Just because a foreign opposition leader had an anti-American bias, did that make him a supporter of terrorism and a legitimate target? Where exactly was the line between a dangerous “ecoterrorist” and a radical environmentalist? Was she really defending America, or just taking out anyone who challenged the entrenched power structures?
Okata assured her that all of their targets had been thoroughly vetted, but as her personal body count piled up, she found herself less and less inclined to trust that decision to higher-ups she had never even met. She needed to know why she was pulling the trigger.
Like tonight.
“Doubts? You bet.” A long leather bag rested at her feet. She unzipped it to reveal her weapon of choice: an M24 sniper rifle. She hefted the weapon and double-checked to make sure its sight was properly calibrated. “So, you ready to tell me who our target is?”
Okata checked his watch, as though timing the revelation down to the minute. He handed her a pair of high-powered binoculars.
“Fifth floor down, third window to the right.”
She located the window in question. The binoculars zoomed in on a Gallic-looking middle-aged reporter seated in front of his computer. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie was undone. He consulted a small spiral notebook as he tapped away at his keyboard. A coffee mug sat within arm’s reach, along with an ashtray. A family photo, depicting the wife and kids, occupied a position of honor on his desk. The man glanced up at a clock on the wall, then went back to typing. Vicki gasped as she recognized his profile.
“Wait a second,” she said. “That’s René Leroux, the investigative journalist. I read his exposé on those escaped Balkan war criminals.” Lowering the binoculars, she turned to confront Okata. “He’s a reporter, not a terrorist!”
“He might as well be,” Okata said mildly, seemingly unconcerned by the distinction. “He’s been poking his nose into our business, which is making our friends in D.C. and elsewhere more than a little nervous. And that could interfere with our work.”
That didn’t explain what they were doing lurking outside his office with a sniper rifle at the ready. “But he’s just doing his job.”
“His job will give aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom. At this very moment he’s waiting for a call from an anonymous whistle-blower who has information on that safe-house bombing in Budapest six months ago.” He gave her a knowing look. “You remember that one, don’t you?”
I wish I didn’t, she thought. She had merely provided backup on that mission, maintaining a defensive position on a rooftop while the demolition team went about its work, but the resulting explosion, which was conveniently blamed on a radical left-wing labor organization, had produced far too much collateral damage for her piece of mind. She still had nightmares about it.
“Yes, I remember.”
“Then you know what’s at stake. Leroux follows that lead, it could point him toward you and me and the people we work for. And that means more terrorists would be able to act with impunity.”
Vicki remembered the photo on the journalist’s desk. “But he has a family! We can’t just kill him, not for reporting the truth.”
“You’re missing the big picture,” Okata insisted. “You need to settle down, focus on the mission, and follow orders. Just like you always have before.”
The rifle in her hands was feeling heavier every second. She racked her mind, searching for a way out. “But if he’s assassinated, won’t that just raise some pretty big red flags, and maybe bring down even more heat on us?”
Okata smiled serenely. “We have that covered.”
He had brought a leather satchel to the mission. He laid it down on top of the humming ventilation fan and undid the clasp.
Vicki tensed. “What’s that?”
“Evidence pointing to one Henri Paquet,” he said. “A local crackpot and conspiracy theorist. Seems he’s been sending vaguely threatening e-mails to the paper for some weeks now—or at least someone has been sending them under his name and from his address. Poor Henri! We couldn’t have asked for a better patsy.”
Okata opened the bag and began strewing the phony “evidence” about the rooftop.
“Paranoid flyers and newsletters with his fingerprints on them,” he enumerated them, “a soda can with his prints and DNA, a sandwich crust rescued from his trash.” Okata shook his head in mock disapproval. “Sloppy, sloppy.”
Horrified, Vicki picked up one of the fallen newsletters. DON’T BELIEVE LIES!!! a garish headline screamed in French. THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MEDIA’S SECRET EXTRATERRESTRIAL AGENDA!!!
“We’re framing him?” She couldn’t believe her ears. Paquet might well be a nut, but that didn’t mean that he deserved to take the fall for a murder. “But won’t he deny everything?”
“Trust me,” Okata said coolly. He finished planting the evidence. “That’s not going to be an issue.”
He didn’t need to spell it out. Paquet was already dead or soon would be. Another piece of collateral damage, sacrificed for the greater good. Or so she had often been told.
“But you don’t need to worry about that. Your job is to take out Leroux.” Okata looked out over a safety railing. “A tricky shot, but nothing you haven’t pulled off before. Just do your job.”
“No! Not this time,” she blurted, her course suddenly clear to her. “This is the last straw. I’m through.”
Okata sighed. “Are you sure about that?”
“Are you kidding? Killing a journalist? Framing an innocent…” Her voice trailed off as a ghastly suspicion hit her like a kill shot. “Hang on! Why are you telling me all this? What happened to need to know?”
She started to swing the rifle around, but Okata was way ahead of her. His trusty Beretta was already pointed at her head.
“Please keep your rifle pointed at the right target,” he instructed. “My aim might not be what it once was, but close-range is no problem.”
She understood now. “This was a…”
“A test,” he confirmed. “There were concerns that you were going soft on us, especially after your reaction to the Budapest incident.” He shook his head sadly. “A shame, really, after all the time and trouble we put in to training you, and after such a sterling track record. I guess you can take the girl out of the humanities but you can’t take the humanity out of the girl.”
You came close, she thought. Too close.
She held on to the rifle. “So now what?”
“You’re going to take the shot, and then we’re going to go somewhere for a nice, long chat about your future with the organization.”
She guessed that future would be short. “Why not just use me as a patsy—and leave Paquet be?”
“Too risky,” he said. “You have too many links to our group. We can’t have people looking into your past and recent activities.” He sounded as though he had already considered that option. “Better that we just finish the mission and catch our flight.”
A single-engine Cessna was waiting for them at a small private airfield just outside the city. The plan was to skip the country as soon as the hit was complete, crossing the Channel to the UK, where Okata would be debriefed on their mission. A bed-and-breakfast in Dover was already booked under an assumed name. Vicki had been looking forward to decompressing after the hit, but it seemed that had been wishful thinking.
She suddenly remembered one of her favorite movies, Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and how the suave villain played by James Mason had famously observed that some problems were best disposed of from a great height and over water. She suspected that she wasn’t meant to make it all the way across the Channel.
And I probably can’t count on Cary Grant to rescue me.
“Leroux should be receiving his call any minute now,” Okata said, a trace of impatience creeping into his usual placid tone. “We shouldn’t delay any longer. Get on with it.”
She figured that the only reason he hadn’t disarmed her was that he still needed her to take the shot. Like
he said, his aim wasn’t what it used to be.
“And if I don’t?”
His face hardened. He kept his pistol aimed at her. “Then Leroux will outlive you, at least for the time being.”
“You’d really shoot me? My own handler?”
Part of her still couldn’t believe it. He’d had her back for the last five years. She had trusted him with her life.
“We’re snipers,” he reminded her. “That’s what we do.”
She stalled for time. “We can’t talk about this?”
“Shoot first, talk later.” He came up behind her, his gun aimed at her back of her skull. “Without further delay, please.”
He came a little too close.
There’s that depth-perception problem again, she thought. She rammed the butt of the rifle into his chest, knocking him backward. His handgun went off, the bullet whizzing past her head.
One shot was all she gave him.
She flipped the rifle in her hands, like a majorette twirling a baton. The muzzle flared. A silencer muffled the sharp report.
He crumpled against the churning ventilation fan. Blood soaked through the front of his jacket. It was a kill shot, but not a clean one. She had done better in the past, but these were special circumstances.
“Guns have two ends,” she said. “You should’ve remembered that.”
“You can’t just turn your back on us,” he gurgled, his voice wet and halting. “We’ll find you wherever you run.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“They won’t forget this.” He coughed up blood. “Assassins never forget…”
His eyes glazed over. He slumped lifelessly onto the rooftop.
She vowed that he would be her last victim.
Vicki hurled the rifle away from her. Her career as an assassin was over, but she needed to move fast if she wanted to make a clean break. A desperate exit strategy popped into her mind. It was a drastic ploy, which would change her life forever, but possibly the only one available to her.
She quickly gathered up the dummy evidence framing Paquet and stuffed it back into the satchel. She had bought Leroux time, but she didn’t want Paquet to go down for Okata’s murder instead. Let the authorities find a mystery along with a body.
Good-bye, Daniel, she thought. Looks like you trained me too well.
She raced down a service stairway, taking the steps two at time, until she reached the ground floor and exited into an alley behind the building, where she ditched the incriminating satchel in a Dumpster. Their getaway car was parked a few blocks away. Thankfully, there was no driver; due to the “sensitivity” of the mission, the hit team had been kept to a minimum.
A short, tense ride brought her to the airfield, where the Cessna 172 Skyhawk was fully fueled and waiting. The pilot, a grizzled vet named Malone, greeted her on the tarmac. He blinked at her in confusion. “What happened? Where’s Okata?”
“He’s not coming,” she said, racing toward the plane. “And neither are you.”
Seeing only a friendly, he wasn’t expecting the karate chop that dropped him like deadweight. A kick to the head guaranteed that he wouldn’t be springing right back up again. She wondered just how guilty he was.
As guilty as her?
“Sorry.”
She left him unconscious on the tarmac, grateful that she hadn’t needed to murder him as well. There was too much blood on her hands already. She was done with killing… almost. There was still one more person left on her hit list:
Vicki Rhodes.
Her training had included flight lessons, just in case something happened to a pilot. Climbing into the cockpit, she fired up the Cessna and set its propeller spinning. Within minutes, she was in the air and heading for the Channel as planned.
Chances were, Okata’s body would not be discovered until morning at the earliest, but by now her unknown superiors were surely wondering why Leroux was still alive. She prayed that her former employers wouldn’t send another team after the nosy reporter, but she couldn’t worry about that. She maintained strict radio silence all the way to Calais. Her bosses would just have to worry and wait.
Let them stew, she thought bitterly.
The Channel came into view, with the white cliffs of Dover visible across the way. Vicki switched on the autopilot and shrugged into her parachute. The plane was already rigged to self-destruct in the event of capture. She set the timer for ten minutes, time enough for the plane to get safely out over the water.
Time to play D. B. Cooper, she thought.
She threw open the plane’s hatch. Violent wind currents invaded the cabin. Committing herself to her rash course of action, she tossed herself out of the Cessna while it was still over land. She plunged toward the French coastline below. All sense of falling evaporated as she reached terminal velocity, roughly a hundred and twenty miles an hour. A sudden jolt yanked her upward as the chute deployed.
She was still drifting toward the ground, scanning for a relatively safe landing spot, when the plane exploded over the Channel. A blazing fireball erupted in the night. Flaming debris plunged toward the choppy water below.
No body would ever be found.
Rest in peace, she thought as she parachuted toward an unknown afterlife. She silently bid farewell to the woman she had been, and a life she could no longer live with. She had no idea what happened next, only that Vicki Rhodes was dead and had to stay that way.
I’m going to need a new name, she realized.
“So you faked your own death in order to put that life behind you,” Nate said, summing it up. The whole crew had been hanging on Denise’s words. “Lot of that going around.”
“It wasn’t as easy as it sounds,” she said. “We’re talking plastic surgery, forged documents, a whole new identity.” She ran a hand through her flaming-red locks. “Generous quantities of henna.”
“Next time go with wigs,” Sophie advised her. “Better for quick changes.”
“I just wanted to start over,” Denise said. “Get away from all the death and deceit and double-dealing. And then I met Gavin and, for a while there, it really did seem like I had a chance at a normal life with a great guy.”
“Okay, I get that,” Hardison said. “But how come, after going to all that trouble to bury your past, you would want to dig it all up again in your book?”
Nate thought he knew the answer. “Your conscience was troubling you.”
“That’s right,” Denise said. “Assassins Never Forget wasn’t just a catchy title. It was the story of my life. I couldn’t forget what I had done, what was still going on out of the public eye, by renegade black-ops groups like the one I’d worked for. I had to come clean somehow, if only to confess and get it off my chest. I couldn’t sleep at night unless I tried to make things right…”
“And so ‘Tarantula’ was born,” Nate said. “Gavin’s ‘anonymous’ informant.”
She pulled back her hair to reveal a cobweb tattoo on the back of her neck. “I got this one night in Santa Fe after too much tequila.” She let her hair fall back into place, concealing the telltale ink. “It was a private joke between Gavin and me. He was the only person who knew about the tattoo.”
Nate couldn’t help wondering if Eliot had ever glimpsed the tattoo during his sleepovers at Denise’s place. There was no tactful way to ask.
“And Gavin knew about your past?” Sophie asked. “About Vicki.”
“Not at first, but yes, eventually. I couldn’t hide it from him. We shared everything else. He deserved to know the truth about me.” Her voice was strained, but she held it together. “It was Gavin’s idea to put himself forward as the author so I could stay safely in the background.”
It all makes sense, Nate thought. “That’s why you never got married, why there was no will, why only Gavin’s name appeared on the book contracts…”
“Why I never showed my face at his public appearances,” Denise said, finishing Nate’s sentence. “It was all about maintaining a low profile so a
s to avoid raising any red flags where my new identity was concerned, and to keep anyone from connecting me to the book. Between Gavin acting as the front, and us disguising the book as fiction, we figured we could avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention.” She choked up. “But instead I got Gavin killed.”
“You didn’t kill him,” Eliot said forcefully. “Beria did.” He gestured at the surveillance photos of Anton Beria. “He the guy you worked for, before?”
“Maybe,” Denise said. “I never met the man at the top. I mostly dealt with my handler.” She winced at the memory. “Everything was strictly compartmentalized, on a need-to-know basis.”
“Like with terrorist cells,” Eliot said. “So that if you’re captured or interrogated you can’t rat out the entire operation.”
“Exactly,” Denise said. “I swear to you, I wasn’t lying before, not about that. I don’t know Beria. As far as I know, I’ve never met him.”
“And he’s never met you,” Nate observed. “Interesting.”
He wondered just how much plastic surgery Denise had undergone to bury her former identity. Enough that Beria had failed to recognize her as the late Vicki Rhodes? Possibly. But did Beria still think Vicki was dead—or had he figured out that Tarantula was Vicki? Nate wished he knew for sure just how much Beria knew or suspected. Opposition research was key to a good plan, but Beria was far too murky a target, and there were too many outstanding question marks for Nate’s liking.
Good thing I’ve got a plan for every scenario, he thought. I hope.
“Maybe I should just exchange myself for Brad,” Denise suggested. “He wants Tarantula? All right; at least nobody else will get hurt because of me.”
“Forget it,” Eliot snarled. “That’s not happening.”
“But this is my mess,” she insisted. “I’m the one he wants.”
“Oh, we’re going to give him Tarantula,” Nate said. “Don’t worry about that.” He winked at Sophie, who caught on immediately, as he knew she would. “But first we still have a book to write…”