The Assassin

by Andrew Britton

  “Damn it,” Naomi said bitterly. “We must have missed him by hours.”

  “Any chance we’ll get it at the border?” Kealey asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Harper said slowly. “It sounds like Vanderveen timed this well. I don’t think he’ll show up without the necessary paperwork, and if it’s all in order, he’ll be waved right through.”

  “Can we at least get the word to customs?”

  “I can’t do it myself. That has to go through Homeland Security. The wheels are already in motion, but now I need a statement from Liman in Montreal. Once it arrives, I can get it out to the right people. Chances are, he’s already crossed the border, anyway.”

  “So what does that leave us with?” Naomi wondered.

  “Rudaki,” Kealey said, repeating her earlier words. “We have to get to him, John. Immediately.”

  Harper hesitated. “The last few days haven’t exactly done wonders for my credibility. I’m all out of favors. I don’t think the director will pull any strings for me based on what we’ve managed to dig up so far.”

  “He has to. There’s too much resting on this. I don’t care how you make it happen, but I need to talk to him. Face-to-face, first thing in the morning.”

  “I can still get you an Agency plane,” Harper said. “I’ll call the director first and see if I can get him to work it out with the assistant director in charge in New York.” The DDO felt the need to point something out. “If it happens, Ryan, and it probably won’t, you’ll be surrounded by FBI agents. I hope you realize that. And if Rudaki is hiding something, a friendly discussion isn’t going to get it out of him.”

  “I’ll worry about that when I’m on the ground,” Kealey said. “Just get me the meeting, John.”

  “I’ll do my best.” He reached for the phone, checking his watch in the process. “This will take a while. Why don’t you two get some rest?”

  “Actually, I—”

  “Get some sleep,” Harper ordered, his voice taking on an authoritative tone. “You should take a look in the mirror… You’re dead on your feet. If I manage to get you in there, it’ll be first thing in the morning. You need to be ready.”

  Reluctantly, Kealey nodded and stood, followed by Kharmai. They left the room as Harper started to dial.

  CHAPTER 45

  WASHINGTON, D.C. • FORT ERIE, CANADA

  Much later, Ryan Kealey lay still on a bed in one of the second-floor guest rooms. He had stripped off his sweatshirt but was still in his jeans. The room was draped in shadow, the far wall rippling with light from the streetlamps beyond the double-hung windows. He had tried to sleep, knowing he needed to get some rest, but his mind was far too active. After leaving Harper’s office, he had gone downstairs with Naomi. They had talked with Julie Harper for a while, the two women sharing half a bottle of wine. Kealey had settled on beer, but he limited himself to two, as he wanted to be sharp for the morning.

  After an hour of this, Harper had called them up to the office. The news was not what they had hoped for, though it wasn’t entirely bad, either. Director Andrews had bought into the theory, mainly because Harper had done his best to leave Kealey’s name out of it. The DCI had then called the FBI director at home and explained the situation. Twenty minutes after the initial call, Harper had the ADIC of the New York field office on the phone. Arrangements were made for Naomi Kharmai to sit in on an interview with Hakim Rudaki at 11:00 AM the following morning. The meeting was to take place at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. It was the best Harper could do; Andrews wasn’t about to allow Kealey anywhere near the Iranian informant, especially in a federal building. He had made an exception for Kharmai, whose sins — at least in his eyes — were less egregious than Kealey’s.

  Kealey was glad that one of them had the chance to confront Rudaki, but he knew that it was a long shot. Naomi didn’t have much of a chance at penetrating the Iranian’s defenses. After all, the man had managed to convince the senior FBI leadership that his information was genuine, probably with Samantha Crane’s help. And that was the other thing: Crane would never allow Kharmai to see Rudaki unless she was present.

  Despite Harper’s restraining words, Kealey was certain that Crane was working with Vanderveen. The idea that the former U.S. soldier was now heading for New York City with a device capable of killing thousands made Kealey feel sick. He didn’t know how it had gotten this far, but there was no doubt in his mind that Vanderveen intended to use the bomb the following day, and if he succeeded, the death toll would rival that of 9/11. It simply could not be allowed to happen.

  He thought it through for as long as possible, but eventually exhaustion set in, and everything started to blur. Kealey closed his eyes, listening to the whisper of rain against the windows, the occasional rumble of a passing car in the damp street. The house was almost completely quiet. For some reason, he wanted noise and sound, anything to distract him from the memories that encroached in the dark. He held them at bay for as long as he could, but he couldn’t stop the inevitable.

  He wasn’t surprised that the past should get to him here. He hadn’t visited the Harper home in nearly a year, and the last time he had stepped foot through the door, Katie had been at his side. He could remember that night with startling clarity, and for good reason: it was the night he had asked her to marry him. After they left for the hotel, he’d surprised her with a moonlight visit to Rock Creek Park. They had walked in the snow, and on a bridge over a frozen stream, he had shown her the ring. Against all odds, she had said yes, and in doing so, she had made his life complete.

  Kealey pushed the memory away, but it was no good. For a moment he wished he was back in Iraq, where he could go on pretending that nothing had ever happened, that she was still alive and well. He would give anything, everything he had to go back to the house on Cape Elizabeth and find her waiting, arms open, eyes shining, a pretty, precocious smile on her face. The thought caused a stinging pain to build on the bridge of his nose, but just as the image threatened to overwhelm him, he heard a slight tap at the door, and a shaft of light slipped into the room.

  Kealey sat up to see Naomi at the door, her figure bathed in the warm light of the hall. She was wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt and cotton drawstring pants, her feet bare. She took a few hesitant steps in, as though second-guessing her decision, but then she came to the edge of the bed and sat down. Ryan eased back and waited, but she clearly didn’t know what to say. After a minute, he broke the silence.

  “How’s your arm?”

  He saw her smile in the half-light of the room. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve asked me about it.”

  He realized she was right. “I’m sorry, Naomi. I’ve just been caught up in everything.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “Anyway, it’s fine. Julie changed the bandages for me after you came up. She used to be a nurse, you know.”

  “I could have done that for you.”

  She nodded once, but didn’t respond. He realized she was distracted, lost in thought. “Ryan, what’s going to happen tomorrow? What am I supposed to say to Rudaki?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied truthfully. “This is not how I pictured things working out.”

  “Why would he talk to me? What could I possibly say to make him give up the truth?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve been thinking about it for hours, but we’ll just have to see how it plays out. Honestly, I’m too tired to think anymore.”

  “I feel the same way.”

  She moved up next to him and leaned against the headboard. They stayed that way for a few minutes, neither finding anything to say. Eventually, he heard her voice in the dark. “I stayed downstairs when you came up.” She hesitated. “You know, talking to Julie.”

  Kealey instantly went on guard, but he didn’t speak.

  “She told me about the last time you were here. With Katie, I mean.”

  She waited for a reaction, but it didn’t come. “Did you ever—”

  “Naomi, what
do you want from me?”

  She froze at the bitter, angry tone of his voice. His mood had changed without warning, like the flip of a switch. As the shock wore off, she realized she had made a huge mistake. She swung her feet to the floor, intent on getting out of the room, hoping she could make it to the door without embarrassing herself further. Before she could take the first step, though, she felt his hand reach out to lightly grip her arm.

  “Wait… I’m sorry.” He was instantly repentant. “I didn’t mean that. Don’t go.”

  She paused, unsure of her next move. Finally, she retook her place at his side, her mind racing, body trembling. Something told her it would be better to stay quiet, so she sat back and struggled to restrain her many questions.

  “I’ve never talked about it,” he said. “Not with anyone. I didn’t mean to…”

  “It’s okay,” she assured him softly. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “No, I want to tell you.” He hesitated, then said, “I need to tell you.”

  She waited for what seemed like an eternity, staring at her hands, too nervous to look at his face. Finally, she heard his voice in the dark. From his distant tone, she could tell he was no longer there by her side, but instead reliving that terrible night on the coast of Maine.

  “It was late when I got back. There was a hell of a storm, and the roads were…”

  He trailed off inexplicably. “After everything that happened, all I could think about was seeing her. I mean, it was finally over. I knew Vanderveen wasn’t dead. We all knew that, but we stopped him in Washington, and that seemed to be good enough at the time. I thought we’d get a second chance, you know? That he’d show up in Africa or Europe and we’d go after him and finish it. But then I walked in that very same night and saw him standing there, with the knife to her throat, and I just… I just couldn’t believe it.”

  He fell silent, and after another lengthy pause, he said, “I’ve never seen her grave, Naomi. I killed her, and I’ve never even seen her grave.”

  She finally looked up, aware of the bottomless pain in his voice. She knew he couldn’t say anything more. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, his face damp. Seeing this, she felt a sudden ache in her chest, and she couldn’t stop herself. She gently wiped away his tears with the back of her hand and wrapped her arms around him. He didn’t try to stop her, but he didn’t respond, either.

  They stayed that way for a very long time. Naomi couldn’t be sure of what she was seeing; she didn’t know how much was grief and how much was guilt. As far as she was concerned, it didn’t really matter. The important thing was that he was finally letting it go. His shoulders were shaking, the tears running free. She felt a strange sense of pride that he had chosen her, that he was willing to show her the things he had buried inside for nearly a year. Eventually, though, he lifted his head and looked away, as though embarrassed by his show of emotion. She desperately tried to think of something to say, anything to fill the silence. She didn’t want him to feel ashamed of the tears he had shed. They were a long time in coming.

  “It’s not your fault, Ryan. You didn’t kill her, and you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

  “I couldn’t protect her,” he mumbled. “I failed her when she needed me most. The look in her eyes at the end was just…”

  Naomi was shaken by his words, but she tried not to show it. She released him and pulled away, resting a light hand on his arm. “Ryan, look at me.” He kept his head down for a long time, obviously struggling with some inner turmoil. Finally, he looked up, and their eyes met.

  “I know how much she meant to you, but you’ve suffered enough. You’ve made mistakes in the past… I understand that, but everyone makes mistakes, and you’ve made up for yours a thousand times over. How many lives did you save last year? How many times have you saved my life?” She reached up and touched his face, her expression softening. “You’ve never let me down, and I know you never will. I trust you completely.”

  She looked away and let her hand fall to her side. Suddenly, she felt very self-conscious. “I don’t know if that means anything to you, but—”

  “Of course it means something, Naomi.” She lifted her gaze and saw that something had changed in his face. “It means more than you probably know.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, the tension building steadily. Then she found herself shifting forward. Her body seemed to be moving of its own accord as she rested a hand on his bare chest, her heart thumping wildly. He put his hand over hers as their lips met, his left arm sliding around her waist. She moved forward and straddled his hips, kissing him harder, digging her fingers into his chest. Naomi knew she was being too aggressive, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She had wanted this for so long, and now it was finally happening.

  She forced herself to slow down, to prolong the moment. She brushed her fingertips over his bare skin, careful to avoid the closed wound on the left side of his abdomen. Ryan sat up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, pressing her lips to his, aware of him rising beneath her. He lifted the T-shirt over her head, easing the fabric over the bandages on her left shoulder. She closed her eyes as his hands drifted down to her lean waist, moving around to the curves of her back. She sucked in her breath as his head dipped to her small, firm breasts, his left hand touching her inner thigh, his right sliding under her hair, stroking the base of her neck.

  They finished undressing each other. Naomi lay back and closed her eyes, lost in the moment. She let out a long, low moan when he entered her, lifting her hips to his body. It was the first time in a long time for both of them, and it couldn’t last; they came quickly and in unison, their limbs intertwined, fingers wrapped in each other’s hair. When it was over, she rested her head on his shoulder and let out a slow, shaky sigh. She was pleasantly out of breath. She had never felt happier, more content, but as the minutes passed, her brain kicked back into gear. She couldn’t help but wonder what was coming next. Like it or not, everything had just gotten a lot more complicated.

  As if reading her thoughts, Ryan said, “This could be tricky.”

  “Mmm.” She was still trying to catch her breath. “I always…”

  “What?”

  “Wondered if you had an interest,” she finished lamely.

  By way of response, he lifted her chin and kissed her softly. She responded immediately, and they made love for the second time, their bodies moving in slow, simple harmony. The act carried less urgency than it had the first time, but no less desire. Twenty minutes after they started, Naomi couldn’t hold on any longer. She cried out, then caught herself and tried to restrain her passion, aware of the thin walls that surrounded them. When they were done, they were both too tired to consider things further. They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and for the moment, the trials that awaited them the following day were forgotten entirely.

  At that same moment, a light rain was drifting over the Peace Bridge between Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Canada, so named to commemorate one hundred years of peace between the two neighboring countries. Despite the temperature, which was hovering near 45 degrees, Tom Logan was relatively warm in his booth on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, a small electric space heater resting on the floor behind his stool. Logan, a twenty-six-year-old Buffalo native, had just started his third year with U.S. Customs & Border Protection, otherwise known as CBP. He didn’t think much of the work, but it seemed to pay the bills, and he’d never really aspired to more than that. As he reached for the second half of the turkey sandwich he’d brought in for dinner, a truck rolled up to his window, having approached unseen on the Queen Elizabeth Way while Logan was digging for his food.

  Logan sighed and dropped the sandwich back in the bag, then slid open the window. He hoped the driver’s paperwork was in order; otherwise, the man would be stuck in Canada for at least another four hours. The Commercial Vehicle Processing Centre had closed at midnight; if the computer indicated the need to
contact the carrier’s U.S. broker or conduct a physical inspection of the cargo, it would just have to wait, and Logan would probably be in for an argument, the same argument he endured dozens of times each day. Most drivers did not appreciate the delay that secondary inspection entailed, even though it was usually their fault to begin with.

  The driver’s window came down. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Good enough,” Logan replied languidly, looking the man over. He was near forty, he guessed, with shaggy brown hair, brown eyes, and an unshaven face. The collar of his checked flannel shirt was turned up. He looked weary, but nearly every driver coming through Primary looked like that. Driving for a living obviously took a toll on the human body. Knowing this made Logan appreciate his job a little bit more, but not much.

  “Got your paperwork?”

  The driver handed over two documents. Logan accepted them, checked them quickly, and nodded his approval. The carrier — like every other company seeking to import commercial goods into the United States — subscribed to the Pre-Arrival Processing System, otherwise known as PAPS. The advantage to the relatively new system was a quick turnaround on paperwork, which resulted in fewer delays on the bridge. Before the CVPC was finished in ’99, more than seven hundred vehicles a day were referred to Secondary in order to complete missing paperwork. Since nearly four thousand vehicles made the crossing daily, the delays had made the Peace Bridge nearly impassable. The introduction of PAPS and the CVPC in recent years had smoothed things out considerably.

  The first document was Customs Form 7533, the cargo manifest. The PAPS bar code was affixed in column one. The second document was the commercial invoice, which wasn’t strictly necessary, though most drivers handed it over as a matter of course. Logan scanned the CF7533 quickly, looking at his monitor. The label itself meant nothing; any carrier registered with customs could get the labels; in fact, the carrier could print them off themselves. Once the label was affixed to the manifest, the carrier was required to send the manifest to a U.S. broker, who would then forward the document on to customs for prerelease. If none of that had transpired, the monitor would instruct Logan to direct the truck to Secondary, which would result in a long wait for the driver.