To me.
Part Four
INSIDE THE DEN
Chapter 78
STACY POLLACK WAS a solemn and commanding presence in front of the roomful of agents gathered on the fifth floor of the Hoover Building. It was standing room only for her meeting. I was one of those standing in the back, but just about everybody knew who I was after our New Hampshire success bringing in Potter. We had rescued another captive—Francis Deegan was going to be fine. We’d also found the bodies of Benjamin Coffey and two other males, unidentified so far.
“Unaccustomed as I am to having things go our way,” Pollack began, and got a laugh, “I’ll take this latest development and offer humble thanks to the powers that be. This is a very good break for us. As many o
f you know, the Wolf has been a key target on our Red Mafiya list, probably the key target. He’s rumored to be into everything—weapon sales, extortion, sports fixing, prostitution, the white slave market. His name seems to be Pasha Sorokin and he seems to have learned his trade on the outskirts of Moscow. I say seems because nothing is a sure thing when it comes to this guy. Somehow he maneuvered his way into the KGB, where he lasted three years. He then became a pakhan, a boss, in the Russian underworld but decided to emigrate to America. Where he completely disappeared.
“We actually believed that he was dead for a while. Apparently not, at least if we can believe Mr. Potter. Can we believe him?” Pollack gestured in my direction. “This is Agent Alex Cross, by the way. He helped with the takedown in New Hampshire.”
“I think we can believe Potter,” I said. “He knows that we need him; he definitely understands what he has to offer us—a possible lead to Sorokin. He also warned me that the Wolf will come after us. His mission is to be the top gangster in the world. According to Potter, that’s what the Wolf is.”
“So why the white slave market?” one of the ASACs asked. “There’s not that much money in it. It’s risky. What’s the point? Sounds like bullshit to me. Maybe we’ve been had.”
“We don’t know why he acts the way he does. It’s troubling, I agree. Maybe it’s his roots, his patterns,” an agent from the New York office’s Russia group said. “He’s always had his fingers in whatever he could. It goes back to his days on the streets of Moscow. Also, the Wolf likes women himself. He’s kinky.”
“I don’t think he likes them,” said a woman agent from D.C. “Honestly, Jeff.”
The New York agent continued: “There’s a rumor that he walked into a club in Brighton Beach a couple weeks ago and wasted one of his ex-wives. That’s his style. He once sold two of his female cousins from the home country on the slave market. The thing to remember about Pasha Sorokin is that he has no fears. He expected to die young in Russia. He’s surprised that he’s still alive. He likes it on the edge.”
Stacy Pollack took the floor again. “Let me tell you a couple of other stories to give you a sense of who we’re dealing with. It seems that Pasha manipulated the CIA to get him out of Russia originally. That’s right, the CIA transported him here. He was supposed to give them all sorts of information, but he never delivered. When he first got to New York, he sold babies out of an apartment in Brooklyn. According to the stories, in one day alone he sold six babies to suburban couples for ten thousand dollars apiece. More recently he swindled a Miami bank out of two hundred million. He likes what he does and he’s obviously good at it. And now we know an Internet site he visits. We may even be able to get on the site. We’re working on it. We’re as close to the Wolf as we’ve ever been. Or so we like to believe.”
Chapter 79
THE WOLF WAS in Philadelphia that night, birthplace of a nation, though not his nation. He never showed it, but he was anxious, and he liked the emotional charge it gave him.
It made him feel more alive. He also liked it that he was invisible, that no one knew who he was, that he could go anywhere, do anything he wanted to do. Tonight, he was watching the Flyers play Montreal at the First Union Center in Philly. The hockey game was one he had arranged to have fixed, but nothing had happened so far, which was why he was anxious, and also very angry.
As the second period was winding down, the score was 2-1. Flyers! He was seated at center ice, four rows back behind the penalty boxes, close to the action. To distract himself he watched the crowd—a mix of yuppies in business suits and loosened ties and blue-collar types in oversized Flyers jerseys. Everybody seemed to have plastic tubs of nachos and twenty-ounce cups of beer.
His eyes shifted back to the game. Players flashed around the rink at dazzling speeds, making a slashing sound as the blades of their skates tore into the ice. C’mon, c’mon. Do something! he urged.
Then suddenly he saw Ilia Teptev out of position. There was the shotgun crash of a slapshot as it left the stick. Goal—Canadiens! The crowd erupted with insults: “You suck, Ilia! You throwing this game?”
Then the announcer came over the PA. “Canadien goal by number eighteen, Stevie Bowen. Time of goal, nineteen minutes and thirty-two seconds.”
The period ended like that, 2-2. The Zamboni chugged out, resurfacing the ice between periods. More beer and more nachos were consumed. And the ice became a slick glass sheet once again.
For the next sixteen minutes, the game was knotted at 2-2. The Wolf wanted to garrote Teptev and Dobushkin. Then the Canadien center, Bowen, plowed through a half-hearted check and burst into the Flyer zone. He dropped a pass along the right boards. A shot! Wide! Recovered by Alexei Dobushkin—who settled behind his own net with the puck.
He skated to his right, then snapped a pass across the ice—across the goal mouth—and it was picked off by Bowen. Bowen slapped the puck into the corner of the net.
Goal—Canadiens!
The Wolf smiled for the first time that night. Then he turned to his companion, his seven-year-old son, Dimitri, whose existence would have surprised everyone who supposedly knew the Wolf.
“Let’s go, Dimmie, the game’s over. The Canadiens will win. Just like I told you they would. Didn’t I tell you?”
Dimitri wasn’t convinced about the outcome, but he knew better than to argue with his father. “You were right, Daddy,” said the boy. “You’re always right.”
Chapter 80
THAT NIGHT AT eleven-thirty I planned to enter the Wolf’s Den for the first time. I needed the help of Mr. Potter, though. Homer Taylor had been moved to Washington for the purpose. I needed his eyes.