Andrew Britton - The Assassin

The long, dimly lit hall led into a kitchen. The whole place seemed eerily quiet. They passed through to a dining room: wood-paneled walls, gilt-framed landscapes, elaborate chairs clustered around a mahogany table. The polished surface shone beneath a sterling silver chandelier. Kealey pointed to the kitchen, gesturing for Kharmai to hold back, but she ignored him and moved to the doorway of the office. The room was open and brightly lit, light playing over the mosscolored walls. There was a desk to the left. As she leaned in and examined the scene, her eyes went wide. She tugged on Kealey’s sleeve and pointed. Leaning his head round the corner, he saw an overturned chair. A single leg was hiked over the upended piece of furniture.

“Is it him?” Naomi whispered. “I can’t see his face.”

“It’s him.” Kealey leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. It was over. He felt a sinking weight in his chest; he had come this far for nothing at all.

Kharmai was shaking his arm, but he pushed her away. She tried again. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and straightened, turning to follow her gaze. Bennett was at the other door, moving into the office. Kharmai was still caught up in the moment, so she followed his lead. Kealey trailed reluctantly. He knew it was pointless; whoever had killed the Austrian would have thoroughly sanitized the apartment. There was nowhere to go; in losing Ruhmann, they had lost their only lead.

Kharmai joined Bennett, who was standing over the Austrian’s body. Kealey stepped into the room and started rifling through the desk. There wasn’t a single scrap of paper to be found. Opening the computer, he punched the POWER button, but all that came up was an error message. He caught sight of the burn bags scattered over the floor. Picking one up, he looked inside and was greeted by the faint odor of smoke. It was just as he’d feared; they were far too late.

Bennett had walked over to the windows. Now he stretched his arms and stared over the river. “I can’t believe it,” he finally said. His voice was filled with regret and embarrassment. “I’m sorry about this, guys. I should have had people watching the building.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kharmai said, staring down at the bloodied, distorted face of Thomas Ruhmann. It was strange, but the sight didn’t seem to affect her at all. It didn’t make sense; losing her job had brought her to tears, but this terrible image meant nothing to her. It made her wonder if she had seen too much in her few years with the Agency, if she had lost something fundamental. “We were just too late. We should have been here a week ago.”

“Maybe you’re right, but still…” Something caught Bennett’s attention, and he shifted the draperies aside. “Hey, what the hell is this?”

Kealey, looking at the other man, caught sight of something wrong, something flashing silver in the bright light of the room. He reached for Naomi’s arm and screamed, “GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT NOW!”

Bennett turned instantly, his eyes opening wide, but Kealey didn’t see the other man’s final expression. All he could think about was getting back to the dining room. He dove to the floor, pulling Naomi down with him. She was shouting a question, probably demanding an explanation, but Kealey couldn’t hear a thing. The roar came behind him, the whistle of hundreds of projectiles, the sound of instant death.

Then everything turned black.

Vanderveen swore as he watched the scene unravel. His vantage point was less than ideal, he’d known that from the start, but the options were few. All he could see was the big man, the one who’d come in from the hall. He knew Kealey and the woman had entered from the dining room, because the big man had turned to his left, and his mouth was moving in conversation. But then he’d reached for the draperies, and Vanderveen was left with no choice but to fire.

At 100 meters, there was no need to compensate. He lined up the crosshairs and squeezed the trigger gently.

The explosion was drowned out by a sudden boom of thunder, which somehow minimized the effect. Lightning flashed overhead as the fifth-floor windows exploded outward, glass raining down to the river. The lights blinked out in the office, even as the lights came up on the floors underneath. Vanderveen didn’t wait to see if his plan had worked. Instead, he grabbed for the radio lying next to his side, under the poncho.

“They’re up on the fifth,” he shouted over the storm. “Get in there. Now! ”

Yasmin Raseen flung open the door of the Mercedes and ran through the torrential rain to the door of the building. In her left hand she carried a pack filled with half a dozen 2-liter containers of liquid propane. She’d collected the fuel from a service station on the Mullerstrasse two hours earlier. She slipped the caretaker’s key into the lock, then entered the foyer.

There was one person present, a teenaged girl with braided blond hair. She paused on the stairs, a confused frown on her face as Raseen rushed in. She opened her mouth to speak, but she never got the words out. Raseen raised her suppressed Beretta and fired twice. The only sound was that of the slide moving back and forth. The first round left a neat hole over the girl’s right eye. The second missed entirely, tearing into the wood-paneled wall. The girl dropped without a sound, her lifeless body bumping over the remaining wooden stairs, coming to rest in the foyer.

Raseen crossed the linoleum floor quickly. There was a trash container next the elevator. She punched the button for the fourth floor. When the doors opened, she grabbed the container, placed it between the doors, then punched all the buttons at once. Racing back to the entrance, she tossed the backpack onto the stairs. Retreating as far as possible, she lifted the Beretta once more, covered her face, and squeezed the trigger. The backpack exploded, showering the stairs and the walls with burning propane.

Lowering the gun, she removed the Gemtech suppressor quickly, stuffing it into her pocket. She slipped the gun into the top of her jeans, under her shirt at the small of her back. She pushed out the door, aware of the screams on the first floor, aware of the shrill thump of the fire alarm. Seconds later she was back in the car, pulling onto the road, grabbing for the radio.

“It’s done. I’m on my way to your location.”

There was no reply. She pressed the TRANSMIT button and repeated the message. Still nothing. Dropping the radio, she shifted into second gear and punched the pedal, squealing onto the Friedrichstrasse.

Kealey came back to consciousness slowly, the plasterwork ceiling swimming into view, everything shifting crazily. He tried to sit up, but his limbs didn’t seem to be working. He forced himself to think, to gain a sense of his surroundings. First, he was aware of the dark. It hadn’t been dark a few seconds ago, but now the room was pitch black. He was completely blind. Worse was the ringing in his ears, which was more like a constant, high-pitched whine than anything else. He put down his hands for support, then pulled them back sharply; the wood floor was covered with shards of glass. He could feel warm, wet pain in his palms as he rolled unsteadily to his feet, trying to clear the haze in his mind.

Naomi. When it cut through the gloom, the thought hit him hard. Where was she? Was she even alive? He fell to his knees, ignoring the stabbing pain of the glass, and felt around on the floor. A sound caused him to turn to his right. Crawling forward, he reached out and felt something warm beneath his hand. He felt his way up to her hair, brushing it back from her face.

“Naomi?” His voice sounded far away, like it belonged to somebody else. “Can you hear me? How bad is it? Where does it hurt?”