Assassin's Game

by Ward Larsen

  “No, David. I did it, but it was not a good move. It was grand theft, or whatever they call it here. I stole someone’s boat. I’m using their food and fuel and supplies, and it’s not right. I know how I’d feel if it was my boat.”

  “Even if the person who stole it was facing what you were?”

  “That doesn’t justify it.”

  Slaton recognized an argument he wasn’t going to win. He also sensed an irregular edge to her tone. Christine was a doctor, typically steady under pressure. He’d even seen her handle situations like this before. Something had his wife uncharacteristically rattled.

  She gripped her mug with both hands, and after a full minute picked up with, “What are we going to do, David? We can’t just keep running from Mossad and the Swedish police and … and whoever else wants to ruin our lives.”

  “We think of a way out.”

  “Well, you’ll have to do it because I don’t understand what’s going on. This whole thing is like a damned game, nothing but smoke and mirrors. Mossad actually thinks that by kidnapping me they’ll force you into one last assassination? Does that make sense?”

  “If you understand how people like Nurin think—maybe. But you have a point. There’s something more going on here.”

  He remembered Nurin’s words. Think about it and everything will make sense … Do this one job and it will be your last. The more Slaton thought about it, the more confusing everything seemed. He had sent Nurin a message saying he would go to Geneva, all along knowing there was only one obvious course—to find Christine. Yet now that he had, it seemed a tenuous victory. Even if he could protect her and evade Mossad in the days ahead, what would happen next week or next year?

  Try as he might, Slaton could not find an answer.

  * * *

  Not everyone at SÄPO was an idiot.

  This point had settled in Sanderson’s mind five years ago when he’d met Elin Almgren. In the course of a particularly maddening investigation, Almgren had helped him track down a killer, passing critical information that others in her service might have held as proprietary. Sanderson had since reciprocated, most recently helping Almgren and SÄPO make a solid case against an international money-laundering network. It was the kind of intergovernmental cooperation that was vital to effective law enforcement, yet rarely seen as a result of turf wars. Fortunately, a handful of midlevel people like Sanderson and Almgren knew how to bend the system in favor of results.

  He had arranged to meet Almgren for lunch at The Flying Horse Pub, and in keeping with their private tradition, since Sanderson had made the request he was obliged to pick up the bill.

  “The Flying Horse Chipotle Burger?” he asked.

  “Best burger in town,” she said, adding, “and the most expensive.” She was a decent-looking woman with fair hair, blue eyes, and the prominent worry lines that came from twenty years of surveillance, late meetings, and otherwise keeping crown and country secure.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Arne, you don’t look well.”

  “I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

  “You need more sex.”

  Sanderson grinned. This was Almgren’s answer to all things amiss in his life. She’d said it when he and Ingrid were near a split, and again afterward when he’d fallen into a miserable funk. Less credibly, it was also her advice when his arthritic knee acted up. Given that Almgren was a lesbian in a long-term relationship, there was no hint of suggestiveness or hidden meaning. And along these same lines, her recommendation carried the weight of what one might find in the middle of a fortune cookie.

  “I’m working on it,” Sanderson said.

  “No you’re not. You’re repressed. Always have been.”

  The waitress swooped in with two pints of ale. She was a slim, tattooed girl of no more than twenty, and as she walked away Sanderson made a point of leering at her bottom.

  “Oh, please,” Almgren said, addressing her beer. “I hear you’ve been taken off these two shootings.”

  “That’s right. Sjoberg is convinced I’m going daft.”

  “Going? You’ve been that way for years, darling. He’s just now realizing it? My opinion of the man slips another notch.”

  Sanderson responded by taking a long pull of his own beer.

  “All right, what do you need?” she asked.

  “I think this man we’re looking for is Israeli.”

  “Israeli? What makes you say that?”

  “The victim who ended up in a coma in the hospital—he was conscious when they first brought him to the emergency room. The staff heard him speaking Hebrew.”

  “Hebrew? You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Almgren gave this some thought. “There are Jews in Sweden, Arne.”

  He gave her a suffering look.

  “Lillehammer?” she said tentatively.

  “It puts everything in a different light, doesn’t it?”

  That event, occurring long before either of them had entered their respective academies, was the stuff of legend in Scandinavian law enforcement. In the summer of 1973, Israel was hunting Ali Hassan Salameh, leader of the group responsible for the previous year’s Munich Massacre. Thinking they’d found their man, a Mossad team was dispatched to the village of Lillehammer, Norway, to assassinate Salameh, but mistakenly murdered an innocent Moroccan waiter as he walked home from a theater with his pregnant wife. The next day, two members of the assassination squad were arrested, and soon the entire team was in custody, later to be put on trial. It was the blackest of days for Mossad, and a debacle that exposed Israel’s brazen will to operate in Europe as never before imagined.

  “It’s been a long time,” Almgren said. “Perhaps the new administration in Tel Aviv is too young to remember.”

  “Or perhaps Israel is desperate.”

  “In what way?”

  Sanderson shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m trying to work that out.”

  “They always have a list of extremists they’re after—Hamas or Hezbollah. Maybe one of them turned up here.”

  “No. That’s not it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The first shooting. All the witnesses said it was a case of one versus three. The man who is now in the hospital was by himself. He shot the man who died, and was exchanging fire with the other two on the street.”

  “And he’s the one who was spouting Hebrew? So then we have the reverse—one of Israel’s enemies tracked this man here. Perhaps he’s a Mossad operative or an Israeli general. Even a politician.”

  Again Sanderson shook his head. “That’s not it either. The two who escaped that first incident were gunned down yesterday. We now have identity documents from all four. They’re good quality forgeries…” he hesitated, “but nearly identical. The same manufacture.”

  Almgren thought about it. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

  The young waitress dropped a plate on the table that held a massive burger with jalapeños and pepperoni spilling from under the bun.

  “Good God,” Sanderson said. “Just looking at it gives me acid reflux.”

  “You don’t have acid reflux. You just need more sex.” Almgren, relishing her cast-iron constitution, dug into the burger with gusto. With a partially full mouth, she said, “This man in a coma—maybe he was a rogue of some kind. The others could have been sent here to eliminate him.”

  Sanderson took a handful of chips from her plate. “Possibly. But I still don’t understand where the girl comes in. There’s nothing sordid in her background, yet this Israeli was talking to her in the café for at least ten minutes. Witnesses said the two of them seemed tense but familiar.”

  “What else then?”

  Sanderson thought about it. “The man now in a coma. He was attended to by a doctor who spoke Hebrew—that’s why I’m certain about the language.”

  “Does the doctor remember what he said?”

  “Yes. He said, ‘Let the bayonet go.’”

  Almgren
set her burger on the plate and stared at him. “Bayonet?”

  “Yes. The doctor was quite sure.”

  “As in ‘kidon’?”

  Sanderson eyed her. “You speak Hebrew?”

  “No. I speak Mossad—we all do where I live. Israeli intelligence is a big organization, but most of their employees are a straightforward bunch. Field operatives, linguists, communications specialists. There is, however, a very elite unit. A handful known as kidons.”

  “And what do they do?”

  “They’re a very special division. The kidonim are Mossad’s assassins.”

  Sanderson stared blankly across the table. He considered the first shooting, the man in the hospital and the three he’d been up against. Had there been an assassin among them? It was not until he considered the second attack that the thunderbolt struck.

  It settled in his mind in a familiar way, a recurring instinct he never doubted. It was none of the first four, but the other, the lone survivor. A man he’d met at the Strand Hotel and interviewed at length. One who had yesterday stolen a gun at a café and used it to kill twice. Sanderson remembered watching him read signs in a language he supposedly didn’t know. Remembered the blue-gray eyes that reflected like polished steel, taking everything in yet letting nothing out. In the car, the way he’d moved to see and not be seen. It had been right there in front of him all along, like staring at the sun but not seeing it for the brilliance.

  The stonemason.

  Edmund Deadmarsh was an assassin.

  TWENTY

  The early-afternoon sky over Bulleron had turned to a full overcast, a steel gray curtain that promised rain. The wind kept still and the seas were quiet, soft waves lapping the boat’s hull with barely audible authority. For Slaton these were no idle observations. Weather conditions at high latitudes were subject to volatile change, and right now meteorology was critical to his near-term planning. Janna Magnussen had said a cold front would arrive tomorrow, but he wondered if things were turning sooner. Could tomorrow morning’s extraction be delayed? Part of him hoped for the worst, a maelstrom that would last a week and cover him and Christine like an impenetrable blanket. A storm formidable enough to curtail the other path that was forming in his mind.

  They were going over nautical charts when Slaton broached a subject he knew would be delicate.

  “I need your help,” he said. “In a professional capacity.”

  Her stare began as curious, but shifted to grim when he removed his shirt to display the wound on his bicep.

  “It’s not a gunshot,” he said.

  “Very reassuring—but I can see that. I did a turn in the emergency room at a big hospital in Boston.” She left it at that, not asking what had caused it. “I’m afraid the boat isn’t very well stocked with first-aid supplies.”

  Slaton reached into his backpack and handed over the remainder of what he’d purchased in Stockholm.

  “You always have an answer, don’t you?”

  He presented his arm. “Obviously not.”

  She set to work, removing the old dressing and cleaning the wound as best she could. Christine was normally chatty and chipper, but she carried on now in a discomforting silence. Slaton found it unbearable—one more good thing trampled by his intractable problems.

  The quiet lasted until she tied off the outer bandage.

  “Anything else?” she asked, pulling away.

  “Is there a toothbrush on board?”

  She shook her head, and said dismally, “It’s a hell of a way to live, Deadmarsh.”

  “And I am a little hungry.”

  “I docked for provisions in a village yesterday. Spent all the cash I had on cheap calories—pasta, rice, eggs, some canned vegetables.”

  “I’ve seen you work with a box of rice. You’re good.”

  Christine didn’t smile, and again his marital radar sensed something amiss. Slaton wondered if there was some complication he’d not yet seen. She pulled a pot from a cabinet and started fiddling with the tiny gas stove. He watched her work, knowing that simple chores could bring a sense of normalcy. It was a thing Slaton had learned during nerve-racking stays in safe houses and treacherous surveillance stakeouts: washing a load of laundry or doing the dishes was a simple way to cut the tension. Christine probably hadn’t recognized it yet. But she would. She was learning.

  “How long will the provisions last?” he asked.

  “For both of us? A few days, a week if we want to lose some weight. Is that the plan? To wait Nurin out until this assassination scheme is past its shelf life?”

  “That was my original idea.”

  She went still. “But not anymore?”

  “Things have changed. Staying here, or sailing someplace else … it wouldn’t work. Mossad is looking for us. And of course the police—I’ve killed two men and shot an officer, and I’d rather not have to explain my reasons in a court of law. As for Mossad, it’s true that Nurin’s plan will be dead in a week, but who’s to say the director won’t come up with something better next week or next month. Hamedi might go abroad again, or perhaps Mossad will find an opening in Iran that has a better chance of succeeding than the last two. No,” he said with certainty, “laying low for a few days doesn’t fix anything. It only postpones the inevitable.”

  “The inevitable? And what is that?”

  Slaton didn’t answer.

  The rain promised by the darkening skies began to fall, tapping against the boat’s fiberglass shell. Christine went to the companionway and slid the top shell closed as drizzle swirled into the cabin. She sank next to him at the built-in dining table, and again he sensed something amiss in her pained expression.

  He met her eyes. “What’s wrong, Christine?”

  After a long pause, she said, “There’s something you should know.”

  “You mean it gets better?”

  He’d hoped for a good-natured smile, but didn’t get it.

  “When I was in the village yesterday, I bought one thing besides the food.” Christine reached into her pocket and pulled out a small plastic strip. It looked like a Popsicle stick, blue and with two colored bands on one end. She set the stick on the table and Slaton stared at it blankly. Only when he correlated the depth of her gaze did he realize what he was looking at.

  “Is that a … you mean we…?”

  Christine nodded. “Yes, David. We’re going to have a child.”

  * * *

  At 4:05 that Monday afternoon Sanderson was waiting in Sjoberg’s office while the assistant commissioner was tied up in something called the Interdepartmental Coordination Group. Sanderson briefly considered bursting in on the meeting with his revelations about Deadmarsh, but in the end he decided against it—given his present standing, he supposed drama would not work in his favor.

  A ship’s clock somewhere in the room rang eight bells. He thought it sounded silly in a police department, and certainly not fitting for an AC’s office. Sanderson looked around the place and admitted, not for the first time, that he had once aspired to this room. The nameplate on the door might well have been his had he kept a more careerist outlook. He noted two pictures behind the desk. A younger Sjoberg standing on a golfer’s tee box with a commissioner long since retired, both brandishing long-shafted clubs. Another of Sjoberg accepting a plaque of commendation from the mayor, probably for some groundbreaking administrative achievement. Sanderson asked himself the familiar questions. Should he have made more appearances at the moving-up parties? Spent his weekends on the charity fund-raiser circuit? Those were the unwritten rules of the game of advancement, and Sanderson had not played by them. He supposed it was natural to find a few regrets at the end of a career, and he couldn’t deny this was one of his. Still, if he hadn’t achieved rank, he knew he’d earned the respect of the men and women he worked with on a day-to-day basis. If the inspectors and sergeants and constables at Kungsholmsgatan 43 were faced with a challenging case, he was the man they’d want to run it. Of this he was sure.

>   The door behind him rattled, breaking his musings, and Sjoberg walked in. He was followed by a woman whose self-important air and yellow identification badge indicted her as being from National.

  “Arne—” Sjoberg looked at him with unmasked surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’d just like a minute of your time. I’ve come across something important.” Sanderson saw the woman hesitate at the door.

  A befuddled Sjoberg addressed her, “Would you give us a minute?”

  She backed outside with a gracious smile, leaving the door open.

  “Arne, we’re very busy. I’d think you of all people would realize it.”

  “I talked to a doctor today at Saint Göran.”

  “Good, it’s about damn time.”

  “No, no. Not Samuels. It was a physician from the emergency room. He told me that the victim brought into the ER Saturday—”

  “What?” Sjoberg said, cutting him off in a coarse whisper. “You went to Saint Göran on a matter relating to this investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you forgotten my orders? Or are you simply ignoring them? You are not involved in this anymore!”

  “But the man was Israeli, I’m sure of it. Don’t you see how this fits? This man we’re looking for is—”

  “Enough! Arne, you are on medical leave. What must I do to make this clear? We are perfectly capable of handling things.”

  “Are you? Then how could you miss something like this?”

  Sjoberg’s voice rose, “I will not listen to the accusations of a dysfunctional detective who can’t even keep track of his—” His words faltered there, and the two glared at one another.

  The office door was still open, and Sanderson sensed a hush outside. Phone calls paused, keyboards gone still.

  In steady, drawn-out words, Sjoberg said, “Out of my office this minute or I’ll have your credentials.”

  Without thinking, Sanderson reached into his pocket, pulled them out, and threw them at Sjoberg, striking him in the chest. He turned on a heel and walked out.

  There were a dozen police officers in the outer room, men and women standing like statues between desks, planted motionless in chairs. They were detectives and sergeants and constables. One and all, they looked at Sanderson with something he had never seen before. They looked at him with pity.