Dirty Work

by Stuart Woods

  “ID?”

  Stone showed the man his driver’s license. “I’ll take over your duty up here. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable in the library, downstairs?”

  “All right,” the man replied, then headed for the stairs.

  Stone went into the bedroom as quietly as possible. Carpenter lay on her belly, breathing softly. Stone undressed, got into bed, and lay down beside her.

  “Welcome home, sailor,” Carpenter said sleepily. “I suppose you want a sailor’s welcome?”

  Stone lay on his side and cupped a buttock in his hand. “Nothing too strenuous,” he said. “I am, after all, home from the sea.” He moved his fingers up and down between her cheeks, and she made an appreciative noise. He explored a little further and found her already wet.

  She rolled over on her side and pressed her buttocks into his crotch, reaching between her legs for him.

  A moment later he was inside her, feeling her cheeks pushing against his belly as they moved together. He reached around and found her clitoris, then, while kissing her on the back of the neck, continued moving in and out of her while letting his fingers do the walking.

  Carpenter began moving faster, and a moment later, came in little whimpers, while he joined her. They lay still for a minute or two, then she rolled over and nestled in his arms. “An Englishman would never have started that way,” she said. “It would have been the missionary position or nothing, not that I have anything against the evangelical. How did your trip go?”

  “Later,” Stone breathed. “Don’t you know that sex renders men unconscious?” He took a deep breath, and by the time he had exhaled, he was asleep.

  26

  Her traveling companions arrived at the Hampstead safe house six hours before their departure time. Marie-Thérèse met the husband and baby, but not the wife, who was taken to another room. She played with the nine-month-old baby girl, whose name was Jasmine, talking to her in Arabic, making her feel comfortable with her temporary mother. Marie-Thérèse had always liked children, and she got on very well with the baby.

  She went through her legend with the young man, whose name was, rather unfortunately, Saddam, discussing details of his wife’s background. Saddam seemed very pleased to be in her company.

  Three hours before their flight a taxi arrived to take the baby’s mother to the airport, followed a few minutes later by another cab to take M-T, Saddam, and the baby. It would take a long time to get through security, but they wanted to be in the thick of a crowd, not too early or too late, which might call attention to them.

  After checking their baggage the “family” approached the outgoing emigration control booth, and they could see the child’s mother only a few people ahead of them. M-T stepped out of line and took the baby into the ladies’ room for an unnecessary diaper change, and when she returned, the mother had passed through the control point, apparently with no problem.

  M-T stepped up to the window and handed over her borrowed passport, which included details of the baby, and that of Saddam. She gave the inspector a little smile, which was not returned, and he stamped their passports.

  The child behaved well in the departure lounge but offered real cause for another diaper change, which M-T accomplished expertly. After an interminable wait, they were herded onto the airplane, passing the child’s mother a few rows ahead of their seats. She ignored them, as she had been told to do. M-T had been afraid she would pay too much attention to the baby.

  The transatlantic crossing was routine, marked only by an attempt by Saddam to grope his new wife, which got him a hard pinch that nearly drew blood. He behaved himself after that.

  Then they were at Kennedy Airport, lined up for customs and immigration. M-T and Saddam presented properly issued visas for a thirty-day visit to family in Dearborn, Michigan. The immigration officer, a woman, was distracted by the happy baby and passed them through after a routine check of their documents.

  Then, as they were about to leave customs, a man in a dark suit approached them. “Will you come with me, please?”

  M-T began looking for escape routes from the terminal. There were none. He led them into a small room containing four chairs and a steel table and indicated that they should sit down.

  M-T was concerned, now. This man was no fifteen-dollar-an-hour security guard. He was intelligent, efficient, and knew his business. M-T, in the role of a good Muslim wife, let Saddam do the talking, and since he was accurately describing the background of himself and his wife, he did well. Then the man turned to Marie-Thérèse.

  “Your date and place of birth,” he said.

  M-T told him and continued to answer as he picked his way through her life history. She was perfect, but not too perfect, but the man was unsatisfied. Clearly, his instincts were telling him that there was more to this couple than met the eye. Then little Jasmine did a wonderful thing.

  The officer suddenly wrinkled his nose and pushed back from the table. “What the hell is that smell?” he asked. He was clearly not a parent.

  Marie-Thérèse became embarrassed and flustered and started removing the soiled diaper. Before she was finished cleaning and rediapering the baby, the officer had his back against the wall and a hand over his nose and mouth.

  “What shall I do with this?” Marie-Thérèse asked, extending a hand with the soiled diaper.

  “Take it with you,” the man said curtly. He pointed at the door, and the little family left. They stood in a long line for a taxi, and Jasmine, once again, came through, beginning to cry. They were pushed to the front of the line and got the next cab.

  “Well,” Saddam said in English, “I’m glad to be through that security gauntlet.”

  M-T elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “Shut up,” she said.

  They checked into a reserved room at the Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington Avenue and waited for the child’s mother to arrive. She knocked on the door a few minutes later. The two women silently exchanged clothes, M-T wished them luck and left them in the room.

  She changed taxis twice going uptown. Finally, she got out at a corner and walked down the block to a storage company. Once inside and satisfied that she had not been followed, she opened the combination lock on her rented storage closet, switched on the light, and stepped inside, locking the door behind her. She changed clothes again, put her hair up and chose a blond wig, then she checked the available weapons. She decided on a tiny .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol with a silencer. She unscrewed the silencer and placed it in a pocket in a large handbag, along with an extra magazine. She also put an ice pick into the handbag, then she packed a few items of clothing into the bag, locked up, and left.

  Stone woke up before Carpenter did, but by the time he returned from the shower, she was awake, sitting up in bed, her breasts exposed. “If that is supposed to interest me, it’s working,” he said.

  “You smell all soapy and clean,” she said.

  He made a grab for her, but she eluded him and ran for the shower. “Fix me some breakfast,” she called.

  “What would you like?”

  “Fruit, yogurt, and coffee.”

  “That’s way too healthy for my kitchen,” he called back. “You’ll take fresh croissants and like it.”

  “If I have to,” she said, closing the shower door.

  “What do you have to do for the next few days?” Stone asked, munching a croissant.

  “I’ve been given time off,” she said.

  “Oh? Why?”

  She told him about the events of the day before.

  “So she’s in London now?”

  “Apparently,” Carpenter replied. “But I’m not taking any chances. I’m still in hiding.”

  “I think I have a better place to hide you than here,” Stone said.

  “And where would that be?”

  “I have a cottage in Connecticut, in a lovely colonial village called Washington, and if you’re willing to ditch your bodyguards, I’ll take you up there.”

  “To th
e country? Now, that sounds wonderful.”

  “I have some catching up to do in my office,” he said, “but I’ll be ready to go by mid-afternoon. Put some things in a bag.”

  “Will do.”

  It was closer to four before Stone got free of work. The two bodyguards worked both sides of the street before calling Carpenter on her cell phone to report the coast clear. By that time, she and Stone were sitting in his car, waiting for the word to move. When it came, Stone opened the garage door with the remote and drove away from the house, closing the door behind them. They turned up Third Avenue, and as they made a left on Fifty-seventh Street, they nearly ran down a young woman, a well-dressed blonde.

  The black Mercedes E55 with the darkened windows meant nothing to Marie-Thérèse, except that it had nearly killed her. The young woman meant nothing to Stone and Carpenter either.

  Stone drove to the West Side Highway and turned north, toward Connecticut.

  “How long a drive?” Carpenter asked.

  “An hour and forty minutes from this spot,” Stone said.

  “Can I cook you dinner tonight?”

  “I was going to take you out, but if you really know how to cook, well . . .”

  “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?” she said.

  27

  Marie-Thérèse showed one of her passports at the front door of the embassy on the Upper East Side and was let in. She approached a window in a thick glass wall.

  “May I help you?” the woman at the window asked in Arabic.

  “Yes,” Marie-Thérèse replied. “I would like to speak to the vice-consul in charge of tourism.”

  The woman blinked and paused for a moment. “We do not have a vice-consul for tourism,” she replied.

  “Please tell him that Abdul suggested I speak with him.”

  Again, the woman said, “We do not have a vice-consul for tourism.”

  “He is expecting me,” M-T replied.

  “One moment, please.” The woman left the window and went to a telephone. She spoke a few words, listened, then returned to the window, filled out a pass, and pushed it through the narrow opening. “Take the elevator to the fourth floor. You will be met.”

  “Thank you,” M-T replied. She turned and walked to the elevator, then rode it to the fourth floor. As she stepped out of the car two men in civilian clothes approached her.

  “Your handbag, please,” the shorter of the two said. He was thickly built, with thick, black hair. Though clean-shaven, his beard showed through the skin.

  She handed it over, then raised her arms for the search.

  The shorter man emptied the handbag onto a small table in the hallway and quickly found the pistol and the ice pick. He picked them up in one hand and the handbag in the other. “Follow me, please.” He led her down a hallway to the rear of the building, stopping at a steel doorway. He tapped a code into a keypad beside the door, then opened it and motioned for her to follow. He climbed a flight of stairs, entered another code beside another steel door, then took her down a hallway to a comfortably furnished office, where a rather handsome man sat at a desk, writing on a pad. The shorter man set M-T’s handbag and weapons on the desk and left.

  Without looking up, the man motioned for her to sit down. He kept her waiting while he finished writing, then closed the folder before him and set it aside.

  “You have come to see us sooner than I expected,” he said.

  “I had a little time on my hands,” she replied.

  The man took a pair of latex gloves from a desk drawer, then picked up her little pistol. “Crude but effective, no doubt,” he said.

  “It does very nicely at short ranges. I wouldn’t like to try to hit a target across a street.”

  He stood up, took a clump of keys from his pocket, and unlocked a steel cabinet. From it he removed a black cardboard box and set it on his desk.

  “I’m told that you are proficient with firearms,” he said.

  “I am.”

  He handed her a pair of latex gloves, then opened the box, removed a pistol from it, and laid it on the desk. “Have you ever seen one of these?”

  M-T donned the gloves, picked up the weapon, and examined it. It was a .22-caliber semiautomatic with a slightly thicker barrel than she would have expected. She ejected the magazine and examined that, too. “I’ve never seen one like this. It has no markings of any kind.”

  “We took it from a CIA agent in Beirut late last year,” the man said. He took a silencer from the box and handed her that, too. She installed it with a simple half turn. “Very nice,” she said. “An assassin’s weapon—light, easily concealed, and, I’ve no doubt, very accurate, especially with the silencer.”

  “It was custom-manufactured for the CIA. Only a couple of hundred were made, according to the man we took it from in Beirut. While it has no manufacturer’s markings and there are no identifying marks on any of its parts, we have discovered that the barrel’s rifling leaves a very distinctive pattern on the bullets fired from it. Part of the inside of the barrel is a freely rotating cylinder, so every time the weapon is fired, a different ballistic pattern is etched onto the bullet.”

  “I’ve never heard of that,” she said admiringly. “It’s ingenious.”

  “We have also learned that if any American police department runs a ballistics check on one of its bullets, the FBI comparison program will flag it as being very special and highly classified.”

  “So, when the police remove the bullet from your traitorous colleague, it will be known that he was killed with a CIA weapon?”

  “Exactly. But if you fire more than once, each bullet will appear to have come from a different weapon.”

  “And who is the gentleman? Do you have a photograph?”

  “He is the man who brought you to this office,” the man said. “The shorter of the two who greeted you at the elevator. Do you remember him well enough, or do you still want a photograph?”

  “I remember him very well,” M-T replied.

  “He lives six blocks north of the embassy,” the man said, “and he always walks home after work, leaving at around five-thirty. He walks up the east side of Park Avenue, where the sidewalks are wide and not crowded, even at rush hour.”

  “Will today be soon enough?” M-T asked.

  “Today will be very satisfactory. What assistance do you require?”

  “I will need an untraceable escape vehicle—a motorcycle, preferably—and someone to drive it. Can you do that in the time available?”

  “We can manage that.”

  She looked at her watch. “I have a little over an hour. I’ll reconnoiter and phone you with a location.”

  He wrote a number on a piece of paper and showed it to her. “Memorize it,” he said.

  She did so, then put the weapon into her handbag and stood up. “If there’s nothing else?”

  He took an envelope from his desk and handed it to her. “Some walking-around money, as the Americans say.”

  “I assume that, since the ballistics will identify the bullet as CIA, you will not need me to dump the weapon where it can be found?”

  “Please keep it, with my compliments,” he replied, standing up.

  They shook hands, in spite of the latex gloves, and she left.

  Downstairs, she walked to Park Avenue, then uptown. Four blocks along, she found a recessed, wrought-iron gate leading to a narrow alleyway beside a large apartment building. She stood in the recess and looked up and down Park. This would do nicely. She used her cell phone to call the number.

  “Yes?”

  She gave him the address of the building she stood next to. “Please have the vehicle follow your friend from a little distance. When the driver sees him fall, he is to pull up near the body. I will hop on, and he can drop me a few blocks away.”

  “It will be done.”

  “I won’t shoot unless I see the motorcycle there. If the driver tries to go past me, I’ll shoot him, so please instruct him carefully.�
�

  “I understand.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “You may call this number if you ever need assistance. I am called Ali.”

  “Thank you.” She punched off. She walked over to Madison Avenue and window-shopped for half an hour, then walked back to her chosen spot. She stood in the little recess, leaning against the building, and looked downtown, from whence her quarry would be coming. Ten minutes passed before she saw him, a block away. She did not see the motorcycle.

  “Right on time,” she said aloud to herself. “Let’s hope my transportation arrives as promptly.” She watched the man approach, now half a block away, waiting to cross the street. As he stepped off the curb, she saw the motorcycle. She knelt beside her handbag and checked the weapon, then she stood up and slung the bag over her shoulder and put her hand inside. She turned to look uptown, then down again. He was walking quickly, and the nearest pedestrian was half a block from him. The motorcycle stopped at the corner, idling.

  She pressed her back against the downtown side of the recess, so that he couldn’t see her. Then he appeared. She stepped out of the alcove with a last look around, took the weapon from the bag, and fired once at the back of his head from a distance of six feet. He fell like a butchered animal. She stepped closer and fired two more rounds into his head, then returned the pistol to her bag.

  The motorcycle came to a stop a few feet away. She hopped onto the pillion seat, sidesaddle. “Drive to Seventy-second Street and turn left,” she said.

  The driver followed instructions.

  “Now, straight ahead, and into the park.”

  He drove into the park.

  “Stop here,” she said, “and thank you.”

  He stopped, she hopped off, and he drove away without a word. From his size, and in spite of the helmet, she thought he was Ali, the man who had given her the pistol.

  She strolled south in Central Park, found a bench, and waited, her hand in her bag, on the pistol, to see if anyone pursued her. No one did.

  28

  Stone left the interstate north of Danbury and turned onto narrower country roads.