The Holy assassin

15

Geoffrey Barnes was the CIA man in Europe. This was the simple way of explaining countless responsibilities and tasks. The specific name for the imposing position is the Director of Operations and Manager of Intelligence for Continental Europe. The principal headquarters was in the city of London in a perfectly normal building, very central, and for which we cannot give an address for reasons of national security. Thus, we designate it the Center of Operations only.

Geoffrey Barnes had hundreds of people in his charge spread over the continent, from subdirectors to department chiefs, agents, technicians, and collaborators, all on Uncle Sam’s salary. Their pockets were filled with money to keep them dancing to his tune. He who can, does, and he who cannot, quits. Like it or not, the best secret information always came from this side of the Atlantic, to be sent later to be expurgated in Langley, a place that can be publicized without fear of reprisals since it is of public, and even historic, knowledge. Barnes had only two superiors in the chain of command, the director general in Langley and the president of the United States. There was also intelligence-sharing among other agencies, in particular Mossad or other secret entities generously patronized by them.

Today the problem was the agency’s alone, the death of a longtime agent in the central station of Amsterdam in doubtful circumstances. The trip to the Dutch capital had been quick, without incident. The distance from London to Amsterdam was negligible. Accompanying Barnes was Jerome Staughton, promoted to Geoffrey Barnes’s personal assistant a year ago, who found his old position of data analyst in real time more to his liking. Being towed in Barnes’s wake was like carrying a tunneling machine on your back, subject to his caprice and mood swings, his deep guttural voice full of contemptuous reproach, and his desire to feed his gigantic body at all hours. Beyond the evident differences between being an analyst and an assistant, working on the ground was always more dangerous than being seated at a desk. It was career progress that wasn’t always welcomed, except for the pay at the end of each week. In any case, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, Barnes had been calm, in no way truculent, even convivial, not a very natural trait in a man who has to protect great secrets.

On landing at Schiphol, they found the cars waiting for them. Everything was planned to the minute. The cars were middle-range models to avoid raising suspicions, and they would obviously not appear to be CIA but rather FBI agents trying to learn more about what had happened and offer their service to every extent possible. One of the disadvantages of the disguise was their having to drive in the middle of traffic instead of opening a free lane. If they had been in the States or even the UK, they would have swept everything out of the way, but here they had to preserve appearances and good conduct, since the Dutch were known not just for tulips but also for hospitality. So the trip took them an hour. As soon as the station was in sight they noticed the presence of Agent Thompson, who had come ahead of time to survey the situation.

As soon as they got out of the cars, Barnes put his hands on the small of his back, stretching as if to make some discomfort or cramp go away.

‘This screws me up,’ was all he said. ‘This job is going to kill me.’

‘You’re going to bury us all, Chief,’ Thompson said, holding out his hand to Barnes and then to Staughton. Chain of command trumped good manners. ‘How was the flight?’

‘It’s taken us longer from the airport here than from London to Schiphol.’

‘It’s the time of day.’

‘Let’s get to business,’ Barnes ordered abruptly. ‘I want to get home in time for dinner.’

‘Over here.’ Thompson motioned to go inside the station.

‘What have you found so far?’ Barnes wanted to know.

Staughton was known to speak little, so his silence wasn’t a surprise. He was assimilating everything he heard and saw in order to process it later. He was good at this, in summarizing the parts, always trying to restrain the director’s impulsiveness.

The station wasn’t closed. Only parts were cordoned off by police tape, so civilians were constantly moving about.

‘They didn’t close the station?’ Barnes inquired.

‘They didn’t consider it necessary. The bathroom is in a corner away from the center of the station, so they decided to close access to that area and not affect normal functions,’ Thompson explained. ‘The trains weren’t even late.’

‘Efficiency.’

‘Our man was named Solomon Keys,’ Thompson began. ‘Born in 1920.’

‘Solomon Keys?’ Barnes marveled. ‘He’s a legend at the agency. I remember seeing him once or twice. He was part of the establishment since the beginning. He came from OSS, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Affirmative,’ Thompson continued, checking a note he had written in a small notebook with a hard black cover. ‘Member of the OSS from 1943 until the end of the war, recruited by the agency when it was founded.’

‘One of the founders,’ Barnes remembered, speaking more to himself than the others, remembering his own career up to now, to director of the CIA, here at Amsterdam Centraal. A lot of sweat and blood spilled, life in danger many times, and the loss. The loss of everything, family, women, normal life… The company demands exclusive commitment. It was what he was in the habit of thinking on lonely nights to justify what he had lost. The truth was he wouldn’t know how to live any other way. When a man had a level of information as elevated as Geoffrey Barnes, with the power and responsibilities inherent in the position, he no longer had a life of his own. It’s a cross to bear. His cross, the cross everyone carries each in his own way, some heavier than others. No one had any notion of what it was like to be a Geoffrey Barnes, what it was to have his work, what it was to know what he knew. No wife, dedicated as she might be, would have the temperament to wait endless nights, trying not to think about whether she would see her husband alive again. It was hard to work for the agency, but just as hard being the wife of an agency employee. As Jerome Staughton could attest, with his two failed marriages, thirty crappy years. You had to be a son of a bitch, as mean as a cobra, a bastard until the day you said ‘Enough.’

‘Right,’ Thompson noted. ‘He studied law at Yale at the same time he turned into a valuable resource for the CIA. He left the service in ’ninety-two and traveled around the world. Ah, and do you want to know something interesting?’

‘That’s what we’re here for. For tragic events I could have stayed home.’

‘He was a member of Skull and Bones. Initiated the same year as Bush the father.’

‘What an SOB.’

‘Who?’ Thompson asked curiously.

‘Neither. It’s just an expression,’ Staughton explained, always prepared to save Barnes from his own mouth. ‘If I say you’re an SOB, I’m not insulting you really. Understand? It’s just an expression.’

‘Okay.’

‘A member of Skull and Bones,’ Barnes repeated thoughtfully.

‘What is Skull and Bones?’ Staughton asked. ‘Some club? A fraternity?’

‘What do you mean, what is Skull and Bones?’ Barnes was scandalized by such ignorance.

‘I wasn’t hired for my knowledge of culture,’ Staughton replied by way of excusing himself.

‘Skull and Bones is a secret society. Or better, the secret society of our country,’ Thompson explained.

‘Like P2?’

‘No, not at all,’ Barnes answered. ‘No. P2 is different.’ He reflected for a few moments. ‘If we ranked every secret society, P2 would command them all, including Skull and Bones.’

‘But, according to Thompson, Skull and Bones has influential members. I heard talk of a president,’ Staughton argued, truly curious.

‘Yes. In truth there are two. Bush the son has been a member since ’sixty-eight,’ Thompson added.

‘Let me see if I can make myself understood.’ Barnes stopped to moderate the question.

The allusion to P2, the Italian Masonic lodge whose complete name was Propaganda Due, had to do with a case that occurred a year earlier that brought together these three men in a massive investigation that ended in nothing, according to Barnes. Propaganda Due was one of the most cited special collaborators with the agency, and the millions in funds they had received from Langley for more than thirty years gave their leaders a privileged relationship, often confusing as to which one was in charge of the other. The power of this lodge was enormous, greater than some presidents, prime ministers. In reality P2 had enough power to install governments or bring them down when they didn’t serve their interests. They disposed of lives as it served them, including popes, as John Paul I would testify, if he were still with us. Skull and Bones was a minor league club, a game for rich students, compared with P2, even though it consisted of influential members always under the control of those who really gave the orders. And those people didn’t appear on television reports.

‘But the chief said P2 commands almost all the rest,’ Staughton interrupted. ‘The “almost” is missing.’

Barnes looked down on the two men from his imposing height. They resumed walking to the place where the crime was committed eighteen hours ago. Dutch police tape set off the area, including the door to the bathroom. A uniformed officer was on guard at the door to ensure that only those authorized entered.

‘All right, you fools, who orders everything and everyone?’

‘Who?’ Thompson asked, unable to answer.

‘Opus Dei,’ the chief concluded.

He showed his FBI badge to the guard and entered the crime scene, leaving his subordinates with their mouths open looking at each other.

‘Opus Dei?’ they both said at once.

They finally joined Barnes moments later, not knowing if what he had said was true or not. It was time to set aside the general subject of power and concentrate on finding the assassin or assassins of Solomon Keys.

‘Here we are,’ said Barnes, looking at the ample space. Urinals to the right, stalls with doors to the left. A passage separated them. The yellowish tiles couldn’t hide the passage of time. Once they were pure white, an indisputable choice for bathrooms, a symbol of health and luxury at the same time. They found the objects of their investigation in the fourth and fifth stalls. Blood spread from the walls to the floor, more in the fourth than the fifth. The door of the fifth had three bullet holes that formed an irregular triangle. A bloodstain lay over the wall that supported the water tank. A few tiles were broken on the left side of the same wall.

‘This is where they killed our man,’ Thompson informed them.

They all stared in silence, looking for clues. The smallest detail spoke to them, intent on answering their questions. Who? Why?

‘What a shitty way to die,’ Barnes vented his feelings.

‘Yeah, it is. And, according to the Dutch report, with his pants around his ankles. Literally,’ Thompson added.

‘You can’t even shit in peace,’ Barnes said, closely examining the place.

‘Here in the other stall was an English couple. Like our man, they were waiting for the train to Hoek van Holland.’

‘When I die, I want to go like that,’ Barnes joked, flashing a sarcastic smile.

‘How do you know that’s what they were doing?’ Staughton asked.

‘I’m a quick study,’ Barnes advised. ‘There aren’t any same-sex bathrooms here.’

A light went on in Staughton’s mind. Of course, it was obvious.

‘And these shots in the door?’ Barnes questioned Thompson.

‘It seems Keys was killed with the door closed. At least it was found locked from inside. One shot hit his chest, the other his head, and the third buried itself in the tiles.’

Barnes looked at Thompson and then at the doors.

‘The door was closed?’ He shut the door with the bullet holes and analyzed it more carefully. Then he passed to the other door. ‘Where did the other two get the shots?’

‘Oh, one shot each in the head. Very clean,’ Thompson told him.

An open door, a shut door. Barnes’s mind seethed with equations and hard thinking. Things were never what they appeared. There were always variants and exceptions, accidents and imponderables, things difficult to connect and understand.

‘What are you thinking, Staughton?’ his chief asked him.

A professional, Staughton was unfazed. With Barnes he always had to be on top of things, fearlessly decisive, prepared to take the shots, figuratively of course. Field work had never been Staughton’s strong suit, and his contribution was to present solutions without having to be in the place where they were worked out in concrete detail. Obviously he’d prefer never to leave London, the Center of Operations. But excursions like this to Amsterdam didn’t bother him. There were much more dangerous things in this world.

‘If the report is correct, and everything happened as we hear-’

‘Don’t bullshit,’ Barnes interrupted. He had no patience for playing around.

‘I’d say Mr. Solomon Keys was collateral damage,’ he concluded.

‘He was what?’ Thompson said, astonished.

‘It looks like it to me, too,’ Barnes supported his associate.

‘How can you come to that conclusion?’ Thompson insisted, still stunned.

‘Staughton, do us the favor…’ Barnes authorized his subordinate to present the theory.

‘It’s not a conclusion, obviously, just a theory,’ Staughton cautioned. Things should always be explicit in order to avoid confusion and mistakes. ‘If the facts you’ve given are correct’ — he looked at Thompson, who affirmed with a nod the trustworthiness of his facts — ‘we are dealing, almost certainly, with collateral damage. The door of the toilet where the couple was found was open and doesn’t show bullet holes. Besides it doesn’t show any signs of being forced. The lock is intact, as it should be.’ He pointed at the catch on door number four, which showed no sign of violence. ‘That is, whatever they were doing…’

‘They were definitely fucking,’ Barnes murmured to himself while gesturing toward Thompson with a vicious smile.

‘… they must have been so immersed in their affairs, they didn’t bother to lock the door from the inside. The other door confirms that it was closed from inside, and the murderer didn’t trouble himself to throw it open. He let off three shots, and everything was over.’

‘I don’t know where you are going with this,’ Thompson said, confused.

‘It’s simple, Thompson. Whoever did this was not worried about the old man. He didn’t even take the trouble to make sure he was dead, or see who he was. It didn’t matter to him. I say Keys was already inside when the couple entered. Later the murderer entered, opened their door, and shot them. Since Keys’s door was locked, he assumed there was someone inside. He got off three shots and got out of there. In summary, this was for them’ — Staughton pointed to door four — ‘and not for him.’

‘Do you know their identities?’ Barnes asked Thompson. He obviously supported Staughton’s theory.

‘It’s here,’ Thompson announced, handing him a paper with the identifications.

Barnes looked at the names. Two unknown people, male and female, both dead in the course of their pleasure. Barnes didn’t hold back his smile, imagining them releasing their fluids and energy, and, suddenly, poom, poom, or better, puff, puff, since no one in the entire station heard anything resembling a shot. He was carrying a silencer. Solomon Keys on the other side, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, maybe even excited, to the extent permitted at eighty-seven, by the madness he must have been listening to and trying to imagine, and then suddenly, nothing. Probably he heard the bodies falling helplessly, and, later, silence, only silence. He bet not even breathing was heard from either of them. What a fucked-up way to die. A man who gave everything for his country. There was no justice. Barnes felt humiliated for Solomon Keys, for himself, since no one knows how he’s going to cross over to the other side. Dead, that’s for sure, you arrive dead, but the ultimate moment, that last moment, of the last breath, how many are going to have the serenity, the perspicacity to feel it, to know it has arrived and to say good-bye? The moment of poof, poof, poof, for Solomon Keys with his pants down. The bastard finished him off. There was no justice. He was collateral damage, in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was no worse luck than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everything was tolerable except that. But who had the power to divine what places are wrong or right? The English couple was the reason for the crime. The killer was after them.

‘Oh, shit,’ Barnes cursed.

‘What’s the matter, Chief?’ Thompson wanted to know.

‘Do you recognize one of these names?’ Barnes asked, passing the identification page to Staughton.

Not waiting for an answer, Barnes took out his cell phone and made a call.

‘Oh, no,’ Staughton let escape.

‘What’s going on? Somebody tell me,’ Thompson kept asking, angry at not recognizing any of the names.

‘It’s Barnes.’ He identified himself as soon as the call was answered. ‘I want to report a homicide.’ He waited a few moments. ‘Call him, please.’ For a moment he appeared to be listening to what the party on the other end of the call was saying. ‘I don’t care if he’s busy. Call him immediately and cut the shit. There has been a murder, but that’s the least of our problems.’