Part 2 (1/2)

MAHONEY AND I WATCHED as the breach team moved quickly on the small inconsequential-looking house. The six agents were outfitted in black-on-black flight suits and body armor. The side yard was littered with two more junked vehicles, a small car and a Dodge truck, and a lot of spare parts for appliances like refrigerators and air conditioners. There was a standing urinal out back that looked as if it had come from a tavern.The house windows were dark even though it was midday. Was Audrey Meek in there? Was she alive? I hoped that she was. It was a huge break if we got her back now. Especially since everybody thought she was probably dead.But something about the raid bothered me.Not that it mattered now.There is no ”knock and announce” protocol when HRT is involved. No talking, no negotiating, no political correctness.I watched two agents breach the front door. They started to go inside the suspect's house.Suddenly, a m.u.f.fled boom. The agents at the front door went down. One of them didn't get up. The other got up and stumbled away from the house. It was awful to witness, a complete shock.”Bomb,” said Mahoney in surprise and anger. ”He musta b.o.o.by-trapped the door.”By then, the four other agents were inside the house. They had gone in through the back and side doors. There were no more explosions, so the other doors hadn't been b.o.o.by-trapped. Two HRT agents approached the wounded pair at the front of the house. They pulled away the agent who hadn't moved since the blast.Mahoney and I ran as fast as we could toward the house. He kept repeating ”f.u.c.k” over and over. There were no gunshots coming from inside.I was suddenly afraid Farley wasn't even in the house. I prayed that Audrey Meek wasn't already dead in there. Everything was feeling so wrong to me. This wasn't how I would have done the raid. The FBI! I had always hated and distrusted these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and now I was one of them.Then I heard, ”Secure! Secure!” And ”We have a suspect! We've got him! It's Farley. There's a woman here too!”What woman? Mahoney and I barged in through the side door. I saw thick smoke everywhere. The house reeked of the explosive, but also of marijuana and greasy cooking. We made our way back to a bedroom off a small living room.A naked man and woman were spread-eagled on the bare wooden floor of the bedroom. The woman on the floor wasn't Audrey Meek. She was heavy, at least forty or fifty pounds overweight. Rafe Farley looked to be close to three hundred pounds and had hideous clumps of red hair not only on his head but all over his body.An old poster for the movie Cool Hand Luke was taped over a king-size bed that had no sheets or covers. Nothing else caught my eye.Farley was screaming at us, his face deep crimson. ”I have rights! I have G.o.dd.a.m.n legal rights! You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are in real trouble.”I had a feeling that he might be right, and that if this screaming man had kidnapped Mrs. Meek, she was already dead.”You're the one in trouble, fat boy!” an HRT agent barked in the suspect's face. ”You too, girlfriend!”Could this possibly be the couple who had taken Audrey Meek and Elizabeth Connolly?I didn't see how.So who in h.e.l.l were they?

Chapter 39.

NED MAHONEY AND I were stuck in a close, dark pigsty of a bedroom with the suspect, Rafe Farley. The woman, who a.s.sured us she was his girlfriend, had put on a filthy bathrobe and been taken into the kitchen to be questioned.We were all angry about what had happened outside. Two agents had been wounded by a b.o.o.by trap. Rafe Farley was the closest thing we had to a break in the case, or a suspect.Things kept getting weirder. For starters, Farley spit at Mahoney and me until his mouth went dry. It was so strange and crazy that at one point, Ned and I just looked at each other and started to laugh.”Think this is f.u.c.king funny?” Farley rasped from the edge of the bed, where he was lodged like a beached whale. We'd made him put on clothes, blue jeans and a work s.h.i.+rt, mostly because we couldn't stand the sight of his big rolls of fat and his tattoos of naked women and a purple dragon eating a child.”You're going down on kidnap and murder charges,” Mahoney snarled at him. ”You injured two of my men. One might lose an eye.””You had no right comin_ in my house while I'm sleeping! I have enemies!” Farley yelled, and spit at Mahoney again. ”You barge in here _cause I sell some weed? Or I screw a married broad who likes me more than she likes her old man?””Are you talking about Audrey Meek?” I asked.All of a sudden he went quiet. He stared at me, and his face and neck turned bright red. What was this? He wasn't a good actor and he wasn't real smart either.”What the hollered you talking about? You been smoking my s.h.i.+t?” Farley said finally. ”Audrey Meek? That chick they kidnapped?”Mahoney leaned forward. ”Audrey Meek. We know you know all about her, Farley. Where is she?”Farley's piggy eyes seemed to be getting smaller. ”How the h.e.l.l would I know where she is?”Mahoney kept at him. ”You ever been in a chat room called Favorite Things Four?”Farley shook his head. ”Never heard of it.””We have a record of your conversation, a.s.shole,” Ned said. ”You got a lot of explaining to do, Lucy.”Farley looked confused. ”Who the h.e.l.l is Lucy? What are you talking about, man? You mean, like, I Love Lucy?”Mahoney was good at keeping Farley off guard. I thought we were working okay together.”You've got her in the woods somewhere in Jersey,” Mahoney yelled, then stamped his foot hard.”Did you hurt her? Is she all right? Where is Audrey Meek?” I picked up.”Take us to her, Farley!””You're going back to prison. This time, you don't get out again,” I shouted in his face.It was as if Farley were finally waking up. He squinted his eyes and stared hard at us. Lord, he smelled, especially now that he was scared.”Wait a f.u.c.king minute. Now I get it. That Internet place? I was just showin' off.””What's that supposed to mean?”Farley slumped down into himself as if we'd been beating him. uvorite Four is for freaks to talk. Everybody makes s.h.i.+t up, man.””But you didn't make up the stuff about Audrey Meek. You know things about her. You got it all right,” I said.”The b.i.t.c.h turns me on. She's a fox. h.e.l.l, I collect catalogues from Meek, always have. All those skinny-a.s.s models look like they need a good unh, unh, uh!””You knew things about the abduction, Farley,” I said.”I read the newspapers, watch CNN. Who doesn't? I told you, Audrey Meek turns me on. I wish I abducted her. You think I'd be sleeping with Cini if Audrey Meek was around here?”I jabbed an index finger at Farley. ”You knew things that weren't in the newspapers.”He shook his huge head from side to side. Then he said, ”Got a scanner. Listen in on police radios and such. s.h.i.+t, I didn't kidnap Audrey Meek. I wouldn't have the b.a.l.l.s. I wouldn't. I'm all talk, man.”Mahoney cut in. ”You had the b.a.l.l.s to rape Carly Hope,” he said.Farley seemed to be shrinking inside himself again. ”Nah, nah. It's like I said in court. Carly was a girlfriend. I didn't rape her none. I don't have the b.a.l.l.s. I didn't do nothing to Audrey Meek. I'm n.o.body. I'm nothing.”Rafe Farley stared at us for a long moment. His eyes were bloodshot; everything about him was pathetic. I didn't want to, but I was starting to believe him. I'm n.o.body. I'm nothing. That was Rafe Farley, all right.

Chapter 40.

SterlingMr. PotterThe Art DirectorSphinxMarvelThe WolfThe cover names sounded harmless, but the men behind them weren't. During one session, Potter had nicknamed the group Monsters Inc. as a joke, and that was an accurate description. They were monsters, all of them. They were freaks; they were deviates and worse.And then there was the Wolf, who was in a whole other cla.s.s.They met on a secure Web site that was inaccessible to outsiders. All messages were encrypted and required a pair of keys: One key garbled the information; the second key was needed to recover it. More important, a hand scan was necessary to get onto the site. They were considering using a retinal scan or possibly an a.n.a.l probe.The subject under discussion was the Couple and what to do about them.”What the h.e.l.l does that mean, what to do about them?” asked the Art Director, who was jokingly called Mr. Softee because he could get very emotional, the only one of them who ever did.”It means just what it sounds like,” answered Sterling. ”There's been a serious breach of security. Now we have to decide what to do about it. There's been sloppiness, stupidity, and maybe worse than that. They were seen. It's put us all in danger.””What are our options?” Art Director continued. ”I'm almost afraid to ask.”Sterling responded instantly. ”Have you read the newspapers lately? Do you have a TV? A team of two took a woman in a mall in Atlanta, Georgia. They were spotted. A team of two abducted a woman in Pennsylvania and they were seen. Our options? Do absolutely nothing or do something extreme. An object lesson is needed for the other teams.””So what are we doing about the problem?” asked Marvel, who was usually spookily quiet but could be nasty when he was aroused.”For one thing, I've shut down all deliveries for the moment,” said Sterling.”n.o.body told me about that!” Sphinx erupted. ”I'm expecting a delivery. As all of you know, I paid a price for it. Why wasn't I informed before now?”No one said anything to Sphinx for several seconds. No one liked him. Besides, each of them was a s.a.d.i.s.t. They enjoyed torturing Sphinx, or anyone else in the group who showed weakness.”I expect my delivery!” Sphinx insisted. ”I deserve it.You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! f.u.c.k you all.”Then he went off-line. In a huff. Typical Sphinx. Laughable, really, except none of them was laughing right now.”The Sphinxter has left the building,” Potter finally said.Then Wolf took over. ”I think that's enough idle chat for tonight, enough fun and games. I'm concerned about the news stories. We need to deal with the Couple in some decisive manner that satisfies me. What I propose is that we have another team pay them a visit. Is there any disagreement?”There was none, which wasn't unusual when the Wolf had the floor. All of them were petrii of the Russian.”There is some good news, though,” Potter said then. ”This fuss and attention...it is exciting, isn't it? Gets the blood boiling. It's a hoot, right?””You're crazy, Potter. You're mad.””Don't you just love it?”The well-protected chat room was not protected enough.Suddenly, the Wolf said, ”Don't say another word. Not a word! I think someone else is on with us. Wait. They're off now. Someone broke into the den and now they're gone. Who could have gotten in here? Who let them in? Whoever it is, they're dead.”

Chapter 41.

LILI OLSEN WAS fourteen and a half years old, going on twenty-four, and she honestly believed she'd heard everything until she hacked into the Wolf's Den.The sick b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the well-protected-but-not-protected-enough chat room were all older men, and they were gross and despicable. They liked to talk incessantly about women's private parts and having vile s.e.x with anyone and everything that moved _ any age, any gender, human or animal. The men were beyond disgusting; they made her want to puke. Only then it got a lot worse, and Lili wished she had never even heard of the Wolf's Den, never hacked into the highly protected chat room. They might be murderers!And then the leader, Wolf, actually discovered Lili was on the site with them, listening to everything they'd said.So now Lili knew about the murders, and the kidnappings,everything they fantasized about and possibly did. Only she didn't know if any of what she heard was real or not.Was it real? Or were they making it all up? Maybe they were just nasty, sicko bulls.h.i.+tters. Lili almost didn't want to know the truth, and she didn't know what to do about the stuff she'd already overheard. She had hacked onto their site, and that was illegal. If she went to the police, she'd be turning herself in. So she couldn't do that. Could she? Especially if the stuff on the site was just fantasies.So she sat in her room and pondered the unthinkable. Then pondered it again. She felt so bad, so sick to her stomach, so sad, but she was also afraid.They knew she'd hacked onto the Wolf's Den. But did they also know how to find her? If she were them, she'd know how. So were they already on their way to her house?Lili knew she should go to the police. Maybe the FBI. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She sat frozen. It was as if she were paralyzed.When the doorbell rang she just about jumped out of her skin. ”Holy s.h.i.+t, holy mother! It's them!”Lili took a deep breath, then she scurried downstairs to the front door. She looked through the peephole. She could hear her own heart thundering.Domino's Pizza! Jesus!She'd forgotten all about it. It was pizza delivery, not killers, at the front door, and suddenly Lili was giggling to herself. She wasn't going to die after all.She opened the front door.

Chapter 42.

THE WOLF HAD SELDOM been angrier, and someone had to pay. The Russian had a long- standing hatred for New York City and the smug and overrated metropolitan area. He found it filthy, foul beyond imagining, the people rude and uncivilized, even worse than in Moscow. But he had to be there today; it was where the Couple lived, and he had business with them. The Wolf also wanted to play some chess, one of his pa.s.sions.Long Island was the general address he had for Slava and Zoya.Huntington was the special one.He arrived in the town just past three in the afternoon. He remembered the one other time he'd been here _ two years after he had arrived in New York from Russia. Cousins of his owned a house here and had helped set him up in America. He had committed four murders out ”on the Island,” as the locals called it. Well, at least Huntington was close to Kennedy Airport. He'd be out of New York as soon as possible.The Couple lived in a typical suburban ranch house. The Wolf banged on the front door, and a goateed bull of a man by the name of Lukanov opened it. Lukanov was part of another team, one that worked successfully in California, Oregon, and Was.h.i.+ngton State. Lukanov had once been a major in the KGB.”Where are the stupid f.u.c.ks?” the Wolf asked, once he was inside the front door.The bull Lukanov jerked a thumb toward a semidarkened hallway behind him, and Wolf trudged down it. His right knee was aching today, and he remembered a time in the eighties when members of a rival gang had broken it. In Moscow that kind of thing was considered a warning. The Wolf wasn't much for warnings himself. He had found the three men who'd tried to cripple him and broken every bone in their bodies, one by one. In Russia this gruesome practice was called zamochit, but the Wolf and other gangsters also called it mus.h.i.+ng.He entered a small, sloppily kept bedroom and immediately saw Slava and Zoya, his ex- wife's cousins. The pair had grown up about thirty miles from Moscow. They had been in the army until the summer of _98, then they immigrated to America. They'd been working for him for less than eight months, so he was just getting to know them.”You live in a garbage dump,” he said. ”I know you have plenty of money. What do you do with it?””We have family at home,” said Zoya. ”Your relatives are there too.”The Wolf tilted his head. :whh, so touching. I had no idea you had such a big heart of gold, Zoya.” He motioned for the bull to leave and said, ”Shut the door. I'll be out when I'm finished here. It might be a while.”The Couple was tied up together on the floor. Both were in their underwear. Slava had on shorts patterned with little ducks. Zoya wore a black bra with a matching bikini thong.The Wolf finally smiled. ”What am I going to do with you two, huh?”Slava began to laugh out loud, a nervous, high-pitched cackling. He had thought they were going to be killed, but this would just be a warning. He could see this in the Wolf's eyes.”So what happened? Tell me quickly. You knew the rules of the game,” he said.”Maybe it was getting too easy. We wanted a little more of a challenge. It's our mistake, Pasha. We got sloppy.””Never lie to me,” the Wolf said. ”I have my sources. They are everywhere!”He sat on the arm of an easy chair that looked as if it had been in this hideous bedroom for a hundred years. Dust puffed from the old chair as it took his weight.”You like him?” he asked Zoya. ”My wife's cousin?””I love him,” she said, and her brown eyes went soft. ”Always. Since we were thirteen years old. Forever, I loved him.””Slava, Slava,” the Wolf said, and walked over to the muscular man on the floor. He bent to give Slava a hug. ”You are my ex-wife's blood relative. And you betrayed me. You sold me out to my enemies, didn't you? Sure, you did. How much did you get? A lot, I hope.”Then he twisted Slava's head as if he were opening a big jar of pickles. Slava's neck snapped, a sound that the Wolf had come to love over the years. His trademark in the Red Maya.Zoya's eyes widened to about twice their normal size. But she didn't make a sound, and because of that the Wolf understood what tough customers she and Slava really were, how dangerous they had been to the safety of the organization. ”I'm impressed, Zoya,” he said. ”Let's talk some.”He stared into those amazing eyes of hers. ”Listen, I'm going to get the two of us some real vodka, Russian vodka. Then I want to hear your war stories,” he said. ”I want to hear what you've done with your life, Zoya. You have me curious now. Most of all, I want to play chess, Zoya. n.o.body in America knows how to play chess. One game, then you go to heaven with your beloved Slava. But first vodka and chess, and, of course, I f.u.c.k you!”

Chapter 43.

ON ACCOUNT OF SECRETS that Zoya had told him under significant duress, the Wolf had to make one more stop in New York. Unfortunate. This meant that he wouldn't be able to catch his flight home out of Kennedy and he would miss the professional hockey game that night. Regretful, but he knew this was the right thing to do. The betrayal by Slava and Zoya had jeopardized his life, and also made him look bad.At a little past eleven, he entered a club called the Pa.s.sage in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. The Pa.s.sage looked like a dump from the street, but inside it was beautiful, very ornate, almost as nice as the best places in Moscow.He saw people he knew from the old days: Gosha Cher-nov, Lev Denisov, Yura Fomin and his mistress. Then he spotted his darling Yulya. His ex-wife was tall and slender, with large b.r.e.a.s.t.s he'd bought for her in Palm Beach, Florida. Yulya was still beautiful in the right light, not so much changed since Moscow, where she had been a dancer since she was teen.She was sitting at the bar with Mikhail Biryukov, the latest king of Brighton Beach. They were directly in front of a mural of St. Petersburg, which was very cinematic, thought the Wolf, a typical Hollywood visual cliche.Yulya saw him coming, and she tapped Biryukov. The local pakhan turned to look, and the Wolf closed on him fast. He slammed a black king down on the table. ”Checkmate,” he roared, then laughed and hugged Yulya.”You're not happy to see me?” he asked them. ”I should be hurt.”Biryukov grunted. ”You are a mystery man. I thought you were in California.””Wrong again,” said the Wolf. ;y the way, Slava and Zoya say h.e.l.lo. I just saw them out on Long Island. They couldn't make the trip here tonight.”Yulya shrugged, such a cool little b.i.t.c.h. ”They mean nothing to me,” she said. ”Distant cousins.””Or me either, Yulya. Only the police care about them now.”Suddenly, he grabbed Yulya by the hair and lifted her out of her bar seat with one arm. ”You told them to f.u.c.k me over, didn't you? You must have paid them a lot!” he screamed in her face. ”It was you. And him!”With dazzling speed, the Wolf pulled an ice pick from his sleeve and stuck it into Biryukov's left eye. The gangster was blinded, and dead in an instant.”No . . . Please.” Yulya struggled to get out a few words. ”You can't do this. Not even you!”Then the Wolf addressed everyone in the nightclub. ”You are all witnesses, are you not? What? n.o.body helps her? You're afraid of me? Good _ you should be. Yulya tried to get revenge on me. She was always stupid as a cow. Biryukov _ he was just a dumb, greedy b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Ambitious! The G.o.dfather of Brighton Beach! What is that? He wanted to be me!”The Wolf lifted Yulya even higher in the air. Her long legs kicked violently and one of her red mules went flying, scooting under a nearby table. n.o.body picked up the shoe. Not a person in the club moved to help her. Or to see if Mikhail Biryukov was still alive. Word had already circulated that the madman in the front of the Pa.s.sage was the Wolf.”You are witnesses to what happens if anyone ever crosses me. You are witnesses! So you've had a warning. Same as in Russia. Same now in America.”The Wolf took his left hand out of Yulya's hair and wrapped it around her throat. He twisted hard and Yulya's neck broke. ”You are witnesses!” he screamed in Russian. ”I killed my ex- wife. And this rat Biryukov. You saw me do it! So go to h.e.l.l.”And then the Wolf stomped out of the nightclub. No one did a thing to stop him.And no one talked to the New York police when they came.Same as in Russia.Same now in America.

Chapter 44.

BENJAMIN COFFEY WAS being held in a dark root cellar under the barn where he'd been brought , what was it now, three, maybe four days ago? Benjamin couldn't remember exactly, couldn't keep track of the days.The Providence College student had nearly lost his mind until he made an amazing discovery in the solitary confinement of the cellar. He found G.o.d, or maybe G.o.d found him.The first and most startling thing Benjamin felt was G.o.d's presence. G.o.d accepted him, and maybe it was time for him to accept G.o.d. He learned that G.o.d understood him. But why couldn't he understand the first thing about G.o.d? It didn't make sense to Benjamin, who'd attended Catholic schools from kindergarten up to his senior year at Providence, where he studied philosophy and also art history. Benjamin had come to another conclusion in the darkness of his ”prison cell” under the barn. He'd always thought that he was basically a good person, but now he knew that he wasn't; and it didn't have anything to do with his s.e.xuality, as his hypocritical church would have him think. The way he figured it, a bad person was someone who habitually caused harm to others. Benjamin was guilty of that by his treatment of his parents and siblings, his cla.s.smates, his lovers, even his so-called best friends. He was mean-spirited, always acted superior, and continually inflicted unnecessary pain. He had acted like this ever since he could remember. He was cruel, a sn.o.b, a martinet, a s.a.d.i.s.t, a complete piece of s.h.i.+t. He'd always justified his bad behavior, because other people had caused him so much pain.So was that why things had turned out like this? Maybe. But what was truly astonis.h.i.+ng to Benjamin was the realization that if he ever got out of this alive, he probably wouldn't change. In fact, he believed he would use this experience as an excuse to continue being a miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.d for the rest of his life. Cold, cold, I'm so cold, he thought. But G.o.d loves me unconditionally. That never changes either. Then Benjamin realized that he was incredibly confused, and crying, and had been for a long time, at least a day. He was s.h.i.+vering, babbling nonsense to himself, and he didn't know what he really thought about anything. Not anymore, he didn't.His mind kept s.h.i.+fting back and forth. He did have good friends, great friends, and he'd been an okay son; so why were all these terrible thoughts shuttling through his head? Because he was in h.e.l.l? Was that it? h.e.l.l was this foul-smelling, claustrophobic root cellar under a decaying barn somewhere in New England, probably New Hamps.h.i.+re or Vermont. Was that right?Maybe he was supposed to repent and couldn't be set free until he did? Or maybe this was it _ for eternity.He remembered something from Catholic grade school in Great Barrington, Rhode Island. A parish priest had tried to explain an eternity in h.e.l.l to Benjamin's sixth-grade cla.s.s. ”Picture a river with a mountain on the other side,” the priest had said. ”Now imagine that every thousand years the tiniest sparrow transports what it can carry in its beak across the river from the mountain. When that tiny sparrow has transported the entire mountain to this side of the river, that, boys and girls, would just be the beginning of eternity.” But Benjamin didn't really believe the priest's little fable, did he? Fire and brimstone forever? Somebody would find him soon. Somebody would guide him out.Unfortunately, he didn't completely believe that either. How could anyone find him here? They wouldn't. G.o.d, the police had lucked out finding the Was.h.i.+ngton sniper, and Malvo and Muhammad weren't very smart. Mr. Potter was.He had to stop crying soon, because Potter was angry with him already. He'd threatened to kill him if he didn't stop, and, oh, G.o.d, that was why he was crying so hard now. He didn't want to die, not when he was just twenty-one and had his whole life ahead of him.An hour later? two hours? three? he heard a loud noise above him and began to cry again. Now Benjamin couldn't stop sobbing, shaking all over. He was sniveling too. He'd sniffed and sniveled since preschool. Stop sniveling, Benjamin. Stop it! Stop it! But he couldn't stop.Then the trapdoor opened! Someone was coming down.Stop the crying, stop the crying, stop it! Stop it this instant! Potter will kill you.Then the most unbelievable thing happened, a turn of events that Benjamin would have never expected.He heard a deep voice _ not Potter's.”Benjamin Coffey? Benjamin? This is the FBI. Mr. Coffey, are you down there? This is the FBI.”He was shaking worse now, and sobbing so hard he thought he might choke behind the gag. Because of the gag, he couldn't call out, couldn't let the FBI somehow know that he was down here.The FBI found me! It's a miracle. I have to signal them. But how? Don't leave! I'm down here! I'm right here!A flashlight illuminated his face.He could see a person behind the light. A silhouette. Then the full face peered out of the shadows.Mr. Potter was frowning down at him from the trapdoor. Then he stuck out his tongue. ”I told you what was going to happen. Didn't I tell you, Benjamin? You did this to yourself. And you're so beautiful. G.o.d, you're perfect in every other way.”His tormentor came down the stairs. He saw a battered sledgehammer in Potter's hand. A heavy farm tool. Waves of fear washed over Benjamin. ”I'm a lot stronger than I look,” Potter said. ”And you've been a very bad boy.”

Chapter 45.

MR. POTTER'S REAL NAME was Homer O. Taylor, and he was an a.s.sistant professor in the English department at Dartmouth. Brilliant, to be sure, but still an a.s.sistant, a n.o.body. His office was a small but cozy one in the turret at the northwest corner of the Liberal Arts building. He called it his ”garret,” the place where a n.o.body would labor in lonely solitude.He had been up there most of the afternoon with the door locked, and he was fidgeting. He was also grieving for his beautiful dead boy, his latest tragic love _ his third!Part of Homer Taylor wanted to hurry back to the barn at the farm in Webster to be with Benjamin, just to watch over the body for a few more hours. His Toyota 4Runner was parked outside, and he could be there in an hour if he pushed it. Benjamin, dear boy, why couldn't you have been good? Why did you bring out the worst in me when there was so much to love?Benjamin had been such a beauty, and the loss that Taylor felt now was horrifying. And not only the physical and emotional drain, there was the great financial loss. Five years ago, he'd inherited a little over two million dollars. It was going too fast. Much too fast. He couldn't afford to play like this _ but how could he ever stop now?He wanted another boy already. He needed to be loved. And to love someone. Another Benjamin, only not an emotional wreck, as the poor boy had been.So he stayed in his office for the entire day to avoid an excruciating hour-long tutorial at four o'clock. He pretended to be marking term papers, in case someone knocked, but he never looked at a single page.Instead, he obsessed.He finally contacted Sterling around seven o'clock. ”I want to make another purchase,” he said.

Chapter 46.

I VISITED SAMPSON AND BILLIE one night and had a great time with them, talking about babies and scaring big, bad John Sampson as much as I could. I tried to talk to Jamilla at least once a day. But White Girl was starting to heat up, and I knew what that meant. I was probably about to get lost in the case.A married couple, Slava Vasilev and Zoya Petrov, had been found murdered in the house they rented on Long Island. We had learned that the husband and wife had come to the United States four years before. They were suspected of bringing Russian and other Eastern European women here for the purpose of prost.i.tution, and also to bear children who would be sold to affluent couples.Agents from our New York office were all over the murder scene on Long Island. Photographs of the two victims had been shown to the high school students who'd seen the Connolly abduction and to Audrey Meeks children. They had identified the couple as the kidnappers. I wondered why the bodies had been left there. As examples? For whom?Monnie Donnelley and I regularly met at seven before I had to attend orientation cla.s.ses for the day. We were a.n.a.lyzing the Long Island murders. Monnie pulled together everything she could find on the husband and wife, as well as other Russian criminals working in the U.S., the so-called Red Mafia. She was hot-wired into the Organized Crime Section over at the Hoover Building and also the Red Mafia squad in the Bureau's New York office.”I brought _everything_ bagels from D.C.,” I said as I entered her cube at ten minutes past seven Monday. ”Best in the city. According to Zagat, anyway. You don't seem too excited.””You're late,” Monnie said, without looking up from her computer screen. She'd mastered the droll, deadpan delivery style favored by hackers.”These bagels are worth it,” I said. ”Trust me.””I don't trust anybody,” Monnie replied.She finally glanced up at me and smiled. Nice smile, worth the wait. ”You know that I'm kidding, right? It's just a tough-girl act, Alex. Give with the bagels.”I laughed. ”I'm used to cop humor.””Oh, I'm honored,” she muttered, deadpan again, as she looked back at the glowing computer screen. ”He thinks I'm a cop, not just a desk jockey. You know, they started me in fingerprinting. The absolute bottom.”I liked Monnie, but I had the sense that she needed a lot of support. I knew she'd been divorced for about two years. She'd majored in criminology at Maryland for undergrad, where she had also pursued another interesting pa.s.sion _ studio arts. Monnie still took cla.s.ses in drawing and painting, and, of course, there was the collage in her cube.She yawned. ”Sorry. I watched Alias with the boys last night. That will be Grandma's problem when she has to get them up this morning.”Monnie's home life was another thing we had in common. She was a single parent, with two young kids and a doting grandmother who lived less than a block away. The grandmother was her ex-husband's mother, which told the story of the marriage. Jack Donnelley had played basketball at Maryland, where he and Monnie met. He was a big drinker in college, and it got worse once he graduated. Monnie said he'd never recovered from being all- everything in high school and then just another guard for the Maryland Terrapins. Monnie was five-foot even, and joked that she hadn't played any kind of ball at Maryland. She told me her nickname in high school was Spaz.”I've been reading all about women being traded and sold from Tokyo to Riyadh,” she said. ”Breaks my heart and it p.i.s.ses me off. Alex, we're talking some of the worst slavery in history. What's with you men?”I looked at her. ”I don't buy and sell women, Monnie. Neither do any of my friends.””Sorry. I'm carrying around a little extra baggage because of Jack the Rat and a few other husbands I know.” She looked at her computer screen. ”Here's a choice quote for today.Know what the Thai premier said about the thousands of women from his country sold into prost.i.tution? _Thai girls are just so pretty._ And here's the premier on ten-year-old girls being sold: _Come on, don't you like young girls, too?_ I swear to G.o.d, he said that.”I sat down next to Monnie and peered at her computer screen. ”So now somebody's opened a lucrative market for suburban white women. Who? And where are they working out of? Europe? Asia? The U.S.?””The murdered couple could be a break for us. Russians. What do you think?” she asked.”Could be a ring operating out of New York. Brighton Beach. Or maybe they're headquartered in Europe? The Russian mob is set up just about everywhere these days. It's not _The Russians Are Coming_ anymore. They're here.”Monnie started to spit out information. ”The Solntsevo gang is the largest crime syndicate in the world right now. Did you know that? They're big here too. Both coasts. The Red Mafia has basically collapsed in their country. They smuggled close to a hundred billion out of Russia, and a lot of it came here. You know, we've got major task forces working in L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, New York, D.C., Miami. The Reds bought banks in the Caribbean and Cyprus. Believe it or not, they've taken over prost.i.tution, gambling, and money laundering in Israel. In Israel!”I finally got a few words in. ”I spent a couple of hours last night reading the ?les from Anti- Slavery International. The Red Mafia comes up there too.””I'll tell you one other thing.” She looked at me. ”That kid who was grabbed in Newport. I know it's a different pattern, I get it, but I do believe he's part of this. What do you think?”I nodded. So did I. And I also thought that Monnie had great street smarts for somebody who rarely left the office. So far, she was the best person I'd met at the Bureau, and here we were in her tiny cube trying to solve White Girl.

Chapter 47.

I HAD NEVER really stopped being a student since my days at Johns Hopkins, and it had served me well in the Was.h.i.+ngton PD, even given me a certain mystique. I hoped it would be the same in the Bureau, though it hadn't been so far. I set myself up with a supply of black coffee and started in on the Russian mob research. I needed to know everything about them, and Monnie Donnelley was a willing accomplice.I made notes along the way, though I usually remember most of what is important enough and don't need to write it down. According to the FBI ?les, the Russian mob was now more diverse and powerful in America than La Cosa Nostra. Unlike the Italian Mau, the Russians were organized into loose networks that cooperated with but weren't dependent on one another. At least not so far. A major benefit was that the loose style of organization avoided RICO prosecutions by the government. No conspiracies could be proved. There were two distinctly different types of Russian mobsters. The ”knuckle draggers” were into extortion, prost.i.tution, and racketeering, and their particular crime group was called the Solntsevo. The second type of Russian mobster operated at a more sophisticated level, often securities fraud and money laundering. These were the neocapitalist criminals, called the Izmailovo.For the moment, I decided to concentrate on the first group, the lowlifes, especially the brigades involved with prost.i.tution. According to the Bureau's OC Section report, the prost.i.tute business operated ”a lot like major league baseball.” A group of prost.i.tutes could actually be ”traded” from an owner in one city to one in another. As a footnote, a survey conducted among seventh- grade girls in Russia listed prost.i.tution among the top-five career choices of the girls when they grew up. Several historical anecdotes had been inserted in the ?le to represent the Russian criminal mentality: smart and ruthless. According to one story, Ivan the Terrible had commissioned St. Basil's Cathedral to rival, even surpa.s.s, the great churches of Europe. He was pleased with the result and invited the architect to the Kremlin. When the artist arrived, his blueprints were burned and his eyes poked out, thus ensuring that he could never create a finer cathedral for anyone else. There were several more contemporary examples in the report, but that was how the Red Mafia worked. It was what we were up against if the Russians were behind White Girl.

Chapter 48.