The Assassin

by Stephen Coonts

  I sat looking out the window into the black Scottish night. Blacker than the doorway to hell. Blacker than the Devil’s heart. Black and formless. Black, black, black.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After the plane landed at a London airport and the engines were secured, Grafton motioned me to remain in my seat. He went forward, said something to the pilot, then came back and sat down across the aisle from me as Speedo and the crew filed off the plane. The lights and air-conditioning, powered by an auxiliary power unit in the tail of the plane, stayed on.

  When we were alone in the airplane, he said, “The key is Marisa Petrou. She knows this bastard better than anyone else alive, and I’ve got a hunch she knows what he’s planning.”

  “What is that?” I asked, to prompt him.

  “Oh, he wants to kill Winchester and the others, me, you . . . and the president. He wants to assassinate the president.”

  I gaped.

  “Qasim wanted to kill him last year in Paris,” Grafton explained, “and I doubt if he’s given up on that dream. Qasim believes that decapitating the head villain, the Devil incarnate to their way of thinking, would shake Western civilization, maybe crack the foundations, as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand did in 1914. Baldly, Qasim wants to trigger a world war. He thinks Islam will rule triumphantly when it’s all over, in a century or two. Death to all the infidels. The victory will be Allah’s.”

  His eyes swiveled to me again. “We’re going to kill him first,” he said, not so much to me as to himself. He was taking a vow. Then he repeated it, and I could feel the cold steel in his voice: “We’re going to kill him first.”

  The moment passed. Staring off into space, he took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then looked at me again.

  “Tomorrow morning I have a job for you. Then, tomorrow afternoon I want you to go back to France, find Marisa and stick to her like glue.”

  This was the second time he had given me this order. Of course, he was the one who told me to get out of Germany. “She won’t like it,” I pointed out.

  “Figure something out.”

  “Okay,” I said, as if hanging out with unwilling females were one of my many skills.

  “This time, if you must shoot someone, bring the women with you.”

  “What about that Russian back there?”

  “It’s impossible. He refuses to use good sense. He commutes back and forth to London, thinks three or four bodyguards will keep him safe.”

  “It would take fifty men to properly guard him.”

  “I have precisely two. I have them watching the estate, looking for anyone sneaking in. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Who are they?”

  “You don’t know them.”

  “I know most of the people in the Company’s Europe operations,” I said brightly.

  “You don’t know them,” Grafton repeated.

  “There’s still a whole hell of a lot I don’t know,” I said reasonably, trying to be a good soldier. Or sailor. That was the only way anyone on this earth was ever going to get anything out of him.

  “What else do you want to know?”

  “Maybe you ought to tell me if Isolde’s chauffeur was a bad guy or an innocent bystander whom I just happened to murder.”

  He smiled a little bit and said softly, “That I don’t know, Tommy. You did the best you could. We’ll all have to live with it that way.”

  I felt like a fool and must have reddened. My face seemed hot. “Sorry,” I said.

  “Keep swinging at the strikes,” he muttered.

  He got out of his seat and led the way up the aisle toward the door.

  It was a gray, rainy dawn—the English are good at these and do them often—when I rolled out the next morning. My roommate, the up-and-coming GM junior executive, was still in his room, presumably asleep. I made coffee and stood at my window looking at the world, which from this perspective consisted of four brick buildings identical to the one I was in.

  I decided they should find the architect responsible for this masonry crime and cut off parts. Still, the neighborhood was nicer than most of Manhattan, the areas that people live in, and the streets had less garbage piled up. Cities, I decided, were an acquired taste.

  I was trying to keep my mind off terrorists and murders and Jake Grafton. Even so . . . A glance at my watch got me going.

  A half hour later I hailed a taxi on the main street a block from my building. The hackie spoke English, the taxi was clean, and he knew how to get to the address I gave him.

  If prostitution is the oldest profession, then espionage is the second oldest. Man’s desire to know other folks’ secrets is certainly as old as the desire for sex. And every spy needs a handler, so he—or she—came along at the same time as the spy.

  The case officer, or handler, is the spy’s contact with his world—the world he grew up in or the world he chooses to serve, for whatever reason—when he is in enemy country. In addition to putting the spy in place, supplying him with the tools of the trade and telling him what information to get, the case officer must be the spy’s emotional support, his anchor, his source of strength and resolve. Some spies need more moral and emotional support than others, but all of them need some of it. Providing it is the case officer’s most important function; without that support, the spy won’t be very effective or stay in place very long.

  As Eide Masmoudi’s and Radwan Ali’s case officer, Jake Grafton met with both men periodically, as seldom as he could, yet as often as he thought they needed him, and whenever either of them asked for a meet. Communications went through the courier, Kerry Pocock, who was a regular visitor to Harrod’s gourmet food department.

  One might think in this day and age cell phones would be the communication method of choice, but they weren’t. People would see the agent talking on the cell phone, which recorded every number called or received. Sooner or later a suspicious person could examine the phone. However, both men did have cell phones, and both had memorized emergency numbers to call, just in case. But once they called one of those numbers, they had to dispose of that phone immediately.

  Spy-handler meets were dangerous. London, and all other European capitals, were buzzing with Muslims, most of whom were not religious extremists or terrorists in any sense of the word. Yet since the villains looked like everyone else, one had to make sure the meet was as private as possible. In addition, it had to fit into the spy’s day and lifestyle in a way that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

  Jake Grafton and Eide Masmoudi were meeting today in one of the men’s rooms at Harrod’s. MI-5 supplied a van and tradesman’s coveralls, which I donned. I parked the van in the back of Harrod’s at the loading dock, off-loaded my service cart with mops and pails and signs, and went inside.

  I started in the men’s rooms on the first floor and worked my way up in the building, keeping an eye on the time.

  I was in a third floor men’s scrubbing out a toilet when Jake Grafton came in. I went out into the hallway, made sure my OUT OF SERVICE signs were prominently placed and got busy scrubbing the door. Two minutes later Eide came down the hallway. He was a little guy, maybe 130 pounds, with dark skin and big eyes and black hair. Although he was wearing trousers and you couldn’t see them, I knew he had a set of really big balls. Our eyes met, I nodded once, and he went into the men’s room.

  As the minutes passed, I worked on that door, then began mopping the hallway. Spilled some water to give me something to work on.

  People came to the end of the hallway and looked at me and the OUT OF SERVICE signs and went away. I usually glanced at them, then pretended to pay no attention. The customers were wearing coats, usually, and Harrod’s employees were not.

  I got the floor clean and stopped to inspect it. By golly, here was a career possibility for me if the spook business ever went south. Then I dumped more water on the floor and set about mopping it again.

  Jake Grafton listened to everything Eide had to say before he produced a computer
-generated picture of what Abu Qasim might look like. “This man—have you seen him?”

  Eide took his time studying the picture, a three-by-five on photo paper. “Perhaps,” he said. “A man in the mosque, last week. Then again . . .”

  Grafton pocketed the photo and produced a small bottle with a screw cap. It held about an ounce of liquid. He held it so Eide could see it. “Some evening, when the sheikh is dining in the mosque, I want you to pour this in whatever he is drinking.”

  “He drinks only water and tea.”

  “Whatever.”

  “What is it?”

  Jake Grafton took a moment before he answered. “It’s a chemical that will combine with another chemical that is already in his body and cause his heart to stop. The two chemicals combine into what the chemists call a binary poison.”

  Eide was dubious. He didn’t reach for the bottle. “Is this stuff poisonous?”

  “Not unless you have that other chemical in your system, and you do not. Nor does anyone else who could be reasonably expected to eat at the mosque. Al-Taji does. The chemical in this bottle will kill him.”

  “Where did he get the first chemical?”

  “During his trial he drank water, along with the other people at the defense table. The first half of the binary cocktail was in the water and was absorbed into the fat cells in his body. It is still there, and will be for some weeks before it becomes inert or is flushed from his system.”

  “And this second chemical will combine with the first?”

  “Yes. By itself, it’s harmless. Also tasteless. You could drink all of it and it wouldn’t harm you. This amount is enough to treat about ten gallons of liquid. It will only prove fatal to someone who has that first chemical in his body. Together they are a binary poison.”

  “If an autopsy is performed, will this poison be found?”

  “Very doubtful. Conceivably it could be, but only if the toxicologist knew precisely what he was looking for.”

  “You are asking me to kill Sheikh al-Taji.” That wasn’t a question but a statement.

  “Yes.”

  Eide Masmoudi searched Jake Grafton’s face. He knew al-Taji was a terrorist, a killer who plotted murder of the innocent—he had been writing the reports for Grafton. Masmoudi believed men like the sheikh perverted Islam, insulting the Prophet and everyone who believed. Even worse, they betrayed Allah.

  “To pervert the holiest of holies is a great crime,” he whispered. Still he did not reach for the bottle. He stood there staring at it.

  “If you use this,” Jake Grafton said, “you and Radwan will have to leave the mosque.”

  “That wasn’t the original plan.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Jake admitted, “but I’m the case officer, and I can change the plan. I’m changing it. These people are beyond paranoid—they’re criminal psychopaths. They’d kill a dozen innocent people hoping that one of them is guilty. Hell, they’d kill a hundred, just for the publicity. I don’t want you and Radwan to take a risk like that. If you agree to use the poison, you two are out of there. As fast as your feet can take you.”

  Eide Masmoudi was a very brave man. He took his time framing his next question. “If this poison, this binary chemical, works as you say it will, al-Taji will merely have a fatal heart attack. Is that correct?”

  Grafton replied, “The doctors tell me his heart will probably stop while he is asleep.”

  “He isn’t the only villain in that mosque. The place is full of throat-slitters and holy murderers. They pervert Islam. They make it into something evil, a crime against man and Allah.” He searched for more words, then said, “They’d kill the queen of England if they had half a chance. Anybody. They’d murder anybody who’d get them in the newspapers.”

  Jake Grafton nodded. “And they’ll kill you if you give the slightest hint—the tiniest hint—that you are scared or worried or have something to hide. They’ll kill you believing that if you’re innocent you’ll wind up in Paradise, so your murder really isn’t a sin. Isn’t that right?”

  Eide acknowledged that Jake Grafton had stated the case correctly.

  “So if you take the bottle,” the admiral continued, “you and Radwan are leaving.”

  Eide eyed the admiral. “You’re the case officer. I take the risks.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, kid. I make the rules and give the orders. You’ll bleed same as everybody. We’ll use you later on something else. We’re not retiring you—you’ll get your chance to make a difference. There’re thousands of these sons of bitches out there running around loose, and we need all the help we can get. Now tell me, yes or no?”

  Eide took his time. Finally he took the bottle from Grafton’s hand and pocketed it. “For my mother,” he said.

  Jake Grafton nodded.

  Eide Masmoudi walked out of the men’s room.

  For his mother, Jake thought, who was murdered in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, by suicidal fanatics. A man couldn’t have a better reason to fight.

  Rolf Gnadinger was still at his office at the bank in Zurich when he received a telephone call from Oleg Tchernychenko. Gnadinger had financed numerous oil field deals for Tchernychenko and Huntington Winchester in the last ten years. They were willing to pay top rates—and did—in return for loans granted with a telephone call and closed within hours. Speed was the name of their game, and Gnadinger had made millions for the bank because he was willing to play. He was willing because he trusted both men, who were solid as rocks.

  After the telephone encrypters were turned on and had timed in, Oleg said, “I had a visit yesterday from Jake Grafton. He told me this Abu Qasim villain is real and evil as a heart attack. He believes Qasim killed Alexander Surkov and Wolfgang Zetsche and may have murdered Isolde Petrou’s son, Jean.”

  “Have you talked to Hunt?” Rolf asked.

  “Yes. He is plainly worried, but put a good face on it. These deaths are evidence, he said, that our war against the terrorists is hurting them. ‘Money well spent,’ was his phrase.”

  “I have taken precautions,” Rolf assured Oleg. That was a lie, one that came readily to his lips. He was being more watchful than he used to be, but that was the extent of it. The truth was that he didn’t want to think of someone hunting him. To kill him. He refused to even look at that vision from the ancient, primeval past. After all, he told himself, I am just another face in the crowd.

  “So have I,” Tchernychenko responded. “I’m too good a client for you to lose. And truth be told, I don’t want to go to the trouble of breaking in another banker.”

  They said their good-byes and hung up. Gnadinger spent a sober moment staring at the telephone. Then his gaze wandered to the portraits on the wall. The chief operating officer of the bank rated a big corner office, with lots of wall space, which he had filled with portraits of his predecessors.

  He studied them, one by one. He had joined the bank in the mid-1960s, about the time the furor over the money the Holocaust Jews deposited in Swiss banks began to bubble. His predecessors had been officers and employees of this bank, or other Swiss banks, when those deposits came in during the late 1930s and early 1940s. They met the German Jews, shook their hands, accepted their money. Then the Nazis murdered them. The banks kept the money.

  That is, they kept the money until the survivors and relatives of the Jews got organized and raised a huge stink. Even then, the banks held on to the bulk of the funds by demanding records that the officers knew didn’t exist.

  The portraits were of the men who refused to return the money. Gnadinger glanced at every face. When he was young, Gnadinger wondered what those men thought about themselves in the wee hours of the night when they were alone with their consciences . . . and with God, if indeed He had survived the Holocaust. Gnadinger had watched for decades as they wrestled with their consciences, or refused to do so, assuring any who asked that they were absolutely certain they were doing the right thing, the right thing for their banks, the right thing for Sw
itzerland. They were right, right, right! Except for the stinky little fact that they weren’t.

  Hitler murdered the Jews, seven million of them, whole families, whole clans, and the Swiss banks profited from that stupendous crime.

  The Islamic terrorists were out to do it again, those new Nazis, who prayed to Mecca five times a day and murdered infidels when they weren’t on their knees with their foreheads on the carpet.

  Rolf Gnadinger had no intention of winding up like one of those men in the portraits.

  He finished the paperwork on his desk, arranged it neatly in piles and in-baskets and files just so, the way the secretaries knew he would arrange it. He had climbed the banking ladder by being logical and detail-oriented, and he was now. Even his anxiety couldn’t force him from the habits of a lifetime. He finished his workday around six thirty in the evening by signing some late-afternoon correspondence, then capped the pen, put it in its place in his drawer, locked the drawers of his desk and rose from his chair.

  It had snowed early this morning, but this afternoon had been unseasonably warm, with sunshine and slush in the streets and melting icicles. He stood at the window for a moment looking at nature’s handiwork, which hadn’t intruded into the quiet offices and corridors of the executive suite.

  He donned his coat and arranged his hat just so, then opened the door and left his office. He nodded at his secretary as he glanced at his watch. He was leaving right on the dot, at his usual departure time, not a minute too early nor a minute too late. Timing is everything in life, a wise man once said.

  Gnadinger rode the elevator down from the executive suite to the main floor of the bank, where he found the tellers finishing their accounting and filling out their day sheets. The guard at the door touched his cap as Gnadinger approached, then turned to unlock the door.

  Well, Oleg was right: He needed a bodyguard. Tomorrow he would call the security service that had the bank contract and ask for a man with a gun. If the man was competent, no one would realize he was an armed bodyguard. The banker reminded himself to demand a man who looked and dressed as if he belonged in Gnadinger’s social circle. No tattooed or pierced persons, please.