Soul of the Assassin

by Larry Bond

  Corrigan told him that a navy Orion patrol plane was already en route, and that a guided missile destroyer might be able to help. In the meantime, he’d try to find a helicopter that could be put at their disposal, either to aid the search or to get them to a ship if the Iranian was found.

  Guns, meanwhile, had gone up on deck. A storm was kicking up; raindrops from the approaching clouds were spraying against his face.

  “They’re trying to get an Orion patrol plane out from Sigonella on Sicily,” said Rankin, joining him.

  “That’s good.”

  “What are you doing out here? It’s raining.”

  “I know. Think that will make it easier for him? Or harder?”

  “Got me.”

  “Easier, I think,” said Guns.

  “You looking at something?”

  “Just thinking.”

  Rankin started to go back inside.

  “What do you figure is wrong with Ferg?” Guns asked.

  “What do you mean, what’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s always taking pills. You notice that?”

  Rankin shrugged. “Look like aspirin or something.”

  “Too small.”

  “Go pills, maybe.”

  Go pills were amphetamines and modafinil, a narcolepsy drug sometimes issued by the military for pilots and others who had to stay up at night.

  “Nah. He takes them in the morning.”

  “Why? You think he’s doped up?”

  “I think he’s sick.”

  “Don’t get obsessed with him,” said Rankin. “Ferg’s Ferg. Just another guy. Just like you and me.”

  “You’re one to talk,” said Guns. But his companion had already gone back into the ship.

  4

  BOLOGNA, ITALY

  Kiska waited until Rostislawitch was in the main hall of the art building, surrounded by people. She walked directly up to him, gently nudging a Danish scientist out of her way.

  “Dr. Rostislawitch. I would like to speak to you, sir,” she said in stiff Russian.

  Rostislawitch, caught off-guard, didn’t even ask why. He followed Kiska as she walked out of the building and across the street, her heels clicking loudly on the pavement. The FSB colonel continued to a small coffee bar and walked to the back, where a small room was set aside for regular patrons. She nodded at the owner as she passed. The man smiled; she’d promised him a hundred euros to keep others out for the few minutes her conversation would take.

  “What is this about?” asked Rostislawitch as she pulled out a chair.

  “In a moment.” Kiska opened her purse and took out a small radio finder, which would tell her if the place had been bugged. She didn’t actually care if Ferguson overheard the conversation, but she did want to know if he was listening in.

  Apparently not; there were no signals.

  “What are you doing?” Rostislawitch asked again.

  Kiska left her device on the table between them.

  “Doctor, you are employed by the Karamov Institute, are you not?”

  Rostislawitch’s last hope that he had been singled out by mistake vanished.

  “I am on the payroll, yes.”

  “You are an important member of the Institute.”

  “I have very few duties these days.”

  “Doctor, there are circumstances where it does not pay to be modest. I am well aware of your abilities. As are many others.”

  “Then you are aware that my abilities are not being put to use, except in the most mundane manner.”

  “That is not my concern, and is probably a matter of opinion,” said Kiska. The scientist’s arrogance shocked her. He was, she believed, contemplating treason, but had the gall to pretend, at least to himself, that he was not at fault because he was bored. “A few days ago, one of the locks in a sensitive area was tampered with.”

  “Was anything taken?”

  “The investigation continues. You were among the people who knew of the area, and the combination to the lock.”

  “If I opened it, there would be a record,” said Rostislawitch. “There are many safeguards in the lab.”

  “You know which area I’m talking about?”

  “I can guess,” said the scientist, doing his best to backtrack.

  “I see. What area is that?”

  Rostislawitch hesitated, unsure whether a wrong answer would simply make it obvious that he was trying to divert attention from himself. He knew there would be no record of him going in or out; without a record, there would be no proof. He knew also that he would not have been the only one who had been in the lab.

  “We are talking about either the monkeys, or the critical storage area,” he said, deciding to combine the right and wrong answers. “There are digital code locks in both areas. I have been to both regularly.”

  “Several other areas do as well,” said Kiska. She had not thought she could get a confession from Rostislawitch—there was, in fact, considerable doubt as to whether anything had even been taken, as she’d admitted to Ferguson. But now she sensed that she had the scientist under her control; she would press him as far as possible. “Why mention those?”

  “Because those are the only important areas where I have access.”

  “The clinic is not important? The medicine area.”

  “I have access there,” Rostislawitch said. “But no, I don’t think it would be that important. Not unless they have resumed the experiments—which they told me they would do without me.”

  “Why did you come to Bologna?”

  “I’m here at a conference. As you know.”

  “Who have you met here?”

  Rostislawitch rose. “I don’t have to answer these questions. We’re not living in the old days.”

  “Sit down, Dr. Rostislawitch. You may not care much about your position, but I am sure you would feel terrible if your brother lost his. And if Irena Grinberg and her husband were similarly unable to find work.”

  “Don’t threaten me.”

  “If you interpret that as a threat, that’s your business.”

  “What is it that you want?” he asked, still standing. A day ago, she might have been able to browbeat him, but today he felt strong, able to resist.

  Kiska rose. She was several inches taller than the scientist, and she leaned forward across the table, emphasizing her physical advantage.

  “Who have you spoken to here?” asked Kiska.

  “I’ve spoken to many people at the conference.”

  Kiska shook her head. “Don’t be coy, Doctor. You must not do anything that would endanger others.”

  “Blackmail will get you nowhere.”

  “The others I’m speaking about are the people who would be hurt by the material you took.”

  “I didn’t take any material.”

  Kiska stared into his face. She saw guilt there, fear—he had taken something; she was sure of it.

  “Doctor, the lives of many people could be in your hands. Do you trust the Americans?”

  “I do not trust the Americans at all.”

  “The girl you took to dinner the other night is an American.”

  “She’s Greek.”

  Kiska frowned. It was sad to see how easily a man could be fooled by a woman who took an interest in him.

  “Check her more carefully,” Kiska suggested.

  “I don’t have to check her,” said Rostislawitch. He knew this was the sort of trick the FSB played to make him suspect everyone. That was how these spies succeeded, by making one paranoid. The KGB had done it; whatever agency succeeded the FSB would do it. It was in their blood.

  “There was an explosion the other day, while you walked on the street,” said Kiska.

  “Yes?”

  “The Americans believe you were the target. I myself was nearby—I had just arrived from Moscow. Who do you think was trying to kill you?”

  “Me? It was a terrorist attack. They weren’t aiming at me.”

  “Are you sure?” />
  Rostislawitch clamped his teeth together, afraid that anything he said would give him away. He made his face angry; he had a right to be angry, he thought, and bitter.

  Despite the scientist’s bluster, Kiska knew she had rattled him. While she lacked the evidence she would need to arrest him, Kiska felt it was now only a matter of time before he did something to give himself away. He might even do it voluntarily, if she could play him right.

  “I can help you,” said Kiska, softening her tone gradually. “I can get you home. Repair things.”

  “There’s nothing to repair. If you have any real weight with the Institute,” added the scientist, “then make them give me my rightful job back. Make them use me the way I should be used, instead of as a babysitter. Tell them it is foolish to allow me to go to a conference, and then hound me there.”

  And with that, he stalked from the room.

  Ferguson waited until Kiska and Rostislawitch had been gone for a half hour before going into the café. By that time the room had been reopened, and the table he wanted near the wall was occupied.

  In any other country, he might have waited for the two men sitting there to leave. But drinking coffee in Italy could be an all-day affair, and he couldn’t spend that much time waiting. Thera was back at the conference, her only backup the Italian security people.

  Fortunately, he had come prepared.

  “Scusare,” he said to the men, standing next to the table. He purposely used the wrong form of the word before switching to English.

  “Excuse me. I’m from the U.S. and I’m a little lost. Hey, what was that?” he added, turning as if he’d just spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

  As he spun, he released something on the table.

  “Ratio!” yelled one of the men as the mouse Ferguson had dropped scurried around the silverware.

  The other man jumped to his feet, sending his chair flying.

  “Grab it,” said the first.

  Within moments, the place was in a tumult: half the patrons were trying to grab the poor mouse; the other half were trying to get away.

  Ferguson calmly righted the chair that had been knocked over, sat down, and reached under the table for the small digital recorder he’d left behind earlier. He ripped off the tape holding it and took the small device, barely bigger than a portable USB memory card, and walked calmly out of the restaurant.

  He felt a little bad about the mouse. But given that the pet store around the corner had advertised it beneath a sign that said: “Feed your snake real food tonight,” he reasoned that he had at least given it a fighting chance for survival.

  5

  THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

  Atha pushed the hood of the rain slicker as far down over his face as it would go. The rain was really pouring now, crashing across the bow of the ship in what looked like solid sheets. The vessel rocked up and down with the waves, pitching to its sides as the sea knifed against its bow, pummeling the ship. The wind was so loud that he couldn’t hear the helicopter, though he knew from the spotlight that it was nearly overhead.

  The Iranian had been winched up to a helicopter several times before when he was younger, so when he had worked out this plan he did not think it would be very difficult. But he had not counted on this rain and the heaving sea; simply standing on the deck made his stomach feel queasy.

  A black streak of rain lashed across the ship. Atha stared at it a moment, then realized it was the rope from the helicopter that was to winch him aboard. A sling that looked more like a rubber inner tube for a bicycle than a harness hung at the bottom; it crashed against a large vent on the foredeck and got hooked there. Atha ran to it, dragging his suitcase as he went.

  Before he could finish hooking himself into the sling it started upward. He barely managed to keep hold of the suitcase as he was tugged toward the chopper. Though he’d tied it to a life jacket and wrapped it in garbage bags to make sure it remained waterproof and would float, in this storm he doubted he would see it again if it slipped from his grasp. He clenched his fingers around it as the rope twisted. The wash from the rotors and the spray of the water drenched him, soaking him to his bones despite the heavy rain gear he wore.

  At last he reached the doorway of the helicopter. A crewman grabbed at Atha’s bag, but he refused to give it up; he was dragged inside by it, rolling back toward the doorway as the chopper bucked in the wind. Another man grabbed hold of Atha and wrestled him against the bulkhead, where he managed to get out of the harness. He lay on the floor as the door was shut and the chopper began gaining altitude.

  Thanking God for his delivery, Atha got up and sat on the narrow bench at the side of the cabin. I’m safe, he thought to himself. As if to rebuff him, the helicopter pitched sharply to the right, throwing him against the two other men. For the first time since he’d come aboard, Atha looked into their faces and realized that they, too, were scared, perhaps even more than he was.

  “There will be a bonus on our safe landing,” he promised. When that failed to cheer them, he added, “We are doing Allah’s work, all praise be to him. He would not let us die before our mission is complete.”

  The crewmen exchanged a doubtful look before nodding.

  6

  BOLOGNA, ITALY

  Nathaniel Hamilton stepped off the small plane at the Bologna airport and hurried into the tunnel toward the terminal. Having effectively ceded the search for the Iranian to the Italians and the Americans—Jared Lloyd was in theory “liaisoning,” but Hamilton had few illusions about who was really in charge—he was at least temporarily reduced to getting whatever he could from the other end of the equation, the Russian scientist.

  London, of course, had no clue what should be done next. In one breath, Hamilton’s supervisor said he would pummel the Americans for stepping into the middle of their operation. In the next, he said how lucky they were for following a hunch and he would damn well make sure they got credit for it.

  Hamilton had been around long enough to realize that, his boss’s opinions notwithstanding, the mission had so far been neither a great success nor a terrible failure. The Americans were worried about whatever Rostislawitch had handed over, but in Hamilton’s opinion the network Atha belonged to was much more important. Was Rostislawitch part of a network of scientists in Russia willing to supply state secrets to Atha? What were the Iranians’ real plans?

  The first thing Hamilton did when he got to Bologna was take a room at the Stasi, a boutique hotel just at the edge of center city. It was an expensive place; his boss would surely have a fit when he saw the bill. But Hamilton wanted a place with a bed that wasn’t made out of melted-down cannons.

  Once he’d checked in, Hamilton took a taxi to the bus station. He walked in the front door and then promptly out the side, walking down the block to an alley, where he turned right and walked to the door of a small building wedged between two larger and much older structures. A sign on the faded wood proclaimed that the place had been condemned; the sign was at least two years old. Hamilton took a look around, then unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  There was no light or electricity; he had to use a small pocket flashlight to find the strongbox he’d come for.

  A touch of paranoia took hold as he knelt to the box. But it quickly passed. He put his key into the lock and opened the lid, then reached in and took what he needed—keys, credit cards, SIM cards for his phone, and finally the guns: a PK pistol and a six-shot dummy cell phone.

  “Now, then,” he said to himself as he rose, the pistol and fake phone tucked into his pockets, “let us see what sort of mood the estimable Mr. Ferguson is in this evening.”

  Truth be told, Ferguson was in the mood for a long nap. He’d followed Rostislawitch back to his hotel, where the scientist was apparently in the process of taking a very long shower. Unfortunately, the battery in the video bug Rankin had installed the day before had run down, and Ferguson had to rely on the backup audio near the door. It was difficult to hear much exc
ept for the shower.

  For the moment, Ferguson was on his own. He’d sent Thera to move some of their cars around so they wouldn’t be towed or ticketed; after that, she was supposed to rest. She wasn’t due back until seven, when she was to meet Rostislawitch for dinner in the lobby.

  The Italians, British, and Russians all knew pieces of what was going on, but as far as Ferguson could tell, they didn’t know as much as the team did. The Italians didn’t know about the bacteria that had possibly been taken; they thought the Iranian was a witness or participant in the bombing. The British didn’t know what Kiska had told Ferguson about the material, though they knew that Atha had met with the scientist. The Russians didn’t know about Atha, since Kiska hadn’t gotten to town until after the meeting.

  What did they know that Ferguson didn’t?

  Plenty, maybe.

  What didn’t he know that was important?

  Number one, who T Rex was.

  Not Kiska. But the problem with eliminating her was that left no one else as a possible candidate. By now the Agency had checked the bona fides of every scientist at the convention without coming up with a match; the Italians had conducted their own check of the backgrounds of the caterers and the others hired for the event. This had resulted in a few surprises—including the arrest of a man wanted for heroin smuggling and the detention of a number of suspected illegal immigrants but no likely candidate for T Rex.

  Meanwhile, the Italian investigation into the bombing was moving ahead at a snail’s pace. The plastique explosive had been isolated but its chemical “tag”—a kind of fingerprint that would indicate where it had been manufactured—had not yet been identified. The truck that had blown up had been stolen from a town about five kilometers away; the police had no leads in the theft.

  So if it wasn’t Kiska, who was it?

  Ferguson took the laptop into the bathroom with him so he could watch the feed from the video bugs covering the hall outside Rostislawitch’s door and listen to the audio bug while he shaved. Rostislawitch had finally finished his shower and was now talking to himself, complaining about Kiska.