The Assassin

CHAPTER TWELVE

After the plane landed at a London airport and the engines were secured, Grafton motioned me to remain in my seat. He went forward, said something to the pilot, then came back and sat down across the aisle from me as Speedo and the crew filed off the plane. The lights and air-conditioning, powered by an auxiliary power unit in the tail of the plane, stayed on.

When we were alone in the airplane, he said, “The key is Marisa Petrou. She knows this bastard better than anyone else alive, and I’ve got a hunch she knows what he’s planning.”

“What is that?” I asked, to prompt him.

“Oh, he wants to kill Winchester and the others, me, you … and the president. He wants to assassinate the president.”

I gaped.

“Qasim wanted to kill him last year in Paris,” Grafton explained, “and I doubt if he’s given up on that dream. Qasim believes that decapitating the head villain, the Devil incarnate to their way of thinking, would shake Western civilization, maybe crack the foundations, as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand did in 1914. Baldly, Qasim wants to trigger a world war. He thinks Islam will rule triumphantly when it’s all over, in a century or two. Death to all the infidels. The victory will be Allah’s.”

His eyes swiveled to me again. “We’re going to kill him first,” he said, not so much to me as to himself. He was taking a vow. Then he repeated it, and I could feel the cold steel in his voice: “We’re going to kill him first.”

The moment passed. Staring off into space, he took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then looked at me again.

“Tomorrow morning I have a job for you. Then, tomorrow afternoon I want you to go back to France, find Marisa and stick to her like glue.”

This was the second time he had given me this order. Of course, he was the one who told me to get out of Germany. “She won’t like it,” I pointed out.

“Figure something out.”

“Okay,” I said, as if hanging out with unwilling females were one of my many skills.

“This time, if you must shoot someone, bring the women with you.”

“What about that Russian back there?”

“It’s impossible. He refuses to use good sense. He commutes back and forth to London, thinks three or four bodyguards will keep him safe.”

“It would take fifty men to properly guard him.”

“I have precisely two. I have them watching the estate, looking for anyone sneaking in. That’s the best I can do.”

“Who are they?”

“You don’t know them.”

“I know most of the people in the Company’s Europe operations,” I said brightly.

“You don’t know them,” Grafton repeated.

“There’s still a whole hell of a lot I don’t know,” I said reasonably, trying to be a good soldier. Or sailor. That was the only way anyone on this earth was ever going to get anything out of him.

“What else do you want to know?”

“Maybe you ought to tell me if Isolde’s chauffeur was a bad guy or an innocent bystander whom I just happened to murder.”

He smiled a little bit and said softly, “That I don’t know, Tommy. You did the best you could. We’ll all have to live with it that way.”

I felt like a fool and must have reddened. My face seemed hot. “Sorry,” I said.

“Keep swinging at the strikes,” he muttered.

He got out of his seat and led the way up the aisle toward the door.

It was a gray, rainy dawn — the English are good at these and do them often — when I rolled out the next morning. My roommate, the up-and-coming GM junior executive, was still in his room, presumably asleep. I made coffee and stood at my window looking at the world, which from this perspective consisted of four brick buildings identical to the one I was in.

I decided they should find the architect responsible for this masonry crime and cut off parts. Still, the neighborhood was nicer than most of Manhattan, the areas that people live in, and the streets had less garbage piled up. Cities, I decided, were an acquired taste.

I was trying to keep my mind off terrorists and murders and Jake Grafton. Even so … A glance at my watch got me going.

A half hour later I hailed a taxi on the main street a block from my building. The hackie spoke English, the taxi was clean, and he knew how to get to the address I gave him.

If prostitution is the oldest profession, then espionage is the second oldest. Man’s desire to know other folks’ secrets is certainly as old as the desire for sex. And every spy needs a handler, so he — or she — came along at the same time as the spy.

The case officer, or handler, is the spy’s contact with his world — the world he grew up in or the world he chooses to serve, for whatever reason — when he is in enemy country. In addition to putting the spy in place, supplying him with the tools of the trade and telling him what information to get, the case officer must be the spy’s emotional support, his anchor, his source of strength and resolve. Some spies need more moral and emotional support than others, but all of them need some of it. Providing it is the case officer’s most important function; without that support, the spy won’t be very effective or stay in place very long.

As Eide Masmoudi’s and Radwan Ali’s case officer, Jake Grafton met with both men periodically, as seldom as he could, yet as often as he thought they needed him, and whenever either of them asked for a meet. Communications went through the courier, Kerry Pocock, who was a regular visitor to Harrod’s gourmet food department.

One might think in this day and age cell phones would be the communication method of choice, but they weren’t. People would see the agent talking on the cell phone, which recorded every number called or received. Sooner or later a suspicious person could examine the phone. However, both men did have cell phones, and both had memorized emergency numbers to call, just in case. But once they called one of those numbers, they had to dispose of that phone immediately.

Spy-handler meets were dangerous. London, and all other European capitals, were buzzing with Muslims, most of whom were not religious extremists or terrorists in any sense of the word. Yet since the villains looked like everyone else, one had to make sure the meet was as private as possible. In addition, it had to fit into the spy’s day and lifestyle in a way that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

Jake Grafton and Eide Masmoudi were meeting today in one of the men’s rooms at Harrod’s. MI-5 supplied a van and tradesman’s coveralls, which I donned. I parked the van in the back of Harrod’s at the loading dock, off-loaded my service cart with mops and pails and signs, and went inside.

I started in the men’s rooms on the first floor and worked my way up in the building, keeping an eye on the time.

I was in a third floor men’s scrubbing out a toilet when Jake Grafton came in. I went out into the hallway, made sure my out of service signs were prominently placed and got busy scrubbing the door. Two minutes later Eide came down the hallway. He was a little guy, maybe 130 pounds, with dark skin and big eyes and black hair. Although he was wearing trousers and you couldn’t see them, I knew he had a set of really big balls. Our eyes met, I nodded once, and he went into the men’s room.

As the minutes passed, I worked on that door, then began mopping the hallway. Spilled some water to give me something to work on.

People came to the end of the hallway and looked at me and the out of service signs and went away. I usually glanced at them, then pretended to pay no attention. The customers were wearing coats, usually, and Harrod’s employees were not.

I got the floor clean and stopped to inspect it. By golly, here was a career possibility for me if the spook business ever went south. Then I dumped more water on the floor and set about mopping it again.

Jake Grafton listened to everything Eide had to say before he produced a computer-generated picture of what Abu Qasim might look like. “This man — have you seen him?”

Eide took his time studying the picture, a three-by-five on photo paper. “Perhaps,” he said. “A man in the mosque, last week. Then again …”

Grafton pocketed the photo and produced a small bottle with a screw cap. It held about an ounce of liquid. He held it so Eide could see it. “Some evening, when the sheikh is dining in the mosque, I want you to pour this in whatever he is drinking.”

“He drinks only water and tea.”

“Whatever.”

“What is it?”

Jake Grafton took a moment before he answered. “It’s a chemical that will combine with another chemical that is already in his body and cause his heart to stop. The two chemicals combine into what the chemists call a binary poison.”

Eide was dubious. He didn’t reach for the bottle. “Is this stuff poisonous?”

“Not unless you have that other chemical in your system, and you do not. Nor does anyone else who could be reasonably expected to eat at the mosque. Al-Taji does. The chemical in this bottle will kill him.”

“Where did he get the first chemical?”

“During his trial he drank water, along with the other people at the defense table. The first half of the binary cocktail was in the water and was absorbed into the fat cells in his body. It is still there, and will be for some weeks before it becomes inert or is flushed from his system.” And this second chemical will combine with the first?”

“Yes. By itself, it’s harmless. Also tasteless. You could drink all of it and it wouldn’t harm you. This amount is enough to treat about ten gallons of liquid. It will only prove fatal to someone who has that first chemical in his body. Together they are a binary poison.”

“If an autopsy is performed, will this poison be found?”

“Very doubtful. Conceivably it could be, but only if the toxicologist knew precisely what he was looking for.”

“You are asking me to kill Sheikh al-Taji.” That wasn’t a question but a statement.

“Yes.”

Eide Masmoudi searched Jake Grafton’s face. He knew al-Taji was a terrorist, a killer who plotted murder of the innocent — he had been writing the reports for Grafton. Masmoudi believed men like the sheikh perverted Islam, insulting the Prophet and everyone who believed. Even worse, they betrayed Allah.

“To pervert the holiest of holies is a great crime,” he whispered. Still he did not reach for the bottle. He stood there staring at it.

“If you use this,” Jake Grafton said, “you and Radwan will have to leave the mosque.”

“That wasn’t the original plan.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Jake admitted, “but I’m the case officer, and I can change the plan. I’m changing it. These people are beyond paranoid— they’re criminal psychopaths. They’d kill a dozen innocent people hoping that one of them is guilty. Hell, they’d kill a hundred, just for the publicity. I don’t want you and Radwan to take a risk like that. If you agree to use the poison, you two are out of there. As fast as your feet can take you.”

Eide Masmoudi was a very brave man. He took his time framing his next question. “If this poison, this binary chemical, works as you say it will, al-Taji will merely have a fatal heart attack. Is that correct?”

Grafton replied, “The doctors tell me his heart will probably stop while he is asleep.”

“He isn’t the only villain in that mosque. The place is full of throat-slitters and holy murderers. They pervert Islam. They make it into something evil, a crime against man and Allah.” He searched for more words, then said, “They’d kill the queen of England if they had half a chance. Anybody. They’d murder anybody who’d get them in the newspapers.”

Jake Grafton nodded. “And they’ll kill you if you give the slightest hint — the tiniest hint — that you are scared or worried or have something to hide. They’ll kill you believing that if you’re innocent you’ll wind up in Paradise, so your murder really isn’t a sin. Isn’t that right?”

Eide acknowledged that Jake Grafton had stated the case correctly.

“So if you take the bottle,” the admiral continued, “you and Radwan are leaving.”

Eide eyed the admiral. “You’re the case officer. I take the risks.”

“Don’t fuck with me, kid. I make the rules and give the orders. You’ll bleed same as everybody. We’ll use you later on something else. We’re not retiring you — you’ll get your chance to make a difference. There’re thousands of these sons of bitches out there running around loose, and we need all the help we can get. Now tell me, yes or no?”

Eide took his time. Finally he took the bottle from Grafton’s hand and pocketed it. “For my mother,” he said.

Jake Grafton nodded.

Eide Masmoudi walked out of the men’s room.

For his mother, Jake thought, who was murdered in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, by suicidal fanatics. A man couldn’t have a better reason to fight.

Rolf Gnadinger was still at his office at the bank in Zurich when he received a telephone call from Oleg Tchernychenko. Gnadinger had financed numerous oil field deals for Tchernychenko and Huntington Winchester in the last ten years. They were willing to pay top rates— and did — in return for loans granted with a telephone call and closed within hours. Speed was the name of their game, and Gnadinger had made millions for the bank because he was willing to play. He was willing because he trusted both men, who were solid as rocks.

After the telephone encrypters were turned on and had timed in, Oleg said, “I had a visit yesterday from Jake Grafton. He told me this Abu Qasim villain is real and evil as a heart attack. He believes Qasim killed Alexander Surkov and Wolfgang Zetsche and may have murdered Isolde Petrou’s son, Jean.”

“Have you talked to Hunt?” Rolf asked. Yes. He is plainly worried, but put a good face on it. These deaths are evidence, he said, that our war against the terrorists is hurting them. ‘Money well spent,’ was his phrase.”

“I have taken precautions,” Rolf assured Oleg. That was a lie, one that came readily to his lips. He was being more watchful than he used to be, but that was the extent of it. The truth was that he didn’t want to think of someone hunting him. To kill him. He refused to even look at that vision from the ancient, primeval past. After all, he told himself, I am just another face in the crowd.

“So have I,” Tchernychenko responded. “I’m too good a client for you to lose. And truth be told, I don’t want to go to the trouble of breaking in another banker.”

They said their good-byes and hung up. Gnadinger spent a sober moment staring at the telephone. Then his gaze wandered to the portraits on the wall. The chief operating officer of the bank rated a big corner office, with lots of wall space, which he had filled with portraits of his predecessors.

He studied them, one by one. He had joined the bank in the mid-1960s, about the time the furor over the money the Holocaust Jews deposited in Swiss banks began to bubble. His predecessors had been officers and employees of this bank, or other Swiss banks, when those deposits came in during the late 1930s and early 1940s. They met the German Jews, shook their hands, accepted their money. Then the Nazis murdered them. The banks kept the money.

That is, they kept the money until the survivors and relatives of the Jews got organized and raised a huge stink. Even then, the banks held on to the bulk of the funds by demanding records that the officers knew didn’t exist.

The portraits were of the men who refused to return the money. Gnadinger glanced at every face. When he was young, Gnadinger wondered what those men thought about themselves in the wee hours of the night when they were alone with their consciences… and with God, if indeed He had survived the Holocaust. Gnadinger had watched for decades as they wrestled with their consciences, or refused to do so, assuring any who asked that they were absolutely certain they were doing the right thing, the right thing for their banks, the right thing for Switzerland. They were right, right, right! Except for the stinky little fact that they weren’t.

Hitler murdered the Jews, seven million of them, whole families, whole clans, and the Swiss banks profited from that stupendous crime.

The Islamic terrorists were out to do it again, those new Nazis, who prayed to Mecca five times a day and murdered infidels when they weren’t on their knees with their foreheads on the carpet.

Rolf Gnadinger had no intention of winding up like one of those men in the portraits.

He finished the paperwork on his desk, arranged it neatly in piles and in-baskets and files just so, the way the secretaries knew he would arrange it. He had climbed the banking ladder by being logical and detail-oriented, and he was now. Even his anxiety couldn’t force him from the habits of a lifetime. He finished his workday around six thirty in the evening by signing some late-afternoon correspondence, then capped the pen, put it in its place in his drawer, locked the drawers of his desk and rose from his chair.

It had snowed early this morning, but this afternoon had been unseasonably warm, with sunshine and slush in the streets and melting icicles. He stood at the window for a moment looking at nature’s handiwork, which hadn’t intruded into the quiet offices and corridors of the executive suite.

He donned his coat and arranged his hat just so, then opened the door and left his office. He nodded at his secretary as he glanced at his watch. He was leaving right on the dot, at his usual departure time, not a minute too early nor a minute too late. Timing is everything in life, a wise man once said.

Gnadinger rode the elevator down from the executive suite to the main floor of the bank, where he found the tellers finishing their accounting and filling out their day sheets. The guard at the door touched his cap as Gnadinger approached, then turned to unlock the door.

Well, Oleg was right: He needed a bodyguard. Tomorrow he would call the security service that had the bank contract and ask for a man with a gun. If the man was competent, no one would realize he was an armed bodyguard. The banker reminded himself to demand a man who looked and dressed as if he belonged in Gnadinger’s social circle. No tattooed or pierced persons, please.

The uniformed guard opened the door for Rolf; he stepped outside into the evening gloom. The temperature was still well above freezing. The sidewalks were shoveled, the icicles on the building were dripping copiously, and slush filled the gutters.

He looked around nervously. Away from the safety of the office, outside in raw nature, with water and wind and slush and people moving randomly, Oleg’s warning about assassins seemed more real, more possible.’

He set off along the sidewalk toward the parking garage that held his car as he glanced warily at pedestrians and passing cars.

Really, in the twenty-first century, in safe, civilized Switzerland, in this ancient old city by the lake, the nightmare of killers and murderers and religious fanatics seemed like something from one of those trailers for a horror movie that he would never watch. A lot of people did watch the horror films, of course, to be titillated, because even they could not accept at a gut level the fact that the evil depicted on the screen might be a part of the world in which they lived.

The banker paused at the door to the garage. Took a deep breath and opened it. The stairwell was empty, the overhead light burning brightly. He climbed the stairs, his leather shoes making grinding noises with every step, noises that reverberated inside that concrete stairwell.

His car was on the third level, right where he always parked. In fact, the parking place had a number and was reserved for him: The bank rented it by the year.

No one was in sight amid the cars when he came out of the stairwell. About half the spaces were empty. He forced himself to walk calmly toward his car. He already had the keys in his hand, his thumb on the button of the fob that would open the locks.

His eyes moved restlessly, looking for a lurking figure, anything out of the ordinary. Of course he saw nothing.

Fear is a corrosive emotion, and Gnadinger knew that. In time he would become more and more jumpy, more and more nervous, as the acid of fear worked on his nerves. He knew that, too.

Approaching the car Gnadinger pushed the button on the fob. He heard the click, audible and distinctive in that concrete mausoleum, as the door locks released.

Then he realized that someone might have put a bomb in his car. He stopped, stood frozen, waiting, wondering what he should do. He realized that he was holding his breath, waiting for the bomb to explode.

It didn’t, of course. He stood there in that ill-lit, dingy garage until he felt foolish; then he opened the door to the car, the interior lights illuminated just as they should, and he climbed in. Closed the doors and locked them and put on his seat belt. Inserted the key into the ignition.

The bomb might be wired to explode when he turned the ignition!

Several seconds passed before a wave of disgust washed over him and he turned the key. The engine caught immediately and the vehicle’s headlights came on automatically. So did the CD player, from which emanated the lively tones of classic jazz, which he had listened to on the way to work this morning.

As he put the transmission into drive and inched out of his space, Rolf Gnadinger chastised himself for being a fool. Oleg had spooked him, and his imagination had done the rest.

Yet the killer or killers might come one of these days. Someone had murdered Tchernychenko’s aide, and Wolfgang Zetsche, and Isolde Petrou’s son. Someone from the Kremlin? Perhaps the Kremlin had ordered Surkov’s murder — he had immediately assumed that when he first heard the news, but why would the Kremlin want Zetsche dead? Or young Petrou, a French diplomat?

Terrorists, he thought. Yes, indeed. Fanatics. Throat-slitters. Suicidal bombers and mass murderers.

He needed a professional bodyguard, he told himself again. Someone trained to be watchful for all these threats. The bodyguard could worry about all this stuff and Gnadinger wouldn’t have to.

The traffic was moderate at this hour and threw up sheets of spray that the wipers had difficulty with. Gnadinger kept busy punching the windshield wash system every few moments.

His neighborhood of renovated older homes was also quiet. Only a few cars passing on the streets, no pedestrians. His house was empty tonight. His wife was in Rome on a shopping expedition with their daughter, who was grown with children of her own. They had planned this trip for months.

And today was the maid’s day off. The maid was from somewhere in North Africa — he didn’t know where; the employment agency had sent her, and his wife had dealt with them. What the maid did on her day off, where she went or whom she talked to, he had no idea.

He pushed the button to raise the door on the two car-garage, the new one that he had had built after he and his wife bought the house ten years ago. The old one was a ramshackle wooden affair, ready to fall down, and he had gotten tired of looking at it. The new one had the same facade and design as the old house, so it looked as if it had been there forever.

Much better, he thought as he walked out of the garage and lowered the door with another button on his key fob.

Fifteen paces took him to his front door. As he walked he eyed the icicles hanging dangerously from the eaves. He needed to have the maintenance people remove those tomorrow.

As he looked for the door key on his ring, he heard a noise behind him, very slight. Startled, he turned immediately.

A man coming at him, with something in his hand! Before Gnadinger could react, he jabbed the thing downward into Rolf Gnadinger’s chest.

Stunned and amazed, Gnadinger glanced down and saw the butt end of an icicle protruding from his chest. He grasped it, tugged futilely… and looked into the face of the man who had stabbed him. The man smiled.

Rolf Gnadinger could no longer stand. He felt himself sinking toward the ground, too weak to remain upright. His vision became a tunnel. Through that long, long tunnel he saw the man walking away. Then the tunnel closed completely and the darkness became total.

Harry Longworth and Gat Brown were dirty, cold and bored. They had been sleeping in a hole, eating MREs and pooping in another hole for ten days now, and they were thoroughly sick of it. The cold, the wind that never stopped and the blowing dust didn’t help.

“One more day of this,” Harry Longworth said. “Then tomorrow we call for an extraction and hike to the pickup point.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Brown retorted. “Let’s call this morning and start hiking tonight. Get picked up tomorrow afternoon and by tomorrow night we’ll be in a bath, eating real food and drinking real beer. A tub full of hot water, real soap, aaah.”

“Pussy.”

“If I had some I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

“If nothing happens by this time tomorrow, we call then.”

The men were hidden on the side of a canyon that wound its way into the mountains. The crest of a rocky ridge was a thousand feet behind them. To their left the Hindu Kush rose in peaks covered with snow.

They listened to the weather on their shortwave radio every day. If snow was forecast, they would have to leave. They had had a window of dry air, though, cold as the devil, with not a cloud in the sky or a flake of snow. They huddled in their hole, watching, shivering, enduring, cursing, telling each other the same old lies.

Below them, against the far wall of the canyon, sat a cluster of six houses and barns, ramshackle affairs made of stones and wood and cinder block. Smoke rose from several chimneys. When the wind was just right, they could smell the smoke and the aroma of cooking meat. Of course, they couldn’t risk a fire. Although it was wide, the canyon wasn’t particularly deep. On its floor were flats with grass for goats and small gardens.

They were there to watch that village complex. So far, for ten days, nothing of interest had happened.

Beside them on a bipod was the.50-caliber sniper rifle, complete with scope. The darn thing weighed thirty-one pounds and shot 1.71 ounce slugs a half inch in diameter and two and a half inches long.

Brown lay on his back as Longworth kept watch. Occasionally Longworth glanced through a spotting scope at the village, but mostly he just watched. They were hidden in an acre of leafless brush, and the view outward was restricted. Ten days ago they had ensured they had a good viewing hole through some judicious pruning of branches. Not much, just enough.

They had counted four men in the village and given each a nickname. There was also one woman and two children. The man they wanted wasn’t there.

“I don’t think the bastard will ever come,” Brown said. “More bum information, and we do the big camp-out. I don’t care what anyone says, at least we can out-camp these bastards.”

“Right.”

“I don’t know how these people stand living in this wasteland. No wonder they’re hot to die and get to Paradise.”

“Next life’s gotta be better than this one.”

“You Jesus freaks keep saying that, and without a shred of evidence,” Gat Brown said, delighted that Longworth had given him this opening. To keep from dying of boredom, they had been debating religion for days. Longworth was a born-again Christian, and Brown was an atheist, or so he said. He wasn’t really, but he wanted to keep the conversation alive, and one way was to never agree with Longworth.

There was a man on the ridge behind them. He had climbed up there at dawn and was hiking along the ridge, looking. He had a rifle of some kind. With his back to the village, Brown tracked his progress with binoculars. “They’re expecting something to happen,” he muttered.

“What?” muttered Longworth.

“Why don’t you admit it?” Brown asked, his eyes glued to the binoculars. “All religion is bunk, theirs and yours and everyone else’s. The whole religious house of cards is built on the premise that man is a special animal, and he isn’t. We’re cousins of the monkey, and he doesn’t fret about getting to heaven or worry about going to hell.”

“You’re an idiot,” Harry Longworth said mildly and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep.

An hour later Longworth said, “Well, look at this. Truck coming.”

Gat Brown checked the sentry on the side of the ridge one more time, got him located on the skyline, then crawled to his hole in the brush for a look. He swung up his binoculars. The vehicle was coming up the canyon, trailing a plume of dust. An old flatbed truck of some kind.

“This might be it,” Harry said.

“That guy up behind us. When we shoot, think you can take him? He’s about three hundred yards away.”

Longworth crawled to a place where he could see the ridgeline. He located the sentry. “Okay,” he said, and checked his M40A3 bolt-action rifle in 7.62 mm NATO, which was lying on a blanket. Then he returned to the spotting scope.

Brown settled himself behind the big Fifty and ensured the safety was on. He swung the scope crosshairs onto the huts, checked that both legs of the bipod were level and the horizontal line in the scope was also level. Beside him was the case that held the.50-caliber Browning machine-gun cartridges. He opened it, pulled four more cartridges out so they lay loose upon the padding.

After a little fidgeting, he settled down to watch the scene through the scope, which had a twenty-six-power magnification.

The range to the huts was 1,639 yards. They had used a laser range finder to establish that, and had lased every path and promontory below them, just in case the people in the huts discovered them and decided to come up here for a look-see. This would be a long shot, but Gat Brown had made shots at this distance before. His longest was almost 1,700 yards.

Shots at these ranges, even with the big Fifty, were difficult. The scope had to have a lot of magnification so that he could actually see what he was aiming at, yet the high magnification made it difficult— actually almost impossible — to hold the crosshairs steady. His breathing, the beating of his heart, the uneven heating of the air — everything made those crosshairs dance nervously even though the thirty-one-pound rifle was on a bipod. Hitting a man-sized target at that range was a job for an expert, which Gat Brown was.

“Wind from your left, maybe eight knots,” Longworth said. He had the binoculars on the truck again. “Three guys in the cab, I think. Hard to say.”

Brown adjusted the rifle to account for the estimated wind. He liked to hold a centered crosshair on his target, but at this distance, there were no guarantees. The wind was just an estimate, and it wouldn’t be uniform over the 4,900 feet the bullet had to travel. He had adjusted the horizontal crosshairs for the trajectory days ago.

“Guy with binoculars beside Hut Two,” Brown murmured. “He’s glassing this slope.”

The village men glassed the slopes every day, and twice in the last ten days they had hiked along the valley floor and ridges with dogs, just looking. Brown and Longworth were well hidden, and the dogs hadn’t gotten a sniff.

“This may be it,” Harry said again, trying to keep the tension out of his voice.

Brown instinctively pulled the rifle tighter into his shoulder, settled himself, forced himself to breathe easily and regularly. He was steady as a rock when the truck rolled to a stop near the huts.

Two men who had been inside came out to greet the new arrivals. Longworth examined each of them carefully through the spotting scope, which had a thirty-six-power magnification. He didn’t touch the scope, which sat on a tripod — merely held his eye as close as possible and looked.

The driver of the truck … his back was to them, and he walked around the front of the truck, disappearing from view. The man getting out on the passenger side… Brown got a profile. The other man, who had been riding in the middle of the bench seat, also got out and for a moment stood behind the other passenger. Then he stepped away and Brown got his best look at the first man to exit.

“It’s him,” he said softly and flicked off the safety. “The guy in the brown coat.”

“That’s our man,” Longworth agreed, his eyes glued to the spotting scope. “Any time you’re ready.”

Brown took a deep breath, exhaled, steadied the rifle on that brown coat. The bearded man wearing it was talking to a man from the hut. This would be a quartering shot into his left rear side.

With the reticle in the scope twitchy, yet more or less centered on the target as steady as a trained rifleman could hold it, Brown began squeezing the trigger, which was adjusted for an eighteen-ounce pull. So gently and steadily did he caress it that the shock of the report and recoil took him by surprise. Automatically he worked the bolt, ejecting the empty cartridge as the deep, booming echo of the report rolled back and forth across the valley.

“You got him,” Longworth said, his voice taut. He abandoned the spotting scope and swiftly crawled to his bolt-action. He looked for the sentry on the ridge.

The man wasn’t there.

Terrific!

Gat Brown shoved a fresh round into the chamber and closed the bolt, then settled back into shooting position and again looked through his rifle scope. Two men were kneeling by the man who was down. He steadied the crosshairs on the nearest man and squeezed the trigger again. In front of him the brush quivered from the muzzle blast.

At the second report the ridge sentry’s head popped out from behind a boulder. He looked around, still uncertain of the sniper’s location. Longworth got his rifle on him, settled into a braced position on one knee and brought the crosshairs to rest. Then he squeezed one off. The sentry went down.

“A hit,” he told himself. He didn’t see the bullet strike, but the shot felt good. A good shooter has an instinct about these things. He crawled back to the spotting scope.

When Brown again looked through the scope, he saw two men sprawled beside the flatbed.

“Put a couple in that truck — see if you can disable it — and let’s saddle up,” Harry Longworth said.

The truck was a much easier target than a man. Where do you suppose the designers put the gas tank?

Brown steadied the big Fifty, held the crosshair where he thought the tank should be, and squeezed the trigger ever so gently.

The rifle spoke again, the brush shook, and again the booming echo rolled around the valley.

“You hit it,” Longworth said tightly. “One more.”

Brown fired again, trying to angle a bullet through the truck to hit the engine block.

“That’s shooting!” Longworth exulted. “Now let’s get outta here while we still can.”

“Amen to that,” said Gat Brown. They taped a delayed-fuse bomb containing a half pound of plastique to the rifle. Then they tossed the spotting scope and ammo beside it, triggered the chemical fuse, grabbed their personal weapons and the rucksacks containing the radios and water and boogied. They left the uneaten MREs and the sleeping bags for the holy warriors.

On their way across the ridge they passed the dead sentry. He had taken a bullet in the left chest.

Two hours of running and trotting later, they were on the other side of the ridge and into the valley. Another hour of hard trotting took them to the mouth of a small canyon they had passed through on their way to the village. They went up the canyon almost a mile, then separated, one man taking one side of the defile, one the other. They came back down the canyon to a place about five hundred yards or so from the entrance, a place where the canyon widened out and there was little cover. The likelihood of an ambush was much greater at the mouth of the canyon; when it didn’t happen there, the pursuers would be less wary when they reached this spot, which at first glance didn’t seem to offer much in the way of cover. There wasn’t — for them.

Harry Longworth fired up the satellite telephone and called for the extraction. He used code words. When he got an acknowledgment he turned the telephone off again to save the battery and stowed it in his backpack.

He arranged his M40A3 and ammo so they were handy. In his backpack were two grenades; he placed them beside the ammo. Making himself comfortable, he removed an energy bar from a jacket pocket, tore off the wrapper and munched on it between swigs of water as he scanned the rocks and ridges and stunted vegetation huddled down for the winter.

The village men would probably be along after a while, following the dogs. If they came, when they came, Harry Longworth and Gat Brown would kill them. The dogs, too.

Per Diem was driving, and I was in the right seat. We were following Marisa Petrou’s limo. Actually the car belonged to Isolde. Apparently she had found a new wheelman after I accidentally on purpose terminated the last one. Shit happens, I’m here to tell ya.

Paris is not an easy town to follow a car in because there is too much traffic and too many traffic lights. If you stay back, inevitably someone gets in front of you and you miss a light and the car you are following disappears in the sea of traffic ahead. So we weren’t trying to finesse Marissa’s chauffeur — we were right on his tail. He didn’t seem to notice. Drove the boulevards without a care in the world.

I wondered where Marisa was going. If she was going to meet Abu Qasim… well, I should be so lucky. Jake Grafton had given me orders: “If you see him, shoot him. I don’t care where it happens or what else is going down. Shoot him dead. Use the whole magazine if you have time.”

That order certainly seemed clear enough. Of course, my chances of bumping into Abu Qasim were about a zillion to one: I had a better chance of winning a Powerball lottery. Even if I did see him, odds are I wouldn’t recognize him. I certainly didn’t want to pop any bankers or boyfriends or members of the bar, even if they were French. I had made up my mind — no more accidental homicides.

I almost left the gun in my hotel room, then thought better of that impulse. Strangulations are brutal and messy. Bullets would be better.

Diem was a good driver. He seemed aware of all that was happening around him and checked the rearview mirror regularly. I glanced back from time to time, too. When people are too easy to follow, a suspicious fellow might wonder if there is a reason, such as someone trailing you. Not this time.

We drove into the heart of the city, crossed the bridge and pulled up in front of police headquarters. The limo stopped, and Marisa got out. There was a photographer on the sidewalk, and he snapped her picture. She didn’t look at him, just walked past pretending she didn’t see him and went inside.

“Wanta go in and see who she’s talking to?” Diem said.

“Ha, ha, ha.” I opened the door. “Follow the limo. I’ll call you on your cell if she grabs a cab.”

I got out and headed for a vantage point across the street, where I could keep an eye on the front door of the prefecture. Knowing Marisa, I didn’t think there was a chance on earth she would use a side or back door. Found an empty bench in front of Notre Dame, inspected it for pigeon doo and parked my fanny.

Gusty wind, temp in the fifties, gray clouds scudding overhead… fortunately I was dressed for the weather. I turned my coat collar up and pulled my hat down tight. Tried to keep the eyes moving and the brain in neutral, which was difficult.

I could see about a thousand possible permutations on how this thing would play out, one of which was that we actually managed to kill Abu Qasim and get him stuffed for display in the CIA museum. One out of a thousand. About six hundred of the possibilities had Grafton winding up in a federal prison. Of course, if that happened, I was probably going to get tossed in an adjacent cell, because I knew all about this vast criminal conspiracy lodged in the rotten heart of the American government and didn’t blow the whistle.

The photographer on the sidewalk across the street made call after call on his cell phone. Before long another photographer arrived. A half hour later a television crew, complete with supporting truck, arrived. After they were set up, the reporter — a woman — talked into a camera for a while, then they waited. Ten minutes later another guy showed up carrying two camera bags, one on each shoulder. They formed a gauntlet that everyone leaving the building had to pass through. Several people did, and the media let them pass unmolested.

Marisa was in there for an hour and a half. The limo appeared at the curb, and the driver got out. Diem in our rental was a hundred feet behind. I walked over and climbed in just as Marisa came out the door and the photographers sprang into action. Inquiring minds want to know. One would think she specialized in hot love scenes for the cinema. She marched determinedly through the crowd, didn’t say boo to the lady with the microphone — which she stuck in Marisa’s face — and climbed aboard the limo. Away we crept, off through traffic, back to the chateau Petrou out in the country.

“What was that all about?” Diem wanted to know. “Why the star treatment?”

“We’ll buy a paper this evening.”

When we did, we discovered that Marisa was the prime suspect in her husband’s murder. Of course, the police didn’t state in so many words that she was it, but she was answering questions before the examining magistrate. Again. She had access to the poison that did him in, opportunity and lots of motive. The dirty laundry of Jean and Marisa’s marriage was smeared all over the paper for the world to read. And she was young, beautiful, rich and slightly exotic. If she managed to beat the rap, she could probably get a movie contract.

I studied the photo in the paper, which was a full-face close-up. I saw a lovely woman with her emotions under tight control. I looked for a hint of guilt or innocence, and didn’t see a trace of either one.

The holy warriors came in late afternoon, when the canyon was deep in shadow. The temperature had dropped to about twenty degrees, and the breeze was off the Hindu Kush. One man was on the point. He stayed on their trail, such as it was — a few scuff marks, here and there a partial footprint — wary as a nervous deer. He passed completely in front of Longworth and disappeared to the left, up-canyon.

He and Brown waited. Longworth’s watch seemed to stop. He breathed shallowly so his breath vapor would dissipate without rising as a cloud.

When they came there were four of them and two dogs on leashes. They walked well spread out. Harry Longworth studied them through binoculars. They were carrying AK-47s.

He ran the binoculars over the far ridge, looking for any sign of movement. Seeing none, he laid down the glasses and picked up the sniper rifle.

The line of searchers passed directly in front of him, the nearest man about eighty yards away, and continued on up the canyon. Fifty yards farther on they began crossing a flat place almost devoid of rocks.

That’s when he shot the man on the left. He heard the high-pitched crack of Gat Brown’s M-16, again and again.

All four men and the two dogs were down when Harry Longworth saw a flash of movement on the far side of the canyon and heard a burst of three shots.

The point man! He had doubled back.

The wind blew and the evening got darker in the canyon.

Finally, when Longworth was convinced the point man wouldn’t move, he did. Harry’s bullet caught him and he slid down a steep, naked slope and came to rest against a small stone.

It was full dark and bitterly cold, with the wind working up to a gale, when Harry Longworth found Gat Brown. He piled some stones on him as he said a little prayer. Brown always pretended to be an atheist — and perhaps he was — but now, Harry Longworth thought, he was with Jesus. Maybe.

The problem with religion is that you don’t really know.

Longworth took Gat’s weapon and rucksack and left him there in that rocky canyon in the foothills of the Hindu Kush.

The next day Marisa didn’t come out. I wondered if our bugs were working. The CIA had someone at Ft. Meade listening to the household drivel on a real-time basis. Grafton had insisted upon it. I called Grafton’s assistant, Robin Cloyd, the lady of the jeans and sweatshirts and big hair, on an encrypted satellite phone. “Hey. This is Tommy.”

“Well, hello there, world traveler. Where are you today?”

“France. What are the spooks hearing from the Petrou chateau?”

“Oh, lots and lots of stuff. Should I send you a summary on your Black Berry?”

“Yeah.” We spies were really into twenty-first-century gadgets. “But let’s cut to the chase. Is there anything there that I should know about?” “Well … I am scrolling through this stuff… The agency uses a program that reduces speech to text, so we get it untouched by human hands.” She hummed a little bit, then said, “It all looks very benign. When are you coming home?”

“My birthday. For sure.” I was lying, of course; I had no idea where I would be tomorrow. “Let me know when Marisa sounds as if she might go out.”

“Of course.”

“Great.”

“Thanks for calling, Tommy.”

Robin Cloyd was a strange woman. As I repacked the satellite phone in its little case, I wondered about her.

The third day of our vigil, Marisa set forth again in the limo. We were forewarned by a call from Robin, and were waiting in our rental when the limo appeared. I checked with the binoculars. She seemed to be alone.

“How do you stand all this excitement?” Diem asked as we rolled along.

“Too lazy to work and too stupid to steal. You know that old song.”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

I kept waiting for Diem’s personality to grow on me, but so far it hadn’t germinated.

It was raining that day in Paris, a steady rain from a dreary sky, matching my mood. Marisa’s chauffeur didn’t try to lose us, which was good, because he would have succeeded. He dropped Marisa at one of the big department stores on the right bank of the Seine. She was just disappearing through the doors of the retailing temple when I bailed out of the rental and charged off after her. I was hoping she was here to meet someone, and I figured Jake Grafton might like to know who it was. For that matter, so would I.

It was warmer and drier inside, with women huddled over the scent and makeup counters and talking in low tones. Marisa was waiting on the elevator, facing the door.

I waited until the door opened and she entered, then jumped on the escalator.

She went up to the eighth floor and into the restaurant. I found a vantage point outside that allowed me to see her through the plate glass windows. She took a seat at a small table in the corner, all alone, studied the menu and ordered when the waitress came around. If she was supposed to meet someone, she wasn’t waiting. Hmmm.

There were three other couples dining there and several single ladies. Two ladies went in and were seated while I dawdled. Half the tables were empty.

I waited ten minutes, just in case, then went inside. The maftre d’ smiled at me, and I pointed at Marisa in the corner.

I walked over and joined her.

“I thought you’d never get here,” she said and gave me a hint of a smile.

“You were waiting for me?”

“I was unsure of the best way to get in touch with you. While I was sitting in the bath, I wondered, should I just name a place and time and ask you to meet me? Or should I go somewhere and wait until you arrived? Which would you prefer in the future?”

“I called the newspapers before I came in. The photographers are gathering outside.”

The waitress brought her a bottle of white wine from the Rhone valley, and an extra glass for me. The waitress poured. The wine was dry and delicious.

“So,” Marisa said when the waitress trotted off, “are we going to sit here telling each other lies, or will you give me the real reason that you are following me?”

“The real reason. Honest injun, cross my heart and hope to die. My boss told me to.”

“Aah,” she said, as if that explained everything.

The waitress brought a menu for me, but I refused it. “Whatever she’s having,” I said, nodding at Marisa. “Bring me the same.”

The waitress smiled, sure she was in the presence of true love, and went away happy.

“If you don’t mind,” I said, “when the lunch comes we’ll trade dishes, just in case.”

She was sipping wine as if she had waited all week for this taste, yet she kept her eyes on me. Now I saw what I hadn’t seen in the photos — she looked stressed.

“Of course, if you brought your polonium with you, you can just sprinkle it all over my grub before I taste it. I’ve heard it gives you a thrill that Mexican hot sauce never will.”

She put her wineglass on the table, and I reached for her hands. Held them both — they were cold — then released one. Sure enough, she had a slight tremor. She withdrew the unattached appendage, but she held on with the other. Her hand felt solid, sensual. For a prime suspect, she felt mighty good.

“Or you can haul out your Walther and start blasting,” I said. “I’m sure everyone will understand. You do have a good lawyer, don’t you?”

She didn’t say a word. Didn’t turn a hair. I didn’t know if she ever played poker, but I wouldn’t bet ten cents with her holding cards.

“Did you poison your husband, was it your mother-in-law, or was it that swine Abu Qasim?”

Now she withdrew her hand and gave me a wan smile. “Mr. Carmellini. Tommy. I know you mean well, that you are a soldier for good and righteousness and those other American things.” With her French accent, the words really sounded cool. Corny, but cool. “I wish for you to deliver a message to Admiral Grafton.”

I sipped wine as I thought about things. “Okay,” I said. “Shoot.”

“He knows all the names, including yours, and he plans to kill all of you.

“My name?”

“Those are my words for Admiral Grafton.”

By “him” I figured she could only mean Abu Qasim. A cold chill slid down my spine. Four days ago Jake Grafton had predicted murder as Abu Qasim’s goal, and had named the targets.

After a moment’s thought, I asked the obvious question. “How did he learn the names?”

“My husband told him.”

“I’ll give Grafton the message,” I said.

She appeared sincere, the mask gone.

Or she was one hell of an actress.

I wondered which was the case.

“Thanks for the wine.” I rose, nodded at the startled waitress and walked out.

If you thought I was going to have a relaxing lunch with the prime suspect in a husband poisoning, and perhaps another, you’re nuts. I wouldn’t have even touched the wine if I had seen her hand near the bottle. Marisa could pay the lunch tab. I figured she could afford it.

Sheikh Mahmoud al-Taji met his visitor in a safe room in the basement of the mosque. His visitor had entered the mosque in full robe and headpiece, so no one had gotten a good look at his face. Even if they had, he was heavily made up, wearing a full beard.

This basement room was the safest place for private conversations. The room was completely suspended upon shock absorbers in the middle of a larger room and surrounded with insulation. Installed on the floors and walls of the basement were amplifiers that broadcast the sounds from within the mosque above.

“It is good to see you again, Abu Qasim.”

“I need to pray. Will you pray with me?”

The two knelt on the rugs and prayed to Allah, the all-merciful. When they had finished, they sat upon the rugs and conferred in low tones.

“It was as you said it would be,” al-Taji said. “The English courts did not convict me. Truly, we can use these people’s laws against them. They are tied up in their own contradictions.”

Al-Taji thought that the English were stupid, with their insistence on the rule of law. He took a moment now to expand upon that theme. It was Allah who ruled, and his words given through the Prophet were supreme. The English had lost their god somewhere along the way, and were the worse lor it.

Abu Qasim knew Western society was more complex, but he didn’t choose to discuss it with the sheikh. They had more important things to occupy them.

“The Americans killed Rameid,” Qasim said, “in his refuge at the base of the mountains. Killed him two days ago with a long-range rifle.”

Al-Taji was taken aback. “May he rest in peace,” he muttered.

“I, too, am a hunted man, as you know. One suspects that you also are a target.”

“But the English did not convict me!”

“They did not convict Rameid, either,” Abu Qasim pointed out, “or Abdul-Zahra Mohammed or the others. They use the law when it suits them and the bullet or the knife when that suits them. Underestimating the infidels is a grave mistake. They are in league with the Devil, as you know.”

“I have given my soul to jihad,” al-Taji said forcefully, “and Paradise awaits. I am at peace. Inshallah.”

They sat there the rest of the afternoon discussing the secret army that hunted them, and its leader, Jake Grafton. Discussed and planned and plotted revenge, which, as every man of the desert knew to the depths of his soul, is life’s sweetest experience.

As he contemplated the prospect, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Taji smiled.