The Mark of the Assassin

  “And just like Sarah Randolph.”

  Michael looked down at his hands, then at Monica.

  “Yes,” he said. “Just like Sarah Randolph.”

  “And you believe these killings are all the work of the same man?”

  “I’m certain of it. He’s a former KGB assassin, code-named October, who was inserted into the West as a young man and planted deep. He’s a contract killer now, the world’s most expensive and proficient assassin.”

  “And this you learned from Ivan Drozdov?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Your theory, Michael?”

  “That Muhammad Awad was telling the truth: The Sword of Gaza did not carry out this attack. It was the work of some other group or individual, done in the name of the Sword of Gaza. And now October has been hired by this group or individual to liquidate the team that carried out the attack.” Michael paused for a moment, then said, “And eventually he will come after me.”

  “Would you like to explain that?”

  “I think they tried to kill me once already, on the ferry during the meeting with Awad. They failed. I think they’ll try again, and this time I think they’ll give the job to October.”

  There was a long pause. Conversations with Monica were always punctuated by moments of silence, as though she were receiving her next lines from a stage prompter in the wings.

  “Who’s they, Michael? What they? Where they? How they?”

  “I don’t know. Someone blew up that jetliner, and did it for a very good reason. Look what’s happened in the interim. The Mideast peace process has collapsed; arms are pouring into the region like never before.”

  Michael thought, And a wounded president came from behind and won reelection, and this country is about to build a costly missile defense system.

  “Good God, Michael! Surely you’re not suggesting any kind of linkage.”

  “I don’t know all the answers. What I’m suggesting is that we seriously consider the possibility other forces were involved in the attack and broaden our investigation accordingly.”

  Adrian Carter finally spoke. “I thought Michael was off the mark when he raised this with me the first time, but now I believe I was mistaken. I think the Agency should do as Michael suggests.”

  Monica hesitated a moment. “I reluctantly concur, Michael, but I’m afraid the investigation will go forward without your involvement.” She treated herself to a long sip of her coffee. “You have uncovered potentially valuable intelligence, but your means and methods have been inexcusable and, frankly, unbefitting an intelligence officer of your experience. I’m afraid I have no choice but to place you on suspension, pending the outcome of a disciplinary review. I’m sorry, Michael, but you’ve left me no other option.”

  Michael said nothing. He had expected it, but still a shock wave shot through him when Monica spoke the words.

  “As for your concerns about your personal safety, you can be certain that the Agency will take every step necessary to protect you and your family.”

  “Thank you, Monica,” Michael said, and immediately regretted it. Assurances from Monica Tyler had the permanence of a sonnet written on the surface of a lake.

  The chauffeured car bearing Mitchell Elliott arrived at his town house on California Street shortly after 8 p.m. It had been a very long day, much of it spent on Capitol Hill twisting arms. Elliott had been around politics long enough to realize euphoria has a tendency to wear off rather quickly in Washington. Promises made by presidents often die the death of a thousand cuts in committee. It would be many months before the national missile defense came before Congress for a vote. The tragedy of Flight 002 would be a distant memory by then, and Beckwith would be a lame-duck president. It would be left to Elliott to make sure the program didn’t fall by the wayside. He had spread millions of dollars around Capitol Hill; half the members of Congress were indebted to him. Still, he realized it was going to take every ounce of his influence and imagination to see the project through to the end.

  The car stopped at the curb. Mark Calahan got out and opened the door. Elliott went inside the house and walked upstairs to the library. He poured himself a glass of scotch and went into the bedroom. The bathroom door opened and a woman entered the room, dressed in a terry-cloth robe, hair damp from the shower.

  He looked up. “Hello, Monica darling, tell me about your day.”

  “He underestimates me,” she said, lying next to him in bed. “He plays me for the idiot. He thinks he’s smarter than me, and I detest people who think they’re smarter than me.”

  “Let him underestimate you,” Elliott said. “It’s a fatal mistake, in this case literally.”

  “I had to reopen the investigation today; I had no other choice. Osbourne has managed to uncover quite a lot of your little game.”

  “He’s only scratched the surface, Monica. You know that as well as I do. And besides, there’s no way he’ll ever see the whole picture. Osbourne is trapped in a house of mirrors.”

  “He knows the identity of your assassins, and he thinks he knows why they’re killing.”

  “He doesn’t know who’s behind them, and there’s no way he ever will.”

  “I had to put out a worldwide alert for them, Mitchell.”

  “Who controls the distribution at Langley?”

  “Everything comes to me, eyes only,” she said. “Theoretically, no one else in the building will see it. And I sent McManus out on an errand, so the Bureau is completely in the dark.”

  “And Michael Osbourne will never know what hit him. Good girl, Monica. You just earned yourself a nice bonus.”

  “I had something else in mind, actually.”

  DECEMBER

  36

  NORTHERN CANADA

  The Gulfstream dropped below radar cover over the Davis Strait and landed on a remote flare-lit road along the eastern shores of Hudson Bay. Astrid and Delaroche ambled down the stairway, Delaroche with the nylon duffel slung across his back, Astrid with her hands over her face against the cruel Arctic air. Stephens never shut down the engines. As soon as Astrid and Delaroche were clear of the aircraft, he raced down the road once more, and the Gulfstream lifted into the clear Canadian morning.

  A black Range Rover waited for them on the shoulder of the road, filled with cold-weather outdoor gear—snowshoes, backpacks, parkas, and dehydrated foods—and a packet of detailed travel instructions. They climbed in and closed the doors against the bitter air. Delaroche turned the key. The engine groaned, struggled, then died. Delaroche felt his heart sink. The jet was gone. They were completely alone. If the truck didn’t start they could not survive long.

  He turned the key once more, and this time the engine started. Astrid, typically German for an instant, said, “Thanks God.”

  “I thought you were a good communist atheist,” Delaroche cracked.

  “Shut up and turn the heat on.”

  He did as she asked. Then he opened the packet and tried to read the instructions, but it was no good. He removed a pair of half-moon reading glasses from the breast pocket of his coat and thrust them onto his face.

  “I’ve never seen you wear those before, Jean-Paul.”

  “I don’t like to wear them in front of people, but sometimes it can’t be helped.”

  “You look like a professor instead of a professional killer.”

  “That’s the point, my love.”

  “How do you kill people so well if you can’t see?”

  “Because I’m shooting them, not reading them. If there were words written across their foreheads, I’d need my glasses.”

  “Please, Jean-Paul, drive the bloody car. I’m freezing to death.”

  “I have to know where I’m going before I drive.”

  “Do you always read the instructions first?”

  He looked at her quizzically, as if he found the question mildly offensive.

  “Of course you do. That’s why you’re so bloody good at everything you do. Jean-Paul Delaro
che, methodical man.”

  “We all have our vices,” he said, putting away the instructions. “I don’t ridicule yours.” He dropped the Range Rover into gear.

  “Where are we going?” Astrid asked.

  “A place called Vermont.”

  “Is it near our beach?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Shit,” she said, closing her eyes. “Wake me when we’re there.”

  37

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The first day of Michael’s exile was appalling. At dawn, when the alarm awakened him, he rushed into the shower and turned on the water before realizing he had nowhere to go. He went downstairs to the kitchen, made toast and coffee for Elizabeth, and brought it up to her. She had breakfast in bed and read the Post. A half hour later, Elizabeth was letting herself out the front door, dressed for work with her two briefcases and two cell phones. Michael stood in the front window, waving like an idiot, as she drove off in her silver Mercedes. All he needed was a cardigan and a pipe to complete the picture.

  He finished the newspaper. He tried to read a book but couldn’t concentrate on the pages. He tried to put the time to good use by checking all the door locks and replacing batteries in the alarm system. That took a total of twenty minutes. Maria, the Peruvian housekeeper, came at ten o’clock and chased him from room to room with her industrial-strength vacuum and toxic furniture polish. “It is a beautiful day outside, Señor Miguel,” she said, shouting at him in Spanish over the roar of the vacuum. Maria spoke to him only in her native language. “You should go out and do something instead of sitting around the house all day.”

  Michael understood his own housekeeper had just dismissed him. He went upstairs, dressed in a nylon warm-up suit and running shoes, and went back downstairs. Maria thrust a piece of paper into his hand, a list of cleaning supplies she needed from the store. He stuck the list in his pocket and went out the front door onto N Street.

  It was a warm day for early December, the kind of afternoon that always made Michael think there was no neighborhood in the world more beautiful than Georgetown. The sky was clear, the air breezy and soft and scented with wood smoke. N Street lay beneath a blanket of red and yellow autumn leaves. They crunched beneath Michael’s feet as he jogged lightly along the redbrick sidewalk. Reflexively, he looked through the windows of the parked cars to see if anyone was sitting inside. A van bearing the name of a Virginia kitchen supply store was parked on the corner. Michael committed the name and number to memory; he would call later to make certain the place was real.

  He ran down the hill to M Street and crossed Key Bridge. Wind gusted high on the bridge and made rippled patterns on the surface of the river below. It was like two different rivers. To Michael’s right a wild river stretched northward into the distance. To his left lay the waterfront of Washington: the Harbor Place complex, the Watergate, the Kennedy Center beyond. Reaching the Virginia side of the river, he looked over his shoulder for any sign of surveillance. A thinly built man in a Georgetown baseball hat was a hundred yards behind him.

  Michael put his head down and ran faster, past Roosevelt Island, through the grass along the George Washington Parkway. He climbed up onto the Memorial Bridge and looked over his shoulder down the parkway. The man with the Georgetown cap was still there. Michael stopped and stretched, looking down from the bridge at the footpath below. The hatted man continued running south along the river, toward National Airport. Michael stood up and resumed running.

  During the next twenty minutes he saw six men with caps and three men he thought might be October. He was jittery, he knew. He ran hard the rest of the way back to Georgetown. He stopped in Booeymongers, a sandwich shop popular with students from the university, and ordered a coffee to go. He sipped it as he walked along N Street and let himself into the house. He showered and changed and went out. He telephoned Elizabeth at the office from his car.

  “I’m going to Langley,” he said. “I have a little housekeeping I need to take care of.” There were a few seconds of silence on the line, and Michael said, “Don’t worry, Elizabeth. I wouldn’t miss this afternoon for anything in the world.”

  “Thank you, Michael.”

  “See you in a couple of hours.”

  Michael crossed Key Bridge once more and turned onto the George Washington Parkway. He had made this drive thousands of times before, but now, as he headed to Langley to clean out his desk, he saw it all as if for the first time. There were giant poplars, tributaries leaking from the rocky hills of Virginia, sheer bluffs overlooking the Potomac.

  At the front entrance the guard punched in Michael’s identification, frowned, and told him to pass. Michael felt like a leper as he walked through the harshly lit corridors toward the CTC. No one said a word to him; no one looked in his direction. Intelligence services are nothing if not highly organized cliques. When one member contracts a disease, the others stay away, lest they catch it too.

  The bull pen was quiet as Michael stepped through the door and walked to his desk. For an hour he picked through the contents of his drawers, separating the personal from the official. A week earlier he had been fêted because of his actions at Heathrow. Now he felt like the kicker who had just missed a game-winning field goal. Every once in a while someone would come forward, lay a hand on his shoulder, and move quickly away. But no one spoke to him.

  As he was leaving, Adrian Carter poked his head into the bull pen and gestured for Michael to come into his office. He handed Michael a gift-wrapped box.

  “I thought it was only a suspension pending an inquiry,” Michael said, accepting the package.

  “It is, but I wanted to give you this anyway,” Carter said. His drooping eyes made him look more morose than ever. “Open it at home, though. Some people around here might not understand the humor.”

  Michael shook his hand. “Thanks for everything, Adrian. See you around.”

  “Yeah,” Carter said. “And Michael, take care of yourself.”

  Michael walked outside and found his car in the parking lot. He tossed Carter’s gift in the trunk, climbed inside, and drove off. Passing through the gates, he wondered if he would ever be back again.

  Michael met Elizabeth at the Georgetown University Medical Center. He left the Jaguar with the valet and took the elevator to the doctor’s office. When he walked into the waiting room there was no sign of Elizabeth. For an instant he had the sinking feeling that he had missed the appointment, but a moment later she walked through the door, clutching her briefcases, and kissed him on the cheek.

  A nurse showed them to the examination room and left a gown on the table. Elizabeth unbuttoned her blouse and skirt. She looked up and noticed Michael staring at her.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Actually, I was thinking about locking the door.”

  “Animal.”

  “Thank you.”

  Elizabeth finished undressing, slipped into the gown, and sat down on the examination table. Michael was fooling with the knobs of the sonogram machine.

  “Would you knock that off?”

  “Sorry, just a little nervous.”

  The doctor came into the room. He reminded Michael of Carter: sleepy, disheveled, a look of perpetual boredom on his face. He wrinkled his face as he read Elizabeth’s chart, as though torn between the mahi mahi and the grilled salmon.

  “The beta count looks very good,” he said. “In fact, it’s a little high. Why don’t we have a look with the sonogram.”

  He raised Elizabeth’s gown and covered her abdomen with a lubricating jelly. Then he pressed the wand of the sonogram against her skin and began moving it back and forth.

  “There it is,” he said, smiling for the first time. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is a very nice-looking egg sac.”

  Elizabeth was beaming. She reached out for Michael and grasped his hand tightly.

  The doctor manipulated the wand for another moment. “And here is a second very nice-looking egg sac.”

  Michael sai
d, “Oh, God.”

  The doctor shut down the machine. “Get dressed and meet me in my office. We need to talk about a few things. And by the way, congratulations.”

  “At least we won’t need to buy a bigger house,” Michael said, trailing Elizabeth upstairs to the bedroom. “I always thought a six-bedroom Georgetown Federal was too big for just the two of us.”

  “Michael, stop talking like that. I’m forty years old. I’m beyond high risk. A lot of things could go wrong.” She lay down on the bed. “I’m starving.”

  Michael lay beside her. “I can’t get the image of you covered with lubricant out of my mind.”

  She kissed him. “Go away. You heard the doctor. I need to stay off my feet and rest for a few days. I’m at my most vulnerable right now.”

  He kissed her again. “I won’t argue with that.”

  “Go downstairs and make me a sandwich.”

  He climbed off the bed and went down to the kitchen. He made Elizabeth a sandwich of turkey and Swiss cheese and poured her a glass of orange juice. He placed the sandwich and drink on a tray and carried it upstairs to her.

  “I think I could get used to this.” She took a bite of the sandwich. “How was it at work today?”

  “I’ve obviously been declared an untouchable.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  “Who gave you that?” she asked, gesturing at the gift-wrapped box.

  “Carter.”

  “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  “I thought I could live without another set of Cross pens.”

  “Gimme,” she said, tearing at the wrapping while she chewed an enormous bite of the sandwich. Beneath the wrapping paper was a rectangular box, and inside the box was a sheath of documents stamped MOST SECRET.

  Elizabeth said, “Michael, I think you need to take a look at this.”

  She thrust it at Michael, and he flipped through the pages quickly.