Assassin (31 page)

“I’m afraid I’ve some bad news for you, Mr. Nash. The hotel is fully booked.”

“Right, I understand there is a large group arriving tomorrow.”

“Ah. Who might have told you that?”

“Your manager over there, Mr. al-Fazir. Great bloke, awright. We had a few beers together just last night.”

“Yes, he’s a fountain of information, isn’t he? What else did he tell you?”

“Oh, nothing really. Hotel gossip and such. Soul of discretion, I assure you. No worries, mate.”

“No worries. But, how unfortunate that Mr. al-Fazir has his dates mixed up. The group is arriving this very afternoon.”

“Today? But my charter flight out arrives at dawn. Surely you can find a spot for me for just the one night, Mr. bin Wazir. A linen closet would suit me just fine.”

“What do you do? Mr. Nash?”

“I’m a photographer, in actuality. On assignment here for the
National Geo
magazine. Big feature on the Komodo dragons coming up. Might make the cover if I get lucky. Quite a few of them on this island, actually. Besides that bloody big bloke at the front door, I mean.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve captured quite a few dragons on Suva myself. My mascot Saddam, as you see, is getting a little long in the tooth. I’ve got a pair of healthy young fellows just waiting to take his place. Not quite as large as Saddam, but a lot quicker and stronger.”

“In captivity?”

“Yes. A large cage the hotel maintains on the property. You can take a look at it on your way to the airstrip, Mr. Nash. Take pictures.”

“Thank you, Mr. bin Wazir. Light should be great that time of morning, actually.”

“Actually, you’re going out there now, Mr. Nash. I’ve instructed the bellman to collect your things and put them in the boot of the hotel Daimler. As it happens, I have a plane at the airstrip. My pilots will be only too happy to give you a ride on the short hop over to Java.”

“But—”

“Ah, here’s my driver now. He’ll take you to the airstrip. Say hello to Tippu Tip, Mr. Nash.”

The towering African chieftain in the red dashiki stuck out his hand and Nash had little choice but to stick his own out as well. The African crushed his hand and smiled broadly, revealing his red-stained teeth.

Nash picked up the antiquated bakelite speaking tube hanging from a hook beneath the rear window of the Daimler.

“Why are we stopping here, driver?” he said into the tube. “The airstrip’s up just ahead. Let’s press on, mate.”

“Boss say you lak take picture of baby dragons.”

“Oh, never mind that. Let’s just get to the airstrip if it’s all the same to you, mate.”

“Boss say you take picture, you take picture.”

“Yeah, well your boss isn’t my boss, is he? Now, you—Christ!”

Tippu suddenly swung the big car off the side of the road and skidded violently to a dusty stop in the short grass. Even with the air conditioning on and all the windows up, you could hear the thrashing and roaring of the two young Komodo lizards from their cage somewhere just inside the solid green wall of jungle. His passenger grabbed frantically for the rear door handle but Tippu had locked all the doors. He turned his massive bulk around in the front seat and looked at the plainly terrified white man.

“Ar take you see dragons,” he said. “You lucky, Mr. Nash. Dragons’ feeding time.”

B
RICK
K
ELLY TRAILED IN
L
ILY’S SCENTED, ALLURING WAKE.
He watched the lavish redhead in pearlescent
peau de soie
sashay silkily through the French doors onto a balcony terrace. There were a number of these semi-circular terraces off the ballroom, all overlooking small gardens on the hotel’s north side. But for the deep thump-thump of the news chopper hovering overhead, it would have been a peaceful spot to escape the tumult of the sharp-elbowed crowd inside. Across Park Lane, the trees of Hyde Park loomed black against the evening sky.

Ambassador Patrick Brickhouse Kelly felt a twinge of guilt.

Tish and the boys were somewhere at the far side of the ballroom, getting autographs from the star, Ian Flynn. It was the reason he’d brought his family out tonight, despite all Jack Patterson’s words of caution. C’mon, Tex, he’d said. A chance for his cooped-up boys to see the world premiere of the new Nick Hitchcock thriller? And, perhaps meet the star himself? In the end, Patterson and his DSS detail had finally relented. Half the royal family and all of their security would be there after all. The ambassador’s family might be a little more secure at a spring garden party inside the walls of Buck House perhaps, but not much.

He cast a guilty glance over his shoulder, looking for Tish and the boys. They were sure to be taking pictures, now, and where was Daddy? Why isn’t Daddy in any of the Nick Hitchcock pictures, Mummy? Because Daddy had slipped away to have a clandestine word with an old friend, darling.

Lily paused just outside the doors, allowing Brick to advance alone. Francesca had her back to him, her elbows resting on the wide stone balustrade, gazing into the deep summer night. Her lush blond hair was pulled back into a chignon, held in place by glittering diamond clips. She seemed to be whistling softly or whispering to chipmunks playing below among the chestnut trees.

Long-buried memories stirred. A week with her, lost in the sanctuary of a small bedroom overlooking the Spanish Steps. Brick, having survived the sandstorms and tank battles in the deserts south of Baghdad with his skin mostly intact, had elected to stop in Rome for a week before heading home to Richmond. A refueling stop, he’d told his mother on the phone, and she’d suggested a hotel he’d find at
Trinità dei Monti 6,
the Hassler. The intimate old-world atmosphere of the hotel proved perfect for nursing war wounds.

It was on his second night in Rome, dining alone at
La Carbonara,
a lively
trattoria
he’d discovered in the
Piazza Campo del Fiore,
that the young American army captain had first glimpsed the beauty. She happened to be working in the kitchen, slicing salami at a heavy wooden table, and every time the kitchen door swung inwards or outwards, he tried to catch her eye.

In the warm, steamy light of the kitchen, surrounded by frenetic cooks, busboys, and black-jacketed waiters, she seemed serene, and, save the gleaming knife in her hand, even angelic.

The kitchen door swung like a camera’s clicking shutter. She’d catch his eye as one waiter pushed into the kitchen with a tray of empty dishes; and he would return the favor as another emerged bearing plates of steaming pasta. Finally, there was that one smile. Neither would remember nor care who’d smiled into the camera first. He fell in love. He thought, at the beginning, she might just be a little bit in love with him, too.

Still blood runs deep,
she’d said to him after their first fight. It was one evening after two or three bottles of rough Chianti in a
taverna
in Testevere, and he spent the rest of the night trying to explain why what he’d meant was not an insult. She was easily hurt, and prone to quick anger. One lesson Brick learned that week was that threading an Abrams M1-A battle tank through Iraqi minefields made tiptoes across the eggshells of the female psyche look suicidal.

When the young Francesca, having asked about his bright decorations, had learned the extent of her handsome new lover’s recent activities in the Persian Gulf, her eyes had flashed with righteous anger.

It ended badly in a quarrel that last night, just before his flight to Andrews AFB and then on to Richmond. A horribly public outburst over the recent Iraqi defeat in the “mother of all battles.” He’d innocently proposed a toast, raising a glass to his fallen comrades in the 100th Armored Division.

“Here’s to us, our noble selves,” Brick said. “None finer, and many a damn sight worse!”

She’d lowered her goblet and, with a thin smile, emptied her full glass onto the white linen tablecloth. The table looked bloodsoaked.

“Still blood runs deep,” she said, gazing at the spreading crimson stain. “This war is not over. It is just beginning.”

Brick looked into her eyes and realized he was seeing her for the very first time. “Tell me about it,” he said, and she did.

Her father, now the proprietor of La Carbonara, was a sixth-generation Roman. Her mother was Syrian. Francesca had grown up in the backstreets of Damascus. She lived in an abusive, tortured household rife with political and religious fervor. She’d listened to both sides all her life, and ended up passionately siding with her blessed mother in her hatred for the impious capitalist imperialists bent on ruling the world. Now her poor mother was dead. Of a broken heart, Francesca always screamed at her abusive father when her anger flared. Her father’s abuse of his daughter was knotted irrevocably with his religion. And her hatred.

What Brick decided he did not need, after a tour of duty in the Gulf in which many of his friends had died horribly in the defense of freedom, was a raging Islamic fundamentalist in his bed. They parted. He never saw Francesca again. Until this moment.

Crossing the terrace now, his mind was filled only with memories of her body in different poses and shifting shades of light in the beautiful old bed. He felt his heartbeat accelerate. “Francesca,” he said quietly, the accent on the first syllable, and she turned around. The soft light of the garden on her exquisite face, bare shoulders, and deep bosom was unbearably unfair to a long and very happily married man.

“Caro?”
she said, the big brown doe eyes gleaming. “
Sí.
It is you. Tank. My great American war hero.
Ecco, mi amore,
come here, eh, Tank Commander? Give your old friend a kiss, eh?”

She held out her arms and Brick went to her. He sincerely meant to give her a chaste peck on the cheek, but she wasn’t having any of that. Both hands went around his neck and she pulled him to her, red lips parted, and the kiss on the voluptuous mouth was unavoidable. He was trying to pull away when he felt a sharp bite just under his left ear.

“What the—”

He caught a glimpse of her right hand, saw her big sapphire ring with the silver needle protruding from the center of the stone and then, nothing more.

“He’s slipping. Help me hold him up,” the Rose whispered.

Lily grabbed Brick’s arm just as the nylon harness dropped from the sky to the terrace below. A hovering helicopter, indistinguishable from any of the press choppers still circling above the hotel, now dangled a hundred-foot-long nylon sling from its opened bay. Together, the two women quickly looped the harness down over Kelly’s head and shoulders and then cinched it upwards under his arms. Rose looked up at the man leaning out of the open chopper bay just above and gave the visual signal. The unconscious American ambassador shot straight up into the night sky, instantly winched up and hauled inside the helicopter. The chopper, white with large blue ITV NEWS logos on its flanks, roared away over the treetops of Hyde Park.

Rose looked at her watch. “Under ten seconds,” she said to Lily,
“Va bene, eh?”

“Molto bene,”
Lily said, and something in her voice made Rose look up. Lily was reaching up inside the wig of red hair arranged atop her head and festooned with emeralds.

“
Che cosa
…what are you—” Francesca said, but Lily was one step ahead of her.

“Un cadeau,”
Lily said, pulling a small black object out of the nest of her hair. “A farewell gift. From our Pasha. In memory of your brilliant performance in the sumo shrine. You remember, darling? You costarred with him.”

“No,” Rose said, moving backwards, “Don’t. Don’t.”

“Surely you knew what would happen if you got too close to him. The Pasha kills what he loves in order to survive. If one flower grows too tall, he cuts it off. Chop, chop.”

Lily advanced toward her with the snub-nosed object extended at the end of her arm, pressed the muzzle into Rose’s bosom, and fired the weapon into her heart. With the choppers still throbbing overhead, and the noise inside the ballroom, the muffled sound of the single round was barely audible. Rose fell toward her, knocking the gun from Lily’s hand, her body landing with a dull thud on top of the weapon. Lily saw that she was dead and vaulted over the balustrade. She fell a good ten feet into the waiting arms of Raed, the driver she had arranged for the evening.

Raed put her down on the ground and looked up, waiting for the next woman to tumble into his arms. Lily grabbed his hand, taking him in tow, and started racing along the narrow dirt path between the curved wall and the thick privet hedge.

“I thought there were two of you,” Raed said, moving swiftly and easily along just behind her.

“No,” she said over her shoulder. “Just me. Hurry. We’re late. The Pasha’s plane is wheels up at Gatwick in less than an hour.”

Alex Hawke was watching the ice melt in Brick’s vodka when he heard something from beyond the open doors he didn’t like at all. A muffled thump followed by a noise that sounded like a hundred-pound sack of flour hitting the bricks. He slammed down his rum and walked quickly towards the French doors, cursing himself and knowing instinctively it was probably already over. All of his alarm systems, usually so reliable, had gone off thirty seconds late.

Still, he was unprepared for what he found. The Italian movie star, alone, face down in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. No sign of the little starlet. And, bleeding hell, no sign of his friend Brick. How the hell? He ran to the balustrade and peered down over the side. The garden below was empty. Nothing.

He dropped to his knees beside the woman, getting an arm under and turning her over, cradling her head as gouts of aortic blood pumped directly from the small entrance wound over her heart. She was moaning and her breathing was keening and shallow. She was conscious, but he knew instantly she wasn’t going to make it. No one could save her now.

He had less than a minute with her. Maybe seconds.

“Who shot you?”

“Oh…so cold.”

“You’re going to be all right. But, you must tell me, my poor woman. Who shot you? Where is the ambassador? Tell me.”

“That…bitch. Lily…she shot…they have all betrayed me…”

“Who? Who betrayed you?”

“All of them…the Pasha and…
un fottuto disastro.
”

“The American ambassador. Where have they taken him?”

“B-Brick? Beautiful Brick…?”

“Yes. Brick.”

“The Blue Palace…Fatin…you know…in the mountains…”

Her eyes closed. He was losing her.

“Stay with me! The Americans, Francesca, who has been killing all the Americans?”

“Snay bin Wazir,” she whispered, “The Pasha. He…has killed me, too…millions more…Americans…soon…justice.”

And then she was gone.

Lowering her gently to the blood-soaked bricks, he saw the gun. He picked it up carefully with his handkerchief. It was sticky with blood. Plastic, he saw, to avoid the detectors. One shot. One to the heart was usually enough.

“Good God, man, shall I get a doctor?”

Hawke looked up to see Lord Mowbray in the act of lighting his cigar.

“Too late for that I’m afraid. If you’d be so kind as to ask Jack Patterson to step outside. Tall American chap at the bar just to the left of the door. Cowboy boots. Also, get an MI6 agent out here. Anyone will do, but the more senior the better. Tell them to hurry, please, Lord Mowbray. But, don’t cause a stir. I need to have a quiet word alone with Ambassador Kelly’s wife.”

As Mowbray turned to go, Patterson appeared in the doorway. Hawke handed him the murder weapon wrapped in his handkerchief.

“Who is it?” Patterson said, kneeling beside him.

“Francesca d’Agnelli.”

“Dead?”

“Very.”

“The movie star. Damn it. The woman we grilled in Venice. Three times, and came up empty. She was with Stanfield the night he exploded in the Grand Canal. This is ‘the Rose.’ ”

“Yes,” Hawke said. “Murdered two minutes ago by the Lily. They snatched Brick, Jack. They’ve got my best bloody friend.”

“Did she talk?”

“Yeah. Apparently, a hell of a lot of Americans are scheduled to die at the hand of Snay bin Wazir.”

“Jesus Christ,” Patterson said, his face a mask of failure and despair. He took out his satellite mobile phone, flipped it open, and punched in the emergency code for Secretary of State Consuelo de los Reyes. Seconds later, the high-low sound of wailing sirens filled the streets of Mayfair and Hyde Park.