Soul of the Assassin

by Larry Bond

  Ferguson looked out at the water and sky. He loved the ocean in muddy gray—“fisherman’s dawn,” his father called it, and though he wasn’t a fisherman, it was the elder Ferguson’s favorite time of day.

  “Anything is possible then,” he used to tell Bob. And then he would smile, smirk really, and add, “Not really. But it feels that way.”

  Ferguson walked toward the dock, intending to go out on the long pier. But he tripped a sensor as he climbed up the three steps; the lights switched on, destroying the mood. For a long minute, he stood staring at the edge of the darkness on the water, waiting impatiently for the floodlight to turn itself off. Finally he gave up and went back to his car.

  That’s what you get for being nostalgic, he told himself, waving at the CIA bodyguard as he drove through the gate.

  Three hours later, Bob Ferguson pulled off the highway to look for a diner and a pay phone. A place right off the interchange advertised itself with a flashing neon, but he didn’t want to make the call from a phone so obviously close to an interstate. He took a right onto the local county highway, following it for about ten miles before finally coming to a village. There was a diner on the main drag, a fifties-era bullet building that called itself The Real McCoy. It was a bit too self-consciously cute, but it also looked like the only place to eat in town. Ferguson parked in the lot, then went inside, where his instincts were confirmed—the old-style diner fronted a consciously kitschy place with a fifties theme. But it was too late to turn back.

  “Good hash browns?” he asked the girl at the cash register as she retrieved a menu.

  “Best. Booth or table?”

  “Booth.”

  Ferguson ordered breakfast, then took his coffee to the phone booth near the men’s room. He took a phone card from his wallet, checked his watch, then dialed the number of his doctor in suburban Virginia.

  “This is Bob Ferguson,” he told the receptionist. “I’m looking for Dr. Zeist.”

  “He’s with a patient.”

  “I can wait a bit. He wanted to talk to me. I’m out of town and may not get a chance to call back.”

  The receptionist clicked him onto hold. Ferguson took a sip of coffee. He suspected that she’d told a white lie; the doctor generally didn’t see patients for another half hour.

  “Hey, Ferg, how are you?” said Zeist, coming on the line.

  “You tell me.”

  “The results are the results,” said the doctor. “You know. My suggestion would be to have another treatment. The odds are good. I’ve only had two patients since I’ve started practice who, um, had flare-ups.”

  Ferguson hadn’t heard Zeist use the word flare-ups before. Ordinarily, the doctor was extremely precise, even clinical, when talking about cancer. He was also generally upbeat, at least about thyroid cancer. The odds greatly favored a positive outcome—even for third-stage patients like Ferguson whose cancer had “escaped the thyroid capsule before detection,” the statistics favored a “full, or close to full, lifetime survival rate without recurrence.”

  Problem was, the cancer didn’t seem to be listening. A recent set of tests had discovered the cells in different parts of his body.

  “So the treatment here is to poison me, right?” said Ferguson.

  “Well, not precisely, Ferg.”

  “I swallow the baseball and sit in the hotel room for a couple of days,” said Ferguson. He’d undergone the treatment before.

  “It’s not that bad, is it?” said Zeist.

  “Nah, it’s not that bad,” Ferguson said. “Just was the worst five days of my life.”

  Ferguson, who hated to be cooped up, wasn’t exaggerating, though Zeist thought he was.

  “We have to do a little surgery first. Take out the adrenaline gland.”

  The adrenaline gland was where the most cancer cells had been located on the scan; it was also relatively easy to remove and to do without.

  “That’s really the best odds,” said Zeist. “The combination—a one-two punch. You’ll beat it. Let’s see. I’d like to set this up for next week—”

  “Next week’s not going to be good.”

  Zeist sighed. “Listen, Ferg, waiting a few days, even a few weeks maybe, won’t be a big deal. But we really do want to move ahead. The best—”

  “Yeah, I’m not putting it off. I’m just kind of booked for the next week to two or three. Hard to tell right now. How much advance notice do you need?”

  “I can get you to see the surgeon at the end of the week.”

  “Too soon. What about Ferber?”

  “I was thinking of Dr. Ferber since he knows you.”

  “Good. Tell him I’ll be in touch.”

  “Ferg, he’s going to have to see you himself. You know that.”

  “I trust him. I’ve seen his work.” Ferguson turned toward the glass door to the restroom area, glancing at his neck in the reflection. “As a matter of fact, I’m looking at it now. Very nice work. No scars.”

  “Ferg, this has to have a high priority. Really. As optimistic as I am, realistically, the sooner the better.”

  “Looks like I have to go,” Ferg said, spotting the waitress carrying his food.

  “Ferg—”

  “Gotta run. Have a date with the world’s best hash browns.”

  Ferguson had finished the home fries—decent, though the coffee nearly made up for it—and was just about to ask for the check when his secure satellite phone began to vibrate with a call. He took it out and slid against the wall at the end of the booth.

  “The Real McCoy,” he answered. “Home of the world’s best hash browns.”

  “Ferg?”

  “Talk to me, Corrigan.”

  “Where are you, Ferg?”

  “On the road again,” sang Ferguson, slightly off-key.

  “The GPS says you’re in Massachusetts.”

  “Just paying my respects,” said Ferguson.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Jack Corrigan. “Your father’s buried up there, huh?”

  Jack Corrigan was the First Team’s desk officer, the mission coordinator who spent most of his time in a bunker known as “the Cube.” His job was to support the First Team while they were in action, providing them information and arranging for assistance when necessary. He’d probably just been briefed on the mission.

  The waitress came over with the coffee, but Ferguson waved his hand at her, adding, “Just the check.”

  “Look, I have the plane all arranged. I have you going out of JFK instead of Logan, though. I didn’t know you were up there. I figured you’d want a direct flight to Bologna so—”

  “Don’t worry about it. When’s the flight?”

  “Three o’clock. Rankin should be there tomorrow night. Thera and Guns are going in through Rome so they can bring more equipment in.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You’re all packed? You need more gear?”

  “I’m good, Mom, thanks. Even have a new toothbrush.”

  “Rankin’s going to come with extra clothes.”

  “He needs them. Never takes a shower.”

  “How can you be so flip this early in the morning?”

  “That’s what happens when you start off the day with great hash browns,” said Ferguson.

  4

  BOLOGNA, ITALY

  (TWO DAYS LATER)

  Stephen Rankin watched as the blonde pulled the strands of hair back behind her ear, pretending to preen in the hotel lobby’s mirror. She was actually checking to see if she was being watched.

  Of course she was. Every male eye in the hotel lobby, including those of the overtly gay man at the front desk, was staring at her. She was just too gorgeous not to.

  Which ought to be a liability in her line of business, Rankin thought.

  The blonde finished playing with her hair and swept toward the doorway. Rankin watched from the corner of his eye—then nearly jumped as he saw her collide with someone and fall to the floor.

  It was Ferguson.
>
  Rankin had worked with the CIA officer long enough now that he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. They were supposed to be shadowing the blonde, who’d been identified as T Rex’s “preparer,” a kind of advance man who made sure things were ready for the assassin to do his job when he arrived in town. Shadowing generally meant staying far in the background, but Ferguson had his own way of handling things.

  “Scusi, signora,” said Ferguson in Italian, bending to help her up. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  “Merci,” said the woman in French.

  “I hope you’re OK,” said Ferguson, first in English and then in Italian.

  “Yes, OK,” she said, her English heavily accented. She pushed down her skirt, scowled at him, then went back toward the door, hesitating ever so slightly before pushing it open.

  Ferguson, meanwhile, strolled across the lobby. Seeming to spot Rankin for the first time, Ferguson greeted him in a loud voice. “Ciao, my American friend. How is the studying going today?”

  “Just fine,” said Rankin, remaining seated. He still had no idea what Ferguson was doing, except that it wasn’t what they had planned just a half hour before.

  “It is a fine day, si,” said Ferguson. “You will join me, yes, for a coffee?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Rankin sourly. He rose.

  “If you’re busy—”

  “Am I?” asked Rankin.

  “Of course not. Come then,” said Ferguson, and he swung around toward the doors.

  “Should we be watching the mistress?” said Rankin once they were outside.

  “I keep telling you, Skippy, she and T Rex aren’t like that. My bet is that not only has she never met him, she doesn’t even know what he does. Not specifically, anyway.”

  “Like she couldn’t figure it out, huh?”

  “He probably sends her on a couple of gigs a year that are just blinds. But maybe she does. The hair color’s a dye job.”

  Ferguson glanced to his left. The taxi was just turning to the east, out of sight.

  “We’re not going to follow her?” asked Rankin.

  Ferguson smiled without answering. Rankin knew Ferguson was acting this way partly because he didn’t like explaining himself, and also partly because he liked to annoy people, especially Rankin. Some days Rankin could let it slide without saying anything; today he couldn’t.

  “Why do you have to be such an ass when we’re workin’, for cryin’ out loud?” he snapped.

  Ferguson just laughed and continued toward the mopeds he’d parked nearby. He grabbed the brown one, stepped over it, and got on.

  “We’re going toward Via Zamboni, I think,” he told Rankin. “Stay back. Remember she’s seen you.”

  “Hey—”

  “And get your radio on. Channel eight—louder the buzz, the closer you are to her. I’m on channel two.”

  Ferguson revved the bike’s small motor, then helped it get moving by pushing his feet along the pavement. Rather than turning in the direction the cab had taken, he went right; after glancing behind him to make sure Rankin was following, Ferguson reached into his pocket and took out the GPS receiver, glancing at the screen, which showed where the bug he’d placed in the cab was. The taxi had become bogged down in the narrow one-way streets. Ferguson continued to the north, then turned onto Via San Giacomo.

  “You with me, Rankin?”

  “I guess.”

  “She said she was going to one of the university administration buildings. Probably bull, but we’ll see how patient she is.”

  “You sure we got the right girl, right?”

  “Got me, Skippy. Depends on how far we trust Corrigan.”

  “Yeah. That makes me feel real confident.”

  One of Rankin’s redeeming qualities, in Ferguson’s opinion, was his deep distrust of Corrigan, largely because of the fact that Corrigan had been an army intelligence officer before joining the CIA. In this case, however, Ferguson believed that the identification of Arna Kerr as T Rex’s “preparer” was probably correct; he’d followed her the night before when she arrived in town, and watched her do the sorts of things Ferguson and the others did before they set up a mission—renting cars, casing buildings, getting the lay of the land. She’d originally been ID’d by matching various credit card and other records against T Rex’s known assassinations. Arna didn’t seem to work them all, but she had been around for the flashiest ones, including Dalton’s.

  Though she had come in from Paris and was apparently claiming to be French, they had traced her credit cards to Stockholm, Sweden. If they decided they wanted her—which they might—they could get her there. Taking her now would tip off T Rex and ruin the entire operation.

  As would letting her know she was being followed.

  The GPS device beeped.

  “Uh-oh,” Ferg said. “Getting out of the cab. Low traffic tolerance. Stay with me, Skippy.”

  “That’s not my name,” growled Rankin.

  Ferguson pinched his elbows close to his body and ducked down a side street. He turned left and cruised onto Via Bel Belmbro. In the process he cut off a delivery truck; the Italian driver responded with a blast of his horn and a stream of curses. Under other circumstances, Ferguson might have stopped to listen—his Italian was not particularly deep—but he was a little farther from Arna Kerr than he wanted to be. So he merely hunkered down on his bike, pushing his head toward the handlebars and dodging a small car that shot out of a private courtyard. He turned onto Via San Vitale, where he remembered a parking lot; he was off his bike and trotting in the direction of the church before Rankin caught up.

  “Go up two blocks; find a place to park. We’ll keep her between us,” said Ferguson.

  “I thought you weren’t putting a tracker on her.”

  “I didn’t. It was in the cab. Come on.”

  Ferguson went far enough up the street so that he could see the next intersection, then leaned back against the facade of one of the buildings. The bricks were arranged in a way that made it look like the wall was a fireplace; for hundreds of years, there had been a marble relief on the lower panel and a statue in the upper niche. Now, though, the niche was empty, and the stone was covered with a thick, oily grime.

  “Where is she?” asked Rankin.

  Ferguson was just about to say that she was a slow walker when he realized that he had made a mistake: she’d be doubling back, not going ahead. That way, she could check the cars behind her to see if she was being followed.

  Well, good for her, he thought.

  “Come down the block, slowly,” he told Rankin, getting back on his bike. “I think she’s backtracking.”

  “You lost her?”

  “Not even close.” Ferguson went down toward Via San Vitale, then circled around and passed Arna Kerr as she walked toward Via Rizzoli at the center of the old city. Bologna’s two towers stood nearby.

  “She’s just doing the tourist thing,” Ferguson told Rankin.

  Ferguson found a place to put the bike. Pulling on a pair of sunglasses, he began walking down the street, considering what to do next. The brief predicted that Arna Kerr would stay in Bologna for one more day or perhaps two. Following her around all that time would be easy, but Ferguson was never one to take the easy way on anything.

  “Ah, you again,” he said, spinning as they passed on the street. This time he didn’t bump into her. “The lady from the hotel whom I knocked to the floor. I am still sorry for this.”

  Displeasure flickered on her face, the slightest hint of uncontrolled emotion.

  A good sign, thought Ferguson.

  “I hope you have forgiven me,” he told her in Italian, pulling off his glasses. “Here I see you are a tourist, but I thought you were a student.”

  Arna Kerr was used to men trying to pick her up. She smiled condescendingly, and continued taking photos of the square with her small camera.

  “I can tell you’re not Italian,” said Ferguson, switching to English. “But I don’t think yo
u are American. Too pretty.”

  “Allez oust,” she said in French. “Get lost.”

  “Ah, oui. But my French is so poor, I don’t know what you are saying. I wouldn’t have guessed French. Scandinavian.”

  “I can call a policeman,” she said, this time in English.

  “Let me,” said Ferguson. He swung around, held his hand up, and said in a soft voice, “Polizia, polizia.” Then he spread his arms in a gesture of apology. “None seem to be nearby. Which is good—I wouldn’t want to share.”

  “You act like an Italian,” said Arna. “But your accent sounds American when you speak English.”

  “Grazie,” said Ferguson. “But it’s more Irish, don’t you think?”

  Arna shrugged, suppressing a smile. If she weren’t working, she might find him attractive in an amusing way. He was good-looking, and glib of course, with a sense of humor. But she was working, and wanted to get rid of him as quickly and painlessly as possible.

  Without calling the police, certainly.

  “I can pretend to be American, if that will help,” said Ferguson. “I have been to Boston and New York. And as it happens, I have all morning free, and can give you a guided tour of the city.”

  “You live here?”

  “Just arrived. But in a past life, I must have lived here. Every street is familiar.”

  “Really, signore—”

  “Ferg. Everyone calls me Ferg.”

  She shook her head. And yet she couldn’t help herself. He was attractive, with a certain air about him. “What do you do?” she asked.

  “Art. I look at very old paintings and tell people with too much money whether to pay ridiculous prices for them or not. And you?”

  “I’m a drug pusher,” she said in French. “A vicious woman who sucks the blood from obnoxious Americans.”

  “Irishmen, too, I hope.”

  Something about him struck her wrong, and it wasn’t just the fact that he so effortlessly figured out what she had said. Arna Kerr took a step toward him, then threw her right hand onto his back, reaching for his wallet pocket.

  Ferguson caught her hand. She was quick, and strong. He thought it was possible she was on to him.