Andrew Britton - The Assassin

Ford cringed, instantly wishing she could take back the words. “I know, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Still, the point is the same. I gave her my word.”

“If you want to look out for me, you can tell me what your people found on Mason’s computer.”

Ford sighed in exasperation. “You’re not going to let this go, are you? Why does it matter, anyway?”

“It matters because I don’t think the trail ended with Anthony Mason. He was working for somebody else, and I want to know who it was. His laptop is my best chance to figure it out.” Her eyes shined. “Don’t you see? Mason was dealing in some heavy stuff, so whoever he was working for must be huge. Getting that guy could make my career.”

“Sam, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ford said, shaking her head sadly. “This goes way beyond Anthony Mason.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know about the ties between Mason and Arshad Kassem, right?”

The younger woman looked puzzled. “Of course, Harper told me about the Iraqi connection the morning of the raid in Alexandria. That guy Kealey mentioned it, too. It didn’t seem too solid to me, but what does that have to do with the laptop?”

“I can’t really get into it. Suffice to say, you’d be amazed.”

“Aunt Rachel, I’m on your side, remember?” Thinking quickly, Crane shifted forward and lowered her voice. “Think about what happened here. If the CIA had pushed its way into a Bureau operation and stolen evidence from a crime scene while you were on the oversight committee, would you have let it pass?”

Ford shook her head slowly, obviously torn. “No.”

“Well, in this case, it was my crime scene and your people doing the stealing. If Harrington hadn’t been there, I would have been in charge, and it would have been my career in the toilet. Frankly, I think I deserve the truth.”

Ford considered these words for a long time, but she couldn’t fault her niece’s logic. Finally, she nodded her agreement. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything.”

Crane brightened immediately. “Thanks. I knew I could count on you-”

“On one condition,” Ford clarified. “You keep it to yourself until your own people get a break on the laptop. Wait until they give you a name… It won’t take long.”

“And what’s the name?”

Ford hesitated one last time, but she had said too much to back out now. “Mason was being run by a man named Thomas Ruhmann. He’s an Austrian arms broker living in Berlin, where he’s using the name Walter Schauble. If your technicians are any good, they’ll get the Ruhmann identity off the hard drive, but not the location. And there’s something else: I have it on good authority that Kealey is going after him.”

The dam broke. Ford talked for twenty minutes, reiterating the initial link between Arshad Kassem and Anthony Mason. To this, she added everything the director had told her earlier — the same information Harper had done his best to keep from her. She went over the links between Rashid al-Umari and Will Vanderveen. She described their involvement in the bombing of the Babylon Hotel, and she mentioned the possibility of an Iranian connection. She went into al-Umari’s background, and she brought up the possibility that the most recent attack in Paris was somehow related. The only thing she left out was the Agency’s involuntary role in the embassy break-in. Crane appeared stunned by the scope of the conspiracy.

“When did you find out that Vanderveen was still alive?” she asked when Ford was done. She didn’t need to ask who he was; a year earlier, the former U.S. soldier had been near the top of the FBI’s most wanted list.

“Nearly two weeks ago.”

“ What! Why hasn’t it been circulated?”

“It has been circulated, but only at the highest levels. The Bureau wasn’t told until a few days ago. Don’t you see? The president wanted to keep this quiet, and that meant limiting the number of people in the know.”

“Well, you could have told me.”

“You didn’t need to know, darling,” Ford replied, somewhat disingenuously. “However, the decision has now been made to release the information on a wider scale. He should be back on your top ten in a matter of days, so I didn’t see the harm in giving you a little heads-up.”

Crane was thinking hard, her brow furrowed in concentration. “There’s one thing I still don’t get. How is Kealey going after Ruhmann if he’s out of the Agency?”

“Apparently, he’s taken it upon himself to finish the job. Ryan Kealey is a man of some means himself. He booked a private plane this afternoon. It leaves Upperville for Berlin at seven a.m. tomorrow.”

“How do you know that?”

Ford smiled. “I have my sources, too, Samantha. The Agency has long cultivated relationships with patriotic, wealthy landowners in Virginia, Maryland, and the District, all of whom have airfields on their property. All it took was a few innocent calls.”

“Hmm.” Crane swirled the contents of her glass thoughtfully, then came back to reality. “It’s an interesting story, I’ll give you that. I have to tell you, though, that the Agency is definitely wrong about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The Iranian connection. I don’t know why al-Umari was chosen to play a role in Baghdad, given his background, but the hard-liners in Tehran are definitely behind it. All of it. The Iraqi insurgency is not capable of carrying something like this off.”

Ford frowned. “You sound pretty certain.”

“Well, I should be.” Crane lifted her glass and smiled knowingly. “You see, I’ve been working directly with the informant in New York for the past month.”

POTSDAM, GERMANY

The following afternoon, Will Vanderveen and Yasmin Raseen crossed the Luisenplatz in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate, angling toward an outdoor cafe on the far side. The temperature was hovering at 60 degrees, the air heavy and still beneath towering storm clouds. Having arrived earlier than intended, they had passed the time by seeing the sights. They’d strolled through the gardens of the Orangery in Sanssouci Park, admired the Marble Palace on the Holy Lake, and stopped for coffee in a redbrick cafe in the Dutch Quarter. The lengthy trek gave them the chance to look for signs of surveillance. Nothing seemed out of place, which meant they had guessed right in London: the surveillance had been placed on Khalil and not on them.

Still, since the courier’s revelations at the Savoy, they had taken nothing for granted. For Vanderveen, in particular, every move from this point forward was fraught with danger. Knowing his face was posted at Passport Control was especially daunting; boarding the plane at Heathrow had been an exercise in extreme self-control, and he had been secretly surprised when they managed to pass through the airport in Berlin without incident.

Shortly after arriving, they acquired the necessary tools through Raseen’s contact in Dresden, a former Stasi officer who’d since turned his hand to more profitable ventures. The man had come through in spectacular form, supplying all that was needed. As it turned out, he was still very much in the game, which made him slightly more trustworthy than he might otherwise have been. They were banking on the fact that he would not risk his reputation — or something worse — by cheating them. Vanderveen had taken a chance and wired the funds from London in advance, not wanting to have that much cash on his person when boarding the plane. The chance had paid off, and for an extra ten thousand Euros, the ex-Stasi officer had supplied them with a late-model Mercedes and a Globalstar SAT-550 mobile phone. The car was now parked on the Charlottenstrasse, and the bulky phone was in his jacket pocket. Everything else they had acquired that morning was packed away in the trunk of the Mercedes, which was not ideal, but it couldn’t be helped, and it wouldn’t be for long.