The Assassins (The Judd Ryder Books)

by Gayle Lynds

  A bright flash erupted in the sky to the south followed by the booming sound of a great explosion.

  Hilu shook a fist at the cloud rising above the lights of the city. “The big attack has started!” he bellowed. “We’ve got to tell everyone the truth about al-Sabah and Tabrizi!” He ran to the museum door.

  Judd sprinted and caught his arm. “Wait. You want to expose them, but let’s do it in a way we’ll be believed. Put your gun in your pocket. Follow me.” Judd slid his Beretta inside his belt under his jacket.

  Another shell exploded, shaking the night. They stepped inside the exhibit hall. People were running to the windows to peer out. Their faces were ashen. Tabrizi was speaking, his voice full and resounding, while his image was magnified on the screens high on either side of the room: “I’ve just been told that the U.S. Embassy is being shelled, and it’s the Sunnis doing it. It’s always the Sunnis trying to intimidate us, to frighten us so we won’t vote and they can take us back to the days of Saddam. They’ll do anything—kill anyone—to control the government again—”

  Leading Hilu, Judd pushed through the crowd then paused at the banquet table, where he picked up a plate of sugared figs. He took off again, heading to the rear of the hall.

  Tabrizi was still talking, and the crowd had turned back from the windows to listen: “The prime minister is well intentioned, but he can’t control or stop the violence. The very fact that the Sunnis would shell the Americans so boldly shows how far they’ll go to get what they want. In international law, attacking a foreign embassy is an act of war. Are the Sunnis daring the Americans to invade us again, or are they living in the past and creating violence that has no purpose in the present? If you vote for me, I’ll protect our country from anyone who would hurt you!”

  * * *

  On the patio outside the museum, the Carnivore glanced to the side. A third bright flash erupted in the southern sky followed by the sound of another shelling. “Your mortars look to be on target, Seymour. Congratulations. You always did like to kill in large groups.” The Carnivore rose easily from the wheelchair.

  Seymour watched him. “Damn.”

  “Yes. Bad luck for you. I’m not crippled. In fact, you and I are going to take a walk. Turn around and put your hands behind your back. Keep them there so I can see them, and go down the steps and turn left.”

  Seymour did not move. “What do you want?”

  “Not your life, at least not yet. Do what I tell you, or I’ll reevaluate that.”

  Seymour hesitated then turned, clasped his hands behind him, and walked down stone steps and onto a stone path.

  More flashes. More explosions.

  When they were beyond the view of the patio, the Carnivore ordered, “Stop. Lean forward and raise your hands up high.”

  Seymour started to separate his hands.

  The Carnivore corrected him: “Keep your hands clasped. Lean over more.”

  Seymour muttered something under his breath, but he did as he was told. He looked like a swimmer on the starting block, bent forward, arms back.

  The Carnivore lifted the rear flap of Seymour’s jacket, revealing a pistol. He took it then checked the rest of his body. Only the one weapon. “You can straighten up, but keep your hands where they are.”

  Seymour complied.

  They resumed walking. Rounding the corner of an adjacent building, they entered one of the museum’s narrow streets. Here they were completely out of sight of anyone in the exhibit hall or on the patio.

  “You asked what I wanted,” the Carnivore told him. “I want those records you’re threatening to send to news outlets and blogs. I want The Assassins’ Catalog.”

  * * *

  In the palm grove on the river’s southern shore, Eva watched in horror the burning balls of flame and smoke above the U.S. Embassy. Then she heard a new noise. It was a high-pitched chopping whine. Low on the horizon, three dark smudges grew larger and louder. Apache helicopters. Suddenly streaks of yellow-white light shot out from them. Heat-seeking missiles, she guessed. The heat from the mortars would be a magnet.

  Before she could take a breath, the yacht burst like a boil, spurting up flames, pieces of wood, and ragged chunks of metal. Blazing debris fell from the sky, hitting the river and the bank and pelting the palm fronds over her head.

  “Morgan!” she shouted. “Morgan!” She held herself tightly, knowing the awful truth—there was no way anyone could survive the inferno burning on the river.

  * * *

  In the museum, Judd opened the door to the audiovisual control room, where the tech was working at a broad console of flashing lights and digital readouts. He and Hilu stepped inside, Hilu closing the door behind them.

  The AV man turned from peering out through the small window that overlooked the party. He lifted his earphones and glanced at the sugared figs.

  Handing the plate to him, Judd said in Arabic, “We thought you might be hungry.”

  With a nod, the tech stuffed two figs into his mouth.

  Judd took out the memory stick he had used in the afternoon to record Mahmoud, the bar owner who had died when his office was bombed. “We need you to broadcast this through your AV system.”

  Hilu made a sound of pleasure deep in his throat. “Oh, this is good, Judd. I like this very much.”

  But the technician shook his head. “I can’t do it. You’re not on the schedule.”

  With a sigh, Judd pulled out his Beretta. “Play it.”

  88

  Along with others standing at the windows, Zahra had been watching the attack. After all the work, all the planning, she savored the bursts of fire, the billowing smoke. When the shelling stopped too soon, she suspected something had happened, perhaps the authorities had found and destroyed the yacht. That had always been a possibility.

  She turned back into the crowded hall, listening and watching. People were talking to one another:

  “Tabrizi is right,” one said.

  “The violence is worse now,” agreed a second.

  “The Sunnis have to be stopped. They’re going to start another war!”

  Someone prayed, “Allah yustur min bachir.” I hope God protects me from whatever evil tomorrow brings.

  She smiled to herself. Her husband’s plans were going forward just as he had hoped. She wanted to congratulate him. Where was he? She checked the stage. The American ambassador was hurrying off down the steps, talking on his cell phone. The prime minister was barking orders at two assistants.

  Tabrizi had jumped down to the floor and was reassuring frightened well-wishers. “All law derives from Allah. Remember Muhammad’s armed struggle against his enemies, all of the blood and deaths. There are still enemies of Islam. Just as Allah gave Muhammad permission to fight, we also have permission to wage holy war against anyone who’d hurt Islam.”

  It was an interpretation of the Koran that both Tabrizi and her husband lived by, and no one could overrule them because there was no established Islamic hierarchy, no Muslim pope, no excommunication of heretics.

  She continued to look for him. She had not seen him in quite a while. The loudspeakers came on again, and a larger-than-life version of one of her husband’s employees—Mahmoud Issa—appeared on the two screens high on either side of the room. She was puzzled. Others were, too.

  A man spoke from off camera: “Tell us why you want out.”

  Mahmoud’s deep-set eyes were sorrowful as he said, “Because al-Sabah has gone too far. I began working for him when I was young and angry and wanted to help my country.…”

  Zahra looked quickly around. People had stopped to stare up at the towering man on the video screens, who was saying terrible things about her husband: “What finally made up my mind is al-Sabah ordered one of my oldest friends to be executed just because he fell in love with a girl whose father works for the opposition—for the prime minister.…”

  Zahra elbowed her way through the crowd. She had to stop whoever was broadcasting Mahmoud.

 
; “It’s not only al-Sabah,” the voice went on, “but it’s also his wife, Zahra, and Tariq Tabrizi.… And it’s all for one goal—they’re determined to join Iraq and Iran into one nation. They’re calling it the Union of Shiite States.…”

  People had been murmuring. Now they were shaking their heads, their voices alternately upset and disbelieving, angry and worried.

  As she passed by, someone pointed her out: “That’s her! That’s al-Sabah’s wife, Zahra!”

  Behind her, Tabrizi was yelling something. She heard the words hoax and my enemies.

  The door to the audiovisual room was closed. She turned the knob and pulled it open. Inside, three men peered around at her.

  “Turn that thing off!” she demanded.

  “No, Roza.” The tall man shook his head. “It’s playing until the end, and you know the end, don’t you? I’ve heard so much about you, Roza Levinchev. And about Seymour, of course. I’m sorry about your daughter, Katia—”

  Roza. Seymour. Katia. How did he know those names? Where was her husband? She was frightened for him. He might need her help. She had to find him. Shoving people aside, she pushed through the crowd to the patio doors.

  * * *

  Watching Roza’s retreating back, Judd told Hilu, “I’m going to follow her.” He was out the door and winding through the throngs just as his own voice sounded from the speakers: “When is the attack? I need all the details.”

  Judd remembered the painful moment vividly.

  Taller than many in the hall, Judd spotted Zahra’s blond head as she reached a patio door and looked back. He moved toward her.

  “It’s tonight,” Mahmoud said. He jammed the stopper into the scotch decanter.

  There was a tremendous roar. The cabinet beneath the decanter exploded. The movie ended. Zahra ran outdoors.

  And Judd followed.

  * * *

  Kari Timonen emerged from the tunnel under the U.S. Embassy and trotted outdoors. The all-clear siren had sounded. Using his classified smartphone, he listened to the report that Iraqi choppers had blasted to smithereens the yacht that had been the launching pad for the shells.

  Waiting for a preliminary report of injuries and damage, he walked around, inspecting. Brown smoke shrouded the buildings. Craters tore apart the manicured grounds. Palm trees were uprooted and splintered. Blast-resistant window glass was shattered, and chunks of concrete the size of large boulders littered the ground. Cars, trucks, and some of the outbuildings were covered in flames. The air reeked of oil fires.

  Finally he got his first report—injuries, no deaths so far. There had been enough warning that people were able to get down to the safety tunnels. He did not like to think how bad it would have been had there not been an alert.

  The rest of the report was that the compound’s major systems—water, electricity, and sewage—appeared to be functioning. He heaved a sigh of relief. Looking around, he saw every major building was still standing, but then engineers had used advanced concrete structural designs to erect them. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was not called Fortress America for nothing.

  * * *

  The tension between the Carnivore and Seymour was electric where they stood on the stone walkway in the museum complex, the Carnivore aiming his weapon at Seymour’s back.

  “I’ll tell you what I want.” Seymour turned slowly, bringing his hands forward to where the Carnivore could see they were empty. “I want to be part of the new Iraqi national government. But the Padre, Eli Eichel, Morgan, Krot, and you could’ve exposed me. So to answer one of your questions—there’s no Assassins’ Catalog. All I needed was the threat of it, so all of you would be provoked into trying to win it. As for the cuneiform tablet, if it leads to a treasure, of course I want it. But you can have the tablet. It’s yours. I’ll give you my pieces. Just walk away and forget I’m still alive.”

  “Bullshit.” There was no damn Assassins’ Catalog? All of the risk and danger of this whole ruinous ride from Washington to Baghdad had been built on Seymour’s stupid personal ambition. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re in training to be the next Mother Teresa, too. I know all about your campaign to put your pal Tabrizi in as prime minister. How many Iraqis do you think you’ve killed to get him there—a thousand, two thousand, more? And then there’s your plan to make Iraq and Iran into one country. My guess is the cost of that in human life will be even higher. And finally, damn clever of you to keep Toma Asker alive and turn him into über-politician Tariq Tabrizi. How many of Saddam’s billions did he give you?”

  It was Seymour’s turn to look irritated. “My payoff comes when Tabrizi gets elected prime minister.”

  “So you don’t know where Saddam’s money is either?”

  “Of course not. All of the records are inside Tabrizi’s head.” Seymour hesitated, then he explained: “When I found out he was the lead financier on the hit list that Saddam gave Morgan, I arranged to have him for my target. I faked his death and had new identities made—”

  At that moment, the Carnivore heard voices then footsteps coming from the far side of the building, about twenty yards ahead.

  Seymour bellowed, “Guards, help!” and dived to his right, rolled twice, and came up sprinting toward an open door into a building on the Carnivore’s left.

  As the men aimed, the Carnivore fired twice in quick succession. They stumbled and fell back, and he dashed into the building through the door Seymour had used.

  He was in the Assyrian Gallery, where he and his five fellow assassins had found the cuneiform tablet more than a decade earlier. Memories flashed through his mind. What irony that he was running through here again. At least this time, he had more than a flashlight. Low-wattage security lamps glowed every thirty feet or so, casting long shadows.

  He listened. Someone was walking quietly near the other end of the gallery. Seymour. As he sped toward the corner, the sound stopped.

  “Delighted you’re here, Alex,” Seymour called out. “We’ll have a party.”

  The Carnivore still had Seymour’s pistol. With his right hand, he inched it out past the corner. A shot slapped it back, which answered that question—Seymour had somehow concealed another weapon.

  “That was stupid,” Seymour told him. “You thought I wouldn’t come prepared?”

  The Carnivore turned to face the wall and took from his shirt pocket a small mirror and opened its arm. “Where’d you hide the gun, you prick?” he asked as he lifted the mirror to the ceiling and angled it around so he could see the intersecting corridor. In an instant he snapped the mirror back. He had gotten lucky: A pair of three-foot-high wood crates, each about five feet long, were stored directly around the corner, butt end to butt end. Seymour was behind the last one, head and shoulders in view, showing confidence as he trained a small pistol to where he expected the Carnivore to appear. The crates looked well constructed. If they were full, they would be too heavy, and his plan would fail. On the other hand, staying where he was was getting him nowhere.

  “It’s a sweet little gun. Mostly plastic,” Seymour said. “A lot of small parts that I spread around to my pockets. When you patted me down, you didn’t feel a weapon, because there wasn’t one—yet.” He laughed. “And you thought you were smart, you arrogant fucker.”

  But while Seymour talked, the Carnivore had dropped flat onto his back and slithered feet-first around the corner. There was a soft sound coming from where Seymour was hiding—he was getting ready to do something.

  The Carnivore bent his knees and rammed his feet into the first crate with such force that it crashed forward, propelling the second crate ahead of it. He heard a grunt, which told him Seymour had been hit.

  The Carnivore jumped to his feet, and Seymour stumbled into view, looking for a target. Running, the Carnivore fired a quick shot to his thigh. As Seymour staggered, the Carnivore smashed his shoulder into him, sending him sliding across the floor. Seymour grunted.

  The Carnivore kicked away the plastic pistol and stood over him.
“No time for sweet good-byes.” He pointed his weapon down at the bridge of Seymour’s nose.

  Seymour stared up, his large body somehow diminished by the vastness of the gallery. His beard looked more white than gray. “You were always sentimental.”

  The Carnivore fired.

  “Monster, monster!” Roza Levinchev came screaming in Russian around the corner, firing wildly.

  A bullet grazed the Carnivore’s side. More bullets slashed into the wood boxes and ricocheted off the floor tiles. He plunged behind a crate.

  “Give me the gun, Roza!” Judd’s voice was loud and commanding. “Dammit, are you insane? I’ll shoot you if I have to!”

  In the sudden quiet, high heels clicked on the hard floor. Warily, the Carnivore stood up, watching Judd shepherd an unarmed Roza toward him. In one hand, Judd held the gun he had taken from the museum guard, and in the other hand the one he must have taken from her.

  Furious and grief-stricken, she was cursing the Carnivore in Russian. Her head was up, her chin high. Tears streaked her cheeks. She knotted her hands and shook them wordlessly at him.

  “I didn’t kill Katia,” the Carnivore told her. “Morgan’s the one who did it. His target was Krot, not her, if that’s any help. Yes, I shot Seymour. What did you expect? He paid the price all of us pay when we fail in our business.”

  If there was such a thing as living fury, it was Roza. Her eyes blazed like blue fire. “Katia was my only child. I loved my husband. You’re an animal!”

  The Carnivore could handle her anger. What was giving him pause was her grief. “I lost my daughter, too,” he found himself saying. “She’s my only child. I’d give a lot to have her back.” He studied her.

  She stared silently at him. He saw despair in her eyes, then hopelessness.

  “You want me to kill you,” he realized. Then: “I don’t do mercy killings. Get the hell out of here.”

  She frowned. She took a step toward him.

  Judd ran in front of her again, blocking her advance. “Get out!” he bellowed in her face. “Leave while you can!”