The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01]

by David L. Robbins

  “Not so little. We found your knife.”

  Judith clapped her hands above the cocked 9mm in her gut. “You did! Good, I thought it was lost in the ocean. It’s extremely valuable, but I suppose you know that. Please make sure it gets into a museum somewhere. I should like to visit it someday. Where was it?”

  “Under Otto.”

  “Ah, yes. The big man on the beach. Well, I wondered.” She nodded at the recollection. “I did not want to do that, Mikhal. Believe me or not.”

  “Sure. And what about Arnold?”

  “The husband? Another necessary evil.”

  “How’d you do him?”

  “You haven’t figured that one out yet? You disappoint.”

  Lammeck licked his lips. Judith saw this and raised a hand for a passing waiter. She called, “Two big glasses of water, please.” She returned her eyes to Lammeck. “The thirst will get quite bad. We’ll make this as quick as we can for you. Now, Arnold, the husband. What do you think?”

  He recalled the skinny corpse and the circumstances. Gunshot hole in the temple, massive exit wound. Cordite on the right hand. Spent round found low in the living room wall. No suicide note.

  Lammeck blinked and lowered his eyes. The room flared again. He looked into Judith’s midriff where the Welwand nestled, angled up into her silken sash.

  The sash.

  He looked up, wincing.

  “Thuggee.”

  “Yes,” she applauded. “You know the Thuggee! Show off for me.”

  “Followers of the death goddess Kali in India. They strangled victims using a wide silk scarf with a coin rolled in it. Arnold let you into his house that night because you had Maude King with you, a woman he knew. Then you choked him with a sash, but just to the point where he passed out. No bruises, no bugging eyes. When he was on the floor you put the pistol in his hand and fired.”

  “Bravo, Mikhal, bravo. You are quite the scholar.”

  “You murdered three innocent people.”

  Judith set a gentle hand on Lammeck’s wrist above the Welwand. He did not shirk her off. One flick of his thumb and she would be bleeding out of her heart. Then he would have to guess which syringe would save him and which would have him lying beside her dead on the floor. She said nothing but looked into his eyes, silent while the waiter set two glasses of water on the table.

  “Listen to my offer, Mikhal, and I won’t have to kill you. Please drink. I know you’re thirsty. Go ahead, don’t worry. The waiter doesn’t work for me.”

  Lammeck pulled his left arm from behind her and finished one glass, then the second. He knew a fair bit about poisons; too many of them had a raging thirst as the opening act. He couldn’t begin to guess what she’d stuck him with.

  “Talk,” he said, wiping his lips, then returning his arm as a barrier behind her.

  “First of all, I have no interest in killing you. Certainly with that gun in my midsection, I have even less. But as I said, I’m a professional, not some insane political murderer out of your history books. I kill only for pay or necessity. And trust me, the moment I see you marked by either one, I will kill you without hesitation. Anytime, anywhere. I believe I have demonstrated that tonight. I can drop you with a touch and you’d never see it coming. Bodyguards wouldn’t stop me.”

  “All the more reason for me to pull the trigger tonight.”

  “Perhaps. But let’s see if we can’t come to an understanding first. And please, if you need more water, let me know and we’ll get it for you. Also, swallowing and talking are going to become difficult sometime soon, and your eyes may become sensitive to light. You’ll start to feel a little numb, too. If this gets too bad, tell me and we’ll, as you Americans say, cut to the chase.”

  Lammeck eyed her purse on the tabletop. “Show me the syringes.”

  Judith complied and cracked open her handbag. Inside lay four needles, numbered with marked tape one through four. She clicked the purse shut, leaving it on the table between them.

  “Listen to me, Mikhal. You’re the world’s most eminent scholar on the history of assassination. I assume you were brought into this case by the Secret Service as an advisor and not to have your own life put in jeopardy. And it is, my dear, in terrible jeopardy. Now, as the terms of your employment do not cover this risk, you have every reason to walk away, with no disgrace. You’re an academic, not a soldier. I mean no disrespect by that. You’re a brilliant man doing important work elsewhere.”

  Lammeck’s pulse surged in his ears. Sweat popped on his brow but he would not free a hand to wipe it. Judith saw this. She touched his forehead with a cocktail napkin.

  “There,” she murmured.

  Lammeck fingered the Welwand’s trigger.

  “No,” he said.

  Judith continued, undaunted, as if she’d expected that answer. She spoke with confidence:

  “You’re not pursuing me because you want to stop me. You’re chasing me because you need to find me. To interview a real Assassin in the flesh for your research. If you kill me, and especially if you die too, this all goes unrecorded, undocumented, and history will never know of it. Trust me, you will not be made famous for it. Your Secret Service and the American press don’t even mention that your President is a cripple. Do you believe they’re going to trumpet an assassination plot against him? Do you think the Secret Service and the FBI will want it known that I got this close, and that you, a mere civilian, a scholar, was the one to stop me, not them? No, Mikhal. If we’re lying beside each other dead like Romeo and Juliet, the story will be that I killed you with poison and you killed me with a pistol you snuck into the embassy. We’ll be explained away as angry lovers or forlorn wretches or something equally mundane. We’ll be buried and covered up, and the president I have been hired to dispose of and you are risking your own neck to protect will live instead. No, we both need to live and do our very important jobs.”

  Lammeck blinked. He was trembling now. He steadied himself.

  “There’s... there’s no way I can trust you. I let you walk out of here, how do I know you’ll give me the right antidote? What keeps you from trying this shit again tomorrow with another needle in my back?”

  Judith nodded. She raised a soft hand below his chin, caressing his cheek.

  “Absolutely correct. So I’m willing to make a good-faith offer, a sort of down payment. I will tell you some of my own history right now, just a bit of it, for your studies. And I promise that if we both survive each other and this war, I will tell you the remainder at another time and place. You can put it all in your book. You can ask me anything you want. The woman who killed Roosevelt. Imagine.”

  “You’d never do that.”

  “Why not? I’m being paid well enough for this to stay invisible the rest of my life. Try me. But decide quickly, Mikhal. From the look of you, I figure we have only another ten minutes.”

  “Give me the antidote.”

  “Give me a question.”

  He snarled, “Give me the fucking antidote.” Judith had him pegged, he knew, he was no hero. He was angry, and he’d been stupid, and though those often resemble courage, they are not the same.

  “Be patient, dear, aggression and a touch of mania are to be expected. And of course, fear. Concentrate and ask me a question.”

  Lammeck clamped his mouth. The lights in the room bedeviled his eyesight. Sweat gathered in his brows.

  “Who are you working for?”

  “That’s for later. Ask another.”

  “The woman who dropped off the invitation?”

  “She’s nobody interesting to you, trust me. Ask me where I come from.”

  Lammeck cut his eyes to the purse. He could grab it, take his chances, one in four, of sticking himself with the right needle. But there was still eight or nine minutes. He could shoot her any time before then. The purse would be there. And she was right: He wanted to know.

  “Where are you from?”

  “That’s much better. I’m from a pretty little village name
d Shahrak, right on the Alamut Road, in what you would call the Valley of the Assassins. It’s a place of extraordinary beauty, with vines and corn, broom and tamarisk, even oak and walnut trees. And you can see Alamut Rock in the distance on a clear day.”

  “So you are...” Lammeck’s tongue was slurring; he cleared his throat. “You are Persian.”

  “Yes. My ancestors were fida’is, Hasan-i-Sabah’s disciples. We’ve lived in that valley for a thousand years. My father was a muleteer. I remember him in his red Pahlavi cap, eyebrows white from dust. I grew up in a mud brick hut next to a stream. As a girl I wore a pair of scarlet trousers with beads sewn at the ankles. I milked goats and sheep and made yogurt. I spun wool for carpets and patted dung cakes for fuel. We stacked the cakes on our roof to dry. I was a very happy child.”

  Lammeck ran his thumb over the trigger, to make sure he maintained control of the Welwand, digging the silencer again into her ribs. Judith did not react.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “You must understand, Mikhal. Growing up female in Persia is the same as growing up in shackles. A Muslim girl is supposed to be pious and meek. I was neither. It’s a country where weakness is death. If you’re not strong, or you don’t have a protector, you’re nobody. Women are zaifeh, powerless. So we are sheep, unless we have a husband. An old Persian saying goes: ‘Even the earth trembles beneath the feet of the unmarried.’ Girls are married off before they reach puberty. When I was ten, my father gave me as a wife to a wealthy landlord who’d seen me in the village.”

  Lammeck’s mouth had stopped making spittle. Each breath was becoming painful.

  “You could have said no.”

  “That’s such an American response. I expected better from you, a man of the world. In Persia, we’re accustomed to being bullied. Conquered, ruled, kept illiterate by the Turks, by our own kings, it doesn’t matter. Centuries have taught Persians to bend with the wind, to hide behind cleverness. Never let your actions be the mirror of your heart, my father taught me. Stealing is a national art, did you know that about us? We are wily, and thus we survive. At ten, I kept my mouth shut, and went where I was told. My father was given a tidy sum for me, and he genuinely believed I was headed for a better life than he could ever provide for me in Shahrak. My mother, of course, had no voice in the matter. My new husband took me to Tehran. As it turned out, he was a very kind man, an influential man, and a friend of Reza Shah. He treated all of his wives and children well. I was educated at the American school. I learned to read and write, dance, paint, sew; I became an excellent calligrapher, fluent in French, and a dab hand with an epee.”

  Lammeck kept his eyes hard on Judith, but the ebony of her dress had begun to bleed into the air around her. The music in the ballroom took on an almost howling quality. Again, he fixed on the handbag, measuring his chances.

  “Finish up,” he rasped.

  “Of course. How inconsiderate of me, nattering away while you sit there dying. Do you want me to stop now and have you shoot me? Or should I at least round off my story?”

  Lammeck tried to chuckle at his predicament; it seemed insane. But his mounting panic would not give him the luxury of a laugh.

  He lifted his head, defiant. “Finish up.”

  “My husband was constantly annoyed with me. I was not the pliable material he believed he was purchasing in that little Assassins’ village by the stream. I called him Agha instead of Ghorban, which is the equivalent of calling him ‘Sir’ instead of ‘He for whom I sacrifice myself.’ I refused to stay in the harem. I wandered about the grounds and even into the city, and he would cane me for it. I stood on the walls every morning and watched the camel caravans leave Tehran. I wanted desperately to go with them, tired of being zaifeh. So, I made my plan to leave my husband.”

  Lammeck growled, “Did you kill him?”

  Judith stroked his gun arm. “I can see I do need to hurry up, dear Mikhal; you’re getting surly. No, I did not kill him. Among many of his collections was a set of antique knives. While he slept I buried one in the pillow next to his head. The other I kept, which now unfortunately is in the possession of the Newburyport police. I slipped away from Agha and went back to my father, who promptly threw me out. He said I had left his house in a white dress, and the only way I could return was in a black one. I was not going all the way back to Tehran just to kill my elderly husband and become a widow. And if I couldn’t trust my family, I couldn’t trust anyone. So I left Persia. I hold no love for Islam, it’s too harsh to women. It reduces us to servants and beggars in chadors. That’s why, when I started my career as an assassin for hire, I took the name of Judith, a Jewish heroine. Just to continue to be annoying.”

  A tremor shuffled across Lammeck’s shoulders, the beginning of convulsions. He didn’t have much time before he lost control over the weapon wedged in Judith’s gut. Then she would leave him to die.

  “I’ve trained very hard, Mikhal. I’ve studied under some of the best in the world, in Syria, Egypt, Istanbul, some in Europe. I’ve worked all over the globe. I’ve even done one job here, in Washington, for the Russians. Do you know who it was? Stay clearheaded for me. We’re almost done, you and I. Think back to 1941,” she prodded. “Bellevue Hotel.”

  Lammeck rummaged in his collapsing thoughts for the name. He recalled the murder: an ex-NKVD operator, a defector and Trotskyite on the run from the Soviets. Wrote a tell-all, I Was Stalin’s Agent. Lammeck shut his eyes to concentrate, then snapped them open, aware that he’d taken them off Judith. She hadn’t moved an inch.

  “Krivitsky. Walter Krivitsky. Shot in the head.”

  She was pleased. “The police called it a suicide, but nobody believed that. Really some of my best work. My clan prefers the dagger, as you know, and certainly poison. But the Soviets specified I shoot him, to be certain. Poor old Trotsky, he got an ax in the head, so by that standard Krivitsky got off lucky. The Russians were extremely generous to me. In my line of work, it helps to be nonpolitical.”

  Lammeck’s fingers had grown numb on the Welwand. His pulse raced. The room seemed aflame with flashes and flicking sparks.

  “Enough,” he croaked. “The antidote. Or you die first.”

  He didn’t care if it was the poison making him say that. He knew he could do it.

  Judith leaned in. “Mikhal, listen. You and I are the same, do you know that? I believe in God, that all things are in His hands. You believe, too, but you call your god History. We are both part of something much greater than ourselves. We are cogs, you and I, in the one clockwork. Now, pay attention. I’m going to give you the antidote. And you are not going to prevent me from doing my job.”

  Lammeck almost lowered the Welwand, but hardened his hand on it. With an open palm, she tried to push the weapon away. He thrust it back into her belly.

  “I will stop you,” he said.

  She shook her head in a mournful, leave-taking gesture.

  “No. You won’t. I suspect after this evening you won’t even get close. But if you do keep trying, and I become aware of you one more time, my dear, I will have to stop you instead. My mission is too important. Roosevelt has to die, Mikhal. If you knew why, you might even agree.”

  At this, Judith pushed back her chair. Her torso faded from the muzzle of the Welwand. She began to stand.

  With his left hand Lammeck threw her back into the seat.

  “Sit down!”

  “Easy,” she crooned. Judith waved her hands slowly, to mollify him. “Don’t give in. We’re almost done. Mikhal, listen to me.”

  “Shut up.” Lammeck had gone hoarse; in his ears, his panting made him sound like a wounded animal. “Give me the syringe.” He shoved the handbag toward her. “Done talking. Do it.”

  Judith complied. She snapped open the purse. Spreading the mouth of the bag, she showed him the four glass syringes.

  “Which one?” he demanded.

  She shook her head. “None of them.”

  Lammeck was stunned. She didn�
�t have the antidote! He was going to die. He wanted to cry, but grief was swamped in confusion and rage. He braced to pull the trigger, to take her with him. He tried to separate his voice from the delirium of the poison, and knew that he no longer could do so. He heard other words in his head, not his.

  Judith. She was talking to him.

  “... not here. Are you listening? Don’t use these. All four of them are more poison. Mikhal?”

  She put her fingers under his chin to raise his head and fix his eyes on hers.

  “I gave you one-thirtieth of a gram of scopolamine. It was a powerful dose.”

  Lammeck repeated, “Scopolamine.”