Red Templar

20

The public’s ideal of a professional assassin runs to one part Sean Connery in a toupee, two parts Daniel Craig and perhaps a dash of Matt Damon-handsome, muscular, unemotional, a magnet for women and a lover of all the finer things in life. Most important, one way or another, no matter which side he is on, the professional assassin is a patriot.

John Bone was none of these things. He was fifty-six years old, tended to a middle-aged man’s potbelly, had thinning carroty hair, wore spectacles and liked nothing better than a nice cup of tea and a plate of eggs, chips and beans for brekkie. He loved cats, cried over certain rock-and-roll songs from the sixties, and ran a small, marginally profitable business designing and printing menus for restaurants, which he ran out of a tiny office above a sex shop on Dean Street in London’s Soho district. Academically, he had excelled only in languages, for which he had a great facility, and now spoke six quite fluently.

He had been married for seventeen years to a simple, pleasant woman named Alice, had twin teenage girls, Hailey and Hannah, 3.2 million euros in a bank of the island of Guernsey and another 5.8 million euros in a bank in Liechtenstein.

He regularly took his family to Torremolinos on the Costa del Sol, where he liked to sail Flying Junior-class dinghies. He generally sailed alone, since Alice was afraid of water and the girls had never really been interested. His favorite color was Lincoln green, his favorite song was “She’s Not There” by the Zombies, his favorite actor was George Clooney and his weapon of choice for close work was a pearl-handled straight razor he kept in his shaving kit when he traveled. Distance work-sniping, rockets and the like-he left to other experts. His wife, Alice, never asked about his frequent overseas trips, and Bone never offered any explanation.

John Bone had no military service or training that anyone knew of, and no one knew very much about his background. He first came to the attention of intelligence in 1980 following the assassination of Walter Rodney, a Marxist candidate in the Guyana elections of that same year. Rodney was blown up in his car with a homemade bomb that he was about to plant at a local police station. According to witnesses Rodney was given the bomb by a sergeant in the Guyana Defence Force named Gregory Smith. The Guyana Defence Force later insisted that they had never had a man named Gregory Smith in the GDF at any rank.

The Central Intelligence Agency, which had Walter Rodney under surveillance at the time, could well believe it; there were very few Guyanese citizens with flaming red hair, pale, sunburned skin and freckles who spoke with a pronounced Dublin lilt in their voice. John Bone was twenty-four years old at the time. It was later discovered that Bone had been in the employ of the incumbent president, Forbes Burnham, and the military leaders of the People’s National Congress. It was unclear whether this was Bone’s first assignment, but the CIA and a number of other agencies followed his career with great interest, using him on a number of occasions.

On this particular October evening he was in Amsterdam standing at the Chipsy King on the Damstraat enjoying a large paper cone of garlic fries smothered in mayonnaise. Years ago, when he’d first come here, the thought of chips with mayo was quite revolting, but now he’d rather acquired a taste for it-at least while he was in Amsterdam. Putting mayo on his chips back home would give Alice a heart attack. He smiled, thinking of Alice. Everything a man could want, she was-kept a good house, handled the money, kept his books at the office and raised the twins, who’d been a handful from day one. On top of that she was still a cracker in bed, even after seventeen years. A treasure.

He ate a few more chips, picking up the saltshaker on the outside counter and giving the cone another shake. Stupid, really, considering his age and his blood pressure. Eating more chips, he kept his eyes on the entrance to the Doria hotel across the narrow street. Like a lot of Amsterdam hotels, the lobby was on the first floor, not the ground, the entrance squeezed in between a pizzeria and a Mexican grill named Gaucho’s.

He’d been given the assignment by his usual contact in the Netherlands-Guido Derlagen, a shaved-headed “security consultant” with hands like hammers and a face like an ax. Bone liked him, but he didn’t trust him. When you got right down to it, Bone didn’t trust anyone when it came to business, but so far the Dutchman’s word had been good. Bone wasn’t entirely sure where Guido had sprung from, but he was willing to give odds on its being the AIVD-the General Intelligence and Security Service, like marbles in your mouth if you tried to pronounce it in Dutch.

This time he was fairly sure he wasn’t working for the Netherlands, though. The target was a top executive in the WikiSpout organization, one of six who knew where the main servers were located and how to access them. She was the pro tem leader, named Caroline Halle Muller, a Dane. According to Derlagen she lived on the fourth floor of the Doria hotel, directly across from him.

She finally appeared, looking just like the photograph Derlagen had shown him: a few years on the wrong side of thirty, hair pulled harshly back off her unsmiling face and done in cornrows that were far too young for her, a skirt too short for heavy thighs. She wore Birkenstocks, of course, and held a giant old-fashioned briefcase clutched in her hand. Oversize glasses on a chain bounced on a pendulous chest covered by a blouse, a tweedy cardigan. No romance in this woman’s life and never likely to be any. She had a Cause with a capital C, and that was better than acting like rabbits any day of the week.

She turned in under the small red awning over the narrow doorway and headed for the fourth floor. Bone continued to plow through the cone of chips until he reached the last little crispy bits in the bottom. He crumpled the cone and looked around for a trash bin. There wasn’t one, so he put the greasy bit of paper into his Windbreaker pocket. It was past due for the laundry anyway, and he didn’t like to litter, especially when his DNA was involved. Funny thing, that: he came out of a time when fingerprints were the only real worry, and since his weren’t on any official record, that was that; but now they could track you down from a bit of belly button lint or a fleck of dandruff. It was sad, really. Science and accountancy seemed to have taken over the world-it was all bits and bytes and double helixes. He sighed and headed across the street, hanging back to let a flock of bicyclists go by.

He went up the stairs. There was a cramped little registration desk on the first floor, but there was no one on duty, which was a blessing. He continued all the way up to the fourth floor, stopping at the top to catch his breath. He could feel his heart pounding away in his chest, and he calmed himself by thinking about the fact that’d he never been a smoker, so that was one thing in his favor, at least. He reached into the right-hand pocket of his Windbreaker and took out a single latex glove. He slipped the glove onto his right hand, then reached back into the pocket for his razor, which he opened and locked.

Breathing back to normal, he walked down the narrow, dimly lit corridor to the door of her room: 422. He knocked quietly. There was no response, so he knocked again.

“Who is it?” Her voice was muffled but he could hear the irritation in it.

He put on his best Dublin drawl. “John Drennan, Ms. Muller. The Irish Independent?” Bone was using the name of one of the paper’s political writers. “Your office said I could find you here.”

The door opened and there she was. “They shouldn’t have done. .”

He moved the blade in his right hand in a firm, continuous motion that slid easily through skin, flesh, arteries, veins, layers of cartilage, ligaments, muscles and mucous membranes that made up the trachea, all the way through to the muscles and glands at the back of the neck, finally scraping the C4 vertebra of the spine. The Muller woman’s instinct was to bring her hand up to the wound, but she only succeeded in pushing her fingers into the bloody ruin of her neck, tipping her almost severed head back at an absurd angle so that her last conscious vision was probably the nubby plaster of her hotel room ceiling. Bone pushed her back into the room with his gloved hand. She sank to the floor and toppled backward. He stepped into the room, careful to avoid the spreading lake of blood around the dead woman’s head. The room was small and utilitarian. A bed, a stand-alone wardrobe, an upholstered chair, a wooden chair and a plain desk under the window. The briefcase was on the desk. Bone opened it and saw that the Dell laptop was still inside. He closed the briefcase, picked it up and walked out of the room. Three minutes later he was back on the Damstraat; fifteen minutes later he was back at his own hotel. He phoned Derlagen.

“It’s done; I have it.”

“Good,” said the Dutchman. “I’ll meet you in the usual place.” The usual place was the waiting room of the Centraal Station. “I have another job if you want it.”

“I was hoping to get home for the weekend. The girls have a choir concert on Sunday.”

“Up to you. Priority fee if you want it.”

“Where?”

“How’s your Russian?”

“Ochen’ horosho,” answered Bone in a Moscow accent. Pretty good. “Any competition?”

“The locals. The Catholics and those mad Czechs they use from time to time.”

“The Peseks? That crazy bitch and her knitting needle?”

“The same.”

“Bloody hell,” muttered Bone. He thought for a moment. “Triple fee and I’ll do it.”

“I’ll see what I can arrange,” answered the Dutchman.

Pierre Ducos, advocate in the little hilltop town of Domme, sat at his table in his favorite restaurant, the Cabanoix et Chataignes on Rue Geoffroy de Vivans, and enjoyed the hearty lamb stew that was the restaurant’s specialty, and for good reason. He would follow it with a sorbet and a coffee and then return to the office. Madame Beauregard the widow would be seeing him that afternoon on a matter that she deemed to be of extreme urgency, but probably had something to do with her fears that her grandson, a student in Paris, was actually a homosexual, and was there anything within the law that Advocat Ducos could do to stop it?

He finished the last of the stew and sat back in his chair, waiting for Jeanette, the only server in the old, low-ceilinged place. She was also the owner’s daughter and was having an affair with the young chef. Ducos knew this because Jeanette, the young chef and the owner were all his clients. He smiled; sometimes it was difficult to remain objective in a small town like this.

Jeanette appeared. “I’ll bring out your sorbet in a moment, m’sieul’avocat.”

“No hurry,” answered Ducos. “I think I’ll step outside for a cigarette. I must make a call anyway.”

“A votre service, m’sieu l’avocat.”

Ducos smiled, stood up and made his way across the dimly lit and crowded room. Cabanoix et Chataignes was everything he liked about Domme-it was strong, with its dark oak rafters, thick plaster walls and slate floors as old as time. It was always crowded with people he knew, and more than anything else it was predictably excellent. The menu changed with the seasons and the whims of the chef, but whatever he chose from the menu he knew without doubt that it would be marvelous. If there was one thing Pierre Louis Rene Marie Joseph Ducos appreciated-nay, demanded-it was consistency. There was nothing he liked less than a thing out of place, time out of joint or an event unforeseen, and that was what he was faced with now.

He lit a cigarette and took out his cell phone. He tapped out a long series of numbers and waited. It answered after a number of rings.

“Sir James? C’estDucos. . Quite well, thank you. We have a situation that must be resolved. It has to do with number five. . Yes, Sir James, the Rose. . Yes, Holliday. . Russia, I’m afraid. . I assume they are aware of this. . All right. I’ll inform Barsukov tomorrow. His people will deal with it, I assure you. . Of course I’m aware Barsukov is in prison. What does that have to do with anything? The prisons in Russia are run by the Mafia, Sir James. . Of course. Every step of the way, Sir James. There is far too much at stake to let it go on any longer. . And a good afternoon to you, Sir James.”

Ducos closed the phone, pocketed it and stood there for a few moments enjoying the last of his cigarette, thinking about the Greek tragedian Aeschylus and his favorite quotation from the man: “God is not averse to deceit in a holy cause.” Smiling, Pierre Ducos stubbed out the remains of his cigarette on the cobbles and went back into the restaurant for his well-deserved sorbet and coffee.