Assassin's Game (22 page)

*   *   *

When Evita Levine stepped through the portico of the Isrotel Tower Hotel in Tel Aviv she immediately got the looks she was accustomed to. She pretended not to notice the bellman’s stare, and quietly appreciated but did not return an obvious glance from a businessman in an expensive suit. She too was well dressed, reflecting her recently established Ronen Chen expense account, and prominent on her wrist was the newest bauble, a bracelet of white gold and diamonds. She did not bother stopping at the front desk, instead going straight to the elevator and rising to the tenth floor. There she knocked on the usual door.

It opened almost immediately.

He stood there unsteadily, a half-spent bottle of red wine in his hand and a loosened tie round his neck. He looked at his watch, the motion nearly tipping the contents of the uncorked bottle onto his stiffly pressed white shirt, and causing Evita to wonder if perhaps she should have come earlier after all.

He said, “There you are, darling, I was beginning to wonder.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I couldn’t get my husband out of the house.”

She stepped inside, kicking the door shut with the heel of her spiked Manolo. Both waited for the lock to catch before embracing. He was a small man, and in her five-inch heels—the ones he so liked—Evita was forced to bend down to meet his lips.

With his hand clutching her bottom, she nipped once at his ear and whispered, “I’m still not used to these little deceptions. I am not a professional like you.”

He backed away. “Not to worry, my angel. As always, I have taken every precaution. If it puts you at ease I can call and find out where he is right now.”

This gave Evita a fleeting chill. He was only trying to impress her, of course, yet she could never forget that he was a powerful man.

“No, that’s not necessary.”

He sauntered to the bar, brimming with confidence. “So—tell me about your week.”

Evita did, as always keeping to the most insipid truths. She talked about her job at the nail salon, a miserable dinner at her in-laws, and the university rejection letter her best friend’s brilliant son had just received. He listened at first, but the longer she talked the more he drank, and his interest inevitably faded. The first bottle of wine went quickly, and by the time the second clanked to the floor they were both on the bed, his shirt gone and she down to her new and very expensive undergarments.

Evita rubbed his hairy chest, slow circles that had the desired effect.

“Enough about me,” she said. “Have you had a busy week?”

“Oh, you can’t imagine.” He let loose a long breath. “There have been meetings every night. The director is a driven man, and he expects no less from those around him.”

“It sounds awful. So much pressure. I wish I could ease your load.”

He chuckled lecherously.

“No, I mean it. I wish I could put all of Hamas on a leaky boat and send them to sea.”

He looked at her drunkenly, a hazy leer that seemed not so different from old Yehud at the bar. “Yes, I believe you would. If I only had more warriors like you.”

Her hand went lower, onto his round, furry belly. “And Iran’s mad scientist—I would put a bullet in his head myself if the chance came.”

“I told you,” he said, “we’re trying. That cockup in the desert—it never had a chance of succeeding. And the motorcycle fiasco? Lunacy, I tell you.” His speech had acquired a familiar viscosity. “But we have one more chance. Hamedi is going abroad, and the director thinks he has found a way. He’s brought in a new man to do it, one who will not fail.”

“One man?”

“Yes.”

“An assassin? How frightful, the people you deal with. How will it be done?”

“I shouldn’t say anything, darling. Not this time.”

“Of course, I understand.” She nuzzled to his ear. “You lead such an exciting life, mon ami. So exciting…” Her hand found his mark. “Let’s talk about it later.”

Ezra Zacharias, director of operations for Mossad, inhaled sharply. “Oh … yes … much later.”

*   *   *

Blix escorted Sanderson into his house.

“I’m fine, Gunnar, really.”

“I still think you should have someone with you tonight. What about your sister?”

“She’s away on holiday.”

“Annika?” Blix said, referring to his daughter.

“I’m not an invalid, dammit! Not yet anyway. Annika is busy enough. And so should you be. Now get out of my house and find this bastard who’s making all of us look like fools.”

Blix grinned. “Yeah, you seem your old self.”

He turned to go, and Sanderson said, “Thank you, Gunnar.”

“No problem. Oh, I almost forgot.” Blix reached into his pocket and pulled out Sanderson’s phone. “Here.”

Sanderson took it. “They’re letting me keep it?”

“Not exactly—they’ve pulled the sim card. You’ll need to pick up a new one.”

“I’ll take care of it right away.”

“Call me as soon as you’re reconnected.”

“Thank you again.”

Blix left, closing the door behind.

Sanderson sat down at his dining room table. He pushed aside a bowl of stale potato crisps and set down his disabled phone. The room was still and silent. He closed his eyes and slipped off his shoes, and with cold seeping through his socks from the bare stone floor, Arne Sanderson wondered what on earth was wrong with him.

*   *   *

The Stockholm police were paying a great deal of overtime. Officers who’d spent their afternoons swarming over three triangulated locations looking for an elusive American, only to come up empty, had been kept on duty. By sunset teams were stationed at each of the three sites, walking arm-in-arm with bright flashlights in search of evidence. Others were committed to patrol subway and ferry terminals. A dozen officers spent their Tuesday evening watching travelers at Arlanda Airport, and two men had been posted, rather hopefully, in the lobby of the Strand Hotel. Neighboring counties had been alerted, and immigration counters across Sweden received notice to watch for an American, possibly traveling under the name of Edmund Deadmarsh, who was suspected of shooting a police officer.

Anna Forsten gave two news conferences that evening. The first provided a terse overview of the recent Strandvägen attacks, a dry and procedural account that was trumped on most news stations by sensational eyewitness video, taken with a mobile phone, that had a certain
Blair Witch
production quality. People could be seen running and screaming, and shots were clearly audible as a young man crashed his scooter and went skidding across the pavement in front of the Renaissance Tea Room. The police acquired a copy of the video, but quickly declared it to hold little evidentiary value.

Sensing her grasp on things slipping, Commissioner Forsten held an impromptu second act on the sidewalk outside her office. In a brief but well-articulated statement she emphasized that things were firmly in control, her legions of crack investigators making significant progress toward capturing the fugitive. Dozens of questions were lobbed, like so many verbal grenades, as Forsten backed into the fortress that was National Police Headquarters. She answered not a single one.

TWENTY-SIX

At the very moment Commissioner Forsten was backpedaling across a Stockholm sidewalk, the man she was looking for was standing on a more quiet slab of concrete some three hundred miles south in the port of Sassnitz, Germany. From his arrival point, Slaton had hiked the width of Jasmund National Park, a four-mile excursion through the brooding heaths and moors of northern Rügen Island. Where the park gave way to a narrow road, Slaton turned left toward a glow of lights in the distance. Twenty minutes later he arrived in Sassnitz.

Now, standing in front of the rail terminal, he looked out and marveled at his good fortune. Slaton could not imagine that a better selection of transportation alternatives existed in any square mile of Europe. He saw a ferry port that dealt the full spectrum—passengers, cars, and long-haul trucks. A rail terminal lay directly behind him, and on the horizon was a shipping yard. In the harbor a small cruise ship had docked next to the fishing fleet, and an assortment of leisure craft lay moored in private slips. There were small bulk carriers and cargo ships, and around these, loading cranes and forklifts sat ready to connect everything to trucks that would spread their payloads across Germany and beyond. Yet if the possibilities seemed overwhelming, they narrowed considerably when he measured his means against his objective. He had thirty-nine U.S. dollars in his pocket. On that he had to reach Switzerland.

Patiently, Slaton reckoned how best to attack the problem. He walked toward the ferry terminal with a cool wind at his back, the air scented with evergreen and the acrid residual of wood-burning fireplaces getting an early-season workout. As the long northern dusk lost its grip, the walkways fell increasingly sectioned, deep shadows broken by shards of electric light. Slaton lingered in the darker recesses to study his options. His attention settled on a large ferry where vehicles were unloading, and after twenty minutes the answer to his problem lumbered down the big metal off-ramp.

He kept to the shadows and watched, and soon two more vehicles of the same type rolled off in direct succession. He followed the little convoy’s progress and saw them park, one by one, in a well-lit holding yard. He watched the drivers dismount and deliver the keys to a kind of dispatch shack. Slaton could not see inside the shack, but he imagined rows of keys hanging on hooks, or perhaps tagged and put in drawers. Either would serve the German penchant for organization. He kept watching, and in thirty minutes saw nine more of the type, nearly identical to the first, driven off the ferry, parked, and the keys delivered to the shack.

Satisfied he understood the process before him, Slaton began a well-practiced reverse flow. He searched for faults in the system, and saw a number of possibilities. He then studied the parking lot itself. The apron was massive, nearly a half mile in both length and width, and surrounded by a wire fence. The lot was roughly half full, a hodgepodge of trucks and cars and trailers and containers. Some would be gone in minutes, while others might expect spring flowers to blossom beneath their undercarriages. Of particular interest, Slaton noted that there was only one entrance, governed by the shack, where a heavy-set woman gave cursory inspections to everything that came and went.

He looked once more at his targeted vehicles and knew it had to be. It was a perfect match for his needs, albeit the sort of theft that would require patience and planning, even creativity. His decision made, Slaton stepped out of the shadows and set to work.

*   *   *

The knock on Sanderson’s door came at half past eight that evening. He opened it to find his ex-wife.

“Ingrid … what on earth?” Seeing the concern on her face, he quickly surmised, “Blix called you, didn’t he?”

“How are you, Arne?”

“I wish everyone would stop asking me that.”

A gust of wind swept across the threshold. “Are you going to ask me in?”

“Yes, sorry.”

Sanderson turned and swept his eyes over the room. As best he could remember, Ingrid had not been here since moving out five years earlier, and he wondered how the place had changed in that time. He saw unkempt furnishings, a carpet that needed cleaning, an embarrassing stack of dirty dishes by the sink. There was no getting around it. “I’ve given the maid a year’s holiday.”

“It’s not so bad,” she lied.

“Can I offer you some tea?”

“Decaf would be nice.”

Sanderson put water on the stove, watching with an odd discomfort as she meandered the place they had shared for so long.

“How is my garden holding up?” she asked, peering into the darkness out the back window.

“Honestly? It looks like the Ardennes after a good German pounding.”

She smiled. “It doesn’t seem like five years, does it?”

“No,” he agreed.

“How is Alfred?” Sanderson asked, happy he hadn’t said “the toilet king.”

“Not well, actually. It’s his heart.”

Fishing through a cupboard for clean cups, Sanderson stopped what he was doing. He saw her sadness, and said, “I’m sorry, Ingrid. Really I am.”

She came closer and looked at him in the kitchen’s strong light. “You don’t look well, Arne.”

“What did Blix tell you?”

“He said you passed out at headquarters today. And he said you’ve been forgetful—that it’s become an issue at work.”

“It won’t be an issue any longer.” Sanderson turned back to the cupboard. “I quit today. It was a rash decision, I admit, but Sjoberg had just pulled me from a big case for no reason.”

“I did hear about that. You were working on these shootings?”

“Yes. He was quite unreasonable about the whole thing. But I suppose it was as good a time as any to pack it in. I’ve given them thirty-five years.”

“That must have been very difficult.”

“Not the way I did it. But we all knew it was coming. I only wish I could have finished the investigation I was working on.”

The tea brewed and then cooled to the point of being useful. As they talked, he thought Ingrid seemed dampened, even spiritless, but given the mood of her visit, not to mention her husband’s ill health, he should not have expected more. He did wish it, though. When they moved to better ground—their daughter and her fireman boyfriend, and the attendant speculation about grandchildren—the air seemed to improve. Ingrid even made him laugh once or twice, which was once or twice more than any other night this week. They’d talked for an hour when she finally looked at her watch.

“I should be going. Alfred doesn’t always remember his pills before bed.”

“Yes, of course.”

After an awkward moment, she said, “I promised Blix I’d tell you to see a doctor. If he asks, say I did.”

Sanderson smiled. He helped her put on her coat, and she looked at him with something old and familiar.

“This investigation—it’s bothering you, isn’t it, Arne?”

“They all do.”

“No. Not like this.”

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing more I can do about it.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She went to the door and took the handle. “You could always get off your ass and finish what you started.”