Free The Wolf by Lorenzo Carcaterra Page A

the boy. “We all can. All you need is to stay calm and hand me the device in your pocket. But do it slowly. Fast moves make me nervous.”
    “I’m not a fool,” the young man said, struggling to regain his composure. “You’ll kill me the second I hand it to you. And if you don’t, the others who will be here will for certain.”
    “You were a fool,” Remi said, catching the young man’s British accent, reading him as well-bred and well-educated, another misguided missionary recruited into a battle whose motives he would never live long enough to understand, “when you agreed to step into this mess. Now you have a chance at smart. You can come out of this without blood on your hands. Take a look around. You see all these people? They can die because of what you do. Or they can live because of what you don’t.”
    The young man took a deep breath. “I’m not afraid,” he said.
    “I know you’re not,” Remi said.
    “I just didn’t think it would be like this,” the young man said. “I didn’t think it would feel the way it does.”
    “You’re not a fanatic,” Remi said. He caught sight of a police van screeching to a halt in front of the terminal. “But you’re down to seconds. Hand me the device and live, or set it off and die.”
    “You’ll die, too,” the young man said. “The other police officers. Hundreds of others.”
    “That’s right,” Remi said. “You are the one, the only one, who makes that decision.”
    The young man eased the device out of his pocket, gripping it in his right hand. He was sweating. Remi saw the control was crudely made, the kind he hated the most because something always went wrong with them. There were wires wrapped around a square box large enough to hold a wristwatch. Brown tape covered the detonator and there was a switch in the center of the box. The young man’s thumb rested on the edge of the switch.
    Remi took two steps back, placed the satchel next to his left leg and held his gun by his side. “What’s your name?” he asked.
    “John,” the young man said.
    “Well, John,” Remi said, “seems you and I are in position, as are the snipers above us. But truth is, we’re the only players here. Whatever happens will be because of what one of us does.”
    “What about me?” John asked.
    “If you give me the device?”
    John nodded.
    “You’ll be arrested,” Remi said. “You’ll be asked about the people who sent you here—names, locations, along those lines.”
    “Will I go to prison?”
    “I don’t know, John,” Remi said. “But I know right now the only person dead in this is a terrorist, and that works in your favor.”
    Remi stared at the young man for several seconds and then holstered his gun, his hands inches from the device. “I’m going to help you, John,” he said. “The ones who sent you? They were wrong about you.”
    “In what way?”
    “You’re not a murderer,” Remi said. “If you were, you would have set off the bomb the minute I put her down in the terminal. But you didn’t. You waited. You came out into the open air and waited, hoping someone like me would let you off the hook.”
    Remi put his hand on the box and eased it out of John’s grip. He held it cupped in both hands and backed away, signaling with his head for the bomb squad members to advance. He waited as a unit rushed toward him from across the walkway, his eyes on John, who seemed relieved his ordeal was nearly over.
    “You did well,” Remi said to him.
    “I know,” John said, a smile spreading across his face. “Better than you, I would say.”
    Remi stared at John, followed the young man’s eyes over toward an overweight man in a blue smock standing on the other end of the taxi stand. John looked at Remi and said, “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
    Remi knew he had no chance to take down the overweight man, knew that his hunch had set him off course. He had gone for the obvious, the worst mistake a cop could make. He had narrowed