Andrew Britton - The Assassin

“Did you see it?”

“No,” Haines replied slowly. “Did you?”

Scott grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the crowd. People were milling about, talking in low, horrified tones, and it was difficult to hear over the babble of voices. When they were far enough away, the younger man said, “I saw it all. Christ, I was right behind the poor bastard when it happened. The driver dragged him halfway down the fuckin’ road before he had the sense to stop.”

Haines did not respond. All he could think about was the woman hunched over her son’s body; he couldn’t get her anguished face out of his mind. Finally, the words leaked into his head. “What happened?”

“He was pushed. I-”

“ Pushed? Are you sure?”

Scott nodded firmly. “Like I said, I saw it clear as day. The kid was just in the way. Wrong bloody place and time, is all, but the Arab was definitely pushed. It was deliberate as hell.”

Haines allowed himself to be dragged along, still thinking about the woman. He couldn’t understand his reaction, as he had seen much worse in his years with 2 PARA. He had seen men torn apart by machine gun fire on a shingle beach in the Falklands, the aftermath of a mortar attack during the Battle of Goose Green, and the destruction caused by a pair of massive bombs in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. In that incident, both the primary and secondary devices had been strategically placed on a dual carriageway near the border. The bombing claimed the lives of 18 men in Haines’s regiment. He had been among the first to arrive on the scene — indeed, he had nearly been killed by the secondary blast — but it all seemed like a distant memory. More to the point, it had been war, and the people who’d died were trained soldiers, brave men who knew the risks. None of it seemed as bad as the stunned look of shock and despair he had just witnessed, and even now, just minutes after turning his back on the scene, he knew he’d be seeing the woman’s face in his dreams for years to come.

“Who pushed him? Why didn’t you follow?”

“The crowd closed up right away, and I lost him in the confusion,” Scott replied. “I didn’t see much, anyway. He was wearing a baseball cap and a black jacket, and I think he was blond, but I couldn’t swear to it…”

Scott continued to relay what he’d seen as they turned off the Strand. Soon they were moving northeast on Chandos Place, heading toward Bedford Street. “What about the car?” Haines asked.

“Fuck the car. No one’s getting off that street for at least an hour, mate. We have to get back and make a report. Robeson won’t be happy, but if you ask me, there wasn’t a damn thing we could’ve done to-”

“The pictures.”

Scott turned. “What?”

“The pictures,” Haines repeated. “You’ve got shots of our man, right? Whoever shoved him in front of that bus will be in the background.”

“Jesus, you’re right.” The young watcher thought for a minute, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’ll work. You saw how busy the street was… There’s no way we’ll be able to pick him out. I didn’t even get that good a look.”

“Maybe not, but that falls to the techs, not us. If there’s anything there, they’ll find it.”

A Vauxhall sedan pulled up to the curb, and Scott said, “That’s us. I called before you arrived on the scene.”

Haines moved toward the back of the car, pulled open the door, and got in. Scott found a seat in the front and tapped the driver’s arm. “Let’s go.”

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

It was just after 2:00 in the afternoon as Jonathan Harper reluctantly entered the room on the seventh floor of the OHB at Langley, pulling the door shut behind him. The sound of the secretary’s typing was blocked out instantly, replaced by an uneasy silence. He had expected the summons, but as he crossed the deep pile carpet, there was something about the resigned look on the director’s face that threw him off-guard. He had expected anger, bluster, and shouted accusations from the start. Anything but this quiet, restrained anger.

Rachel Ford’s demeanor was much easier to read. She was staring at him intently from the seat opposite his. Her mouth was set in a straight, thin line, her eyes glittering dangerously behind a pair of elegant reading glasses. Her presence could only mean one thing: she had been brought up to date on the contents of Anthony Mason’s hard drive, and she had learned about the previous day’s meeting at the White House.

It had been Harper’s decision to keep her out of the briefing, based on Kealey’s request. He had called in every favor he could to keep Science and Technology out of the loop, as Roger Davidson, the head of the directorate, was one of Ford’s staunchest supporters. Harper had then persuaded Andrews to go along with the idea, based on the fact that somebody had slipped the Bureau information about the laptop’s whereabouts. Harper had pointed out Ford’s relationship to Samantha Crane, the FBI agent tasked with the raid in Alexandria, and the subsequent accusations she had leveled at Kealey. This evidence, while extremely circumstantial, was enough to convince the director to keep Ford out of the way, at least temporarily. It now appeared Andrews had changed his mind; otherwise, the deputy DCI would not be present.

Harper took the proffered chair and ignored Rachel Ford’s unwavering stare. Instead, he looked past the large mahogany desk as the DCI arranged a few loose papers. It was midday; through the large, soundproof windows, pale sunlight flitted over the tops of the trees. It was a pleasant scene, but hardly fitting. An autumn gale would have been more appropriate to the dark, strained mood that enveloped the room.

Finally, Andrews looked up and appraised his guest. “So, have you seen him yet?”

The opening question was not what Harper expected, but he recovered quickly. “Yes, I saw him this morning.”

“And how bad is the wound?”

“Not bad, but painful… You can tell just from looking at it. The bullet scraped a rib and left a nasty gouge. He’s lucky as hell. A few inches to the right and he never would have made it out of the building.”

“And this situation would be much worse,” Andrews added, running a tired hand over his face. He leaned back in his chair. “Of course, it’s already a complete disaster. Worse would be… well, unthinkable. What happened out there?”

Harper cleared his throat, bracing himself for the coming storm. “I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that we have a location for Thomas Ruhmann. He’s living in Berlin under the name Walter Schauble. If we move quickly-”

“Let me stop you right there.” Andrews jerked forward in his chair and planted his feet beneath the desk, his face tightening. Ford was shaking her head in disgust. “We’re not going to talk about the one good thing that came out of this fucking mess,” the DCI continued, “because we can’t act on that piece of information. So let’s talk about reality, okay? At 4:45 this morning, a security guard from the German Embassy was admitted to University Hospital in Georgetown with a gunshot wound to the upper arm. Ten minutes later, a D.C. Metro police officer was brought in with a Grade V concussion and severe lacerations to the face and neck. In case you didn’t know,” he continued in a strained tone, “a Grade I concussion is the least severe. Grade V is the worst, with a period of unconsciousness lasting more than ten minutes. In this case, the officer did not regain consciousness for nearly five hours.”

Andrews stopped to arrange his thoughts. When he spoke again, his voice was taut and barely controlled. “Thirty minutes after the police officer was brought in, a blue Ford Taurus — a car from our motor pool, I might add — arrived at the gate off Dolley Madison Boulevard. The driver was none other than Ryan Kealey. He had no credentials, nothing to identify himself. He was made to wait while they called through and verified his status. Then they called in a doctor, but not before Kealey managed to bleed all over the floor of the gatehouse.” The DCI smiled tightly. “It’s a tile floor… lots of cracks, you know? I hear they’re still trying to clean it up.”