Andrew Britton - The Operative

“I didn’t know him before today,” Stempel said, “but I got the very strong impression that Ryan Kealey is not the sort of man to let things drag on.”

“No, he is not,” the president agreed.

Andrea Stempel left, the president said his silent prayer, and then he turned and walked through the empty Oval Office to the West Wing elevator.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Yasmin was walking down West Broadway, just crossing Chambers Street, thinking about the morning.

She hadn’t eaten. She stopped in the Amish Market to get a sandwich. Large sections of the store had been bought clean: evacuees had picked up beverages and snacks, and locals had already been in to buy essentials.

She bought a Greek yogurt and some kind of power juice, warm. Then she continued down the avenue to Vesey Street, then over to Church for the last leg of her walk. She had no idea how she had gotten to West Broadway. The last thing she recalled, she was over by South Street, walking toward a UPS truck.

All she knew was that it was okay. She had been where she wanted to be, where she was supposed to be, and was headed back to where she was staying. Except for the memory lapse, she didn’t feel as if anything was wrong. Hooked on a finger and slung over her shoulder, Yasmin was carrying the garment bag she had left the apartment with early that morning. She knew there was a weapon inside. She detected, very faintly, the burned gunpowder and knew it had been fired.

You’re an assassin. It’s what you do. You’ve smelled that odor many, many times before.

But she simply couldn’t remember who it had been fired at. What was more, she was strangely ambivalent about not knowing. It was as if, not remembering, she simultaneously had nothing to worry about. Except the fact that she couldn’t remember, but that, too, didn’t bother her much.

Downtown seemed oddly deserted. It wasn’t just unpopulated; it was as though it’d been swept clean of life and activity, like the shelves in the market. She sat in the park in front of 7 World Trade Center to eat. It was the last building that had fallen on September 11 and the first to be rebuilt as a great silver rhomboid.

She ate the yogurt, was sorry she didn’t have bread to fling to the pigeons. The birds were respectful at least, not like in some cities, where they came up and sat on your shoulder to try and pick at whatever you were eating. She drank the tart-tasting juice concoction as she continued to One West. The finger holding the garment bag was beginning to cramp. When she was finished with the drink, she threw the bag over her arm. It didn’t fold.

Right, she thought. There’s a rifle inside. She hugged the bag to her. She was an assassin. She packed weapons the way an electrician packed a toolbox or an attorney packed legal documents.

Church Street was barren. Century 21, one of the city’s busiest clothing stores, looked as if it were closed. There were no police. With a mounting sense of alarm, she quickened her pace. There were no tourists in Battery Park, but the seawall was lined with people waiting for boats. The harbor was filled with traffic, some of it police, some of it private, most of it commercial. All of it was in motion, to New Jersey and Staten Island, some of it up the Hudson to Midtown.

She saw a few policemen here, most of them trying to move the traffic along Battery Place and West Street. All of it was funneling into the lanes that opened into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. She looked at her watch. It was nearly lunchtime, but everyone was going home.

This isn’t holiday traffic, she told herself. Something’s wrong.

Yasmin went to a cop who was standing with her hands on her hips, waiting for a signal from up the street to let more traffic onto West Street.

“What’s going on, Officer?” Yasmin asked.

“You been asleep?” the woman asked.

“Apparently,” Yasmin replied.

“Sniper attacks uptown and on the Lower East Side,” she said. “If you live near here, get there now.”

“Thanks,” Yasmin said.

She walked to her destination, the tall, century-old building on the corner. Sniper attacks. She was a sniper. Was this about something she’d done?

Why can’t I remember?

She went inside, was announced by the concierge, and took the penthouse elevator to the top floor. There was something she needed to do. She frowned. What was it?

The drawbridge lowered, and she crossed it, walking the narrow passageway into the palace. It wasn’t what she needed to do; there was someone she needed to see. Her cousin, Nabi Bakhsh.

So smart, she thought, but so arrogant. He doesn’t think his little cousin is a threat. He doesn’t think she can stop him.

She paused before the palace door and laid her saddlebag on the carpet. She drew a nine-inch blade from a leather sheath inside. There was already blood on it from the guards she had killed earlier, making her way into the usurper’s city. She closed the saddlebag, left it on the carpet, held the knife behind her back, blade down, and turned the door handle. It was unlocked. She entered, saw the princeling in his regal garb, talking to her own informants. He smiled at her. She smiled at him. She went to embrace him. He seemed surprised and backed away.

“You aren’t going anywhere, Nabi Bakhsh,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” he replied.

She swung the knife around and pushed it into the soft tissue just behind his chin. The blade was slanted toward the back of his head. The steel went through flesh, tongue, soft palate, and sinus cavity. Blood washed her wrist; and air, sucked through the wound, caused it to bubble. He gurgled down air as he reached for her hand, tried to pull the knife away. But she was pushing him back, twisting as she did, ripping a cavity at the base of his brain. His arms went limp, and he hung there on the knife, deadweight increasing by the moment.

She drew her arm back and let him fall.

“You will not be taking the throne from my father,” she said defiantly.

The princess became aware of her informants moving around her in a wide circle. They were coming toward the body, not away from it. One of them, the woman, was placing her saddlebags on the floor. The other, a man, came over and gently, quietly, took the knife from her hand.

“You have done well,” the man told her.

“Thank you.”

“As we discussed, all that remains is to make sure the moat cannot be crossed again,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

The man turned her toward the closet to her left, beside the window. The woman opened the accordion door. There was a weapon inside, nearly as long as the other woman was tall. It was a narrow tube with a trigger, a sighting device, and a sleek, flattened arrowhead on the upright end.

“You know the target, where it is,” the man said. “We’ve shown it to you.”

“I remember.”

He set a cell phone on the table. He held her hand, raised it so she could see the bracelet with the marble. “You will wait here until the phone rings. That will let you know it is time. Then you know what to do?”

“Take that rocket launcher, go to the roof, and make certain the moat cannot be crossed.”

The man smiled. “And when you are finished?”

“I will come back here, locate the highest point, and keep a lookout for my father.”

The smile vanished. He looked at the other woman in the room. She nodded, cocked her head to the door. “Why don’t you sit beside the phone and wait for it to ring?”

“All right.”

The woman grabbed keys and her shoulder bag from the table and took a final look around. The man waited for her at the door.

They left without a word.

Drs. Ayesha Gillani and Emile Samson took the elevator to the lobby and walked to the parking garage. While Samson restored the spark plugs, Gillani got behind the wheel of the old BMW. Once they had pulled onto West Street, a police officer helped them cut across the tunnel-bound traffic to get to the virtually empty uptown lane. She swung west toward the World Financial Center and the marina. She pulled as far onto Rector Place as the cul-de-sac would allow, and then Samson went to the trunk.