The Assassins Part 5

Lara gave a slow nod. "You have powerful friends. It was a problem that they might go looking for you, so the Padre found a way to cover for a while that you were missing. But then you arrived a day early from Baghdad. The Padre did not have everything ready to s.n.a.t.c.h you." He gave Ryder an earnest look. "It is not necessary to shoot me. I will leave as soon as I fetch something from the Padre. It will be as if you and I never met."

Ryder gestured at Eva and the teenaged girl. "Unarmed. Innocent. No reason to kill them unless someone's afraid they'd identify you-or what you're taking. You're working for the snipers. Who are they?"

Sweat broke out on the man's forehead. "Eli Eichel hired me. He partners with his brother, Danny. They were the shooters. Eli is retired Kidon."

Ryder paused. He had expected the Carnivore to be the man's employer. Kidon was Mossad's highly regarded kill department, renowned for orchestrating successful wet jobs around the globe. And now a Kidon-trained a.s.sa.s.sin and his brother had killed six people and Eva so they could get their hands on something the Padre was carrying.

"Keep searching," Ryder ordered.

Lara sat back down on his heels. He pulled a leather pouch from inside the Padre's coat. Using his teeth, he loosened the drawstring and spilled three leather bags onto his palm. He opened them. Each contained a chunk of limestone.

Ryder frowned. "What are they?"

"Eli said they are special rocks. See, there are marks on them." He turned one over.

Ryder recognized the symbols. Cuneiform writing. "How are you getting them to Eichel?"

"I am supposed to phone him. Then he will say where to meet."

Ryder considered. "Tell him to come here."

The man's eyebrows rose in fright. "They will kill me if I betray them."

"I'll kill you if you don't. Make the call. Put it on speakerphone."

As if in slow motion, Lara took out his cell and tapped numbers.

Ryder listened as a man with a deep ba.s.s voice answered: "Shalom." The low growl of a car engine sounded in the background.

Lara took a deep breath. "Shalom. I have the rocks. They are just as you said."

"You've done well. Walk out of the hunt club and turn left-"

Shoulders tensing, Lara interrupted, his voice quivering. "Come here. Please. It would be better than someone seeing me on the roadway."

The ba.s.s voice sharpened. "You're afraid. Why?"

Ryder caught Lara's gaze and stared hard at him.

Lara sighed. "There are many dead people. Much blood. More than I-"

"We'll be there soon." The connection went dead.

Lara pocketed his cell phone, his expression wretched.

"You're Jewish?" Ryder asked, remembering the exchanges of Shalom.

"Yes, from Bilbao. Most Basques are like the Padre-Catholic. But plain-door synagogues have always been around; you just have to know where to knock. There is an old Basque saying-we know who the Jews are because we used to be Jews."

Lara's being a rare Basque Jew would give Eli Eichel a powerful link to him.

Ryder nodded. "Put the rocks away."

As the man bent over to do so, Ryder quickly lifted his knee and slashed the heel of his boot down hard onto his skull. With a thick grunt, he toppled, unconscious. Ryder scooped up the limestone pieces, put them into their individual pouches, and then all into the larger leather pouch. He b.u.t.toned them into his peacoat's inside pocket.

Taking a deep breath, he walked over to Eva. She was on her right side, crumpled like a broken doll, her face turned away. A bullet had severed her carotid artery. Her head lay in a pool of freezing blood.

Breathing shallowly, he crouched and cupped her face in his hands. She was still warm. Steeling himself, he turned her face toward him. Her eyes were open, such a beautiful cobalt blue. Her chin was soft and round. Her lips full and sweet. He remembered the violent deaths of comrades, friends, and family. Of his fiancee. And now, Eva. His eyes burned with grief.

Gently releasing her, he started to get to his feet, then stopped. The sunlight reflected on her unblinking eyes in such a way he saw she was wearing contacts. Eva had never worn contacts. Puzzled, he studied her. He frowned. His heart rate accelerating, he cradled her head in his hands again and used his thumbs to feel around her cheeks, then around her lips. Her skin here was different from her cheeks, softer, more flexible.

Again he probed along her cheeks until he found a line, a subtle demarcation under his thumbs where one side of her seemed normal while the other was more dense, a bit rigid. He heard Tucker's voice in his mind: "The ME says the devices fit on snugly and are flexible, but when pressed they feel a little stiffer than human flesh." He pressed deeper until he found a slit, an opening, where the denser "skin" rose along the line of the natural skin. Using his fingernail, he tugged along the edge, slowly lifting up a rim of fake flesh. A prosthesis.

His gaze returned to her eyes. He pried off one of her contact lenses and stared at a pale blue eye. Not Eva's rich cobalt blue color. Not Eva. Not her.

He let out a long breath. Eva had been doubled, just as he had been. Lifting his head, he looked around at the b.l.o.o.d.y carnage and felt relief sweep through him. Somewhere Eva was alive.

16.

As a cold wind swept down the timbered hills, Ryder looked at his watch. The snipers could arrive at any moment. Jumping up, he took out the tracker he had used to follow Eva's double and pried open the back. There it was, just as Toms Lara had said-a paper-thin electronic bug the size of a s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.ton.

He ran back to Lara, loosened the top laces of the unconscious man's boot, and pried open the lining. Sliding the bug inside, he pressed the lining back against the shoe and tightened the laces again.

Hustling from corpse to corpse, he looked for the tracker. At last he found it, a small handheld, under one of the fallen guards. Its miniature screen showed the bug as a motionless green dot, with data about longitude, lat.i.tude, and alt.i.tude. Now Ryder would be able to follow Lara electronically wherever he went.

Hefting Lara up onto his shoulder, he carried him to the Explorer, opened the rear door, and dumped him inside. He had the urge to beat the s.h.i.+t out of him, but he needed him to be able to talk when the snipers arrived.

He hunted through the vehicle and found rope under the front seat. He tied Lara's hands and feet. Checking his watch again, he swore. He had burned through ten minutes.

Picking up Lara's phone, he saw it was a disposable cell. He touched the MENU b.u.t.ton and went to RECENT CALLS. The most recent had to have been to Eli Eichel, the sniper whom Lara had just phoned.

There was another number. Ryder dialed it. In moments he heard ringing-from a distant corpse. He ran, s.n.a.t.c.hed the ringing phone from the dead man's hand, and answered the call. Now he had a line open between the two cells.

Putting Lara's cell on speakerphone, he slid it inside Lara's breast pocket. He held the other cell to his ear and aimed his voice at the one in the pocket.

He spoke in a normal voice: "One ... two ... three ... four ... five."

He smiled grimly. He could hear his voice with clarity. Now he should be able to listen to conversations between the snipers and Lara. He put the cell in the front pocket of his jacket where he could quickly access it.

Swinging on his backpack, Ryder scooped up one of the Uzis. It was not the semiautomatic version but instead its cousin, a far more efficient killer-a fully automatic weapon, illegal in the United States except for police and Cla.s.s-3 dealers. The magazine was located in the grip a.s.sembly. He checked it-all twenty-five rounds were loaded. He grabbed two boxes of ammo from the back of the Explorer and shoved them into his backpack.

Slinging the Uzi over his shoulder, he gave a last look then sprinted past the limousine, around the line of juniper bushes, and back up into the forest. As he climbed, afternoon shadows spread black across the animal path and ice-covered stream. Winter birds chattered. Reaching the hilltop, he turned and looked back down on the scene of the ma.s.sacre. For a moment he wondered who the dead women were and felt bad for their families.

The snipers had still not arrived.

He took out his Galaxy and dialed Tucker Andersen.

"What no-good are you up to now?" Tucker grumbled in greeting.

"Eva's been doubled, too," Ryder told him. "She wasn't at her condo, but there was blood and other evidence of a fight. I found her cell phone and a tracker there. It appeared she'd bugged herself so I could follow, and I did, to a place called the Esti Hunt Club." He described witnessing the slaughter and discovering prostheses on the woman whom he had thought to be Eva. "There was one survivor. He told me what we suspected-the Padre had planned to force me to reveal how to find the Carnivore. The strange thing is, the Carnivore wasn't the sniper. It was two other a.s.sa.s.sins-Eli and Danny Eichel. Apparently Eli Eichel was Kidon."

"First it's the Padre, then it's the Carnivore." Tucker's voice rose in frustration. "Now it's the Eichel brothers."

"Tell me about them."

"Eli is the leader. Early in his career, he tracked a key Iraqi scientist to Paris, slit his throat, stabbed him several times in the heart, and then made it look like a robbery gone bad-and the French police believed it. Just before that, Eli had gotten the scientist to reveal the location of Saddam's top-secret nuclear complex outside Baghdad. The result was, Eli got away without a trace, and a few days later the Israelis bombed the h.e.l.l out of the installation. After several years, for no apparent reason, Eli left Mossad and began to freelance. Mossad handled it quietly. Losing someone as good as him is a bad outcome for an intelligence agency-unless, of course, the agency is using the former employee for off-the-books work. I've heard his brother, Danny, is strange but as gifted a sniper as his brother."

"I want photos of both. Every piece of information you have."

"I'll have Gloria a.s.semble dossiers. What else did you learn?"

Ryder described the limestone pieces with the cuneiform symbols. "Lara didn't know what they were or meant, and I have no idea either."

"Eichel's just killed seven people to get them," Tucker said. "If he finds out you have them, he'll come after you."

"Probably. Do you want to send your people here to investigate, or are you going to wait for the locals?"

"I'll helicopter in a team," Tucker decided. "Where was Lara supposed to deliver the limestone pieces?"

"He's not delivering. Eichel is picking them up."

"I'll send backup for you."

"There's no time. You're too far away. And besides, I've bugged Lara so I can follow him, and I planted an open cell on him, too, to listen in on any conversations. He'll tell the Eichels about me, and I'm hoping they'll take him along to get as much as possible out of him. That way we can track them."

"I like it."

Ryder c.o.c.ked his head, listening. The engine noise of a vehicle approaching the hunt club floated up the snowy hill.

"They're here," he told Tucker. "Before I go, I a.s.sume Eva's at the Farm. She needs to know what's happened and that she may be at risk. But if I call, they won't let me talk to her." Trainees at the Farm were incommunicado.

"I'll handle it," Tucker agreed. "Watch your back."

17.

Williamsburg, Virginia A light snowfall dusted the lawns and lampposts in Colonial Williamsburg. A tavern door swung open, and the aromas of strong ale and Virginia barbecue drifted out. Smiling and giving every evidence she was enjoying it all, Eva Blake moved with the throngs of tourists admiring the historic sights.

In truth, she was in field training, halfway through the CIA's six-month tradecraft school for spies at the Farm. Williamsburg was only a few miles away, which was why locals often served as unwitting partic.i.p.ants in off-campus exercises.

A pair of enormous oxen plodded past, their bells jingling. Playing her role, Eva lifted her digital camera, joining other visitors as they snapped pictures. Then she turned and took more photos, this time of actors in period costumes and, finally, a row of picturesque houses with tall dormer windows.

Angled as she was, Eva again glimpsed the silver-haired woman a half block behind, pus.h.i.+ng a baby carriage. The woman gave every appearance of being a grandmother taking her infant grandchild for an outing, except the buggy probably held a lifelike doll. Eva believed the woman was surveilling her. In Farmspeak, the woman was a shadow. And she was good at it, no doubt retired FBI or CIA.

Eva crossed the street. She wore a short brown wig over her long red hair, a quilted thermal coat, and flat-heeled black boots. With no makeup and her sensible clothes, she was more likely to be ignored than to be identified as a spy-in-training.

She repressed a smile. Her life was so different from when she was a curator at the Getty Museum, in Los Angeles. In those days there were gala fund-raisers, candlelit dinners to convince rich collectors to loan art, and of course the constant navigation through the piranha-infested waters of international museum work. She had loved it. But then it was the culmination of years of pulling herself up from her back-alley poor childhood, her alcoholic family, and her teenaged years as a pickpocket. When you finally turned your life around, everything you accomplished was precious.

As she pa.s.sed a bay window, Eva saw in the reflection the silver-haired woman cross to her side of the street. Eva did not change her pace or demeanor. Her job was to lull the woman with the normalcy of her own behavior, and at the same time to memorize the woman's face, clothing, choice of coffee and wine and chocolates-whatever details she could gather-for the report she must write tonight.

Pa.s.sing a bookstore, she strolled into Merchants Square. All of the quaint buildings in the square had the style of the 1700s but were built in the 1900s. She was tired, done. She wanted to go back to the motel and have a long, hot shower. The problem was, her shadow had to be the first to quit. Then she spotted an unusual sight-a video store. She stared a moment. The store gave her an idea.

She pushed open the door. A bell tinkled. She paused near the cash register, viewing the videos under CLa.s.sICS. The bell tinkled again. In the reflection of the gla.s.s counter she saw it was not her tail, but an older man in a shearling coat. She felt a surge of hope. Maybe the silver-haired woman had finally had enough and left.

No such luck. The bell sounded again, and this time it was the shadow pus.h.i.+ng the baby carriage. Keeping her expression neutral, Eva headed toward the rear of the video store. She glanced at t.i.tles in DRAMA, HORROR, and COMEDY as if she might want to rent one. And then she spotted the sign she had hoped to find. It was overhead, small, discreet: ADULT ENTERTAINMENT. Listening, she heard the wheels of the baby buggy behind her.

Without a backward glance, Eva pushed through a beaded curtain and entered a small room where the surrounding walls and a central floor-to-ceiling rack displayed movies advertising t.i.tillating t.i.tles with a variety of bold Xs. Bulbous naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s, steel chains, and black leather beamed out at her. There was no one in sight. She hurried around the central stack-no one was there either.

Running to the end, Eva rearranged movies so she could see through a small opening back to the room's curtained entrance. When the curtains rustled, she peeked out. The woman was backing in, pulling the baby carriage. She stopped, leaving the carriage on the far side of the curtain, one hand firmly on the handle. Her actions had just confirmed two of Eva's suspicions-she was definitely her shadow, and she did not want to be seen taking an infant into a video store's dirty-movie room. Like Eva, she was not supposed to draw attention to herself.

The woman looked up and stared at a wall poster of a naked man and woman sporting spiked dog collars, then at a couple wearing cellophane G-strings. For a brief moment, her face darkened and she gazed around as if she wanted to say something loudly. But breaking cover was against the rules for her, too. She stood there another heartbeat, trapped. Finally, she turned and left, the carriage's wheels sounding retreat.

Eva took a deep breath and chuckled. The woman might decide to wait for her outdoors. Still, the temperature was dropping, and the woman must be as tired as Eva. Peering out between the strands of the beaded curtain, Eva a.s.sessed the store. She did not see the woman or the buggy. She waited five minutes then walked back, stopping at the THRILLER shelves.

The man in the shearling coat came to stand beside her and run his fingers across a list of t.i.tles. His shoes were lizard-skin ta.s.seled loafers. His coat was three-quarter length, a pale bone color, beautifully made. It must have cost at least three thousand dollars. His horn-rimmed eyegla.s.ses sat solidly on his large Roman nose. His thick gray hair was artfully tousled. A dapper older man, he appeared relaxed and confident in his expensive coat and shoes. As sweat misted his forehead, he unb.u.t.toned his coat, probably to cool off.

Amused, she realized she was a.s.sessing him just as she did her shadows. And then she saw he was watching, too-but other people.

"Tucker Andersen sends his regards," he said. His lips had barely moved, and his face remained in profile as he continued to face the shelves.

His quiet voice seemed to float on the air a few seconds before Eva computed he had spoken to her.

"Don't look directly at me," he continued. "You realize you've given Gretchen Hilton cardiac arrest. How she ever lasted in the field twenty years is beyond me. She'll get even with you, though. You can expect descriptive words like unsavory and voyeur and soph.o.m.oric antics about you in her report. Of course, there are some who will be delighted by her discomfort."

"Who are you?"

He slid the movie he had been examining back into its slot. "Frank Smith. That's my real name. I understand you're operating under the alias Debora Lane. Nice name. Let's go outside and walk while we talk. That way we'll minimize the annoyance of eavesdroppers, busybodies, and professional spooks like ourselves." Without waiting for her response, he walked past the counter and out the gla.s.s door.

Eva snapped up a Was.h.i.+ngton Post from a stack on the counter and paid the cas.h.i.+er. Pausing at the door, she scanned the sidewalk and trees. Seeing no sign of her shadow, she left the store, too. She did not bother to look for Frank Smith; if he were serious about talking with her, he would find her.

She turned back the way she had come to retrieve her rental car-all the trainees were required to use rental cars, at government expense. They were useful for changing ident.i.ties and losing tails.

Before she had walked twenty feet, Frank Smith stepped out from the side of a building. How had he managed to hide himself so completely?

She turned to face him.

He gave an enormous smile. "Ah, yes, the Farm. By now you no doubt have done paramilitary training and conquered that ridiculous obstacle course. I a.s.sume you've created a bomb using Clorox, although I've never been certain exactly why we needed to know that-"