Assassin's Game

FIFTY

Sanderson had heard the gunfire quite clearly. In the excitement of the moment he’d jumped to his feet, but immediately felt dizzy. He kept standing, though, leaning on a white metal rail to watch the proceedings. He was a quarter mile from the dock where Entrepreneur lay, her elegant superstructure bathed in yellow light and framed by the lively city. That was where his eyes had gone first, until it became apparent that the disturbance was farther off at the base of the distant bridge, half a mile from where he now stood. Back in the day, as a young constable with his life ahead of him, Sanderson might have covered such a gap with an easy three-minute run. But now, as a broken-down veteran and soon-to-be pensioner? A man with no more to look forward to than needles and scalpels? It might as well have been the moon.

The rally of lights grew at the Pont du Mont Blanc, alternating pulses in the hues of authority — blue and amber and red. There were soon a dozen cars and two ambulances, and regular vehicle traffic across the bridge was halted in both directions. Then he saw a motorcade rocket up Quai du Mont Blanc and pull to a stop at the foot of the dock. It could only be Hamedi’s entourage, and their arrival spoke volumes to Sanderson. If Hamedi had not been diverted, it meant any threat against him had been decisively neutralized.

So there was his answer.

Imagining Deadmarsh bullet-ridden and lying in a heap, Sanderson was struck by a bolt of recrimination. Could he have prevented it? Had any policemen been killed or injured? He realized now that it had been a mistake to not call Sjoberg and tell him what he knew. Sanderson had made a lot of good decisions over the years, but his last one had been wrong. And people were dead because of it.

He watched the man who had to be Hamedi get hustled up the pier by a security detail. They all clambered up the gangway and disappeared into Entrepreneur, and minutes later he watched the crew lift mooring lines and heard a low rumble from the engines. The big boat pushed away from the dock with a stately demeanor, and on her aft mast the United Nations flag flew in a bright spotlight, flapping smartly in the evening breeze.

So that’s it then, he thought. It’s all over.

The slight detective fell back to his rock, this time not so much a physical slump as a deflation of spirit. Sanderson was overcome by the idea that he’d screwed up. Desperate to prove his continued relevance, he had let his ego get in the way of the job. His chin wrinkled and tightness racked his chest, and he held his throbbing head in his hands. Sanderson forced his gaze away from the evidence, the grandeur of Entrepreneur getting under way and the tragedy being cleaned up under the bridge, and his eyes settled on the tiny lighthouse to his left. It was surrounded by a breakwater, a U-shaped pile of white boulders meant to protect the outer jetty. In the half-mote between the two, bobbing in the early-evening shadows, Sanderson saw something that seemed curiously out of place.

He saw an untended jet ski.

Oded Veron put down the phone in Mossad’s operations center. He was clearly livid, his face red and veins bulging on the sides of his thick neck. Two strides later he was inches from Nurin’s face. The director held his ground, knowing that calm was his best defense against an old soldier who made his living by intimidation. All the same, he would not be surprised if a blow came.

“You sacrificed my man!” the Direct Action commander screamed. “You sent him in with his hands tied. You told him exactly how to do his job, and when things went to hell you ordered his support team to back away! What the hell is going on?”

Nurin glanced at the room’s third party, Ezra Zacharias, who nodded knowingly.

“Yes, I’ll explain everything, Oded. I owe you that much. But right now we have to know exactly what is happening. Please give me a few more minutes.”

Veron backed off, still seething, and strode to the far side of the room. He sank heavily into a plush chair, soft leather crinkling under his bulk.

With that storm abated, Nurin turned back to the information flowing in from Veron’s team in Geneva. He was relieved that Slaton had aborted the mission. Difficult as the evening was, Nurin realized that he should have done things this way from the beginning. Using Slaton had been a desperate measure.

No, he thought. It was a sign of weakness.

Zacharias spoke up. “Sir, I think there is something I should take care of?”

Nurin nodded. “Yes, Ezra. It’s time for you to wrap things up on your end.”

Without another word, Zacharias left the room.

After stepping aboard Entrepreneur, Hamedi endured a succession of handshakes that seemed to have no end. Strangers claimed they were glad to meet him, which he doubted given his present reputation, yet he smiled and said the same in return, thinking, Soon each of you will have a story to tell.

On clearing the arrival contingent, a man Hamedi recognized as Behrouz’s number two pulled him aside, and after a quiet word ushered him toward a remote corner of the ship’s quarterdeck. They passed heavy tables stocked with hors d’oeuvres, crab quiche, and Provençal tarts, and to one side was a well-stocked bar where a pair of young women in black uniforms were busy pulling corks. Hamedi felt a rumble in the deck that told him the boat was maneuvering. Empty teacups began chattering on the tables. He was guided round a makeshift stage where the members of a tuxedoed string quartet were making final delicate adjustments to their instruments. Hamedi’s escort came to a stop behind the stage backdrop, a thick velvet curtain that put them completely out of sight.

The guard said, “The minister of security has requested a private word with you, Dr. Hamedi.”

“A word about what?”

The man walked to the port rail and pointed across the water.

For the first time Hamedi noticed the sea of lights pulsing around the northern half of the first bridge. He said, “You mean … it has happened again? The Israelis?”

“Yes, only minutes before you arrived. But everything is under control. It appears to have been a lone assassin — he did not survive our counterattack. Colonel Behrouz,” the man continued, using his boss’s old Revolutionary Guards rank, “wishes to give you a full account.”

The guard disappeared, but Hamedi had a sense he was waiting just on the other side of the backdrop. He went to the rail and stared at the disquieting scene. On the previous two occasions he had been forewarned by Behrouz. A third attempt, of course, was always a possibility, but the idea had slipped from Hamedi’s head amid the blurring course of his work and the preparations for today’s speech. Now reality stared back at him, blue and red strobes reflecting from the lake like lasers.

“A third attempt?” he whispered to himself. “Why do they not stop?” The guard had said it was a lone assassin, but this seemed small relief. A shaken Hamedi hoped it was the last.

The boat was moving, and the city seemed to rotate as she slipped further from the dock and began picking up speed. Hamedi closed his eyes tightly. The prayer that came to mind was the first his mother had ever taught him, and he versed the words softly under his breath, mimicking her distinctive musical cadence. Hamedi was not quite finished when he sensed a presence behind him. He abruptly went silent, and turned to see Farzad Behrouz. The look twisted into his pockmarked face was nothing less than exultation.

“Yes,” Behrouz said. “Yes, I knew it all along. Only the proof escaped me — and now I have it.”

Hamedi opened his mouth but no words came. Thoughts he had not harbored in thirty years surged to the forefront. Dangerous, reckless thoughts. It is a curious paradox that those brilliant men and women who design nuclear weapons are not, on balance, inclined to physical violence. Yet as a boy Ibrahim Hamedi had seen more than his share of scraps, and so he knew where his fists were. He had, of course, never killed a man, but there was a first time for everything. A lifelong disciple of physics, Hamedi resisted the urge to work things through mathematically. Mass and momentum and conservation of energy were all good and fine for a classroom, but right now he thought it better to simply lunge for the little cretin’s throat.

Behrouz saw it coming and opened his mouth, presumably to call for help.

Neither man’s intent came to pass because in the next moment, under the vigorous opening notes of Brahms’s String Quartet Number Three, they were both slammed to the deck by a massive explosion.