Soul of the Assassin - [First Team 04]

by Larry Bond

  Ferguson had already planted a video bug to cover the hallway. The size of an American dime, the unit sent a signal to a transmitter hidden in a fire hose box two floors below. The transmitter boosted and relayed the signal to a satellite system used by the First Team. The ops could tap in via laptops and small purpose-built viewers that looked like video iPods to see what was going on. The deskman also monitored the feedback in the Cube, giving the team another set of eyes and ears. They had installed a series of bugs, both video and audio, along with transmitters around the city to help them monitor what was going on. The major drawback to the tiny devices was their limited batteries; they had an average life of only eight hours, though occasionally could last for as many as twenty-four. Larger units had greater capacity, but were correspondingly easier to detect.

  Rankin wanted to place one of the larger video bugs in the base of a fire extinguisher at the end of the hall. But first he had to make sure that Arna Kerr hadn’t placed her own devices here. He walked down the hall swiftly, holding what looked like a handheld computer in his hand; it was actually a bug detector.

  Rankin had almost finished his sweep when one of the doors opened. He stopped at a room at the far end of the hallway as if he was going to knock. Two women and a small child came out and began milling around. The kid was watching Rankin, so he went ahead and knocked at the door he’d stopped in front of.

  No one answered—perfect, he thought. He mimed being puzzled, knocking again, calling for a friend named Maurice. To his surprise, the door suddenly opened. A man big enough to be professional wrestler stood inside.

  “Chi è Maurice?” said the man.

  “Gotta be the wrong room,” said Rankin. “Made a mistake. Sorry.”

  “Who’s Maurice?” repeated the man, angrily.

  “Relax,” said Rankin. He didn’t know much Italian, and in fact couldn’t be sure that was what the guy was speaking. “Sorry I woke you up, all right? Sorry. Scusi.”

  The man took a threatening step into the hallway. For a moment Rankin worried that the guy was going to start a fight. The last thing Rankin wanted to do was start a commotion—especially with someone who actually looked big enough to give him a serious fight.

  If not beat the crap out of him.

  “It’s OK; it’s OK,” Rankin said, holding his hands up. “Just relax. I made a mistake. Wrong floor.”

  The women and kid by now had taken the elevator downstairs. Rankin waited by it, the anti-Maurice watching him the whole time, his eyes flickering with an unspoken threat until the elevator finally came back and Rankin got on.

  Was he connected to Arna Kerr? No, thought Rankin—it was just an unlucky coincidence.

  “Why doesn’t this shit ever happen to Ferguson?” he mumbled as he got out of the elevator on the floor above and walked to the stairs.

  ~ * ~

  T

  hera was shown to the worst table in the house, a tiny half-moon squeezed between the waiters’ station and the ladies’ room. She couldn’t quite see Ferguson from where she was, but she did have a good view of Arna Kerr. The blonde was exactly the sort that turned men’s heads: perfect nose, thick lips, oversized breasts. Her arms looked sculpted.

  Probably tennis muscles, Thera thought; all show, no power.

  Thera pushed her jealousy away as the waiter approached. She had a little trouble with her Italian, confusing it with the Greek she’d learned as a child and still spoke with her relatives. Her pronunciation was so far off she had to repeat her order several times before she was understood.

  Thera suffered through a limp pasta dish before Arna Kerr finally excused herself and headed for the ladies’ room. Thera waited until she passed, then rose and walked toward the lobby, taking her phone out as if intending to make a call. She detoured to her left, avoiding a party of eight and walking right next to Ferguson’s table. As she passed, he moved his chair back and bumped into her.

  “Scusi, scusi,” he said in Italian, jumping to his feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, pushing away.

  “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  “Mi ammazzi,” she said. “You kill me.”

  Thera went into the foyer, grabbed her coat from the rack, and then left the restaurant.

  “I thought you were going to eat,” said Guns when she found him in the car down the block.

  “I didn’t feel like it.” She pulled a pair of rubber gloves from the glove compartment and opened her pocketbook, where Ferguson had tucked Arna Kerr’s wineglass when he accidentally bumped into Thera.

  “Think we got prints?”

  “We’d better. I’m not going back in there.”

  Thera put her hand inside the glass and then wrapped what looked like a thin electric blanket around it. Instead of an electrical plug, the blanket connected to a USB port in the team’s laptop, which was under the foot mat in the car. After fiddling with the sensitivity setting, she got an image of the glass on the screen. There were two smudges, a thumbprint, and what looked like the print of a middle finger.

  It figures, she thought.

  ~ * ~

  F

  erguson suggested they go back to Arna’s room, but she preferred his.

  “You don’t even know where it is,” he told her.

  “It’s not at the Borgia?”

  “I was there to see a friend. Who turned out not be in. Luckily for me. Or I wouldn’t have met you.”

  “You look like the kind of man who would have a nice room. Sauna, right?”

  “No sauna,” said Ferguson. “The marble sink is on the large size, though.”

  “That sounds nice.” She brushed his cheek with her finger.

  “Then let’s go,” said Ferguson, rising.

  Arna Kerr ran her hands across his back as they waited in the lobby for the taxi, making sure he didn’t have a gun.

  Maybe he was what he seemed—an attractive, well-off but somewhat lonely man about her own age. Maybe he’d seen her in the lobby of the Borgia and decided he wanted to sleep with her. Or maybe something else. She couldn’t be sure; the way he looked at her didn’t quite suggest lust.

  She had never once been made while on a job. Would it go down like this? Would Interpol send some smooth Irishman—or whatever he was—to romance her?

  No—that happened in movies. In real life, they arrested you. Or shot you.

  Most likely shot you.

  Which he might be planning to do when he got her to his room.

  The wine she’d drunk was making her take chances she shouldn’t, Arna Kerr thought. She should just tell him good night, go up to her room.

  But part of the attraction was the danger, or its potential.

  “Here we go,” said Ferg as the cab pulled up. “Are you with me? You’re so quiet you might be sleeping.”

  “I’m awake,” she said, and leaned up to kiss him.

  ~ * ~

  A

  fter Rankin planted his video bug, he left the hotel and walked around the block to a building subdivided into apartments. He reached for one of the buttons, as if he were going to ring to be buzzed in. Instead, he pushed a thin plastic card into the jamb near the lock. The door opened easily.

  Inside, the place smelled of boiling greens; the pungent, spinachlike smell reminded Rankin of his childhood, but not in a good way—he used to gag at the smell of spinach.

  The building was five stories high. Rankin trotted up the steps to the top, stopping at the top landing to make sure no one was around. Then he moved quickly down the hall to a window that looked onto the side alley. He reached to the top, making sure the latches he had checked yesterday were still undone- then pushed the window up and stepped out onto the ledge.

  When he’d done this the night before, the moon had been out and there was plenty of light to see the narrow ledge by. Tonight, however, it was cloudy, and damp besides; he felt his feet slip as he pulled himself up onto the narrow lip outside the building. He took a breath, hol
ding himself against the old brown bricks. Then he gently pushed the window closed and began sliding to the right, where a small hip roof led to a wide, nearly flat roof overlooking the back of the hotel where Arna Kerr had her room.

  Even at this hour, there was still plenty of traffic in the city. Rankin could hear the dull boom of stereos and smell the stink of exhaust as he moved sideways across the building. If she had gotten a room on the other side of the hotel, his job would have been easier— there was a bar with a broad terrace overlooking the street on that side; he could have gotten a drink and pretended to be copping a smoke.

  If Ferguson had had this job, that’s where the room would have been.

  Rankin made it to the hip roof and pulled himself over, knees scraping on the hard ceramic shingles. They were a lot more slippery than he remembered. He pushed on, got to the flatter roof. There he took his water from his backpack and took a long pull, resting for a moment. His breath back, he took out the small dish and screwed what looked like a boom mike into the center. The device worked by feeding an infrared laser onto a window and using it to “read” the vibrations, translating them back into sound waves. Rankin put on a pair of glasses tuned to the laser’s frequency and began aiming the device. He had just figured out the correct window when he heard Guns talking to him on the radio.

  “Hang on,” he said, adjusting the volume. “What’s up?”

  “Ferguson is going over to the Orologio,” Guns said. “How are you doing there?”

  “Almost set.”

  “You can take your time. She won’t be going back to her room tonight.”

  “No shit.”

  ~ * ~

  F

  erguson had made love to the enemy plenty of times before, but tonight he was off-balance. He went through the motions smoothly, fingers gliding gently down the buttons of her blouse, undoing each one with a simple push, pulling the silk away from her shoulders, letting the shirt fall back and away from her torso. He ran the backs of his hands over her bra—black and silky—then around to undo the clasp.

  He pushed his lips against hers. They gave way easily. Her tongue met his, rolling around it. Ferguson slipped the bra from her shoulders and cupped her breasts gently, her nipples hard.

  But it wasn’t about sex. It was a job, and as smooth as his hands were, his mind felt as if it were watching through a peephole from another room.

  He reached the zipper on her skirt and slipped it downward. The skirt caught against her hips but then gave way, falling to the floor.

  It might not be about sex, but it wasn’t just the job, either. Power was involved: getting it, having it, keeping it. That was what spying was. Not that Ferguson considered himself a spy in the classic sense— it was rarely his job to simply get information, and he never had been a “runner of men and women” as his father had been for most of his career. A spymaster manipulated people—sex had probably been one of his tools, though until this moment Ferg had never really thought about that.

  “The bed’s in the next room,” said Ferguson when Arna Kerr was down to her panties.

  “The couch is right here.”

  She leaned backward toward it ever so slightly. He took the hint, pushing against her gently, moving down with her as she gave way.

  ~ * ~

  8

  BOLOGNA, ITALY

  Thera had heard enough. She reached for the handle of the car door. “I’ll be back,” she told Guns.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “Time to run a check,” she said, though she had been around the block making sure they weren’t being watched only a few minutes before. She slapped the Fiat’s door closed and began walking away from the hotel—away from Ferguson and what he was doing with the blonde.

  She shouldn’t care—she didn’t care—and yet her whole body vibrated with anger.

  Something moved in the shadows at the edge of the street. Thera slipped her hand inside her jacket pocket, wrapping her fingers around the small pistol there. But it was nothing—a young man and woman, making out near the portico’s pillar.

  Thera continued around the block, her sneakers rubbing on the pavement. She needed a mission, a mind-set: she became a tourist, coming home after dinner. She quickened her pace, slightly worried about the unfamiliar surroundings.

  She turned the corner and saw a small crowd of people gathered near a café at the far end, spilling out into the street, laughing and having a good time.

  Ferguson was just doing his job, Thera told herself. It shouldn’t bother her. It really shouldn’t bother her.

  ~ * ~

  H

  e fell asleep after they were done. Arna Kerr pretended to doze herself, then got up and went to the bathroom, grabbing his pants along the way.

  No keys, a few euros of change, an Irish pence.

  The license looked genuine, but that wasn’t much of a trick— her own documents, after all, were phony. She repeated the number to herself three times, enough to memorize it: Arna Kerr had always been good with numbers. She slipped the credit card receipt out, thinking she would take it as well, but most of the account number was x’d out.

  The license would be enough. She fingered the wallet. There wasn’t much in it besides money: the credit cards she’d seen earlier, a few business cards. No photos, no phone numbers of lovers, just the bare essentials. Very businesslike.

  The sex had been businesslike as well. She sensed he was holding back. Maybe he was married, despite the lack of a ring.

  Arna Kerr flushed the toilet and ran the water, purposely making enough noise so he could hear and stir if he was awake. She cracked the door to see, but he was still lying motionless on the bed.

  Reaching for the light, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Arna didn’t like to see herself naked. Being naked meant being without defenses.

  That was what sex was, wasn’t it?

  She turned off the light and tiptoed into the room, went to the bed, and ran her fingers across the side of his face, tickling his ear and neck. He didn’t move. Between the wine and the sex, he was totally out.

  She went back around to the other side of the bed and picked up her underwear. Pulling on her panties, she went to the bureau and eased open the drawers. The top one was empty; the bottom held a pair of pants and a sweater. She slipped her hand in and checked: nothing.

  There were more clothes in the drawer to the right. Underwear— silk boxers—a soft, thick T-shirt, socks. A pair of jeans.

  In the closet, she found a leather briefcase and a suiter. These she took, one at a time, into the bathroom so she could search them thoroughly. The suitcase was empty, except for some tissues and a disposable razor. The briefcase had four yellow folders, some pens, and two pieces of paper that had addresses and phone numbers, all in Bologna. At least two belonged to galleries, and from what she knew of the locations she guessed the others were galleries as well.

  Wouldn’t a man like this have a laptop with him, or a PDA? If so, it wasn’t in the luggage. She put everything back the way she found it, then searched some more. Finally satisfied that her lover was at least roughly who he said he was, she got dressed to go.

  Arna Kerr hesitated at the door. There would be no possibility of seeing him ever again.

  No?

  No.

  Outside, she saw someone in a car half a block from the hotel. He seemed to be looking at her. But then she saw a woman coming along the street behind her, crossing to the car—he’d been waiting for a girlfriend.

  Well, she thought to herself, that was a nice diversion. Now it’s time to get back to work.

  ~ * ~

  F

  erguson gave Arna Kerr ten minutes to change her mind and come back, then pulled on his pants and a sweatshirt and crossed the hall to the safe room where he’d left his gear. Inside, he powered up his laptop and entered the surveillance program, checking to make sure she wasn’t down in the lobby. Then he turned on his radio and asked the others what was going on.<
br />
  “Looks like she’s taking a midnight tour of the city,” said Guns.

  “Going back to her hotel?”

  “Doesn’t look like it. Walking to the east. Maybe she’s got another date.”