The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01]

by David L. Robbins

  Lammeck readied a reply. Before he could snap, Dag grinned.

  “Look, Professor, lighten up. This is what we’ve got to do. The chief and me signed up for this kind of thing, but you got dragged into it. Honestly, we have a better shot at her if you’re with us. Please don’t make us have to babysit you in your hotel until this is over. You’re already a major pain in the rear. Can you imagine what you’ll be like if we have to do that? Cut us a break, okay?”

  The devil and the deep blue sea, Lammeck thought. Reilly versus Judith. One led to house arrest and the U.S. government as an adversary, the other to potential death—or a potential wealth of knowledge for his career. What was the right thing to do? The brave thing? Unbidden, perhaps because Judith was Persian, Lammeck thought of Nadir Shah, the goatherd who, in the mid-eighteenth century, rose to head of his family, chief of a bandit clan, then became the military leader who drove the Afghans and Turks out of Persia. Once he became Shah, Nadir turned into a despot who waged many wars and built pyramids of skulls from those who opposed him. As dangerous as the man was, he was finally assassinated in 1747 by four of his bodyguards; Nadir killed two of them before being cut down himself. Just bodyguards, Lammeck thought. Anonymous men who did the courageous thing. Lammeck wanted to know their names, to give them their due.

  He said to Reilly, “Why not.”

  “Thank you,” the chief replied. “You should know, Mrs. Beach really does like you. That’s just how she shows it.”

  Judith appeared to like him, too. She’d tried to kill him. Those two women had in common an odd stamp of affection.

  “You went alone,” Reilly said. His temper eased now that Lammeck was back in the fold. “That was gutsy and stupid. Why’d she let you go, Professor? She had you dead to rights.”

  “I stuck a 9mm Welwand in her rib cage. We struck a deal. We both walked away.”

  “Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.” Reilly shot Dag a disbelieving look.

  “Okay,” Dag said, rubbing his brow. “Number four. No more firearms, Professor.”

  * * * *

  March 12

  Aurora Heights

  Arlington, Virginia

  JUDITH SLIPPED THE KEY into the Tenches’ front door. She stepped around a scattered heap of mail to hang her coat on the hall tree. She sifted through the envelopes and this time left the invitations alone. She arranged the mail neatly on the sideboard.

  Upstairs, she took Mrs. Tench’s gown out of a dry cleaner’s cardboard box and returned it to the woman’s dressing closet. She fingered several of the gowns, then held an azure patterned silk to herself. It had sweeping long lines to the floor and would bring out the color of her eyes. She returned the dress to the hanger. Closing the closet door, Judith sighed. She would not get the chance to wear that dress.

  The Tenches were scheduled to return home tomorrow. The die was cast for Judith to leave this household. She would wring the mister another couple of times for what he was worth, but held little faith anymore that he was the path. Instead, she’d made some other promising connections in her embassy evenings. Several powerful men had asked for her phone number. She’d refused, taking their cards and saying she’d call them, a scandalous and intriguing thing for an attractive woman to do. One bullfrog-necked power monger claimed to be the chief of staff for a senior New York congressman. He was unmarried, full of himself, and ripe.

  Downstairs, she sat in the bright kitchen. This was her favorite room in the house, because Mrs. P. kept it a sanctuary. Judith considered making Jacob a gift out of this kitchen; it would be a simple thing to make his wife very sick. A sprinkle of corn cockle on a Parker House roll. A dash of meadow saffron in a glass of milk. Baneberries in a slice of pie. His skinny, unstable wife would have to see a doctor, probably go to the hospital. Jacob would have to pay some attention, make certain she was cared for. Maybe he’d look closely for the first time in years and see who he married, then make some decision, one way or another. Maybe the wife would be the one to act. But the camel needed to be pulled fully into the tent before those two fortunate and wretched Americans would speak to each other about it.

  Judith stood to go, leaving that decision for another day. Probably Mrs. P. would take the blame for making the woman ill, her cooking would be faulted. She’d be fired. That would be a complication Judith didn’t want.

  She donned her coat, locked the house, and drove away. The day was a token of spring, under a blue sky with early blossoms in the rich yards of the neighborhood. Tomorrow Judith would tell Mrs. Tench she would be quitting soon and would need a referral letter. The woman’s reaction would dictate how well she ate in Judith’s final days in her employ.

  She drove east across the Potomac. As always, Memorial Bridge was packed with cars, buses, and military vehicles. Frequently, the bridge was shut down while hearses and mourners filed slowly to Arlington Cemetery for some soldier or sailor’s burial, backing traffic up for a mile into downtown D.C., injecting a frozen gridlock into the heart of the city that took hours to filter away.

  Finally reaching Seventeenth, she turned south to motor past the Blackstone Hotel, for no reason other than it was a touchstone, where Lammeck had been. The professor had surely been relocated by now. She didn’t need to know where he’d gone. If she saw him again before her mission was finished, it would be because he’d sought her out. She hoped against that.

  In any event, he was alive for now. She’d set up the rendezvous at the embassy to scare him off, with no intention to kill him unless he proved to be some unrealistic academic or repressed champion who wouldn’t back down. As it turned out, he was exactly those things, but also something less, and that saved his life. Though he’d actually checkmated her, though he certainly had gumption, and their encounter had been exhilarating, she was never in real fear that he could pull that trigger. Judith knew the eyes of a killer, and

  Lammeck—even in pain and fright—did not have them. In him, she’d seen a clever man worth keeping a vigil on, but not one to fear. This confirmed the suspicions she’d had before meeting him; extremely rare are the people who can kill face-to-face. If coldbloodedness were a common trait, Judith would have had no career.

  Mikhal Lammeck posed no threat. For now, letting him live served her purposes, for every dead body she created was a complication, and another crumb dropped on a trail that might lead to her. There had already been corpses aplenty on this job.

  Besides, in the unlikely event the professor proved her wrong, she’d keep her word to him. She’d kill him.

  For twenty-five minutes she drove up and down the eastern rim of the White House grounds, until a parking spot opened. Judith was pleased; she’d expected a longer wait. The sooner she was against the curb, the sooner she was out of the line of sight of agents prowling the streets and sidewalks. The time was one-thirty. The President never came out of his big white residence and its grounds before three o’clock. Judith walked away from the car, slipping easily into the stream of workers on the sidewalks. She was accustomed to being packed in with people on all sides; Cairo was just as crowded, but less frenetic. The men and women on the move here in Washington had a world to win with their fast steps, and this made every stride important, dedicated. She waited in line to buy a soft pretzel and a bag of warm chestnuts from a vendor, then strolled away in the multitude.

  Today was the first pleasantly warm day since her arrival. She’d heard of the beauty of Washington’s springtime, the fabled cherry blossoms beside the reservoir. She walked west toward the classic façade of the Lincoln Memorial, alongside the narrow Reflecting Pool. This path, designed to be a promenade beside monuments and tourist attractions, was just as choked with human traffic as any sidewalk or street in the center of the city, for this was the location of more than half a mile of temporary, four-story wooden office buildings thrown up for the Navy Department on the long banks of the artificial pond. A covered walking bridge, connecting the two sides, cut across the middle of the pool, breaking the view. Judith ma
rveled that Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Peiping, the centers of history’s empires, had managed to avoid architecture this homely in order to fight their wars.

  She took a bench in the sun and ate beside the shallow pond. She imagined this white city, blushing in pink blossoms, with its leader dead. She passed her mind’s hand over the landscape, draping pillars and domes with black, painting the sky a rainy gray for a grand procession, an imperial mourning. She would transform both this city and the world it affected with its guns and money. She would do this vast thing.

  Judith ate slowly, enjoying the day and her anonymity in it, regardless of how hard Lammeck and his wrinkled agent companion sought her out. She had something on her side they could not counter. Time. Her acts of history carried no schedule. Six months, a year on the outside; her employers never specified, trusting to her abilities. Sooner was always better—it showed proficiency—but patience was sharper than any blade, more lethal than the keenest poison. She had all the funds she needed, and the papers to assume another half-dozen identities. Judith had many strengths as an assassin, but her greatest was her discipline. She knew how to circle and watch for the beckon, listen for the cue, for history to call her onto the stage where only she and her target would stand before no audience.

  She tore off a bit of pretzel for a tolerant pigeon.

  It could be any day, she thought. Why not today?

  Judith rose from the bench, to amble in the spring warmth back to her parked car.

  At ten minutes to six, Roosevelt emerged for the first time since his return from Yalta. He did so in his accustomed fashion, in his armored limo flanked by Secret Service cars crammed with agents. With headlights on, the little caravan crept away from the south gate. Judith let some traffic fill in between them, then pulled out.

  Roosevelt was always easy to follow on his motors away from the White House. His driver never made attempts at evasion. His motorcade used no sirens or lights, and obeyed every traffic signal. Clearly the Secret Service had not curtailed the man’s movements because of her. Did he even know an assassin was on his trail? From a hundred feet behind the limo, Judith projected herself into the seat next to the crippled man, an invisible eye on him. No, he didn’t know about her. Roosevelt’s minions were protecting him from Judith in every way they could, even from knowledge of her. Why? Because the old man was burdened enough. How sad, to need these occasional drives just to feel mobile in the world. To have such power and still crave a simple ride in a car. Judith envisioned the old man’s face fixed to his window, a slow and ill gaze watching his sunny country slide by. He was ruler here, but he must also be alone inside his walls, trapped and betrayed by his body, in need of fresh air and a change of scenery. For the first time, Judith sensed the tragedy of this president. Even in an America ascending, he was intended for sacrifice, as the great almost always are. That time was very near, just as she was. History had removed its grace and protection from Franklin Roosevelt, and put Judith there instead.

  She sensed they would meet soon. She felt this in her hands and heart, and in her purpose, all stronger than his.

  The motorcade turned west toward Georgetown. The President’s window was cracked open; smoke leaked from a cigarette. Judith followed the three cars, maintaining a two-block distance from the trailing vehicle. She guessed the motorcade was headed again out to Rock Creek Parkway so the President could get some wind in his hair. She was wrong. Instead, the cars turned into the residential streets, among the fine brick homes and wrought-iron railings. Judith sped to shorten the gap to the motorcade; she did not want to lose them in these tight avenues.

  The three cars drove not far into the neighborhood behind several embassies, then stopped on Q Street in front of a high brown-stone. Judith held back. An agent stepped out of the lead vehicle and went to stand beside Roosevelt’s passenger door. The President did not get out of the limo; instead, a tall woman came down the steps from the house without anyone going to fetch her. She’d been waiting for them.

  The agent opened the limo door for her—more smoke escaped— and closed it; the motorcade continued with the woman seated in the back beside the President.

  Judith moved in their wake. She drove past the brownstone, glancing up to take the street number, 2238. In a tall window, watching the cars disappear, stood a very robust white woman. She wore a maid’s uniform.

  Judith didn’t trail the President and his female guest. She drove back to the White House. She parked in sight of the south gate. At twenty minutes to seven, the three vehicles returned.

  At midnight, one car left the south gate, returning to Q Street.

  * * * *

  March 13

  Georgetown

  JUDITH REACHED FOR THE bottle of maple syrup a split second behind the big woman. She smiled, retracting her hand. “I’m so sorry. You saw it first. You go ahead.”

  The woman returned the smile and took the item; Judith grabbed the bottle behind. The old maid pushed her cart farther along the aisle. Judith lagged, feigning interest in other groceries until the woman laid hold to a tin of cling peaches. Judith appeared at her wide shoulder, waited, then again took the second can.

  “Funny,” she said, “it’s like we’re shopping for the same person.”

  “Yes.” The woman nodded and peeked into the wire basket over Judith’s arm to see they also had Wheateena Biscuits in common.

  Judith made a show of running her gaze down the woman’s girth, not to take in her size but the solid black maid’s outfit with its lace collar beneath her unbuttoned coat. Judith wore a very similar uniform, purchased that morning.

  “I’ve never seen you around,” Judith said. “Are you new in the neighborhood ? “

  The woman laid a plump hand to her breast and quaked with a giggle. “Me? Non, there is nothing new about me at all.” This woman was like Mrs. P., old and possibly much older than she looked. She was moonfaced and pleasant eyed, and she was not American.

  “Where are you from? You have a beautiful voice. Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be forward.” Judith took the wire basket from her right arm and with shy eagerness extended her hand. “My name is Desiree.”

  “And I am Annette. Desiree. Un beau nom. Do you know what that means?”

  “A beautiful name.”

  “You know French?”

  “I grew up in New Orleans speaking Creole French. My daddy is colored but my mama’s Cajun.”

  “Well, well.” Annette jiggled again with laughter. “We are a pair, oui? Perhaps we are long-lost sisters.”

  The woman turned to continue her shopping with Judith at her side. The two chatted in their common tongues and plucked a few of the same things from shelves, though Judith did it once for comedy and put the item back. To Judith’s questions, Annette played out a quick version of her story: her hometown of Toulouse, coming to America as a young widow looking for work after the tribulations of the last war, then a long employment as the private servante for a rich madame who was recently widowed, who was up from South Carolina for a visit with her sister here in Georgetown. Despite Annette’s energy, she grew flush and breathless talking and rolling the cart. Judith could see her health was not good.

  Judith got her groceries first, filling only one bag. Annette had three bags. Judith offered to help her carry her load back to the house of the madame’s sister.

  “Merci, chère. But I will carry them alone. I do not want to be seen so old and fat that I require the assistance of a skinny girl.”

  Judith took one of Annette’s bags. The older woman did not resist.

  “But you do need the help, ma soeur. It’s no trouble. Come on.”

  Judith walked beside the huffing woman. She made most of the conversation to spare Annette the exertion of talking. She explained that she was new in Washington and worked for a crazy lady whose husband had a big job in the government. She didn’t like the capital all that much; it was so much bigger and more crowded than what she was used to back in New Orleans
. She was considering going home, or maybe getting a different job, somewhere in the countryside.

  This took them to the steps of the brownstone. Judith walked the grocery bag to the top of the steps. There she said good-bye to Annette.

  “I’ll see you around,” she promised. The big woman watched her down the steps and held up a hand in farewell. At the sidewalk, Judith pivoted to walk on. Just before she could stop and call out, the older woman spoke.

  “Desiree, are you free this evening? My madame, she is going out for dinner. I will ask if I may go to a dinner myself. With a friend.”

  Judith cradled her own bag of groceries with both arms, swinging them just the right amount with girlish humility.

  “Avec plaisir, Annette.”

  * * * *

  AFTER SIX O’CLOCK, JUDITH tailed one dark car from the White House to Q Street. When the tall woman again came down the steps and was chauffeured away, Judith parked on P Street, then walked to the brownstone to collect Annette.