Soul of the Assassin (61 page)

Ferguson started to laugh. The others couldn’t figure out why.

“What happened to Kiska Babev?” Thera asked. “Did you get the message?”

“What message?”

“Corrigan called, Thomas Ciello figured out she wasn’t T Rex.”

“Oh yeah, I knew that.”

“You did?”

“I’ve been telling you that. T Rex wasn’t after Rosty. T Rex wanted me.”

“You?”

“Sure.” He pulled off his coat and began undoing the bulletproof vest he’d been wearing. He hated wearing them, but then, he hated being shot even more. Hamilton’s first bullet had hit him square in the chest, right over his heart—he could still feel the pain. The bruise would be with him a long time, but it was considerably better than the alternative.

“Why was he hired to kill you?”

“I guess the Syrians are a little pissed off about the fact that the nuclear material they bought a few years back never made it to Damascus.”

“So who is T Rex?”

“It
was
Hamilton,” Ferguson explained. “Unfortunately, Kiska shot him in the head. It wasn’t her fault, though. She didn’t think I had a vest. Or a gun. If it were me, I would have preferred in the kneecaps so we could bring him home. Not going to bother Parnelles, though.” Ferguson pushed his legs out, trying to stretch. He was tired; he needed about twenty-four hours of sleep before he’d feel human again. “I knew Rosty wasn’t the target. Killing him isn’t that hard. He lives alone, lives in Russia. Piece of cake to kill him. No offense, Doc.”

Rostislawitch forced himself to nod.

“T Rex didn’t mind a lot of blood, but he always took the easy way out when he killed someone. He only used car bombs because the victims had bodyguards or were generally on their guard. Rosty was too easy. The trick was to make us think he was the target. That was pretty clever.”

“How long did you know it was Hamilton?”

Actually, Ferguson hadn’t been positive it was Hamilton until he showed up in front of him at the restaurant. He also didn’t know how much of the Iranian plot Hamilton himself had known, and while he suspected that he had purposely set up his preparer to lure Ferguson here, he couldn’t be sure of that, either. But he just shrugged without answering, as if he knew the whole story, and had from the very beginning. Explaining things took away much of the mystery, kind of like a woman without any clothes.

Now that he didn’t need to be on his guard, now that they were done and others could watch out for him, fatigue rolled over Ferguson like a tsunami wave. He closed his eyes, drifting. The song he’d heard in the background of the club played in his head. It was Cole Porter, an old love song. The music swelled and he got up to dance.

Ferguson turned to find a partner, and there was Thera, dressed in a long gown, pearls draped from her neck. He was in a tux.

“Shall we dance?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” she said.

He took her hand and swirled her once, then held her close. And in the dreamworld that had suddenly descended on him, everything was perfect.

~ * ~

39

WASHINGTON, D.C.

“The site is secure,” Corrine Alston told the President. “The decontamination teams are another two hours away.”

“The bacteria has been contained?”

“We think so. Two of our people were at the edge of the camp. They’re going to be isolated, but we don’t think they were infected.”

“A cure?”

“We hope they weren’t exposed,” said Corrine. “The Russian scientist is cooperating. But the strain is resistant to antibiotics. The people who were exposed may very well die. At a minimum, they’ll be very sick.”

“That’s unfortunate,” said President McCarthy.

“Dan Slott is arranging for medical care to be flown in.”

McCarthy got up from his desk and walked to the small globe at the side of his office, spinning it around slowly until he was looking at Iran. “We’re going to announce the Iran nuclear treaty tonight, Corrine. Very good work.”

She felt a little embarrassed to be thanked, since she had had almost nothing to do with it.

“Ferguson and his people, and Colonel Van Buren, they really did a fantastic job,” she told the President. “And, I should mention, T Rex—the assassin who killed our CIA officer two years ago—he’s dead. He was a renegade MI6 agent.”

“MI6?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sometimes you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, can you, Miss Alston?”

“No, Jonathon, sometimes you can’t.”

McCarthy didn’t say anything else. Corrine, with more work to do, left the President staring at the globe.

~ * ~