The Assassin (Max Doerr Book 1) (31 page)

Doerr
took his smartphone out, expecting a text – nothing.

So
he sent a text to his handler: “Has the bird left town?”

Within
minutes, he received a text back: “No report of leaving.”

Doerr
texted: “Is the bird spotted in the city at all?”

A
reply text came back: “We have been bird-watching. But not spotted in the city
yet.”

Doerr:
“Then how do you know the bird even reached Amsterdam?”

Reply:
“We don’t. Per the source, bird came to town yesterday.”

Doerr:
“Who is the source?”

After
a delay of two minutes, the reply came back: “The source’s reliability is as
high as the fee we paid to secure the info. Hang on. You’ll see the bird soon.”

Doerr
didn’t send any more texts; he knew it was best to leave them alone and let
them do their work while he waited for his moment. Doerr put his smartphone
back into his pocket and proceeded to the third floor of the museum. He enjoyed
art for an hour and then headed for the cafeteria and ordered a cheeseburger.

He
stood in the pickup line, waiting for his food to arrive, three other customers
ahead of him. He watched the first customer take a tray full of burgers and
fries. And that was when he felt a vibration in his pocket. He pulled out his
smartphone.

A
text message was waiting: “Bird sighted in flower shop in Westerpark.”

Doerr’s
body went into alert mode immediately. Another text came with the address of
the flower shop. Luckily the place wasn’t too far, ten minutes’ cab ride. Doerr
left the cafeteria without waiting for his burger. As he ran down the stairs,
his phone buzzed again. This time, it was a phone call from the handler.

“Yes,”
said Doerr into his phone.

“A
cab will be waiting at the museum. Its plate number ends in 124. Get inside the
cab.”

“I
need to hire a cab myself.” Doerr had faced this situation before. The agency
always wanted to use its own vehicle, more transparency, and better control.
But Doerr wanted to hire his own ride, giving him the control.

“Why?”
the handler barked. “Our cab is fitted with a radio and multiple monitors. You
know it’s better. Don’t argue with me.”

“I
don’t need a radio or monitor as long as you or somebody is online, answering
my questions. Sometimes your vehicles are bugged, or the instruments hacked
into.”

Doerr
picked up the pouch with his gun from the locker and was approaching the
museum’s main door. “Besides, I won’t have time to stare at some fancy
monitor.”

“It’s
a protocol defined by the top bosses, Doerr. We don’t want you to shoot from a
cab and see the cabbie giving an interview on a TV channel an hour later. See
my point now?”

“I
won’t be doing anything like that from inside a taxi,” Doerr whispered as he
walked out of the museum. He could see a cab approaching; its plate number was
SJT-124. From outside it appeared like an ordinary cab.

Doerr
detested the CIA when they tried to control the whole shebang. But he
recognized it was pointless to argue with the handler. The time lost might
prove crucial later. The cab stopped where Doerr was standing, and Doerr hung
up the phone, entered the cab, and sat on the passenger seat. As the vehicle
moved slowly away from the museum, the cabbie pressed a button on the
dashboard. All the meter displays went dark, and the dashboard turned into a
monitor displaying a video feed showing the front of a flower shop.

“That’s
the shop where Rafan is right now.” The handler’s voice came up on the radio.

“How
long has he been in there?” Doerr asked.

“Two
to three minutes, I would say.”

“And
how many minutes is it going to take for us to reach there?”

“I
would say five to ten,” the handler replied. “But confirm with your driver.”

Doerr
looked at the driver, who gave a meaningful nod of agreement – yeah, it should
take about five to ten minutes.

Doerr
set his eyes on the road; traffic was thin. At one p.m., the rush period was a
few hours away. The cab passed two vehicles and allowed four more to pass; it
could certainly use a bit more speed.

“Can’t
we go faster?” Doerr said to the cabbie. The man made a hand gesture in reply,
indicating that a cop might be present on the roadside, armed with a
speed-checking device.

Doerr
wondered if the driver was a mute. If he were, then that was perhaps a good
choice on the agency’s part. A silenced cabbie would not be able to give
interviews to the TV stations.

Three
minutes passed. Keeping an eye on the monitor, Doerr asked the handler, “Does
the shop have a back door?”

“Not
sure. If it does, then it opens to another road.”

Doerr
was in a quandary now. Should he head for the road in front of the shop or the
back? “Do you have someone near the shop’s entrance?” Doerr asked.

“No.
There is a guy standing opposite the shop. The video you’re seeing is coming
through his wristwatch.”

Obviously
the agency had hired someone to stand there, wearing a watch with a tiny camera
pointed at the shop’s front door.

“The
cab will drop you five hundred feet away from the shop,” the handler said.
“There is no surveillance there, so the cab will simply drive away while you
take care of business and vanish from the site on your own. Understood?”

“Understood.”
It was standard procedure. Doerr didn’t need much help, the less, the better.
“I want to go to the back entrance of the shop.”

“Why?”
The handler sounded irritated. “I see no reason for the bird to exit via the
back door.”

“I’ve
got a good feeling that he’ll come through the back. These guys always take
precautions. Now tell the driver to go to the back road. Looks like he takes
orders from you only. We have someone at the front anyway.”

“No
way. The guy at the front is an unarmed civilian. He can’t do much. Go to the
front
.”

Doerr
knew there was no point arguing with the handler.

Seven
minutes had passed since leaving the museum. Doerr made a hand gesture to the
driver, asking him to go to the back. The driver shook his head forcefully. He
wouldn’t listen.

A
minute later, Doerr could see the flower shop and spotted the young man
standing in an awkward position so that the camera on his wristwatch pointed to
the shop.

The
cab stopped after the ten-minute ride from the museum, and Doerr got out of the
vehicle and trudged to the shop. Ten minutes were way too long. Rafan was
probably out already. Within seconds, Doerr was inside the shop.

The
flowers in the shop were arranged in three rows. One row had yellow tulips, the
second one had red, and the third row contained all the other flowers.
Regardless of color, the most expensive ones were kept in the back row. At the
front, there were many boxes, one stacked on another. Doerr knew those were
packaged flowers to be picked up by couriers, waiting to be shipped across the
globe.

Doerr
visually checked the shop and then rushed to the back – no Rafan. He knew he
should have hired a private cab from the street and used that thousand euro
cash he had in his back pocket. That way he would have arrived at the shop
early. The agency’s driver couldn’t afford to speed up and get apprehended by a
local cop, who might have decided to check out the vehicle and discover all the
high-tech gizmos; that would be scandalous.

Doerr
was sure that Rafan would not wait in the shop for ten minutes. Rafan would
make the transaction as quickly as he could and then make a hasty exit. Doerr
rushed to the shop’s back door, opened it, and stepped outside. He looked right
and then left. No Rafan, no human. He saw a black cat, which fled swiftly.

An
employee of the shop, a middle-aged bald man, rushed to Doerr. “Do you need any
help, sir?”

“I
was supposed to meet someone here,” Doerr lied. “Did you see a short stocky
Middle Eastern man who came here alone?”

The
employee thought for a few seconds and then asked thoughtfully, “With little
bit of gray hair at the front?”

“Yes.
Yes. Was he here?”

“In
fact, yes.” The employee smiled. “He was here a minute ago. He ordered a bunch
of flowers to be delivered.”

“Really?
Can you show me the delivery address?”

“No.”
The employee’s face turned serious. “We can’t give away customers’
information.”

“The
thing is” – Doerr pulled out a hundred-euro bill – “my friend was probably
sending a present to a common friend. Today is the friend’s birthday. But the
friend has moved to a different place.” Doerr told a bunch of lies and handed
the euro bill to the employee. “Can I see the delivery address?”

“Why
didn’t you say it was your friend?” The smile returned to the employee’s face
as he took the cash. “Come this way, please.” The man headed for the cash
register. He pulled out a notebook. “Room number 436, Hotel Marina. Kattengat
12, 1019 SZ Amsterdam. Is that the right address?”

“Yes.
That is the right address. Thank you.”

Doerr
briskly exited the shop. After walking about a hundred feet, he pulled out his
smartphone and called his handler.

“What
happened?” the handler asked.

“First
check this address. Hotel Marina. Kattengat 12, 1019 SZ Amsterdam.” The address
had been imprinted in Doerr’s brain as soon as the shop employee had uttered
it. “Tell me where it is.” Doerr waited as his heart pulsed higher. He had a
thin hope that Rafan had given his address or his friend’s. Then Doerr could
nail Rafan.

“I
just checked. That address is nonexistent. Now tell me what happened in that
flower shop.”

Doerr
gave him a brief gist of it.

“I
don’t know why Rafan gave a false address for the flower delivery,” said the
handler.

“It’s
a ploy to slow down the pursuer,” Doerr said. “I think we could get him today
if I could hire my own cab.”

Doerr
was frustrated because Rafan wasn’t an ordinary target. He was the man who had
sucked the happiness from Doerr’s life.

Chapter 2
                                Rome,
Italy

A
year and three months ago…Max Doerr was a very happy man that day. His month-long
assignment in Italy was complete, and he was waiting for his wife, Gayle, to
come and join him in the historic city of Rome. He was thinking about her and
could almost smell the lavender fragrance of her hair. He could visualize her
hazel eyes that he never tired of gazing at. The chauffeured CIA sedan took him
to Leonardo da Vinci airport.

Heading
back to the hotel, inside the sedan, Gayle curled into a cocoon and rested her
head against his chest. “When can we go to the Colosseum?” she asked.

“You’re
tired,” Doerr said. “Let’s go there tomorrow.”

“I
think you are tired, Max. I’m not,” Gayle said with her usual smile. “Today we
go. Come on, life is short.”

The
sedan turned right, and the hotel was barely five hundred feet away, and that
was when it happened.

First
an ear-piercing explosion; then the car tilted to the left. He extended his
hands to protect Gayle, but his head hit the roof. He smelled smoke; the memory
of what happened next was blurred. Waking up in a hospital, all he remembered
was Gayle’s face.

“You’ve
been in a coma for four days,” said the nurse.

He
tried to look around. “Where is Gayle?”

The
nurse sighed, and her chin dropped. He felt his heart collapsing and body
sinking.

Plenty
of sunlight was coming inside the tiny hospital room when he woke up again. Soft
music was coming from somewhere, but no one was around. He knew he was alone,
truly alone. A few years back, his son had been murdered in New York, and now
Gayle was gone. The last words from her mouth – life is short.

Everything
felt meaningless, and Gayle’s last words echoed in his heart.

Why
her. Why? Why? Why?

In
the next two months, his weight dropped by fifteen pounds. At night, he
couldn’t remember if he ate his lunch and didn’t want to have dinner. He
stopped drinking coffee because it brought Gayle’s memory. He started smoking
occasionally.

He
didn’t report for duty and wouldn’t return calls left by the CIA folks.

That
changed when he heard a message left by CIA Director Alison Stonewall on his
cell phone, explaining who had killed Gayle – Rafan Sohail.

Chapter 3
       
           
            California

That
woman is crazy
, Janco thought. She was driving at ninety miles an
hour in a sixty-five zone.