Andrew Britton - The Assassin

For the most part, the city’s natural charms were lost on him. The only thing that concerned him was the solitary cafe halfway up the rue de la Paix. The exterior tables were sparsely occupied, as the weather was surprisingly cold for September. In fact, only two people were presently braving the crisp autumn air: an elderly man with a grizzled white beard, a worn flannel cap perched over his forehead, and a young woman with flowing dark hair, her lithe body draped in a white woolen cardigan. She had one elbow propped over a thick novel, a steaming cup of cafe au lait at her right hand.

Vanderveen had been watching her for the better part of the last forty minutes. He could not help but admire her tradecraft; she’d kept her head down the entire time, seemingly lost in the book, except for the few brief occasions when she’d raised her eyes to take in her surroundings.

There was something that didn’t quite fit, though. She was almost too casual… A woman of this reputation would not put herself in such a vulnerable spot. He knew this instinctively, and yet everything he saw — her easy demeanor, the indifferent people hustling by on the street — made perfect sense.

He was reluctant to rush to judgment. When it came to tasks like this, he was painfully aware of his own shortcomings. He’d joined the U.S. Army in 1984, at the age of eighteen, starting out as a private with the 25th Infantry Division (Light) before completing airborne training, Ranger School, and Explosives Ordnance Disposal. After that came Special Forces Assessment and Selection, followed by the Q Course at Bragg. By 1993, he was assigned to the 3rd Group as a staff sergeant, soon after which he received his sixth and final promotion.

As a relatively young E-7, Jason March had completed nearly every advanced school the army had to offer. He learned how to hit a mansized target from distances up to 700 yards with 90 percent accuracy; to jump from a plane at 30,000 feet, landing within 30 feet of his target destination; and to kill another human being using everything from a rifle down to his bare hands. However, the tradecraft required for intelligence work was simply not part of the curriculum; such training was reserved for people on a very separate career path. Even those who were “sheep-dipped” — borrowed by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for covert paramilitary operations — were only allowed a very brief glimpse into the world of governmentfunded “black” operations. Once he’d taken everything he needed from the army, though, such information became invaluable to the newly reborn Vanderveen, and so he sought to educate himself in the camps along the Pakistani border. He quickly discovered that the guerilla groups he was involved with had no idea what they were doing, and the archaic manuals and Russian instructors on which they relied were all but useless.

The truth was that he was out of his element here, but he was fairly sure of one thing: the woman had slipped up. The most experienced professional could make mistakes, but mistakes of this severity were extremely rare and hard to forgive. If what he was seeing was correct, she’d left herself open to a secondhand contact, which meant that she trusted her handlers much more than she should have. Unless…

He pulled out the pay-and-go phone he’d purchased earlier and dialed the number by heart. As expected, he saw the woman glance down at her side, then come up with a phone in her right hand, her face twisted away from the road — away from him. It was this last gesture that caught his attention, the first real sign that something was wrong.

“Yes?”

“It’s Monterre,” he said in fluent French, using the prearranged code. “I missed you at the restaurant last night.” I’m ready to meet.

“Yes, I’m sorry about that. We should set something up.” As soon as possible.

“How about Le Bouclard at four p.m.?”

No response. “Le Bouclard,” he repeated, “at-”

A rap on his window stopped him in mid-sentence. He froze, then lowered the phone in a casual movement and turned his head to the right, his stomach sinking. He had no weapon, no means of defense. His hands were useless in this confined space. If the Iraqis had grown tired of him, if they had lost faith in his abilities, it would all end here.

He lowered the window. The woman staring in at him was clutching a cell phone in one hand, the other pushed deep beneath the folds of her coat.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she said. He did as he was instructed, eyes riveted to the bump beneath her dark coat, calculating distance and opportunity. “Can you leave this car?”

“Yes.”

“Then get out and follow me.” She seemed to sense his thoughts. “You should not be concerned. We’re on the same side… I’m only taking the proper precautions.”

Relaxing slightly, Vanderveen nodded once. “Fair enough. Lead the way.”

“This could be a problem.”

“Could be,” Harper agreed.

They were seated in the director’s palatial office, the last light of day drifting through the west-facing windows. After leaving the chaotic scene on Duke Street, Harper had ordered his driver straight back to Langley as Kealey filled him in. Less than two minutes after clearing the turnstiles in the Old Headquarters Building, Harper had been called up to the seventh floor. While he’d fully expected this development, the urgent summons to the director’s office wasn’t made any more palatable by his foresight. To make matters worse, Rachel Ford was seated next to the DCI, her lips turned up in a smile of self-satisfaction. Their chairs faced his and were arranged in a distinctly confrontational manner.

“I just got a call from Harry Judd,” Andrews continued, shaking his head in semi-disbelief. “He was extremely pissed, John, and I didn’t get the impression he’s going to let it rest. According to him, you went behind his back to get access to the staging area, and then — and this is the part that really gets me — Kealey went into the building and engaged the subject? Is that right?”

The DDO frowned and said, “No, that’s not accurate. He never fired his weapon.”

“You’re sure?” Ford asked skeptically. “It doesn’t seem to me that you have much control over this man.”

“I’m sure,” Harper replied, an edge to his voice. “Kealey was the only person I saw who was even slightly concerned about taking Mason alive. He wouldn’t have fired unless it was absolutely necessary.”

“I hope to God you’re right,” Andrews said. “Where is he?”

“Getting cleaned up. He didn’t get a chance before he flew out.”

“And the laptop? What’s the story on that?”

“It’s hard to say. I turned it over to Science and Technology, but it could take a while. Mason probably deleted most of the relevant files. I’m not holding my breath.”

The DCI began tapping the end of a cheap ballpoint pen against the edge of his desk, lips pursed in thought. “I don’t see why we need to be involved in this,” he finally said. “We were tasked with identifying and tracking down the people who bombed the Babylon Hotel. We managed to do the first part in record time — without Kealey’s help, I might add.”

“Bob, we knew that Kassem was-”

“In fact,” Andrews said, raising his voice a little, “all he’s done is cause problems. That shit he pulled in Fallujah put us on shaky ground with the military, and now he’s interfered in a Bureau investigation on U.S. soil. How does any of this help us, John?”

Harper caught Ford nodding in agreement as he turned his gaze to the windows. Not for the first time, he was struck by the fleeting nature of gratitude. Nearly a year earlier, Ryan Kealey had saved at least 500 lives and possibly many more. Included in the list of potential casualties was at least one head of state — David Brenneman, the president of the United States. Now the Agency was ready to dump him for what would amount to a small embarrassment, and even that was an unlikely scenario. The failed raid on Duke Street was already beginning to generate serious fallout, and bringing charges against Kealey would only result in more press coverage, making matters worse. None of that would appeal to the Bureau’s leadership. They would be more likely to hold on to the chit for a time of real crisis, for a time when the Agency had dirt on something the Bureau would rather keep quiet. Such events were not as rare as the public perceived.