Andrew Britton - The Assassin

When they reached the cafe, Raseen left his side, took a seat, and waved for the waiter. Vanderveen retrieved the satellite phone from his coat and continued around the square. Since the courier’s death in London, everything had gone according to plan, with one major exception. The previous night, he had placed a call to his contact in Washington, D.C., and there had been no answer. Now he dialed the number again and waited.

“Hello?”

“It’s Taylor. Where have you been? I called yesterday.”

“I know, but I couldn’t get away. Have you reached your destination?”

“Yes. Anything new?”

“Quite a bit, actually…”

Vanderveen returned to the table ten minutes later. The food had arrived: sandwiches for him, yogurt and freshly baked bread for her, coffee for two. He took a seat but left the food untouched, and she noticed immediately. “What is it? What’s happened?”

He leaned forward, dropping his voice to a murmur. “Kealey is already on the way.”

She stopped buttering a slice of bread and studied him carefully. “So he knows about Ruhmann.”

“So it would seem. He left a private airfield in Virginia at 6:00 AM eastern time, which means he should arrive sometime this evening. He has someone with him, a woman named Kharmai. Undoubtedly, they’ll want to talk with our friend.”

“And you think they’ll move tonight?”

Vanderveen thought for a moment. “I think there’s a good chance they will. But that’s not a problem… In fact, it means we’ll be able to leave the country sooner than we thought.”

She nodded her agreement.

“Try and eat something,” Vanderveen said. “We may not get the chance later tonight.”

On the return trip around the square, he had stopped at a newsstand to pick up a few papers. As Raseen dutifully tucked into her food, he unfolded a copy of Die Welt and read the cover story. The news from Iraq was predictably dire; the day before, a suicide bombing at the shrine to Imam Musa al-Khadam — one of the holiest sites in Baghdad — had resulted in 45 deaths. According to the Interior Ministry, a secondary device placed in a truck outside the Khadamiya hospital claimed the lives of 32 more as the injured were rushed from the shrine to the hospital in makeshift ambulances. Soon thereafter, angry crowds gathered at checkpoints leading into the Green Zone, and several U.S. military vehicles were fired upon as they tried to leave the American enclave. Sixty-three American casualties had been reported by the Pentagon over the past three days.

In the European edition of the London Times, however, Vanderveen found a much more interesting article. An investigative journalist in Karbala had uncovered the circumspect sale of an oil refinery east of Samawah. The refinery, originally owned by Rashid al-Umari and the Southern Iraqi Oil Company, had been sold to a conglomerate of Sunni investors, several of whom had direct ties to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The New York Times had picked up the story on the AP, as had every other major newspaper in North America and Western Europe.

In response, Ahmadinejad aired a speech in which he denied Iranian involvement, but praised Moqtadr al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army for what he described as “God’s work in ridding Iraq of the Zionist invaders.” That Nuri al-Maliki — the Shiite prime minister — had also been targeted in the recent wave of attacks seemed to have escaped the Iranian leader’s attention, but his remarks had had the expected effect. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations called for a full inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Nasir al-Din Tabrizi in Paris, and a former secretary of state appeared on Meet the Press, where he stated his belief that Iran was actively working to undermine U.S. policy in Iraq. He also remarked that such activities would not go unchecked by “this or any other administration.”

Vanderveen folded the newspapers and absently sipped his coffee, which tasted as if it had been made several hours earlier. Everything was working according to plan. The Iranians were under escalating suspicion, and the various factions in Iraq were at each other’s throats. The American troops were caught in the middle and sustaining huge losses with each passing day. Once the delegation in New York was taken out, Iraq would almost certainly slide into civil war. Izzat al-Douri was about to get his wish.

Thunder overhead pulled him out of his reverie. He glanced at his watch. Raseen, catching the gesture, looked over her shoulder. Tourists were clustered on the other side of the square, standing around the Brandenburg Gate, apparently unaware that there was a much grander specimen — with the same name, no less — on the Pariser Platz in Berlin, just a few kilometers to the east. Most of the tourists were toting cameras and daypacks, and a few carried umbrellas in anticipation of the building storm. As Vanderveen watched, one man walked to the center of the square, turned, and fired off a series of shots with a digital camera.

“That isn’t him,” Raseen remarked softly, her eyes trained on the figure in the near distance. “He’s wearing the right clothes, but that isn’t Ruhmann. Why didn’t he come?”

Vanderveen slowly shook his head. He hadn’t really expected the Austrian to show up in person. The man standing in the center of the square, looking around impatiently, without a hint of subtlety, was Karl Lang, Ruhmann’s bodyguard and personal assistant. His picture and background information were in the file they’d been given the previous day. Before leaving London, Vanderveen had memorized the contents and dropped the file down a grate on the King’s Road.

“I’m not sure,” he said, raising a hand to wave Lang over. “But this man is here for us, so let’s say hello.”

Lang was in his late thirties, short and heavily built. An expensive Nikon was draped around his neck, the strap tucked under the grimy collar of a light cotton jacket. His features were strangely androgynous, not in keeping with the rest of his body. As he walked to the table, he removed a blue daypack from his shoulders. Once he was seated, he tossed it casually under the table, where it landed next to a nearly identical pack.

“How did you get here?” he asked in English. His tone was distinctly confrontational.

“We have a car,” Raseen told him. “No one followed us.”

Lang snorted but did not reply.

“Where is Ruhmann?” Vanderveen asked. “I was told he would be here.”

The words earned him a disdainful look. “My employer is a very important man. He can’t afford to waste time dealing with trivialities. Besides, meetings are dangerous. This could have been handled over the phone.”

“What about the key to the storage facility?”

“That could have been sent by mail.” The man leaned forward, his face pinched in anger. “Let’s get something straight. I don’t want to be here, and you don’t impress me. For a professional, you take a lot of foolish risks. I know who you are, Vanderveen, and so does Herr Ruhmann. Did you honestly believe that he wouldn’t learn your identity? How do you think he lasted this long?”

“Certainly not by employing arrogant little shits like you,” Vanderveen replied in a calm, measured voice. The German bridled instantly, reaching over the table, but Raseen quickly batted his hand away.

“Stop it,” she hissed, glaring at each of them in turn. “We’re in the middle of a public square.” She focused her cold gaze on the courier, and there was something in her face that made him sit back instantly. “Since you’re here, I assume you’ve received the final payment.”

“Yes. The wire transfer came in yesterday,” Lang confirmed. “The key is in the pack. It will open a ground-level unit at the Lake Forest storage facility in Montreal. Unit 124, to be precise. Directions from Montreal-Trudeau are in there as well, along with an invoice for the boiler. All that leaves is the equipment. You know what you need, correct?”