Hour of the Assassin

by Matthew Quirk

  How many of them were there? Dread washed through Nick, left an acid taste in his throat.

  A faint noise near the back stairs: footsteps. Nick stalked closer. It was an echo from above.

  Two low thumps sounded through the ceiling, somewhere on the upper floors, between him and Malcolm Widener. Nick’s breath caught. It felt for an instant like all the air had rushed out of the room and there was nothing to fill his lungs.

  He sprinted to the stairs and climbed, then edged into the hallway that led to Widener’s office, scanning in both directions. The office’s side door was open.

  Nick moved toward it, the adrenaline pushing him forward like an automaton. He pressed against the wall, left side, then right, buying as much of a vantage on the room as he could.

  He saw the desk, the back of Widener’s chair, a still hand palm-to-ceiling on the armrest.

  Fast through the door. He blew into the room and circled. A glossy red-black puddle inched across the floor. He stepped to the side and saw Widener, sprawled across the chair, his clothes slick as a barber’s gown, wet with his blood.

  Nick scanned the room. No one else was here. His eyes went back to Widener’s throat. Whoever had done this was a professional, moving quickly with no sign of hesitation.

  Pressure. Airway. Breathing. Circulation.

  Nick took two long strides toward him and clamped his hand over his neck. He felt for a pulse. It was there.

  No. That was his own. Nick’s heart banged against his chest like an unbalanced dryer. He looked into Widener’s eyes, searching for a spark of life, but they were like glass.

  A knife lay on the floor. Nick knew that blade. He crouched and reached for it, felt the blood drip down his fingers. He lifted it and examined the weapon, the tip rounded from resharpening, the handle worn, smooth and shining where the index finger would rest, with a large chip missing near the lanyard hole. It wasn’t just the same kind of knife. It was the knife, his knife.

  Nick had left it at his office two hours ago.

  His face felt hot, fevered. Now would be a great time to wake, Nick.

  He regripped the knife and spun. He was still alone. He looked on the desk for the letter of authorization. That document would prove he was no criminal. It was gone, along with the other papers.

  Whoever had killed Widener had taken them.

  Nick held the knife and looked to the body, then the blood on his hands. He understood the scene, the simple story it told. Nick Averose, who could get to anyone, anywhere, had murdered the former director of the CIA.

  4

  How did that night go so wrong? Through the next desperate hours, the question wouldn’t let go of Nick as he picked apart every moment that had brought him to Widener’s office, looking for some way he could have known, could have stopped it all.

  But the day that ended with Nick holding that knife had started ordinarily enough, or whatever passed for ordinary in Nick’s world.

  Many former Secret Service agents go into corporate security, guarding VIPs and managing risk for multinational companies. But Nick had his own shop that he ran out of a converted carriage house in the Shaw neighborhood of DC. He liked working for himself and setting his own hours. His reputation brought in more clients than he could handle, and he could afford to pick the more interesting challenges.

  That morning he’d come in early with breakfast sandwiches for himself and Delia Tayran, the twenty-seven-year-old engineer who handled the IT and technical side of the business. She was Nick’s only employee, though she was more like family.

  They’d finished going over the plan of attack on Widener’s residence for a third and final time by eleven.

  By eleven thirty, Nick was in handcuffs, his arms bound behind his back. Delia had locked him up like a pro. They were taking a break, messing around with a strange pair of cuffs, seeing if Nick could pick his way out of them. Locks and safes and restraints were all part of the trade. Delia always seemed to know when Nick could use a respite from the tunnel vision of plotting a job and the role he played.

  He worked against his linebacker’s build, trying to pass the cuffs under his legs and in front of him. He hopped and tugged and felt them budge against the back pockets of his jeans. They moved an inch farther, but that threw off his balance and he had to lean against the wall.

  “Mercy?” Delia asked, standing in front of him with her hands on her hips, laughing.

  “Never. Who made these?” He slid his fingers over the metal, feeling along the hinge, looking for the keyway, trying to angle a bent pick inside.

  “The Stasi. Some hacker guy I met at a conference let me borrow them. Don’t scratch them.”

  Delia looked to her side and her jaw dropped slightly. Nick craned his head back.

  A woman stood in the open door of the shop, arms crossed, a mix of apprehension and wonder on her face as she took in the scene.

  Delia leaned down and fumbled with the key while Nick smiled at their guest. Her name was Alexandra Hart. She was a lawyer for Aegis, a high-end executive protection firm based in London and New York. They handled Malcolm Widener’s security and had hired Nick to run an audit at his residence that night.

  Hart wore a tweed dress with short sleeves that showed the upper arms of a dedicated athlete. Her hair, her mouth, her posture—everything was pulled tight in a determined beauty.

  “Be with you in a minute,” Nick said.

  The cuffs released. Nick rubbed his wrists and held his hand out. “Alexandra, come on in.”

  She tucked her small attaché under her left arm and shook his hand while eyeing the red marks from the cuffs.

  “Escaping illegal restraints,” he said. “Part of the portfolio.”

  “Of course,” she said primly, and brought out a file. Nick always signed the letter of authorization in person. They executed three copies. After Nick did tonight’s job at Widener’s house and saw just how vulnerable the former director was, he would document any weaknesses and report them back to Hart.

  “I’m eager to hear your findings,” she said.

  “I look forward to it,” Nick replied, and puzzled over his own formal diction. He was too old and too married and too professional to be thrown by a gorgeous woman, but there was something else about her his attention kept snagging on, something beneath the all-business exterior.

  Nick watched her walk out and turned to see Delia looking at him. She rolled her eyes. Nick checked his watch. They were way ahead of schedule. He pointed to the cuffs.

  “One more go,” he said. “I was close, right?”

  Delia squinted and seesawed her hand in the air. “‘Close’ would be generous. I know we’ve been over this before, but I have one word.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Yoga,” she said, and closed the cuffs around his wrists.

  He was out of them in eight minutes.

  That was it. A regular day. A good day. No sign of the storm to come.

  At six o’clock, Delia went home after they finished prepping gear. Nick liked to do his final run-through alone, sitting in silence, going through the whole operation second-by-second in his mind.

  He was ready. He drew his knife from the sheath and put it in the top drawer of his desk, then went out to the cabinet safe where he kept his gun. He checked and rechecked that the Smith & Wesson magazine was unloaded and the chamber clear. He placed the ammo in the safe, along with a copy of the letter of authorization in case anything went wrong.

  He put the paperwork in his pocket and—armed with an empty sheath and gun—locked up and went outside. His truck was parked in the front. He started it up and headed for Malcolm Widener’s house.

  5

  Now Nick stood over Widener’s body on the top floor of that home, anger and pity rising in him in equal measure. The presence of death seemed to fill the room, lingering in the air like smoke.

  He lifted the landline on the desk. No dial tone. His cell still had no signal. He heard rustling through the window, i
n the side yard, then the softest whisper of a step in the hall.

  He crossed the office with silent paces and sprinted through the main door.

  He saw the blow coming, a blur at the edge of his vision. A man, pressed against the wall just outside, thrust his hand toward Nick’s face.

  It was blue. A surgical glove. Nick halted, leaned back as if slipping on ice, and the glove passed an inch from his jaw.

  Nick seized the wrist and drove his fingers and thumb like a C-clamp between the radius and ulna, where the nerves ran.

  A short, vicious punch from the man’s free hand caught Nick in the temple, but Nick stayed up, wrenched the arm, dragged him toward the floor.

  The attacker leaned to the side, trying to relieve the pressure on the joint, and Nick pushed him over. He crashed, twisting, to the ground, and Nick let the wrist go, then kicked him hard in the stomach, the head.

  The man raised himself with one arm and brought his feet beneath him, but as he stood, his face went slack. Nick noticed a substance smeared across his cheek and lips that looked like petroleum jelly.

  The man looked at the glove, the palm coated with the same oily material, then fell to the side. He didn’t move, didn’t even try to check the fall.

  Nick edged toward him and snatched the gun from the man’s holster. No response. He had tried to hit Nick with whatever was on that glove. It must have been some kind of paralytic.

  Nick checked the pistol. A round was chambered. The mag was full. He started down the hall, then froze. Doors opened and closed in the front and side of the house.

  He moved toward the rear stairs and heard more people coming.

  He stepped back into Widener’s office. He was trapped. The one with the glove had been in the lead. The others downstairs sounded like they were moving in from the exits, closing a noose around Nick to make sure he couldn’t escape.

  Blind them. You need the dark.

  He slipped the knife blade through the cord of the desk lamp. A blue spark leaped out, and the room went black. The metal in the knife short-circuited the wires and tripped the breaker. That was what he had hoped for. The hallway was dark, too. The same breaker fed this wing.

  Surprise them. Get to their backs. Knife in hand, he went to the window, saw a figure moving across the yard, and crossed the room to the other side. There was a circular window at the end of a dormer. It looked onto the peak of the roof below. It was high up with steep slate on either side, but he could see a way out: along the spine, down to the roof of the sunroom, and then a twelve-foot drop to the back lawn.

  His mind worked coldly, methodically, focusing on each move, each next step, holding back the panic and shock.

  He looked for a latch to open the window, but there was none. He brought his elbow back and drove it into the frame. The glass shattered, and pain shot up his forearm. He ignored it as the night air rushed in.

  6

  Gray crossed the entry hall of Malcolm Widener’s house, calm amid the violence. Men with pistols drawn followed him like a pack of dogs.

  The lead man had taken down Widener quickly and cleanly. He excelled at stealth and so had gone in first. Now all Gray needed was Nick Averose, dead in this same house, to complete the story. They had him surrounded, all the exits blocked.

  He heard glass shatter above and vectored on the noise, his body tensing. He raced up the stairs. Moving down the hallway, Gray held his flashlight beside his gun, checking every door, every corner, as he passed. The men fanned out, searching, closing in on Widener’s office.

  Gray stepped inside. The flashlights illuminated the director’s body, the finger-streaked blood.

  A draft streamed into the room, and they fixed on a circular window, its frame and glass busted out.

  Gray moved toward it, looked through, and saw the shards glittering along the roof.

  “He’s gone,” his deputy said quietly, peering over the backyard.

  “Go.” Gray flicked his head toward the window. The man climbed through, broken glass crunching under his legs, hissing in pain but saying nothing.

  Gray approached the desk with his light and glanced over Widener’s body. The knife was gone. That was only the beginning of the evidence he needed to complete the frame. He had plenty. But he also had Nick Averose armed and on the loose.

  He needed to take him before he made it over that fence.

  7

  Nick pressed himself against the panel, deep in the kneehole under Malcolm Widener’s desk, pulling back from the light as if it, in itself, were lethal. A man moved a few feet away.

  The blood had pooled here, lukewarm and tacky, clinging to the soles of Nick’s shoes and his hand pressed against the floor. That meant more tracks and more prints, but right now that was the least of his concerns. He felt like he had stepped outside his body and was watching it all happen, a nightmare so lucid it shocks you out of sleep.

  But there was no waking from this. He forced himself to slow down, to breathe. His forearm started to cramp and he eased his grip on the knife. The nearest man moved closer, stepping around the blood. Nick narrowed his eyes against the light.

  They would find him. He had no chance. He was going to die in this room, on this floor. The thought nearly broke him, left him numb and unable to move, but as he faced it, he found an eerie calm in the center of the fear.

  He wouldn’t go quietly. He flipped the knife into an ice-pick grip and tensed, stomach tight, ready to lunge as the man came closer.

  “What is it?” someone asked.

  Sudden dark. The light moved away. Voices spoke, but they were farther off and he couldn’t make out the words. Footsteps moved out of the room. He heard a tile skitter and fall. Nick had heard the sounds of more glass breaking. Now he understood. Someone had gone through the window and was on the roof. These men were following the false trail he had left.

  He waited, then slipped forward on his elbows. The room was empty. He stood and stole toward the side door, and saw men walking down the back hall. One spoke quietly into a radio mic connected to an earpiece. They were headed for the stairs in the rear of the house, going toward the route he would have taken if he had escaped through that window. Nick went out the office’s other door and took the hall to the house’s main stairs. He stopped halfway down the last flight leading to the ground floor.

  Boot soles creaked faintly on the marble below. Someone had new footwear tonight. A mistake. New rubber on smooth floors would often make a sound. Nick moved closer. The guard waited near the landing. Nick wanted stealth, wanted to get out of here without bringing hell down on himself, but he didn’t have time to hold until that man moved on. He took the stairs one by one, weight on the balls of his feet, testing for noise before he committed to each step.

  The blood pumping through his body made the growing bruise on his temple ache with every beat. How long had it been, before tonight, since he had last been in a real life-or-death fight? Not since the Service.

  The figure was side-lit and looking toward the back of the house, where they were hunting Nick. Nick noticed a scar on the man’s neck. Nick had his knife and could have taken him quietly, but he wasn’t going to kill anyone if he didn’t have to. Step by step. How close until the target heard the rustle of fabric? Heard him breathe?

  Close enough. The man turned but Nick was already in motion. Sweeping his arm through the air, he caught the man in his windpipe as he pivoted, and brought him down hard on his back as if he had slipped on black ice. He was out.

  Nick crouched by the wall, put the tip of his knife in an outlet, then kicked it in, breaking the plastic and shorting the circuit with a bolt of blue lightning. Another breaker tripped. Nick picked up the knife and moved through the blackness.

  8

  Gray stood on the back deck of the house and watched the lights sweeping the yard.

  “We don’t see him,” said a voice on the radio.

  He heard a crack from inside, then turned and stepped back into the house. He tried t
he lights. Nothing.

  He raised his pistol, held his light beside the barrel, and advanced.

  Kitchen: clear. Living room: clear.

  He spoke into his radio. “Is he inside?”

  “He must be. We have a man down by the front door.”

  “Dead?”

  “No, jacked up proper, though.”

  “I’ll come to you and we’ll clear it room by room.”

  A sound like a right cross to a heavy bag, leather pounding leather. It was hard to place it with all the echoes in the hall.

  “Copy?”

  No answer.

  “Copy?”

  Another man down. Gray spun, his flashlight circling like a lighthouse beam.

  Averose, where the fuck are you?

  9

  Nick crouched over the man on the ground, the second he had taken down, just inside the front door. He patted his pockets, looking for a wallet or keys or an extra magazine for the gun.

  They were empty except for a set of Chevy keys. Nick eased open the door and stepped outside. He could see people moving at the side of the yard and lights crossing the entry hall, coming after him.

  He ran and ducked behind the hedges. A Chevy Suburban was parked on the street, but there was no way he could get to it without going through those men.

  He took his own keys out of his pocket and pressed the small red button. After two seconds, the horn sounded and lights flashed behind the house, the alarm on his own truck. The flashlights broke away, fixed on the source of the noise.

  “Out back!” someone yelled.

  Nick sprinted to the fence along the front of the property, leaped high, and dragged himself over. He landed on the far side and came up half stumbling and half running. He went to the driver’s door of the Suburban, put the key in the lock, and opened it, avoiding the fob so that no lights or horn would give him away.