Assassin's Game

TWENTY-THREE

Magnussen was busy talking to air traffic controllers as the little seaplane ventured into what had to be unfamiliar territory — the busy air corridor over Stockholm. The view was exactly as she’d promised, the leaden topside of a cloudbank with only a few breaks, the highest buildings and a few radio antennae stabbing through like so many urban periscopes. Slaton didn’t mind the featureless cityscape. He had not come to sightsee.

He pulled the three prepaid cell phones from his backpack, pocketing two and waking the third.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

Magnussen laughed. “This airplane doesn’t have many instruments to interfere with. Go ahead and call. You should get good reception as low as we are.”

The phone was already activated, and indeed he saw good signal strength. Slaton pulled a business card from his pocket and dialed Detective Inspector Arne Sanderson.

Sanderson was closing the trunk of his car when it dawned on him that he should check his email one last time — Sjoberg had likely forgotten to pull up that anchor. He had just entered the headquarters building when his phone vibrated. He looked at the number but didn’t recognize it. Thinking it might involve one of his mandatory medical probings, he answered reluctantly.

“Sanderson.”

He heard a great deal of background noise, and then, “Hello, Inspector.”

The voice registered instantly — one he had first heard three days prior in the lobby of the Strand Hotel. “Where are you?”

“I’m very near, actually.”

Sanderson began trotting up the hallway that led to the operations center.

The man whose name was certainly not Edmund Deadmarsh said, “I thought we should talk.”

“You realize you’re in a great deal of trouble.”

“How is the policeman?”

“His leg was damaged, but he’s expected to make a full recovery. Unlike the other two.” Sanderson shoved his way into the room and skidded to a stop in front of the duty officer’s desk. He switched the phone to his left hand and began scribbling on a notepad.

“I’m glad to hear he’s recovering,” said the familiar voice. “Please give him my apologies. At the time I didn’t see any other way. He was about to get far worse.”

Sanderson finished his note and shoved it toward the duty officer. Talking to suspect Deadmarsh on my duty number! Triangulate this call immediately! He then readdressed the phone with, “Are you trying to tell me you shot our man in the leg to rescue him from another assailant? Do you expect me to believe that?”

“Believe whatever you like, Inspector. I was having a leisurely breakfast when I was forced to defend myself. Have you identified the other two, the ones who initiated things?”

“I think you know we haven’t.”

“How is Anton?”

“Who?”

“The man you showed me in Saint Göran, the one in a coma. Has his condition improved?”

“There’s been no change.” Sanderson looked expectantly at the desk man who was multitasking between a phone and a computer. He scribbled a reply to Sanderson. Pinging now. Need thirty more seconds.

Sanderson said, “Who is he?”

“You really have no idea? Tell me you’re better than that, Inspector.”

“Please. Let’s not play games.”

“All right. His name is Anton Bloch. One year ago he was the director of Mossad.”

Sanderson wanted to respond, but his thoughts fell into a tailspin. As incredible as this sounded, it made perfect sense. An Israeli, and certainly a man with enemies.

“I’ll assume by your silence that you really didn’t know,” Deadmarsh prompted.

“Are you saying this was some kind of attempted assassination?”

“You figure it out. I want to talk about my wife.”

Sanderson half-listened as Deadmarsh made her case, the fugitive stonemason explaining that his wife was only a victim in some ill-defined scheme. The tech gave a wild thumbs-up and wrote another note. We have him locked! Near Frihamnen Ferry Terminal!

Sanderson issued an order he was in no position to give — he made a circular carry-on motion with his free hand to indicate that the duty officer should launch the fleet. The man complied, and within seconds every available unit on the east side of Stockholm was descending on the computed position.

Deadmarsh chose that moment to say, “Sorry, Inspector, but let me call you right back.”

The line went dead.

“You can’t do that!” Janna Magnussen shouted.

Slaton had opened the side window of the Cessna. It was an easy thing to do, a single latch, and had raised the level of wind noise considerably. What had his pilot’s attention, however, was that he was holding the mobile phone outside with one hand as he studied the breaks in the clouds below. When they were over a clear section of the Lilla Värtan Strait, he let fly.

“No! You cannot do that!”

Slaton watched the handset flutter down behind them, but quickly lost sight.

“It is against the law to drop things from an aircraft!” she protested.

Slaton eyed her. The cockpit was loud, but it was a small space, so he was sure Magnussen had heard at least some of his conversation with Inspector Sanderson. Now he’d begun dropping objects on the city below. It was a pivotal moment, and one that Slaton had anticipated, indeed planned. Before calling Sanderson again, there was a need to amend his relationship with his pilot. He pulled the Beretta from his right thigh pocket and pointed it across his body. Magnussen’s scowl shifted, annoyance giving way to concern. But the pilot kept her cool, as pilots were prone to do. She had certainly faced moments of more immediate peril — terrible thunderstorms, ice-covered wings, oncoming aircraft. All the same, Slaton had her undivided attention.

“I need your help,” he said.

“This is how you ask for help?”

“I don’t have the luxury of asking. Please understand that I have no interest in harming you, Janna. But I won’t hesitate if you make it necessary. And before you declare this illogical, that a passenger would disable an airplane’s only pilot, I should explain. I’m not an experienced aviator, but I have had some training. If I needed to land this airplane I could. I wouldn’t attempt it in the water because I’ve never done that. I’d just hold a speed of eighty knots, fly south until the weather clears, and then find a nice open field or a dirt road. A place with no power lines or trees. It wouldn’t be pretty, and I’d probably wreck your airplane. But I would walk away. I’m very confident of that.”

Magnussen alternated, watching him one moment, and her instruments and path the next.

He continued, “I won’t let you change the transponder code to indicate a hijacking, and I will be listening to every radio call you make. All I ask is that you fly over two more points here in Stockholm, and then take me south.”

“Where?” she asked.

“I’ll let you know when the time comes. When we arrive, I’ll get off your airplane and you’ll never see me again. You can go wherever you like, and I will still pay you the balance of our agreed upon fee. Once I’m gone you can alert the authorities or not — that’s up to you. But if you delay that contact for a few hours, say the time it will take you to return to Oxelösund from our destination, then two weeks from now I’ll send you a check in the amount of twenty thousand U.S. dollars.”

She looked at him suspiciously, but not without interest. Mossad agents were trained to operate in a sequence — manipulate, persuade, coerce, and as a last resort, threaten and deliver bodily harm. As an assassin, Slaton had long resided on the backside of this continuum, but he was not incapable of lesser means.

“This is where you calculate probabilities, Janna.”

They locked eyes and he could see her doing exactly that. The gun was now pointed at the floorboard, having served its purpose.

“Do as I ask for a few hours,” he said. “The rest is up to you.”

The more Magnussen thought about it, the less worried she appeared. Skeptical certainly, but not immediately fearful for her life. She said, “I saw something on television yesterday. There have been shootings in Stockholm. A manhunt is under way. You are the one they’re looking for.”

“Yes. And so you know I’m serious. But I also think you believe me — you know I won’t harm you. I only need to leave Sweden, Janna. Doesn’t that make sense?”

He watched her consider it all, likely adding in the circumstance of having dropped him off on a remote island yesterday.

“All right,” she said. “Tell me where you want to go.”

“For the moment, let’s turn west.”

Sanderson listened intently as the units reported in. He was still in the operations center, his phone in hand and a thumb poised over the Answer button.

He was sure the primary revelation was now rising up the chain of command — that the man lying in a coma at Saint Göran was a former director of Mossad. As explosive as this was, Sanderson viewed it as a distraction for the moment, a piece of a larger, more theoretical puzzle that was secondary to finding Deadmarsh. Get the American in custody, he decided, and the intriguing details could be sorted at will.

The duty officer in charge of the operations center, Assistant Commander Eilsen, was giving a status report on a secure phone. “We’ve got eight cars establishing blockades around the Frihamnen terminal. All the access roads are covered, and six teams on foot have begun flushing the passenger boarding area. We’ve also recalled a ferry that just left for Riga. No one’s spotted Deadmarsh yet, but he’s got to be there somewhere.”

Sanderson’s phone rang, again an unknown number. He answered by saying, “Give it up!”

“I could say the same to you, Inspector.”

Sanderson heard the same background noise he’d registered earlier, and thought, He’s moving. The boat to Riga?

Eilsen tapped his computer display and whispered, “He’s using a different number!”

“Let’s end the hide and seek, shall we?” Sanderson said. “You claim that you didn’t shoot that policeman with malicious intent. I’m inclined to believe you. And you imply the others were shot in self-defense. If this can all be proven, you’ll be shown leniency. Come in quietly, kidon.”

The line went quiet, nothing but the low mechanical buzz.

Their second triangulation went more quickly, everyone having been forewarned. Sanderson saw a red circle blossom to the map display. It was ten miles from the first plot. His eyes narrowed.

“What the hell?” Eilsen mumbled. He immediately began redirecting units toward the new fix.

Deadmarsh was talking again, something about his wife’s innocence. Sanderson covered the mouthpiece and said, “I can hear an engine in the background. He’s traveling. A truck or a motorcycle. It’s the only way he could have moved like that. Tell everyone to watch for a vehicle running north!”

The call suddenly ended.

Sanderson cursed.

Three miles east of police headquarters at Kungsholmsgatan 43, a white mobile phone traveling at its terminal velocity struck the pavement of a nearly empty municipal parking lot near the Vasa Museum. The handset exploded into shards of plastic and circuitry, and scattered across the tarmac, no piece larger than a one-kronor coin surviving. Ten minutes later and eight miles west, after another brief conversation, the third phone fared marginally better. It bounced off the vaulted roof of the rectory at Brännkyrka Church, streaked past a priceless stained-glass window, and finally came to rest under eighteen inches of well-consecrated earth in the adjacent cemetery.

By the time Deadmarsh’s third call ended, cars in blue and yellow Battenburg markings were racing a patternless weave across greater Stockholm. Sanderson was immediately summoned to Sjoberg’s office, and found the new investigator-in-charge already there.

“Why did he call you of all people?” Anna Forsten asked before he’d even crossed the threshold.

“I’d given him my number. I’m probably the only policeman in Sweden he knows.”

Sjoberg said, “SÄPO is going to be all over this. Can it be true? The former director of Mossad is sitting in a coma at Saint Göran?”

“It sounds incredible,” Sanderson said, “but I expect it’s true.”

Forsten flicked a well-manicured finger through a printed transcript of the calls Sanderson had just taken. “What does this mean—‘Come in quietly, kidon.’ What the devil is a kidon?”

“A kidon is a Mossad assassin.”

Sjoberg stared incredulously. “And where did this revelation come from?”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you when you—” Sanderson hesitated. He looked at each of them in turn. “Am I to understand that I’m back on this investigation?”

An agitated Sjoberg said, “No, Arne, you most certainly are not. I just need to know how—”

“Then figure it out for yourselves!” Sanderson turned on a heel and started for the door.

“Wait! I want your phone.”

Sanderson stopped.

Forsten said, “We’ll give it back once we’ve routed your number through the operations center switchboard.”

“Brilliant. And when he calls again expecting to speak to me, how will you answer?”

“He doesn’t give a damn about you. This man is obviously trying to throw us off. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole Mossad angle is no more than misdirection.”

“I agree,” Sjoberg said. “All he’s done is prove what we already suspected — that he’s right here in Stockholm.”

“Is he?” Sanderson countered.

“Arne,” Sjoberg said, “let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be. Give me the phone.”

Sanderson pulled out his mobile and dropped it on Sjoberg’s desk. “Do what you like. But I’ll tell you this. If you … if you…” Sanderson stood still, trying to remember what he was about to say. He felt suddenly dizzy.

And then everything went blank.