Assassin's Game

by Ward Larsen

  Sanderson knew precisely what was at stake—Assistant Commissioner Paul Sjoberg’s step up to National. He said, “I think I have a good idea.”

  “Good. Give me an update this afternoon. Three o’clock?”

  “Three o’clock,” Sanderson repeated, retreating to the door.

  Paul Sjoberg stared at the threshold long after Sanderson was gone, his fingers tapping the blotter on his desk. After a full minute, he went back to his computer. He called up his email and reopened a file near the top.

  From: Dr. Ernst Samuels, M.D./NPMS

  Subject: D/I Sanderson

  Please be advised that Detective Inspector Sanderson has no-showed a second appointment. Given the nature of his evaluation, I recommend that he reschedule immediately, and if necessary be pulled from duty to accommodate. A third event will result in a formal letter of complaint through department channels.

  Regards,

  E. Samuels, M.D.

  NPB Health Services

  Sjoberg composed the most conciliatory reply he could muster and hit the Send button. He then wondered what the hell to do.

  * * *

  It took nearly two hours for Slaton to be proved correct. He was scanning a review for a thriller he would never read when a man sat down at his table. Slaton didn’t look up right away, but instead tipped the last of the tea into his cup, the dregs of the pot thick and flavorful. It was a good ten seconds before he lowered the Times.

  “It took you long enough,” he said in Hebrew.

  He was looking at a man roughly his equal in height, but considerably heavier. He had dark eyes, curly black hair shot with threads of gray, and was casually dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. One hand gripped the arm of his chair while the other, in an awkward set, was positioned near the open zipper of his dark windbreaker. Outside, there was not a breath of wind. The man responded to Slaton’s taunt by simply sliding a black iPhone across the table, angling between a spent glass of orange juice and a bowl of sweetener packets.

  Slaton put the Times on the table. He ignored the phone and gave the man a level, dispassionate stare. The same look a headmaster might give a recidivist truant.

  “How long have you been in country?” Slaton asked.

  The man obviously didn’t want to chat, but Slaton waited, making it clear who was in charge.

  “A week,” the man replied, keeping with Hebrew.

  Slaton’s eyes drifted obviously to the street. “Where is your partner?”

  To his credit, the man didn’t flinch. “Just take the damned phone.”

  The waiter was bearing down. Slaton waved him away, and while his right hand swiped the air dismissively, his left foot inched forward under the table.

  “Who will I be talking to?” Slaton asked.

  “It’s a secure line.” The courier offered nothing more.

  Slaton picked up the phone and saw that it was ready to connect to a number labeled HOME. He tapped the screen, and the call was answered before even a single ring had rattled the handset. “This is the director.” The voice was flat and featureless, like an ocean in the doldrums.

  “How do I know that?” Slaton said. “We’ve never met.”

  “No, but you were well acquainted with my predecessor.”

  “Your predecessor is in a hospital fighting for his life. Why?”

  “Anton put himself in a bad position.”

  “I think you put him in a bad position,” said Slaton.

  “That was never my intent. We are doing what we can for him.”

  Slaton did not doubt that he was talking to Raymond Nurin. If he didn’t know the man, he recognized the thought process. A pragmatic viper.

  “Who approached Christine?” he asked.

  “We did.”

  “Why? If Mossad saw a threat to her safety, I should have been told. Is she in danger?”

  Nurin did not reply right away.

  “Dammit! What’s going on here? Where is my wife?”

  “Your wife is safe,” Nurin said.

  There was a lengthy pause as Slaton interpreted. Your wife is safe. Four simple words, but the implication was stunning. His world, so long predictable, seemed to invert. All that was known became unknown. All that was controlled became uncontrolled.

  “Are you telling me Mossad has taken Christine?”

  “She is safe.”

  “Safe? You put her in the middle of a goddamn firefight. Christine ran through traffic and threw herself into a boat.”

  “None of that was planned.”

  “And what was planned? Mossad is branching out into kidnapping and extortion? If that’s your new organization, Director, I’m glad I left.”

  “Actually, David, that is my point. You can never leave. Not with your background. You will always be what we trained you to be.”

  Slaton felt anger welling. “Is that the point of all this? You want me back? For what?”

  Nurin answered with silence.

  Still focused on the man across the table, Slaton said, “All right, Director, I’ll go that far with you. Who do you want me to kill?”

  TEN

  Sitting in an unmarked police car a hundred yards away, Sergeant Lars Elmander was becoming increasingly agitated. To begin with, he was unhappy he’d been forced to work on a Sunday morning—his twelve-year-old son had an important soccer match. Then there was the assignment itself. It had started out easily enough when he’d spotted Deadmarsh leaving the Strand Hotel. For two hours Elmander had watched him stroll the waterfront like any tourist, taking in the sights at a casual pace, chatting with a vendor at a news kiosk. This was followed by an extended breakfast on the patio of the Renaissance Tea Room.

  Yet the very ease of the job had begun to bother Elmander. He was watching Deadmarsh flick casually through a newspaper, teacup in hand, when the disconnect mushroomed to sufficient mass in his policeman’s brain. Elmander had been given a briefing on his target, and he decided that for a man who’d just flown across an ocean to find his missing wife, Edmund Deadmarsh was acting in an improbably casual manner. His concerns were magnified when a second man arrived and, with no apparent invitation, took a seat at Deadmarsh’s table.

  He watched closely, yet saw little interaction between the two. Soon Deadmarsh began talking on a mobile phone, and it was then that the final revelation thumped into Elmander’s head. It occurred to him that the stranger who’d just arrived matched the description of a man they were looking for—the shooter of two days prior.

  Elmander straightened in his seat and pulled out his phone. He dialed Sanderson’s number, but the inspector didn’t pick up. “Come on, come on…”

  In a move that would save his life in a matter of minutes, he ended the call, rang the dispatcher, and requested backup.

  * * *

  “Your target is Dr. Ibrahim Hamedi,” Nurin said, “the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.”

  “I should have known,” Slaton said.

  “Hamedi will soon be traveling outside Iran. He will be vulnerable. The phone you are holding contains a file of information. It will tell you where and when to strike, including details on a tactical opening that is ideal for a man with your gift. Use it.”

  These words rang in Slaton’s head like a klaxon, and he stamped them to memory without trying to understand. Nothing made sense. An assassination planned, but then subcontracted? Christine abducted to make it happen?

  “Why?” Slaton asked. “If you have such a great opening, do it yourself. You have others like me.”

  “No, David. Not like you. Think about what has happened recently and everything will make sense.”

  Slaton considered what he knew, and he did find a way to make it work. “You’ve failed twice. A leak?”

  “Yes,” Nurin said.

  “All the more reason for me to not get involved.”

  “I will be your only contact, David. No one in Mossad knows your intent, not even the man sitting across the table from you. Do this one jo
b and it will be your last.”

  “No. I’ve already done my last job.”

  “Christine will—”

  “Christine will be safe very soon,” Slaton cut in, “because you don’t have her. If you did, you’d already have given me proof.”

  After a pause, Nurin said, “You’re right, of course. But we’re looking for her.”

  “So am I.”

  “Don’t overestimate your abilities, kidon. You are alone with no support. We have dozens of operatives in country, and every airport terminal and rail station in Stockholm is covered. We will find her first.”

  “And then what—hold her in an undisclosed location? Interrogation?”

  “Please, David, believe me when I say that I am a practical man. This is no more than a demonstration. You and Christine are in a tenuous position. Anonymity is what keeps your past at bay, and Mossad controls that anonymity. We have gone to great trouble and expense to ensure it. But there is a price for our continued support. You need us, and we need you.”

  “And if I don’t agree, then what? Mossad will give me up? Expose me for what I once was? That sounds like a threat.”

  “A threat against you would be—how should I say it? Counterproductive? I dare say I might be putting my own personal safety at risk.”

  Slaton said nothing. He put his free forearm on the lip of the table, curled his fingers underneath, and leaned forward.

  “This isn’t about your safety or mine,” Nurin continued, “and certainly not your wife’s. This is about Israel.” He explained that Iran was close to achieving its ultimate nuclear ambition, the development of a fission device that could be coupled to a long-range ballistic missile. Israel’s air force and cyberwarriors, for all their offensive capability, could not end that threat. Hamedi was the key. “The architect of Qom is vulnerable. We must act because this is our last chance. Israel is desperate, David, so I am desperate.”

  “You don’t represent the Israel I knew. Not with a scheme like this.”

  “And if I had come to Virginia and asked for your help? Would you have acted?”

  No reply.

  “You know we’ll find Christine. Do as I ask, and in a week Israel will be rescued. You and your wife can then be safe for the long term. You have my word.”

  “Your word?” Slaton spat, his anger rising. “You and your organization can go to hell!”

  His thumb ended the call. He took a deep breath and tried to right his thoughts. There was something he wasn’t seeing. Something in Nurin’s reasoning that didn’t make sense. Slaton had no chance to decipher what it was because the man across the table moved.

  It wasn’t his hand, but his gaze, flicking toward the street for an instant. Slaton was sure he was a Mossad field operative, a katsa, presumably armed with a company-issued .22 Beretta in a company-issued shoulder holster. The man had been here roughly five minutes, and until a moment ago his eyes had been locked squarely across the table. There was caution in every facet of the man, his stiff posture and overcasual stare, and so the katsa knew who Slaton was. Knew what Slaton was. According to Nurin, the man hadn’t been told why he was here, and this was likely true. Give him the phone. He is dangerous, but not a threat to you. Those would have been his instructions. But the phone call to the director had obviously not gone well, and so the katsa was double-checking that his backup was nearby. A partner, or even a team.

  Where? Slaton wondered. Close in, on the sidewalk? Across the street in a car? How many? He imagined it was the same setup they’d used two days ago with Christine. Unfortunately, that thought took Slaton to an unexpected place, to a vision of Christine running for her life across the waterfront. The control he’d been fighting for was suddenly lost.

  Pocketing the phone, Slaton looked across the table and said in a clear voice, “Tell me one thing. Were you the one who went after my wife?”

  He got a dark stare in return, an attempt at bravado. But no answer.

  “Did you shoot Anton Bloch?”

  Ten full seconds of silence.

  Slaton kept perfectly still. Perfectly.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Nothing.

  At twenty seconds the katsa lost his nerve. He moved for his gun in a rush.

  ELEVEN

  Krav Maga, literally “contact combat,” is a style of fighting developed in Israel. Emphasizing the art of counterattack, it is the embodiment of street-fighting. There are no rules, and any and all resources are used to neutralize opponents. In training, emphasis is placed on reacting to unexpected and immediate threats, the worst-case scenario. In the real world, however, the preference is to recognize potential adversaries in advance and formulate preemptive strikes.

  Operating under this mind-set, Slaton had been positioning for his assault ever since the katsa had sat down. In truth, even before the katsa had sat down. He knew a great deal about the table in front of him. He knew that it weighed very near fifteen pounds and was not secured to the floor. He knew it rested on three legs, two of which were now perfectly bracketing the katsa’s chair. He understood the table’s distribution of weight, and that its center of gravity lay just below a blunt edge that was situated between the katsa’s solar plexus and his holstered gun. The katsa’s chair was identical to his own, a typical four-legged affair, but atypically light and unstable. Slaton knew all of this because he had studied and weighed and measured for the better part of two hours. He also knew that the area behind the chair was clear, nothing but five feet of cold, hard concrete.

  So before the katsa’s hand had even reached his windbreaker, Slaton was countering. Perfectly balanced by his right foot and left arm, his left foot hooked a front leg of the katsa’s chair and pulled, while at the same time his right hand pushed the tabletop in the opposite direction. The only possible result was for the man to rotate uncontrollably in his chair. The katsa’s free hand went up and back, a foreseeable reaction to falling blindly backward. His right hand cleared his jacket as he fell, and the predicted Beretta was there. But he was completely off balance, more flying than sitting, and his head slammed into the concrete.

  Everything on the table flew to the floor, a clatter of breaking china and spinning utensils. Slaton moved instantly over the stunned katsa, but the man recovered quickly. He still had the Beretta, and started swinging it forward. Slaton lunged for the gun but got only a wrist. He grappled with his other hand and reached the weapon, covering the katsa’s desperate grip. The gun was frozen between them, two big men, but gravity was on Slaton’s side. He levered all his weight, and applied the hand and arm strength of a man who in the last months had moved three hundred tons of stone. The katsa buckled, and Slaton forced the barrel away from his own chest and toward his opponent.

  Both men were grasping and pulling when the gun went off.

  Slaton held firm, unrelenting.

  The man below him went slack.

  He wrestled the gun free, and saw a wound at the katsa’s throat pulsing blood. This, he knew, was no more than a mechanical aftereffect, fluid dynamics taking its course. The upward angle of the shot had sent the round into his head, and the man’s eyes were already lifeless and wide, staring at the sky. With bright red blood pooling on the floor, Slaton stood with the gun in his hand. He quickly gauged the movement around him, and registered nothing as a threat. Briefly, he considered searching the body for documents or identification, but knew it was pointless. And there was no time. He had completed his objective, made the sought connection. Now the situation had digressed, and only one thing mattered.

  Get clear.

  Slaton had backed one step away when he was struck by an opportunity. He pulled the phone from his pocket and took a quick photograph. Then he ran.

  He dodged tables amid cries of shock and outrage. The chaos around him, on appearances random and uncontrolled, was in fact quite predictable. Those nearest the fray were leaning away and trying for distance, while others, farther back and with the illusion of security, dialed 112 on their mo
bile phones to reach the police. Slaton ignored them all. In the last hour he had studied every man and woman in the place, and seen no one with the air of a would-be hero. No off-duty policeman or soldier on leave. If a threat remained, it would be outside.

  Reaching the sidewalk with the gun still in hand, he palmed it discreetly to his thigh. A voice from the past played in his head. A man moving fast generates attention. A man moving fast with a gun generates panic. Slaton broke into a purposeful jog, the pace of a man trying to reach a stopped bus before the door closed. He’d gone no more than five steps when he skidded to a stop.

  Two men had him perfectly bracketed.

  * * *

  If there is a recipe for disaster it is to put three men who are armed and trained in one place, and then fix that each is unaware of the others’ motives.

  Of the three, it was Sergeant Elmander who was taken completely by surprise. He’d been completing the call to dispatch, his mobile stuck to his ear, when he saw flashes of movement under the café’s cheerful yellow awning. He’d seen the table go flying, and watched Deadmarsh jump to his feet. The man who’d been sitting across from him disappeared in a burst of commotion.

  Then Elmander heard the gunshot.

  He knew he had to do something, so he clambered out of his car. He heard the reassuring sound of a siren in the distance. Backup was on the way. His hand went under his jacket and he performed an awkward exchange—his phone for his SIG Sauer. At a cautious trot, Lars Elmander began moving toward the Renaissance Tea Room.

  * * *

  One hundred yards away, on an opposite diagonal to the café, a stocky and nearly bald man burst from a black Mercedes sedan. He too began moving, though at a decidedly more purposeful clip. His eyes alternated between the café and a blond man with a crew cut who had just come into play—judging by his dress, the bald man decided, almost certainly a policeman. As if to prove the point, the crew-cut man drew a weapon as he ran, and his other hand fumbled in a back pocket for what had to be his credentials.

  The bald man altered his vector slightly, but he didn’t slow—not until he reached the street. The traffic was heavy, a nearby light having cycled to green at precisely the wrong time. That, he knew, could be fixed. He held up an open palm to stop oncoming traffic, and reinforced the directive with what was brandished in his other hand—a heavy handgun with a long barrel.