Assassin's Game

NINETEEN

Slaton watched Christine start a pot of coffee aboard the newly christened Bricklayer, and as she went about the job neither tried to discuss their predicament. Her smooth face was strained, the usual easy smile gone. Her weariness was accentuated by the rumpled clothes she’d certainly been wearing for days. Being well versed in stressful situations, he knew to let her lead the conversation.

Christine rummaged through a storage bin and made small talk about the weather, eventually progressing to a rundown of her short voyage here, this no more than a sailor’s account of an uneventful passage. Dividing her narrations, however, were long moments of silence. When the coffee was brewed she found two mismatched cups, poured, and sat down at the small table to face him.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“We’re going to get you safe. Then we’re going to keep it that way.”

“How?” Her voice was uncharacteristically flat and direct — as if she was in doctor mode.

“I don’t know exactly, but I’ll make it happen.”

“Anton was trying to help me.”

“I know, I figured that much out. He wanted to ruin this whole Mossad scheme.”

She nodded. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“No.”

Christine’s face came alight, and for the first time she looked at him with something near hope.

“He’s alive, but there’s a bullet lodged near his spine. He’s in the hospital and in serious condition, but there’s a good chance he’ll pull through.”

She was silent for a time. “You want to hear my story, don’t you?”

“Only when you’re ready.”

“A debriefing — isn’t that what they call it in your line of work?”

“Christine, please don’t—”

“No, no,” she interrupted. “I should tell you everything. I know that.”

And she did, beginning with a mundane physician’s conference, and ending with the Stockholm to Riga Passage and a stolen sailboat anchored in a remote cove. She included Bloch’s account of Mossad’s failed mission in Iran and the loss of four men, including Yaniv Stein whom Slaton had known well. She gave the abduction attempt particular emphasis, and when she recounted the details of Bloch being shot her voice wavered. But she carried on. Christine explained that three men had been involved, and by her descriptions Slaton was sure he’d seen them all — one on a slab in the morgue, and the other two at the Renaissance Tea Room. Without a doubt, all Mossad. Without a doubt, all dead.

Slaton responded with his own story, beginning with the call for help Bloch had made from her phone, and ending with Magnussen Air Charters. When he was done, he paused long enough to refill their cups.

“You killed two men?” she asked.

“That wasn’t my plan — but yes.”

“And you shot a policeman?”

“One round in his leg. I had to put him on the ground because he was about to be killed.”

She laughed nervously. “I would not believe that from anyone else on God’s earth. Why do I trust you so unfailingly?”

He didn’t answer.

“This assassination Mossad is pursuing — where is it to take place?”

“Do you really want to know?”

She nodded.

“Geneva. Six days from today.”

Christine went silent, and Slaton had an urge to change tack. Looking around the cabin, he said, “Tell me again where you got this boat.”

“I stole it.”

“From who?”

“How should I know?”

He waited patiently.

Christine pitched a heavy sigh, and said, “It was at a private dock near the marina. I saw a moving truck at the house above — a crew was hauling out some clothing and books, boxes of pots and pans. It seemed like a nice house, well-kept. I figured the owners were moving south for the winter, maybe to a place in France or Spain. If that was the case, the boat wasn’t going anywhere. I figured it would probably just sit there until somebody from the marina came and hauled it out for dry storage in a month or so. After the movers drove off, I waited until dark. There were no locks, so it was easy. I pulled two mooring lines and she was mine.”

“You’re right — the boat probably won’t be missed anytime soon. That was a good move.”

“No, David. I did it, but it was not a good move. It was grand theft, or whatever they call it here. I stole someone’s boat. I’m using their food and fuel and supplies, and it’s not right. I know how I’d feel if it was my boat.”

“Even if the person who stole it was facing what you were?”

“That doesn’t justify it.”

Slaton recognized an argument he wasn’t going to win. He also sensed an irregular edge to her tone. Christine was a doctor, typically steady under pressure. He’d even seen her handle situations like this before. Something had his wife uncharacteristically rattled.

She gripped her mug with both hands, and after a full minute picked up with, “What are we going to do, David? We can’t just keep running from Mossad and the Swedish police and … and whoever else wants to ruin our lives.”

“We think of a way out.”

“Well, you’ll have to do it because I don’t understand what’s going on. This whole thing is like a damned game, nothing but smoke and mirrors. Mossad actually thinks that by kidnapping me they’ll force you into one last assassination? Does that make sense?”

“If you understand how people like Nurin think — maybe. But you have a point. There’s something more going on here.”

He remembered Nurin’s words. Think about it and everything will make sense … Do this one job and it will be your last. The more Slaton thought about it, the more confusing everything seemed. He had sent Nurin a message saying he would go to Geneva, all along knowing there was only one obvious course — to find Christine. Yet now that he had, it seemed a tenuous victory. Even if he could protect her and evade Mossad in the days ahead, what would happen next week or next year?

Try as he might, Slaton could not find an answer.

Not everyone at SÄPO was an idiot.

This point had settled in Sanderson’s mind five years ago when he’d met Elin Almgren. In the course of a particularly maddening investigation, Almgren had helped him track down a killer, passing critical information that others in her service might have held as proprietary. Sanderson had since reciprocated, most recently helping Almgren and SÄPO make a solid case against an international money-laundering network. It was the kind of intergovernmental cooperation that was vital to effective law enforcement, yet rarely seen as a result of turf wars. Fortunately, a handful of midlevel people like Sanderson and Almgren knew how to bend the system in favor of results.

He had arranged to meet Almgren for lunch at The Flying Horse Pub, and in keeping with their private tradition, since Sanderson had made the request he was obliged to pick up the bill.

“The Flying Horse Chipotle Burger?” he asked.

“Best burger in town,” she said, adding, “and the most expensive.” She was a decent-looking woman with fair hair, blue eyes, and the prominent worry lines that came from twenty years of surveillance, late meetings, and otherwise keeping crown and country secure.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, Arne, you don’t look well.”

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

“You need more sex.”

Sanderson grinned. This was Almgren’s answer to all things amiss in his life. She’d said it when he and Ingrid were near a split, and again afterward when he’d fallen into a miserable funk. Less credibly, it was also her advice when his arthritic knee acted up. Given that Almgren was a lesbian in a long-term relationship, there was no hint of suggestiveness or hidden meaning. And along these same lines, her recommendation carried the weight of what one might find in the middle of a fortune cookie.

“I’m working on it,” Sanderson said.

“No you’re not. You’re repressed. Always have been.”

The waitress swooped in with two pints of ale. She was a slim, tattooed girl of no more than twenty, and as she walked away Sanderson made a point of leering at her bottom.

“Oh, please,” Almgren said, addressing her beer. “I hear you’ve been taken off these two shootings.”

“That’s right. Sjoberg is convinced I’m going daft.”

“Going? You’ve been that way for years, darling. He’s just now realizing it? My opinion of the man slips another notch.”

Sanderson responded by taking a long pull of his own beer.

“All right, what do you need?” she asked.

“I think this man we’re looking for is Israeli.”

“Israeli? What makes you say that?”

“The victim who ended up in a coma in the hospital — he was conscious when they first brought him to the emergency room. The staff heard him speaking Hebrew.”

“Hebrew? You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

Almgren gave this some thought. “There are Jews in Sweden, Arne.”

He gave her a suffering look.

“Lillehammer?” she said tentatively.

“It puts everything in a different light, doesn’t it?”

That event, occurring long before either of them had entered their respective academies, was the stuff of legend in Scandinavian law enforcement. In the summer of 1973, Israel was hunting Ali Hassan Salameh, leader of the group responsible for the previous year’s Munich Massacre. Thinking they’d found their man, a Mossad team was dispatched to the village of Lillehammer, Norway, to assassinate Salameh, but mistakenly murdered an innocent Moroccan waiter as he walked home from a theater with his pregnant wife. The next day, two members of the assassination squad were arrested, and soon the entire team was in custody, later to be put on trial. It was the blackest of days for Mossad, and a debacle that exposed Israel’s brazen will to operate in Europe as never before imagined.

“It’s been a long time,” Almgren said. “Perhaps the new administration in Tel Aviv is too young to remember.”

“Or perhaps Israel is desperate.”

“In what way?”

Sanderson shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m trying to work that out.”

“They always have a list of extremists they’re after — Hamas or Hezbollah. Maybe one of them turned up here.”

“No. That’s not it.”

“How do you know?”

“The first shooting. All the witnesses said it was a case of one versus three. The man who is now in the hospital was by himself. He shot the man who died, and was exchanging fire with the other two on the street.”

“And he’s the one who was spouting Hebrew? So then we have the reverse — one of Israel’s enemies tracked this man here. Perhaps he’s a Mossad operative or an Israeli general. Even a politician.”

Again Sanderson shook his head. “That’s not it either. The two who escaped that first incident were gunned down yesterday. We now have identity documents from all four. They’re good quality forgeries…” he hesitated, “but nearly identical. The same manufacture.”

Almgren thought about it. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

The young waitress dropped a plate on the table that held a massive burger with jalapeños and pepperoni spilling from under the bun.

“Good God,” Sanderson said. “Just looking at it gives me acid reflux.”

“You don’t have acid reflux. You just need more sex.” Almgren, relishing her cast-iron constitution, dug into the burger with gusto. With a partially full mouth, she said, “This man in a coma — maybe he was a rogue of some kind. The others could have been sent here to eliminate him.”

Sanderson took a handful of chips from her plate. “Possibly. But I still don’t understand where the girl comes in. There’s nothing sordid in her background, yet this Israeli was talking to her in the café for at least ten minutes. Witnesses said the two of them seemed tense but familiar.”

“What else then?”

Sanderson thought about it. “The man now in a coma. He was attended to by a doctor who spoke Hebrew — that’s why I’m certain about the language.”

“Does the doctor remember what he said?”

“Yes. He said, ‘Let the bayonet go.’”

Almgren set her burger on the plate and stared at him. “Bayonet?”

“Yes. The doctor was quite sure.”

“As in ‘kidon’?”

Sanderson eyed her. “You speak Hebrew?”

“No. I speak Mossad — we all do where I live. Israeli intelligence is a big organization, but most of their employees are a straightforward bunch. Field operatives, linguists, communications specialists. There is, however, a very elite unit. A handful known as kidons.”

“And what do they do?”

“They’re a very special division. The kidonim are Mossad’s assassins.”

Sanderson stared blankly across the table. He considered the first shooting, the man in the hospital and the three he’d been up against. Had there been an assassin among them? It was not until he considered the second attack that the thunderbolt struck.

It settled in his mind in a familiar way, a recurring instinct he never doubted. It was none of the first four, but the other, the lone survivor. A man he’d met at the Strand Hotel and interviewed at length. One who had yesterday stolen a gun at a café and used it to kill twice. Sanderson remembered watching him read signs in a language he supposedly didn’t know. Remembered the blue-gray eyes that reflected like polished steel, taking everything in yet letting nothing out. In the car, the way he’d moved to see and not be seen. It had been right there in front of him all along, like staring at the sun but not seeing it for the brilliance.

The stonemason.

Edmund Deadmarsh was an assassin.