The Wolves (9 page)

“You’d do that for me?”

“Now that I know the score, I might have even if I hadn’t been told to. You have any thoughts, how to close the deal?”

“At this point, I’m mainly hoping to get a clear look at the mansion.” Wells explained his plan to rent an apartment.

“Gonna be tough for you to take him if he knows you’re coming.”

“I didn’t think I’d get made at the airport.”

“But you did.”

“Everybody makes mistakes.”

“What if the family’s in the way—”

“No. Clean only.”

“You say so. I’ll leave some long-lens gear here for you. Drones, too.”

“I can fly them with no training?”

“They’re pretty intuitive. Where’s your stuff, by the way?”

“Left it in the cab. I’m a trusting soul.”

“Do me one favor. No praying to Mecca in here. I’m not much of a Catholic, but I gotta draw the line somewhere.”

Wells felt like he’d been ambushed. Almost literally. He found his hands at his throat, ready to stop a garrote. Then he saw Wright’s smirk. “Tell me you’re joking.”

The smirk widened. “
Of course
I’m joking. True what they say about you, though, isn’t it? A real believer.”

I don’t know why we’re talking about this. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove.
Maybe Wright wasn’t trying to prove anything. Maybe he
just couldn’t keep himself from poking for sore spots. An occupational hazard.

“I’ll tell Vinny how much help you’ve been.” In other words:
Don’t forget how high my connections run.
Wells didn’t love playing that card, but after the Muslim John weirdness, he didn’t see any choice.

“You do that. You need anything else, holler.”

Then Wright was gone. Wells sat in silence for a minute, checked the room. The pistol was loaded, the knives and extra magazines and holster in the safe, as Wright had promised. Along with an unexpected bonus, a suppressor, what civilians called a silencer. Whatever he thought of Wells’s faith, Wright had already come through. Still, the snide comments were a reminder that some people in the agency would forever suspect Wells for his conversion.

No matter. His new suits might be gone, but he had money, passports, and a pistol. Everything a good operative needed. He tossed the pistol and knives into his backpack and followed Wright out. Time to get to work.

MACAO, SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION,
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

T
he cat was orange and black and fat and sunning itself on a patch of weeds at the edge of the highway that connected Beijing with the capital’s airport. General Cheung Han had plenty of time to notice it. His Mercedes limousine was barely moving, no surprise. Despite a massive road-building program, Beijing’s traffic jams worsened every year.

As Cheung watched, the cat stood, stretched its legs, licked his big balls—and jumped into the traffic.
“Bai mu,”
Cheung said to his driver. The term literally meant “white-eyed” or “blind,” but was slang for “stupid.” The idiot cat was going to get himself killed.

They were in the middle lane, with the cat about twenty meters ahead. A delivery van in the right lane would surely squash the thing. But no. A second later, the cat poked his head out from under the van. He was moving deliberately. Almost mincing. Cheung saw what he wanted, a half-eaten piece of fried chicken lying between the right and center lanes.

He lowered his window.
“Gundan! Gundan, shagua!”
Scram! Scram, dummy!

The cat grabbed the chicken, a fat breast, almost too big for him to hold. It dragged on the pavement as he turned for the curb and dropped from his jaws.

“Greedy dummy!”

But the cat wouldn’t give up. He picked it up again, a tighter grip this time. With the breast firmly in his jaws, he sauntered in front of a motorcycle, jumped to the curb, and straightaway tore into the chicken.

“Cheeky, isn’t he?” the driver said.

“Lucky.”
A good sign for me.
Cheung was on his way to the baccarat tables of Macao. He didn’t need his favorite fortune-teller to know that the gods would be with him tonight.

—

A
T THE AIRPORT
, the limousine passed the civilian terminals and delivered Cheung to a nondescript two-story building used exclusively by senior leaders and generals. A plain white jet waited fifty meters away, fueled and ready for the three-hour flight to Macao. The jet’s exterior was indistinguishable from a Gulfstream V. In fact, it was a Chinese copy called the Smoothwind 10, assembled at a giant new factory west of Beijing.

Five years before, the generals of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force had convinced the Chinese government to invest $42 billion in the civilian jet industry. They argued that the air force, which was struggling to match the American F-22 and F-35, would benefit from civil aviation research and development. The industry would also employ hundreds of thousands of Chinese in high-skill manufacturing and engineering jobs. The fact that the generals could steal a fortune along the way went unmentioned, though not unnoticed.

Despite all the bribes and kickbacks, the first Smoothwind rolled out of the new factory on schedule. Like the skyscrapers that sprang up overnight in Shanghai. Like the high-speed rail lines that soon enough would cover all of China. Like the factories around Shenzhen that churned out millions of mobile phones and laptops and tablets
every day
. Sometimes Cheung couldn’t believe the progress his country had made. He was fifty-four, old enough to have grown up in a village a thousand kilometers southwest of Beijing with seven hundred residents and no indoor toilets. Old enough to remember the unthinkable luxury of eating chicken on his fifth birthday and falling asleep with a full belly for once. Thanks to the hard work of a billion Chinese, the next generations would never be able to imagine that poverty.

Endless nights of studying took Cheung from Peking University to the Technische Universität Munich, where he studied operations research. Many Chinese students there found ways to stay in Germany or move to the United States. Cheung didn’t see the appeal. The Western countries were rich. But they weren’t his, and they never would be. Back home, he joined the air force. He learned to fly on balky J-7 fighters, flying coffins that killed two of his classmates in their first week of training. Cheung was comparatively lucky, surviving a failed takeoff caused by a blown hydraulic line. The accident shattered both his legs, effectively ending his flying career. He didn’t complain. The J-7’s problems showed him that even the bravest pilots couldn’t overcome third-rate equipment. He joined the air force’s research-and-development department. Twenty-five years later, he oversaw aerospace research for the entire People’s Republic.

Along the way, he’d grown rich. He didn’t see why the developers and bankers should be the only ones to make money. Why shouldn’t the leaders who’d made the miracle possible with their foresight and hard work? Why shouldn’t
he?
He had given far more to China than
those pigs. For a quarter century, his legs had ached every day. For a quarter century, he’d walked with a limp. He deserved a share. Now he’d gotten it. And he hadn’t stolen a single yuan. No. These were gifts. A property company bought up farmland that the air force needed for a new base and gave him one percent of its stock as a thanks for the tip he’d provided. The avionics company that made the Smoothwind’s radar bought his son an apartment in Manhattan so the boy wouldn’t have to live in a Columbia University dormitory. Cheung didn’t even consider turning down the money. Who would have benefitted? The air force would build its base in any event. The radar worked as well as any other, certainly well enough to do its job.

The gifts added up quickly. Cheung had two hundred million dollars salted away in Hong Kong and Switzerland. Money enough for his trips to Macao. He didn’t apologize for those, either. Nothing like a night or two at the baccarat table to clear his head.

—

I
AN
F
LEMING
made baccarat famous in
Casino Royale
, when Bond, James Bond, beat a Russian spy out of a fortune. But the game that Cheung would play was a pale cousin of Bond’s. Where Bond battled other players, Cheung played the casino itself, under strict rules that gave the house a small but definite edge. For all its seeming complexity, baccarat was one of the most highly structured games that casinos offered. A ten-dollar blackjack player had more control over his fate than Cheung. Blackjack bettors controlled their hands, choosing whether to hit or stand. Baccarat players didn’t.

In baccarat, a dealer laid out two hands of two cards each, one to the “player” and one to the “banker.” The suits of the cards didn’t matter, only their numerical values. Jacks, queens, and kings counted as zero, aces as one. The two cards were added to make the hand’s value—
but only the rightmost digit counted for the score. In other words, a hand of eight and six was worth four, not fourteen. A three and a seven equaled zero, not ten.

Zero was the worst possible score, nine the best. Any two-card eight or nine was called a “natural” and automatically won the hand.

If neither player nor banker was dealt a natural, both sides had one final chance to improve their hands. A player dealt five or less automatically received a third card. Then it was the banker’s turn. After the last card was dealt, the hand closer to nine won. A tie was a tie, and neither side received any money.

Like blackjack, craps, and every other casino game, baccarat offered the house a hidden edge. Because the “banker” had looser rules governing when he could take a third card, he won about fifty-one percent of the hands. Bettors like Cheung chose to gamble on either the “banker” or the “player” side—the only decision they could make. If they chose the player side, they were paid even money when they won. If they chose the banker side, they paid a small commission, just enough to give the edge back to the casino. Either way, they were at a disadvantage of about one percent on every bet. The gap was small enough to be invisible to a casual bettor. A hot player could beat it for a night, a weekend, even a week.

But ultimately that one percent disadvantage couldn’t be overcome. Card counting and bet sizing couldn’t outsmart it. Joss sticks couldn’t perfume its deadly math. In the long run, the house always won.

—

C
HEUNG UNDERSTOOD THE ODDS
. But he didn’t care. He’d outwitted them often enough. In five years, he’d visited Macao twenty-six times. On nine trips, he’d left ahead, each time by at least ten million Hong Kong dollars. On one epic three-day visit he gambled for sixty hours
and won one hundred and one million dollars. The general manager at 88 Gamma, Cheung’s favored casino, gave him a twenty-four-karat gold plaque to commemorate his entry into the Hundred Million Club, players who had won that much money in a single trip.

Cheung remembered every delicious detail of those trips. As for the others, he’d lost, sure. Still, he thought he was close to even overall, even if he’d never precisely totaled his wins and losses. His great secret was that he knew when to shift between the player and the banker side. He’d once won eleven straight hands, flipping between player and banker five times along the way. It wasn’t luck as much as intuition, as if the cards were speaking to him.

He was a very good gambler.

Only he wasn’t.

In reality, Cheung suffered from a bad case of gambler’s memory. His wins were big, but his losses were even bigger. In all, even counting his wins, Cheung had thrown away five hundred million Hong Kong dollars in five years at 88 Gamma. He was not the casino’s biggest loser. That honor belonged to a property developer who had somehow lost two billion dollars. But he was in the top ten.

—

S
O
C
HEUNG
’
S VISITS
spurred a mix of awe, greed, and fear among the hosts and managers at 88 Gamma. Awe that a man could pour away money so stupidly. Greed because whales like Cheung translated into paychecks and bonuses for the people who served him. And fear . . . because Cheung’s appetites extended past the baccarat tables. Sober, he was no more arrogant than the average Chinese plutocrat. But Cheung rarely stayed sober long. He drank to celebrate his wins and to drown his losses. The more he drank, the bolder his requests became.
And Aaron Duberman had made clear how he expected his staff to treat Cheung and his fellow whales.
Like kings. Whatever they want.

To prove his point, Duberman himself regularly visited the ultra-high-roller VIP rooms. Whether the whales were winning or losing, shouting or calm, Duberman sat beside them and made happy promises.
If you need a break, please, share dinner with me. Foie gras? Bird’s nest soup? Shark fin? Say the word, my chef will make it . . . We’ve made sure all your favorite hostesses are here, but if you’re bored, let me know. More where they came from . . . I hope my manager told you we’re hosting the welterweight Thai boxing championship. Front-row seats for you, naturally. But how would you like to watch the champ practice tonight? A private session, just you and his trainers.

And, after fifteen or twenty minutes of watching, one last offer, this one whispered.
If you have any special requests, anything not on the menu, so to speak, Chou-Lai is the man to ask.
Chou-Lai Zhen held the deliberately vague title of Special Assistant/High Limit Operations. In reality, he was the house pimp and pusher. 88 Gamma was too careful to provide anything illegal itself. But Chou-Lai made sure that if a whale wanted companionship, female or male or both, or drugs, uppers or downers or anything in between, he’d have them.

Chou-Lai’s services were available to only the biggest whales of all, men—and they were without exception men—who lost at least fifteen million Hong Kong dollars a year. They might not know exactly how much they were worth to 88 Gamma, but Duberman did.

—

C
HEUNG SPENT THE FLIGHT
to Macao reading a classified briefing on the Snow Moth, a new fifteen-centimeter drone with an advanced self-guidance system. The Snow Moth was designed to be nimble enough
to fly in the most crowded cities, small enough to sneak over hostile military bases. Its biggest problem was battery life. But a month before, air force engineers had redesigned its battery into tubes that could be embedded in its plastic skeleton. Now the Snow Moth could stay airborne for ten hours in smooth conditions, six in high winds. Production costs were estimated at seven thousand dollars each. For what the United States spent on a single fighter, China could build twenty thousand drones.

Another successful development program, another project that Cheung could recommend be moved to full production. China National Automated Aircraft Company would no doubt find a way to thank him. As the Smoothwind descended, he stuffed the report back in his briefcase and poured himself a taste of eighteen-year-old Glenfiddich. Only a taste, though. He wanted to be in top form tonight.

He landed at the Aeroporto Internacional de Macau just after 8 p.m. To the west, the sun set behind the mammoth casinos of Cotai—the artificial island that Macao had built to give the gambling industry room to expand. Two dozen casinos rose out of the landfill, with more coming. Duberman’s 88 Gamma complex towered over the others. Its main casino was fifty stories of sleek black glass. Near that tower was the new skyscraper, which looked about ready to open. Cheung was already looking forward to opening night.

Technically, Chinese citizens needed visas to enter Macao. But for elite officials like Cheung, the border wasn’t even a formality. A limousine waited for him on the tarmac, carried him through a gate beside the main terminal. No passport check, no record of his entry.

Ten minutes later, the limo rolled into a parking garage at 88 Gamma that was reserved for VIPs. Cheung’s personal host Xiao, a dapper forty-something man in a suit, bowed deeply as Cheung stepped
out. “General.” As a rule, Cheung preferred to be addressed only by his title, not his name. “So good to see you again.”

Cheung merely nodded.

“Would you prefer to see your room, or directly to your table?”

Cheung felt the luck foaming inside him. “The table, I think.”

Xiao nodded gravely and led Cheung to an elevator, where a tall Chinese woman waited. “General.”

“What a pleasant surprise, Jian.” A lie. She was always here for him. But he liked to pretend their meetings were coincidence, another form of luck. This part of the night was a show, one that the casino put on for him alone.