The Big Bad Wolf Read online

  I sat in a straight-backed chair directly across from him. For a long moment we glared at each other, then I let my eyes wander around the room. Bookcases and cabinets had been custom built and covered every wall. A large oak desk held a computer and printer, as well as wooden in and out boxes, and stacks of ungraded papers. A green wooden sign behind the desk read “Bless This Mess.” There was no hint of the real Taylor, or “Potter,” anywhere.

  I noticed authors’ names on the spines of the books: Richard Russo, Jamaica Kincaid, Zadie Smith, Martin Amis, Stanley Kunitz.

  It was rumored that the Bureau often had an incredible amount of information on a subject before an interview was conducted. This was true with Taylor. I already knew about his boyhood spent in Iowa, then his years as a student at Iowa and NYU. No one had suspected he had a dark side. He had been up for promotion and tenure this year, and had been working to finish a book on Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as an article on John Donne. Drafts of the literary projects were laid out on the desk.

  I got up and looked through the pages. He’s organized. He compartmentalizes beautifully, I was thinking. “Interesting stuff,” I said.

  “Be careful with those,” he warned.

  “Oh, sorry. I’ll be careful,” I said, as if anything he had written about Milton or Donne mattered anymore. I continued to look through his books—the OED, The Riverside Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Milton quarterlies, Gravity’s Rainbow, a Merck Manual.

  “This interrogation is illegal. You must know that. I want to see my lawyer,” he said as I sat down again. “I demand it.”

  “Oh, we’re just talking,” I said. “This is only an interview. We’re waiting for a lawyer to get here. Just getting to know you.”

  “Has my lawyer been called? Ralph Guild in Boston?” Taylor asked. “Tell me. Don’t fuck with me.”

  “As far as I know,” I said. “Let’s see, we busted you at around eight A.M. He was called at eight-thirty.”

  Taylor looked at his watch. His dark eyes blazed. “It’s only twelve-thirty now!”

  I shrugged. “Well, no wonder your lawyer isn’t here yet. You haven’t even been apprehended. So, you teach English lit, right? I liked literature in school, read a lot, still do, but I loved the sciences.”

  Taylor continued to glare at me. “You forget that Francis was taken to the hospital. The time is on the record.”

  I snapped my fingers and winced. “Right. Of course it is. He was picked up at a little past nine. I signed the form myself,” I said. “I have a doctorate, like yourself. In psychology, from Johns Hopkins, down in Baltimore.”

  Homer Taylor rocked back and forth on the bench. He shook his head. “You don’t scare me, you fucking asshole. I can’t be intimidated by little people like you. Trust me. I doubt you have a Ph.D. Maybe from Alcorn State. Or Jackson State.”

  I ignored the baiting. “Did you kill Benjamin Coffey? I think you did. We’ll start looking for the body a little later this morning. Why don’t you save us the trouble?”

  Taylor finally smiled. “Save you the trouble? Why would I do that?”

  “I actually have a pretty good answer. Because you’re going to need my help later on.”

  “Well, then, I’ll save you some trouble later on, after you help me.” Taylor smirked. “What are you?” he finally asked. “The FBI’s idea of affirmative action?”

  I smiled. “No. Actually, I’m your last chance. You better take it.”

  Chapter 77

  THE LIBRARY IN the farmhouse was empty except for Potter and me. He was handcuffed, totally cool and unafraid, glaring menacingly.

  “I want my lawyer,” he said again.

  “I’ll bet you do. I would if I were you. I’d be making a real scene in here.”

  Taylor finally smiled. His teeth were badly stained. “How about a cigarette? Give me something.”

  I gave him one. I even lit it for him. “Where did you bury Benjamin Coffey?” I asked again.

  “So, you’re really the one in charge?” he asked. “Interesting. The world turns, doesn’t it? The worm too.”

  I ignored his question. “Where is Benjamin Coffey?” I repeated. “Is he buried out here? I’m sure he is.”

  “Then why ask? If you already know the answer.”

  “Because I don’t want to waste time digging up these fields or dredging the pond over there.”

  “I really can’t help you. I don’t know a Benjamin Coffey. Of course, Francis was here of his own free will. He hated it at Holy Cross. The Jesuits don’t like us. Well, some of the priests don’t.”

  “The Jesuits don’t like who? Who else is involved with you?”

  “You’re actually funny, for a police drone. I like a bit of dry humor now and then.”

  I stretched my leg out, struck his chest, and knocked his bench over. He hit the floor hard. Banged his head. I could see that it shook him, surprised him, anyway. Must have hurt at least a little bit.

  “That supposed to scare me?” he asked, once he’d gotten his breath. He was angry now, red faced, the veins in his neck pulsing. That was a start. “I want my lawyer! . . . I’m explicitly asking you for a lawyer!” He began to yell over and over again: “Lawyer! Lawyer! Lawyer! Lawyer! Can anyone hear me?”

  Taylor kept yelling at me for over an hour—like some sociopathic kid who wasn’t getting his way. I let him scream and curse until he started to get hoarse. I even went outside and stretched my legs, drank some coffee, chatted with Charlie Powiesnik, who was a pretty good guy.

  When I came back inside, Potter looked changed. He’d had time to think about everything that had happened at the farm. He knew that we were talking to Francis Deegan and that we’d find Benjamin Coffey too. Maybe a few others.

  He sighed out loud. “I assume we can make some sort of arrangement to my liking. Mutually beneficial.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure we can make an arrangement. But I need something concrete in return. How did you get the boys? How did it work? That’s what I need to hear from you.”

  I waited for him to answer. Several minutes passed.

  “I’ll tell you where Benjamin is,” he finally said.

  “You’ll tell me that too.”

  I waited some more. Took another turn outside with Charlie. Came back to the study.

  “I bought the boys from the Wolf,” Potter finally said. “But you’ll be sorry you asked. So will I, probably. He’ll make both of us pay. In my humble opinion, and remember, this is just a college professor talking, the Wolf is the most dangerous man alive. He’s Russian. Red Mafiya.”

  “Where do we find the Wolf?” I asked. “How do you contact him?”

  “I don’t know where he is. Nobody does. He’s a mystery man. That’s his thing, his trademark. I think it turns him on.”

  It took several more hours of talking, bargaining, and negotiating, but Potter finally told me some of what I wanted to know about the Wolf, this Russian mystery man who impressed him so. Late in the day, I wrote in my notes, This makes no sense yet. None of it does, really. The Wolf’s scheme seems insane. Is it?

  Then I wrote my final thought, at least for the moment:

  The brilliance of it may be that it makes no sense.

  To us.

  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.

  The two of us sat close together, Taylor in cuffs, in an operation room on the fifth floor of the Hoover. The professor was nervous, and I guessed that he was having second thoughts about our arrangement with respect to the Wolf. “Don’t think that he won’t get to you. He’s relentless. He’s crazy,” he warned me again.

  “I’ve avoided crazy men before,” I said. “We still have a deal?”

  “We do. What choice do I have? But you’ll regret it. So will I, I’m afraid.”

  “We’re going to protect you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “So you say.”

  The night had been a busy one already. The top computer experts at the Bureau had tried password-cracking software to get into the Wolf’s Den. So far, everything had failed. So had a “brute force” attack that could often decode encrypted data by feeding in combinations of letters and numbers. Nothing had worked. We needed Mr. Potter to get inside. We needed his eyes. The blood vessel patterns of the retina and the pattern of flecks on the iris provided unique methods of identification. Scanning involved a low-intensity light source and an optical coupler.

  Potter put one eye up to the device and then focused on a red dot. An impression was taken and then sent on. Seconds later, we had access.

  This is Potter, I typed as Taylor was led out of the operations room. He would be transferred to Lorton Federal Prison for the night, then taken back to New England. I put him out of my mind, but I wouldn’t be able to forget his warning about the Wolf.

  We were just talking about you, said someone with the user name Master Trekr.

  I wondered why my ears were buzzing, I typed, and wondered if I was communicating with the Wolf for the first time. Was he on-line? If so, where was he? What city?

  I was center stage in the operation room used by SIOC. More than a dozen agents and technicians were gathered around me. Most were on computers too. The scene looked like a very high-tech classroom.

  Master Trekr: Weren’t really talking about you, Potter. UR paranoid. Same as it ever was.

  I looked at the other user names:

  Sphinx 3000

  ToscaBella

  Louis XV

  Sterling 66

  No Wolf. Did that mean he wasn’t on-line in the Den? Or was he Master Trekr? Was he observing me now? Was I passing his test?

  I nee
d a replacement for “Worcester,” I typed. Potter had told me that Francis Deegan’s code name was Worcester.

  Sphinx 3000: Take a number. We were talking about my package. My delivery. It’s my turn. You know that, you fruitcake.

  I didn’t respond at first. This was my first test. Would Potter apologize to Sphinx 3000? I didn’t think he would. More likely, he’d come back with a caustic reply. Or would he? I chose to say nothing for now.

  Sphinx 3000: Fuck U, too. I know what UR thinking. U kinky bastard.

  Sphinx 3000: As I was saying before I was interrupted. I want a southern belle, the more hung up on herself, the more self-absorbed she is, the better. I want an ice goddess, who I plan to shatter. Totally into herself. She wears Chanel and Miu Miu and Bulgari jewelry, even to the shopping mall. Heels, of course. I don’t care if she’s tall or short. Beautiful face. Pert tits.

  ToscaBella: How original.

  Sphinx 3000: Fuck original, and, sorry to repeat myself, but fuck U. Give me that old-time rock-and-roll music. I want what I want, and I’ve earned it.

  Sterling 66: Anything else? This southern belle of yours? In her twenties? Thirties?

  Sphinx 3000: That’d be good. All or any of the above.

  Louis XV: Teens?

  Sterling 66: How long do you plan to keep her around?

  Sphinx 3000: One glorious night of ecstasy and wild abandon . . . just one night.

  Sterling 66: And then?

  Sphinx 3000: I’m going to dispose of her. Now, do I get my goddess?

  There was a pause.

  No answer came from anyone.

  What was going on? I wondered.

  Of course U do, answered Wolf. Just be careful, Sphinx. Be very careful. We’re being watched.