The Mark of the Assassin

  “She has the Director’s complete trust and therefore should be handled carefully.”

  “Listen to you—the headquarters man all of a sudden.”

  Michael tossed his cigarette into the dark. “There’s something about this attack that stinks.”

  “More than the fact that two hundred and fifty people are lying on the bottom of the Atlantic?”

  “That body in the boat makes no sense.”

  “None of it makes sense.”

  “And there’s something else.”

  “Oh, Christ. I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “The way Mahmoud was shot in the face like that.”

  They stopped walking. Carter turned and looked up at Osbourne. “Michael, let me give you a piece of advice. Now is not the time to go chasing after your Jackal again.”

  They walked in silence until they reached Michael’s car.

  “Why is it that you drive a silver Jaguar and live in Georgetown and I drive an Accord and live in Reston?”

  “Because I have better cover than you do, and I’m married to a rich lawyer.”

  “You’re the luckiest man I know, Osbourne. If I were you I wouldn’t fuck it up.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what’s done is done. Go home and get some sleep.”

  Michael’s father ended up hating the Agency, but somewhere along the line, whether it was his intention or not, he created in his son the makings of a perfect intelligence officer. Michael came to the attention of the Agency during his junior year at Dartmouth. The talent spotter was a professor of American literature who had worked for the Agency in Berlin after the Second World War. He saw in the ragged, bearded college student the makings of a perfect field officer—intelligence, leadership skills, charisma, attitude, and the ability to speak several languages.

  What the professor did not know was that Michael’s father had worked in the clandestine service and that Michael and his mother had followed him from posting to posting. He could speak five languages by the time he was sixteen. When the Agency came for him the first time, he turned them down. He had seen what the job had done to his father, and he had seen the toll it had taken on his mother.

  But the Agency wanted him, and it kept trying. He finally agreed after graduation, because he had no job prospects and no better ideas. He was sent to Camp Perry, the CIA training facility outside Williamsburg, Virginia, known as the Farm. There he learned how to recruit and run agents. He learned the art of clandestine communication. He learned how to spot enemy surveillance. He learned the martial arts and defensive driving.

  After a year of training he was supplied with a cover identity and an Agency pseudonym and given a simple assignment: Penetrate the world’s most violent terror organizations.

  Michael drove along Route 123, turned onto the George Washington Parkway, and headed toward the city. The road was deserted. The tall trees on either side twisted in the gusty wind, and a bright moon shone through broken clouds. Reflexively, he checked his mirror several times to make certain he was not being followed. He pressed the accelerator; the speedometer showed seventy. The Jaguar rose and fell over the gentle landscape. The trees opened to his left, and the Potomac sparkled in the moonlight. After a few minutes the spires of Georgetown appeared. He took the Key Bridge exit and crossed the river into Washington.

  M Street was deserted, just a few homeless men drinking in Key Park and a knot of Georgetown students talking on the sidewalk outside the local Kinko’s. He turned left on 33rd Street. The bright lights and shops of M Street vanished behind him. The house had a private parking space in the back, reached by a narrow alley, but Michael preferred to leave his car on the street in plain view. He turned left onto N Street and found a spot; then, as was his habit, he watched the front of the house for a moment before shutting down the motor. Michael enjoyed being a case officer—the seduction of a good recruitment, the payoff of a timely piece of intelligence—but this was the part of the job he didn’t like, the gnawing anxiety he felt every time he entered his own home, the fear his enemies would finally take their revenge.

  Michael had always lived with an element of personal risk because of the way he did his job. In the lexicon of the CIA, he was a NOC, the Agency acronym for non-official cover. It meant that instead of working out of an embassy, with a State Department cover, like most operations officers, Michael was on his own. He had been a business major at Dartmouth, and his cover usually involved international consulting or sales. Michael preferred it that way. Most of the CIA officers operating from an embassy were known to the other side. That made conducting the business of espionage all the more difficult, especially when the target was a terrorist organization. Michael didn’t have the albatross of the embassy hanging around his neck, but he also didn’t have it for protection. If an officer operating under official cover got into trouble, he could always run to the embassy and claim diplomatic immunity. If Michael got into trouble—if a recruitment went bad or the opposing service learned the true nature of his work—he could be thrown in jail or worse. The anxiety had receded gently after so many years at headquarters, but it never really left him. His overwhelming fear was that his enemies would go after the thing he cared about most. They had done it before.

  He climbed out of the car, locked it, and set the alarm. He walked west to 34th Street, examining the cars, checking the tags. At 34th he crossed the street and did the same on the other side.

  Curved brick steps rose from the sidewalk to the front door of their wide Federal-style house. Michael used to be sensitive about living in a two-million-dollar Georgetown home; most of his colleagues lived in the less-expensive Virginia suburbs around Langley. They kidded him relentlessly about his lavish home and his car, wondering aloud whether Michael had gone the way of Rick Ames and was selling secrets for money. The truth was far less interesting: Elizabeth earned $500,000 a year at Braxton, Allworth & Kettlemen, and Michael had inherited a million dollars when his mother died.

  He unlocked the front door, first the latch, then the deadbolt. The alarm chirped quietly as he stepped inside. He closed the door softly, locked it again, and disarmed the alarm system. Upstairs, he could hear Elizabeth stir in bed. He left his briefcase on the island counter in the kitchen, took a beer from the refrigerator, and drank half of it in the first swallow. The air smelled faintly of cigarettes. Elizabeth had been smoking, a bad sign. She had given up cigarettes ten years ago, but she smoked when she was angry or nervous. The appointment at Georgetown must not have gone well. Michael felt like a complete ass for missing it. He had a convenient excuse—his work, the downing of the jetliner—but Elizabeth had an all-consuming job too, and she had changed her schedule in order to see the doctor.

  He looked around at the kitchen; it was bigger than his entire first apartment. He thought back to the afternoon five years ago when they signed the papers on the house. He remembered walking through the large empty rooms, Elizabeth talking excitedly about what would go where, how the rooms would be decorated, what color they would be painted. She wanted children, lots of children, running around the house, making noise, breaking things. Michael wanted them too. He had lived an enchanted childhood, growing up in exotic places all over the world, but he’d had no siblings and he felt there was something missing in his life. Their inability to have children had taken a toll. Sometimes the place seemed empty and cheerless, far too large for just the two of them, more like a museum than a home. Sometimes he felt as though children had been there once but had been taken away. He felt they had been sentenced to live there together, just the two of them, wounded, forever.

  He shut out the lights and carried the rest of the beer upstairs to the bedroom. Elizabeth was sitting up in bed, knees beneath her chin, arms wrapped around her legs. An overhead light burned softly high in the cathedral ceiling. Dying embers glowed in the fireplace. Her short blond hair was tousled; her eyes betrayed she had not slept. Her gaze was somewhere else. Three ha
lf-smoked cigarettes lay in the ashtray on her nightstand. A pile of briefs was strewn across his side of the bed. He could tell she was angry, and she had dealt with it the way she always did—throwing herself into her work. Michael undressed silently.

  “What time is it?” she asked, without looking at him.

  “Late.”

  “Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be so late tonight?”

  “There were developments in the case. I thought you’d be asleep.”

  “I don’t care if you wake me up, Michael. I needed to hear your voice.”

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. The place was crashing. I couldn’t get away.”

  “Why didn’t you come to the appointment?”

  Michael was unbuttoning his shirt. He stopped and turned to look at her. Her face was red, her eyes damp.

  “Elizabeth, I’m the officer assigned to the terrorist group that may have shot down that jetliner. I can’t walk out in the middle of the day and come to Washington for a doctor’s appointment.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t, that’s why. The President of the United States is making decisions based on what we tell him, and in a situation like this it’s impossible for me to leave the office, even for a couple of hours.”

  “Michael, I have a job too. It may not be as important as working for the CIA, but it is damned important to me. I’m juggling three cases right now, I’ve got Braxton breathing down my neck, and I’m trying desperately to have a—”

  Her composure cracked, just for an instant.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I wanted to come, but I couldn’t. Not on a day like today. I felt horrible about missing the appointment. What did the doctor say?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Michael crossed the room, sat down beside her on the bed, and pulled her close. She put her head against his shoulder and cried softly.

  “He’s not sure what the problem is exactly. I can’t get pregnant. Something might be wrong with my tubes. He’s not certain. He wants to try one more thing: IVF. He says Cornell in New York is the best. They can take us next month.”

  Elizabeth looked up at him, her face wet with tears.

  “I don’t want to get my hopes up, Michael, but I’ll never forgive myself if we don’t try everything.”

  “I agree.”

  “It means spending some time in New York. I’ll make arrangements to work out of our Manhattan office. Dad will stay on the island so we can use the apartment.”

  “I’ll talk to Carter about working from the New York Station. I may have to go back and forth a few times, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

  “Thank you, Michael. I’m sorry about snapping at you. I was just so damned angry.”

  “Don’t apologize. It was my fault.”

  “I knew what I was getting into when I married you. I know I can’t change what you do. But sometimes I need you to be around more. I need more time with you. I feel like we bump into each other in the morning and bump into each other again at night.”

  “We could quit our jobs.”

  “We can’t quit our jobs.” She kissed his mouth. “Get undressed and come to bed. It’s late.”

  Michael rose and walked into the large master bath. He finished undressing, brushed his teeth, and washed his face without looking in the mirror. The bedroom was dark when he returned, but Elizabeth was still sitting up in bed, her arms wrapped around her knees again.

  “I see it in your face, you know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That look.”

  “What look?”

  “That look you get on your face every time someone gets killed anywhere in the world.”

  Michael lay down on the bed and rolled onto his elbow to face her.

  Elizabeth said, “I see that look in your eyes, and I wonder if you’re thinking about her again.”

  “I’m not thinking about her, Elizabeth.”

  “What was her name? You’ve never told me her name.”

  “Her name was Sarah.”

  “Sarah,” Elizabeth said. “Very pretty name, Sarah. Did you love her?”

  “Yes, I loved her.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  “I love you.”

  “And you’re not answering my question.”

  “No, I don’t love her anymore.”

  “God, you’re a terrible liar. I thought spies were supposed to be good at deception.”

  “I’m not lying to you. I’ve never lied to you. I’ve only kept things from you that I’m not allowed to tell you.”

  “Do you ever think about her?”

  “I think about what happened to her, but I don’t think about her.”

  She rolled onto her side, turning her back to him. In the darkness, Michael could see her shoulders shaking. When he reached out to touch her, she said, “I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why are you crying, Elizabeth?”

  “Because I’m mad as hell at you, and because I love you desperately. Because I want to have a baby with you, and I’m terrified about what’s going to happen to us if I can’t.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to us. I love you more than anything in the world.”

  “You don’t love her anymore, do you, Michael?”

  “I love you, Elizabeth, and only you.”

  She rolled over in the darkness and pulled his face to hers. He kissed her forehead and brushed tears from her eyes. He held her for a long time, listening to the wind in the trees outside their bedroom window, until her breathing assumed the rhythm of sleep.

  7

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Anne Beckwith had one rule about dinner: Talking about politics was strictly forbidden. Politics had ruled their lives in the twenty-five years since her husband had been sucked into the GOP machine in California, and she was determined that for one hour each evening politics would not intrude. They dined in the family quarters of the Executive Mansion: the President, the First Lady, and Mitchell Elliott. Anne revered Italian cooking and secretly believed the country would be a better place if “we were a little more like the Italians and less like Americans.” Beckwith, for the sake of his political career, had asked Anne to keep such views to herself. He resisted Anne’s desire to vacation in Europe each summer, choosing “more American” settings instead. That summer they vacationed in Jackson Hole, which Anne, on the fourth day, renamed “Shit Hole.”

  He indulged her when it came to food. That night, beneath soft candlelight, she had chosen fettuccini tossed with pesto, cream, and peas, followed by medallions of beef tenderloin, a salad, and cheese, all washed down by a costly fifteen-year-old bottle of Tuscan red wine.

  Throughout the meal, as White House stewards drifted silently in and out of the room with each new course, Anne Beckwith carefully guided the conversation from one safe topic to the next: new films she wanted to see, new books she had read, old friends, the children, the little villa in the Piedmont district of northern Italy where she planned to spend the first summer “after our sentence is over and we’re both free again.”

  The President looked exhausted. His eyes, normally a clear pale blue, were red and tired. He had endured a long tension-filled day. He had spent the morning with the heads of the agencies investigating the attack on the jetliner: the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board. In the afternoon he had flown to New York and met with grieving relatives of the victims. He toured the crash site off Fire Island aboard a Coast Guard cutter and flew by helicopter to the town of Bay Shore to attend a prayer service for a group of local high school students killed in the tragedy. He had a tearful meeting with John North, a chemistry teacher whose wife, Mary, was the faculty sponsor of the trip to London.

  Vandenberg had scripted the events perfectly. On television the President looked like a leader, calmly in control of the situation. He returned to Washington and met with his national security staff
: the secretaries of defense and state, the national security adviser, the director of Central Intelligence. At precisely 6:20 p.m., Vandenberg briefed White House reporters on background. The President was considering military retaliation against the terrorists believed to be responsible for the attack. U.S. Navy warships were moving into place in the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. At 6:30 the White House correspondents from ABC, CBS, and NBC stood side by side on the North Lawn and told the American people that the President might take decisive action to avenge the attack.

  Mitchell Elliott knew the overnight poll numbers would be good. But now, sitting across the table from James Beckwith, Elliott was struck by the fatigue written on his face. He wondered whether his old friend had the will to fight any longer. Elliott said, “If I didn’t know better, Anne, I’d say you were ready to leave now instead of four years from now.”

  The remark bordered on discussion of politics. Instead of changing the subject, the way she usually did, Anne Beckwith met Elliott’s gaze and narrowed her blue eyes in a rare display of anger.

  “Frankly, Mitchell, I don’t care if we leave four years from now or four months from now,” she said. “The President has given this nation everything he has for the past four years. Our family has made terrible sacrifices. And if the people want to elect an untested senator from Nebraska to be their leader, so be it.”

  The remark was vintage Anne Beckwith. Anne liked to pretend she was above politics, that a life of power had been a burden, not a reward. Elliott knew the truth. Behind the placid facade, Anne Beckwith was a ruthless politician in her own right who exercised enormous power in private.