Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West

by Ian Watson

  The mysterious follower regained his feet, immediately glancing off to his right instead of at the person who’d just bowled him over. Terry followed the man’s gaze. Abigail was there, some way off and with her back to them, standing stock-still between rivers of faces, her head tilted back, apparently hypnotised by the mirrored Hancock tower before her. As though ignited by Abigail’s scarlet coat, Terry’s barely suppressed fury flared.

  Grey eyes now stared at him in annoyance. “Watch where you’re going, buddy!” That last word sarcastically. But then belated recognition widened the stare.

  “Stay away from her!” snarled Terry. His pent-up emotions burst out in a massive release, and he smashed a tight fist as hard as he could into Blue-jacket’s face. The man staggered backwards and hit the deck for a second time.

  Shoppers scattered. Someone yelled for the police. Fortunately, Abigail didn’t appear to have noticed. He caught sight of her striding south down Clarendon. Sudden flurries of rain split the whole scene with beaded curtains. He hurried after her, still trembling with rage, but his knuckles stung and he was more puzzled than ever. Blue-jacket guy had almost certainly recognised him! What was going on?

  Agent Leviticus struggled to a sitting position and waited for the world to stop reeling. Then panic pierced his confused state. His gun! He reached into the pocket of his jacket, the special pocket that could be accessed from both sides of the reversible garment. The hard outlines of his Sig Sauer P229 brought immediate comfort. He recalled cub agent Nehemiah being drummed out of the Service for losing his weapon to a suspect. Yet the comfort was short-lived. There’d be hell to pay from Jack.

  The stares and comments of a surrounding crowd suddenly burst in on him. And he felt the warmth of blood around his nose and mouth. Getting to his feet, he fished out a hanky to clean up his face, then pushed through the ring of spectators and quickly away. His embarrassment would be even worse if he had to explain to slow-minded uniforms and expose the business of ICE.

  Welcome rain stung his skin and brought him clarity. Abigail must have detailed her boyfriend to take out any followers, which meant she was going somewhere important and he’d missed it. There was no excuse. He’d anticipated an easy mission and had been lax. Even recognising Terry Fox from his mug-shot, just two seconds earlier, might at least have saved him from complete failure.

  He found a quiet spot and called his much-feared boss on a Service mobile. Jack’s outrage nearly split his eardrum.

  South End, Boston, Massachusetts: May

  Somehow, Terry hung on to his fleeing love through the twists and turns. But, as the shoppers looking for novelties thinned, this became harder. Soon he shared the pavement with Abigail alone, and the red of her coat both dazzled and frightened him. He maintained a long distance, even losing sight of her occasionally. He prayed he wouldn’t lose her permanently, and sure enough the scarlet signal, desire and pain, always showed up again.

  For some bizarre reason she circled Union Park, perhaps still hoping to catch out the likes of Blue-jacket-guy, but Terry discovered he had a kind of instinct for what Abigail would do at each junction, and it didn’t fail him.

  She slipped into a brightly coloured café. Café Lorca. Terry sheltered in a doorway across the street and saw her take a table alone, fortunately near the windowed front of the camp-looking joint.

  Terry bet himself she wouldn’t be alone for long. Confusion and suspicion constricted his throat so much that he could barely swallow. His knuckles ached. Sure enough, a man soon turned up, seating himself opposite Abigail. Terry moved in closer, trying to look casual, edging up from behind the direction of her gaze to get a good look at the guy. He took out his mobile, pretending to answer it, giving him an excuse to loiter while he mouthed Yes and Okay and Great to nobody.

  The two were talking earnestly already, yet neither the place nor the mood spoke in the slightest of important academia. An obliging shaft of sunlight revealed a goofy smile and curly hair. Not a match for the reversible jacket guy. Surely not even a match for himself!

  Terry was on the point of sneaking a phone-photo when shame stung him. This was Abigail! Why would he need evidence? He felt dirty. Yet despite his lack of trust and despite his ignoble action today, he still oscillated between the bitterness of exclusion and the rage of jealousy.

  He swore foully, not realising this was out loud until an old couple passing by stared apprehensively at him. An image of Abigail cuddled up to him in bed escaped from his memory with such reality. He could feel her warmth and softness again, could almost smell her scent. Confused still further by the gentle spirit this evoked and feeling like a kicked dog, he slunk off towards home.

  Tehran, Iran: May

  “In Rome, this says beware pickpockets on crowded trains.”

  “We have zip pockets. Our jackets have.”

  The four men were speaking in English for practise, surrounded by the dozens of country maps and guide books and city plans they’d been studying for months now. Ali, Amin, Bashir, and Muhammad. One of the fluorescent strips in the windowless room began to flicker. Bashir picked up the internal phone and in Farsi demanded a replacement tube, then closed his eyes protectively, or because he was tired.

  “Which two of us will be chosen?” mused Ali.

  “As God wills,” replied Muhammad.

  “And the extent of our knowledge,” added Amin. “And a medical.” He rubbed his shoulder. “The gym aches me today. But the pain is of fitness.”

  “In London,” said Ali, “knowledge is the name drivers of taxis say for a test about which routes are fastest. Soon we have knowledge together of half the world!”

  “And half that knowledge,” said Bashir, “will be no use, when one is sent only west or only east.”

  “Would you only memorise half the Qu’ran because you might die half way through reciting? Two of us might fall ill before the chosen day.”

  Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Downtown Boston, Massachusetts: May

  The article burned into Jack’s brain as though the text was made from fire.

  ICE around Roxbury mosque, it declared.

  His neck flushed, his hands trembled with the effort of maintaining control. The familiar rage that had kept him tirelessly fighting on the front-line as a soldier of God, and a defender of the country’s borders, occasionally let him down too. He pulled back the top-right drawer of his desk and slipped his hand inside, gripping the solid comfort of the Bible there.

  Gradually, his muscles relaxed and his heartbeat slowed till it became the steady drum of a march again, a march filled with God’s purpose. His vision cleared and he contemplated how orderly his office was: to the right thick carpet, traditional wood, expensively framed pictures and awards above rows of leather-bound books. The desk where he sat was polished oak. To the left, computers fed two dominating wall-screens that gave him a sense of power and control; his eyes and ears. Those screens and a couple of lamps provided the only light; he could concentrate much better in a dim environment and never opened the blinds.

  At least the article was only on page five. Nevertheless, it could cause him a lot of trouble. There’d be public pressure, and the legal department would suddenly find a conscience again. For a few months at least, he’d have to stop monitoring visitors to the mosque. This could mean a serious loss of intelligence. Illegals or conspirators would be warned; the latter would meet elsewhere.

  So one point to Abigail Leclaire. He had little doubt she was the reliable source quoted, even if the reporter had managed to gain surreptitious confirmation from within ICE itself. This was due to his own misjudgement in letting slip the information as part of his pressure on her, at Elephant Walk. Yet he’d really thought she’d crumble, not fight back! Undoubtedly there was strong stuff inside the girl; but why was she fighting?

  He’d crushed many a liberal idealist who’d unwisely decided to turn and nip at the ankles of authority, yet he sensed there was more to Abigail’s resistance. She knew stuf
f; she might be seriously involved. If not directly recruited by the agents of Eagle Teacher, then at least an indirect tool.

  Direct pressure on Abigail wouldn’t work. She’d only clam up, or fight harder, and neither did he have anything on her, as yet. She might call for big industrialist daddy to help too, and that’d mean some serious heat, maybe an ultimatum to lay off. Already he’d been denied a tap on her mobile. ‘We don’t want to offend Canada,’ the high-ups had said. More likely, they couldn’t afford to offend daddy and his powerful friends in the U.S. Her landlines, on university property, were altogether a different matter…

  At the very least, Jack surmised, Abigail was a lens through which the origin and motives behind Eagle Teacher might be discerned, a lens he very much needed to see through. And she could still be taught that resisting him wasn’t at all wise.

  He punched a button on his desk-phone.

  “Leviticus,” he said slowly. Using code-names, even in the office, added to the aura of fear he liked to project.

  “Cut fawning! I’m giving you a break. You’re back on the street. Yeah, thank me later, if you don’t screw up! I’m sure you remember the guy who damaged your nose. Yeah, him. Search his apartment. And while you’re about it, trash the place. Hey, I’m offering you revenge and a second chance too, all in one shot! Yeah. No. Find anything you can to do with the case, and whatever else that might be embarrassing. If there’s anything even remotely dodgy, make sure some uniforms find it too. Come to think of it, even if there’s nothing dodgy, make sure uniforms find something. Unregistered gun, small stash… Yeah, Yeah. That’s the idea. Do it today, now… as soon as he goes out to work or whatever.”

  He would start by isolating Abigail. That was the way to go. She’d recruited her boyfriend to the cause, whatever her cause might actually be, so he was fair game.

  He punched the phone again.

  “Hi Jenny.” She didn’t have a code name of course, although he’d thought of some, mostly very un-biblical.

  “Yeah, rain again. Yeah, tough. Look, I want you to start a new subject file. Er… Paul Summers, reporter at the Boston Globe. Yeah, anything and everything you can, just to kick us off. Okay. That’ll be fine. Okay, thanks.”

  Southern Ethiopia: July 1158

  Hakim surveyed the naked prisoner huddled in the main monkey cage. Subjected to daily spear-jabs, aimed only to torment him yet never to injure him too much, afflicted by numerous monkey bites and scratches, subsisting on whatever monkey food he could scavenge, he was a pathetic figure. In fact absolutely wretched, his scrawny flesh covered in scabs and suppurations. Ah, the indomitable nature of the human spirit, thought Hakim. How ironic, how vile, that the doomed will still struggle for survival. Yet, in this prisoner’s position, what would he himself do? Would he have the courage to starve himself? Or refrain from drinking the unclean water? Maybe try to swallow his own tongue in order to choke himself?

  Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts: May

  Walid al-Areqi pulled his robe closely about him as he strolled along Columbus Avenue. The late night air was quite nippy, more like Fall than Spring, and rain seemed to be threatening as dark, raggy clouds hid the stars. An empty yellow cab cruised by at no great speed, but Walid could tell that the vehicle was registered in Cambridge, thus it couldn’t legally pick him up in Boston even if he waved; and anyway he ought to walk home, for the exercise. A sudden downpour wouldn’t harm him. Years ago, he might have interpreted a vacant cab ignoring a signalling man, dressed such as he was, as ethnic prejudice. Now, he knew much better. How many rages and acts of violence in the world were due to mere misunderstandings?

  So he was very pleased he could help Abigail to cast some enlightenment and also to further their blossoming friendship. Via her publications, a greater understanding of Islamic literature would penetrate western minds. And how curious that the obscure topic she was currently pursuing with such tenacity was connected to the perplexing scholarly problem he’d been wrestling with himself – the alternate and mysterious, almost buried Ismaili interpretation of the waters of life. Yet it seemed this was so, and it gratified him to have made some reportable progress. He should also introduce her to Kamal as soon as may be. It gratified him too to flatter Abigail a little, emphasising her Frenchness, her looks. Then a wry smile escaped him. How ridiculous! For a man his age to act so, just because she was pretty.

  Rain began to spit. Though only to spit. Under a streetlamp a king-size discarded pizza box grinned, graphic eyes of sliced pepperoni, nose of chilli pepper, smiley tomato paste mouth. Walid felt a sudden, childlike impulse to kick the box along the sidewalk. That wouldn’t be very dignified! Besides, maybe a rat had slunk inside the gaudy cardboard, smelling a faint odour of food. Even so, his feet performed a little jig and he recalled games of football long ago in dusty, war-damaged places.

  He passed a parked black SUV in which someone was sitting. Momentarily their eyes met. A round-faced Asian of some sort, with light-chocolate skin, so it seemed in the poor light. Maybe Filipino or Indonesian or from somewhere thereabouts. The man seemed to have one eyebrow above another on the right side of his face, which looked a bit weird; though the Asian then looked away.

  Walid proceeded in a reverie and turned into a dark alley that was his usual short cut. He was a third of the way along when bright lights flooded the narrow corridor of brick and concrete from behind him, the glaring main beams of some vehicle. As he glanced back it accelerated with a roar, filling the alley with its rushing bulk, just as fear filled his mind. The driver was mad! Cars normally ambled down here, so as to avoid pedestrians.

  Gesturing a warning, Walid flattened himself up against the nearest wall. Dazzle that pained his eyes was accompanied by an aghast and paralysing bafflement; the vehicle didn’t intend to avoid him! Just seconds later, a moment of crushing agony, almost too brief for any thought.

  Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts: May

  Abigail felt trapped. She wanted to be anywhere but here, in Terry’s car, quite apart from the fact that it always smelled musty to her.

  “Sorry about the meal, babe,” he apologised for the third time. “They’re a man down, I have to go in later.”

  She’d spent months trying to wean him off that patronising word, yet he still slipped easily back to it.

  “You should get a real job,” she sniped, instantly wishing she hadn’t.

  He parried, deflecting the attack. “You didn’t like the movie then?”

  She bit back the sharp no that formed on her tongue. Why was she being so acid? It was nice of him to take her out, and he’d done his best. A film about the Crusades she hadn’t even known was playing. It was to have been followed by fine home-cooking too, before the current bar he worked at had called him in.

  “Very dramatic,” she conceded. “But the history was all wrong.”

  He slipped a quirky smile her way. “Y’know, you could suspend your rationality a bit more often. Have some fun. I thought it was real good.”

  Their talk was dancing within the strict and tiring rules of a duel. Yet neither of them wanted to really wound the other, so silence then reigned inside the car. Abigail was relieved. But she’d put off broaching the big issues for far too long. Collectively, those hung above like the sword of Damocles.

  Terry pulled up outside his apartment on Myrtle Street, and turned to face her. A critical moment made itself felt, like the sword’s point intruding.

  “You could stay over anyhow.” His voice scraped slightly in its effort to be gentle.

  “Spend hours alone with nothing to do, then have you wake me up at 2.30 am? Thanks but no thanks! I’d prefer to go out and grab some dinner, then work at home with my papers, on my own computer.”

  Terry’s brow furrowed. “And not alone? Not for dinner anyhow?”

  All gentleness in his voice had evaporated. Why was he always so suspicious? Amazingly, she had once thought his jealousy sweet. Now it infuriated her.

  “I do have friends, y
ou know, if I needed to eat in company!”

  “Oh yeah, I know, I know that. Friends!”

  Abigail realised the spat had left its normal course behind. His voice was full and dripping with irony, his mouth bitterly twisted, as though there was deeper meaning behind his words that she ought to grasp. But she couldn’t. In some confusion, she backed down. The point of that sword was far too close; all she could think about was continuing to avoid it.

  “Hey look, let’s not get mad,” she soothed. “I have to come in for my bag. I’ll stay until you need to go. If I get the subway later, you won’t use up time having to run me home. There still an hour or more to chill out, and have a glass of that wine you were going to treat me to.”

  She finished with a bright smile. It worked, but only just. Trouble still stalked behind Terry’s eyes. Something had taken him to the edge, and, though she frantically searched her memory, she couldn’t think what she might have done.

  The fact that the apartment door was unmistakably open didn’t compute at first. Terry stopped dead and gaped, the key already raised in his hand. Abigail bumped into his back. The door was ajar a couple of inches, and light streaming through the gap seemed to mesmerise them both. Abigail recovered first.

  “Careful!” she hissed. “Don’t go in. Someone might still be inside.” Terry charged in regardless. Abigail followed.

  Terry yelled an aggressive challenge as they burst from the small entrance into the main living area. Yet his voice died as they both gazed at the transformation of his familiar and cosy room. It looked as though a pocket tornado had made a very unsociable visit.

  The floor was a sea of paper that sucked in smashed picture-frames and ornaments, along with most of the once-orderly miscellany of Terry’s life. Beached hulks of bookcases reared from half-submersion in the mess, while stuffing from slashed cushions floated like froth above angry waves. A bottle of red wine on its side jutted precariously from a shelf; the stopper Terry had put in only hours before now loose, allowing its contents to drip into a shocked silence, spattering onto a metal tray below.