Assassin's Game

by Ward Larsen

  Then, and only then, did Slaton walk into the Strand Hotel.

  * * *

  He stepped though the entrance, paused, and began a carefully governed survey.

  Belying the hotel’s stately, ivy-covered exterior, the lobby was a contrast in Scandinavian contemporary: maple hardwood floors under Finnish Rya rugs; mid-century modern chairs and fixtures, all glass and angles and polished chrome. Aside from their physical arrangement, however, Slaton had no interest in the furnishings. He instead plotted the room’s landscape: counters, staircases, elevators, lounge areas. He took in the sounds and registered the general mood. His practiced eyes brushed over each guest and employee, hoping to capture any gaze that seemed equally practiced. Nothing drew his attention.

  Slaton saw two clerks at the reception desk, both women, and an older man staffing the adjacent concierge station. The concierge was deeply engaged with a guest, so his choices were narrow. He walked to the desk, veering toward the younger of the two women. Early twenties, blond, dazzling smile. Eager to please.

  She looked up as he approached, and said, “Kan jag hjälpa dig?”

  Slaton was not unprepared. His blue-gray eyes and sandy hair—lighter than usual after a summer outdoors—certainly made him appear more Swedish than American. Or, for that matter, Israeli. Yet another reason Mossad had found him so useful.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I’m American.”

  She shifted effortlessly to English, “Of course. How can I help you?”

  “I’m trying to locate one of your guests, but I don’t know the room number. Could you look it up for me?”

  “I am not permitted to give out such information,” she said, telling Slaton what he already knew. “But if you like I can dial the room and let you speak with the guest.”

  “That would be fine.”

  “What is the name?”

  “Christine Palmer. Dr. Christine Palmer.”

  Watching closely, Slaton sensed a hesitation. Her thin fingers typed the name into her computer.

  “Here it is,” she said.

  The clerk turned an adjacent house phone to face Slaton and performed the connection, again using her computer. For the second time he watched her type, and happily she used the number pad on the keyboard as opposed to the upper numeric bar. By some quirk of memory, inputs to ten-digit keypads were easily recalled by pattern alone. Seven, three, two, four. The seven was almost certainly a prefix to denote an internal line, which meant that Christine was in room 324.

  Or had been.

  Slaton picked up the house phone and listened as it rang. A dim hope rose that Christine would answer, that he would wake her from a midafternoon nap and they’d be laughing about the grand misunderstanding over dinner. On the eighth ring he hung up, both the phone and the idea.

  “I’m afraid she’s not in,” he said. “I’ll try again later. Thank you for your help.”

  “My pleasure,” she beamed.

  Slaton was about to turn when she added, “One moment, sir…” Another hesitation.

  He went to full alert, and saw her eyes flick to the right—toward the other receptionist. The second woman stood stiffly, her gaze locked to a spot behind him in the lobby.

  The pretty young clerk began to say something, but Slaton didn’t hear it. His attention was padlocked to a reflective strip of stainless-steel trim on the wall behind the counter. In the mirror-like surface he saw three men approaching.

  Slaton did not turn, but he moved. Ever so slightly, his stance widened and his left foot edged back in preparation. His hands were already free, so there was no need to set down a briefcase or pocket a mobile phone. As he braced his body, his eyes searched for improvised weapons, but he was standing at the front desk of a noble hotel. There was nothing.

  When the men were ten steps away they spread left and right. This told Slaton they were trained. He saw two possibilities. Unfortunately, two possibilities that demanded very different reactions. Slaton planned for the worst case and rehearsed a flow in his mind. With a half step back, he could pivot to his left and strike the man on the right, the biggest, with a heel to the head. Next, he would rotate a right elbow to the center target. He ended his blueprint there, knowing that was as far as it would realistically hold.

  Seconds from launching into a melee, he took one more look at the older clerk. Slaton weighed her expression very carefully. She was concerned, but in a controlled way. Guarded, yet not preparing to dive behind the counter. That made his decision.

  With the men positioned three steps behind him, Slaton slowly turned.

  The one in the middle, the smallest and a man who had ten years on the other two, put a hand under the lapel of his jacket. It came back out, as Slaton had hoped, with a well-worn set of credentials.

  “Polisen. Vi vill prata med dig.”

  Slaton gave the man a questioning look. “English?”

  “Police. We’d like to have a word with you.”

  SIX

  “Might I see some identification, sir?”

  Slaton gave his passport to the man in the middle and watched him type E-D-M-U-N-D D-E-A-D-M-A-R-S-H into his phone. The two bookends stood motionless and appeared unconcerned. In truth, Slaton was happy to see the police—they were next on his list to contact. He was not, however, happy to find them here. Slaton was sure he’d been highlighted by the receptionist after inquiring about Christine, and it struck him as ominous that this had earned him special recognition. It meant the police were at the Strand for reasons relating to her, and committing three officers to such a quest would not be done lightly.

  “I’m trying to find my wife,” Slaton said, his voice perfectly askew.

  “Her name?”

  “Dr. Christine Palmer. She’s here for a medical conference.”

  The man in the middle seemed to study him for a moment, then handed back his passport. He said, “Mr. Deadmarsh, I think we should talk.”

  They moved to a quiet corner of the lobby where two couches were separated by a glass table. The lead man introduced himself as Detective Inspector Sanderson. He was late fifties, a small man with a crooked nose and more than his share of scars. A bantam scrapper if Slaton had ever seen one. He sensed a toughness about the man, along with a manner that implied there was little he hadn’t seen, nothing he hadn’t heard. His most striking feature was a set of ice-blue eyes that ran clear and sharp. After a businesslike handshake, Sanderson settled onto one of the couches. The two supporting men—twin monuments of bulk, sinew, and seriousness—drifted to the perimeter.

  “What can you tell me about Christine?” Slaton asked, not having to manufacture the edge in his voice.

  “I can tell you we’re looking for her.”

  “Why?”

  “Actually, I was going to ask you that same question. Why are you here?”

  “I got a text from Christine yesterday. I was back in the States.” Slaton pulled out his phone and showed Sanderson the message.

  The inspector studied the display with apparent interest, although Slaton suspected the message was something he’d already seen. If the man was indeed searching for Christine, the first thing he would have done was acquire a record of her mobile traffic.

  “And based on this one-word text,” Sanderson surmised, “you booked the first available flight to Stockholm?”

  “Yes,” Slaton said matter-of-factly. “My wife said she needed help. I tried to contact her, but she didn’t answer. So I took the first flight.” All true, and once again points that Sanderson, if he was thorough, had already verified.

  “Has anything like this happened before?” the inspector asked.

  “My wife calling for help? No, never. This scares the hell out of me, Inspector. Why are the police involved?”

  The cool blue eyes probed. “First I should tell you that we have no reason to believe your wife is in immediate danger.”

  “Immediate danger? What the hell does that mean?”

  “Yesterday there was a shooting
at a café nearby. Two men were gunned down. Your wife was at that café.”

  “Was she injured?”

  “No,” Sanderson said, “at least not that we know of. But she was seen talking with one of the victims right before the shooting began.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m afraid that has been vexing us. We’re not sure, which is why we’d very much like to talk to her. Unfortunately…” Another heavy pause.

  Another dead stare from Edmund Deadmarsh.

  “Soon after this shooting took place, a woman—we believe your wife—was seen by a number of witnesses running across the waterfront.”

  “Running?”

  “She was being pursued by a man, we think one of the assailants.”

  Slaton put his head in his hands, a reaction that was part theater. But only part. He tried to incorporate what he was learning with what he already knew, yet the possibilities remained overwhelming. He needed more information. “A man was chasing Christine? Why? Was this a robbery or something?”

  “At the moment, I’d say not. But we really aren’t sure.”

  Slaton sensed a degree of honesty in that answer, laced perhaps with frustration. “All right, so this man was seen chasing my wife—what happened then?”

  “Again, we have a number of witnesses, and their statements all correlate. They saw your wife jump onto a departing boat to escape her pursuer.”

  For the first time Slaton saw an answer he liked, but he gave no tell. Remaining in character, he pulled an incredulous tone. “She jumped onto a boat? Where did she go from there?”

  The policeman turned his palms up to say he didn’t know.

  “Have you identified any of these people?”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid.”

  “But you said two men were shot. Don’t people in Sweden carry driver’s licenses or identity cards?”

  To his credit, Sanderson remained steady. “We strongly suspect that these men are not Swedish. And this is where I was hoping you might be able to add something.”

  “What could I tell you? My wife is a doctor and she came here for a conference.” Slaton held up his phone like a lawyer holding an exhibit to a jury. “She called me for help, and now you’re telling me a man with a gun was chasing her.”

  “Did I say the man had a gun?” Sanderson countered quickly.

  “You said there were shootings.”

  Both fell silent for a moment, and the policeman leveled his cool stare, probing for any glimmer of deceit or indecision. Slaton showed him desperation, rising anger.

  Sanderson sighed. “Well, Mr. Deadmarsh, it appears you don’t understand what’s happening any more than we do.”

  “I wish I did.”

  “All the same, there might be something you can do to help us find your wife.”

  “Anything.”

  Minutes later they were weaving through traffic in an unmarked police car. Slaton was in the backseat, shouldered next to the larger of the two bookends, a massive and unsmiling man with a blond crew cut. He supposed they were trying to intimidate him, trying to force the right mind-set. At that moment, Slaton imagined he was going to waste the rest of his day answering questions. He expected photographs and stale coffee in a room that stank of sweat and fear. He expected takeout food on a scratched wooden table. He expected police headquarters.

  He was wrong.

  SEVEN

  Inspector Arne Sanderson tried to be discreet as he eyed the man in the backseat of his unmarked car. He was intrigued by the American in the mirror.

  For the last twenty-four hours Sanderson had run an ambitious investigation. The first hours of any inquiry were critical, the time when cases were broken, yet this particular quest had hit a wall. His overall assessment was one of disconnects. He had a double shooting, but no apparent motive. A doctor with a spotless background who’d been chased through the streets, and who was concerned enough about her safety to have leapt onto a moving boat. And the most troubling thing of all—of the five people involved, the only one he’d identified was the doctor, and she seemed more a victim than a suspect. They had found driver’s licenses and passports on the two men who’d been collected by ambulances at the scene. All were Turkish items and all patently forged. Yet it was quality work, or so Sanderson had been told—biometric chips, color-changing ink, fluorescent fibers—all certainly fashioned by the same artist. Drug smuggling was his first inclination, and that could still be the case. But there was a niggling doubt. A doubt further driven by the man seated behind him.

  Driving fast and distracted by thoughts of his passenger, Sanderson missed the turn at the Kungsbron bridge. He made a hasty correction, and nearly ran down a pedestrian outside the Belgian embassy. Cursing silently, he eased off the accelerator. For thirty-five years Sanderson had watched policemen near the end of their careers, and he knew there were two distinct leanings. Most pulled back and coasted onto the off-ramp of retirement. They put checkmarks in boxes and answered phones when it suited them, showed up at the station a few minutes later each morning. When the halfhearted party finally came, with its backslapping and cake and embarrassing gifts, it was no more than a ripple, quickly lost in the ongoing storm of day-to-day operations. But there was a second path. Men and women who went out on less subdued terms, the results either noble or ruinous, but always spectacular.

  Is that where I’m headed? he wondered.

  Sanderson looked in the mirror again, but the man had somehow slipped from view. In what was becoming a recurring mental exercise, he challenged himself to recall details about Edmund Deadmarsh: a bricklayer from Virginia, calluses on his hands to prove it. What color were his eyes? Blue-gray, unusual. Too easy. What color were his shoes? Sanderson thought, but drew a blank. What color?

  Brown, tan laces, well-worn. Boat shoes, but not a name brand, U.S. size eleven or twelve.

  Yes, he thought, that’s it.

  He pressed a bit harder on the gas, and took a policeman’s liberties against a newly red traffic light. He made it through the intersection unscathed, but with horns blaring behind him. Arne Sanderson grinned ever so slightly.

  * * *

  Minutes later Sanderson turned sharply into the parking lot of Saint Göran Hospital. On appearances a contemporary affair of burnt brick and glass, the facility was in fact one of the oldest in Sweden, with a pedigree dating back to the thirteenth century. As an institution, it had survived war, famine, and no fewer than eight hundred Nordic winters, which was more than could be said for the monarchies and governments that had overseen its administration.

  Sanderson led inside, flashed his identification to a security guard, and entered the elevator with Deadmarsh and Sergeant Blix in trail. When the door closed, he sank the only button that would take them down.

  Deadmarsh watched closely. “Why are we at a hospital?” he asked.

  “The two victims of this shooting are here, but we haven’t been able to identify either. Both men were carrying false papers—very high-quality documents, in fact.” Sanderson saw no reaction to this as the elevator bottomed out. The door opened, and he noticed Deadmarsh eyeing a sign on the wall that said in Swedish, MORGUE. If he didn’t know better, he might have thought the American was reading it.

  He said, “We’d like you to take a look at these men, see if you recognize either of them.”

  “What makes you think I’d know who they are?” Deadmarsh asked.

  “We know your wife had an acquaintance with one of them, so there must be some chance. How long have the two of you been married?”

  “About six months.”

  “Did you know each other long before that?”

  “No, actually. Only a few months.”

  “So you wouldn’t have a lot of mutual friends,” Sanderson suggested.

  “Fewer than most couples.”

  They arrived at a heavy metal door, and Sanderson sent Blix ahead. He turned and said, “All the same, I’d like you to have a look. But I must warn you, this is the
morgue. Are you up to it?”

  “If it will help find my wife—absolutely.”

  Sanderson engaged his most somber smile. “Good. It always helps to have that kind of cooperation.”

  EIGHT

  Slaton followed the inspector through a steel door that looked like something from a prison. Here, on the lowest level, the contemporary architecture of the building’s outer facade gave way to more original underpinnings. As was common practice in Europe, the ancient foundation had been shored up, and the old skeleton dressed with new fixtures and fittings. The room in which he was standing was dated by a hard stone floor that seemed to go straight to the earth’s core. He saw naked ventilation ducts strapped to a plaster ceiling, Internet wiring tacked across wall slabs that had been laid down centuries before. Noting the thickness of the jointed stone, Slaton was happy to have taken up masonry in the twenty-first century.

  Weak lighting sprayed the unpainted walls in an eerie yellow hue. The room was cold and damp, fitting to its function, and the smell of an acrid cleaning agent didn’t quite overpower the stench of death. Slaton had been in morgues before, bigger versions overflowing with the aftermath of bombings and war. Here there were no more than a dozen tables reserved for the newly departed, a waiting room for earthly remains until they could be disposed of with that proper balance of decency and sanitation. Slaton did not see an attendant, but he heard music from a nearby office, something with a Euro-pop techno beat that added to the room’s bizarre texture.

  A drawer had already been pulled, presenting a body covered by an off-white sheet. The inspector led Slaton to one side of the long gray tray, and his sergeant pulled back the cover. Slaton studied the body. As he did, he felt Sanderson studying him.