosatom would only worry about one kind of missing material. And the fact that Pavlov had waited so long to mention it, and then mentioned it so casually, signaled that Rosatom must be very worried indeed.

“Just the rumors,” Kowalski said.

“A minor matter. A kilo or two of low-grade stuff. Maybe three.”

“Yes, of course.” Kowalski stretched his bluff. “But I heard it was HEU.” Highly enriched uranium, suitable for a nuclear weapon, not the less-enriched kind used to generate electricity in power plants.

“No, not HEU. Somewhere in the middle. But whoever has it may be bragging, saying it’s the good stuff, enough for a bomb. And you know, the Americans will make a stink if someone finds it before we do. And sometimes you hear about things.” Pavlov cleared his throat. “Anyhow, if you hear anything, if you could see your way clear to let us know, we wouldn’t forget it.”

Kowalski decided to push for information. “This stuff, when did it get lost? And where?”

“Last seen in Mayak a couple of weeks back.”

Mayak.
The biggest nuclear weapons plant in the world. Another sign this was more serious that Pavlov was letting on. But Kowalski didn’t want to ask any more questions. Pavlov had probably said more than he’d meant to already.

“I’ll ask some people,” Kowalski said. “If I hear anything, I’ll call you. And promise you’ll come to Zurich soon. Nadia and I must take you to dinner. She misses her countrymen.”

“Delightful.” Pavlov hung up and Kowalski considered for a minute, remembering a phone call he’d received a few months before, one of the few offers he’d ever turned down flat. He wondered if he could afford to spare Tarasov with Wells on the loose. On the other hand . . . he had to know if Pavlov’s call meant what he suspected.

He called Tarasov. “Anatoly. Get your passport. You’re going to Moscow.”

O
n the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s legendary nightlife strip, the hookers were having a slow night. They stood in their usual spot, in front of a small public courtyard between kebob stands and novelty shops specializing in fake pistols and dull knives. They shuffled in their boots, a dozen miserable women, each an even ten feet from the next. Even whores couldn’t escape the German passion for order.

Hamburg’s true red-light district was a few blocks south, on Herbertstrasse, a single street sixty yards long where the prostitutes sat in shop windows as they did in Amsterdam. Only adult men were allowed on Herbertstrasse, and high wooden fences on both ends kept out women and children. Despite the ugliness of the trade, the street possessed a certain hard glamour. The prostitutes posed on their stools in lace bras and panties, watching men swirl on the pavement beneath them. Police monitored Herbertstrasse, and the prostitutes there registered with the city and were tested regularly for HIV. But the discount hookers on the Reeperbahn had no glamour at all. They wore puffy down jackets and tight jeans, and their faces were young and unformed, yet already worn. They looked like high school juniors who had fallen asleep in their beds and woken up in hell.

A steady stream of tourists and sailors and locals walked by the courtyard. The women gave them all the same treatment, a whispered invitation, half-coo, half-hiss. Any man foolish enough to stop found himself in a whispered tête-à-tête with a hand on his arm. But it was only 10 p.m. and a drizzle dampened the air, and the men were still mostly sober and mostly saying no. So the women smoked and stamped their feet to stay warm and ran their hands through their bleached blond hair and waited for business to improve.

 

 

 

NEAR THE BACK
of the courtyard, Sayyid Nasiji watched the whores’ dance. He’d never understood the German attitude toward these women. A police station stood only a couple of blocks away. Why did the German cops tolerate this dismal scene? How had these women fallen so low? Where were their families?

Nasiji didn’t delude himself. Muslim nations had prostitutes, too. But at least Muslims were ashamed of the flesh trade and tried to stop it. The Germans seemed almost proud that women were selling themselves in public. They jammed the Reeperbahn. And the crowd wasn’t just sailors or ugly old men with no choice. Students and office workers came here to dance at the clubs speckled among the strip parlors.

Yet Nasiji liked Germany. He’d attended college at the Technical University of Munich, five hundred miles south of here. He’d initially planned to specialize in nuclear physics. But he was Iraqi, and his professors warned him that most nuclear power plants probably wouldn’t hire him. So he stuck to chemical engineering. Still, he spent most of his free time in the university’s nuclear labs.