The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01]

by David L. Robbins

  “Yes, good.” Judith acted cheered by his fleeting attention. “Now, look here. Put out your hand.”

  Lammeck complied, glad to have any course other than death. Before he could catch himself he’d let loose of the Welwand. The elastic drew the weapon back up his sleeve. Judith set a brass token in his palm.

  “This is a coat-check number. A syringe of physostigmine venenosum is in another purse I checked. It will reverse the scopolamine. You’ll have a rough night, but you will not die if you get up and go now.”

  Judith snapped the handbag on the table shut. Lammeck heard the click in the torrent of sounds in his brain. She tucked it under her arm and rose. Lammeck did not stop her.

  She leaned down.

  Close to his ear, she whispered, “Remember, Mikhal: Anytime, anywhere, I can kill you. But not tonight. Now go. You’ll make it.”

  Lammeck squeezed his right hand for the Welwand. It was gone. He shivered his head to clear it, and made a bark deep in his throat to speak. He laid his left hand to his elbow to reclaim the gun but she was already steps away, beyond the lethal range of the Welwand.

  Judith crossed her hands over her breast. The diamonds at her throat sparkled. She bowed slightly.

  “Befarma-ri, Mikhal. Go with God.”

  Lammeck lost her in the crowd and the thumping of his heart. He opened his right hand and stared at the token she’d left. What was the last thing she’d said? Go now, Mikhal. Go with God.

  Go.

  Lammeck ripped out of the chair, spilling it behind him. He staggered, catching himself on the shoulders of a dancing couple. The woman squealed when Lammeck drove her behind him with a sweep of his big arm. He walked clumsily, then broke into a zigzagging trot. The embassy’s foyer seemed an impossible distance away, broken with undulating shapes. Lights hurt him and he squinted, blinding himself more to the crowd, making him collide with someone at almost every stride. He knocked women aside, a few men down, swimming through them all to the front door. At his back he heard shouts, but these fell in the sea of his burning blood and he pressed on.

  At last, ready to buckle, gasping, he brushed aside a handful of gowns and tuxedos to slap the token on the counter of the coat-check closet. The woman with Asian eyes started in disgust at him.

  “Sir,” she said, “please wait your turn.”

  “Now,” he said, trying to make a fist to bang it, but he was out of strength. The woman did not move, defying his rudeness.

  Lammeck focused on her with his last bit of clarity.

  He hissed, “Fast...”

  From behind, one of the guests Lammeck had shoved aside snipped, “Just give it to him, will you? We’ll wait.”

  The girl took the token, then pivoted for the crowded racks. Lammeck gripped the counter like a plank at sea and clung there, waiting, counting moments with his wild heart. His torso shuddered., another convulsion.

  “Here, sir. Now, if you please.”

  The girl set a black evening bag on the counter. Lammeck snared it and collapsed, his back against the half door of the closet. He tore trembling into the bag for the needle.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  March 10

  Washington, D.C.

  LAMMECK LEFT THE DOOR locked and did not answer. That did not stop Dag. The agent quit knocking, disappeared, and must have flashed his badge downstairs because he came back with a woman from housekeeping who let him in.

  Dag stood beside the bed. Lammeck rolled away, groaning. Dag pushed back the drawn curtains. Noon light blitzed the room. Dag tugged on Lammeck’s shoulder to make him lie faceup.

  Lammeck opened his eyes to a sour face. Dag dropped a thin folder on Lammeck’s belly.

  “What the hell’s going on with you, Professor? You want to explain this?”

  Lammeck tested his throat, to say his first words in fifteen hours.

  “Break it off in your ass.”

  His voice remained strained, but he’d made his point and turned over on the ignored folder.

  At his back, he heard Dag peel off his wrinkled raincoat and toss it on the sofa. The phone receiver was lifted from its cradle and a button stabbed.

  “Gimme room service. A big pot of coffee to room 540. Pronto.”

  A chair skidded beside the bed.

  “I don’t care if you close your eyes or you’re half dead. I want to know what happened.”

  Throughout the night, Lammeck would have settled for half dead. He’d been packed into a taxi at the embassy and carried back to the Blackstone after heaving his address to some Peruvian security guard. At the hotel, the black bellhop hauled him to the elevator, then Lammeck stumbled on the old man’s arm to his room and bed. The clerk had to peel him out of the tux, whispering to Lammeck, “I know, big man, I know.” For eight hours, until dawn crept around the fringe of the curtains, Lammeck struggled to breathe; he vomited a half dozen times after crawling to the toilet, then dry-heaved off the edge of the bed for an hour. His joints burned with every movement; his head spun in a dizzying whirl of pain and nausea. He recalled waking dreams or hallucinations, but nothing specific, just images of heat and ache out of order and all reason. It seemed that he’d fallen asleep only moments before Dag barged in.

  Lammeck forced himself to flop over on his back. He stared at the ceiling out of eyes he did not want to see in any mirror.

  “Judith.” Her name was more croak than word.

  “We’ll get to her in a minute. First, I want to know why Reilly’s office got six phone calls this morning about you being a junkie? And that means I got one big one from him. We’ve got pissed-off diplomats, including the Peruvian ambassador himself, bitching about you jabbing a needle into your thigh on the floor last night in the middle of their embassy. We got reports of you shoving people out of the way and falling on your ass to give yourself an injection. An injection, Professor! You want to tell me what this is about before I have the D.C. cops arrest you?”

  Lammeck lay there wishing he could laugh; he mustered only the energy to prop himself up against the headboard.

  With a raw throat, he told Dag of the invitation slipped under his door yesterday morning. The little old black woman who’d delivered it. Judith at the embassy, her physical description and what he thought were her disguises. Their face-off, with the poison gaining in him and the 9mm Welwand in her gut. He explained how she’d killed Arnold. Everything she’d said about her background. She’d done Krivitsky in ‘41. And Dag had been right all along: FDR was her target. The antidote at the coat-check closet, and his manic race for it. He finished with Judith’s request that he back away from the investigation, or she would kill him for certain next time.

  Dag listened without comment, an incredulous look plastered on his face. When he was done, Lammeck sank back into the bed.

  “You mean to tell me,” Dag said, “you went to that embassy by yourself, knowing damn well that invitation under your door came from Judith?”

  “I...”

  “Shut up. You took a firearm into an embassy, and ended up sticking it in Judith’s ribs when she showed herself to you. And while you were passing out from poison that somehow you were stupid enough to let her poke you with, she admitted she was here to kill the President. Then you let each other get away, on the condition that you back off and allow her to kill him. And if you don’t, she’ll just kill you some other time. Did I leave anything out?”

  Lammeck rolled to his side, facing away from Dag. “That sums it up.”

  Dag groused, “That’s too goddammed far-fetched to be a lie.” Lammeck heard the agent’s derisive laugh to himself. “So what’d you tell her?”

  “Since I was dying at the time, I told her I thought she made a very good point.”

  * * * *

  DAG PACED WHILE HE got dressed.

  The constriction in Lammeck’s throat eased enough for him to comment on the indignities he’d endured in the past eighteen hours in the service of the United States government. Dag mad
e no reply, shuffling around the room while listening to Lammeck carp. Dag was prepared to take a bullet for his president, and so he clearly lacked sympathy for Lammeck’s current aches and pains.

  Lammeck slouched into the bath for a shave and a shower. When he came out, he saw Dag had laid out his suit for him.

  “Reilly’s real eager to see you, Professor. Chop-chop.”

  Lammeck took his time climbing into the clothes, to gather himself and be defiant. Dag’s authority over him had begun to chafe weeks ago, but last evening’s near-death experience—almost dying and almost killing—added to his sense of liberation.

  Traffic on the way to the White House was gnarled, even on a Saturday morning because of the six-day workweek. Even so, Dag reached the west gate before Lammeck was ready. Something had fallen out of balance about time. Last night seemed an eon ago, and only an instant ago. It seemed like the poison and Judith were all he’d ever known, as if he’d experienced birth and death in the fifteen minutes he’d been with her. He’d spent his adult life studying killers, plus the last several years training them—Dag, Gabčik, Kubiš, all were men who’d gone out and taken lives. Last night Lammeck, who’d always been squeamish around blood, came within a flick of his thumb from joining the rank of killers, then joining the dead. How could this not change a man, to stand on the lip of both abysses? Lammeck knew he’d been granted an insight, not just for his research on assassins and history. Last night, for the first time, he realized how much he did not want to die. He’d been witness to the terrible power held by someone who could take life without hesitation. He’d faced that person. And he believed, for moments, he’d been that person.

  Dag led him to the West Wing and Reilly’s office. Inside, Mrs. Beach gave Lammeck a bemused smile, as though she were undecided if she’d been proven right or wrong about him. Lammeck stopped in front of her desk and pressed his palms on her blotter.

  “What?”

  She blinked innocently behind her pince-nez. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “No crack? No snide remark at my expense? Because I’ve had it, Mrs. Beach. Just so you know.”

  “I’ll consider myself warned, Doctor. Dag, he’s inside. Gentlemen.”

  Lammeck rolled his head on his neck like a gunfighter, waiting for another word, but she’d already returned her attention to her paperwork.

  Reilly waited in his chair. Also in the office sat a young man with a sketch pad and a box of chalks. Dag took Lammeck’s elbow, pulled him close, and whispered, “Just a physical description. Nothing else.”

  The artist stood to greet Lammeck. Lammeck shook the artist’s hand and shot Reilly a nod.

  Reilly said, “Rough night, I heard,” making no pretense of his displeasure. “I look forward to the details when we’re done here. This is Special Agent Decker.”

  The young artist asked a series of questions about Judith’s appearance. As best he could, Lammeck laid out for him her features: angular jawline, high cheeks, vibrant blue eyes, dark brows, reddish-brown hair that was probably a wig, glasses also a fake. Lean and tall, five foot ten. She emerged out of Decker’s strokes as if out of a mist. In twenty minutes, with shoulder-length hair shaded black, Judith was in the room with them. But the likeness wasn’t exact; Lammeck’s recollections were marred by his memory of pain. Lammeck wasn’t sure if anyone other than him could really recognize her from this depiction. Even so, he found the face on the page compelling, like a calamity.

  Decker turned the pad to show Reilly.

  “She’s a looker.” The chief nodded to Lammeck. “You sure about your memory?”

  Lammeck shrugged, and kept himself from snapping: She tried to kill me. I almost killed her. I was kinda busy.

  “Thank you, Decker.” Reilly dismissed the artist.

  When the young man was gone, Dag spoke first: “We’re saying she’s a stalker. A crazy hate-mailer. That’s it.”

  Lammeck came out of his chair. “A what? She’s not just some nut job. She’s dangerous as shit, and she’s here to kill the President. You can’t cover that up!”

  “We can,” Reilly said, “and we are. Professor Lammeck, eight weeks ago when you first got here, Dag told you only a handful of people in the world knew there was something in the wind that might—just might—turn out to be a plot against our president. Now that we know there’s a full-blown assassination attempt brewing here, we haven’t changed the strategy of keeping a tight lid on it. Every agent we have in the field right now who sees that sketch will think he’s looking for some weirdo wandering the White House grounds or circling the streets somewhere. We’ve put out the word that she may be armed, and that’s all. Frankly, we get five nut cases a day who say they want to kill Roosevelt, so one more’ll come as no surprise. You said you wanted a presence and that’s what I’ve given you. But understand me clearly. I’m not taking any risk of this leaking. The Boss knows we’ve beefed up his security. That’s the extent of what he or anyone outside this office knows. My people are trained not to ask. We’re still in a world war and I will not have the country or the President distracted from that. We can handle this without spreading the news all over Washington. Believe me, sufficient precautions are being taken to keep the President safe. Sounding the alarms won’t help. Now sit down.”

  Lammeck returned to his chair. Foreboding weighed him down.

  “Who’s we, Chief?”

  “Professor, I can’t undo what you know. Right now you are in on one of the biggest secrets in the whole United States. I heard you mention to Mrs. Beach on your way in that you have ‘had it.’ It’s my unpleasant duty to inform you that, whether or not you’re considering quitting this case, you are not going home. You are not leaving my protection or control. You haven’t ‘had it,’ Professor, unless and until I say you have. That means until this woman is stopped. Or the war is over, at which point I assume whoever hired her will call her off. Then you can go, and we’ll keep an eye out for her ourselves.”

  Lammeck glanced at Dag for no reason—he knew he would find no support there—other than to look away from Reilly in astonishment.

  “I’m being held prisoner?”

  “That’s one scenario. The other is you continue to cooperate with us. Your choice. House arrest in your hotel or you stay on the team and help us catch this bitch. And Professor: If you have any ideas about calling the press or a lawyer, if you even think about fucking with me, you will very quickly see what authority the Secret Service has put at my disposal. I assure you, you’ll be impressed.”

  Lammeck came to this office ready to lambaste Reilly and Dag, to thump his chest and leave in an indignant huff for being unappreciated, and put in harm’s way. Abruptly, he realized just how badly he’d miscalculated.

  “You didn’t tell the ambassador.”

  Reilly laughed at this, ridiculing. “Come on, man, use your bean. You think I’m going to tell anyone how a Persian assassin drugged you?”

  “Drugged me? She poisoned me!”

  “Alright, she poisoned you. Trust me, it was a hell of a lot easier to tell the ambassador of Peru that you’re a diabetic who doesn’t manage his insulin shots very well than to let the cat out of this particular bag. Oh, and for good measure I threw in that you’re known to be pretty rude when you’ve had a few too many and your blood sugar gets out of control.”

  “But...” Lammeck choked, stunned, “...but I’m a scholar. I have a reputation. That was an antidote. I could have died!”

  Smiling, Reilly waved this objection away. “The U.S. government will make it right, Professor. Once this is over with, and President Roosevelt can be told, believe me, your contribution will be acknowledged through the proper channels.” Lammeck didn’t understand, and Reilly made himself clearer. “That means Harvard, Yale, Stanford, whatever you want. Okay?”

  “You trying to buy me off?”

  “I’m trying to shut you up. And I’m trying to keep you on the team.”
Reilly’s demeanor eased. “Christ, Professor, you found her.”

  “She found me.”

  “Just like you said she would. But not exactly the result we were looking for.”

  “What are we talking about, Chief?” House arrest was not an option, and going back to Scotland was off the table. Reilly was asking him to keep his life on the line: Judith had made it perfectly clear that she would not think twice about removing him if she felt too much heat again.

  Reilly glanced at Dag, who took over.

  “Number one, you’re off the front line. No more parties, no more tuxes. She knows you now and she’s too dangerous for you to be left dangling as bait. If you get hurt as a civilian, that looks bad on my resume. Two, new hotel. Three, you report where you are and what you’re doing every day to me or Mrs. Beach. And believe me, all three of us are being punished with that one.”