“Would you like to be on my e-mail and mailing list?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
The door opened and Annabel’s husband came through it.
“This is my husband, Mackensie,” Annabel told the visitor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”
Silva smiled, fixed Mac in a hard stare, shook his head, and left the gallery.
“A buyer?” Mac asked.
“Just browsing. See? I arranged the new plates.”
He admired the display along with his wife. “Looks great,” he said.
“I hope they sell.”
“You didn’t know him?” Mac asked.
“Who?”
“The man who just left.”
“No.”
“He wasn’t anxious to give his name.”
Annabel laughed. “He probably didn’t want to be inundated with e-mail and mailings from me. I don’t blame him.”
“Free for lunch?” Mac asked.
“Sure.”
“Founding Farmers by the World Bank, say twelve thirty?”
“See you there.”
They kissed, then Mac stepped out onto the sidewalk where Silva stood looking into an adjacent shop window in which expensive women’s shoes were displayed.
“Beauty of a different sort,” Mac commented as he came up beside him.
“What?”
“Women’s shoes and pre-Columbian art. Beautiful but different.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s right,” Silva said.
The men looked at each other without saying anything else before Silva walked away.
Mac watched him navigate shoppers and disappear into another shop. There was something about the man that bothered Mac. He’d become an astute judge of people, honed by dealing with every possible variety of criminal when practicing law. This man with whom he’d had only the briefest of contact triggered something visceral in the former attorney, nothing he could put his finger on but there nonetheless. It was in the eyes, he decided. There was a coldness there that Smith had seen too many times before, a lack of affect that he’d learned was characteristic of a certain type of man. He made a mental note to suggest to Annabel at lunch that, should the man come into the gallery again, she be on her toes.
Silva, too, had had a negative reaction to this man who was the gallery owner’s husband. This was someone to stay away from and Silva was sorry that he’d visited the gallery. He didn’t know why he felt that way but the presentiment itself was sufficient. Maybe it was the aftershave lotion this man named Mackensie wore, or an odor emanating from his pores. No matter. This was a man who could spell trouble for Silva—for anyone—someone to be avoided. Not that his reaction to Smith mattered. He would never visit the gallery again or have occasion to bump into Annabel’s husband anywhere else.
He was scheduled to meet with Dexter at noon and had decided to spend the latter part of the morning perusing Georgetown’s shops, which he enjoyed doing. Annabel’s gallery was just one of his stops. He had no interest in pre-Columbian art, or any art for that matter, but it had looked like an attractive space in which to kill time.
Emile had assumed that his meeting with Dexter would be at the office building near the Pentagon, but he was mistaken. Dexter had said something about the need to avoid going to that place and had suggested a Burger King on K Street, which amused Silva. Meetings not held at the office were always conducted in fast-food restaurants because Dexter, and those for whom he worked, had decided that such places were safe, based on the assumption that men involved in high-level nefarious activities wouldn’t stoop to that gastronomic level. It didn’t matter to Silva, although he detested fast food and would have preferred to meet in higher-class establishments like 701 or Citronelle, The Palm, or Tosca. But his job wasn’t to make decisions. His job was to kill, something at which he was very good.
As he drove to his rendezvous with Dexter, Mac Smith’s face kept injecting itself into his thoughts, and Annabel’s, too. She was a beautiful woman—too beautiful for her husband. He played out a fantasy of slowly slashing the husband’s throat while a naked Annabel looked on. That brought a smile to his face as he pulled into the lot and parked.
Dexter was already at a table wedged into a corner away from others. “Order something,” he said when Silva came to the table. Silva returned with a tray holding a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke.
“You pick the nicest places to meet,” Silva said through a smile.
“It serves its purpose,” Dexter responded.
“Why was my trip abroad canceled?” Silva asked.
“It became inconvenient to send you.”
“Pity. I was looking forward to getting away. So, why am I here today?”
“We may have another assignment for you.”
“Where?”
“That hasn’t been decided yet. But in the meantime I want you to leave the city for a few weeks until the Mutki affair cools down.”
Silva laughed and tasted the sandwich. “I never realized how much of a storm that would create.”
“It was handled poorly.”
Silva frowned. “Not by me,” he said.
“By everyone. Our sponsors have made their displeasure known to me.”
Dexter’s mention of his “sponsors” triggered a series of thoughts for Silva. He’d never been sure who gave the orders for someone to be eliminated using the group headed by Dexter that was headquartered in the Virginia office building. That facility was relatively new. When Silva first started working for the enterprise there had been no central location. All orders came from hotel suites. But it was decided—by whom, Silva didn’t know—that it would be best to establish a business front with space to house the various instruments, technology, and weapons used to carry out the group’s missions.
Emile Silva had intended to make a career out of the marines. But a series of incidents in which his rage overflowed, resulting in physical attacks on fellow servicemen, led to a decision by his superiors that he was mentally unstable, unable to function in the corps’ structured environment. He’d fought that finding but had been unsuccessful, and left the service with a general discharge—and a need to seek revenge on those former comrades-in-arms whose testimony had been the basis for his dismissal. One in particular topped his retribution list.
Silva and Buddy Carcini had become friends while in uniform, as much of a friendship as Silva, constitutionally a loner, was able to develop with anyone. Carcini was a fast-talking Italian from New York who appreciated Silva’s cockiness and jaundiced view of the world, and of authority. They were competitive in many aspects of their service, on the shooting range, in hand-to-hand combat drills, and in a special sharp-shooting unit both had applied for and been accepted into.
It was off the base where the problems between them emerged and festered. It seemed to Silva that Carcini spent every hour off-duty chasing girls from the local town. Silva went along with him on some of his hunts but was never comfortable with his buddy’s sweet talk to each young woman they met. It wasn’t that Silva was shy. He could talk as good a story as Carcini, and a number of the girls made it obvious that they were taken with him. But when it came time to follow through, to entice a girl into a local motel or into the backseat of a borrowed car, Silva backed off, much to Carcini’s amusement. But after a few episodes like this, Carcini’s amusement turned to sarcasm, and then to questions about whether Silva was a closet homosexual.
Silva had finally had enough. One night as Carcini slept in their barracks, Silva pulled a switchblade knife from where he’d secreted it in his bunk, silently went to Carcini’s bunk, clasped a hand over his mouth, and pressed the blade against the New Yorker’s throat. “If you ever call me a fag again,” Silva hissed, “I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear.”
The next morning, Carcini saw blood on his pillow. When he looked into the mirror, he saw that the knife had traced a four-inch-thin red line just beneath his Adam’s apple. He conside
red not reporting the attack but the cut was too blatant to go unnoticed. Besides, he’d had it with Silva. And there was patriotism to be considered. The marine corps didn’t need a flaming fag in its ranks. He told his superior what had occurred, and the captain passed the story up the chain of command. This wasn’t the first experience the brass had had with Silva and his penchant for settling every argument with physical force. It was time to get rid of him, and Carcini’s testimony was the basis for his removal from the corps.
Silva maintained his proud bearing as he walked out of the hearing. He paused where Carcini was seated, smiled at him, and left the base and his career in the United States Marines behind.
It took several years for the right circumstance to present itself for Silva to be in contact with Buddy Carcini again. Carcini had left the corps and was working and living in Chicago according to posts on his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Silva, who’d supported himself in Washington as a bouncer at topless clubs and by applying muscle for local bookies and mobsters, went to Chicago, staked out where Carcini worked and lived, and spent three days shadowing him. On the third night, when Carcini left a girlfriend’s apartment at three in the morning, Silva followed him to where he’d parked his car.
“Hey, Buddy, remember me?” Silva asked as Carcini, who’d had too much to drink, fumbled to insert his key in the lock.
Carcini turned and squinted in the dimness of the streetlight.
“Emile, Buddy. Emile Silva,” he said with a throaty laugh.
“Oh, Jesus, I’ll be damned,” Carcini said. He extended his hand. Silva grabbed it, pulled him close, and rammed a knife into Carcini’s throat, severing the jugular vein. His former friend slid to the pavement and was dead in less than a minute. Silva wiped the knife on Carcini’s shirt and walked away, a satisfied smile on his face. He took the next available flight back to Washington and assumed that the murder of his former friend and fellow marine would become another in Chicago’s unsolved-cases file. He knew one thing for certain: he’d never felt more alive than that night.
He continued to work odd jobs in the D.C. area until one night when he met a well-dressed man in a bar. They fell into an easy conversation and the topic of what Silva did for a living came up. He mentioned his work as a bouncer.
“You can handle yourself, huh?” the man said.
“I do pretty well.”
“Ever been in the military?”
Silva said that he’d been a marine, and after some gentle probing by the man he told him why he had left the corps. “I don’t like to be pushed around,” Silva added as an explanation for having threatened his fellow serviceman, leaving out the reference to his sexuality.
“I’d have done the same thing,” the man said.
“There are people in this world who don’t deserve to live,” Silva said.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Their conversation flowed easily, with Silva’s drinking companion smoothly segueing from topic to topic until it settled on politics.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Silva said, “all this pantywaist diplomacy with these bastards around the world who hate us is a waste of time. We should just take ’em out, get rid of them.”
The man agreed with this, too. He’d agreed with every philosophy Silva had espoused.
“Same with some of the lefties in this country. What good are they? We’re too soft, that’s our problem. I think Jamison might finally put us on the right track. What do you think?”
“I like the new president. He’s tough, doesn’t take guff from anyone including our so-called allies.”
“If I were calling the shots I’d turn Iran and North Korea into parking lots, bomb ’em to oblivion.”
The man laughed gently. “I’m not sure I agree with that approach but I see your point. You say you work as a bouncer.”
“On and off.”
“I know someone who might be looking for a person with your skills and outlook,” the man said.
“Really? What kind of job is it?”
“It would be best if he described it to you. He has a small, privately held company that does contract work for the government. Very low-key, not on anyone’s radar screen.”
“What, like Blackwater, private security?”
“Similar. If you’re interested, I’ll pass along your name and contact information. No guarantees, of course, but it might be worth exploring. Nothing to lose, as they say.”
“Makes sense to me.”
Silva gave him his name and phone number before leaving the bar. Two days later he received a call. “My name is Dexter. A colleague of mine says you might be the sort of person we’re looking for.”
“Yeah, he said you might be calling.”
“I would like to meet with you.”
“Sure. Just tell me where and when.”
Silva met Dexter in a suite in the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. He disliked the little man from their initial handshake, disliked his thick glasses and nasal voice and creviced bald head. He also disliked the little man’s careful choice of words, never anything concrete, just beating around the bush and talking in vagaries. After forty-five minutes, Silva asked him to get to the point about the job and whether he was being seriously considered for it.
“Have you ever killed a man?” was Dexter’s answer.
This sudden directness caught Silva off guard. He fumbled for an answer, which seemed to amuse Dexter. “It shouldn’t be hard to answer,” he said through his smile. “Either you did or you didn’t.”
“All right, I did.” Silva decided that he could make that admission without being specific, not incriminating himself with any particular crime.
“What were the circumstances?” Dexter asked.
“That’s my business,” Silva said.
“I appreciate discretion.”
“Yeah, well, it happened because I needed to right a wrong.”
“A noble motivation. Did you use a weapon?”
“Knife,” Silva said, realizing he was now revealing too much.
“And how did you feel after you’d righted this wrong?”
“I felt—I felt good. It was the right thing to do.”
“I’m sure it was. How would you feel about killing someone you don’t know?”
Silva held up his hands and said, “Whoa. What is this, some set-up?”
Dexter allowed the comment to pass. He said, “I’m talking about killing someone to right wrongs.”
“What, a hit? Hey, forget I was even here. I’m not into anything illegal.”
“Why do you assume it would be—illegal?”
“Because—”
“What if it were sanctioned by your own government?”
“Huh?”
“When the government decides to do something in the interest of national security, or because our way of life is being threatened, it’s hardly illegal. In fact, it’s for a common good, for the good of the citizens of this wonderful country.”
“Then that would make it all right I guess.”
“You would have killed the enemy when you were a marine, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Killed on behalf of your government.”
“Right.”
“Not all soldiers in the fight against tyranny and the destruction of our precious way of life wear uniforms, Mr. Silva. Some of our most patriotic citizens have been people exactly like you, men who treasure our democracy and who don’t hesitate to do what needs to be done to preserve it.”
“Sure, I agree with that,” said Silva. “But I thought I came up here to be interviewed for a job.”
“Oh, that is exactly what I’m doing, Mr. Silva. I happen to have a job opening for which you might be perfectly suited. I should add that it pays handsomely for very little work.”
Silva smiled for the first time that afternoon. “You’ve got my attention,” he said.
“Good.”
“What’s the name of your company?” Sil
va asked. “What’s your name? All I know is ‘Dexter.’”
“Best that it be left that way for the moment. I would like to meet with you again.”
“Sure. Anytime.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
He was, two days later. Silva met again with Dexter and the man who’d befriended him in the bar. That man’s name was never mentioned, nor was Dexter’s last name. But their intentions were clear to Silva.
He was now a paid assassin for the United States government.
CHAPTER 18
Mitzi Cardell woke with a headache and sour stomach. She’d had a series of nightmares that had caused her to toss and turn, and she’d awoken a few times with a gasp, her chest pounding. It was good that she and her husband slept in separate beds.
He’d gotten up early to catch a plane to attend a business meeting in London. She had pretended to be asleep when he kissed her on the forehead and said, “I’ll be back soon. I love you.”
With him gone, she got out of bed, went into her private bath, and viewed herself in a large theatrical mirror surrounded by bulbs. She didn’t like what she saw. “Calm down,” she told herself, using ineffective words.
She went downstairs dressed in a robe and slippers and went to the kitchen, where a member of the staff was cleaning up after John’s breakfast.
“Mr. Muszinski got off all right?” Mitzi asked.
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Would you like breakfast now?”
“What? No, no, thank you. Not yet.”
She went to her office and dialed her father’s number in Savannah.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said.
“I’ve been up for hours, sweetheart. John told you I called last night?”
“Yes. What is this all about?”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
She heard him shut a door and return to the phone. “Ah’ve done some checking on this private investigator who visited Waldine Farnsworth. He’s a former Savannah police officer, now retired.”
“You told John that he was asking Waldine about Louise. Louise Watkins?”
“Evidently. I’ve already had some of my people take a look at this detective and his interest in Ms. Watkins. Seems he’s working for the girl’s mother.”
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