The Big Bad Wolf

CHAPTER 15

THE MODERN-DAY GODFATHER. A forty-seven-year-old Russian now living in America

and known as the Wolf. Rumored to be fearless, hands-on, into everything from weapon

sales, extortion, and drugs to legitimate businesses such as banking and venture capital. No

one seemed to know his true identity, or his American name, or where he lived. Clever.

Invisible. Safe from the FBI. And anybody else who might be looking for him.

He had been in his twenties when he made the switch from the KGB to become one of the

most ruthless cell leaders in Russian organized crime, the Red Maya. His namesake, the

Siberian wolf, was a skillful hunter, but also relentlessly hunted. The Siberian was a fast

runner and could overpower much heavier animals but it was also hunted for its blood and

bones. The human Wolf was also a hunter who was hunted except that the police had no

idea where to hunt.

Invisible. By design. Actually, he was hiding in plain sight. On a balmy evening, the man

called Wolf was throwing a huge party at his 20,000-square-foot house on the waterfront in

Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The occasion was the launch of his new men’s magazine, called

Instinct, which would compete with Maxim and Stun.

In Lauderdale, the Wolf was known as Ari Manning, a wealthy businessman originally from

Tel Aviv. He had other names in other cities. Many names, many cities.

He was passing through the den now, where about twenty of his guests were watching a

football game on several TVs, including a 61-inch Runco. A couple of football fanatics were

bent over a computer with a statistics database. On a nearby table was a bottle of

Stolichnaya encased in a block of ice. The vodka in ice was the only real Russian touch that

he allowed.

At six-foot-two, this Wolf could carry 240 pounds and still move like a big and very powerful

animal. He circulated among his guests, always smiling and joking, knowing that no one in

the room understood why he smiled, not one of these so-called friends or business partners or

social acquaintances had any idea who he was.

They knew him as Ari, not as Pasha Sorokin, and definitely not as the Wolf. They had no

clue about the pounds of illegal diamonds he bought from Sierra Leone, the tons of heroin

from Asia, and weapons and even jets sold to the Colombians, or white women purchased by

the Saudis and Japanese. In south Florida, he had a reputation for being a maverick both

socially and in business. There were more than 150 guests tonight, but he’d ordered food and

drink for twice that number. He had imported the chef from Le Cirque 2000 in New York,

and also a sushi cook from San Francisco. His servers were dressed as cheerleaders and were

topless, which he thought a cheeky joke, guaranteed to offend. The famous surprise dessert

for the party was Sacher tortes flown in from Vienna. No wonder everybody loved Ari. Or

hated him.

He gave a playful hug to a former pro running back for the Miami Dolphins and talked to a

lawyer who’d made tens of millions from the Florida tobacco settlement exchanged stories

about Governor Jeb Bush. Then he moved on through the crowd. There were so many ass-kissing social climbers and opportunists who came to his house to be seen among the right,

and wrong, people: self-important, spoiled, selfish, and, worst of all, boring as tepid dishwater.

He walked along the edge of an indoor swimming pool toward an outdoor pool more than

twice the size. He chatted with his guests and made a generous pledge to a private-school

charity. Not surprisingly, he was hit on by somebody’s wife. He had serious conversations

with the owner of the most important hotel in the state, a Mercedes-dealing mogul, and the

head of a conglomerate who was a hunting “buddy” of his.

He despised all of these pretenders, especially the older used-to-be’s. None of them had ever

taken a real risk in their lives. Still, they had made millions, even billions, and they thought

they were such hot shit.

And then he thought about Elizabeth Connolly for the first time in an hour or so. His sweet,

very sexy Lizzie. She looked like Claudia Schiffer, and he fondly remembered the days when

the image of the German model was on hundreds of billboards all over Moscow. He had

lusted for Claudia all Russian men had and now he had her likeness in his possession.

Why? Because he could. It was the philosophy that drove him and everything in his life.

For that very reason, he was keeping her right here in his big house in Fort Lauderdale.