Soul of the Assassin (38 page)

“There’s nothing to repair. If you have any real weight with the Institute,” added the scientist, “then make them give me my rightful job back. Make them use me the way I should be used, instead of as a babysitter. Tell them it is foolish to allow me to go to a conference, and then hound me there.”

And with that, he stalked from the room.

~ * ~

erguson waited until Kiska and Rostislawitch had been gone for a half hour before going into the café. By that time the room had been reopened, and the table he wanted near the wall was occupied.

In any other country, he might have waited for the two men sitting there to leave. But drinking coffee in Italy could be an all-day affair, and he couldn’t spend that much time waiting. Thera was back at the conference, her only backup the Italian security people.

Fortunately, he had come prepared.

“Scusare
,” he said to the men, standing next to the table. He purposely used the wrong form of the word before switching to English.

“Excuse me. I’m from the U.S. and I’m a little lost. Hey, what was that?” he added, turning as if he’d just spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

As he spun, he released something on the table.

“Ratto!
” yelled one of the men as the mouse Ferguson had dropped scurried around the silverware.

The other man jumped to his feet, sending his chair flying.

“Grab it,” said the first.

Within moments, the place was in a tumult: half the patrons were trying to grab the poor mouse; the other half were trying to get away.

Ferguson calmly righted the chair that had been knocked over, sat down, and reached under the table for the small digital recorder he’d left behind earlier. He ripped off the tape holding it and took the small device, barely bigger than a portable USB memory card, and walked calmly out of the restaurant.

He felt a little bad about the mouse. But given that the pet store around the corner had advertised it beneath a sign that said: “Feed your snake real food tonight,” he reasoned that he had at least given it a fighting chance for survival.

~ * ~

5

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Atha pushed the hood of the rain slicker as far down over his face as it would go. The rain was really pouring now, crashing across the bow of the ship in what looked like solid sheets. The vessel rocked up and down with the waves, pitching to its sides as the sea knifed against its bow, pummeling the ship. The wind was so loud that he couldn’t hear the helicopter, though he knew from the spotlight that it was nearly overhead.

The Iranian had been winched up to a helicopter several times before when he was younger, so when he had worked out this plan he did not think it would be very difficult. But he had not counted on this rain and the heaving sea; simply standing on the deck made his stomach feel queasy.

A black streak of rain lashed across the ship. Atha stared at it a moment, then realized it was the rope from the helicopter that was to winch him aboard. A sling that looked more like a rubber inner tube for a bicycle than a harness hung at the bottom; it crashed against a large vent on the foredeck and got hooked there. Atha ran to it, dragging his suitcase as he went.

Before he could finish hooking himself into the sling it started upward. He barely managed to keep hold of the suitcase as he was tugged toward the chopper. Though he’d tied it to a life jacket and wrapped it in garbage bags to make sure it remained waterproof and would float, in this storm he doubted he would see it again if it slipped from his grasp. He clenched his fingers around it as the rope twisted. The wash from the rotors and the spray of the water drenched him, soaking him to his bones despite the heavy rain gear he wore.

At last he reached the doorway of the helicopter. A crewman grabbed at Atha’s bag, but he refused to give it up; he was dragged inside by it, rolling back toward the doorway as the chopper bucked in the wind. Another man grabbed hold of Atha and wrestled him against the bulkhead, where he managed to get out of the harness. He lay on the floor as the door was shut and the chopper began gaining altitude.

Thanking God for his delivery, Atha got up and sat on the narrow bench at the side of the cabin. I’m safe, he thought to himself. As if to rebuff him, the helicopter pitched sharply to the right, throwing him against the two other men. For the first time since he’d come aboard, Atha looked into their faces and realized that they, too, were scared, perhaps even more than he was.

“There will be a bonus on our safe landing,” he promised. When that failed to cheer them, he added, “We are doing Allah’s work, all praise be to him. He would not let us die before our mission is complete.”

The crewmen exchanged a doubtful look before nodding.

~ * ~

6

BOLOGNA, ITALY

Nathaniel Hamilton stepped off the small plane at the Bologna airport and hurried into the tunnel toward the terminal. Having effectively ceded the search for the Iranian to the Italians and the Americans— Jared Lloyd was in theory “liaisoning,” but Hamilton had few illusions about who was really in charge—he was at least temporarily reduced to getting whatever he could from the other end of the equation, the Russian scientist.

London, of course, had no clue what should be done next. In one breath, Hamilton’s supervisor said he would pummel the Americans for stepping into the middle of their operation. In the next, he said how lucky they were for following a hunch and he would damn well make sure they got credit for it.

Hamilton had been around long enough to realize that, his boss’s opinions notwithstanding, the mission had so far been neither a great success nor a terrible failure. The Americans were worried about whatever Rostislawitch had handed over, but in Hamilton’s opinion the network Atha belonged to was much more important. Was Rostislawitch part of a network of scientists in Russia willing to supply state secrets to Atha? What were the Iranians’ real plans?

The first thing Hamilton did when he got to Bologna was take a room at the Stasi, a boutique hotel just at the edge of center city. It was an expensive place; his boss would surely have a fit when he saw the bill. But Hamilton wanted a place with a bed that wasn’t made out of melted-down cannons.

Once he’d checked in, Hamilton took a taxi to the bus station. He walked in the front door and then promptly out the side, walking down the block to an alley, where he turned right and walked to the door of a small building wedged between two larger and much older structures. A sign on the faded wood proclaimed that the place had been condemned; the sign was at least two years old. Hamilton took a look around, then unlocked the door and stepped inside.

There was no light or electricity; he had to use a small pocket flashlight to find the strongbox he’d come for.

A touch of paranoia took hold as he knelt to the box. But it quickly passed. He put his key into the lock and opened the lid, then reached in and took what he needed—keys, credit cards, SIM cards for his phone, and finally the guns: a PK pistol and a six-shot dummy cell phone.

“Now, then,” he said to himself as he rose, the pistol and fake phone tucked into his pockets, “let us see what sort of mood the estimable Mr. Ferguson is in this evening.”

~ * ~

ruth be told, Ferguson was in the mood for a long nap. He’d followed Rostislawitch back to his hotel, where the scientist was apparently in the process of taking a very long shower. Unfortunately, the battery in the video bug Rankin had installed the day before had run down, and Ferguson had to rely on the backup audio near the door. It was difficult to hear much except for the shower.

For the moment, Ferguson was on his own. He’d sent Thera to move some of their cars around so they wouldn’t be towed or ticketed; after that, she was supposed to rest. She wasn’t due back until seven, when she was to meet Rostislawitch for dinner in the lobby.

The Italians, British, and Russians all knew pieces of what was going on, but as far as Ferguson could tell, they didn’t know as much as the team did. The Italians didn’t know about the bacteria that had
possibly
been taken; they thought the Iranian was a witness or participant in the bombing. The British didn’t know what Kiska had told Ferguson about the material, though they knew that Atha had met with the scientist. The Russians didn’t know about Atha, since Kiska hadn’t gotten to town until after the meeting.

What did they know that Ferguson didn’t?

Plenty, maybe.

What didn’t he know that was important?

Number one, who T Rex was.

Not Kiska. But the problem with eliminating her was that left no one else as a possible candidate. By now the Agency had checked the bona fides of every scientist at the convention without coming up with a match; the Italians had conducted their own check of the backgrounds of the caterers and the others hired for the event. This had resulted in a few surprises—including the arrest of a man wanted for heroin smuggling and the detention of a number of suspected illegal immigrants but no likely candidate for T Rex.

Meanwhile, the Italian investigation into the bombing was moving ahead at a snail’s pace. The plastique explosive had been isolated but its chemical “tag”—a kind of fingerprint that would indicate where it had been manufactured—had not yet been identified. The truck that had blown up had been stolen from a town about five kilometers away; the police had no leads in the theft.

So if it wasn’t Kiska, who was it?

Ferguson took the laptop into the bathroom with him so he could watch the feed from the video bugs covering the hall outside Rostislawitch’s door and listen to the audio bug while he shaved. Rostislawitch had finally finished his shower and was now talking to himself, complaining about Kiska.

Ferguson didn’t want it to be her because she’d saved his life. Was that really it?

If she was T Rex, he’d have to take her, and of course she wasn’t going to just come with him, and then Parnelles’s wish would come true. He’d have his pound of flesh, and maybe some problems with the Italians, but those problems he wouldn’t mind.

But maybe Rostislawitch wasn’t the real target; maybe the car bomb was “just” a car bomb, or even a feint to throw them off the trail. Imperiati’s other target was due tonight, the keynote speaker at the dinner Rostislawitch and Thera were going to.

Ferguson listened as the Russian turned on his television. A middle-aged woman came down the hallway near his room, stopped, and went back to her room. She emerged with a sweater a few moments later. Ferguson watched her, planning what he would do if she was T Rex.

But she wasn’t. She got in the elevator at the end of the hall and descended to the lobby.

~ * ~

t 6 p.m., Ferguson called the Cube for an update. It was the first time in recorded history that he had checked in precisely at the time he was supposed to, at least according to Lauren DiCapri.

“If I’d known it was an occasion, I’d’ve worn a tie,” he told her.

“What are you wearing now?”

“Nothing but a smile. Tell me what’s going on.”

Lauren’s update consisted largely of two facts: Rankin and Guns still had no idea where the Iranian had gone, and Parnelles and Slott were both angry with the world.

“You especially,” she added. “They can’t figure out why you won’t admit Kiska Babev is T Rex.”

“If I did admit that, what then?” said Ferguson. “You think she’ll just fly home with me?”

“Knowing you, sure.”

“Listen, is Ciello around?” asked Ferguson.

“As a matter of fact, he wants to talk to you. First, though, the Brits are also kind of mad at us. Hamilton had some sort of hissy fit, claiming that Rankin and Guns screwed up his surveillance.”