Path of the Assassin

CHAPTER 12

In the cozy Hemingway Bar of the Paris Ritz, the assassin sat eating one of the hotel’s famous club sandwiches, delighted by the lead story in the paper. The attacks on the mosques in Medina and Jerusalem were officially being called the worst ever against Muslims and two of the worst terrorist attacks in history. Combined, they were projected to exceed the death toll of September 11.

The article also included the full letter sent to The Jerusalem Post by the Hand of God Organization claiming credit.

Arab and Muslim countries around the world were calling for sanctions against Israel, while many Israeli citizens supported the organization and claimed that the Muslim world had brought this suffering upon itself. The Israeli government emphatically denied any knowledge of or support for the Hand of God Organization. They also stated that they had no idea how the terrorists got their hands on the Israeli weaponry used in the Medina attack, how equipment for the second attack was smuggled onto the Temple Mount, or how the terrorists knew restoration workers would not be in that area on the day in question.

The assassin smiled. With enough money, anything was possible.

The article went on to detail the bitter outrage felt throughout the Arab world. Legions of Islamic voices called for the blood of the Jews and a true holy war to decimate the nation of Israel and her American supporters once and for all. Let them come, the terrorist thought. Let them come.

At midnight, the assassin sat in the shadow of the Notre Dame at the Petit Pont Café reading another newspaper and drinking a coffee. A small duffel bag sat beneath the table. Ten minutes later, a blue Renault truck pulled up and double-parked outside. A man in a cap and tan coveralls with the name of his company, Premiere Piscine & Spa, embroidered across the back, entered and ordered a drink at the bar. The assassin watched him. He was right on time.

The man smoked a cigarette and made small talk with the bartender. Ten minutes later, he paid his bill and went downstairs to use the toilet. He had more than enough time to get to his job at the Ritz and they never let him use their toilet. The Ritz demanded that all deliveries, repairs to common areas, and the cleaning of the pool happen in the dead of night, as if by magic, so that guests would never be troubled by the appearance of any stray workmen.

The man stood on the dirty footrests of the Turkish toilet and began to relieve himself. When his steady stream of relief could be heard outside, the assassin emerged from the adjacent cabine, jerked open the pool cleaner’s door, and put two bullets into the back of his head with a silenced French nine-millimeter MAS pistol. The assassin dragged the lifeless body out, careful not to get any blood on the floor, and crammed it into an adjoining storage closet, where it wouldn’t be found until, at the earliest, the next afternoon.

Quickly, the assassin pulled on an identical cap and pair of tan coveralls with Premiere Piscine & Spa embroidered across the back and then threw the duffel into the storage closet and closed the door. With the dangling cigarette and lowered head, no one suspected the figure leaving the café was anyone other than the pool man.

The assassin drove to a narrow, dimly lit street in Paris’s thirteenth arrondissement. A large key was fitted into a rusting lock, which opened a set of aging double doors, and the truck was backed into a filthy rented garage. It took the assassin only a matter of moments to load the required materials and be back on the road.

At the service entrance of the Ritz, the assassin parked the blue Renault and off-loaded a host of pool-cleaning supplies onto a handcart, including three large plastic barrels labeled “Chlorine.”

The security at the hotel was the absolute best in Paris. With the wide array of celebrities and dignitaries the hotel hosted, it had to be. The guard at the service entrance was paid to be vigilant, and he knew all of the regular service providers, including the pool cleaner.

“Where is Jacques tonight?” he asked, trying to get a good look beneath the cap at the pool cleaner’s unusual eyes.

“Migraine,” responded the assassin with a disinterested, blue-collar Parisian accent.

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“Jacques keeps all the important jobs for himself. I get the shitty pools out in the suburbs. But, at least I don’t have to do them in the middle of the night. Do you have a copy of the fax?”

The man looked through the stack of paperwork he had been handed at the beginning of his shift, and sure enough, it included a fax from Premiere Piscine & Spa, which stated that Jacques would not be able to make it tonight and that his coworker would be doing the pool cleaning. Faking it had been easy. The assassin had contacted Premiere weeks before and had asked to be sent a quote for pool cleaning. With that in hand, all that needed to be done was to copy their cover sheet and program a new fax machine with the correct number, so that when it arrived at the Ritz, everything would appear to be in order.

The guard recognized the blue Renault, the fax was in keeping with hotel service policy, the replacement was wearing the company uniform, and the entire pool area — the entire hotel, for that matter — was monitored with video cameras, so he could see no reason not to let the worker pass. He did, though, have one more question.

“Why all the supplies?”

“Bacteria.”

“Bacteria?”

“The last time Jacques was here, he noticed a slight buildup. He didn’t have enough chemicals with him to do a proper shock treatment, so it was on the schedule for tonight. If you don’t want the pool cleaned…”

That was all the guard needed to hear. He buzzed the door and explained where the freight elevator was and how to find the pool. The assassin made sure to use the baseball-style cap as a shield from the surveillance cameras while pushing the handcart deep into the bowels of the hotel.

It was not the first time the assassin had been in the Ritz pool area, nonetheless it was still awe-inspiring. It was the largest pool in Paris and looked like a Roman bath. The walls and ceilings were painted with beautiful frescoes. An elevated, dome-covered bar and dining area looked out over the pool, where guests could swim above the mosaics of mermaids with golden hair playing golden harps. As an added extravagance, the Ritz had installed underwater speakers, which funneled soothing music beneath the water.

Ever mindful of the cameras, the assassin put on a pair of rubber gloves and set to work. First it was necessary to go through the motions of actually cleaning the pool — taking levels, skimming, scrubbing the sides and the bottom, then disabling the filters. Next came the chemical science.

The assassin opened the barrels marked “Chlorine” and, with a large plastic measuring cup, started pouring the powder into different areas around the pool. It was a chlorine hybrid that would continue to allow the water to smell chlorinated, but would create the perfect passive host for what was to come next.

Contained within the final barrel was a deadly toxic chemical named Sadim. The toxin took its name, in reverse, from the famous king whose touch turned everything to gold. In the case of Sadim, everything it touched turned to death. Victims experienced an agonizing and rapid demise. All that was necessary was that the toxin come into contact with bare skin. It was colorless, odorless, and extremely difficult to detect postmortem unless a pathologist or forensic toxicologist knew exactly what he or she was looking for.

After carefully removing the lid, the assassin scooped out the tiny time-release gel caps and began dropping them in the pool, focusing heavily on the deep end. The assassin looked at the wall clock. It was 2:30 A.M. Within three hours the toxin would be dissolved and have circulated throughout the entire pool.

The assassin left the building via the service entrance with the tan baseball cap still pulled down tight. Three blocks away from the Ritz, the truck and coveralls were exchanged for racing leathers and a black Triumph motorcycle. The assassin rode back to the Place Vendôme and waited for the service-entry security guard to finish his shift and make his way home.

When the man left the hotel in his gray, two-door Peugeot, the motorcycle was right behind. Ten minutes later at a stoplight in Pigalle, the assassin pulled alongside the car, withdrew the silenced nine-millimeter MAS, and delivered two perfect shots — one just between the eyes and another clean through the heart. The security guard had been the only one who could have positively identified the assassin, and now he lay slumped over his steering wheel, bathed in the neon lights of the Moulin Rouge. Satisfied with the evening’s work, the assassin gunned the motorcycle and disappeared into the night.