Andrew Britton - The Assassin

“Is Vanderveen with him?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Kealey closed his eyes, shaking his head. It didn’t make sense; Times Square was only five minutes away, to begin with. They should have felt the blast already. He flipped open his phone and dialed Harper’s number at Langley. “What kind of truck was it?”

“White,” she said in a daze. “With a box on the back. An Isuzu, I think.”

When Harper answered, Kealey said, “John, I need you to check something for me right now, no questions asked. The delegates with the UIA… Where are they staying in the city?”

“Jesus, Ryan, I have no idea-”

“Then find out,” he snapped. “And call me back.”

“I’m on it.”

Kealey snapped the phone shut without responding, thinking furiously. There wasn’t much he could do until the DDO came up with an answer, so he moved onto the next problem: what to do about Naomi. He still hadn’t heard any sirens, probably because the gunshots weren’t audible on the street. Maybe the traffic served to drown out the sound. Either way, it gave him a little time to figure things out.

He looked down and saw that she had started to cry softly. For the first time, he noticed the handcuffs around her wrists. He touched her shoulder, and she looked up through her tears.

“Naomi, did you shoot Foster, or was it Crane?”

“It was me. But I had to. He was trying to-”

“I know, I know. Did you use the same gun on both of them?”

She shook her head, tears rolling down her face. “No, I found a gun in Nazeri’s desk, and I used it on… Foster. But I fired all six, and then I saw his gun, so I picked it up. I thought Vanderveen was coming back for me. After that, everything just kind of… happened.”

She broke off, tucked her knees up to her chest, and buried her head in her arms. Kealey was already on the move. First, he went to Foster’s body and grabbed the back of his shirt, turning him so he was facing the opposite direction, away from the office. Then he moved back to Naomi, lifting Foster’s gun out of her lap. She didn’t seem to realize what was happening. He lifted the lower half of his T-shirt and used the material to wipe down the gun as fast as possible, doing his best to erase any sign of her fingerprints. When he was satisfied, he kneeled next to Foster’s right hand and let the gun slip from his shirt to the floor.

At that very moment, his phone rang. He flipped it open immediately.

“It’s the Renaissance Hotel,” Harper said. He sounded amazed and angry. “Forty-eighth and Seventh. Thirty-five members of the Iraqi National Assembly in one fucking place. I don’t know who thought that one up, but I’m going to-”

“Okay, thanks.” Kealey flipped the phone shut without waiting for a response. It didn’t make sense; he didn’t know why the bomb was still intact, but it didn’t really matter. If he could just get there in time, he might still have a chance to stop it.

He touched Kharmai’s shoulder again to get her attention. “Naomi, I have to leave you here. I don’t know if what I’ve done will hold up, but you have to get a grip on yourself and come up with a story, okay? Foster shot Crane; then you shot him. You need to fill in the blanks before the cops get here. Understand?”

“Ryan, I can’t do that. I deserve whatever-”

“Don’t say that,” he said in a hard voice, cutting her off. He softened his tone and kneeled beside her. “It was a mistake, it’s done, and spending the next few years of your life in prison won’t fix it. You have to get it together, okay?”

She nodded and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Okay. I’ll try.”

“Good.”

He glanced at his watch as he ran for the doors. Sanitizing the scene had taken a full minute, a minute he couldn’t afford to spare. Before he got outside, he thought of something and went back to Foster’s body. He found the keys to the Crown Vic in the man’s left jacket pocket, along with FBI credentials in a flip-style billfold. He grabbed both items. Less than a minute later, he had the roll-down vehicular door up and was pulling out onto West Thirty-seventh Street, heading for Eighth Avenue. He accelerated immediately, racing against the one-way traffic, laying his hand on the horn. In his rush to beat Nazeri to the hotel, he didn’t notice the man in the Sable across the street, who watched him go with a mixed expression of rage and curiosity.

As Kealey raced north toward the Renaissance Hotel, Vanderveen crossed the street quickly, heading back to the warehouse, wondering what he would find inside.

NEW YORK CITY

Amir Nazeri wiped a film of sweat from his forehead and stared down at his hands, which were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel of the Isuzu box truck. They were steady, but only because they were welded around the wheel; the rest of his body was trembling violently. He willed his limbs to relax but knew that it wouldn’t make a difference. Looking up, he stared blankly through the windshield at the traffic passing a few feet in front of him, then turned to his right, absently watching the crowds sweeping past on the sidewalk. He wondered what these people would think if they knew what was going through his mind. Would any of them understand? Somehow, he didn’t think so. Only one person had ever really understood him, and she was gone, stripped away by the same government that had given him the chance to prosper in a new and foreign land. The irony of this — that America could give with one hand and take away with the other — had never occurred to him, but he wouldn’t have cared to consider it.

The Isuzu had passed through the western half of the theater district and was now idling at the intersection of West Fifty-second and Tenth. He had missed the right turn onto West Forty-eighth several minutes earlier. At first, he told himself it was just because he’d seen a police car make the same turn. But then he’d come up with a similar excuse for the next eastbound street, the street after that, and the street after that. At this rate, he would never reach his destination, but suddenly — inexplicably — he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He wiped his face again as the light turned green. He hesitated, but instead of turning right onto West Fifty-second, he kept going straight. Nazeri shook his head unconsciously, aware of the pressure building inside his chest. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. When Kohl had first put forth this proposition, everything had seemed so clear. In killing Fatima Darabi, the U.S. government had stripped away the only thing that had ever mattered to him. When he’d learned what had happened to her, the bitterness had threatened to overwhelm him completely. Nothing had changed since then, so why was he hesitating? Why was he finding it so hard to make the turn?

Suddenly, he was overcome with deep, piercing shame. How could he be so weak? He still didn’t know exactly what Fatima had done for the mullahs in Tehran, but he knew that she’d come to the United States to risk her life for her country. She had sacrificed everything for what she’d believed in, and while Amir did not share those beliefs, he did respect them. More to the point, he respected her courage. In life, she had possessed a certain strength, an inner vitality he could never aspire to, only admire from afar. But now she was gone, and it was his turn to be strong. If he failed her now, he would never again have the chance to avenge her death, at least not to the extent she deserved.

As this realization sunk in, her face appeared, unbidden. When she came, he saw her at ten years of age, splashing in the fountains at the Sheik Lotfallah mosque in Isfahan, a giddy smile on her face, whooping as the water rained down in a silvery cloud.