by Ward Larsen
An approaching delivery truck skidded to a stop.
* * *
Slaton saw them both.
The policeman was closer, thirty yards and closing. He was holding his ID toward Slaton, but his gun was low, pointed at the pavement—a configuration that might prove fatal in a matter of seconds. The bald man’s weapon was ready, held steady and high. Slaton couldn’t identify the type of gun from forty yards, but it was a heavy piece.
Only the policeman seemed unaware of the triangular nature of the battlefield. Any of the three might shoot, and all had two targets from which to choose. It was a tactical riddle the likes of which Slaton had never experienced, indeed never imagined. The kind of situation his old instructors at the schoolhouse loved to conjure. In an instant, he narrowed his focus to one thing—his desired outcome. He had to separate from this place and get safe. Countless variables came into play—crowds, traffic, a low sun—all things that might or might not push an engagement in his favor. There was simply no time to compute it all. Slaton’s principal advantage was that he had faced such dilemmas before, and so he took immediate control.
With the Beretta still palmed tightly to his hip, he looked squarely at the cop. Slaton raised his empty left hand and pointed toward the third man in the street.
* * *
Elmander didn’t stop. But he looked where Deadmarsh was pointing. He saw a stocky man with a gun in the middle of the road.
On locking gazes both froze.
Elmander watched the bald man square his shoulders and raise his weapon. His policeman’s response was instantaneous, a sequence beaten into his head through years of training. He shouted, “Police, drop your weapon!” and set himself in a good platform as he brought his own weapon to bear. It was a motion he had practiced a thousand times on the firing range.
But this was not a firing range.
Elmander felt like he was moving in slow motion, like his limbs were stuck in quicksand. He saw the massive barrel being leveled at him, and knew that his own gun was coming up too late. His sited his target, but the picture was uncontrolled and wavering. Elmander tried to settle for a shot, knowing speed was nothing without accuracy. He watched the bald man doing the same. His finger began to squeeze, but the gun’s hammer never fell.
He was hit.
Excruciating pain seared into his right thigh, and before he knew it he was toppling sideways like a two-hundred-pound bowling pin. Strangely, in that instant, with the pavement rushing toward his left ear in an uncontrolled descent, Elmander swore he heard a second bullet whistle past his head. As he hit hard and rolled, every conscious effort went to one thing. Hold on to your gun, you idiot!
Elmander did. The hard steel stock was there in his hand, but when he tried to stand again his right leg buckled. Half sitting, half kneeling, he scanned for the bald man and saw him, just a flash disappearing behind the frame of a parked car. Elmander trained his gun in that direction—a terrible position from which to fire, but at least a deterrent. Something for the man to think about. He looked for Deadmarsh but didn’t see him anywhere.
Christ.
His leg felt as if it was on fire, but through either honed discipline or visceral fear Elmander ignored his wound. The siren was getting closer, echoing off the surrounding buildings in the most beautiful symphony he’d ever heard. He kept alert, his weapon poised, knowing that if he could just keep the assailant at bay for another minute, maybe two, help would arrive. Scanning the streets and sidewalks, he saw no sign of either Deadmarsh or the bald man. As it turned out, Elmander would never see either again.
He did, however, hear their shots.
* * *
With the policeman out of the fight, Slaton ran an arc around the bald man, pulling him away from the wounded officer. He was moving at full speed, skirting the busy street. The .22 Beretta is a light weapon, and even in his practiced hand a handicap in terms of range, accuracy, and stopping power. Slaton fired from fifty feet on a hard run, and the fact that he scored any hits at all was testament that his marksmanship had not faded. Of the three rounds he sent, two found their mark.
His target rocked once, twice, and almost fell.
Almost.
He’s wearing a vest, Slaton thought.
The stocky man returned fired, and a round smacked into the wall just in front of Slaton, concrete chips stinging his face.
Move, move!
Slaton fired across his body, but missed. At this range, on the run, the odds of a successful headshot were virtually nil. With two rounds remaining, and no spare magazine, he was on the defensive. There was nothing to be gained from an engagement—only risk. He changed his angle and sprinted toward a corner that would put him clear. A bus wheeled around from the side street, giving momentary cover, and Slaton lowered his weapon and went for flat-out speed. He was two steps from safety when another shot came. Another miss.
He never saw the scooter.
He would later surmise that it was a kid trying to get away. Whatever the case, the scooter appeared in a flash and hit him like an express train. Slaton clattered to the ground and slammed into a lamppost stanchion. Something slashed his arm. He was facedown on the sidewalk, arms and legs sprawled wide. The killer had to be right behind him, closing fast with a capable weapon—and now at a range where he wouldn’t miss.
With all the self-discipline he had, Slaton lay perfectly still.
He imagined the bald man nearing, imagined him focusing on his downed target and closing for a coup de grâce. Amid the raucous street noise, Slaton discerned the sound of slowing footsteps.
One …
Absolute stillness, his body relaxed. He sensed the footsteps shuffle to a pause.
Two …
A vision of the bald man raising his weapon, settling his sight.
Three.
Slaton snap-rolled left, and in the next instant a bullet smacked the concrete where his head had just been. The Beretta moved in a flash, his right hand sweeping a high arc to intersect the man’s head. At precisely the right instant—
Fire.
Flat on his back, Slaton again went still. The recoiling Beretta was calm in his hand, ready with one round remaining. He didn’t need it.
The killer, with a new and neat hole in his forehead, crumpled to the concrete and didn’t move.
Slaton did.
With the gunfire at an end, order would soon be restored. And order was his enemy. He scrambled to his feet and turned onto the side street. Were there any others? he wondered. Slaton hoped he’d been facing a team of two, but there was no way to be sure. He ran a block east, then a block south, glancing over his shoulder at every turn. He kept up the zigzag pattern, east then south, for five minutes. His arm stung, but he was moving fluently, adrenaline doing its job. He kept an eye on the cars and people around him, watching for movement that was abrupt or counter to the natural flow. Nothing drew his attention.
Spotting an in-service taxi at a stoplight, he hailed it with his good arm. The driver waved him in and Slaton careened into the backseat, whipping the door shut behind him.
“Gustav Vasa church,” he said breathlessly. “I’m late. How long will it take?”
“Fifteen minutes,” the driver said, not questioning the idea of being late for church on a Sunday morning.
Slaton threw a hundred-dollar bill through the Plexiglas window—there was no time for subtly. He caught the man’s eyes in the mirror. “Make it ten.”
Not another word was spoken. The cab jumped ahead.
Slaton examined his arm. Pain, moderate bleeding, but his shirt helped mask the damage—red on red. He settled back into the seat and felt his heart thumping, something you never noticed until the downside of a firefight.
The driver was worthy. He ran two red lights and hurtled over a curb to reach the church in nine minutes. Slaton got out and started toward the main chapel where a large crowd was spilling into the street. Tourists perhaps, or well-blessed parishioners leaving the midmorning service.
He didn’t bother to differentiate. As soon as the cab was out of sight, Slaton reversed course and walked fifty yards to the Odenplan subway entrance. He quick-stepped down and disappeared.
TWELVE
Sanderson was concentrating on a computer screen in the criminal forensics division, a video that had been captured two days earlier by the security camera of a Strandvägen bank. A silver Audi was parked along the street, blurry and distant, and the technician seated beside him tinkered with the image until the license plate became clear.
“And you ran it?” Sanderson asked.
“The number doesn’t exist—it’s probably been altered.”
Sanderson frowned, but was not surprised. “What about the car? Any luck identifying it?”
“No reports of that make and model being stolen, and we haven’t found anything similar abandoned.”
“What about our suspects? We could really use a good photograph or two.”
The tech sorted computer files like a magician running a card trick. He pulled up a half dozen photos. “These are the best we’ve been able to find.”
The images, again extracted from video footage, were grainy and of marginal use. Nothing Sanderson would bother to distribute, and probably nothing a prosecutor could ever use in a court of law. The only consolation was that two of the men were already accounted for, one in hospital and one in the morgue. The best image captured was one they did not need—they already had an excellent passport photo of Dr. Christine Palmer, along with a high-resolution image from the website run by her physician’s group. She was an attractive woman with soft features under medium-length auburn hair, and on the website she was presented as doctors invariably were—compassionate smile over the requisite white lab coat. The fact that she was apparently married to a manual laborer registered as a curiosity to Sanderson, but nothing more. He was pondering it all when a young woman from the command center rushed into the room.
“Inspector Sanderson! We’ve just had more trouble on the waterfront, sir!”
“What now?”
“The Renaissance Tea Room. Shots fired, two dead. And one of ours is injured, on his way to the hospital now.”
Sanderson’s stomach knotted. “Do we know who?”
“I believe it’s Elmander.”
* * *
Slaton was seated behind a partition on a nearly empty Metro train, the Blue Line bound for Tensta. White shafts from passing floodlights flicked through the windows as the car swayed smooth and quick over the tracks. There were two other passengers in his car, a teenage couple who’d gotten on at the last stop in a rush of laughter and fumbling limbs. A pair so absorbed in each other, Slaton doubted they had even noticed him.
His first order of business was a self-appraisal, and the only damage he saw was a three-inch gash to his upper arm, his shirtsleeve torn to correlate. A bullet? he wondered. A ricochet? Most likely not. As was usually the case, something less dramatic, even mundane—a broken beer bottle or a sharp edge from the scooter he’d tackled. Behind the partition he bandaged the wound with what he’d been able to scavenge from the departure platform, a pile of discarded napkins and a strip of packing tape ripped from a cardboard box. That stopped the bleeding, but it was no use against infection. He rolled up the long sleeve of his shirt to cover the bloodstained section, then did the same with the other side for the sake of symmetry. This turned out to be the most painful part, flexing his injured bicep, but he got the job done.
Slaton took the iPhone from his pocket and turned it in his hand. On appearances it seemed a generic device, but he was sure it had been loaded with any number of applications that Apple had never imagined. Mossad was certainly tracking it, his position likely pinging on a display somewhere in Tel Aviv at this very moment, like a beacon out of a dark night. He also allowed that the phone had been modified in such a way that turning it off, or even removing the battery, was not a solution. For the moment, however, Slaton knew he was safe—a train was a moving target, and this offered a certain latitude. To get rid of the thing was the only answer, but first he had to see what was in Nurin’s files. He woke the phone and saw the usual icons for web browsers, music, and games. Only one was unfamiliar, a bright red square with a capital N. A spymaster’s sense of humor? he wondered.
Slaton tapped the icon and a list of files came into view. He opened the first and saw a map of Geneva marked with reference numbers for associated notes. He navigated through and saw that the assassination was to take place the following Sunday, seven days from today. Another file contained an op plan, complete with diagrams and schedules. Slaton read quickly and took mental pictures. He considered forwarding the files to another computer, but quickly discarded the idea—trying to outmaneuver Mossad’s clever computer technicians was a fool’s game. The files were certainly tagged, tied like so many fishing lures to mainframes in Tel Aviv. Waiting to be reeled in. So Slaton reverted to basics, cataloging in his mind the vital details: times, dates, and locations, all stamped into gray matter behind closed eyes.
The train slowed nearing Rissne Station. Slaton decided he’d kept the phone long enough, but he was not quite finished. He called up the picture he’d taken at the café. It was a wobbly composition, suffering from poor lighting and the urgency of the moment, but the subject was clear enough: Nurin’s agent strewn on the floor, his eyes rolled back and a jagged wound on his throat, all against a backdrop of blood-covered concrete. Going in, it had not been Slaton’s intent to kill anyone. Now both members of Nurin’s contact team were dead. As was so often the case, a well-orchestrated sketch had gone down in flames. The reasons were equally classic—complications resulting from the human element. Mistrust, fear, anger. All had played a part, and now the tragic outcome was summed in one high-resolution image.
Slaton had no way to know if anyone else—another Mossad operative or perhaps an embassy employee—had already reported in to Tel Aviv with a damage assessment. If not, this picture would provide all the debriefing necessary. Slaton considered a text message to accompany the image, but on this he hesitated. He’d already made one mistake. Angered that Nurin had pulled Christine into his scheme, Slaton had lost his temper with the director. He had rejected the assassination plot out of hand. Now, however, he saw a better course, one that might relieve some of the pressure. Using carefully measured words, he typed a brief and succinct message.
The train pulled to a stop and Slaton disembarked. He climbed the stairs to street level and immediately turned right. Confirming he had good reception, he hit the phone’s Send button. Two minutes later Slaton stood on a curb next to a bicyclist, an older man who was waiting for a green crossing light. Up and down the street there wasn’t a car in sight. An orderly people, the Swedes. The old man was hauling groceries in twin baskets that outriggered his rear tire.
“Lovely weather,” Slaton said, speaking Swedish for the first time since his arrival.
The old man looked at him, then up to a sullen, darkening sky. He shrugged before noticing that the light had changed. As the old man cast off, Slaton slipped the phone deftly into his starboard basket. He turned the other way and began to walk.
* * *
Thirty minutes later and seven miles west, Slaton stepped off a bus in the working-class suburb of Jakobsberg. He estimated he was twelve miles from downtown, well clear of the morning’s chaos. He walked until he found a convenience shop, and there paid cash for three prepaid, disposable cell phones, a long-sleeve sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of the Swedish National Rugby team, and a large bottle of water. His next stop was a pharmacy where he purchased disinfectant, proper bandages, and alcohol wipes.
From there he scouted for a public restroom, the quietest he could find being in the basement of a dark and nearly vacant pub. The place stunk of piss and stale beer, but it met his most important constraint—he was alone. At the sink he wet a handful of paper towels before locking himself into one of the two toilet stalls. He sat down, pulled off his shirt and carefully remove
d the improvised bandage. The wound was more painful now, and he cleaned it using the disinfectant. Slaton did his best with a field dressing, keeping a portion of the supplies in reserve for a better job when he had more time and better conditions. Gingerly, he pulled the new sweatshirt over his head, happy he’d gone with an extra-large. Finished, he took a long drink from the water bottle.
With two plastic bags in hand, Slaton divided his worldly possessions. In one he put the cell phones and clinical supplies, and in the other went a torn and bloody shirt. He flushed the old bandage down the toilet, and buried the plastic bag with the shirt deep into a repulsive trash bin. Seconds later he was climbing the stairs back to the street, taking two at a time, the beaten restroom door swinging loosely behind him.
THIRTEEN
Raymond Nurin sat in his bunker an unhappy man. He lived, or so it seemed, deep in the bowels of Mossad headquarters. He kept a proper office, of course, one with heavy furniture and a decent view, but that was a place for formal occasions—meetings with Knesset members and the issuance of citations to the rank and file. The bunker was where Nurin’s real work was done.
The room had been designed under his exacting eye. There was a single workstation to display information, data that had already been sorted and scrubbed by the army of technicians one floor above. There was also a modest conference table with six chairs, this being the number of opinions at which Nurin drew a line—any more, in his view, generated a level of noise that was no more than static.
He was sitting alone at the conference table when the knock came, forceful and impatient. The kind of knock that would come if the building was on fire.
“Come.”
Two men appeared. Rolling in the lead, predictably, was the tanklike form of Oded Veron. Though a man of average height, Veron exceeded the human mean in every other dimension. His hulking shoulders and massive head were fitted over a thick base, all of it advancing with an air of unstoppable momentum. Sharply pressed desert fatigues, sans insignia, covered chain-mail skin that paraded forty years of sun, sand, and scar tissue. Bringing up the rear was Nurin’s second in command, Mossad’s director of operations, Ezra Zacharias. Zacharias had been promoted only recently, after the previous operations chief, a known tyrant who openly aspired to Nurin’s post, was forced to retire in the face of a life-threatening illness. Nurin had chosen Zacharias for his softer, more malleable countenance, not to mention his loyalty. Physically he was Veron’s counterpoint—small, round, and nearsighted—yet what he lacked in physical presence was more than compensated for by an unbending work ethic.
