Andrew Britton: The Assassin

When Ryan Kealey saw that the passengers in the backseat were distracted, he said the older man’s name. Even if the former vice president of Iraq had not been instantly recognizable, his reaction would have made his identity clear. As he started to shout a warning, Kealey took a single step back, raised the Beretta, and fired twice into Izzat al-Douri’s face. Tahir al-Tikriti cursed viciously as the back of the older man’s head exploded 2 feet to his left, showering his own face and the front of his suit with blood and brain tissue. Al-Tikriti was younger than his traveling companion, and he was fast; he already had his weapon halfway drawn when Kealey swung the Beretta toward him and fired twice more, the bullets entering the former IIS director’s chest less than an inch apart.

Tahir al-Tikriti inhaled deeply, his lungs filling with air and blood. He looked up at his killer, taking in the young American face, wondering what was behind those dark gray eyes as the gun came up for the last time.

The muzzle produced a searing, brilliant light.

And then there was only darkness.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

It was just before 6:30 AM, still dark, a light snow drifting over the city as a white Ford Ranger rumbled to a halt on Q Street, just northeast of Dupont Circle. The driver, having just stolen the truck ten minutes earlier in Georgetown, blew on her hands to warm them up, scowling at the heater in the process. It seemed to be taking forever to warm up, but with any luck, she wouldn’t need the vehicle much longer. Yasmin Raseen still had one good set of documents, including a well-worn Italian passport and a credit card issued by a bank in London. She’d already used the card to purchase a ticket to London, and she’d need the passport to board United Flight 920, departing for Heathrow later that afternoon. She was about to leave the United States for the first — and hopefully last — time in her life.

She shivered slightly behind the wheel, even though she was wearing a down jacket over a white woolen sweater. Her hands were pushed under both layers, resting against the bare skin of her stomach to keep them warm. Not for the first time, she wondered what would possess a man to wake each morning at this ungodly hour to run the frigid streets of Washington, D.C. Had she been a religious woman, she would have been used to rising even earlier in order to say the Fajr prayer at dawn. Although she didn’t adhere to the faith, rising early for religious purposes seemed like a reasonable sacrifice. Prayer had meaning, after all, and could be conducted indoors, unlike running in this freezing air, which struck her as a strange choice of exercise. She could make no sense of the desire to invite a mugging or, barring that, a bronchial infection before the sun came up in the east.

It had taken her longer than she’d expected to track down the exact address on General’s Row, largely because the street did not offer a great deal of cover. Wary of inviting unwanted attention, she’d been forced to limit herself to a few hours of surveillance each day, moving along the length of the street. She was also forced to work on foot, as she was without a vehicle and couldn’t risk stealing one until it was time to act. After weeks of diligent study, she had finally narrowed it down to one probable address. Her suspicions were proved correct when the same black Suburban with government plates came to collect the deputy DCI four mornings in a row, depositing him at different times each evening.

From there, she began looking for weak points in Jonathan Harper’s security. It soon became clear that the man was most vulnerable on his morning runs, which she had yet to see him miss. Not only would he be least aware at that time of day, having only been up for a short while, but the empty streets also provided a better chance for escape when her work was done. After finalizing her plan, she had booked the flight out of Dulles. Now all that remained was to carry out the act itself.

As she watched through the windshield, the door to the brownstone was pulled open, and a man came down the icy steps, dressed in tracksuit bottoms, running shoes, and a Boston College sweatshirt. He was also wearing thin gloves and a woolen watch cap. Harper seemed to look up for a moment, as though appraising the dark, empty sky. Then he began to conduct a series of slow stretching exercises, his breath steaming in the cold air, his body casting irregular shadows under the sidewalk lamps.

After a time he set off, walking north on 17th Street. From her position, she had a visual on her target for a long time. He broke into a run somewhere north of S Street, but then turned a moment later, fading from sight. Raseen wasn’t concerned at all. She knew that he’d retrace his route exactly. She’d seen him do it on each of the past four mornings, albeit from a much greater distance. She no longer needed the binoculars, for when he returned in forty minutes or so, she’d be ready to greet him in person.

She found her right hand reaching out to touch the butt of her gun. Amir Nazeri had provided her with the Beretta. 22 shortly before his death in New York. The plastic grip was cold to the touch, but she took comfort from it nonetheless. The weapon was resting on the passenger seat, covered by the previous day’s copy of the Washington Post. The newspaper had been in the truck when she’d popped the lock. Her first act had been to flip the paper over, as the lurid headlines were hard for her to take. Izzat al-Douri had been shot to death at a border crossing in Al Anbar Province two days earlier, along with his chief advisor, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

Yasmin Raseen had known both men for many years, al-Douri since she was just a girl. While she had yet to shed any tears over their deaths, she couldn’t help but feel a distinct, but strangely indirect sense of loss. Since they’d been part of her father’s life, they were part of hers, and with their passing, she felt a little more alone in the world. And there was something else to consider: al-Douri had been her primary benefactor since her father’s capture near Tikrit, along with the last of the money he’d managed to personally carry out of the Central Bank before the fall of Baghdad. With al-Douri’s passing, she was left with very limited means. There was no doubt in her mind that the Americans were responsible for the assassination of both men, even though al-Douri had yet to be publicly linked to the recent events in Baghdad, Paris, and New York.

As she waited for Jonathan Harper to return, her thoughts began to drift. Before long, they turned to Will Vanderveen, which didn’t surprise her at all. Over the past several weeks, he had occupied most of her waking thoughts, as well as her dreams. One memory in particular stood out in her mind: the night at the Hotel Victoria in Calais. What a strange incident that had been. His violence had sparked something in her she’d long sought to keep down, but setting it free had done so much for her, both emotionally and physically. He was one of the most fascinating men she’d ever known, completely cold, without compunction, and yet she had also glimpsed an underlying compassion during the few intimate moments they’d shared. It was still hard to believe he was gone, and although he had died before achieving his goal, he had achieved something else that he never had the chance to know about. Something much greater than what he’d aspired to.

Her hands, warm beneath her layers of clothing, drifted over the smooth skin of her stomach. She smiled to herself, thinking about the life that would soon spring from her body. At thirty-eight years of age, she had long since come to the conclusion that motherhood wasn’t meant for her, that she would have to find some other way to fill her barren inner landscape. And yet, now it seemed she had been given the chance she had always longed for.