But he sure as hell knew what they looked like. What he’d never realized until this very moment was how goddamned big a pistol looked when it was being leveled between one’s eyes.
Which accurately described his current situation.
He froze and tried not to make his terror obvious. The intruder’s wry smile told him he’d failed.
“How did you get in here?” Clayton said. “This is the official residence of the United States Ambassador to France, and you are not welcome in my home.”
The man’s smile widened. “I understand. I think I will stay anyway. And to answer your question, there is always a way in, if you know where to look and are willing to impart the proper…motivation…to those who insist on attempting to stop you.”
Despite his fear, Clayton cocked his head at the sound of the man’s accent. After spending the better part of seven years as a semi-permanent resident of Paris, he’d become quite accustomed to the heavy French accent of those Parisians who spoke English, and this was not it.
This was not even close to it.
The man’s English was passable, in a “foreigner-who-learned-the-language-but-doesn’t-speak-it-regularly” kind of way, but the accent was as far from French as it was possible to get.
It sounded Russian.
Clayton raised his eyes and met the man’s gaze head-on. It was difficult to do, but he decided anything would be better than staring down the barrel of that awful gun.
Then their eyes locked and he reconsidered his hypothesis. Because despite the smile on the intruder’s face, the man’s eyes were cold and stony and glittering with hostility.
It was becoming harder to keep his voice steady, but somehow Clayton managed it. For now. “What sort of ‘motivation’ did you impart on my security? How many men did you shoot?”
A wounded look crossed the intruder’s face and then disappeared. “I did not shoot any of your men. How could I be expected to surprise you if bullets were flying outside your window?”
“Then I’ll ask the same question a different way. How did you neutralize my security?”
“At the point of a knife.” The glitter deepened in the man’s eyes. At first Clayton assumed it was the expression of a madman, but now he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t think the intruder was insane, not exactly. Not clinically, at least. He was…highly committed.
To what, Clayton had no idea.
“How many men did you kill with your knife to gain access to my home?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to that question, but the intruder hadn’t pulled the trigger yet, and Clayton figured if he could continue the dialogue, maybe he could figure a way out of this mess.
It was the longest of long shots, but it was better than dying where he sat.
“As many as I encountered,” the man answered flatly. His amused smile was gone and Clayton longed desperately for its return.
The two men gazed at each other for what felt like an extended period of time, and then Clayton said, “What do you want? Why are you here?”
“What I want is to make a point. As for why I am here, well, isn’t it obvious?” The intruder glanced down at his gun and then across the desk at Clayton, and at that moment Clayton realized he really needed to pee.
“Wh-what kind of point are you trying to make, and to whom?”
“That is of no concern to you.”
“Of course it’s my concern! You’re holding a gun to my head and threatening my life, so—”
“Taking,” the man interrupted.
“Excuse me?”
“You said I am threatening your life. I merely attempted to correct the inaccuracy of your statement. I will be taking your life.”
“But…why? What have I ever done to you?”
“I already told you why. I am making a point. Sending a message. And to answer your second question, I am quite certain you have never done anything to me. In fact, you seem like a fine, upstanding, reasonable man. Please do not feel this is in any way personal.”
“It is to me.”
The smile returned. “Da. I suppose it would be.”
“Don’t do this. It’s not too late to leave, and if you do no one ever has to know you were here. I give you my word I won’t—”
“Please stop. Begging for your life is humiliating. It is beneath you, Mr. Ambassador, and more to the point, it is irrelevant. I told you this is not personal. I am simply doing what must be done to get the attention of people who have thus far ignored me, and so I have no choice but to finish what I set out to do. Anything you say, any begging you do, will be meaningless in that context.”
Clayton realized his eyesight had become blurry because his eyes had filled with tears. This scene felt unreal, like something out of a nightmare, and yet it was as real as the big black gun being pointed in his direction. He thought about Rebecca, and about Lorena and Matt, and about how he would never see any of them again. He thanked God he had sent them away, but wished with all his heart he could hold each of them one more time.
“If it is any consolation, Mr. Ambassador, there will be no pain. It will be over quickly and you will never feel a thing.”
Clayton swallowed heavily. His fingers felt numb and he wondered if he might be suffering the onset of a stroke. “It really isn’t,” he whispered.
“Perhaps not, but remember, things could always be worse. They could, in fact, be much worse. Be thankful you must not ingest the poison I forced your comrade, Ambassador Wickheiser to ingest.”
“Poison?”
“Da. It was not over quickly for Comrade Wickhesier.”
“Oh, God, why…”
“There is nothing to be gained by continuing to discuss topics we have already covered. What do you say we get started?”
Clayton’s throat was suddenly as dry as the Sahara. He tried to answer but discovered the term “tongue-tied” had a literal application. He simply could not speak. He began shaking his head, breathing heavily as his blurry eyes began leaking down his cheeks.
“Do not move,” the intruder said, apparently not realizing Clayton not only couldn’t move, he could barely breathe. The intruder stepped back to the office doorway and bent down while continuing to train his gun steadily on Clayton. He’d placed a small gym bag on the floor and after rummaging around inside the bag for a moment, retrieved a roll of shiny silver duct tape.
The intruder displayed the roll to Clayton and said, “Duct tape would not be my first choice of binding for this operation, but as I mentioned, the point of this exercise is to capture the attention of the proper people, so I must do what will best accomplish that goal.”
He stood and approached Clayton and Clayton instinctively shrank back in his desk chair, scrabbling his feet against the polished hardwood floor and rolling the wheeled chair backward.
The chair thudded into the wall and Clayton heard picture frames rattling above his head as the intruder shook his head sadly. “Please, Mr. Ambassador, do not continue to humiliate yourself. There is nowhere to go, and no means of escape.”
Clayton was sweating and panting and all he could think of was begging for his life, and the hell with what this lunatic had said about humiliating himself. But his throat was still dry and his tongue still would not cooperate and he just COULD NOT SPEAK.
The intruder stepped behind Clayton’s desk and pulled a strip of duct tape off the roll. The zip of the tape sounded obscene in the midnight stillness of the office. The man reached for Clayton’s arm and Clayton yanked it away in a blind panic.
The intruder shook his head. This time there was more annoyance than sadness in the action. “Let me make something clear to you, Mr. Ambassador. I am happy to kill you painlessly. In fact, it is what I prefer. But if you insist on making this more difficult than it needs to be, I shall have no problem dragging your death out and making it as agonizing as possible for you. The time is barely midnight. We could quite easily spend the next four to five hours together, doing things you would not enjoy. Is tha
t what you want, Mr. Ambassador?”
Clayton shook his head violently. That was most definitely not what he wanted.
“Then sit quietly, and place your hands on the arms of your chair. I will not tell you again.”
Clayton forced himself to do as he was told. It was not easy. Every fiber of his being was telling him to spring to his feet and run, but of course he could not spring to his feet because he was quite literally frozen in fear, and he could not run because there was nowhere to go.
The intruder worked quickly. He secured Clayton’s arms and legs to the chair and in a matter of sixty seconds was ready to continue. He dropped the tape back into his bag and then removed something that looked to Clayton like a long, narrow black tube from a roll of paper towels.
The intruder began threading the paper towel tube onto the barrel of his gun, and that was when Clayton pissed himself. He couldn’t help it. One moment he was dry and the next he was sitting in his own waste.
The intruder didn’t seem to notice. Or if he noticed, he didn’t care.
He returned one more time to his bag and retrieved a sheet of notebook paper upon which something had already been written. Clayton couldn’t tell what the words were and really couldn’t care less. His life was in its final moments and unless the paper contained instructions on avoiding his fate, it was of no use to him.
The intruder approached, holding the paper and duct tape in one hand and his gun in the other. He bent in front of Clayton and shocked Clayton by shoving a portion of the paper into his mouth. He then slapped a strip of duct tape over the paper and around the back of Clayton’s head.
Then he stood.
“Thank you for a pleasant evening, Mr. Ambassador. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, as must all lives. Again, this is nothing personal.”
Clayton was shaking helplessly and hyperventilating as the intruder placed his gun barrel under Clayton’s jaw and aimed it upward toward the ceiling. The barrel felt heavy and cold.
And then the world disappeared.
At least the intruder kept his promise. There was no pain.
3
May 13, 1988
5:40 p.m.
Washington, D.C.
Tracie Tanner lifted the piece of jewelry from the bowl and dabbed at it carefully with a cloth held in her left hand. A rope chain threaded through a gold cross, the jewelry was simple but had at one time been quite beautiful. Before she’d placed it into the bowl, however, it had been covered in its owner’s dried and clotted blood.
She had soaked the cross and chain overnight in a jewelry cleaning solution, and by this morning much of the human tissue and unidentifiable gore had sloughed off. There had been a lot of it. Some of the blood had soaked off as well, but there was still plenty left, and Tracie had replaced the chain and cross in fresh solution for several hours before attacking it again.
Now she worked at it patiently, running the chain through the solution and then placing it on a bath towel atop her tiny kitchen table. The towel would have to be trashed when she was finished, as would the cloth and, in all probability, the bowl as well. She could wash everything, of course, but the thought of reusing any of it after being covered in bits of brain and bone was…unappealing, to say the least.
The whole job was unappealing, really. She couldn’t think of a single thing she would less like to be doing. But the things she wanted to do had always been very different from the things she needed to do, and this was something she felt strongly needed to be done.
So she took her time, moving link by link along the gold chain, dabbing with the cloth and working the blood off the finish, then moving forward and beginning the process again. It was close work, painstaking and mentally draining. In the beginning it was also emotional, as she was forced to relive the deadly events that had resulted in her taking possession of this beautiful cross and chain in the first place.
But as she worked, she was surprised to discover a sense of calm settling over her. It felt good to take her time and expend her energy in restoring the cross and chain to their original condition. The process made her feel close to the chain’s owner, and she thought he would have appreciated her efforts, had he lived to see them.
She hadn’t known him well; they weren’t close in any traditional sense. They didn’t even know each other’s real names. But they’d been bound together by a shared commitment, two Amercian covert operatives toiling halfway around the world in hostile environments in support of democracy and freedom.
They had faced life and death situations together on more than one occasion, each relying on the other’s resourcefulness and courage to complete their missions. It was the sort of thing that had a way of fostering closeness even between relative strangers, of bringing people together in a way nothing else could.
She worked for a while on the chain and then took a break, calling her father just to say hello, something she didn’t think she’d done in years. After his initial concern that something was wrong, the delight he took in hearing from his little girl was so clear through the phone line that she vowed to make similar calls on a regular basis.
They chatted about everything and nothing, a situation so out of character for her that he asked on three separate occasions whether something was wrong. But nothing was wrong, at least nothing she could talk to her father about, and when they finally hung up she felt better that she had in a very long time.
Peaceful, if not exactly at peace.
After ending the call to her father she got back to work.
She finished cleaning the chain and then turned her attention to the cross. Covered in dried blood and gore, its gold finish was barely discernable, but Tracie knew after working on the rope chain that restoring the cross would take only time and effort.
She was more than happy to expend both.
An hour later she had placed both items on a fresh towel to dry, and this one she knew she would not have to throw away. The chain and cross sparkled like new, and although the chain’s clasp would have to be repaired—it had been torn off its owner’s neck the last time he’d worn it—Tracie knew the jewelry would hold a special place in its new owner’s heart.
She gazed at her handiwork for a while and then turned her attention elsewhere. Her phone would ring soon enough, and when it did she would be able to deliver the restored jewelry to its rightful owner, whoever—and wherever—that person might be.
***
She didn’t have to wait long.
The telephone call came during dinner: canned ravioli, which she was attempting to wash down with the remains of a quart of milk on the verge of going sour. She doubted she’d ever been happier to hear the damned phone ring, even if it ended up being a telemarketer or political survey on the other side of the conversation. Either one would be preferable to finishing the ravioli and milk.
But when she answered the call she discovered it wasn’t a telemarketer, and it wasn’t anyone taking a survey.
It was CIA Director Aaron Stallings, and he was characteristically gruff. “Get your ass in here first thing in the morning,” he said as soon as she picked up. He didn’t even bother with a “hello” first.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks for asking. And how are you?”
He ignored her comment. “What time can you get here tomorrow?”
“How early is too early?”
He snorted. “Christ, Tanner, have you learned nothing from working with me? There’s no such thing as too early.”
“Then what about tonight instead?”
“Tonight?” Stallings answered. Tracie knew he was still in his office at Langley and she pictured him looking at his watch, trying to figure the traffic and determine how long it would take to get from there to his suburban home. None of their meetings ever took place at CIA headquarters, given Tracie’s status as an unofficial employee.
“Tonight works,” he said after an extensive delay. “I said tomorrow morning in an attempt to minimize interferen
ce with your life, but I forgot you have no life.”
“Look who’s talking,” Tracie shot back. “I’m not the one who’s still in the office at seven o’clock on a Friday night.”
“No, you’re sitting alone at your kitchen table eating a frozen pizza and waiting for the movie of the week to start on TV.”
She dropped the handset onto the table with a thud, hoping it sounded as annoying on the other end of the line as it did to her. She walked into her living room to shut off her tiny black and white television and then she returned to the phone. “Shows what you know. It’s canned ravioli, not frozen pizza. And the movie of the week doesn’t even start for another two hours.”
“Fine. Then you were watching reruns of some stupid sitcom that went off the air twenty years ago.”
Not for the first time she glanced around her apartment looking for a miniature camera or hidden listening device. “For your information, my television’s not even on.”
He snorted again. “Not since you turned it off a minute ago.”
She sighed into the phone, intentionally loudly enough for him to hear. “What time do you want me there?”
“Give me an hour. That way you’ll have enough time to meet with me and still make it home for the beginning of the movie.”
“Don’t worry about it. Tonight’s is a repeat. I’ve already seen it.”
He snorted again and hung up without another word.
4
May 13, 1988
8:00 p.m.
McLean, Virginia
“Took you long enough,” Stallings said without raising his eyes from the stack of paperwork cluttering the desk of his home office. He’d been hard at work on the stack every time she’d ever been here, and it never seemed to change in size.
She made a point of lifting her wrist and staring at her watch, an effort that was lost on her boss because he still hadn’t looked up. “It’s eight o’clock on the nose,” she said. “Exactly the time you told me to be here.”
“Traffic was light tonight. I could have seen you twenty minutes ago.”
The Soviet Assassin Page 2