Soul of the Assassin (2 page)

“About what?”

“That Michael was working, instead of being on vacation.”

“Was he?”

“You’re being very contrary tonight, Robert. I just told you he wasn’t.”

Bad publicity about the CIA’s secret rendition program had caused a great deal of friction in Europe just prior to Dalton’s death. The French believed that the Agency was withholding information about what Dalton had been working on—they thought it involved something in France—and in Parnelles’s view had been less than cooperative out of spite.

Ferguson—who admittedly had never cared much for anything French, let alone their spies—knew that the French security service seldom displayed anything approaching alacrity, even when pursuing their own priorities. But he let that observation pass.

“If Dalton was targeted, then something must have happened in Asia,” Ferguson told Parnelles. “What was it?”

“Unimportant, Bob. The point is, what I’m getting to—we know who killed him. He was a contract killer known as T Rex.”

“Like the dinosaur.”

“Exactly. He kills everything in his wake. He’s extreme. T Rex.”

Actually the name had been used in a text message intercepted by the National Security Agency just before another assassination, this one of a wealthy businessman visiting Lisbon. Ferguson had already seen the information in the text brief of his mission. There had been other “jobs” as well: T Rex had been implicated in the murder of a Thai government minister and a suspected fund-raiser for Hezbollah, to name just two. Parnelles ran down the list of known and suspected victims, impressive in both length and variety.

Tired of sitting, Ferguson began bouncing his right leg up and down. His foot was just touching the fringe of a hand-woven wool rug Parnelles had retrieved from Iran toward the end of the shah’s reign— bad days, Parnelles had said once. It was all he said, ever, on the subject to Ferguson.

“You seem distracted, Bobby.” Parnelles glanced at Ferg’s foot, tapping on the carpet.

“Foot fell asleep.” Ferguson bounded up from the chair. “Can’t sit too long.”

He did a little jig in front of the chair. “So what’s the real story, General? Who is T Rex?”

“We don’t know.”

“The Israelis hired him, and we can’t figure it out?”

“The Israelis
didn’t
hire him,” said Parnelles. “Hezbollah has a lot of enemies. Including Hezbollah itself.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Figure out who he is. Apprehend him. Bring him here for trial.”

“That’s what Slott told me this afternoon.” Ferguson glanced at his watch. “Yesterday afternoon.”

He got up from the chair and walked around the study. It was as familiar to him as his own condo—more so. He’d played hide-and-seek here as a kid.

Taking T Rex in Italy was sensitive. The Agency was still smarting over a well-publicized trial of several of its members, fortunately in absentia, for the rendition of a suspected terrorist a few years before. The Italian court had found that the man was not a terrorist and had been kidnapped by the CIA, albeit with help from the Italian secret services. The political situation argued for the use of the elite First Team—officially, the Office of Special Demands—a small group of highly trained operatives headed by Ferguson and occasionally assisted by a Special Forces army group.

But the job might have been done by other CIA agents, including a special paramilitary team trained in renditions.

“So when I bring back T Rex,” said Ferguson, “what happens? You put him on trial?”

Parnelles frowned.

“If a situation develops where he can’t be brought to trial,” he said, picking his words very carefully, “that would be something we could all live with.”

~ * ~

2

ROME, ITALY

It was simply and finally about the money, nothing else. Early on the assassin believed it was about the challenge, the chase and kill, but that was a lie. There was an element of that, certainly, but it was no more than an element, a small part, not the main motive.

The real motive was greed. Money. There was no denying that, not after all these years.

Many people lied to themselves; it was necessary in this business. But growing older, the assassin made it a policy to be honest when assessing personal motives and vices. Once begun, the practice had been liberating. It saved considerable time, and created clarity.

And clarity was of the essence.

The person they called T Rex pushed back the curtains, watching the dawn come over the city. Bologna would be the perfect place. The assassin already knew it well, spoke Italian fluently, and envisioned an easy time at the borders.

Everything was already moving toward its resolution. It was like an opera, complicated and beautiful.

But again, it wasn’t about aesthetics; it was money.

This one would be the last. The payoff would be sufficient to guarantee that. Retirement waited in Thailand. The papers were already prepared.

There was more risk here than in any of the other jobs he had done, but that seemed only fitting. A capstone, a challenge at the endgame.

But really, it was about money, not the pleasure of killing people.

~ * ~

3

NEAR HAMPTON FALLS, MASSACHUSETTS

Ferguson woke around five a.m., and helped himself to the coffee the night watch team protecting Parnelles had made in the kitchen. The coffee was bitter and burnt, but it was enough to get him going. He went out onto the deck, nodding at the surveillance camera before carefully closing the door behind him. The high-tech security gear-— not to mention the CIA detail—had been added only in the past two years, necessary precautions, though Ferguson knew Parnelles chafed at them.

As did he. If he’d been in a different mood, Ferguson would have spent a bit of time goofing on them—making faces for the camera, whispering Russian and Arabic curse words to the listening devices. But last night’s unofficial briefing had left him in a serious mood. He ignored the sensors and walked to the beach, guided as much by memory as the gray twilight. He wasn’t exactly alone—two low-light cameras and an infrared recorded his every move—but it was as close as he could get.

Kill an assassin?

Morally, Ferguson supposed, there was plenty of justification. He hadn’t known Dalton but assumed he was a good officer, on the right side. Probably not perfect, but good enough to be hated by the bad guys. Getting T Rex would mean doing justice for Dalton. And surely that was what Parnelles wanted; clearly Ferguson had been assigned the case not so much because of his ability, but because the Director of the CIA knew he could talk to him freely without fear of repercussion.

Yet he hadn’t spoken freely, had he? Even Parnelles, who wanted it done, had hesitated to speak openly of murder.

Would it be murder if T Rex resisted?

That would depend on the circumstances, thought Ferguson.

He laughed at himself. “I’m thinking like a Jesuit,” he told the waves.

There was plenty of reason for that, as he had been educated by them.

What would Father Francis have said?
Intention, boys. That makes the difference. And it is known by God.

Yes. The Jesuits were always with him.

“Rest easy, Father Francis,” Ferguson told the waves.

He intended to take T Rex alive, if possible, despite his unwritten orders. He’d bring the bastard to justice, but in his way.

Ferguson looked out at the water and sky. He loved the ocean in muddy gray—”fisherman’s dawn,” his father called it, and though he wasn’t a fisherman, it was the elder Ferguson’s favorite time of day.

“Anything is possible then,” he used to tell Bob. And then he would smile, smirk really, and add, “Not really. But it feels that way.”

Ferguson walked toward the dock, intending to go out on the long pier. But he tripped a sensor as he climbed up the three steps; the lights switched on, destroying the mood. For a long minute, he stood staring at the edge of the darkness on the water, waiting impatiently for the floodlight to turn itself off. Finally he gave up and went back to his car.

That’s what you get for being nostalgic, he told himself, waving at the CIA bodyguard as he drove through the gate.

~ * ~

hree hours later, Bob Ferguson pulled off the highway to look for a diner and a pay phone. A place right off the interchange advertised itself with a flashing neon, but he didn’t want to make the call from a phone so obviously close to an interstate. He took a right onto the local county highway, following it for about ten miles before finally coming to a village. There was a diner on the main drag, a fifties-era bullet building that called itself The Real McCoy. It was a bit too selfconsciously cute, but it also looked like the only place to eat in town. Ferguson parked in the lot, then went inside, where his instincts were confirmed—the old-style diner fronted a consciously kitschy place with a fifties theme. But it was too late to turn back.

“Good hash browns?” he asked the girl at the cash register as she retrieved a menu.

“Best. Booth or table?”

“Booth.”

Ferguson ordered breakfast, then took his coffee to the phone booth near the men’s room. He took a phone card from his wallet, checked his watch, then dialed the number of his doctor in suburban Virginia.

“This is Bob Ferguson,” he told the receptionist. “I’m looking for Dr. Zeist.”

“He’s with a patient.”

“I can wait a bit. He wanted to talk to me. I’m out of town and may not get a chance to call back.”

The receptionist clicked him onto hold. Ferguson took a sip of coffee. He suspected that she’d told a white lie; the doctor generally didn’t see patients for another half hour.

“Hey, Ferg, how are you?” said Zeist, coming on the line.

“You tell me.”

“The results are the results,” said the doctor. “You know. My suggestion would be to have another treatment. The odds are good. I’ve only had two patients since I’ve started practice who, um, had flare-ups.”

Ferguson hadn’t heard Zeist use the word
flare-zips
before. Ordinarily, the doctor was extremely precise, even clinical, when talking about cancer. He was also generally upbeat, at least about thyroid cancer. The odds greatly favored a positive outcome—even for third-stage patients like Ferguson whose cancer had “escaped the thyroid capsule before detection,” the statistics favored a “full, or close to full, lifetime survival rate without recurrence.”

Problem was, the cancer didn’t seem to be listening. A recent set of tests had discovered the cells in different parts of his body.

“So the treatment here is to poison me, right?” said Ferguson.

“Well, not precisely, Ferg.”

“I swallow the baseball and sit in the hotel room for a couple of days,” said Ferguson. He’d undergone the treatment before.

“It’s not that bad, is it?” said Zeist.

“Nah, it’s not that bad,” Ferguson said. “Just was the worst five days of my life.”

Ferguson, who hated to be cooped up, wasn’t exaggerating, though Zeist thought he was.

“We have to do a little surgery first. Take out the adrenaline gland.”