The Perfect Assassin

by Ward Larsen

  Suddenly there was movement on the boat and Slaton saw the ex-soldier astern, sorting through a pile of equipment. Wysinski was still in no hurry. The kidon cocked his head and looked back to where the young girl had been tending her flower boxes. For some reason he wanted to see her again, in all her faithful purpose and innocence. She was gone.

  His approach was completely silent. The pier was wide, and along each side lay a solid row of boats and wooden finger slips that blocked the view almost continuously. If any passerby had happened to look in just the right gaps, they would have seen the vague, dark silhouette of a small inflatable Zodiac beneath the pier. It moved so slowly that anyone who might watch it for a moment or two would see nothing other than the motion one would expect from such a craft if it were moored on a loose painter, drifting randomly back and forth. Indeed, it moved in two directions — six inches slowly shoreward, then a foot toward the end of the pier. Six inches in, another foot out. In the dim light there was no way anyone could make out the man who was crouched inside, his head just clearing under the dock’s stringer planks as he inched his way out.

  Slaton worked his fingers into the gaps between the wooden two-by-sixes, careful to never let the tips protrude above the top surface. At one point, someone, probably a dockhand, walked directly overhead and stopped. Slaton, motionless, saw the soles of a pair of deck shoes through the cracks, and heard the man grunt as he tossed a sailbag onto the deck of a nearby boat. It landed with a thud, then the shoes retreated back up the pier toward shore. Slaton pressed on, finally stopping twenty feet short of Wysinski’s boat. He pulled out the Beretta and released the safety.

  For a full five minutes he listened, mentally logging the sounds, the patterns of movement, and selecting a point of entry. The boat was stern to the pier and had a large, flat swimming platform behind the transom. It was clearly the quickest and easiest way aboard, assuming he could get there unseen. The name on the stern was artfully scripted, Lorraine II, home port Casablanca.

  Slaton wondered if this was the boat that had been used to retrieve the weapons. It was not a salvage ship by any means, but could have done the work. There were two small davits astern, of the type normally used to hoist and carry a small skiff. But there was no skiff, and a few strong men would have had no trouble swinging a pair of five-hundred pounders aboard.

  Slaton heard Wysinski go below and he edged closer. The last ten feet would be the toughest. Wysinski would have a narrow line of sight, over the transom and under the dock. Slaton saw the coast was clear and moved fast to the platform. He stepped across silently while pushing the Zodiac back into the shadows, then stayed low until he heard Wysinski back on deck. When Slaton stood, the gun was sighted and ready.

  Wysinski had his back to Slaton, but he sensed a presence and turned. Slaton saw something in the man’s expression. But it wasn’t surprise. There should have been surprise. And maybe a trace of fear, even in an old soldier. Alarms went off in Slaton’s head. Something was very wrong. He quickly glanced up and down the pier but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Get below!” Slaton ordered, wanting to get out of the open. “Hands behind your back!”

  A sneering Wysinski complied, moving slowly to the boat’s cabin. Slaton followed, every sense on alert for the slightest deviation. Wysinski was a few steps in front as they reached the big main cabin, and as Slaton passed through the companionway, he assessed the interior. Aside from Wysinski’s steady movement, there was nothing. Then he spotted the two descending stairwells, one to his left and one to the right, passageways that led back and down, probably to a stateroom below the aft deck. If he followed Wysinski forward—

  A barely audible creak. Slaton heard the sound just as Wysinski’s eyes gave it away. He twisted right, saw movement and fired without waiting to focus on the target. There was a groan as the man fell back, tumbling down the staircase.

  Slaton spun left and saw a glint arcing toward him from the opposite stairwell. He lifted an arm to parry the blow, but felt the knife slice across his chest and wrist. In close, Slaton dropped his gun and grabbed the arm that held the knife. With all his strength he turned, letting the weight of his body do the work. The attacker lost his balance and stumbled against Slaton. At that moment a shot rang out from Wysinski’s direction and Slaton felt the man he was struggling against go limp. He dove down the stairs to his left as another shot rang out, this one shattering a nearby porthole and spraying glass everywhere.

  Slaton crashed painfully to the bottom of the stairs, banging his head against a rail. He saw the first man he’d taken, lying crumpled on the floor with a crimson pool spread across his chest. The man’s gun lay on the floor and Slaton grabbed it as he rolled behind the central bulkhead for cover. He got his first look at the stateroom under the aft deck. It was stunning.

  Not ten feet away, chained to a wooden cradle, was a ten kiloton nuclear weapon. Resting snugly in Eastbourne’s harbor. He could easily see how they’d done it. There was a large hatch overhead, near the port davit, and Slaton noticed that the furniture and trimmings in the state room had been torn apart to make room for the weapon. He heard movement above. Wysinski wasn’t giving up.

  Slaton checked how many rounds remained in the gun’s clip and was glad to find it full. He then looked down and evaluated his wound. The cut on his chest wasn’t deep, but his arm was stinging in pain. The sounds above stopped. Wysinski was waiting for him to make the next move. Slaton wondered how long it would take for the police to react, then mused that, at the rate he was going, he could soon write an authoritative treatise on the subject.

  He looked again at the hatch above the cradled weapon, then noticed that the port stairway had a privacy curtain at the bottom. It wouldn’t stop bullets, but it would conceal his activities. Slaton reached across the stairwell and yanked the curtain closed, his action drawing fire through the flimsy fabric. Three rounds, one of them clinking to rest in something metallic. He looked at the bomb to see a nice round hole in the nose cone. Slaton was grateful it wasn’t a conventional, high-explosive type, or he and Wysinski might both be at the bottom of the harbor. Curling his wrist into the starboard stairwell, he fired four shots blindly. He then ran to the hatch, unlatched it, and threw it open. The big fiberglass door swung up slowly on pneumatic lifts and stopped in a vertical position. Slaton moved quickly.

  Victor Wysinski stood watching the two stairwells. He didn’t see the hatch rise until it was nearly straight up. It hinged forward, blocking his view of the opening. Wysinski fired three shots that easily penetrated the thin fiberglass. There was a moan, and a gun slid out onto the deck. Then a muffled thud. Wysinski moved out on deck, keeping his firearm trained on the hatch. Slaton was nowhere to be seen, but there was blood around the opening. Wysinski rushed to the hatch and pointed his gun downward, certain he’d scored a hit. He saw nothing.

  Slaton cued on Wysinski’s hesitation. It only took a moment for the ex-commando to realize his mistake and turn, but it was too late. Slaton rushed him from behind, crashing a shoulder into Wysinski’s side. He held his arm upright and they slammed headlong into the transom, Wysinski’s gun going over the side and into the harbor. The two struggled and fell entwined, crashing heavily to the deck. Wysinski recovered first and saw the gun Slaton had lost lying a few feet away. He scrambled over and grabbed it. Slaton struggled to his feet, looking stunned and grimacing in pain.

  “You’re slipping, kidon,” Wysinski said with a smirk.

  Slaton looked down the barrel of the weapon and slumped to one knee.

  Wysinski glanced toward shore. “You let an old paratrooper get the better of you.”

  “Those other two aren’t so smug,” Slaton said, gasping for breath.

  “Joacham and Sergeant Heim? They were good men. You’ve been costing us a lot of good men lately, but not anymore.”

  “The police will be here any minute. Your revenue from this fiasco is about to be cut in half,” Slaton said with a nod toward the hatch.
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br />   Wysinski laughed. “You haven’t figured it out yet, have you?”

  “What?”

  “Do you really think we’re going to all this trouble for a few million in cash? It’s too bad you won’t be alive in a couple of days to see. It’s beautiful, the way everything will work.”

  “How what will work?”

  “If only you could have been on our side, kidon. Unfortunately, the person in charge has some history with you. Or maybe I should say, you with him. That’s why you’re here. In ten minutes the police will find the killer they’ve been looking for — dead. And with an alarming surprise below decks.”

  “Where’s the other weapon?”

  “In the hands of Pytor Roth, a mercenary and an imbecile who will unwittingly shape the future of our country. It all fits perfectly.”

  Sirens and screeching tires announced the arrival of a large police contingent. Slaton stood straight, his eyes locked to Wysinski. “You say the person in charge has a past with me? Who?”

  Slaton took a deliberate step forward. Wysinski straightened his arm and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked harmlessly. Slaton didn’t even blink, his movement steady and strong. Wysinski tried to shoot again with the same result. His smugness disintegrated as he realized he’d been duped.

  Slaton closed in. “Who?” he screamed.

  Wysinski backed up, his eyes sweeping, searching frantically for something to use against the kidon. Wysinski spat out, “He was one of the shooters on the bus in Netanya.”

  Slaton stopped dead in his tracks. “What?”

  “And the man who ordered Yosef killed. He’s the reason you are here today.”

  “Netanya? That was the Palestinians, Anand’s group.”

  “Rubbish! We never identified anyone, did we, kidon? We only rounded up the usual suspects. You of all people must know — no one was ever held responsible.”

  “You? You and your sick friends? Working with the Arabs?”

  “No. Don’t you see? It’s exactly the opposite.”

  Slaton’s head spun. Wysinski was only trying to save himself. Nothing more. “No, not Netanya,” he said hoarsely. “No Israeli could do that. What would it accomplish?”

  “Yes, what have we accomplished?”

  Slaton took a step away, and slowly, agonizingly, he tried to comprehend the incomprehensible. A world he always controlled seemed to be spinning now, and he was at the vortex.

  “And wait until you see what we accomplish this time. The policies of compromise for our country will be over. We will be strong once again and he will lead us there. He is leading us there.”

  The words swirled in Slaton’s mind and one thought, one image overrode everything else. He was waiting outside the room, the nurse standing squarely in his way. Let me in! I have to get in! Do something — anything!”

  The burly soldier charged Slaton, knocking him off balance, then ran. Slaton stumbled backwards as Wysinski clambered up to the dock.

  “Who did it? Who?” Slaton stammered. He saw Wysinski racing away and realized the answers would soon be gone. All at once, the fog lifted. Slaton riveted on the man who knew, the one who could slay his nightmare once and for all.

  Slaton bolted, immune to his pain, immune to feeling anything. He lunged across to the dock and caught Wysinski in ten strides, twisting an arm behind his back. Wysinski leaned ahead, clearly expecting Slaton to try and stop him. Instead, Slaton propelled him forward and the heavier man completely lost his balance. With all the force he could muster, Slaton slammed the stocky soldier head first into a concrete dock piling. Wysinski’s body crumpled to the dock and lay motionless.

  Slaton dropped next to him and put his hands around a throat that would never again carry a breath. “Who?” he screamed. “Who did it?”

  “Don’t move!” a voice commanded from somewhere up the pier.

  Slaton was oblivious as he strangled the limp corpse.

  Another shout, “You!”

  This time he looked up. Three policemen were twenty feet away, approaching very, very slowly. Slaton looked down to see the lifeless eyes of Viktor Wysinski. It was the first time he had ever killed a man without planning, without premeditation. He had simply killed due to rage. The kidon had lost control. But now he had to regain it, because there was still someone else out there. Someone even more dangerous. And more deserving. Slaton stood slowly.

  The policemen were an experienced contingent and they stopped five paces away, seeing no surrender in their suspect’s posture. What they saw in his eyes was closer to madness.

  “Here now,” the one in front said, “let’s do this the easy way.”

  It happened without warning. Their man dove to his right and disappeared with a splash into the inky water of the harbor.

  “Bloody hell!” one of the bobbies said as they all ran to where the man had been. Two searched the water in vain while a third checked Wysinski, which didn’t take long. “He’s done,” the policeman said with certainty.

  Another policeman came running up the dock and more were in the distance. All converged on the pier. They searched the adjacent boats, not finding any trace of their quarry. Then, at the very end of the pier, an outboard motor churned to life. The two who were closest ran out and spotted a small inflatable boat, thirty yards off and speeding toward the harbor entrance. The driver was hiding under some kind of blanket or tarpaulin.

  “He’s makin’ for open sea!” one of them yelled. The constable in charge barked orders to the nearest man. “Get to the harbormaster and commandeer a boat. Something fast!” He pulled out his radio and put in an emergency request for a helicopter from the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. They watched the Zodiac as it headed out through the channel. At one point it crashed into a seawall, before bouncing crazily back to open water.

  “He’s stark mad,” one of the bobbies said.

  Another nodded. “Did you see the look in his eyes? And the way he killed that poor sod?”

  “I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t bother me one bit that some one else will have to wrap him up now.”

  Half an hour later, a Royal Navy helicopter, a Westland Sea King, intercepted the Zodiac. The little craft was two miles offshore, still at full throttle and making large, lazy circles on the choppy seas. The Westland’s crew moved in for a closer look and immediately noted three things. First was a tarp that was flapping along loosely behind the craft, slapping in and out of its wake. Second was a rope, tied from beam to beam, and in the middle secured to the little outboard’s steering arm. Of course the third, and most relevant observation was that there was no one in the boat.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The police in Eastbourne searched the Bertram and had no trouble discovering two more bodies in the suite below deck. Word was quickly sent to Scotland Yard that the man they were after, seen by three officers, was likely responsible. They also made note of a large, polished steel, cylindrical object on a stand near one of the bodies. The officer in command, understandably on edge as a result of the carnage around him, elected to assume the worst and ordered the entire dock evacuated. He called in the bomb disposal unit from London’s Metropolitan Police.

  The technicians from London arrived an hour later. The man in charge had considerable experience defusing all sorts of small, homemade explosive contraptions; credit that to the IRA. He took one look at the sleek, well-machined device on board the yacht and quickly decided he might let someone else have a crack. Whatever it was, it looked military, and the Army lads up at Wimbish would do better with it. In the meantime, he suggested that the evacuation perimeter be expanded. The few operating businesses on the waterfront were ordered closed, and a handful of year-round residents were rousted from their homes. By one o’clock that afternoon, only those with official purpose were allowed within a block of the harbor.

  The 58th Field Squadron had existed, under various banners, for over a century. As one of the few Royal Engineers units to specialize in explosive ordnance disposal, the 58
th managed a brisk business in places like Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Kosovo. More recently, its charter had been expanded to conduct “search operations in confined and environmentally harmful situations,” a euphemism for tangling with the occasional weapon of mass destruction.

  Based in Wimbish, the soldiers of the 58th took nearly two hours to arrive. By then, crowds had begun to gather outside the cleared area, concentrated at those points that held a good view of the harbor. Reporters prowled the access points, peppering anyone in any sort of uniform with questions about what was going on. Aside from acknowledging that three bodies had been removed from the scene, little was said.

  The 58th brought their best men and equipment, and got right to work. A robot might normally have performed the initial work, however their preferred unit was designed for streets, buildings, and warehouses. Its tracked wheels where wholly incompatible with stairs and, anyway, the contraption was far too big for clambering around such tight spaces. That being the case, the scene reverted to one not much different from what it had been back in World War I — one volunteer, in the best protective gear available, would go below deck on Lorraine II and deal with the weapon. Yet while the concept was reminiscent of another era, the technology was not. A small camera on the soldier’s headgear transmitted real-time pictures to a mobile command center outside, where the officer in charge watched every move.