The Assassin

by Andrew Britton

  “Don’t say that, Ryan.” She backed up a couple feet, shaking her head wildly. “Don’t tell me that!” Still holding Foster’s gun, she clamped her free hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and disbelieving. She didn’t move for about twenty seconds. Then, as his words started to sink in, her legs gave way and she half-fell, half-sat on the smooth concrete floor, just outside the open office door.

  Lowering her hand from her mouth, she stared into space for what seemed like a very long time, shaking her head slowly. Then it all seemed to hit her at once. Kealey saw the change sweep over her face as the guilt, grief, and regret took hold, squeezing away any lingering hope that this might be a dream. From personal experience, he knew that what he was seeing was only the start. It was painful to watch, but he also knew there was worse to come. Much worse.

  He looked away, struggling with several emotions of his own. He was relieved beyond measure to find her alive and unharmed, but he was furious with her for what she had done, for what she had brought on herself. With one impulsive act, she had made a mistake that would haunt her forever. A mistake she could never take back.

  He looked down at Samantha Crane. Her soft brown eyes were open, her lips slightly parted. In death, her face was strangely serene. It was hard to believe she was gone; just a moment ago she had been so alive, so vital and real. The small hole in her right cheek was barely noticeable, but as Kealey watched, a thin trickle of blood ran down from the wound to the floor. Gazing into her lifeless face, he was tempted to follow Naomi’s example: to sit down, let the exhaustion take over, and wait for the police to show up. But that just wasn’t an option; Vanderveen and Nazeri were still out there somewhere, and time was running out.

  Snapping out of it, he went over and kneeled by her side, shaking her arm to get her attention. “Naomi, did you talk to Vanderveen? Did he mention anything about the bomb?”

  She was still in denial, or maybe shock; it was hard to tell. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Come on, did he tell you anything? Where are they taking it?”

  “He said… something about Times Square.”

  “Times Square? You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did Vanderveen leave?”

  “Five minutes ago. Right before you got here. Nazeri is driving the truck.”

  “Is Vanderveen with him?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  Kealey closed his eyes, shaking his head. It didn’t make sense; Times Square was only five minutes away, to begin with. They should have felt the blast already. He flipped open his phone and dialed Harper’s number at Langley. “What kind of truck was it?”

  “White,” she said in a daze. “With a box on the back. An Isuzu, I think.”

  When Harper answered, Kealey said, “John, I need you to check something for me right now, no questions asked. The delegates with the UIA… Where are they staying in the city?”

  “Jesus, Ryan, I have no idea—”

  “Then find out,” he snapped. “And call me back.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Kealey snapped the phone shut without responding, thinking furiously. There wasn’t much he could do until the DDO came up with an answer, so he moved onto the next problem: what to do about Naomi. He still hadn’t heard any sirens, probably because the gunshots weren’t audible on the street. Maybe the traffic served to drown out the sound. Either way, it gave him a little time to figure things out.

  He looked down and saw that she had started to cry softly. For the first time, he noticed the handcuffs around her wrists. He touched her shoulder, and she looked up through her tears.

  “Naomi, did you shoot Foster, or was it Crane?”

  “It was me. But I had to. He was trying to—”

  “I know, I know. Did you use the same gun on both of them?”

  She shook her head, tears rolling down her face. “No, I found a gun in Nazeri’s desk, and I used it on… Foster. But I fired all six, and then I saw his gun, so I picked it up. I thought Vanderveen was coming back for me. After that, everything just kind of… happened.”

  She broke off, tucked her knees up to her chest, and buried her head in her arms. Kealey was already on the move. First, he went to Foster’s body and grabbed the back of his shirt, turning him so he was facing the opposite direction, away from the office. Then he moved back to Naomi, lifting Foster’s gun out of her lap. She didn’t seem to realize what was happening. He lifted the lower half of his T-shirt and used the material to wipe down the gun as fast as possible, doing his best to erase any sign of her fingerprints. When he was satisfied, he kneeled next to Foster’s right hand and let the gun slip from his shirt to the floor.

  At that very moment, his phone rang. He flipped it open immediately.

  “It’s the Renaissance Hotel,” Harper said. He sounded amazed and angry. “Forty-eighth and Seventh. Thirty-five members of the Iraqi National Assembly in one fucking place. I don’t know who thought that one up, but I’m going to—”

  “Okay, thanks.” Kealey flipped the phone shut without waiting for a response. It didn’t make sense; he didn’t know why the bomb was still intact, but it didn’t really matter. If he could just get there in time, he might still have a chance to stop it.

  He touched Kharmai’s shoulder again to get her attention. “Naomi, I have to leave you here. I don’t know if what I’ve done will hold up, but you have to get a grip on yourself and come up with a story, okay? Foster shot Crane; then you shot him. You need to fill in the blanks before the cops get here. Understand?”

  “Ryan, I can’t do that. I deserve whatever—”

  “Don’t say that,” he said in a hard voice, cutting her off. He softened his tone and kneeled beside her. “It was a mistake, it’s done, and spending the next few years of your life in prison won’t fix it. You have to get it together, okay?”

  She nodded and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “Good.”

  He glanced at his watch as he ran for the doors. Sanitizing the scene had taken a full minute, a minute he couldn’t afford to spare. Before he got outside, he thought of something and went back to Foster’s body. He found the keys to the Crown Vic in the man’s left jacket pocket, along with FBI credentials in a flip-style billfold. He grabbed both items. Less than a minute later, he had the roll-down vehicular door up and was pulling out onto West Thirty-seventh Street, heading for Eighth Avenue. He accelerated immediately, racing against the one-way traffic, laying his hand on the horn. In his rush to beat Nazeri to the hotel, he didn’t notice the man in the Sable across the street, who watched him go with a mixed expression of rage and curiosity.

  As Kealey raced north toward the Renaissance Hotel, Vanderveen crossed the street quickly, heading back to the warehouse, wondering what he would find inside.

  CHAPTER 55

  NEW YORK CITY

  Amir Nazeri wiped a film of sweat from his forehead and stared down at his hands, which were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel of the Isuzu box truck. They were steady, but only because they were welded around the wheel; the rest of his body was trembling violently. He willed his limbs to relax but knew that it wouldn’t make a difference. Looking up, he stared blankly through the windshield at the traffic passing a few feet in front of him, then turned to his right, absently watching the crowds sweeping past on the sidewalk. He wondered what these people would think if they knew what was going through his mind. Would any of them understand? Somehow, he didn’t think so. Only one person had ever really understood him, and she was gone, stripped away by the same government that had given him the chance to prosper in a new and foreign land. The irony of this — that America could give with one hand and take away with the other — had never occurred to him, but he wouldn’t have cared to consider it.

  The Isuzu had passed through the western half of the theater district and was now idling at the intersection of West Fifty-second and Tenth. He had missed the right turn onto We
st Forty-eighth several minutes earlier. At first, he told himself it was just because he’d seen a police car make the same turn. But then he’d come up with a similar excuse for the next eastbound street, the street after that, and the street after that. At this rate, he would never reach his destination, but suddenly — inexplicably — he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  He wiped his face again as the light turned green. He hesitated, but instead of turning right onto West Fifty-second, he kept going straight. Nazeri shook his head unconsciously, aware of the pressure building inside his chest. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. When Kohl had first put forth this proposition, everything had seemed so clear. In killing Fatima Darabi, the U.S. government had stripped away the only thing that had ever mattered to him. When he’d learned what had happened to her, the bitterness had threatened to overwhelm him completely. Nothing had changed since then, so why was he hesitating? Why was he finding it so hard to make the turn?

  Suddenly, he was overcome with deep, piercing shame. How could he be so weak? He still didn’t know exactly what Fatima had done for the mullahs in Tehran, but he knew that she’d come to the United States to risk her life for her country. She had sacrificed everything for what she’d believed in, and while Amir did not share those beliefs, he did respect them. More to the point, he respected her courage. In life, she had possessed a certain strength, an inner vitality he could never aspire to, only admire from afar. But now she was gone, and it was his turn to be strong. If he failed her now, he would never again have the chance to avenge her death, at least not to the extent she deserved.

  As this realization sunk in, her face appeared, unbidden. When she came, he saw her at ten years of age, splashing in the fountains at the Sheik Lotfallah mosque in Isfahan, a giddy smile on her face, whooping as the water rained down in a silvery cloud.

  It was the best memory of his life.

  Horns blared behind him, pulling him out of his reverie. As he came back to reality, he wished so much that he could go back to that time, a time when anything seemed possible. A time when they still had the chance to make the right choices. He felt something warm running over his cheeks and realized that he was crying.

  When he hit the light at West Fifty-sixth Street, he swung the wheel to the right. The hotel was less than five minutes away, and he knew now what he had to do.

  All doubt was gone.

  In the warehouse on West Thirty-seventh, Naomi Kharmai was still sitting on the smooth cement floor. For the moment, she was lost to the world, mired in her own private hell. She couldn’t seem to settle on any one emotion: the guilt would start to take hold, only to be replaced by a surge of self-pity. These twin tenets of misery were propped up by anger: anger at Harper, for letting her have her way; anger at Ryan, for not walking in first. If Crane had been the second person through the door, Naomi never would have pulled the trigger. But it just hadn’t worked out that way, and now an innocent person was gone forever.

  She still couldn’t believe it. Through the tears in her eyes, she stared at Crane’s body in the near distance, silently begging the other woman to stand up and shake it off. It just didn’t seem possible. She had taken a life. An innocent life. It was the one word she just couldn’t shake from her tortured conscience. It was also a word that didn’t apply to Matt Foster, and for this reason, Naomi didn’t regret shooting him at all. Samantha Crane was the only victim here, but if Crane was innocent, what did that make her? The answer was incredibly simple, yet so hard to accept.

  She was guilty. Guilty of the worst possible crime. Naomi just couldn’t see a way past this mistake. Even if Ryan somehow managed to stop Nazeri, how was she supposed to live with herself? To come to terms with what she had done?

  The thought brought on a fresh wave of bitter, scalding tears. They were flowing steadily now that the shock had worn off, but she knew this was only the start; the shock might have faded, but reality had yet to set in. As sorrow welled up in her chest, she heard a noise at the doors and looked up. Suddenly, her grief was replaced by something even worse. As she stared, openmouthed, at the man standing before her, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was some kind of divine punishment for what she had just done. If so, the punishment was fully befitting her crime.

  Will Vanderveen was standing there, holding a gun in his hand. Her gaze instantly moved to the gun near Foster’s hand — the one Ryan had cleaned of her fingerprints — but Vanderveen seemed to sense her thoughts.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said. Smiling, he gestured for her to stand. “On your feet, Naomi. We’re going for a little ride.”

  The six-minute drive from the warehouse to the intersection of Forty-eighth and Seventh was the longest of Ryan Kealey’s life. He was caught up in a surge of emotions: rage that he’d missed Will Vanderveen yet again, sympathy for Naomi and what she had yet to endure, and building despair over the death of Samantha Crane. He hadn’t known her, but she had been innocent of this whole mess and, from what he could tell, a good agent, despite the fact that she’d been blindsided by Rudaki and Matt Foster, her own partner. He couldn’t really fault her for not seeing the truth earlier; he had been similarly betrayed in the past, and he hadn’t seen it coming, either. He only wished he had been able to get to Naomi first; if he’d been able to warn her, Crane would almost certainly still be alive. In truth, he was as much to blame as she was.

  He had found the lights shortly after making the turn onto Eighth Avenue, and the siren soon after that. As the Bureau sedan swept toward Times Square, he was scanning the surrounding traffic, as well as the cars lined up at the curb, searching for any sign of a white Isuzu truck. He saw a few possibilities, but he didn’t have time to check them. At this point, his only chance at stopping Nazeri would be to get to the target as fast as possible. The only thing he couldn’t understand was why he had not heard the blast. It should have happened at least ten minutes ago. He kept waiting for the rising plume of shattered cement and dust, as well as the thunderous explosion, signifying the death of thousands of people, but it never came, not on West Thirty-seventh Street, not on Eighth Avenue, and not as the Crown Vic he had borrowed squealed to a halt at the intersection of West Forty-eighth and Seventh Avenue.

  He’d cut the lights and the siren a few blocks earlier, not wanting to warn Nazeri if the other man had already reached his destination. Now he got out of the car and looked around, searching frantically for the truck that Naomi had described. Not seeing it, he took a second to scope out his surroundings. The Renaissance Hotel was on his right, twenty-six stories of black glass and steel. From where he was standing, he could reach out and touch the gleaming façade. Above his head was a huge sign edged in gold filigree, at least six stories in height, with a large, circular clock on top. He checked the time and saw that the General Assembly was not set to convene for another three hours. In other words, at least thirty members of the United Iraqi Alliance were inside the hotel at that very moment, along with several hundred businessmen, conventioneers, and tourists, all of whom were blissfully unaware of the looming threat.

  In the distance was the narrow northern face of the world-famous One Times Square, the Bertelsmann Building off to the left. Times Square Tower rose behind all of it, glistening like a vertical wall of blue-green water in the midday sun. In between, passenger cars flashed back and forth on the through streets, along with dozens of buses and what seemed like hundreds of yellow cabs, though the actual number was far less. The traffic on Seventh Avenue was southbound in four narrow lanes, hurtling toward One Times Square and the intersection with Broadway, the view partially obscured by towering columns of steam, which seemed to gather in ominous clouds in the cool air.

  People were everywhere, choking the sidewalks, dressed for the weather in long-sleeve shirts and light sweaters. The temperature was about 65 degrees, much warmer than it had been in Washington the previous night, but still fairly brisk for September. Kealey automatically started looking for police officers and was
momentarily shocked when he didn’t see any. Then he remembered that half the force — and 90 percent of the Manhattan Patrol Borough South — was conducting crowd control at the UN enclave a few blocks to the east. He wondered why the crowd didn’t extend to this area, then recalled that the demonstration stretched north on Second Avenue, from Fifty-first to Fifty-fifth. In other words, this was the perfect place to strike: for the moment, the hotel was completely unprotected. Completely vulnerable.

  Kealey swung around and looked north, scanning the approaching traffic. If Nazeri was coming, he guessed it would be from this direction, not from the west. Involuntarily, his right hand drifted down to his hip, where the Beretta was holstered. The butt was covered by the lower edge of his T-shirt. A magazine was loaded, of course, 14 rounds plus one in the chamber, and he had two spare mags as backup. He suspected he might well need them; 15 rounds might not be enough to take out Nazeri, Vanderveen, and the truck. Once he saw the vehicle approach, he’d have to fire through the windshield as fast as possible. It wasn’t an ideal scenario, but at this point, he had little other choice. What worried him most were the police officers in the area. He hadn’t seen any, but he knew they were there. The minute he pulled the gun, he’d become a target, but there was no way he could explain the situation in time. He had no proof of anything he had to tell them, and the first thing they would do is take his gun and hold him for questioning. Bringing them into the loop simply wasn’t an option.

  Just as he was trying to figure out his next move, two things happened at once. His cell phone rang, and he spotted the top of a white Isuzu truck approaching from the north, moving at a slower rate than the surrounding traffic. As he watched, it shuddered to a halt at the light at Fifty-first and Seventh, two cars back from the light itself. Never moving his gaze from the vehicle, he reached into his right pocket and withdrew his phone, flipping it open to answer the call. “Kealey.”