The Mark of the Assassin

  He pulled her hair violently, then released her. Her handbag lay on the seat between them. He opened the flap and dug through the contents until he found the Browning. He displayed it for her, as proof of her treachery, and placed it inside his coat.

  “He’s very sloppy, this Frenchman of yours, Astrid. He sent you into a very dangerous situation. He knew I worked for the Stasi. He should have realized I might recognize a former Red Army Faction killer. It takes a cold bastard to send a woman into a situation like that.”

  The car came to a sliding stop on a desert escarpment overlooking the city. Below them Cairo spread like a giant fan, narrow in the south, broad in the north at the base of the Nile delta. A thousand minarets stretched toward the sky. She wondered which was hers. She wanted to be back in her horrid hotel room, with her toilet that didn’t work, next to her building that was about to crash down.

  “You love this man, obviously. That’s why you are willing to endure physical pain for him. He does not feel the same for you, I assure you. Otherwise, he would never have allowed you to approach me. He’s using you, just like those bastards in the RAF used you.”

  Stoltenberg said something to the driver in rapid Arabic that Astrid did not understand. The driver opened the door and got out. Stoltenberg shoved the gun into her throat again.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s try this one more time.”

  Delaroche killed the bike’s engine when he saw the brake lights of the Mercedes flare red. He silently coasted to a stop, pushed the bike off the track, and approached the car on foot. The moon threw shadows. Cairo murmured in the distance. He froze when he heard a car door open and close. The car remained dark; Stoltenberg, like any decent officer, had disabled his interior light. In the moonlight Delaroche could see the driver, gun in hand, checking the perimeter. Delaroche crouched behind a jagged outcropping of rock and waited for the man to draw nearer. When the driver was about ten yards away, Delaroche stood and leveled his Beretta in the darkness.

  Stoltenberg was slapping her again, her face, the back of her head, her breasts. She felt he was beginning to enjoy it. She thought about something else, anything else. She thought of her houseboat on the Prinsengracht, and her little bookstore, and she wished to God that Jean-Paul Delaroche had never come into her life. The front driver’s-side door opened and closed. In the darkness Astrid could barely make out the silhouetted figure of a man behind the wheel. She realized it was not the same man who had been there before.

  Stoltenberg was pressing the gun into Astrid’s throat again.

  “Anything back there?” Stoltenberg said in Arabic.

  The man behind the wheel shook his head.

  “Yallah,” Stoltenberg said. Let’s go.

  Delaroche spun around and pointed the Beretta at Stoltenberg’s face.

  The German was too stunned to react.

  Delaroche fired three times.

  “He could have killed me, Jean-Paul.”

  She lay on the bed at the Hotel Imperial, dressed in her galabia, smoking one cigarette after the next in the half-darkness. Delaroche lay next to her, dismantling his guns. Her hair was damp from the shower; she had rubbed herself raw, trying to wash away Stoltenberg’s blood. Wind drifted through the open French doors. She shuddered with a chill. The toilet had stopped working again. Delaroche called the front desk and asked someone to fix it, but Mr. Fahmy, the keeper of the secret knowledge, was off that night. “Bokra, inshallah,” the clerk said. Tomorrow, God willing.

  Delaroche regarded her statement; the professional in him could not dispute it. Eric Stoltenberg had had ample time and opportunity to kill her. He had chosen not to because he needed more information.

  “He could have killed you,” Delaroche said, “but he didn’t because you behaved perfectly. You stalled, you told him nothing. You were never alone. I was right behind you the entire time.”

  “If he wanted to kill me, you couldn’t have stopped him.”

  “This work is not without risk. You know that.”

  Stoltenberg’s words ran through her head.

  He’s very sloppy, this Frenchman of yours. He sent you into a very dangerous situation.

  “I’m not sure I can go on, Jean-Paul.”

  “You took the assignment. You took the money. You can’t back out now.”

  “I want to go back to Amsterdam, to the Prinsengracht.”

  “That door is closed to you now.”

  She took inventory of her injuries once more: split lip, bruised cheekbone, a mark like a handprint on her right breast. She had never been in a situation where she was helpless, and she didn’t like it.

  “I don’t want to die like an animal in the desert.”

  “Nor do I,” he said. “I won’t let that happen to either of us.”

  “Where will you go, when this business is finished?”

  “Back to Brélés if I can. If not, the Caribbean.”

  “And where will I go, now that the door to Amsterdam has been closed to me?”

  He put down his guns and lay on top of her.

  “You can come with me to the Caribbean.”

  “And what will I do there?”

  “Whatever you like, or nothing at all.”

  “And what will I be to you? Will I be your wife?”

  Delaroche shook his head. “No, you will not be my wife.”

  “Will there be other women?”

  He shook his head again. “No, there will be no other women.”

  “I’ll be whatever you want me to be, but you mustn’t humiliate me with other women.”

  “I would never humiliate you, Astrid.”

  He kissed her mouth gently, so as not to hurt the cut on her lip. He unbuttoned her galabia and kissed her breasts and the ugly mark left by Stoltenberg’s hand. He slid down her body and pushed up the galabia. The terror she had felt hours earlier melted with the exquisite sensation of what he was doing between her thighs.

  “Where will we live?” she asked softly.

  “By the sea,” he said, and resumed.

  “Will you do this to me by the sea, Jean-Paul?”

  She felt his head nod between her legs.

  “Will you do this to me often by the sea, Jean-Paul?”

  But it was a silly question, and he did not answer it. She took his head and pulled him tightly against her body. She wanted to tell him she loved him, but she knew such things would never be said aloud. Afterward, he lay next to her, softly breathing.

  “Do you sleep at night, Jean-Paul?”

  “Some nights are better than others.”

  “Do you see them?”

  “I see them for a while, and then they go away.”

  “Why do you kill them that way? Why do you shoot them in the face three times?”

  “Because I want them to know I exist.”

  Her eyes closed, and she drifted toward sleep.

  “Are you the Beast, Jean-Paul?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Beast,” she repeated. “The Devil. Perhaps you leave your mark on their faces because you’re the Beast.”

  “The people I kill are wicked men. If I don’t kill them, someone else will. It’s just business, nothing more.”

  “It’s more than business with you, Jean-Paul. It’s—” She hesitated, and for a moment he thought she was finally asleep. “It’s art, Jean-Paul. Your killing is like art.”

  “Go to sleep, Astrid.”

  “Wait for me to fall asleep before you do, Jean-Paul.”

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  She was quiet for another moment; then she said, “When you retire, what will become of Arbatov?”

  “I suppose he’ll have to retire too,” Delaroche said. “He’s an old man anyway.”

  “Are you the Devil, Jean-Paul?” Astrid said, but she was asleep before he could answer.

  She dug it from her bag in the moments before dawn, the little item from Le Monde about a retired Russian diplomat killed by st
reet thugs in Paris. Delaroche was sleeping—or pretending to sleep, she was never sure.

  She carried the clipping to Fahmy’s treacherous balcony and read it once more in the beige dawn. Perhaps it wasn’t Jean-Paul, she thought. Perhaps it really was just a robbery.

  Cairo stirred beneath her. A zabbaleen entered the alley, a little girl, dressed in rags, sleepily flicking an ass with a switch. The muezzin screamed. A thousand more joined in.

  She touched a match to the clipping and held it aloft until flame engulfed it. Then she released it and watched it drift downward, until it came to rest on a pile of garbage and turned to gray ash.

  31

  CAIRO

  The taxi ride from the airport had taken nearly as long as the flight from Rome. It was hot, even for November, and there was no air-conditioning in the well-worn little Fiat. Michael sat back and tried to relax. He knew getting agitated would only make matters worse; Cairo was like a trick knot that became tighter the more you struggled.

  The driver assumed Michael was a rich Egyptian back from a Roman holiday, and he prattled on about how bad things had become. He had the modest robe and unkempt beard of a devout Muslim. The road was choked with every conceivable type of transport: cars, buses, and trucks belching diesel fumes, donkey carts, bicycles, and pedestrians. A wispy boy shoved a live chicken in Michael’s face and asked if he wanted to buy it. The driver shouted him away. A colossal image of the Egyptian president smiled down benevolently from a roadside billboard. “He wouldn’t be smiling if he were stuck in this traffic with the rest of us,” the driver murmured.

  Michael had never lived in Cairo, but he had spent a great deal of time there. He had served as the control officer for an important agent inside the Mukhabarat, the all-pervasive Egyptian security service. The agent didn’t want to be debriefed by an officer from Cairo Station—he knew the embassy and the CIA residents were well monitored—so Michael slipped into Egypt from time to time, posing as a businessman, and did the debriefing himself. The agent provided valuable intelligence on the state of radical Islam in Egypt, the most important U.S. ally in the Arab world. Sometimes the information flowed the other way. When Michael learned of a plot to assassinate the Egyptian interior minister, he passed the information to this agent. The plot was foiled, and several members of the al-Gama’at Ismalyya were arrested. Michael’s man received a big promotion that gave him access to better intelligence.

  The Nile Hilton is located on Tahrir Square, overlooking the river. Tahrir means liberation in Arabic, and Michael always thought it was the most inappropriately named place on earth. The immense square was jammed with traffic well into the night. The taxi hadn’t moved an inch in five minutes. The blare of traffic horns was unbearable. Michael paid the fare and walked the rest of the way.

  He checked into the room, showered and changed, and went out again. The Mukhabarat had one of the most extensive monitoring operations on earth. Michael knew his room telephone was certainly bugged, even though he was traveling as an Italian businessman in town for a round of meetings. He went into the Tahrir Square metro station and found a telephone kiosk. He spoke quietly into the receiver for two minutes, raising his voice once to shout over the clatter of a train entering the station.

  He had two hours to kill. He would put the time to good use. He boarded the next train, got off at the first station, and doubled back. He walked. He went to the Egyptian Museum. He was lured into a tourist shop that specialized in fragrant oils. The shop boys plied him with tea and cigarettes while he sampled several oils. Michael rewarded their hospitality by purchasing a small bottle of vile sandalwood oil, which he tossed in the nearest rubbish bin as soon as he left. He was clean, no surveillance.

  He flagged down a taxi and climbed inside.

  Cairo is a city of lost elegance. Once there were fine cinemas and an opera house and walled villas that spilled chamber music into the warm nights. Little is left, and what remains has the quality of newspaper left too long in the sun. Many of the villas have been deserted, the opera house is gone, and the theaters stink of urine. The restaurant Arabesque has the feel of old Cairo, rather like an old man who putters around the house all day dressed in a suit and tie.

  It was midafternoon, the quiet time between lunch and dinner, and the dining room was nearly deserted. Michael actually had to strain to hear the din of traffic noise, so thorough was the restaurant’s insulation. Yousef Hafez was seated at a corner table, far from anyone else. He looked up and smiled as Michael approached, flashing two rows of perfect white teeth. He had the look of an Egyptian film star, the fleshy type in his fifties with thick graying hair who attracts younger women and beats up younger men. Michael knew it was not far from the truth.

  They ordered cold white wine. Hafez was a Muslim, but he thought strict adherence to Islamic law was for “the crazies and the peasants.” They clinked glasses and talked about old times for an hour while the waiters brought plate after plate of Lebanese-style appetizers.

  Michael finally got around to business. He told Hafez he was in Cairo on a personal matter. He hoped Hafez would help him out of friendship and professional courtesy. Under no circumstances could he discuss this matter with his current control officer. He would be paid for his help, directly from Michael’s pocket.

  “You can buy me lunch, and another bottle of this wine, but keep your money.”

  Michael signaled the white-jacketed waiter to bring more wine. While the waiter poured, Hafez talked about a pizza he had eaten in Cannes that summer. The Mukhabarat employed tens of thousands of informants; it was always possible the waiter was one of them. When he was gone, Hafez said, “Now, what can I do for you, my friend?”

  “I want to talk to a man named Eric Stoltenberg. He’s former Stasi, living in Cairo doing freelance work.”

  “I know who he is.”

  “You know where to find him?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  Hafez set down his wineglass and signaled for the check.

  The body was in a warm room with a hundred others, covered in a gray sheet. The attendant’s coverall was spotted with blood. Hafez knelt next to the body and looked to Michael to make certain he was ready. Michael nodded, and Hafez drew back the sheet. Michael looked quickly away and retched once, the lunch at Arabesque rising in his throat.

  “Where did you find him?” Michael asked.

  “Near the pyramids on the edge of the desert.”

  “Let me guess—shot three times in the face.”

  “Exactly,” Hafez said, lighting a cigarette to cover the smell. “He was last seen in a nightclub in Zamalek. A place called Break Point.”

  “I know it,” Michael said.

  “He was dancing with a European woman—tall, blond, German, maybe.”

  “Her name is Astrid Vogel. She used to be a member of the Red Army Faction.”

  “She did this?”

  “No, I suspect she had some help. You have videotapes of all arriving passengers at Cairo airport?”

  Hafez pulled a face that showed he found the question mildly amusing.

  “Mind if I have a look?”

  Hafez covered the body and said, “Let’s go.”

  They placed Michael in a room with a videotape deck and monitor. A pair of factotums moved silently in and out, bringing new tapes in one direction, taking the old ones in the other. They brought him tea, Russian style, in a glass with an ornate metal holder. They brought him Egyptian tobacco when his Marlboros were gone. He worked backward, beginning twenty-four hours before the murder. October would be meticulous. October would plan it carefully.

  He found her sometime after midnight. She was tall and erect, and her hair was drawn back tightly, accentuating her long nose. Her large hands seemed to struggle with the passport as she handed it across to the customs officer.

  October appeared five minutes later, short, light on his feet, like a fencer. The brim of a baseball cap, pulled low over his brow, obscured much of the face, but Michael co
uld see enough of it. He froze the two images and called for Hafez.

  “Here are your killers,” Michael said, when Hafez came into the room. “This one is Astrid Vogel, the German woman whom Stoltenberg was dancing with at the nightclub.”

  Hafez pointed at the second image. “And that one?”

  Michael stared at the screen. “I wish to Christ I knew.”

  32

  AMSTERDAM

  It was a bitterly cold dawn when Delaroche and Astrid returned to the houseboat on the Prinsengracht. For twenty minutes Delaroche inspected the vessel carefully to make certain no one had been aboard. He checked his telltales. He tore through the cabinets in the galley and the drawers in Astrid’s bedroom. He prowled the frozen deck. Astrid was no help to him. Content to finally be aboard her beloved Krista, she collapsed fully clothed on the bed and watched him with one eye as if he were mad.

  Delaroche felt alert and refreshed, despite the long journey. The previous morning they had flown from Cairo to Madrid, having first explained to Mr. Fahmy that they were cutting short their stay at the Hotel Imperial because madam was very ill. Fahmy feared it was the toilet that had driven them away—he offered the hotel’s best suite to entice them to remain—but Delaroche assured him it was the water, not the toilet, that had forced them to leave. From Madrid they had taken the train to Amsterdam. Delaroche spent the journey hunched over his laptop like a businessman, planning his next assassination. Astrid slept fitfully next to him, reliving the last.

  The canal had frozen again, and once more the Krista was filled with the joyous shouts of skaters. Astrid took sleeping pills and covered her head with a pillow. Delaroche was too wired to sleep, so at midmorning, when the sun burned away the clouds, he went onto the foredeck and painted, bundled in a heavy sweater and fingerless gloves. The light was good and so was the subject matter—skaters on the canal, gabled houses in the background—and when it was done he thought it was the best work he had produced in Amsterdam.