Assassin's Game

FORTY-SIX

In spite of what he’d told the housekeeper, Slaton did not plan on thirty minutes.

With the difficult part done, the breach of the floor, he worked quickly. He took the can of Scotchgard, reached down into Hamedi’s closet and sprayed a generous three-inch band over the shoulder of each jacket. From his earlier trials he decided that a second coat wasn’t necessary. He pushed the jackets back where they belonged on the rail and set the lower ceiling tile carefully in place, then arranged the cut-out section of wood floor at a forty-five-degree diagonal over the gaping hole. He cut away the pad to fit the raised section of wood, and when he folded the carpet flap back it appeared perfectly flat. He then shifted Madame Dupre’s luggage stand so that the two X-shaped legs were straddling the hidden hole. The patch wouldn’t go unnoticed forever, but Slaton was quite sure it would buy him the thirty hours he needed.

He did his best to clean up, rubbing a hand over the telltale sawdust until it disappeared into the carpet, and then using one of Madame’s hairbrushes to groom the thick-pile weave until his cuts were unnoticeable. Satisfied, Slaton was soon standing motionless against the door, glued to the viewing port and waiting for the silence that would send him on his way. Two minutes later, after a whistling steward passed with a room-service tray, he was at the elevator.

He was waiting for the door to slide open when the maid he’d encountered earlier turned a corner. In an awkward moment they locked eyes only a few steps apart. Slaton smiled to put her at ease, and then blew out a long and heavy breath, adding a mock look of exhaustion.

“Madame Dupre,” he said conspiratorially. “Un formidable appétit.”

The maid’s face broke into a look he couldn’t quite place — something, he reckoned, between astonishment and delight. Then the elevator arrived and the kidon was gone.

Sanderson arrived back at his hotel wet and exhausted, having spent a wretchedly inclement afternoon scouring the United Nations complex and the shores of Lake Geneva. From a park on the southern bank, his chin tucked against a heavy drizzle, he had watched the yacht Entrepreneur arrive in all her glory. From the busy sidewalks and pedestrian bridges beyond, sloshing through puddles and getting splashed by passing cars, he had studied a thousand faces. Not one was Edmund Deadmarsh.

He was passing the hotel’s front desk when a clerk called out, “Monsieur Sanderson.”

“Yes?”

“We have received a package for you, an overnight delivery.”

Sanderson walked over and took a small but solid package. “Thank you.”

He went to his room and locked the door before opening the book-sized parcel. Unzipping a packing strip, he opened the flap and pulled out what he’d been waiting for — his service SIG Sauer 9mm. He hadn’t carried it regularly in years, but once each quarter he cleaned and oiled the weapon, and exercised both the action and his marksmanship at the firing range. Sanderson had not taken the time to explore Swiss regulations regarding the importation of weapons, but he was surely violating some kind of law in having it sent here. He was equally confident that the shipment of a single handgun, particularly by overnight express, had a miniscule chance of being detected. Not surprisingly, the SIG had slipped through.

He found the loaded magazine separate, and Sanderson confirmed that the chamber was empty. He seated a magazine with the butt of his palm, racked a round into place, and set the gun on the nightstand feeling much better about things.

Ingrid had done well.

The call came at ten o’clock that night, Evita’s mobile rattling loudly as it vibrated on the nightstand. She silenced it quickly and waited, but her husband’s snoring didn’t even change cadence — he’d passed out nearly an hour ago after what was clearly a hard evening session with “the boys.” When she saw who was calling, Evita eased out of bed and took her phone into the kitchen.

“There you are,” she said in a hushed voice. “It seems like such a long time. I’ve missed you.”

“I’m sorry,” Zacharias said. “I’ve been busy. Very busy. Things are progressing rapidly at work. But I think I can get away for a time. Are you free tonight?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, trying for breathless anticipation. Then for good measure, “I’ve been longing for you, darling.”

They were together less than an hour later in their usual suite.

Evita let the little man lead, as she always did. Indeed, this was how she’d hooked him that first night at the opera house — knowing he had season tickets, and knowing his wife was out of town caring for her ill mother, and standing coquettishly by the refreshment stand at intermission, doe-eyed and cleavaged and flashing glances until he moved to her. They had skipped Wagner’s second act that night to talk in a quiet corner of the mezzanine balcony. Zacharias had taken command of the exchange, dropping occasional hints of his loneliness, but speaking more directly about his high position with Mossad. On that first encounter his oblique stories of intrigue and daring had left Evita’s mouth set in a perfect letter O, a shape that, during the tedious third act of Verdi’s Rigoletto three weeks later, she mirrored under the crisp cotton sheets of the Isrotel Tower Hotel with a very different end in mind.

Now, twenty minutes after falling into each other’s arms, Zacharias lay spent next to her on the bed, their usual wine-laden courtship having been discarded in a frenzy of ripped buttons and tangled elastic.

Afraid he might drift to sleep — he usually did — Evita said, “You seem stressed tonight, my dear. More than usual.”

“Yes, yes,” he said with a heavy sigh. “But tomorrow it will all be over.”

“The assassin you spoke of? He is going to strike?”

He nodded drowsily.

“How so?” she prompted.

Zacharias told her.

When he was done she massaged his hairy shoulders, soft, gentle circles that kept up until he was fast asleep. Evita dressed quickly, but took the time to leave a salacious note on hotel stationery, ending with her lipstick-pressed signature of a full kiss. She was then quickly out the door.

Shortly after, a phone rang in a decrepit hotel on the south side of Saida, Lebanon. After a brief conversation, a relieved Rafi hung up and immediately dialed a second number.

Just after midnight in Geneva, Farzad Behrouz stood on the balcony of his suite pulling a French cigarette to its bitter end. The view was impressive — best if one stood at the outer left edge — but nothing like that of the connecting suite. The balcony to his left gave a sweeping panorama of the city, a million-dollar vista that on this weekend was going completely to waste. He saw the French doors shut tight, drawn curtains backlit by a bulb burning over the desk. Does the man ever do anything but work? Behrouz wondered. He tried to recall if he had ever seen Hamedi when he wasn’t hunched over a computer or shuffling through papers. Behrouz, of course, was often consumed by his own undertakings. Yet Ibrahim Hamedi seemed different. And Behrouz, in a long-honed instinct, did not trust men who were different.

He knew a great deal about the scientist. He knew Hamedi was heterosexual, although he had not dated since returning to Iran. He wore a size ten shoe, spoke fluent German and English, and had a scar on his left hip from a scooter accident when he was a teenager. This was all in the records. Yet there was something else that escaped Behrouz, a hidden force that drove the man. He thought he might know what it was, but had been unable to find proof. Indeed, proof of such a thing might not even exist. How to substantiate the blackness of a man’s soul?

Behrouz shifted his gaze toward the city, the ominous shadows that were the Alps looming over pitched rooftops in the moonlight. He stabbed the butt of his cigarette into a tumbler just emptied of a sharp twelve-year-old Scotch, and was skimming his eyes over the lake when his phone vibrated.

“Yes?”

“She has done it!” came the eager voice of Rafi.

“Where will it happen?”

“Please understand, this is valuable information. We have put ourselves in considerable danger to acquire it, and perhaps it is worth more than our agreed upon—”

“Tell me this instant!” Behrouz hissed. “Otherwise it will be worth your life!”

A pause, then, “The Jews will attack tomorrow night. On a dock at the lake, in front of a large boat. A lone assassin will attempt to shoot from underneath a bridge — I don’t know the name of the bridge, but it is two hundred meters away.”

Behrouz stood stunned for a moment, then spun a half circle and saw it right in front of him — the bridge to his right, the first of the spans that overlaid the mouth of the Rhone. From there to the dock, two hundred meters? Yes, he thought, that must be it.

“What else?” Behrouz said impatiently. “Did she give a time?”

“No. Only that it will happen tomorrow night. If this is not precise enough I could ask her to make another contact. But that, of course, would involve further risk. I am sure she will demand more money.”

“No!” Behrouz insisted. “Your whore will make no further contact. Not unless I direct it. If she seems too eager it will raise suspicion. Her target may be decadent, but he is not a fool.”

Rafi began to say something else, again involving money, but Behrouz only ended the call. He suspected that none of the money he’d paid so far had gone to the spy. No woman gave herself as this one had for money. She was acting on passion — love, hate, revenge. He pocketed his phone and studied the dock and nearby bridge. Leaning on the balcony rail with a perfect perspective, Behrouz lit another cigarette, and after a long draw began to design his countermove.