Allan Folsom - The Machiavelli Covenant

"I see him now, Richard."

Victor's gun sight suddenly squared to follow a dark-skinned man. He was maybe twenty-five, wearing a New York Yankees jacket and blue jeans and looking toward the line of taxi cabs.

"The target is yours, Victor."

"Thank you, Richard."

Victor's right hand slid forward over the rifle stock until it touched the trigger guard and then the trigger itself. Serpentlike, his gloved index finger curled around the trigger. The man in the Yankees jacket stepped toward a taxi cab. Victor's index finger eased slowly back on the trigger. There was a dull pop! as the weapon fired and then a second pop! as Victor fired again.

The man in the Yankees jacket grabbed his throat as the first shot hit. The second exploded his heart.

"All done, Richard."

"Thank you, Victor."

Victor crossed the room, unlocked the door, and left the rented office. Just Victor. Not the rifle or the tripod that supported it. Not the circular piece of cut glass. Not the small tool he had used to make the cut. He walked twenty steps down a corridor lined with doors to other rental offices, then opened a door to the fire stairs and walked two floors to the street below. Outside he climbed into the back of a faded orange van marked DISTRICT REFRIGERATION SERVICES,closed the door and sat on the floor as the van pulled away.

"Everything alright, Victor?" Richard's voice spoke to him from the driver's seat.

"Yes, Richard. Everything is alright." Victor could feel the van lean to the right as Richard turned a corner.

"Victor," Richard's voice or the tone of it never changed. It was always calm and direct and because of it, trustworthy and soothing.

"Yes, Richard." By now, after nearly fourteen months, Victor's state of mind was very nearly the same. Trusting, comforted, directed. Whatever Richard wanted, Victor was happy with.

"We are going to Dulles International airport. Across from you is a suitcase. Inside it are two changes of clothes, assorted toiletries, your passport, a credit card in your name, twelve hundred euros in cash, and a reservation on Air France flight 039 to Paris, where you will arrive at six thirty tomorrow morning and from where you will take a connecting flight to Berlin. Once there you are to check into the Hotel Boulevard on the Kurfürstendamm and wait for further instructions. Do you have any questions, Victor?"

"No, Richard."

"You're certain?"

"Yes, I'm certain."

"Good, Victor. Very good."

• 3:40 P.M.

Nicholas Marten was not a drinking man, at least not the kind who sat in the bar of his hotel in the middle of the afternoon drinking whiskey. Yet now, today, this afternoon, still emotionally devastated by Caroline's death, he simply felt like it. He was sitting alone at the far end of the bar working on his third Walker Red and soda and trying to get past the near-crippling wave of emotion that had washed over him the moment her attorney had ushered him out of her house and closed the door behind them.

Marten took another pull at his drink and absently looked around. Halfway down the bar he could see the female bartender in the low-cut blouse chatting with a middle-aged man in a rumpled business suit, her only other customer. The half dozen leather-padded booths across the room were empty. So were the eight tables with accompanying leather chairs in between. The TV behind the bar was tuned to a live news broadcast from Union Station where a man had been shot and killed barely an hour earlier. Not just killed, the on-camera reporter said, but "assassinated," shot dead by a gunman from a window in a building across the street. As yet the authorities had revealed little about the victim other than to say he was thought to have been a passenger on an Acela train that had just arrived from New York City. Nor had there been speculation as to the motive for his killing. Other details were only beginning to trickle in, one suggesting the murder weapon had been left behind. It was a situation that made Marten think again about Dr. Stephenson, wonder again why there had still been no public announcement of her suicide, and made him wonder if somehow her body was still lying on the sidewalk and for some improbable reason had not been discovered. That hardly seemed likely. The only other explanations were what he had thought earlier, that her next of kin had yet to be notified or maybe that the police were working on something they didn't want made public.

"Nicholas Marten?"

A man's voice suddenly crackled behind him. Startled, Marten turned around. A man and a woman were halfway down the bar coming toward him. They were probably in their mid-forties, city-worn and intense and wearing dark off-the-rack suits. There was no question who they were. Detectives.

"Yes," Marten said.

"My name is Herbert, Metropolitan Police Department." He showed his I.D., then put it away. "This is Detective Monroe."

Herbert had a medium build with a touch of belly and gray hair mixed in with natural brown. His eyes were very nearly the same color. Detective Monroe was maybe a year or two younger. Tall, with a square chin, her blond hair cut short and highlighted. She was pretty in a way but too tough and too weary to be attractive.

"We'd like to talk to you," Herbert said.

"What about?"

"You know a Dr. Lorraine Stephenson?"

"In a way. Why?"

This was the thing Marten had dreaded, that someone had seen him outside of her house, maybe even seen him follow after her when she ran off down the street, perhaps even heard the gunshot, and then seen him leave and taken down the license number of his rental car as he drove away.

"You made several calls to her office yesterday," Monroe said.

"Yes." Calls? What is this? Marten wondered. This was a suicide and they'd gone over her telephone records? Well maybe. She knew a lot of important people. The whole thing could be more involved than he thought and have nothing to do with Caroline.

"Persistent calls," Monroe said.

"What did you want from her?" Herbert pressed him.

"To talk to her about the death of one of her patients."

"Who was that?"

"Caroline Parsons."

Herbert half smiled. "Mr. Marten, we'd like you to come down to police headquarters and talk to us."

"Why?" Marten didn't understand. So far they'd said nothing about her suicide. Nothing to suggest they knew he had been anywhere near her residence.

"Mr. Marten," Monroe said flatly, "Dr. Stephenson has been murdered."

"Murdered?" Marten said in genuine surprise.

"Yes."

• METROPOLITAN POLICE HEADQUARTERS,

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 4:10 P.M.

Where were you between eight and nine o'clock last night?" Detective Monroe asked quietly.

"In my rental car driving around the city," Marten said evenly, working to give them nothing. In a way it was the truth. Besides he had no other alibi.

"Anybody with you?"

"No."

Herbert leaned forward across the institutional table in the small interrogation room where they sat facing each other. Detective Monroe stood back against the door they had come in. The only door in the room.

"Where in the city?"

"Just around. I don't know where exactly, I'm not familiar with the city. I live in England. Caroline Parsons was a close friend. Her death disturbed me a lot. I just needed to keep moving."

"So you-drove around?"

"Yes."

"To Dr. Stephenson's home?"

"I don't know where I went. I told you, I don't know the city."

"But you found your way back to your hotel." Herbert kept working on him while Monroe remained silent, watching his reactions.

"Eventually, yes."

"About what time?"

"Nine, nine thirty. I'm not sure."

"You blamed Dr. Stephenson for Caroline Parsons's death, didn't you?"