The Assassin

by Andrew Britton

  He grabbed her good arm and pulled her down to the last houseboat. It was a large craft — nearly 60 feet in length — with a fiberglass arch over the flying bridge. Kealey climbed over the rail and helped her over. There was an aluminum table bolted to the deck, surrounded by chairs, potted plants by the rail. He went to the sliding glass door and tried to open it, but it was locked. There was a mat under his feet. He lifted it but didn’t find a key. Looking around, his gaze was drawn back to the plants. Ignoring Naomi’s bewildered expression, he crossed the deck and kneeled by the clay containers. He started dumping the soil out of them, one after the other, running his fingers through the dirt. Finally, he saw something glinting silver. He grabbed the key and went back to the door.

  “How did you know that was there?” Naomi managed to ask. She was leaning against the exterior wall, shaking impossibly hard, her arms wrapped tightly around her body.

  He didn’t reply, unlocking the door and sliding it open. He stepped inside, and she followed him in.

  The salon was filled with comfortable, overstuffed couches, worn rugs on the floor, the galley beyond. There was a little light from the riverside lamps, enough to make out the general layout. Naomi went to one of the couches immediately. She collapsed onto the cushions and curled into a tight ball, her whole body trembling. Kealey went straight through to a side hall, finding the master stateroom a few seconds later. He searched the room, but it quickly became apparent that no one had been on the boat for a while. Unable to find any clothes, he stripped the blanket off the bed, then went through to the head. He rinsed the dirt from his hands in the sink. There was one towel on the rack. He grabbed it and went back to the salon. Kharmai was still in the same position.

  “Naomi, you have to get out of those clothes.” She didn’t respond, her face pressed into the back of the couch. He sat on the edge and shook her gently. “Come on, sit up.”

  She slowly did as he asked, and didn’t protest when he lifted the fleece pullover over her head, only wincing slightly when her left arm came up. Kealey thought the cold must have numbed the pain. The T-shirt came next. Then he pulled off her shoes, socks, and finally her jeans. Kealey quickly grabbed the towel and pressed it into her hands. She absently started to rub it over her damp skin. He looked away, resisting the urge to appreciate her seminude form. When she was mostly dry, he wrapped the blanket tightly around her and used the towel to finish drying her hair. Then he sat next to her and pulled the blanket down from her left shoulder.

  “How bad is it?” she asked, turning to look for herself. Her voice was stronger now; she was starting to warm up a little. Her lips had returned to their normal color, and there was a pink glow to her cheeks which he found encouraging.

  “Not as bad as I thought,” he said honestly. He could only find three puncture wounds. Two of the bearings were just beneath the skin, but the other was much deeper. He was guessing the first two were ricochets, the third a direct hit. She had been behind and to the left of Bennett when the explosion occurred; it was possible that the bearings just beneath her skin had passed through Bennett’s body before hitting her, which would explain why the wounds weren’t deeper. He felt a sudden, insane urge to laugh out loud. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

  “What about you?” she asked, looking suddenly alarmed. “Were you hit?”

  Kealey hadn’t had time to think about it. He’d pulled off his pullover in the river, so he checked his exposed arms, then looked for holes in his T-shirt. The cuts on his hands had been rinsed clean, and he could see they weren’t too bad. He tried to focus, letting the adrenaline ebb, feeling for anything wrong. Nothing seemed to be out of place.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Listen, you have to get to a hospital. Your arm isn’t bad, but you can’t leave it. Not even until the morning.”

  She shook her head immediately, the anxious expression falling away, replaced by a look of intense concentration. “The police will be checking the emergency rooms. We can’t risk it.”

  “What about the embassy?”

  She closed her eyes and leaned back on the couch, desperately trying to think of a way out. Bennett had been working with them as a favor to Jonathan Harper. Nobody else at the embassy even knew they were in the country, let alone what they were doing, but once they went to the CIA’s chief of station, they’d have to explain what had happened. His reaction would not be pretty, but that would be nothing compared to the fallout at Langley.

  Naomi shook her head, realizing that there was no way she could fix the situation. The truth would come out sooner or later, and when it did, her career would be beyond saving. She suddenly felt a hot wave of guilt; she was thinking about her career while Shane Bennett — a fellow officer, a decent man — was lying dead in Rühmann’s apartment. She remembered what had popped into her head as she’d stared down at Rühmann’s ruined face, and she suddenly realized it was true: she had lost something fundamental, some inner sense of compassion. Somehow, without even noticing the change, she’d become a harder person than she’d ever thought possible.

  “I guess we have no choice,” she finally said. Her voice was heavy with resignation and something else that Kealey couldn’t quite place. “The truth will come out sooner or later. Let’s just get it over with.”

  “I have to find a phone. It won’t take long. I looked around… I don’t think anyone’s been here for a long time. You’ll be fine until I get back.”

  He started toward the door. Naomi hesitated, then called his name. He turned to face her.

  “Ryan, I…” She looked away and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, hoping the dark obscured her features. Her face felt hot. Once again he had saved her life at the risk of his own. If there was ever a time to express her feelings, this was it. But even though the words were on the tip of her tongue, she just couldn’t get them out.

  “Don’t take too long, okay?”

  CHAPTER 41

  BERLIN

  The U.S. Embassy in Berlin is a boxy, charmless building of gray stone located in the embassy district south of Tiergarten, shielded behind a vast array of red and white barriers, concrete planters, and rows of razor-sharp concertina wire. The guardhouse is manned by unsmiling German police officers bearing automatic weapons; to stumble upon the sight, a tourist might start to wonder if the tangible divide between East and West was still in place.

  Just after 7:00 the next morning, Ryan Kealey lay on a bunk in a spare room on the second floor. A television tuned to CNN was mounted against the far wall. The volume was barely audible, as Naomi was sleeping soundly in the next bed, but he could hear enough to get the general drift. The situation in Iraq was escalating day by day. Twelve hours earlier, a series of coordinated attacks had taken place in Basra, propagated by Syrian insurgents. Three police stations were bombed in the space of forty minutes, along with a local office of the International Red Cross. Since the attacks occurred in the evening, the number of reported casualties was surprisingly low. As a result, the story took a backseat to the more dramatic events in Baghdad. Six hours before the bombings in Basra, a truck laden with seventy pounds of HMX had crashed into a Green Zone checkpoint. Seventeen were reported dead, including 5 U.S. soldiers, among them a captain in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

  The images on the screen changed, and the newscaster moved on to a different story. Kealey let his mind drift, thinking about the events of the past few weeks. It was hard to see any kind of pattern in the recent escalation of violence, but the truth was that everything seemed to stem from the attempted assassination of the Iraqi prime minister and the murder of Nasir Tabrizi in Paris. Both men were powerful, influential politicians, and that made them natural targets, but there was something else to consider. Nuri al-Maliki and Nasir Tabrizi were also on either side of the most prominent divide in Iraq, that between the Shia and Sunni faith. After the bombing of the Babylon Hotel, the Shiite-controlled Mahdi Army had publicly accused the Sunni insurgency of masterminding
the attack. As a result, the violence over the next week seemed to primarily target Sunni businesses and places of worship. But then Tabrizi had died, causing the violence to swing the other way. Shiite places of worship had suffered the brunt of what appeared to be retaliatory strikes, despite the discovery that Tabrizi’s assassins were Iranian nationals.

  Given the current situation, Kealey couldn’t see a solution on the horizon, and apparently, he wasn’t the only one. A number of prominent Democrats had already revived an old debate on the floor of the Senate, arguing that U.S. troops were not trained to intervene if the situation dissolved into civil war. A number of retired generals had also weighed in on the issue. Most seemed to believe that the military would not be able to control the situation if the Iraqi government fell into disarray. Privately, Kealey agreed, but it threw the whole situation into a new light, and he couldn’t help but reconsider his earlier thoughts. What if someone wanted to destroy the Iraqi National Assembly? What if someone had retained Vanderveen’s services to that specific end? The former U.S. soldier had definitely participated in the bombing of the Babylon Hotel — that much was fact — but had Vanderveen somehow played a part in the assassination of Tabrizi in Paris? If so, he had covered his tracks remarkably well.

  Naomi stirred on the other bunk, and Kealey looked over, his thoughts switching to the previous night. The car from the embassy had arrived less than ten minutes after he made the call. The driver had brought clothes for Kharmai, and once she had changed, they’d driven straight back to the embassy. The chief of station, a florid, portly Texan by the name of Fichtner, had met them at the gates. He had screamed at Kealey for twenty minutes while a doctor removed the shrapnel from Naomi’s arm. Fichtner then made the call to Harper in Washington. Kealey had no idea how Harper had reacted — he had only heard one side of the conversation — but he knew that the DDO would not be pleased with what had transpired. A man he had personally recruited was dead, Rühmann was gone, and they were no closer to finding William Vanderveen. The whole thing was a complete disaster. For the first time since his dismissal from the Agency, Kealey was starting to feel that he’d earned his walking papers.

  Naomi stirred again and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She pulled back the covers and swung her feet to the floor, revealing a white T-shirt that hung like a dress on her slender frame. Kealey could see the bandage beneath the fabric near her left shoulder, but his attention was quickly drawn elsewhere, as the bottom edge of the shirt barely reached the top of her bare thighs. He looked away, embarrassed, but then he felt her eyes on him, and he turned back. She was wearing a slight smile, obviously amused.

  “You didn’t seem so shy when you were pulling my clothes off last night,” she said, pulling her hair back from her face.

  The comment caught him off-guard. “You were soaking wet, Naomi, and it was freezing out there. I was just trying to—”

  “I know, I know. Relax. I was only joking.” She stood and looked around for her jeans. Once she had pulled them on, she sat back down on the edge of the bed. Kealey saw that her smile had disappeared. As if reading his mind, she studied him with a serious expression. “This isn’t good, is it?”

  He shook his head, then seemed to hesitate. “I’m sorry I brought you into this. If I’d known it would turn out this way—”

  “Don’t, Ryan.” She fixed him with a steady gaze, hoping to convey her sincerity. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t make me get on that plane, just like you didn’t make me help you in Washington. I wanted to do those things. I wanted to be part of it, and I don’t regret it.”

  “What about your career? And don’t tell me it doesn’t matter, because I know it does.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, it matters. I didn’t want to lose my job… I mean, who does, right? But it’s done, and that’s that. Besides, some things are more important.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like helping the people you care about.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, each trying to figure out what to say next. The moment was shattered by a knock at the door. A woman with feline features and short auburn hair poked her head in, her gaze instantly moving to Kealey’s bare chest. Naomi recognized her as Fichtner’s aide. She spoke between loud smacks of the gum she was chewing. “Ryan, Mr. Fichtner would like to see you in his office.”

  “Okay,” Kealey said. He reached for his shirt, which was still slightly damp. “Thanks, Becky.”

  “No problem.” The woman beamed at him for a few seconds, then turned to Naomi, the smile fading. “You’re Kharmai, right? You have a telephone call. You can take it in the next room.”

  Naomi was bewildered. “Did they say who they were?”

  “Her last name is Peterson,” the aide said, sliding her gaze back to Kealey. “Apparently, she called Langley looking for you, and Mr. Harper had it routed through to our switchboard.”

  “Okay,” Naomi said. “I’ll be out in a minute.” The woman didn’t move, and Naomi repeated herself loudly. Finally, the aide left reluctantly, the door closing behind her.

  “You have a fan there,” she said wryly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah, right.” Naomi shook her head as she stood and walked to the door. “Like you didn’t notice.”

  She followed the aide down a narrow hall. They came to the secure phone, which was housed in a small, windowless office. The aide gestured in a bored, dismissive kind of way, then went back the way she had come. Naomi glared at the retreating woman as she reached for the phone and punched the HOLD button. “Kharmai.”

  “Naomi, it’s Liz. How are you?”

  At the sound of the other woman’s voice, she couldn’t help but smile, her spirits lifting. At the same time, she felt a tinge of self-pity. She didn’t miss much about London, but Peterson definitely qualified.

  “Could be better,” she replied honestly. They exchanged pleasantries for a minute; then Naomi related the events of the previous night, leaving out the fact that she was no longer officially with the Agency. Peterson was slightly stunned when she finished, and Naomi had to prompt her to get back to why she’d called in the first place.

  “Well, it has to do with the name we pulled off the tape. Jason March, aka William Vanderveen.”

  Naomi instantly perked up. “What do you have?”

  Peterson explained quickly about Samir al-Askari, the Jordanian banker, and his untimely end on the Strand. “Two of our best watchers were tracking this guy, Naomi. One was taking photographs from across the street. When we went back and digitally enhanced the shots, two faces kept popping up in the background, a man and a woman. We ran a check through our facial recognition software, looking for nodes. Vanderveen came up; the match was ninety-five percent.”

  Kharmai interpreted quickly. Nodal points were visual markers on the human face. The markers could be nearly anything distinctive: the width of the mouth, the distance between the eyes, the spacing of the cheekbones. The human face contained eighty nodal points, but for the software to make a match, only fourteen to twenty-two points were needed, with twenty-two rated at 100 percent. Ninety-five percent was encouraging; it meant that twenty-one nodal points had linked the file photograph of Will Vanderveen to the shots taken in London. “And this was when? Two days ago?”

  “Al-Askari died two days ago, but we didn’t get the match until yesterday.”

  “Huh.” Naomi thought about it, unsure of how this information could help. They didn’t have any hard evidence, but Ryan was certain that Vanderveen had set the trap for them in Rühmann’s apartment, and Naomi agreed. London was old news.

  Then something hit her. “Wait, you said there were two faces?”

  “That’s right,” Peterson replied. “The second is a woman, but she didn’t come up on the database. We have no idea who she is, but she was definitely moving with Vanderveen. They’re close together in all the shots, and in one, you can see that she’s holding his arm. According to the report
, al-Askari entered the Savoy and stayed inside for approximately thirty minutes. We don’t have shots of Vanderveen entering the hotel, but we managed to get hold of some footage from the Savoy’s CCTV cameras. He was there, and the woman was with him inside the hotel as well.”

  Naomi instantly thought back to the night before. She’d been dazed shortly after the explosion, but she could remember the thick smoke rising up from the ground floor. If Vanderveen was shooting from across the river, who had started the fire? It seemed strange that she hadn’t considered it earlier.

  “Liz, do me a favor and send me those shots through Langley. We’ll run them through our own database and see if we can’t come up with something more.”

  “Already done,” the other woman said. “When I called looking for you, I was put through to a man named Harper. He has the photographs, and you’ll have the security tape from the hotel tomorrow. I just wanted to tell you in person.”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “Don’t mention it. When are you coming back?”

  Naomi sighed, thinking about her recent dismissal. The States didn’t feel much like home at the moment, and London definitely had its perks. She was a British citizen, after all, and MI5 was always looking for experienced people. Maybe Peterson could pull some strings.

  “I don’t know,” she finally replied. “But I’ll be in touch. Don’t forget about me, okay?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Naomi was ushered into the chief of station’s office a few minutes later. Ryan was already there, seated in front of the other man’s desk and looking decidedly unhappy. Ken Fichtner was shouting into the phone, his face blotchy, his tie loose and stained with some unknown substance. He looked like he was on the verge of a heart attack. He scowled at Naomi as she walked in, then turned back to the single window behind his desk. Naomi took a seat next to Ryan and pulled her chair close to his. In a low voice, she relayed what Liz Peterson had just told her.