Assassin's Game

by Ward Larsen

Christine went above and stood on deck. A chilly breeze swept across the cockpit of the little boat, a basic and reliable Pearson 26. She scanned the horizon as she’d been doing all morning, but saw nothing new. Indeed she saw not a single man-made thing. Her last encounter with civilization had been yesterday morning, the seaside village of Runmarö eight miles north. There she had spent every penny in her pocket, mostly on food, and sent one message to her work email account. Then she had sailed here, to the back side of a remote island, and dropped anchor. With her part of the bargain done, there was nothing to do but wait. This was where David’s plan ended, a windswept natural harbor at the end of the earth, winter bearing down like a frigid anvil.

  She looked ashore, to the tiny island called Bulleron. It was no different from a thousand others in the Stockholm Archipelago, barren rock outcroppings, a few hardy trees and shrubs clinging for life. It looked a jagged and inhospitable place. The other three cardinal points of the compass were equally discouraging—open water, a few remote islands floating in the marine haze. That was all Christine saw. No boats, no barges, no ferries.

  And no David.

  * * *

  “I’d like you to draw a clock showing the time as nine twenty-one,” Dr. Samuels said.

  “Digital or analog?” Sanderson asked.

  The doctor stared at him with the solemnness of an undertaker.

  Sanderson weighed asking if he wanted a.m. or p.m., but decided there was no point in antagonizing the man. Samuels was a nuisance, but in the end only a man doing his job. They’d been at it for the better part of an hour. What is the date? Can you tell me the year? Where are we? Ridiculous hoops, but hoops he had to jump through all the same. It hadn’t helped that when he’d been asked to count backward by sevens, starting with one hundred, Sanderson had stumbled at seventy-nine. But then, he wasn’t taking any of it very seriously. To make his misery complete, he’d woken with another headache. He’d be damned if he was going to mention that to the doctor.

  Sanderson drew a clock with Mickey Mouse hands and handed it over.

  Dr. Samuels frowned. He was a tall man, balding and with a beard that looked positively Freudian. It seemed as if every shrink Sanderson had ever known tried for the same look, a manifestation of transference or repression or some damned thing that made them all, in his view, no better than the poor sods they were passing judgment on.

  “How old was your mother when she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  The doctor looked at him uncertainly.

  “Sixty, maybe sixty-one.”

  A sigh. “Do you have any trouble balancing your checkbook?”

  “Yes, but only because I need a raise.”

  “Please, Inspector. We’re nearly done. I’m going to give you three words. Please say them back to me in reverse order. Cashier, lumber, gable.”

  “Pignon, bois, caissier.”

  The doctor stared at him blankly.

  “Gable, lumber, cashier—in French, because you didn’t specify a language. Doctor, perhaps we could continue these parlor games later over a pint, but I really should be going. The streets are not as safe as they ought to be lately, and my oath obliges me to do something about it, notwithstanding the off-chance that there may be beta-amyloid proteins clogging my brain.”

  “All right,” Samuels said. “I think I have enough to work with. But I will insist on an MRI.”

  Sanderson nearly protested, but decided it would do no good. He heaved a sigh and said, “Let’s get on with it then.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Janna Magnussen banked the Cessna into another tight turn.

  “There are fifty thousand cabins in the Stockholm Archipelago,” she said. “I don’t see a single one here.”

  “This is the place,” Slaton said. “I’m sure of it.”

  They’d been circling the area for thirty minutes, a peninsula at the top of a rabbit-shaped island named Bulleron. Starting with the bearing and range from Stockholm that Christine had given, Slaton instructed Magnussen to fly outward in an ever-expanding pattern. The weather was not cooperating, a broken marine layer having risen to obscure things below. With a bit of bad luck, Slaton knew they could fly right over Christine and never realize it. He’d asked Magnussen to search for a cabin along Bulleron’s eastern shoreline, while he looked for the true objective—a small boat, probably anchored in the natural harbor along the western shore. It might be a sailboat or a power cruiser, even an open runabout. Slaton would be thrilled with a rowboat if Christine was in it.

  The peninsula was a mile wide and perhaps three miles long, an evergreen carpet broken by patches of dirt and rock. Slaton saw no roads or power lines, indeed no sign of civilization at all. They were five hundred feet above the eastern shore, skimming the cloud layer, when he caught a flash of white. Slaton watched the spot intently and saw it again—no more than a hundred yards offshore, a sleek profile flickering through the clouds. As casually as he could, he trained the field glasses on the sea, willing the clouds to break one more time. They did, long enough for him to make out a small sailboat. He quickly focused the glasses and read the name on the stern: Bricklayer.

  In his years with Mossad, Slaton had endured countless stressful situations, and so he was an expert at compartmentalizing emotion. It didn’t matter. When he saw the name of the boat he felt a surge from the depths of his soul. He shifted the glasses to the far end of the peninsula and began searching for landmarks by which he could crosscheck the position.

  “I see it!” he said, pointing to the area. “Just inside that stand of trees.”

  Magnussen followed his finger to the forest five hundred feet below. “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “This is the place. Can you put it down near the eastern shore?”

  Magnussen gauged the waters. Then she gauged him. “The western side is in the lee—the water is calmer there.”

  He gave her an unwavering look.

  “Yes, I can manage either way,” she affirmed. “But you’re sure this is the place?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “All right—it’s your kronor.” Magnussen maneuvered the aircraft, and minutes later made a smooth touchdown, the twin floats settling like a pair of high-speed canoes. From that point, the aircraft became a boat.

  “I can’t maneuver very well once she’s in the water,” she said. “If you want to get close to the shoreline I see only one stretch of beach that looks approachable. Even there I’m going to need your help.”

  On her instructions, Slaton got out and stood at the midpoint of the starboard float, clear of the idling propeller. Ten yards from shore Magnussen killed the engine. Slaton moved forward, jumped into knee-deep water with his backpack in hand, and then pushed and pulled until the Cessna was pointed back out to sea.

  Magnussen called through the open door, “Remember, tomorrow we have to fly in the morning if we’re going to beat the weather. Eleven o’clock, here?”

  Slaton gave a thumbs-up, and after a final shove the engine chugged to life and Magnussen added power. Already running into the wind, the little airplane skipped nimbly over the waves and rose into the sky.

  Slaton turned ashore, and as soon as his feet hit sand he broke into a jog. The terrain was rough—rock and brambles and fallen timber. A mile that would have taken six minutes over level ground took fifteen. When the western shore came into view he didn’t see the boat, and for a terrible moment he feared she might have gotten under way to a new anchorage. Finally, closer to shore, he spotted the white hull.

  And then he saw Christine.

  He could barely see her face, but there was no mistaking his wife’s willowy build and upright posture. She’d come ashore, probably having seen or heard the seaplane. The boat was moored close to shore, an anchor off the stern and a bow line secured to a fallen tree. Christine was standing on a patch of rocks and searching the sky.

  Slaton ran faster, battering through brush and
vaulting boulders. The noise drew her attention, and finally they locked eyes.

  Only she didn’t move.

  Christine stood her ground and let him come to her. Slaton didn’t care—after five thousand miles what were a few more yards? When he came near she didn’t raise her arms, and he stopped a few steps away. Slaton stood completely out of breath and tried to read her face. He saw hope and pain and worry. Finally, Christine cocked her head ever so slightly and leaned toward him. Arms at her side, she virtually fell into his chest.

  Slaton caught her and held on, her body conforming to his like clay in search of a form. They were still for a long, long moment until the inevitable came. Her uncontrollable sobs began welling into his chest. He began to kiss her, first the top of her head, and then her upturned face. She pulled him down and soon they were on their knees in the sand, just holding one another.

  Hanging on tenaciously against the spiraling world.

  * * *

  Sanderson’s MRI was scheduled for eleven o’clock that morning, to be conducted in a radiology annex near Saint Göran Hospital. The technicians were running behind, but after an aggravating thirty-minute wait a young man stripped Sanderson of his possessions and shoved him into a clattering tube. When the test was done, he was given his clothing along with solemn assurances that the results would soon find his doctor, who in turn would find him.

  His morning wasted, Sanderson got dressed and, after a pitched fight with his necktie at the bathroom mirror, decided to walk two blocks to Saint Göran to check on Sergeant Elmander. Of all Sjoberg’s accusations at their last meeting, the thing to strike Sanderson hardest was the idea that he’d not been there to back up a fellow officer in a moment of need. Nearing the hospital he considered buying a takeout meal, recalling that Elmander was mad about some kind of ethnic food. The variety, however, escaped him. Had it been Thai? Chinese perhaps? Sanderson couldn’t remember, and another stitch of worry sank in. Was this how it would be from now on? Every time something didn’t snap into his mind, more anxiety? No, he decided. He would not let that happen.

  As luck would have it, he found Elmander sitting up in bed, his wife and son at his side, and his face buried deep in a takeout container of spaghetti. Italian, Sanderson thought.

  “Afternoon, Inspector,” said a chipper Elmander.

  “Hello, Lars. How are you?”

  Elmander gestured to a heavily bandaged leg. “Up and running in a few days, they tell me.”

  Elmander and his son began bantering about which of them would now be faster on the soccer pitch, a sparring contest that Sanderson found even more encouraging than the official medical prognosis.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t answer when you called,” Sanderson said.

  “Not to worry, Inspector,” Elmander replied in a mercifully carefree tone. “Blix tells me they’ve bumped you off the case.”

  Sanderson nodded.

  “Big mistake on the assistant commissioner’s part, if you ask me. Of course, it wouldn’t be his first, eh?”

  They exchanged the kind of smile shared between subordinates, but Sanderson was left wondering how much else had made its way to the rumor mill. He supposed that news of his advanced dementia had swept the station by now. They talked for ten more minutes about work and sports, and agreed to meet for a pint at Black and Brown next week.

  Sanderson left the room feeling much better than when he’d gone in. He was nearing the elevator when it occurred to him that he should check on their mystery patient, the man who was presumably still in a coma. At the nurse’s station Sanderson pulled his credentials—Sjoberg, by either good grace or gross oversight, had not confiscated them—and a young man directed him to the correct room.

  He arrived to find a nurse tending an IV. The patient looked no different, still and lifeless, but an array of monitors beeped rhythmically to prove otherwise.

  “Any change?” Sanderson asked, again showing his identification.

  “No,” the nurse replied. “I expect it will be a few days before any decisions are made.” She was a matronly sort, roughly his age, and Sanderson suspected she knew what she was talking about.

  He stood with his hands on his hips, and thought aloud, “Too bad we never got a word with him.”

  “There were a few moments when you might have.”

  “A few moments?”

  “He was conscious when he arrived. Even muttering a bit.”

  “Muttering?” Sanderson repeated.

  “He kept saying something over and over, but it made no sense to me.”

  “Can you remember the words?”

  She shrugged. “They were very distinct, but it wasn’t Swedish. And not English either. My only two languages.” She made a stab at sounding it out.

  Sanderson took out his notepad. “Say it again as precisely as you can.”

  The nurse did, and Sanderson wrote down the words phonetically. “Who else was on duty when he came in?”

  “Dr. Gould down in ER. I think he’s working now if you want to talk to him.”

  Five minutes later Sanderson was doing just that. Gould was nearing the end of his shift, but happy to help a policeman on a quest.

  “Yes,” the doctor said, “I did hear what he said. It didn’t make much sense, but that’s not unusual around here—the man had incurred severe trauma.”

  Sanderson again took out his notepad, ready to scribble. “Tell me anyway.”

  The words the doctor gave were very near those he’d gotten from the nurse, perhaps a harsher edge to a few of the consonants.

  “One more time,” Sanderson said.

  “Would you like it in English?”

  Sanderson looked up, nonplussed.

  “It’s Hebrew,” Gould said. “I recognized it immediately. He was saying, ‘Let the bayonet go.’ As for what that means—I wish you luck, Inspector.”

  NINETEEN

  Slaton watched Christine start a pot of coffee aboard the newly christened Bricklayer, and as she went about the job neither tried to discuss their predicament. Her smooth face was strained, the usual easy smile gone. Her weariness was accentuated by the rumpled clothes she’d certainly been wearing for days. Being well versed in stressful situations, he knew to let her lead the conversation.

  Christine rummaged through a storage bin and made small talk about the weather, eventually progressing to a rundown of her short voyage here, this no more than a sailor’s account of an uneventful passage. Dividing her narrations, however, were long moments of silence. When the coffee was brewed she found two mismatched cups, poured, and sat down at the small table to face him.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “We’re going to get you safe. Then we’re going to keep it that way.”

  “How?” Her voice was uncharacteristically flat and direct—as if she was in doctor mode.

  “I don’t know exactly, but I’ll make it happen.”

  “Anton was trying to help me.”

  “I know, I figured that much out. He wanted to ruin this whole Mossad scheme.”

  She nodded. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “No.”

  Christine’s face came alight, and for the first time she looked at him with something near hope.

  “He’s alive, but there’s a bullet lodged near his spine. He’s in the hospital and in serious condition, but there’s a good chance he’ll pull through.”

  She was silent for a time. “You want to hear my story, don’t you?”

  “Only when you’re ready.”

  “A debriefing—isn’t that what they call it in your line of work?”

  “Christine, please don’t—”

  “No, no,” she interrupted. “I should tell you everything. I know that.”

  And she did, beginning with a mundane physician’s conference, and ending with the Stockholm to Riga Passage and a stolen sailboat anchored in a remote cove. She included Bloch’s account of Mossad’s failed mission in Iran and the loss of four men, inclu
ding Yaniv Stein whom Slaton had known well. She gave the abduction attempt particular emphasis, and when she recounted the details of Bloch being shot her voice wavered. But she carried on. Christine explained that three men had been involved, and by her descriptions Slaton was sure he’d seen them all—one on a slab in the morgue, and the other two at the Renaissance Tea Room. Without a doubt, all Mossad. Without a doubt, all dead.

  Slaton responded with his own story, beginning with the call for help Bloch had made from her phone, and ending with Magnussen Air Charters. When he was done, he paused long enough to refill their cups.

  “You killed two men?” she asked.

  “That wasn’t my plan—but yes.”

  “And you shot a policeman?”

  “One round in his leg. I had to put him on the ground because he was about to be killed.”

  She laughed nervously. “I would not believe that from anyone else on God’s earth. Why do I trust you so unfailingly?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “This assassination Mossad is pursuing—where is it to take place?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  She nodded.

  “Geneva. Six days from today.”

  Christine went silent, and Slaton had an urge to change tack. Looking around the cabin, he said, “Tell me again where you got this boat.”

  “I stole it.”

  “From who?”

  “How should I know?”

  He waited patiently.

  Christine pitched a heavy sigh, and said, “It was at a private dock near the marina. I saw a moving truck at the house above—a crew was hauling out some clothing and books, boxes of pots and pans. It seemed like a nice house, well-kept. I figured the owners were moving south for the winter, maybe to a place in France or Spain. If that was the case, the boat wasn’t going anywhere. I figured it would probably just sit there until somebody from the marina came and hauled it out for dry storage in a month or so. After the movers drove off, I waited until dark. There were no locks, so it was easy. I pulled two mooring lines and she was mine.”

  “You’re right—the boat probably won’t be missed anytime soon. That was a good move.”