The Holy Assassin

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  ‘Perfect.’ The secretary acknowledged the security instructions.

  Wojtyla had already entered another level looking indulgently at the young Turk. They waited for the director to exit the cell. They heard the lock closing from the outside, followed by silence, oppressive for some, but not for Wojtyla. He looked at the Turk, who lowered his face submissively. The pope approached him, spontaneously lifted his wrinkled hand to the Turk’s face and raised it. The dead-looking eyes of the young man had nowhere to hide, nor could he close his eyelids. They remained open, naked before the man who ought to have died two years ago, been wept over, buried, and replaced, since life continues and only those who are here matter, like these two now who must overcome cultural, religious, ideological, and other more deadly differences.

  Suddenly the Turk allowed some life to revive his pale eyes. They filled with tears and seemed to give in to the pope’s scrutiny. Wojtyla’s hand lifting his chin was firm as a rock. There was neither censure nor reproach in his expression, no sign of visible condemnation, only a man, the holiest of them all, looking into the depths of the other’s soul and understanding everything without saying a word or showing emotion.

  As soon as Wojtyla let him go, the young Turk knelt at his feet with such devotion the guard almost fired on him. The pope raised his hand, as if saying lower the gun, and the guard obeyed.

  ‘Forgive me, Holy Father,’ the Turk pleaded, with his head bent over the feet of Peter’s worthy successor.

  Wojtyla crouched to lift him up and placed his hand on the Turk’s head.

  ‘Get up, my son. What has to be forgiven was already forgiven a long time ago.’

  He helped the Turk up and led him to the bed.

  ‘Now, sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Take a deep breath and tell me everything, my son.’

  36

  Harvey Littel entered the crisis office room with the confidence of a sovereign handing down laws to his people. Certainly Littel didn’t make laws or carry out regulations. His world was a world apart, a world of intelligence, counterintelligence, military, civilian, industrial, and political espionage. There was only one rule on this battlefield: conquer at any price. Imbued with this spirit, Harvey Littel took his place at the table as the windows of the door automatically darkened to block the view from outside.

  ‘Good evening, once again, gentlemen. Any news?’ he asked, taking his seat in a comfortable leather easy chair.

  ‘We have the Russian contacts on permanent alert,’ Colonel Garrison informed him. He took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth.

  ‘Perfect. Excellent.’ Littel raised his hand. ‘I’d appreciate it if you don’t smoke in my presence. Thank you.’ It was obviously an order, not a courteous request.

  Stuart Garrison looked at him with the Cuban cigar unlit. He put it back in his jacket pocket for a better time.

  ‘And Barnes? Has he given us any information?’

  ‘He’s on the phone at this moment, Dr. Littel,’ Priscilla hastened to inform him, with her notebook at the ready.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Littel responded. ‘Let’s not make him wait any longer,’ he decided. ‘Cil, put him on the speakerphone.’

  ‘Geoffrey Barnes?’ said Priscilla, whose affectionate diminutive was only for her boss’s use and no one else’s.

  ‘Yes?’ They heard Barnes’s guttural voice filling the room from the speakers placed in the ceiling. The phone, as in the previous room, was near Littel on the table.

  ‘Barnes, how are you?’ Littel greeted him with audible friendliness.

  ‘Littel, good, thanks. You? Shut up in the second basement without seeing the full moon?’ His voice expressed confidence, which in itself calmed everyone who was listening.

  ‘You know how things are. We just get by. I bet you’re sitting at your desk on the sixth floor watching the lights of the city, knife and fork in hand, ready to devour some roast pheasant.’

  ‘You’re mistaken about the food, but it’s a good idea.’

  ‘Well, all right. How does it happen that one of our own has been killed in Amsterdam?’ He suddenly took a serious tone of voice.

  ‘My people have been there. I was, too, last night, and I can affirm that the victim, Solomon Keys, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Solomon Keys. It’s confirmed.’ Littel corroborated the information Barnes gave him with what he already had.

  Some sighs were heard in the room in recognition of the name. Most had heard him spoken about. Others knew him personally. Peace to his noble soul.

  ‘Yes. Well, he died because he was in the Amsterdam Centraal station, in one of the restrooms, specifically when a British couple came in to satisfy their carnal desire.’

  Some listeners began to laugh nervously. It was humorous to hear Barnes tell a story like this with complete professionalism.

  ‘Someone came in to eliminate the couple, and Keys paid the price,’ Barnes concluded.

  ‘Okay, in any case we’re going to ask for his service order to confirm whether the motive of his trip was tourism or an operation,’ Littel said, while gesturing for Priscilla to carry out that task. She agreed and wrote it in her notebook.

  ‘He was over eighty years old,’ Barnes commented in the sense of excusing the old agent of the company of any blame.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time, Barnes,’ Littel clarified. ‘Sometimes they return to activity for a mission or two.’

  Although separated by thousands of miles, both of them imagined the same thing. Little old men with canes, arthritic and breathing with difficulty, but, if the agency needed them … That was their life, the best marriage they ever made, until death do them part.

  ‘I agree,’ Barnes said. ‘But you probably won’t find anything. The subjects of this operation were two English journalists, Natalie Golden and Greg Saunders.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Prestigious journalists.’

  ‘Is the motive known?’ Littel asked.

  ‘We’re tracking that down. We’ll know something soon.’

  ‘Natalie Golden and Greg Saunders,’ Littel said to the room. ‘I want you to find out everything about them, from where they were born to who they hung out with. The smallest detail is important. Get working on it.’

  A group left the room to follow up on the order.

  ‘Barnes, what else do you have for me?’

  ‘There’s been an explosion this afternoon here in London.’

  ‘In …’ Littel consulted his notes on the table. ‘Redcliff Gardens. We’re current on that.’

  ‘Okay. The explosion was of criminal origin and resulted in a death and an injury.’

  A certain uneasiness filled the room.

  ‘We’re already trying to question the injured party.’

  ‘And the death?’

  ‘An agent of the RSS, a certain Nestov.’

  ‘Nestov?’ Colonel Stuart Garrison exclaimed. ‘This was why he wasn’t answering his phone.’ The colonel looked pale.

  ‘Whose house was it? What was he doing there?’

  Barnes didn’t answer. A murmur rose in the room.

  ‘Silence,’ Littel said. ‘Barnes, are you there?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then do me the favor of answering. What was he doing in the house?’

  Barnes again showed no sign of answering. When that happened, it could only mean one thing. Littel understood and picked up the receiver of the phone while disconnecting the loudspeaker.

  ‘Okay, Barnes, now it’s just you and me.’

  It was clear the other listeners didn’t like the idea of being excluded from the conversation. It meant greater secrecy, increasing their curiosity.

  Littel listened attentively to what Barnes was telling him. His face began to change from perturbed and dark to an expression of irritation and unease.

  The others noticed this change of mood and felt even more frustrated.

  ‘Is this the president’s position?’


  Hearing Washington mentioned, everyone perked up his ears in vain. They continued hearing the same thing: nothing.

  Seconds later Littel put down the receiver and disconnected the call. They could see a couple of drops of sweat running down his face. And it wasn’t the fault of the air conditioning. Something was bothering Littel, and if something worried him, it would soon worry everyone.

  He drummed his fingers on the table for a few minutes, making the others, who kept silent in frustration, very nervous.

  ‘Wake up the subdirector,’ he ordered at last. ‘And get a plane ready.’

  37

  ‘This isn’t very clear,’ Staughton protested from the passenger seat as Thompson got to the end of Montpelier Street and turned left toward Brompton Road.

  ‘That’s how the services function. If everything were clear, we wouldn’t have a job.’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ Staughton admitted. Uncomfortable, he took a deep breath. ‘But someone could be wrong.’

  ‘No, they couldn’t.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ Thompson repeated. ‘They’re working with us. We work with them as long as it’s in our mutual interest. We understand that, and they do, too.’

  ‘Yes, but according to the president.’

  ‘The president acts according to the interests of the United States of America. That’s all he has to be concerned about. And according to those interests he swore to defend, he helps whoever can give him the most.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem right,’ Staughton confessed.

  ‘You’re still a beginner in operational work in the field, so let me give you some advice. There are Americans, that’s us, and the others. Don’t ever get too friendly with the others because the day will come when they’re our enemies. Do you understand?’

  ‘It’s still not right.’

  ‘Forget about being right. The world is not fair. Take my advice, and you’ll never have a problem when the pieces change sides. Precisely because they’re the “others” ’ – he made quotation marks with his fingers – ‘they’re mere accessories and the first to go when things change.’

  ‘I understand.’

  The two men continued the trip in silence. Staughton took in the moral lesson given by his colleague, who should be his friend, given the hours they spent working together every day. Maybe they were friends without knowing it, ready to give their life for the other one if the need should arise. It was curious how they spent nights together, traveling, on surveillance, listening, but continued to be strangers, perhaps because each one erected a wall that prevented any closeness. One of the things this profession had taught them and they never forgot was, contrary to war, in which your life is entrusted to the man next to you, here no one trusted anyone. Even your own shadow wouldn’t hesitate to inform against you.

  ‘Let’s get back to Sarah Monteiro and Jack Payne. Don’t you remember anything?’ Staughton asked.

  ‘You ought to remember something yourself. Or did that blow you received in Saint Patrick’s leave you with amnesia?’ His irritation was obvious. It wasn’t something he liked to remember.

  ‘I’m not proud of it, I agree. Nobody likes to end up out cold.’ He pointed at Thompson. ‘But I wasn’t the only one. I won’t mention any names, but I take note.’ He smiled, trying to break the bad mood the memory created. ‘On the other hand, I’m glad things turned out the way they did.’

  ‘The way they did? Why?’ Thompson even took his eyes off the road to look at his partner, amazed to hear this stupidity.

  ‘Because we would have had to justify three or four unnecessary deaths. Both sides reached an agreement by talking, and no one died,’ he concluded.

  Thompson looked at him without knowing what to say, at least until he recovered his reason, and his irritation.

  ‘They reached an agreement through blackmail. Keep quiet or we’ll publicize this. And I should remember that the author of this blackmail died fucking in a bathroom in Amsterdam, next to your colleague, who was guilty of nothing and probably didn’t know what she’d done. And they did it in front of him.’ He spat with anger.

  ‘And now someone who has nothing to do with this shit has decided to even the score. And Uncle Sam—’

  ‘Leave Uncle Sam out of it,’ Thompson interrupted. ‘Uncle Sam always knows what he’s doing even if it doesn’t look like it. Let’s stop making him always the reason.’

  Staughton shut up. It wasn’t worth arguing. Thompson was an agent with the vices of working in the field, in multifaceted operations, used to assuming personalities that had nothing to do with his identity. A true spy, a chameleon of a thousand and one colors, capable of convincing his mother, if she were still alive, that he was her husband.

  Staughton was a very different case. Recruited by the information section for electronic surveillance, he had always operated inside. With a mouse and a telephone there was no adversary to confront. Operations took on an air of fantasy when everything was done with eyes on a monitor that determined the results, like a computer game that paid a real salary at the end of each week. Now, since he’d been with Geoffrey Barnes in the field, he understood that the shapes on the screen signify real places and the color points show flesh-and-bone people, like himself and Thompson, who was driving in a bad mood by his side. The mission accomplished described only one of the parts. There was always someone who lost, and usually much more than he expected.

  Thompson accelerated, a reflection of his irritation, entering Fulham Road a little faster than the speed limit; there were no policemen around. He turned off rapidly to the right and drove faster. Staughton breathed heavily. He knew that any moment the hospital would come in sight on the left.

  A mile and a half later the hospital appeared, as anticipated. Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, two ambulances parked in front with no one around, except a Mercedes van parked on the street with the lights on and engine running. Thompson turned around completely to pull up behind it.

  ‘Look there.’ He pointed toward the entrance.

  Staughton was also looking. A woman he immediately recognized was leaving the hospital with an older blond man and a young man dressed in pajamas.

  Thompson stopped the car and got out, gun in hand.

  ‘Sarah Monteiro,’ he called in a loud, commanding voice, pointing the gun at her. ‘Don’t move.’

  Staughton got out of the car, confused, but without taking his gun out. His partner had the situation under control and was more used to pointing guns at people and even … shooting them without hesitation or conscience.

  Sarah and the others obeyed promptly and even raised their hands, as film directors require, without receiving the order.

  Thompson smiled, seeing the scene unfold under his direction, and looked at Staughton confidently, like a teacher showing his willing student the art of apprehending one or more individuals. But his expression changed as soon as he turned his eyes toward his partner and saw a red dot moving up his chest toward his head.

  ‘What?’ Staughton wanted to know. ‘What’s going on?’ Fear made his voice tremble.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Thompson ordered, looking across the street, the probable location of the shooter. Several buildings with the lights out made it practically impossible to tell.

  Thompson pointed the gun at the three people with no sign of putting it down, while he watched the buildings in front, visibly uncomfortable.

  ‘Sarah Monteiro,’ he shouted. ‘Get over here.’

  He could use her as a shield, getting an advantage over the shooter, whose identity he thought about. It could only be Jack Payne, the so-called Rafael Santini.

  Sarah walked toward Thompson, step by step, without haste. This was not in her plans. Everything had seemed solved by the elimination of Templar and James. A noise in the window of the driver’s-side door on Thompson’s car broke it into pieces and made Sarah cry out and hit the ground. Thompson shook the pieces of what used to be the window off his jacket and ran
to reach Sarah, his last chance, fifteen yards away, lying on the ground, easy, easy. The asphalt jumped twice near his feet. Two shots, without doubt, that made him stop and get the message: I don’t want to kill you, but if I have to … He dropped his gun and put his hands behind his head without anyone’s ordering it. He had lost. In that moment he saw Rafael come out of the house in front and cross the street with a gun pointed at him.

  ‘Make your colleague lay down his gun,’ Rafael ordered.

  Hearing him, Sarah got up and looked at him with luminous eyes. A year later, another encounter in the same circumstances. Couldn’t they meet another way? More normally. A dinner, a date at the movies, a cup of coffee?

  ‘Do what he tells you,’ Thompson told Staughton in the same firm voice as always. This clearly wasn’t the first time he’d found himself with a gun aimed at him. A warrior’s occupational hazard, Staughton thought with respect, while he tossed his gun away from him. If they knew him well, they’d know he’d never shoot at anyone.

  Rafael crossed the street without taking his eyes off the two men. He never relaxed or even glanced at Sarah, who already knew how he operated. All business. There’s no diversion in the life of Rafael Santini, a sometime double agent for P2 who used the name Jack Payne.

  When he got near Thompson, Rafael arched his lips in a sarcastic smile.

  ‘How’s Geoffrey Barnes?’

  Neither agent answered, naturally. Thompson met Rafael’s look, while Staughton lowered his eyes to avoid calling undesirable attention to himself. On the computer everything was much easier.

  ‘Give him my best, friends,’ he said in a neutral tone. Of course, they’d never pass on that message, but Staughton was pleased to know that Rafael wasn’t going to harm them.

  ‘You’re totally crazy,’ Phelps protested. ‘Gun out, shooting at people? You’re completely possessed. My God, where are we? And who are these men?’ He pointed at Staughton and Thompson, who looked at him fascinated.