ASSASSINS

by Mike Bond

  Jack glanced up from the phone booth. No one was near him on the sidewalk. A pickup clattered past dragging its tailpipe. In a shop window a stuffed grizzly bear snarled at him. “So I heard.”

  “It’s been over a year. You’re supposed to stay in touch.”

  “What you want?”

  “I checked your bank account in Maine. You’re down to your last three hundred twenty-seven bucks.”

  “I might have other income.”

  “You don’t. But I’m offering you some.” There was a moment’s silence as Timothy checked the call tracer. “What the bloody Hell are you doing in Fairbanks?”

  “Hanging out with wolves and feeding mosquitoes. What you want?”

  “The French police think some of your boys are bombing the Paris Métro. Mitterrand’s on Reagan’s ass and Reagan doesn’t like it.”

  “I don’t have any boys.”

  “La Police Nationale thinks you do.”

  “I don’t know anybody at La Police Nationale.”

  “Yes you do. Some guy named Richards...” The phone buzzed as Timothy shuffled papers. “No, here it is – Reecard, Colonel Max Reecard. Says he knew you in Beirut.”

  “Your accent’s horrible, Timothy.”

  “How soon can you get down here?”

  “What are you paying?”

  “More than you’re getting now. We need deniability. You’re the one to do it.”

  Jack hung up. Amazing how life changed when you least expected. Maybe in Paris there’d be fewer mosquitoes.

  THE MÉTRO CAR WAS TWISTED and charred. Its walls had blown outward and the floor was gone. It smelled of seared metal, charred rubber and something evilly metallic. Dried blood coated the distended ceiling and lay in an ugly brown spray over a Galeries Lafayette poster of a pretty girl twirling in a black dress.

  “How can anyone do this,” Jack said, “to perfect strangers?”

  “Easy.” Max Ricard lit a Gauloise. “Just leave your five kilos of plastique in a shopping bag under your seat and get out. Five minutes later, the infidels are in Hell for the crime of not being Muslim. And you’re a step closer to Paradise.” Ricard took a puff. “What do you suppose is the link between the ‘Islamic Army of Salvation’ who blew up this subway car, and the Algerians you trained in Afghanistan?”

  Jack glanced round the echoing Métro depot. “Why would there be?”

  “Some of these guys boast to other Muslims that they were mujihadeen in Afghanistan. How many Russians they killed, the missiles they used to shoot down Soviet planes...” He watched Jack. “They say they’ll do the same here.”

  “Why would mujihadeen do this? Why not Abu Nidal – they bombed the Rome and Vienna airports last Christmas? Or Shiite Amal or Islamic Jihad? This detonator’s the kind they teach in Hezbollah camps...”

  “You’d know about that,” Ricard grinned over his cigarette. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “... and they’ve been hijacking American planes, killing Americans too! TWA 847, the Achille Lauro, TWA 840, our soldiers in Germany... last week that Pan Am plane in Pakistan –”

  “As you know, Algeria’s in a civil war. The fundamentalists want to make it a true Islamic state – Sharia, Islamic law, all that. And we have five million Algerians in France.”

  “You were crazy to let them in.”

  “Our beloved president said we have to let in the families of those already here.” Ricard waved his cigarette. “Turns out, every Arab in the world is related...”

  “But you’re military – why are you on this?”

  “Got pulled out of Beirut and transferred back to DST, where I started out –”

  “DST?”

  “La Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. The part of La Police Nationale that deals with terrorism... I run agents inside Muslim groups, tracking people...” Ricard pulled a piece of paper from his breast pocket. “This’ll jog your memory.”

  Jack glanced at the name scrawled in Arabic script, handed it back, took a breath of cold air, a cloying fragrance of blood. “Who is it?”

  “Don’t give me that shit.”

  Jack looked at the name again. “Never heard of him.”

  “Two of our assets inside Muslim groups were told, separately, that he set this bomb. That he got off one stop be fore the explosion. I’m sure you know him.”

  Jack shook his head. “Sorry.”

  Ricard raised his eyebrows. “Let’s try it this way: if you were to have known him, who might he be? If, as they say, he fought in Afghanistan?”

  “It was probably through Pakistani intelligence – ISI. Have you asked them?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “You’ve got millions of illegal Arabs in the slums around Paris, Lyon, Marseille, all your cities. How are you going to find him?”

  “According to our agents he was last seen at a mosque in Sartrouville. Trouble is, no one knows what he looks like. That’s why I wanted you to tell me.”

  ON THE MÉTRO back to his apartment near the Panthéon Jack looked for packages under seats, studied every person for an awkward move, a flicker of fear. In a tunnel he glimpsed a dangerous man reflected in the window across the aisle then realized it was he.

  Walking uphill from Cluny he scanned the cafés, watched every Arab passing on the sidewalk. Most of them, he told himself, were law-abiding, some even happy to be here.

  He went into a café near the Panthéon and downstairs to the men’s room. There was one man in the stall, no one in the women’s. When the man left, Jack dropped a fifty-centime piece in the phone and called Timothy collect. “It’s one of our guys.”

  “No, Jack. Even if it is it isn’t.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  Timothy thought a moment. “Lead them astray.”

  “People are getting killed here. By a guy we trained.”

  “Can they tie him to us?”

  “I trained him, Timothy. A squirrelly little Algerian named Hassan Husseini. I taught him to fire the SA-7s that we helped Wahid trade opium for.”

  “You’re dreaming, Jack. Making this up –”

  “He shot a wounded prisoner once, a Russian major. Now I think of it, he’s the reason my dog died. And why I got wounded.”

  “No one has time for your private memories, Jack. This guy does not exist.”

  FOR DAYS AND NIGHTS he rode the Métro watching everyone, every package, looking for Husseini. There were plainclothes cops riding it, too; after a while several noticed him.

  “Where you going tonight?” one asked, a pretty young woman with a short haircut and slender muscular arms and an MAB 9mm in a hip holster under her silk Cardin jacket. She checked his papers, saw he was an American student at the Sorbonne and waved him off.

  In the DST offices on rue Nélaton in the 15th Arrondissement he studied photos of Islamic fundamentalist leaders in France, told Ricard in all honesty he’d never seen them.

  He met a few of the beautiful women who crowded this gorgeous city but none he dared get close to, realized he felt lonelier here than alone in the Pacific or in the wilds of Alaska. Would there ever be someone?

  Loneliness is just a state of mind.

  Repair the evil you’ve done. Find Husseini.

  RAIN SLANTED ACROSS the café window. He had finished a simple dinner and a bottle of wine, a little drunk and in a mood to be straight with himself.

  Wanting to defend his country he’d helped create Husseini the killer – do we always create the opposite of what we seek? Facing too much death had set him outside life, a loner locked in his habits of concealment and distrust, of not being who he seemed.

  The bartender wiping out a glass, a waitress laughing at a customer’s joke, a grizzled old man reading Le Monde, two lovers staring over wine into each other’s eyes, a family eating ice cream – these people weren’t going to kill him, this wasn’t the Beqaa or the Hindu Kush.

  The French doctor had saved him in Afghanistan, but for what? He saw her strained f
ace, her angelic beauty in which sorrow seemed so inexplicably mired. She’d known Ahmad. How? Where was she now?

  Surrounded by whales at sunset in Tuamotu a year ago he’d felt awed and humbled by their ancient beauty, felt they’d changed him. But he was still the same.

  I owe you, he’d told her. Save someone else, she’d answered. Then we’ll be even.

  A song was playing – In my life, I’ve loved you more – over the hiss of the espresso machine and clatter of conversation. Tears came to his eyes unbidden. Casually he asked for more wine.

  Doctors Without Borders. Their head office in Paris could tell him how to find her.

  If he caught Husseini before he killed again, would that be saving someone?

  SARTROUVILLE LAY in a great oxbow of the Seine twenty minutes northwest of Paris. Once a farming town, it had become like many Parisian suburbs a site for installing thousands of North African immigrants. In place of orchards and farms now rose vast concrete cités – welfare towers and grim streets of dismembered cars, windblown trash and graffiti-spattered walls. Places the French cops, tough as they were, were told not to go.

  The once-beautiful high-speed subway was like its destination: graffiti across the walls and ceilings, the high-tech seats slashed by knives and burned by cigarette lighters. “If we can’t be happy,” the destroyers seemed to say, “no one will be.”

  The mosque was eight blocks from the station through streets of silent men and veiled, downcast women with their arms full of children. The front of a former department store, its windows boarded and covered with posters in Arabic script, it was a low room with a linoleum floor.

  The mullah, squat and one-eyed, strode back and forth at the end of the room where a sales counter had been shoved against the wall. He spoke fast in a North African dialect that was hard to follow, spitting out sections of the Koran with commentary between them.

  “The Holy Book tells us to strike back against evildoers and perfidy!” he roared. “And listen ye, this is a country of infidels! Because they do not believe, God confounds them. And because God confounds them, they do not see the cause. The Koran tells us, the cause is their own infidelity to God!”

  He faced them, hands upraised. “There is crime in this country – because of their evil ways, but they blame us!”

  He coughed, spit in the corner. “And listen ye, there shall be great destruction in this country – because, as the Koran teaches, God will bring down destruction on evildoers!”

  Back and forth he strutted in Day-Glo slippers and wrinkled robe, pounding a fist into a palm, head tilted back, beard wagging. Jack focused on his own dirty fingers splayed on the rug to keep from laughing. But as he glanced round it was clear the others were inflamed by it. “You’re all here on welfare!” he wanted to yell. “You get free medical care and free schools and free apartments! If you don’t like it, go back where the Hell you came from!”

  After the service he approached some young men arguing in North African accents. One grabbed him. “What you want?”

  “I am from far away. Afghanistan, where we wage jihad against infidels.”

  “I don’t know this place.”

  “We’re a Muslim republic attacked by the Soviets. Near China.”

  The young man called the others over. “I’ve heard of that,” one said.

  “Because he’s a teacher,” another explained.

  “Please excuse my poor speaking,” Jack said. “Though the Koran is written in Arabic, in Afghanistan we speak another tongue. My little Arabic I learned from an Algerian freedom fighter who came from Paris.”

  “Yes, some Algerians have gone there,” the teacher said.

  “I have been sent to find him, to ask him to send us others,” Jack said. “He told me of this mosque. Do you know him, his name is Hassan Husseini?”

  “Don’t say that name,” the teacher said.

  “Why? It’s a name to be proud of. He’s a brave fighter, has killed many infidels.”

  “He’s changed it.”

  Jack waited a moment, as if puzzled. “How will I find him then?”

  “Where do you stay?”

  “In Paris, with fedayeen from Beirut.”

  “How do we find you?”

  Jack looked around the tawdry room. “I can come back. Tomorrow night.”

  “If we hear of him who had that name,” the teacher said, “who wishes to see him?”

  “Tell him Wahid al-Din. Eagle of the Hindu Kush.”

  I Can’t Save You

  IF HE CALLED HER he’d have to explain why he’d been in Afghanistan. But he couldn’t tell her. Anyway she probably wasn’t even in France. Certainly not in Paris. Why would she care about somebody she’d saved four years ago?

  Doctors Without Borders was in the phone book. A man answered on the first ring. “I was a correspondent in Kabul,” Jack said. “I met one of your doctors there, a woman, in September eighty-three –”

  “That would be Sophie Dassault – the only one who stayed that long in Kabul. After the others got killed.”

  “Is she still there?”

  “She’s a trauma surgeon at La Pitié Hospital. On our board of directors too. Why are you asking?”

  Half an hour later he arrived at the Hospital’s Admitting window. “Is Dr. Dassault here?”

  The woman glanced up at him, the clock. “She’s in the operating suite. Won’t be out till her shift ends at five. What’s your name?” she said as he turned away.

  All day he rode the Métro looking for Husseini. If we could read the secret history of our enemies, Longfellow had said, we would find in each person’s story enough suffering and sorrow there to disarm all hostilities. But he’d kill Husseini now, no matter his secret sufferings and sorrows.

  Hadn’t he too had sufferings and sorrows – fatherless at ten, a heartbroken benumbed mother, the years of poverty, the long Maine winters, the determination to work and work and work and rise above it, getting into West Point then losing it all? Hadn’t he too been made heartless by pain?

  The trouble with thinking, Bandit said, is it gets you nowhere.

  At 16:30 he was leaning against the fender of a parked car watching people leave the hospital. At 17:10 a slender woman in a white raincoat came out and walked purposefully across the lot, a briefcase slung over her shoulder.

  “Please wait!” he called in Pashto.

  She turned on him, eyes wide. “What did you say?” she answered in French.

  It was she: the slender incised cheeks, the wide eyes, the auburn hair cut short now, not long like it’d been... He saw her face as it had looked down at him under the white light... I can’t save you, she’d said.

  Her fingers round the briefcase strap were long and slender. A ring – no, not the wedding finger. Under the white raincoat a blue and red scarf. “You’re a doctor,” he said in Pashto.

  “Yes,” she said reluctantly in Pashto.

  “Kabul hospital four years ago. You saved me.”

  Her mouth opened. “Three times,” he said, “you saved me.”

  She stepped back. “I have to go now.”

  “You saved me from a bullet in the shoulder. Then from the Spetsnaz –”

  He saw her eyes widen at the word. “– then from Hekmatyar’s men.”

  Doubt hardened her face. “You’re not Afghani. You have an American accent. Who are you?”

  “I told you I was a journalist... I got shot. You took me to Ahmad’s –”

  She edged away. “Please,” he said.” I need to talk to you.”

  “I have to pick up my son. I’m glad I was able to help you. Goodbye.”

  “Wait!” he begged, aware of people watching.

  “Please go. Before I call the guards.”

  THE MOSQUE in Sartrouville was nearly empty, a few men filing in for evening prayers. Jack edged along the back, watching for Husseini. What would he do if he saw him? Follow him, tell Ricard? He hadn’t thought this through.

  Too obsessed with Sophi
e. Yes, just to say her name. Sophie.

  When your head isn’t where you are, that’s how you get killed. He forced himself to watch the growing throng of dissatisfied men, listen to their rancorous prayers, the slip-slap of the mullah’s feet as he pranced back and forth in his Day-Glo slippers.

  “I have to pick up my son,” she’d said. She was married?

  The prayers ended. Husseini wasn’t there. Jack edged past the young men, his back to them, and out the door. A light rain was falling.

  She didn’t want to see him. He’d made a fool of himself. Like some pimply buck-toothed fifteen year-old at a school dance, terrified of girls.

  He took the RER back to Paris, a vague discomfort in his chest. She would never like someone like him.

  She hadn’t wanted to talk about Afghanistan. To speak Pashto.

  Afghanistan a cascade of memories: snow and wind, dusty heat, McPhee’s grin and Loxley’s laugh, filthy villages under the crushing sky, the kindness of an old woman and the curse of a dying man, the fear before combat and the sorrow after.

  He found her in the phone book, 51 rue St. Dominique, under her own name. That didn’t mean anything: she could be married, living with someone. If he called her, what then? If he waited outside her building it would be like stalking her. She’d call the cops.

  19:55. He could still call her. Not too late.

  Who are you? she’d asked. What could he say?

  SHE ANSWERED on the second ring. The phone slippery in his hand he tried to speak casually, conscious of his accent, telling himself Don’t lie. “I need to ask you some questions, about my shoulder –”

  “I don’t remember anything about you. Anyway I don’t have office hours.”

  “You told me to save someone else’s life, then we’d be even...”

  “I told you that?”

  The phone was cutting in and out; he could barely hear. “I haven’t been able to save anyone’s life, so I still owe you. Can I invite you to dinner?”

  “Heavens no. I don’t have time.”

  “Just coffee then –”

  “Why are you bothering me?” She halted. “When did America have journalists in Afghanistan?”

  A motion behind him made him spin round – a meekish little man waiting for the phone. “I was freelancing.” Don’t lie. “When did you come back?” he said, switching the subject, aware how lame it sounded.