The Assassin (33 page)

“Oh, shut up, Jerry,” Simon Cairnes said disgustedly.

Winchester ignored them both and headed for his private office.

We wound up in first-class seats on our trip westward across the Atlantic. The Company put us in business class, but Isolde threw a ladylike duck fit when she heard that, so I upgraded us, using my credit card. If the Company bean-counters took offense when I turned in my expense account, I decided, I’d send a bill to Isolde. She would probably frame it and hang it on a wall.

I had an aisle seat with Marisa on my left and Isolde in a window seat on the other side of the plane. On the aisle beside Isolde, and across from me, was a college-age youngster who was fashionably disheveled, with tattered jeans, an earring and sproutings of facial hair and pimples. I decided he was harmless and ignored him. He must have decided I, too, was harmless, and old as dirt, so he ignored me—donned his iPod earphones and tuned out.

I felt sort of naked sitting there unarmed beside two women with targets on their backs. I had given Marisa’s Walther and my Springfield to Mrs. Pocock to hold until I returned to the sceptered isle, someday. A pistol in your pocket won’t make you bulletproof, but in our uncertain age it can be a comfort, a metal pacifier, if you will, or a crucifix for the ungodly.

My shoulder was aching, so I rubbed the bandage and helped myself to another two Tylenol, which I swallowed without water. Marisa watched without comment.

We had been airborne about an hour and were flying above a cloud deck when she said, barely loud enough to hear, “What happened this morning?”

So I told her, whispering. I saw the kid across the aisle glance my way. He couldn’t hear a word with those earphones on, but must have assumed Marisa and I were lovers.

When I finished a recitation of events, she had no comment. I had a few, but I didn’t voice them. Really, someone who supposedly knew what he was doing whanging away with a silenced .22-caliber pistol at that range? I hadn’t seen him carrying a rifle, and the police search didn’t turn up one. So it had indeed been a pistol, a weapon designed for point-blank murder.

He was lucky he hit me. Well, hit me twice.

I wondered why he shot me in the first place. He didn’t have a chance in a hundred of killing me.

He certainly didn’t panic. That was out. A diversion? From what?

I decided that a diversion was the likeliest possibility. The man who had killed Eide Masmoudi might have been leaving in another direction.

So I had botched that assignment, too. I seemed to be having a long dry spell at the plate.

“You’re lucky you aren’t dead,” I muttered to Marisa.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she responded.

“Who are you, really?”

“Just a woman. That’s all I know about myself. I am a person with an unknown past and an unknown future.”

“That pretty much describes most of us,” I observed.

After she picked at the complimentary meal and drank a glass of champagne, Marisa settled back with a pillow under her head and went to sleep. The flight attendant saw her and brought a blanket, which I arranged over her.

Isolde sat staring out her window at endless clouds and sky. After a while she removed several reports of some kind from her large purse and immersed herself in them. Once in a while she made a note in a margin. She must have grabbed those when we skedaddled from the chateau.

She was a tough old bird. Still, son Jean, friends Zetsche, Tcherny-chenko and Gnadinger dead, with the fearless, feckless Tommy Carmellini standing guard … Standing up for your principles was turning out to be damned expensive. I wondered if she thought signing on with Huntington Winchester was worth the cost.

I read the newspaper I had bought in the airport, then leafed through the in-flight magazine, which was full of info on cool vacation places I’ll never have the time and money to visit. Nothing in there on the sewers of Cairo, where I’d spent some time this past summer. After a while my eyelids got heavy. I reclined the seat and drifted off.

“Two more dead ?”

“Yes. Oleg Tchernychenko and his two bodyguards were killed when his limo blew up on a motorway. Rolf Gnadinger was stabbed with an icicle, apparently. The maid found him dead on the front stoop of his house outside Zurich.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Sal Molina, shaking his head sadly. He took a moment to gather his thoughts. They were sitting in his cubbyhole office at the White House. “Any more news?”

Grafton told him about Sheikh al-Taji, Eide Masmoudi and Radwan Ali. “The British police found Ali an hour or so ago. He and his two roommates had been tortured to death. Their landlord found them in their London flat. Blood everywhere.”

“Al-Taji’s death was in the morning briefing. What will the autopsy show?”

“That he died of heart failure. These things happen.”

“Why did they murder the roommates?”

“Guilt by association, I guess,” Jake Grafton said forlornly. “Needless to say, the Islamic militants are claiming that the sheikh was assassinated by agents of the CIA.”

“You’ve fucked this up, Jake.”

“That’s an accurate description, I suppose.”

Molina picked up a pen and bounced it off the desk. “Guess we had better go see the man.”

“Before we do, let me see the president’s schedule for the next several weeks.”

Molina dug the document out of a locked drawer, then sat silently while Jake perused it. When Jake handed it back, he said, “I don’t like what you’re thinking.”

“Let’s go see him.”

Molina put the schedule away, then led the way to the Oval Office. Two senators were with the president, so they had to wait. Ten minutes later the senators left and, after murmuring something to the receptionist, who would hold the calls and keep any scheduled visitors waiting until they came out, Molina led Grafton in. The private secretary was there, and Molina waved him out. He closed the door behind him.

Both men took seats on chairs facing the president, who was seated at his desk. The president listened in silence as Jake summarized events in Europe and the U.K. over the last several days. He didn’t interrupt or comment, merely listened. He was used to listening to bad news, Jake thought, and no wonder—he heard a lot of it.

When Jake finished speaking, the president sat in silence digesting it. “So where do we go from here?” he asked.

“I’ll resign, if you like,” Grafton said. “Wilkins wants me out, and you’ve got to admit, he’s got good reasons.”

The president waved that away. “I don’t remember you promising results. As I recall, you told Sal you thought it was worth the risks to get a shot at Abu Qasim. Still feel that way?”

Grafton searched the president’s face, then Molina’s. His gaze returned to the president. “Qasim wants a big strike. He needs a big strike. He wanted your head last fall in Paris, and I think he still does. If he can also get Winchester and his pals, fine. But they are small fish and you’re the whale.”

“I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that,” the president said with a grimace.

“What is Qasim going to do next?” Molina asked.

“That’s just it—we don’t know,” Grafton explained. “So far he has been looking for an opening, going after Winchester’s pals one by one as the opportunity presented itself. He isn’t doing it to intimidate or terrorize us; he’s doing it to keep his organization intact and his holy warriors motivated by showing them that he—and they—can successfully fight back. And that is precisely the reason Winchester and the others wanted in—to prove that they could fight back. Every group of people since the dawn of time has looked for ways to successfully resist their enemies. That motivation is what makes us human.”

“Which gets us where?”

“Abu Qasim will take any opening that presents an opportunity to hurt us at minimum risk to himself. Our challenge is to trap him.”

“Are we talking one terrorist or two? Or ten or twenty?” the president asked with a frown. “How many?”

“I don’t know. But believe me, one good one is more of a threat than a hundred mediocre ones.”

Molina and the president had run out of questions.

Grafton continued, addressing the president: “On Thursday of next week you are scheduled to appear at a political fund-raiser in New York. It’s probably been announced and been in the newspapers and on the Internet for weeks.”

The president nodded.

“You’re going to China this weekend for three days. That was probably also publicized.”

This time Molina nodded.

“The rest of your schedule for the next two weeks looks benign. No public events, just the usual preparation for the next session of Congress, budget talks and so forth. I think it’s possible that Abu Qasim may make a try during your New York visit. I’d like to help him out, with your permission, by including Winchester, Smith, Cairnes and Isolde Petrou as invited guests at the fund-raiser. The press secretary can put their names on the list and give it to the press. I suggest that Sal call Winchester and extend invitations.”

“I thought no one knew what Qasim looks like.”

“No one but his daughter, Marisa. Carmellini is sitting on her. She’ll be at the fund-raiser with Tommy and me.”

The president rubbed his chin. “Qasim was in Europe, you think?”

“Probably still is. He’ll be coming this way—you can bet the ranch on that.”

“Any chance Homeland Security or the FBI can pick up his trail?”

Grafton shrugged. “I’ve talked to the secretary of Homeland and the FBI director. I have another meeting with Homeland and my boss, Wilkins, scheduled for tomorrow. We can only hope.”

It went without saying that the Secret Service would pull out all the stops searching the hotel where the fund-raiser would be held. They would even use radar to look at the structure of the building.

“Are you going to be able to keep Winchester alive until then?”

“I’ll try.”

The president looked at Molina. “Sal?”

Molina shrugged. “This mess will probably go nuclear before then. If the press gets wind of this …” His voice trailed off as he scratched his forehead. He looked at Grafton. “Got any other ideas?”

“No.”

“Darn.” Molina said it softly, almost inaudibly.

The president came to life, sat up straight. “Do you trust Marisa Petrou?” he demanded of Jake.

“Within reason, I suppose. I’d give her a quarter for a parking meter.”

“You’re lying,” Molina said acidly. “You wouldn’t trust her with a wooden nickel.”

Jake Grafton didn’t respond.

The president smiled grimly. “Admiral, remind me to never, ever play poker with you. You’re going for the whole pot with nary a pair. You don’t even have an ace. You’ve got nothing but a lousy black queen.”

Grafton nodded.

“I can’t wait until the wolves in Congress get their fangs in this,” the president said. “It’s going to be one hell of a circus.” He shooed them both out.

chapter EIGHTEEN

I awoke on the descent into Dulles. The sky was dark, full of clouds. Soon the glow of Washington’s lights lit the clouds from underneath; then, as we continued to descend, the sea of lights became visible from horizon to horizon. Marisa woke up and busied herself getting put together while I got glimpses out the window.

As the wheels squeaked on the runway, the flight attendant, a woman, came on the PA: “Let me be the first to welcome you to the United States.” As a cheer erupted from the tourist section, Marisa smiled at me.

A man from the Company met us when we came out of customs/ immigration and drove us straight to Jake Grafton’s condo in Rosslyn. While Isolde and Marisa were nibbling snacks in the kitchen with Callie Grafton, the admiral motioned me into his den. He sat and listened while I went through everything that had happened, in minute detail, since we had last seen each other.

When I finished my litany of stupidity and death, he didn’t say anything, so I added, “I’m sorry, Admiral.”

“You don’t owe anyone an apology, Tommy. Not me, the dead people or the gods. You did the best you could. That’s all any of us can do.”

“Well, we have them here in the States now. With all those gun-toters at Langley to help us, a mouse couldn’t get through to them.”

He took a deep breath and his eyebrows rose, then fell. “Unfortunately I can’t get all those gun-toters. I can’t get any of them. Wilkins and his deputies nixed that. They have zero confidence in me, and they say that if indeed we do have a squad of dedicated terrorists heading this way, the Company needs all its security personnel in place and on the job to prevent a terrorist event at Langley. Hard to argue with that.”

I was incredulous. “Can’t you get anybody?”

“I brought back some of the guys that have been hunting in the Middle East, the ones I could pull out without blowing their covers. The FBI has loaned me a couple of people, and I have you. If you can get your pal Willie Varner to help, we can add one more to the list. That’s about the crop.”

I felt nauseous. “Why don’t you get Sal Molina to tell Wilkins to cooperate or ship out?”

“If I did that, I’d be finished in the Company. It was Wilkins’ call and he made it. Period.”

“So we salute and soldier on.”

“Something like that.”

I lost it then.

Grafton waited until I ran down, then said, “The women are sleeping in the guest bedroom tonight. You’re on the couch. Tomorrow morning, go see Willie.”

He opened a drawer and took out a pistol, a 1911 Colt automatic in .45 ACP, which he passed across the desk. I popped the magazine out, then pulled back the slide and checked for brass. It was loaded, all right. I snapped the magazine back in and looked it over.

“It was my father’s,” the admiral said. “He carried it during World War II. I want it back.”

“He ever have to shoot anybody with it?” I asked as I tucked it into my belt.

“He once told me he did, then refused to answer questions about it.”

“Marisa said Qasim wants you dead, too.”

“By God, I hope so,” Grafton said fiercely. “I hope he attends to it personally instead of sending his mechanic’s assistant, Khadr.”

“He might also decide that Callie will do in a pinch. Or your daughter, Amy.”