Barry Eisler - Requiem for an Assassin

I drove past, looking for anything that smelled of a setup. With Accinelli as the target, it wouldn’t be difficult for Hilger to predict my fundamental moves, such as initial surveillance of the target’s workplace and residence. There could be a team here, waiting for me. But for now, nothing set off my radar.

Operationally, I wasn’t wild about what I saw. First, the parking lot was accessible only through a gated station, currently manned by a guard. Probably a rent-a-cop, possibly half asleep, true, but it complicated things. And the presence of all that razor wire, and the fence, and the access control, and of course the guard, all hinted at other measures I would prefer not to encounter.

I drove through the area, getting a feel for it. I noted some possibilities, all involving setting up in a nearby parking lot and waiting to tail Accinelli’s Mercedes when I saw it leave the premises. The one advantage of the controlled access meant there was only one place I had to key on to know when he was coming and going. Well, it was a start. I decided to take a look at his home.

Sands Point turned out to be possibly the most moneyed town I’d ever seen. Mansion after mansion on plots the size of small countries, some of them set so far back from the road they were nearly invisible through the bare branches of all the winter trees. Because the town was set on the Port Washington peninsula, many of the homes fronted Long Island Sound and had their own marinas, the better to dock, of course, private sailboats and yachts. The cars I saw were all Mercedeses, BMWs, and Lexuses, along with one antique Bentley, and I was glad to have a ride that felt at home among them.

I was on high alert as I approached Accinelli’s house, on a quiet, tree-lined road called Hilldale Lane. If Hilger had decided to set up a welcoming reception, the area around the residence would be a key choke point. But the street was entirely quiet. I rolled up just past the driveway and took a peek.

Accinelli’s was one of the town’s more modest dwellings, but his home was still a mansion by any definition: a massive, Romanesque-style building of gray stone set a hundred yards back from the road; a rolling, manicured lawn, frosted over now, with a circular driveway cutting through it; old growth trees and plots of flower gardens, empty now but for a few hardy perennials hanging grimly on in the frozen dirt. The air of the place was ease, a relaxed confidence in the rightness of the natural order, money and status untouchable by the vicissitudes of the outside world.

Next to the house was a detached two-car garage of the same stone as the main structure. At the driveway’s center, at the front of the house, there was a stone portico, and under it, a black Mercedes S Class, the 2007. The way it was parked, I couldn’t see the license plate, but most likely it was his. Was someone coming, going, or did they typically just park the car there? No, there was no frost on the windows, so it hadn’t been there all night. Someone had just come from somewhere, some errand, maybe, maybe grocery shopping, and they had parked the car in front of the house to carry something inside.

Just then, the front door opened and I saw Accinelli. Son of a bitch. I eased off the brake and let the BMW roll forward. But not before I saw what he was carrying: golf clubs.

He hadn’t looked out toward the street, and I didn’t think he’d noticed me. Even if he had, I doubted he would have made anything of a fancy BMW driving past. I kept driving, thinking, weighing the possibilities. I hadn’t expected anything actionable to happen so fast-I had planned only on a drive-by, a get-acquainted-with-the-neighborhood visit-but this looked like too good an opportunity to pass up.

Golf clubs suggested an outing, and the clothes he’d been wearing…it hadn’t fully registered at first, but he was in black-and-gray polypropylene or something similar, zipped to the neck. “Technical gear,” some of the sporting-goods outfitters like to call it, a fancy way of saying cold-weather sporting clothes. Yeah. He was on his way to the links.

Shit, I didn’t remember the address of his club. If I did, I could have gotten ahead of him, which is almost always preferable to tracking from behind. The Village Club, it was called, but where was it? As I drove back down Hilldale, then right on Middle Neck, the same way I had come in, I looked for local points of interest on the nav system. Country clubs, country clubs, come on… I couldn’t find it. Okay, the hell with it, plan B.

I pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped. If Accinelli came this way, I’d let him go right past me, then fall in behind. A few minutes of a big BMW behind him, especially if he were heading to Sands Point’s golf club, as I expected, wouldn’t alarm him. And if he went the other way on Middle Neck, I would just swing around and follow him in the other direction.

Sudden paranoia jolted me: what if the Hilger team I’d been so watchful for turned out to be Accinelli? Maybe they know each other from the war. Maybe Accinelli owes a favor. Hilger tells him roughly when to expect me; Accinelli watches the road from the house, with the car warmed up; he sees me, then walks out pretending not to, with a golf club bag that’s actually holding a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with sabot slugs.

I scanned the area. A black SUV was coming toward me down Middle Neck, and I started to get that deep-down Oh, fuck feeling. I held down the brake with my left foot and put my right over the gas, ready to floor it if the SUV slowed, or sped up, or swerved. But it didn’t, and as it came closer I could see the occupants were just an elderly couple. Shit, they were probably on their way to church.

I let the SUV pass and checked the rearview. There was the Mercedes, pulling out of Hilldale and making a left on Middle Neck, away from me. For a moment, I’d been so keyed up that I was surprised he wasn’t coming at me. Then I realized I was being ridiculous. What was Accinelli going to do, blow someone away from his own car a hundred yards out from his $10 million home, right in front of the horrified neighbors? No. Hilger might have been trying to set me up, but it wouldn’t be that way.

I did a U-turn on Middle Neck and followed from about a hundred fifty yards back. It was a long, straight road that gradually curved from east to south, and tailing him from far back was easy. I continued to scan for surprises as I drove.

After about two miles, Accinelli made a left onto Thayer Lane. Thayer, right, now I remembered, that was the address of the club. I followed along behind him. About eight hundred yards up, Thayer curved around to the right and I lost sight of him for a moment. Then I came around the curve, too, and saw Accinelli’s car again, stopped next to an island with a guard post at the center of it. Beyond the post was a parking lot; beyond the parking lot, a compound of enormous tile-roofed brick buildings that I remembered from the website comprised the former estate of Isaac Guggenheim. This was it, then, the entrance to the club. Accinelli moved forward past the post. I swung around on Thayer and headed back out.

I recognized there was an opening here, if I could move fast enough to exploit it. I input the coordinates for Midtown Manhattan into the nav system. Twenty-five miles. Allowing time for parking and the purchase I planned to make, with just a little luck and light traffic I could be back here in not much more than an hour and a half.

I took the Long Island Expressway west as fast as I could without risking a ticket. What was Accinelli planning today-nine holes, or eighteen? And how long would he be playing regardless? Surely no less than two hours, even for a shorter game. And it would be lunchtime after that. Maybe he’d grab a bite at the club. Maybe this was a Sunday ritual for him, leaving his wife a golf widow, spending two, three, maybe four hours on the links, and with his cronies thereafter. It made sense. Anyone who played in these temperatures had to be a fanatic.