The Assassin

by Andrew Britton

  Vanderveen had closed to within 5 feet. Everything else had fallen away: the jostling crowd, the cacophony of voices, and the constant roar of the cars sweeping by. All he could see was the man named Khalil: the elegant cut of his Savile Row suit, the attaché dangling from his right hand, the hair curling over the back of his collar. He had stopped somewhere to purchase an umbrella, a lime green monstrosity, which was now bobbing over his head. If he had put it up earlier, it would have made Vanderveen’s task much easier, but the rain was only now starting to increase in tempo and force.

  He paused to sweep some water out of his eyes. The courier, clearly accustomed to large cities, was an expert at navigating the packed sidewalk, sliding from left to right, avoiding the crowd with surprising grace and agility. Vanderveen realized he was falling behind. Adjusting his pace, he looked to the left, waiting for the right moment. The vehicular traffic was moving far too fast for these narrow roads. The city officials seemed to have considered this inevitable, as their preventative measures were mostly passive. Police constables were positioned at the major crosswalks, and white letters on the cement warned tourists to “look right.” Khalil was passing one of the crossings now, and with a start, Vanderveen realized that they were drawing close to Villiers Street. The entrance to the station at Charing Cross was less than two blocks away.

  As if reading his mind, the courier dipped a hand into his suit jacket and came up with a cell phone. He held it in front of his body as he dialed, obscuring Vanderveen’s view. Then he lifted it to his ear. Vanderveen looked past his target, checking the road. Traffic was hurtling past him at full speed. Coming up were a white Rover sedan, a Renault wagon, a black cab, and beyond that, a double-decker bus. Khalil stepped to his left to avoid an elderly woman with an armful of bags, and Vanderveen seized the chance. Coming up on the courier’s right side, he let the Rover go racing past, along with the Renault and then the cab. Khalil, with the phone raised to his ear, was giving Raseen instructions when his head turned to the right and his eyes went wide. At the moment of recognition, Vanderveen used both arms to shove him as hard as he could, directly into the path of the bus. Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd as the brakes squealed and the screams rose behind him.

  “Fucking hell!”

  Haines swore viciously and slammed on the brakes as the cars fishtailed in front of him. Craning his neck, he could see people running toward a double-decker bus. The vehicle was three cars ahead of his own, and every instinct he had told him that this was relevant. Pulling out his earpiece, he turned off the ignition and got out of the car, jogging toward the commotion. As he approached, he could see a few people stumbling away from the scene, their faces white, eyes wide in shock. To his right, a young woman was bent over at the waist, vomiting noisily onto the pavement. Her friend, looking nearly as sick, was standing by her side, rubbing her back and murmuring calming words.

  Pulling his eyes away from this strange scene, Haines skirted another car and pushed to the front of the building crowd. An older man in uniform was standing front and center, hands wrapped in his ginger hair. He was screaming something that didn’t make sense. Listening closely, Haines heard a few words cutting through the hysterical rant: “…wasn’t my fault. I swear to God, it wasn’t my fault. They just fell right into the road. You all saw it….”

  And then he saw the front of the bus.

  It looked as if somebody had splashed red paint all over the grill. Despite the obvious signs, it took him a few seconds to realize what had happened. His eyes involuntarily moved down to the wheels, and he saw the twisted remains of a human body, part of it wrapped up in the axle, the rest scattered along the street. Moving forward, Haines caught sight of another body, that of a teenage boy. He was lying behind and to the right of the bus, his limbs broken and resting at strange angles. A middle-aged woman — presumably the mother — was draped over the lifeless form, sobbing uncontrollably. As he watched, a pair of police constables moved out of the crowd. One went to the woman, gently lifting her up and away from her son, while the other started ordering people back from the scene of the accident. Haines felt somebody tap his arm, and he turned. It was Scott. His animated expression was difficult to read; there were equal measures of horror and excitement on his young, unlined face.

  “Did you see it?”

  “No,” Haines replied slowly. “Did you?”

  Scott grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the crowd. People were milling about, talking in low, horrified tones, and it was difficult to hear over the babble of voices. When they were far enough away, the younger man said, “I saw it all. Christ, I was right behind the poor bastard when it happened. The driver dragged him halfway down the fuckin’ road before he had the sense to stop.”

  Haines did not respond. All he could think about was the woman hunched over her son’s body; he couldn’t get her anguished face out of his mind. Finally, the words leaked into his head. “What happened?”

  “He was pushed. I—”

  “Pushed? Are you sure?”

  Scott nodded firmly. “Like I said, I saw it clear as day. The kid was just in the way. Wrong bloody place and time, is all, but the Arab was definitely pushed. It was deliberate as hell.”

  Haines allowed himself to be dragged along, still thinking about the woman. He couldn’t understand his reaction, as he had seen much worse in his years with 2 PARA. He had seen men torn apart by machine gun fire on a shingle beach in the Falklands, the aftermath of a mortar attack during the Battle of Goose Green, and the destruction caused by a pair of massive bombs in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. In that incident, both the primary and secondary devices had been strategically placed on a dual carriageway near the border. The bombing claimed the lives of 18 men in Haines’s regiment. He had been among the first to arrive on the scene — indeed, he had nearly been killed by the secondary blast — but it all seemed like a distant memory. More to the point, it had been war, and the people who’d died were trained soldiers, brave men who knew the risks. None of it seemed as bad as the stunned look of shock and despair he had just witnessed, and even now, just minutes after turning his back on the scene, he knew he’d be seeing the woman’s face in his dreams for years to come.

  “Who pushed him? Why didn’t you follow?”

  “The crowd closed up right away, and I lost him in the confusion,” Scott replied. “I didn’t see much, anyway. He was wearing a baseball cap and a black jacket, and I think he was blond, but I couldn’t swear to it….”

  Scott continued to relay what he’d seen as they turned off the Strand. Soon they were moving northeast on Chandos Place, heading toward Bedford Street. “What about the car?” Haines asked.

  “Fuck the car. No one’s getting off that street for at least an hour, mate. We have to get back and make a report. Robeson won’t be happy, but if you ask me, there wasn’t a damn thing we could’ve done to—”

  “The pictures.”

  Scott turned. “What?”

  “The pictures,” Haines repeated. “You’ve got shots of our man, right? Whoever shoved him in front of that bus will be in the background.”

  “Jesus, you’re right.” The young watcher thought for a minute, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’ll work. You saw how busy the street was… There’s no way we’ll be able to pick him out. I didn’t even get that good a look.”

  “Maybe not, but that falls to the techs, not us. If there’s anything there, they’ll find it.”

  A Vauxhall sedan pulled up to the curb, and Scott said, “That’s us. I called before you arrived on the scene.”

  Haines moved toward the back of the car, pulled open the door, and got in. Scott found a seat in the front and tapped the driver’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 34

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  It was just after 2:00 in the afternoon as Jonathan Harper reluctantly entered the room on the seventh floor of the OHB at Langley, pulling the door shut behind him. The sound of the secretary
’s typing was blocked out instantly, replaced by an uneasy silence. He had expected the summons, but as he crossed the deep pile carpet, there was something about the resigned look on the director’s face that threw him off-guard. He had expected anger, bluster, and shouted accusations from the start. Anything but this quiet, restrained anger.

  Rachel Ford’s demeanor was much easier to read. She was staring at him intently from the seat opposite his. Her mouth was set in a straight, thin line, her eyes glittering dangerously behind a pair of elegant reading glasses. Her presence could only mean one thing: she had been brought up to date on the contents of Anthony Mason’s hard drive, and she had learned about the previous day’s meeting at the White House.

  It had been Harper’s decision to keep her out of the briefing, based on Kealey’s request. He had called in every favor he could to keep Science and Technology out of the loop, as Roger Davidson, the head of the directorate, was one of Ford’s staunchest supporters. Harper had then persuaded Andrews to go along with the idea, based on the fact that somebody had slipped the Bureau information about the laptop’s whereabouts. Harper had pointed out Ford’s relationship to Samantha Crane, the FBI agent tasked with the raid in Alexandria, and the subsequent accusations she had leveled at Kealey. This evidence, while extremely circumstantial, was enough to convince the director to keep Ford out of the way, at least temporarily. It now appeared Andrews had changed his mind; otherwise, the deputy DCI would not be present.

  Harper took the proffered chair and ignored Rachel Ford’s unwavering stare. Instead, he looked past the large mahogany desk as the DCI arranged a few loose papers. It was midday; through the large, soundproof windows, pale sunlight flitted over the tops of the trees. It was a pleasant scene, but hardly fitting. An autumn gale would have been more appropriate to the dark, strained mood that enveloped the room.

  Finally, Andrews looked up and appraised his guest. “So, have you seen him yet?”

  The opening question was not what Harper expected, but he recovered quickly. “Yes, I saw him this morning.”

  “And how bad is the wound?”

  “Not bad, but painful… You can tell just from looking at it. The bullet scraped a rib and left a nasty gouge. He’s lucky as hell. A few inches to the right and he never would have made it out of the building.”

  “And this situation would be much worse,” Andrews added, running a tired hand over his face. He leaned back in his chair. “Of course, it’s already a complete disaster. Worse would be… well, unthinkable. What happened out there?”

  Harper cleared his throat, bracing himself for the coming storm. “I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that we have a location for Thomas Rühmann. He’s living in Berlin under the name Walter Schäuble. If we move quickly—”

  “Let me stop you right there.” Andrews jerked forward in his chair and planted his feet beneath the desk, his face tightening. Ford was shaking her head in disgust. “We’re not going to talk about the one good thing that came out of this fucking mess,” the DCI continued, “because we can’t act on that piece of information. So let’s talk about reality, okay? At 4:45 this morning, a security guard from the German Embassy was admitted to University Hospital in Georgetown with a gunshot wound to the upper arm. Ten minutes later, a D.C. Metro police officer was brought in with a Grade V concussion and severe lacerations to the face and neck. In case you didn’t know,” he continued in a strained tone, “a Grade I concussion is the least severe. Grade V is the worst, with a period of unconsciousness lasting more than ten minutes. In this case, the officer did not regain consciousness for nearly five hours.”

  Andrews stopped to arrange his thoughts. When he spoke again, his voice was taut and barely controlled. “Thirty minutes after the police officer was brought in, a blue Ford Taurus — a car from our motor pool, I might add — arrived at the gate off Dolley Madison Boulevard. The driver was none other than Ryan Kealey. He had no credentials, nothing to identify himself. He was made to wait while they called through and verified his status. Then they called in a doctor, but not before Kealey managed to bleed all over the floor of the gatehouse.” The DCI smiled tightly. “It’s a tile floor… lots of cracks, you know? I hear they’re still trying to clean it up.”

  Andrews rested his arms on the desk and interlaced his fingers. “I have to tell you, John, it pisses me off that you knew about this before I did. Of course, we both know it’s more than that, don’t we?” The director’s gaze was probing. “After all, you supported the embassy raid from the start.”

  “Bob, if you’re suggesting that I signed off on what happened last night—”

  “I’m not ‘suggesting’ anything. I’m telling you that I know what you did. How else would Kealey get access to a car from the motor pool? I know he’s done a lot for us, but he’s only been here four years. He doesn’t know the procedure, and he doesn’t have the authority. You covered your tracks well, John, but I don’t have the time or the patience to beat around the bush. What were you trying to accomplish? Rühmann’s ties to the attacks in Baghdad and Paris are sketchy at best. Do you really think his location is worth the kind of fallout that we’re about to endure?”

  “Sir, we managed to link Rühmann to Kassem, Vanderveen, and al-Umari—”

  “Maybe so, but it wasn’t enough to convince the president, was it? And when the break-in comes back to us, what happens then?”

  Before Harper could answer, the telephone chirped softly. Andrews snatched it up and spoke a few harsh, dismissive words. He replaced the receiver, but Ford stepped in before he could pick up the thread. “Well?”

  Harper ignored her. “Bob, the Germans can search every database they have, and so can the FBI. They’re never going to find a record of Kealey’s fingerprints. They might have his blood, but they have nothing to match it to. I talked to him. I know he disabled the cameras before he went in. There is no feasible way this can be traced back to us. People were hurt… okay. So what? That happens occasionally in this business. No one was killed. This will all be forgotten in a matter of weeks, and because of Ryan’s efforts, we are now in a position to move forward.”

  Ford scowled. “Jonathan, I don’t think you fully appreciate the severity of this situation. If anyone even hints at our involvement, our diplomatic relations with Germany will be damaged beyond repair.”

  “This is not the State Department,” Harper shot back. “And you’re not on the oversight committee anymore. We are not charged with maintaining diplomatic relations. Will Vanderveen has murdered U.S. soldiers and citizens. He has attacked this country on several occasions. In my opinion, the chance to track him down is worth a few hurt feelings on the international front and a damn sight more.”

  It was the unvarnished truth, or at least the way he saw it. Harper fully expected his little speech to make things worse, but while Ford’s face turned a deep shade of scarlet, the DCI merely nodded plaintively.

  “What about a career, John? Would you say that finding him is worth the career of, say, a talented young CTC analyst? One of our best and brightest?”

  Harper tensed involuntarily. “Kharmai?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What are you talking about? She wasn’t even there.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Ford announced. Turning to her right, she said, “You can’t possibly believe that. He knew damn well where she was last night, because he sent them both.”

  Andrews frowned. Harper could see him wavering, but finally, he seemed to accept the denial at face value. “I don’t know where Kealey left her — she didn’t come back to Langley with him — but she was definitely at the embassy,” the director said. “The Metro police cruisers all have dash-mounted cameras.”

  “You saw the tape?”

  “No. I didn’t need to. The officer woke up this morning and gave his statement, which we got hold of shortly thereafter. The name the woman gave him was Sara Brown. Not real, of course, and not particularly original, but that’s beside the point. His descr
iption matched Kharmai to a T, right down to the accent.

  “The dots connect themselves,” Andrews continued, his voice dropping to a more reasonable level. “People are going to figure this out, John. It might come out of this building, or it might come out of the White House, but the point is, it will come out. She’s got to go. Kealey too. Their days at the Agency are numbered. It’s that simple.”

  Harper nodded stiffly, vaguely aware of Ford’s triumphant smile. “When?”

  “They’re suspended without pay, effective immediately. We’ll ease them out by the end of the month. I’ll let you deal with Kealey; frankly, I’d be happy to never see him again. You’ve known him for a long time, and he’s done a lot for us. That’s the only reason he’s not facing charges. The same for Kharmai, and she has my word on that: she’s free and clear if she goes quietly. I want to talk to her face-to-face. We can bring her up now, if you like. Or you can break the news to her first. It’s up to you.”

  “There’s no point in drawing it out,” Harper decided at length. “She’ll be expecting it anyway.”

  “Fine.” Andrews lifted the receiver and punched a button. “Diane, ask Naomi Kharmai to report to my office, please. You should find her in Science and Technology. If she’s not there, try McLean.”

  He replaced the receiver, leaned back in his chair, and appraised his guest. After a time, he turned to Ford and said, “Rachel, would you mind excusing us for a moment?”

  She didn’t look happy, but she’d gotten her way, and for the moment, that seemed to be enough. She nodded curtly, stood, and walked out.