The Innocent

by David Baldacci

  like every other man, rich or poor. He studied the wall in front of him, the graffiti and filthy language written there. He finally looked away in disgust. It was the Western influence that had brought such things, of that he was convinced. In that world, women could drive cars, vote, work outside the house, and dress like whores. It was ruining the world. Even his country now said that women could vote and do other things that only men should be able to do. The king was insane and, worse, a puppet of the West.

  He hit the flush lever with the sole of his shoe, zipped his pants, and unlatched the stall door. While he washed his hands, he stared at his image in the mirror. A fifty-year-old man looked back at him: gray in the beard and quite large in the belly. He was worth well north of twelve billion dollars, making him the sixty-first richest person in the world according to Forbes magazine. He had taken his oil money and leveraged it into many profitable operations using his business savvy and international connections. He was sandwiched on the list between a Russian oligarch who used gangster tactics after the fall of the Soviet Union to snap up state assets for virtually nothing and a twenty-something tech king whose company had never made a dime in profit.

  He left the bathroom and walked back to the table with his guards organized in a hard-diamond pattern around him. He had copied this tactic from the American Secret Service. His personal physician traveled with him, just like the U.S. president. Why not emulate the strongest? was his thinking.

  And in his mind, he was just as important as the American president. In fact, he would have liked to replace him as the de facto leader of the free world. Although the world would not be nearly as free with him in charge, starting with the women.

  Drinks finished, they moved on to their evening meal at a restaurant that had been completely rented out so that the prince could dine in peace without the fear of strangers interrupting. After that he changed back into his robes and returned to his jet, housed in a secure hangar back at a private jet park outside the city. The Hummers pulled past the open doors of the hangar and stopped in front of the massive jet. While most planes were painted white, this one was all black. The prince liked the color. He thought it was masculine and powerful and possessed a tangible element of danger.

  Just like him.

  The hangar doors closed before he got out of the Hummer.

  There would be no targets for long-range rifle shots between open hangar doors.

  He walked up the steps, puffing slightly as he neared the top.

  The hangar doors would reopen only when the plane was ready to take off.

  The meeting would be held on the plane, while it was on the ground. The meeting would last for one hour. The prince would control the meeting.

  He was used to controlling situations.

  That was about to end.

  CHAPTER

  6

  THERE WERE TWO GUARDS at the bottom of the stairs leading to the jet. The rest of the security was in the plane, surrounding what would be the main target for any attack. The fuselage door was closed, locked. It was like a vault. A very expensive vault. But as with all vaults, there were weaknesses.

  The prince sat at the center of the table in the main part of the cabin. The interior was entirely of his own design. The plane consisted of nearly eight thousand square feet of marble and exotic woods, oriental rugs, and exquisite paintings and sculptures by long-dead, museum-quality artists that he could admire at forty-one thousand feet and five hundred miles an hour. Talal was a man who spent his money and thereby enjoyed his wealth.

  He gazed around the table. There were two visitors here. One was Russian, the other Palestinian. An unlikely partnership, but it intrigued the prince.

  They had promised that for the right price they could accomplish something that virtually everyone, the prince included, would have thought impossible.

  The prince cleared his throat. “You’re sure you can do this?” His tone was full of incredulity.

  The Russian, a big man with a full beard and a hairless head that gave him an unbalanced, bottom-heavy appearance, nodded slowly but firmly.

  The prince said, “I am curious as to how this is possible, because I have been told that it is absolutely pointless even to try.”

  “The strongest chain is defeated by its weakest link.” This came from the Palestinian. He was a small man, but with a fuller beard than the Russian. They were like a tugboat and a battleship, but it was clear that the small man was the leader of the partnership.

  “And what is the weakest link?”

  “One person. But that person is placed next to the one you want. We own that person.”

  “I cannot see how that is possible,” said the prince.

  “It is not just possible. It is fact.”

  “But even so, access to weapons?”

  “The person’s job will allow access to the necessary weapon.”

  “And how do you own such a person?”

  “That detail is not important.”

  “It is important to me. This person must be willing to die, then. There is no other way.”

  The Palestinian nodded. “That condition is met.”

  “Why? Westerners do not do that.”

  “I did not say that the person is a westerner.”

  “A plant?”

  “Decades in the making.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do any of us do anything? We believe in certain things. And we must take steps to realize those beliefs.”

  The prince sat back. He looked intrigued.

  The Palestinian said, “The plans are in place. But as you know, significant funds are required for something like this. Much of it in the aftermath. Our person is secure, for now. But that could change soon. There are eyes and ears everywhere. The longer we wait, the greater the chances of the mission failing before it has been given a chance to succeed.”

  The prince ran his fingers over the carved wood of the table as he glanced out the window. The windows were extra large, because he enjoyed the views from his high perch.

  The subsonic round hit him squarely in the forehead, exploding his brain. He fell back against his leather seat and then slowly slid to the floor. Gray matter, blood, bone, and tissue covered the plane’s once beautiful interior.

  The Russian leapt up but had no weapon. It had been confiscated at the door. The Palestinian just sat there, paralyzed.

  The guards reacted. One pointed to the shattered plane window. “Out there!”

  They rushed to the door.

  The two guards outside the plane had drawn their weapons and fired at the source of the fatal shot.

  Shots pinged around Robie’s position. He aimed and fired back. The first sentry fell with a kill shot to the head. The second collapsed a few moments after that with a bullet wedged in his heart.

  From his high perch Robie pointed his rifle’s muzzle at the door of the plane. He sent five shots right through the center, destroying the opening mechanism. He swiveled around and took out the cockpit window and with it the plane’s controls. The big bird would be grounded for a while. It was fortunate for his mission that bulletproof material was too thick and heavy to carry on planes. That made it simply a hundred-million-dollar vault with a very large Achilles’ heel.

  Then he was done with killing.

  Now came the hardest part.

  The exit.

  He tightwalked down the girder until he reached a wall on the far side of the hangar. He pushed open the window, attached his cable to the support ring he had bolted into place the night before, and rappelled down the wall. His feet touched the asphalt and he ran due east away from the hangar and the dead prince. He scaled a fence, dropped to the other side. He heard shouts behind him. Some beams of light broke the darkness. Shots headed his way, all far off target. He knew that could change.

  The car raced up. He threw his gear in the backseat, jumped in, and it drove off before his door was even shut. Robie did not look at the driver and the driver did not lo
ok at him. The car traveled for only a few miles, into the outskirts of Tangier, before stopping. Robie slipped out, headed down an alley, walked another five hundred feet, and entered a small courtyard. A blue Fiat was there. He slid into the driver’s seat, snagged the keys from under the visor, and started it up. He gunned the engine and left the courtyard. Five minutes later he neared the center of Tangier. He drove through the city and parked the car at the port. He popped the rear hatch and pulled out a small bag packed with clothes and other essentials, including travel documents and local currency.

  He boarded not the high-speed ferry back to Spain, which he had taken to get here, but instead the slow ferry from Tangier to Barcelona. It took twenty-four hours to go from Barcelona to Tangier and three hours longer in the other direction.

  His employer had sprung for a three-person family berth rather than simply a seat. He went to this space, stowed his bag, locked his door, and lay on the bed. A few minutes later the ferry slipped away from the dock.

  Robie could see the logic. No one would expect an assassin to escape via a boat that took over a full day to get to its destination. They would check the airports, the high-speed ferries, the highways, and the train stations. But not the lumbering old bathtub that would take twenty-seven hours to go a few hundred miles up the Med. He would actually arrive two days from now, since it was nearly midnight.

  Robie had had with him a long-range surveillance cone that had allowed him to hear the conversation on the plane between the prince and the two other men. Access to weapons. Decades in the making. Significant funds for the aftermath. It would have to be followed up. But that was not his job. He had completed his task. He would make his report and others would now take over. He was certain that even the Saudi royal family would be relieved that one of their black sheep had been killed. Their official statement would condemn such an act of violence. They would demand a full investigation. They would posture and fume and whine. Tense diplomatic communications would be exchanged. But in private they would toast the ones responsible for the killing. In other words, they would toast the Americans.

  It had been a clean operation. Robie had had the prince in his crosshairs from the moment he’d gotten out of his SUV. He could’ve taken him out then, but wanted to wait until the prince and his guards were on the plane. It would allow him more time to get away if the security detail were trapped inside the aircraft. He had lost sight of the prince for about half a minute right after he had entered the plane, but had reacquired him as he walked down the aisle and sat at the table.

  Robie had aimed for the head of Talal even though it was a tougher shot, because of something he’d seen through his scope. When the prince had leaned forward in his chair, Robie had seen the straps underneath the man’s robes. He was wearing body armor. One did not wear body armor around the head.

  Robie had spent three days and nights of his life perched high up, peeing into a jar and eating power bars while waiting for his target in a facility that was supposedly in lockdown and totally secure.

  Now the prince was dead.

  His plans would die with him.

  Will Robie closed his eyes and slept as the ferry gently swayed on its slow ride over the calm waters of the Med.

  CHAPTER

  7

  THIS ONE WAS DIFFERENT.

  It was close to home.

  So close that it was home.

  Nearly three months had passed since Tangier and the death of Khalid bin Talal. The weather was cooler, the sky a little grayer. Robie had not killed anyone during that time. It was an unusually long period for him to be inactive, but he did not mind. He took walks, he read books, he ate out, he did some traveling that did not involve the death of someone. In other words, he acted normal.

  But then that flash drive had appeared and Robie had had to stop being normal and pick up his gun again. The mission had come to him two days ago. Not much time to prepare, but the mission was a priority, the flash drive told him. And when the flash spoke Robie acted.

  He sat in a chair in his living room, a cup of coffee in hand. It was early in the morning and he had been up for several hours. As the next mission grew closer it had been difficult for him to sleep. It had always been that way with him—not so much nervousness as a desire for heightened preparation. When he was awake part of his brain was constantly refining the plan, finding errors and fixing them. He could not do that while he was asleep.

  During his downtime he had adhered to his earlier plan of socializing more and even accepted an invitation to an informal party held by one of his neighbors at the man’s apartment on the third floor. Only a dozen people had attended, some of whom also lived in the building. The neighbor had introduced Robie to several of his friends. However, Robie’s attention had quickly focused on one young woman.

  She was a recent renter here who made the trek to the White House as early as four a.m. on her bike. Robie knew where she worked because he had received a briefing on her. He knew she left that early for work, because he had often watched her through his peephole.

  She was a lot younger than Robie, lovely, intelligent, at least from what he had observed. They had made eye contact on several occasions. Robie sensed she might be as friendless as he. He also sensed that if he started talking to her she wouldn’t have minded. She had worn a short black skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was swept back into a ponytail. She had a drink in hand and every so often she would glance in Robie’s direction, smile, and then look away as she continued her conversation with another person whom Robie didn’t recognize.

  Several times Robie had thought about approaching her. Yet he had left the party without doing so. As he was walking out he’d glanced back at her. She was laughing at a comment made by someone, and never looked his way. It was probably better that way, he’d thought. Because really, what would have been the point?

  Robie rose and stared out the window.

  It was fall now. The leaves in the park had started to turn. The evenings were chilly. The humidity of summer was sometimes still with them, but its intense edge had measurably eroded. The current weather was not bad for a city that was built on a swamp—and still was a swamp by many people’s estimation, at least the part where the professional politicians nested.

  Robie had done his recon in the abbreviated time allotted. The run-throughs, logistically harder in this situation, had still been performed.

  And he still didn’t like it.

  But it was not his call.

  The location would not involve Robie stepping on a plane or train. But the target was different as well. And not in a good way.

  Sometimes he went after people intent on global menace, like Rivera or Talal. Or sometimes he simply went after a problem.

  You could take your pick of labels, but in the end they all meant the same thing. His employer decided who among the living and breathing would qualify as a target. And then they turned to men like Robie to end the living and breathing part.

  It made the world better, was the justification.

  Like flinging the planet’s most potent army against a madman in the Middle East. Military victory was ensured from the start. What could not be wholly predicted was what came after victory. Like a morphing chaos you couldn’t escape.

  Trapped in a trap of your own making.

  The agency Robie worked for had a clear policy on operatives who were caught during a mission. There would be no acknowledgment that Robie even worked for the United States. There would be no steps taken to save him. It was the opposite of the U.S. Marines’ mantra: Everyone in Robie’s world was left behind.

  Thus on every mission Robie had employed an exit plan known only to him, in case the operation went awry. He had never needed to employ his personal backup plan, because he had never failed a mission. Yet. Tomorrow was simply another day for something to go wrong.

  Shane Connors was the one who had taught Robie this. He had told Robie that he had to use his backup plan once, in Libya, when the ope
ration, through no fault of his, had imploded.

  “You’re the only one out there who really has your back, Will,” Connors had told him. That advice had stayed with Robie all these years. He would never forget it.

  Robie surveyed his apartment. He’d been here four years, liked it for the most part. There were restaurants within walking distance. The area was interesting, with many unusual shops that were not part of homogeneous national chains. Robie ate out a lot. He liked to sit at tables and watch people go by. He was a student of humanity in a way. That was why he was still alive. He could read people, often after observing them for only a few seconds. It was not a natural talent. It was a skill he had built up over time, as most useful skills were.

  In the basement of his building was a gym where he would go to work out, hone his muscles, ratchet up his motor skills, practice techniques that needed practicing. He was the only one who ever used the facility. For training involving weapons and other necessary tools of his trade there were other places he went. Other people he worked with.

  At forty years of age it didn’t come any easier.

  He toggled his neck back and forth and was rewarded with a satisfying