Assassin's Game

FORTY-FOUR

“I’m going to kill someone, I tell you!”

The Beau Rivage desk manager looked up most uncomfortably. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

Slaton kept to Continental-hued English, an accent that might have sourced him from any of a dozen of the upper countries. “That idiot at L’Ambassadeur. I booked his five best rooms for the second weekend in November, and now he tells me he has plumbing issues that must be addressed. He says he can give me no more than two rooms, and that the bridal suite is unavailable.”

“Quel désastre, monsieur! How can I be of service?”

The desk manager in front of Slaton was not the man who’d been on duty yesterday, the one he’d seen guiding the Iranians. A nametag presented this man as Henri. He was small and round and impeccably dressed, a confectioner’s bonbon suited in dove gray silk and a red tie.

“My sister is marrying the Viscount de Vesci that Sunday. The wedding is booked for the Basilica Notre-Dame, and I have been cursed with the thankless job of finding lodging. I would need your best available suite — you have a balcony on the top floor that overlooks the lake, yes?”

“Our finest.”

“And four more rooms for the rest of her party. Can you save me?”

“L’Ambassadeur,” the hotelier said, adding a tsk-ing noise as if to say, It is only to be expected. “Let me see what can be done.” He toyed with a computer for a short time before saying, “Yes, yes. The Bertrand Suite is available that weekend. And the other rooms — I can do something.”

“You are a miracle worker,” Slaton said. “But I must see the room before I can commit.”

“Ah — regrettably, monsieur, that room is occupied by a guest this weekend. Perhaps if you came back—”

“No! I have to settle this before I leave for Oslo tomorrow. There is no need to go inside, but I must see the room to be sure.” Slaton leaned in conspiratorially. “And ask an exorbitant price. Our father is footing the bill, but he will not even attend — too busy on his yacht in the Caribbean with his third wife. If the bastard won’t sit through a full Catholic mass at his eldest daughter’s wedding, he is due some kind of pain.”

Henri cocked his head deferentially, perhaps a man who knew better than to become involved in family discord. Or perhaps a man who worked on commission. “I think I might have seen Madame Dupre enter the restaurant just a few moments ago.”

Slaton grinned approvingly.

They went to the elevator, the manager with a key card in hand. As they waited for a car to arrive, a contingent of three swarthy men stepped into the lobby from the street. Slaton knew immediately that they were Iranians. Indeed, he knew they were part of Ibrahim Hamedi’s security detail. He knew because he recognized the smallest of the three — as would anyone employed by Mossad in the last five years. Slaton was looking across the lobby at Farzad Behrouz, minister of intelligence and national security for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Raymond Nurin stood at a fourth-floor window with his arms crossed, the smoke from his cigarette curling upward unbroken in the room’s stagnant air. The office, in a little used corner of the administration wing, had been vacant since Nurin’s directive to downsize the department last spring. He’d quietly seen to it that the room was left unused, an order that had generally been adhered to, notwithstanding the leopard-print thong he’d found wadded under a desk last July. There was nothing special about the room itself, a testimonial to particleboard office furniture and dry-erase markers, but the view was first rate. The windows here were the largest in the building, and a welcome relief from the bunker below with its artificial light and charcoal-filtered air. In the distance Nurin could see scalloped beaches, and blue-green waves rolling in from the Mediterranean. The day was unseasonably warm, and the masses of Tel Aviv had descended for a last fling with the sun before winter stole it away. Nurin imagined the carefree throngs. Crawling, splashing, flaunting, ogling — all a matter of where one was in life’s sequence.

He turned away.

The events he had set in motion were not progressing as planned. Or if they were, he had no way of knowing it. To be director of Mossad implied a measure of influence, a command of events. As it was, Nurin felt like he was free-falling through a blackened void. He’d heard nothing from Slaton, but that was to be expected. Veron’s Direct Action team was established in Geneva, yet until given a mission they were a rudderless bunch. And yesterday Hamedi had arrived in Switzerland with an unusually large security force. Everything was in place, so far as could be planned, yet there was one menacing variable — the thing that had cost him no end of sleep this past week. Would Slaton turn up under the bridge on Lake Geneva? And if so, just how competent was this kidon?

God I’ve screwed this one up.

Nurin stabbed out his cigarette in a full ashtray. He decided it was time to play his contingency card. Hamedi would never be this vulnerable again, not until it was too late, and there was no way to predict Slaton’s intentions. Knowing he had to do something, Nurin pulled out his phone and arranged a meeting in his office.

Ten minutes later Nurin was back in his bunker. Veron had already arrived, and Zacharias soon joined them. Nurin was about to speak when Zacharias took the initiative.

“The girl, Dr. Palmer, has turned up in Stockholm. She was admitted last night to Saint Göran, the same hospital where Bloch is recuperating from his operation.”

“Admitted you say?”

“It’s nothing serious. The police have certainly questioned her by now, but I doubt she can tell them much.”

Nurin wasn’t so sure, but it was another complication he had no time to think about. He addressed Veron, “Is your team in place?”

“Yes, they’ve established a safe house in Geneva and are standing by for instructions.”

“All right then, let’s give them some. Here is what they will do…”

For Israel’s most accomplished assassin to find himself in an elevator with the head of Iranian state security was not without prospects.

Henri was prattling a well-rehearsed monologue about the hotel’s superior amenities, in particular the thread-count of its Egyptian cotton sheets. None of the Iranians seemed to regard Slaton critically as they shouldered into the car, the bodyguards perhaps anesthetized by Henri’s all-too-predictable pitch, a version of which they had already endured.

Slaton studied Behrouz up close, and saw a small man with narrow-set eyes and a rutted complexion. He was reasonably well dressed in a suit and tie, and his two sidecars were similarly fashioned, although each of them involving twice as much fabric. Possibilities stirred as Slaton weighed the situation. Might he modify his original plan?

He could kill Behrouz in seconds — from where he stood, the neck being the quickest and most efficient method — but the other two would react. The Glock was tucked neatly in his rear waistband, ready for a right-handed draw, but the two guards had spread apart well. If Slaton went that route he would be facing, quite literally, the proverbial gunfight in an elevator. He might survive all that, might even reach the fourth floor with his gun in hand to mount an assault on the room where Ibrahim Hamedi was perhaps vulnerable. Yet there were other outcomes less to Slaton’s liking. Improvisation was one thing, ill-considered chaos another. The latter bred outcomes that might endanger Christine, and so he took the idea no further.

Slaton was standing directly next to Behrouz, towering over him, and as the elevator rose he extracted a pack of chewing gum from his pocket, unwrapped two sticks, and popped them into his mouth. He held out the pack of gum as an offering. Behrouz gave a quiet snort, then turned toward one of his men and started chattering in Farsi. On the fourth floor the Iranians exited uneventfully, the two big men hanging with Behrouz like sharks trailing a remora — a peculiar contradiction to the natural order of things.

One minute later Slaton and Henri were on the fifth floor, the little man knocking on the door of a room named Bertrand. When there was no answer, the hotel manager pulled out his passkey and opened the door of the suite. Slaton had carefully positioned himself to be on Henri’s right, which put him on the active side of the door, near the lock and handle. With the door ajar, he took one step inside and leaned so as to press the hotelier slightly back into the hallway. As he viewed the room, Slaton reached behind his back and stuck the wad of gum that had been in his mouth onto the key card from his own room at the Montreux Casino, then jammed the whole arrangement into the receiver of the striker plate.

“Yes,” he said, “this will be perfect. A wonderful view, I’m sure.”

“The best in Geneva,” affirmed a beaming Henri.

Slaton too smiled as he reached for the handle and carefully pulled the door shut. The desk manager steered them back to the elevator, and in the lobby minutes later the man who would soon be brother-in-law to the Viscount de Vesci agreed to return the next day to formalize their arrangements. Good wishes were exchanged, and as he backed away, Slaton asked, “Where is the men’s room, please?”

Henri pointed toward the stairwell as he began addressing another customer.

Slaton waited until the hotelier was fully engaged before bypassing the restroom, and for the second time in as many days he shot up the stairs taking three at a time.