The Assassin (40 page)

I went up, too.

Then three shots, trip-hammer fast. A moment later, the sound of a door swinging shut.

I ran, knowing full well he might still be in the stairwell and waiting for me.

He wasn’t. He had shot the lock of the ninth-floor door until it gave, then run out.

So he was out in the hallway waiting for me … or trying to get into an apartment to take hostages.

I eased the action of the shotgun open until I saw brass, then looked into the magazine well. Saw the head of a shell. So I had at least two left.

I took a deep breath, jerked the door open and looked right, then left.

Empty both ways.

Stepped carefully out. Saw the open elevator door. Oh, yes, one of them was here when I killed the power. Heard noises.

Eased my head around to see as slowly as humanly possible, every nerve ready to go.

He had gone out the emergency door in the top. A hole gaped in the overhead.

I looked up into the black void.

He was up there somewhere, that was certain.

With the cops notified, Willie Varner watched the man by the Saturn. His head was up now, and he looked at the building. He, too, must hear the muffled shots from inside the building, as if they were fired from a long distance away.

He got behind the wheel of his car and groped for the key. Willie knew what he was doing even though he couldn’t really see him do it. Tommy would have taken the key, of course.

Now the man got out of the car, looked again at the building and began walking quickly this way. Now he broke into a trot.

Somewhere a siren moaned.

The man’s gait became a run. He was going north, downhill toward the Metro station.

Willie timed his rush perfectly. He charged from the stoop, sprinted across the street and slammed into the running man, who apparently didn’t even see him coming, or, if he did, didn’t react quickly enough to change course or get out of the way.

Both men went to the sidewalk. Willie was up first, probably because he was more frightened. He thought the man might have a gun, and he knew damn well he didn’t. So he grabbed the man and slammed his head into the sidewalk. The man passed out.

Lacking any better ideas, I fired the shotgun up into the emergency exit in the roof of the elevator car … and heard the buckshot raining down the shaft as I worked the action.

Stepped sideways and aimed for the ceiling and fired again. Blew a hole in the top, then listened to the rain of shot.

Aimed again and pulled the trigger. Click. The Remington was empty.

I dropped it, then leaped for the hole and got the edges. Pulled myself up. Got an elbow through and then my head. Kept waiting for the bullet that he would fire when light from the elevator car stopped coming through the hole.

The shot didn’t come, so I knew he was below me. There had to be a ladder in the shaft.

Sure enough, when I got onto the top of the car and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust, I saw the gleam of light reflecting off the ladder rungs. The ladder was on the steel supports between the cars.

I looked over the edge as I pulled out Grafton’s Colt. Dark as the pit of hell, but he was there, and I doubted if he had made it all the way down. One way to find out.

I thumbed off the safety and pointed the pistol down the ladder and let ‘er rip. The flashes blinded me. Emptied the entire seven-shot magazine, then pulled back and fished the other one from my pocket as I listened to something soft smack into something hard.

Heard a soft groan, then nothing.

I stood there a moment listening to my heart gallop. Heard the wail of a police siren. Two of them.

Decided to take a chance. Got my penlight from my pocket, held it as far from my head as possible, turned it on and pointed the beam down the shaft.

Took a moment for my eyes to adjust; then I saw him. He was lying on the top of the elevator car that was on the lobby level, all sprawled out on his back.

Holding the light as steady as possible, I held the pistol at arm’s length, pointed down, aimed as carefully as I could in that light and let him have another. The report was deafening. A second or two later, from far below, came the tinkle of the spent shell as it bounced off steel.

Of course, I had no idea if I’d hit him. I shot twice more because I’m a mean bastard, then gave up.

I turned off the penlight and sat down on top of the car. A little light shone up through the square emergency exit and the little round hole I had blasted. I used it to ensure the pistol’s safety was engaged.

“Cops are going in the front door,” Willie said.

I fumbled for the transmit button on the radio on my belt, found it and pushed it in. “Dudes are all dead, I think. Willie, tell the cops that the power to the elevators is off and three corpses are in the stairwell. Another one is on top of the elevator at the lobby level. Robin, tell Cal-lie to call Jake Grafton.”

chapterTWENTY-ONE

In the United States, shooting someone is a really big deal, so before very long, the building was packed with cops, FBI agents and—ten minutes after the others arrived—Secret Service agents. Some of them wore uniforms, most didn’t, but they all had guns and badges and little radios and lots of questions.

Five of them ended up firing questions at me at the super’s desk in the basement while someone got the elevators back in service and lab techs worked on the basement door, which had had the lock blown off.

A guy who looked like a paramedic helped me get my shirt off and slapped some disinfectant and a small bandage on top of my left shoulder. He did this while I answered questions. He even helped me get my shirt back on, then nodded at me and departed.

I kept my answers brief and to the point, explaining the how, when and where, and leaving the what and why to Jake Grafton. The five interrogators expected me to tell them more, a lot more, but I refused, which they took as a professional insult. Too bad. Finally, I was putting my Stanford legal education to good use.

An hour into this my Big Boss, William Wilkins, showed up. “Enough,” he said. It would have been interesting to see if indeed Wilkins could single-handedly stop the train, but he didn’t have to. The FBI director showed up, and my interrogation was indeed over.

With the brass watching, I reached over and picked up Grafton’s 1911 Colt and put it in my pocket. Picked up the agency shotgun, too, even though I had no more shells for it. Robin had some for hers, so maybe we could share. The police captain thought he would say something, then decided he wouldn’t.

Leaving the big bananas to confer with the police, I climbed the stairs to the lobby and strolled to the door of the building. A media circus was going on outside. A couple of television crews had set up shop, complete with lights and trucks, and helicopters with spotlights circled overhead. Spectators crowded the sidewalks and stood upstairs on balconies to watch as the police carried out the bodies one by one and sent them off to the morgue in ambulances.

Of course, I was interested in the guy who drove the Saturn. Some cop told me Willie had laid him out and was sitting on him when the police showed up. He was downtown being booked for felony murder, conspiracy and driving a stolen car, among other things. They dusted the Saturn for fingerprints, scraped mud from the fender wells and finally hauled it away to the FBI lab for a real going-over.

Squinting against the lights, I could see someone—it looked like Fred Colucci—talking to a television reporter. Not wanting to suffer through fifteen minutes of fame, I went upstairs to the Graftons’ condo. I rode up in the elevator with the holes in the ceiling. The other one was still out of service as they photographed and bagged the guy on top of it.

Willie was sitting on the couch telling Callie, Robin and Amy about his exploits while some female reporter on television gave them the hot scoop from the sidewalk in front of the building. The whole scene was more than a little weird. I waved to them on my way to the kitchen, where I poured myself a very healthy drink of Wild Turkey from Grafton’s liquor cabinet. I added an ice cube, then began sipping on it.

Callie came in, took the drink from my hand and kissed me on the cheek. Then she handed me back the drink, looked me in the eyes and said, “Thank you, Tommy.”

I nodded, trying to hold back the tears.

My cell phone rang. It was Jake Grafton.

“Maybe I’d better talk to him in the bathroom,” I said, and I went, taking my drink with me.

“It didn’t go well,” Khadr remarked to Abu Qasim, quite unnecessarily. They were watching CNN Headline News in Qasim’s hotel room in Greenwich, Connecticut. Khadr had a room on the floor below. “I didn’t know he was going to deliver the warriors,” Khadr added.

“Neither did I.” Qasim took a deep breath and let it out through his nose as he watched the camera pan across Grafton’s building. “It was always a long shot,” he murmured. “Jake Grafton is competent.”

“As is Carmellini,” Khadr admitted. “Al-Irani less so. Will he break under interrogation?”

“He knows nothing important.” Qasim used the remote to turn off the television. He had advised al-Irani to blow up Grafton’s building, but the Iranian objected. He lacked sufficient explosives, there was not enough glory in such a deed, and, finally, the real reason, the warriors wanted to enter Paradise with the blood of infidels on their hands. They wished to attack, to kill face-to-face. Qasim saw that he could not persuade al-Irani, so he stopped trying. “We all must serve Allah as we see best,” he admitted, which satisfied the Iranian.

Tonight he tried to forget what might have been. “Tomorrow we will drive to Winchester’s estate and look it over,” he said to Khadr. “It will be guarded by professionals every bit as good as Carmellini. They may have sensors deployed, and dogs. I want Winchester and Grafton.”

Khadr stood and adjusted his trousers. “We will see,” he said non-committally.

Qasim made eye contact. Khadr had no intention of trying the impossible; Qasim liked that. He wanted success, not glorious futile attempts.

“Indeed,” Qasim said. He nodded.

When he finally got off the telephone after talking to Callie, Tommy, his various bosses and Sal Molina, Jake Grafton went downstairs. Winchester, Smith, Marisa and Isolde were watching a television news show, which was airing an interview with a “terrorism expert.” The FBI had labeled the deceased and the lone survivor as armed terrorists making an attack on the family of a high-ranking government employee, whom they refused to identify. The reporters were frantic; even though it was two hours past midnight, they obtained a list of the building’s residents from someone, who of course refused to be identified. The “expert” on camera was consulting the list and making guesses.

Winchester used the remote to lower the volume as Jake went behind the bar to fix himself a drink.

“My telephone doesn’t work, Grafton,” Jerry Hay Smith said aggressively. “Neither does the landline or anyone else’s cell. Want to tell us about it?”

“About what?”

“About why you turned off the telephones.”

“I intend to get some sleep tonight and didn’t want to be interrupted by people reading me transcripts or playing recordings of your conversations. I know I could tell them to wait until tomorrow to call me, but I thought, if Smith makes his calls tomorrow, maybe they can all go home tonight and get a decent night’s sleep.”

“You bastard!”

“You want to go home and make your calls, you know where the door is. We’ll lock it behind you.”

“When this is over…” Smith whined, trying to sound ominous. It was a lost cause.

“I know,” Grafton muttered.

Jake brought his drink around and sat down beside Isolde. “How is Callie?” she asked, as if Jerry Hay Smith weren’t even there.

“Doing as well as can be expected, under the circumstances. She and Amy are coming tomorrow to visit with us for a few days.”

“They didn’t get Abu Qasim, did they?” Winchester asked.

Grafton shook his head no.

“He might be here tomorrow, too.”

“Or tonight. Or never.”

“Or he might be over at Cairnes’ house butchering him slowly,” Jerry Hay Smith said.

“Good point,” Grafton said cheerfully. “Or he might nave finished up with Mr. Cairnes and be waiting at your house for you to come home. One never knows.”

Smith stomped off, climbed the stairs and headed down the hall toward his bedroom.

“I think it’s time for me to retire also,” Isolde announced. She smiled at Jake and Winchester, glanced at Marisa and followed Smith.

Winchester finished his drink, then followed the others.

When only Jake and Marisa were left, Jake said, “Will he come here?”

“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “I suspect he’ll send Khadr.”

“Still think he’ll try to kill the president?”

“Him, you, these others. The movement needs victories.”

“And martyrs,” Jake said, frowning into his drink.

“Those, too,” she said harshly. “The blood of martyrs is like perfume to Allah. It pleases and delights Him almost as much as the blood of infidels.” She rose and ascended the stairs.

“If you love me, die for me,” Jake muttered.

By nine the next morning we were rolling north up the interstate in Grafton’s SUV. I drove, and the women gabbled around me. Last night, before he went home, Willie and I had a few minutes alone. I thanked him for everything, including taking down the Saturn driver.

“Some cop tol’ me he’s an Iranian from Brooklyn,” Willie said. “I was hopin’ it was that Qasim dude, then I’d be a hero and get famous and meet hot women.”

“Next time.”

“You always say that, but there’d better not be a next time, Tommy. I’m too cold and too old, and that wine made me ’bout half sick. Had to nip at it, you understand, just to keep up appearances.”

“Right.”

After the women wound down and toddled off to bed about three, I tried to sleep on Grafton’s couch. The forensic guys were going to be working downstairs all night, but just in case, I had loaded my shotgun with Robin’s spare shells.

I had just gotten arranged on the couch when Grafton’s phone rang. I picked it up. Some enterprising television producer had obtained Grafton’s unlisted number. I rudely hung up on her, and then went into the kitchen and took the phone there off the hook. That way the beeping wouldn’t disturb me.