A confident assassin may have done the deed right then, just pulled back and shot through the grille into the target’s head. And, certainly, he could have hired such professionalism. Arjan would have done it; had even requested the assignment.
But it has to be me. If I don’t do this myself, then it is for nothing.
Given that requirement, Arjan had set about preparing his boss for this moment, arranging transportation and alibis, securing timetables and blueprints. Arjan had made him train for five weeks with Incursori loyalists. They had worked him physically and filled his mind with knowledge of ballistics and anatomy, close-quarters combat, the arts of vigilance and stealth—at least to the extent that time allowed. Arjan had explained that using a sniper’s rifle and scope was infeasible, considering the deadline.
Shooting a man from three hundred yards is a skill! he had snapped. It’s not like the movies, man. It takes years of training to guarantee a kill. And you’ll have only one chance, right?
Right.
So somewhere in Arjan’s dark mind, a switch labeled “close kill” had been thrown, sending Luco down a track that led to this ventilation shaft and his hand on the wire that held the grille in place. Slowly, he unwound it from an exposed screw. Then he recalled Arjan’s instructions and relooped the wire.
The target’s unabated flow told him he had at least a few more seconds. Luco removed a moist washcloth from a Ziploc baggy. He rubbed it over his face, removing sweat and dust from around his eyes, letting the water refresh him. Arjan had told him that countless missions failed because of haste and machismo myths about warriors fighting despite handicaps. “Perspiration in your eyes is a disadvantage you can avoid, so do it!” he had ordered.
Luco dried himself with a washcloth from another Ziploc. His fingers felt clammy inside the tight dishwashing gloves he wore, but that was better than trying to handle the wire and pistol with sweaty hands. Surgical gloves, he had learned, were too thin to prevent leaving fingerprints. And Arjan had been clear about wearing the gloves from ingress to egress—so clear, in fact, that he’d made Luco wear them the entire last week of his training.
The target was tugging his pants up, running a hand around to tuck in his shirt. As soon as he rounded the partition to step in front of the sink, Luco whipped the wire off the screw and let the grille swing down. A string that was attached to the wire slid between his thumb and forefinger until a knot stopped it, halting the grille inches from the wall.
The water at the sink came on.
He used his strong arms to position himself directly above the opening. His legs pistonned down, and he dropped to the floor. By bending his knees as soon as the toes of his rubber-soled boots touched the marble, he managed an almost-silent landing. Still crouched, he pulled the pistol from his waistband. It was a China Type 64, old but especially suited for the job at hand. Its barrel was no longer than any handgun’s, but included a silencer; its breech slide was lockable—and was now locked, he noted—to prevent the noises of cartridge ejection and round rechambering inherent to semiautomatic pistols. With its subsonic 7.65mm bullets, it was the quietest pistol ever made.
He stepped behind the target, who was bent over the sink, splashing water on his face. Perfect. The gun’s locking slide meant he had only one quick shot. The next shot would take at least five seconds to prepare—an eternity if a wounded victim was screaming and thrashing around and bodyguards were kicking in the door. His goal was instant incapacitation . . . instant death. And that meant the bullet had to sever the brain stem, which was best achieved from behind. He pointed the pistol at the approximate spot where the man’s head would be when he straightened.
But, still bent, the man reached for a hand towel, knocked it to the floor, and turned to retrieve it. Catching Luco in his peripheral vision, he stood to face him. His eyes focused on the gun, and he raised his hands in surrender. His attention rose to Luco’s face. Puzzlement made his eyes squint, his mouth go slack.
He knows he’s seen me before, Luco realized.
“Ti darò qualsiasi cosa oppure,” the man pleaded. I will give you everything. His voice was hushed, obviously believing that cooperation would forestall his death.
“Sono sicuro che lo farai,” Luco said. I know you will. Stepping forward, he touched the barrel to the indentation between the man’s lips and nose—lightly, as if anointing him—and pulled the trigger. The man’s head snapped back. Brain and blood and bone instantly caked the mirror behind him, as a dozen fissures snapped the glass from a central point where the bullet had struck. Miraculously, none of the shards came loose. The noise had been barely audible above the sound of the faucet. Luco caught the body as it crumpled and laid it gently on the floor.
Then the smell hit him, like meat shoved into his sinuses. He stood, tried to breathe. Something fell from the mirror and landed wetly on the countertop. Vomit rose in his throat. He slapped his palm over his mouth and willed it back down. Hand in place, he forced himself to survey the slaughter—the brain matter on the mirror and counter; the blood there, as well as spreading in a pool under the head, a rivulet breaking away and snaking toward a floor drain near the toilet; the face contorted in terror, mouth open, tongue protruding, eyes wide.
He wanted to remember.
Back below the ventilation opening, he jumped and pulled himself into the shaft. He could have used the bench for a boost up, but the idea was to slow his pursuers, even by mere seconds. It wasn’t the time it would take the guards to move the bench into place that mattered, but any confusion produced by not having an obvious escape route to follow. First, they’d call for a screwdriver (or shoot away the screw heads). Then they’d tug at the grille, which the high-tensile wire would hold firm. Ultimately they’d get into the shaft, glance at the false metal wall he would place behind him, and head the other way.
Six minutes after the assassination, he clambered out of the shaft behind a stack of boxes in a storage room. Through the door, two steps down a hallway, and he was descending the narrow and dark servants’ staircase, rarely used since the installation of elevators in the 1970s. He came out in a kitchen three floors below. Hands were immediately on him, pulling at his blood-spattered overalls.
“Hurry,” a young man whispered in Italian. His head moved in all directions as he peeled the clothes away.
Luco stripped off the rubber gloves, then vigorously rubbed his hands together. He opened a pocketknife and ran the blade over the laces of his boots. The young man—Antonio, Luco remembered—tugged off the boots and pushed on a pair of expensive oxfords to match his suit. Everything went into an attaché case. Antonio scrubbed at his neck, face, and hair with a wet towel.
“Ah,” Luco complained, wiping at his eye.
“Dishwasher soap. Nothing better for blood.” Antonio tossed the towel into the attaché, produced a comb, and ran it through Luco’s hair. “Come.” He led Luco to a heavy fire door at the rear of the building and signaled for him to wait. He opened it and slipped through. Fifteen seconds later he was back, beckoning Luco outside.
A long alley ran away from the Asia House, cutting a canyon between two tall buildings. The only illumination appeared to be the glow of a mercury-vapor lamp on the far street where the alley ended. Everything else was submerged in blackness. Propping the door open with his foot, Antonio pointed down the alley. “The car is parked on Henriata Sold.”
Luco gripped the young man’s shoulder and gave it a shake. He leaned closer. “Grazie.”
Antonio whispered back, “Anything for you.”
Luco stepped into the dark alley, the click of his heels echoing quietly. The door closed behind him. He smiled.
It was finished.
And it had just begun.
2
The present
Garrisonville, Virginia
The boy had his mother’s hair, dark and fine and shining. Brady Moore ran a hand over his son’s head, feeling the soft strands slip through his fingers like water. Zach’s face was
turned away; his breathing was deep and rhythmic. Asleep, or almost. Sitting next to Zach on the bed, his back against the headboard, Brady gently scooted away and shifted his legs over the edge.
What at first glance might have been a tan wig lying on the bedspread at Zach’s feet stirred. Then a head popped up from one side of the clump and swiveled toward him. This was Coco, the most loving Shih Tzu to grace the breed, Brady was sure, and Zach’s ever-present companion since the boy was in diapers. Brady raised a finger to his lips. Coco, pink tongue protruding from a mouth-shaped part in his fur, simply watched Brady with eyes that were slightly bulging and slightly crossed. After a moment, the dog’s head disappeared back into the collective whole.
Brady closed the book in his lap and set it on the nightstand, pushing aside a G.I. Joe and the accoutrements of make-believe warfare: a tiny canteen, a plastic M16, something that looked like a field radio. When they clinked against a picture frame, Brady let his eyes linger on the woman looking out from it. Pretty. No . . . beautiful. In that grand genetic crapshoot, her father’s Chickasaw lineage had mixed with her mother’s Teutonic ancestry to create a stunning progeny. Not just physically, though certainly her appearance was the first thing that had attracted Brady’s attention. Dark, sultry. High cheekbones, narrow nose, doe eyes. The shape and composition of her features invited lingering scrutiny, the way some foods—Swiss chocolate came to mind—demanded to be savored. Then her personality revealed itself, along with her intelligence and wry humor . . . Some people seemed to have it all, and the best of them had no clue about the effect they had on other people.
That’s Karen. She’s so . . .
Brady stopped himself. Even eighteen months after her death, he thought of Karen in the present tense. A familiar ache pinched his heart, tightened his throat.
“Thinking of Mom?”
The voice was sleepy, so ethereal it took Brady a second to realize it had not originated in his own head.
He turned to see his son looking over his shoulder at him. The boy was all Karen. Besides the hair, his eyes, like hers, were the dark brown of polished coffee beans. Zach also possessed her not-quite-full lips that made a sudden jaunt upward at the corners, forming a smile even when it wasn’t intended. It was that faux smile—on the mother, not the son who was at the time still seven years from conception—that had caused Brady to break away from his friends in line for a movie to ask the dark beauty if she’d mind if he held down the seat next to hers, seeing that he was a great movie companion, laughing in all the right places and sharing his popcorn. Never mind that she was in line to see something other than The Untouchables; he didn’t know what and didn’t care. It was only after they were engaged that he learned she hadn’t been smiling at him after all. But his boldness in approaching a girl without the slightest hint of an invitation had made her say, “Sure, who in her right mind would turn down free popcorn?” Funny how things work. They had both been seventeen.
Brady leaned over the boy, propping himself up with one arm. “Hey, I thought you were asleep,” he whispered.
“Do you think she thinks of us?”
“All the time.” He leaned closer. “More than that. She watches us.”
Zach smiled. A real smile, not a trick of his lips. Brady didn’t know how the boy did it. Here Brady was, thirty-three and feeling constantly on the brink of some chasm, some breakdown whose torments he couldn’t imagine and from which he probably wouldn’t return. At nine, Zach was holding it together much better. Lots of tears, sure, and times of melancholy no kid should experience. For the most part, however, he was functioning well, with healthy bouts of giggles and curiosity about babies and electronics and airplanes and only an occasional, if precocious, question concerning death, dying, and the afterlife. Ignorance is bliss? Or was it something else that enabled Zach to get on with his life? Whatever it was, Brady was glad for it.
“She watches me when you can’t? Like when I’m at school and when you . . . go away?”
Brady’s business trips were a painful subject. In fact, Zach’s eyes were still red-rimmed from an earlier bout of tears over the trip Brady was going on the next day.
“Right,” Brady said. “All the time.”
“If she sees something bad happening, can she stop it?”
Brady thought for a moment. “I think she sort of whispers in our ears. ‘Don’t step off the curb yet. Wait for that car to pass.’ And ‘Don’t climb that tree. There’s a broken branch up there.’”
Zach nodded. Well, of course Mom would do that. He said, “Will you pick me up from school tomorrow?”
“No, Mrs. Pringle will do that.”
Zach made a sour face. At the foot of the bed, Coco whined in his sleep, as if agreeing with his master’s opinion.
“What? You like Mrs. Pringle.”
“Yeah . . .” He hesitated. “It’s just that she drives so slow, by the time we get home, Scooby-Doo’s over.”
“You should be doing your homework then anyway. Or playing outside while the sun’s hot.”
“Yeah, but, Dad . . . Scooby-Doo.”
Brady knew how the boy felt. Time was when he and Zach would rent old episodes and spend an evening cracking up at Scooby and Shaggy’s misadventures with ghosts, goblins, and other assorted spookies. Karen never saw the attraction, and since her death, Brady hadn’t felt like yukking it up, even with Zach. So the boy watched reruns on his own and always got down to the business of being an energetic fourth grader after the show was over. Before Brady could respond, Zach continued, “And she’s so old, like a hundred and something.”
“Not quite, but even if she were, what does it matter?”
He wrinkled his nose. “She smells funny.”
True enough. Mrs. Pringle was a widow in her seventies who smelled as if she stored herself in mothballs when she wasn’t baby sitting Zach. But she had no problem in the mental acuity department, and despite operating at half speed, she seemed perfectly capable of doing all the things required to look after the boy. Weekday mornings, Brady saw his son off to the bus stop. After school, Zach went to a daycare center with several other schoolkids whose parents both worked or who had a single parent. Until a year and a half ago, Brady had never imagined that he’d fall into the latter category.
He knew some parents let their children stay home alone for the few hours between the end of school and the end of their work. He’d been in law enforcement long enough, however, to know latchkey kids were more likely to expose themselves to danger—by being careless or naive on the Internet, with fire, around strangers—and become victims of accidents or crime. During the infrequent times Brady worked late, Mrs. Pringle filled in. She may have been slow and odorous, but to Brady, the woman was a godsend.
“Look,” Brady said, “when I get home, we’ll rent some Scooby-Doos and watch them till our eyes fall out, okay?”
Zach brightened. “The two of us?”
A brief pause. “You bet.”
“You too?”
Brady let out a chuckle, as if it were a silly question, but of course it wasn’t. “Me too,” he said.
“All right!” Instantly wide-awake, Zach scooted into a sitting position. “How long will you be gone?”
“A few days, at least. Maybe a week.”
The boy’s face fell. “That long? Why do you have to go? Can’t someone else do it?”
“It’s my job, Zachary. Other people are doing their jobs.”
“Will Miss Wagner be there?”
Brady knew that Zach liked his partner, Alicia Wagner.
“She’s there already. The Bureau decided to send us too late to get to the crime scene before the local police . . . processed it.”
“You mean before they contaminated it.”
Brady wasn’t sure he liked his son so steeped in the ways of the FBI, its parlance and procedures.
He said, “That’s right. So, anyway, there’s no real hurry getting there. We’ll do what we can, review the evidence, and hope to
be there sooner the next time.”
Zach said, “Hope for the next time?”
The kid was quick.
“I don’t mean hope there is a next time. Of course not. I mean, if the bad guy strikes again, we hope to get there sooner so we can help.”
Zach nodded.
Brady leaned over, parted his bangs, and kissed him on the forehead. “Now get to sleep, big guy,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
As he rose, Zach gripped his arm. “Can we pray?”
Brady paused. It was a ritual Karen had started. Sinking back down onto the bed, he said, “You do it.”
The boy closed his eyes and began speaking in the gentlest of tones.
Brady noticed how the bedside lamp cast a warm glow over Zach’s face. He never tired of observing his son, and now his eyes absorbed every detail, his mind storing it for instant recall while he was away. Between his entwined hands, Zach held his “blankie,” a threadbare infant blanket that he had originally given up at age four. Shortly after Karen’s funeral, he’d had a number of bed-wetting incidents and had begun crying for his blankie. Fortunately, Karen, as organized as she was sentimental, had stored it in a box marked Zachary’s Baby Things. The nighttime accidents had stopped, but Zach was now more attached to that raggedy cloth than he had been as a toddler. Mrs. Pringle kept stitching it back together, especially its silk trim, which Zach absently rubbed between forefinger and thumb when wearied or worried.
Wetting the bed, needing the blankie, clinging to Brady—these were Zach’s telltale signs of distress. Brady’s were anger and sullenness. He’d also developed a rigid skepticism of the so-called ordered universe. Man’s notion that he could somehow shape his future was bunk. How many Ivy League grads wound up flipping burgers? Brady personally knew of one, and not because the guy was flaky, but because the universe was. Brady also remembered being shown the extensive security of a house from which a baby had just been kidnapped. And was a lifetime of exercise and healthy eating able to stop a drunk from plowing his car into you? Karen had discovered the answer to that one herself. “Fair” implied order, and life wasn’t fair.