Soul of the Assassin (8 page)

“How does T Rex contact her?” asked Guns.

Thera shook her head.

Rankin realized the shower had been turned off in the room and pressed his hand against his ear. He heard some shuffling, and then Arna Kerr began speaking.

“It’s Italian,” Rankin said, handing the earphone to Ferguson.

“She’s getting a taxi to the airport,” Ferguson told them, getting up. “Pardon me while I go bid her a tearful good-bye.”

~ * ~

11

BOLOGNA, ITALY

Arna Kerr was just putting her bag into the back of the cab when she heard Bob Ferguson calling her.

“You,” she said, before even turning to look at him.

“They say you’re checking out.”

He took her in his arms, kissing her gently. She resisted, but only for a moment.

“On your way over to my hotel, I hope,” said Ferguson.

“I have to go.”

“Didn’t sell enough drugs?”

“Plenty.”

“Stick around, you’ll sell some more. Maybe I’ll buy a few.”

He really was cute, she thought, cute enough to change her plans—a few more hours here wouldn’t bother anyone.

Or better, she could suggest they go down to Rome, or somewhere farther south, some little village somewhere that was still warm and sunny.

She had to go. He was too tempting.

“Duty calls,” she said, pushing him away gently.

“It’s almost lunchtime. Come get something to eat.”

“I have to go. I’m sorry.” She put her hand on the car door.

“A little
vino?”

“No, grazie.”

“Your Italian’s getting better.”

“Prego.
Another time, Bob.” She started to get into the cab.

“Well, give me your card and tell where you’re going to be,” said Ferguson.

Arna Kerr hesitated. “I don’t think so.”

“No?” Ferguson ran his hand along the back of her arm. Even though she was wearing a winter coat, she felt a tingle all the way through to her spine. “Come on. Hang around.”

“If you give me your card,” she said, “maybe I’ll call you.”

“Didn’t I give you one already?” Ferguson asked.

She cocked her hand slightly, gesturing that if he had, she had lost it. Ferguson pulled one from his pocket.

“Call me,” he said, sliding her the card. “It’s a service. But they’ll get in touch.”

She took the card and smiled, then got in the cab. Ferguson gave it a friendly pat as it left—placing a small global positioning device on its rear fender to make it easier to follow.

~ * ~

12

CIA BUILDING 24-442

Thomas Ciello paced back and forth in his small office on the second floor of Building 24-442. It was a relatively large office—thirteen paces by eleven and a quarter paces—and he had arranged the furniture so that he could stride in more or less a straight line. Building 24-442 was primarily located underground, so being on the second floor meant he had no windows. But this wasn’t a drawback as far as Thomas Ciello was concerned. On the contrary. The very blankness of the walls helped him focus.

Thomas Ciello was the chief analyst for Special Demands, a somewhat nebulous job title that matched his somewhat nebulous job description. In theory, he liaisoned between the team and the CIA’s “regular” research and analysis side, digging up background and other information necessary for missions. The reality was considerably more complicated, as Ciello often found himself gathering information on his own, through whatever source he could think of.

But analysts liked to say that the problem wasn’t so much obtaining information as making sense of it. Ciello was living that saying right now, as he tried to puzzle out what Arna Kerr’s work in Bologna meant.

She’d left vehicles and taken rooms in several parts of the center city; obviously T Rex’s target was there. Most interestingly, she’d taken measurements of three public squares in the city of Bologna. From what the First Team had reported, she had documented the distances between the buildings as well as their heights.

Why?

A sniper would want to know distances. But Ciello thought it was unlikely a sniper would plan an assassination in the public squares; the buildings that surrounded them were mostly open to the public, which meant there would be a lot of people who might see him coming in and out. It would certainly be possible—Ciello had to admit that T Rex might know much more about the buildings and the business of assassination than he did—but he thought it unlikely.

Besides the public squares, Arna Kerr had visited three university school buildings, math, computer science, and the Art School Annex, a temporary building being used while the main art buildings were renovated. None of them seemed likely to attract the sort of high-profile victim T Rex was generally hired to target.

After a search of their faculty and student lists failed to turn up anything interesting, Ciello had set out to compile a list of conferences and lectures they were hosting. Getting information on the mathematics school was easy; it posted a calendar online. But the public lectures it listed weren’t exactly major hints: “The Evolution of Euclid” and “String Theory” were the highlights. “Computer Science” was equally esoteric; the focus seemed to be on graphic compression routines and video. The Art School Annex listed no guest lectures or conferences until after the Christmas break, when “Fresh Thoughts on Medieval Brushstroke Techniques” would start the new year off with a bang.

Ciello put his thought process on hold and lay down on the floor. The ceiling tiles had a very interesting pattern. Probably they involved a code, but not being a cryptologist, he couldn’t decipher it.

That wasn’t an excuse, though, was it? Cryptologists were just mathematicians, and everyone knew mathematicians were crazy.

“Thomas, what are you doing?”

Ciello looked up and saw Debra Wu, his executive assistant, standing by the door. She made a show of putting her hands over her dress, as if he were trying to look up it. A faint odor of perfume wafted from her. It tickled his nose and he stifled a sneeze.

“Mr. Slott needs to talk to you,” said Wu, shaking her head. “He’s having a conference call with Ms. Alston.”

Wu continued to talk, but Ciello had stopped listening. His mind was back at the piazzas.

Arna Kerr was making a scale model of them.

“Thomas, are you listening to me? Mr. Slott needs that report. Mr. Slott. The DDO. Your boss’s boss. Thomas?”

“Uh-huh.”

T Rex’s preparer was measuring the space between the buildings, which was another way of saying she was measuring the air.

Air.

Hadn’t the UFO sighting in San Diego in 1953 involved some sort of similar measuring devices? No one had figured out what that meant, either.

Bad example.

In his spare time, Thomas Ciello was working on a book that would be the definitive study of UFOs in the twentieth century So far, he hadn’t worked on a case where UFOs were part of the solution— though there was always hope.

“Thomas, are you going to have something or not?” she said finally.

“Don’t know,” mumbled Ciello.

She turned in disgust. Her sharp twist sent a fresh whiff of perfume in Ciello’s direction.

“Oh!” said Ciello loudly. “That’s why she took the measurements!”

“What?” demanded Wu.

“Now I get it.”

“You know who T Rex is?”

“Of course not. But I know what they’re up to.”

Wu waited for the answer as Ciello jumped to his feet and started pumping his keyboard.

“Well?” she said finally.

“Perfume.”

~ * ~

13

BOLOGNA, ITALY

Guns picked Ferguson up in the car two blocks away.

“Ferg, you’re slipping,” Guns told him. “You couldn’t even get her phone number.”

“I couldn’t even get her e-mail address,” said Ferguson in mock amazement. “Next time you take the romance angle and I’ll watch.”

Guns laughed. Ferguson could always be counted on for a joke.

Rankin and Thera were on Vespas ahead, following the cab as it headed out to the airport.

Ferguson took out his sat phone and called the Cube.

“Yes, Bob?” said Lauren DiCapri, the relief desk person.

“Hey, beautiful, what happened? Corrigan went home?”

“Something about working thirty-six hours straight got to him.”

“Tough sitting in that chair, huh?” Ferguson leaned back in the seat. “You tracking us?”

“Of course.” All four of the ops had GPS sending units in their satellite phones, showing the Cube where they were.

“Find Arna Kerr’s flight yet?”

“The flight for the round-trip ticket she bought doesn’t leave for another two days,” said Lauren. “So if she’s going to the airport, she used another credit card for the flight.”

“And different ID,” said Ferguson.

“Maybe, maybe not. We’re not working with the Italians, remember? I don’t have direct access to any of the booking systems, let alone their security lists. I’m working with the credit card companies.”

“How could I forget?”

Slott, the CIA Deputy Director in charge of covert action, had told Ferguson in the briefing that they wouldn’t work with Italy because of the rendition case. Indeed, Ferguson had a relatively low regard for the Italian intelligence agencies and preferred not to get them involved, either. If he got T Rex—
when
he got T Rex—the plan was to knock him out, bundle him in the trunk of a car, and take him directly to the U.S. air base at Aviano. He’d be in a federal lockup, waiting for a grand jury to indict him, within twenty-four hours.

“Listen, Lauren, I gave Arna Kerr my card. Maybe she’ll call; maybe she’ll send an e-mail or check the Web site.”

“Don’t worry. We’re ready.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want to miss a date.”

~ * ~

he thin wall separating caution and paranoia had melted by the time Arna Kerr cleared the ticket counter. A kind of panic regularly accompanied this stage of a job—when the fieldwork was done but before she returned to Sweden and safety.

Arna Kerr forced herself to remain calm as she went through gate security, fiddling with her hair and fussing with her makeup to hide her jitters. Once through, she went into a washroom and checked her bags and clothes for a bug or tracking device, by going over them first with a detector and then painstakingly by hand, visually inspecting everything. She’d done this already at the hotel before leaving— and also examined the footage on the two digital cameras she’d left running on the desk—yet she still felt as if she had missed something.

She told herself she was overcompensating for spending the night with the Irishman.