Hour of the Assassins (11 page)

He had spotted two shields. One very dark skinned, leaning against a wall; the other more Semitic-looking, sitting at the bar. They were both beefy, powerful-looking men, like their master. Neither of them were drinking and Caine knew it wasn't because of anything written in the Koran. He knew them because he was cut from the same cloth. They were professionals. Every few seconds they ran their eyes over the crowd near Ibn Sallah's table, like cops mentally frisking a suspect.

Caine finished the
marc
in a quick swallow. Should he try it? he wondered. A mistake could be fatal, but if it worked it could conceivably save him weeks. If he did it, it would have to be fast. He would have to make it a quick in-and-outer, before they had time to react. If he were still working for the Company, he would be signaling his case officer that he was going into the red zone. He got up and walked over to Ibn Sallah's table.

In a way it was an interesting tactical problem. And one that they had never covered at the Farm, because it wasn't supposed to happen. How do you approach a shielded member of the opposition and let him know that you have nothing more lethal on your mind than setting up a friendly r.d.v., without getting terminated? As he approached the table, Caine staggered slightly, hoping to buy a few seconds by convincing them that he was just a drunk civilian. He timed his approach so that he had to stumble against the table to avoid colliding with a waiter. The drink in his hand sloshed onto the table, startling the blonde.

“Excuse me, Fraulein,” Caine said, slurring his words slightly and smiling his most ingratiating smile. Annoyed, her eyes blazed at him as Ibn Sallah calmly slid his hands out of sight under the table.

“
Bitte sehr
,” she responded tartly.

“I hope you'll forgive me,” Caine replied, turning to face the man. He kept his hands out in plain sight, feeling a ripple of fear trickle down his spine like a bead of sweat, anticipating the impact of a silenced slug slamming into his back.

“Not at all,” Ibn Sallah replied, relaxing his shoulders. He was beginning to buy Caine's drunk act.

“It's important that we talk, monsieur,” Caine replied. At that moment he felt something hard poke into his ribs and knew that the shields had come up. He was boxed in and there was nothing to do but brazen it out.

“Why is that?” Ibn Sallah asked quietly, his eyes hard and alert. Caine knew that if he couldn't convince Ibn Sallah now, that they would be sweeping him up with the morning garbage in some back alley off the Münstergasse.

“Because we're in the same business and it's to our mutual advantage,” he replied.

Ibn Sallah paused, sizing Caine up. Then as if reminding himself of the shields, he nodded confidently.

“It had better be,” he replied. He raised an eyebrow and the dark-skinned Arab bent over. Ibn Sallah whispered something to him briefly.

“It's been a pleasure meeting you, Fraulein,” Caine responded, bowing slightly to the blonde, his eyebrow raised in a quizzical appraisal. She smiled back at Caine with a look that was equally appraising and disdainful. Then he and the dark-skinned Arab were walking arm in arm, like old business associates, out of the bar. When they reached the lobby, the Arab released Caine and whispered tonelessly in a heavily accented French,

“Tomorrow, the boat to Rapperswil.”

“What time?”

“Eleven o'clock and, monsieur,” the Arab added with an ominous hiss, “come alone, or else …”

The Arab turned and walked back toward the bar without finishing the threat. He didn't have to.

For a moment Caine considered going back to his room. He was tired and jumpy, and although he had been successful, he knew that he was pushing his luck with Ibn Sallah. He had to be careful. It was when you began cutting corners that you made mistakes. On an. impulse he walked out of the lobby and down to the promenade by the lake.

The lake was as dark and endless as the sea and he couldn't see the black water as it lapped tirelessly at the shore. The promenade was deserted as the icy wind off the lake whipped across the darkness. Empty benches were lit by sporadic streetlamps glowing futilely, like the lost sentinels of a dead planet.

He felt cold and alone and wished he were back in Malibu, lying in front of a crackling fire against the warmth of C.J. Strange how he couldn't shake her from his thoughts. After all, she was just a pretty little pro with all the morals of a bitch in heat. Still, there was more to her than that, if only he could get at it. Somehow she had left an imprint on his mind, as faint and indelible as the trademark on a pat of butter.

He looked back at the twinkling lights of the city, climbing up the slopes of the Dolder into the night And behind those lights lived the quiet ordinary lives he had rejected so long ago. But they belonged, all right. And he didn't belong anywhere. There were times, he thought, when he believed that loneliness was a word invented just for him.

He began to walk up the Bahnhofstrasse toward the Limmat River. Nearing a church, he heard the faint sounds of voices singing a German carol. He strained his ears and then he realized that they were singing, “Silent Night.” It was Christmas Eve. For a moment it brought back the Christmases of his childhood, the sense of awe in church before the adolescent doubts began, the odds and ends they used to decorate the tree, the colored electric lights strung outside the house. He remembered standing with his mother and piping the carols in his child's voiçe, all the while dreaming of snow and getting the bicycle that would make life perfect. And now he was plotting a murder this Christmas eve. Still, hadn't the first Christmas begun with thousands of murders, the Slaughter of the Innocents? Nothing really had changed since Herod's time, he decided. The innocents were still being slaughtered, only now we are better at it. The only difference was that then it was Herod's madness and now it was a political matter. The poet Rimbaud was right, he decided. “Now is the hour of the assassins.” He turned away from the church and went back to the hotel.

Once in his room he got the Bauer automatic out of the Hasselblad and loaded it. Then he called room service and ordered a bottle of Scotch. When the bellboy came with the bottle, he kept his right hand in his pocket, gripped tightly around the Bauer. After the bellboy left, he carefully wedged a chair under the door handle, placed the Bauer under his pillow, and poured himself a drink. It took almost half a bottle before he managed to fall asleep.

Heavy white clouds full of snow scudded across the sky as Caine boarded the old-fashioned paddle-wheel steamboat to the Rapperswil side of the lake. The boat was crowded and noisy with the sounds of families on their Christmas day outing. He made his way to the promenade on the upper deck, where he had glimpsed the dark-skinned Arab just before boarding. But when he got there, the Arab was gone. He ignored the people around him, remembering the old CTP dictum that if you pay no attention to others, people are unlikely to pay attention to you. Instead he stood at the rail, looking out across the lake.

The sun peeked briefly through a rift in the clouds, casting shafts of white light onto the sparkling waves. Snow had fallen during the night, blanketing the hills around the lake with the shiny illusion of something clean and new. Quiet villages around the lake were scattered like miniatures in the snow. For a moment Switzerland was a Christmas card come to life. With a rumble the great paddle wheel began to turn and the boat throbbed with the vibration. The paddle wheel churned the gray water to a milky froth as the boat began to move. Caine suddenly felt a shiver slide up his spine, as though someone had stepped on his grave. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw the dark-skinned Arab gesture for him to follow.

He followed the Arab into the men's room, where the other shield stood in front of a mirror, painstakingly combing his hair. Without a word the dark-skinned Arab held out his hand. Caine briefly debated a bluff, then shrugged and handed over the Bauer. He put his hands on his head and the two men frisked him, quickly and expertly. Caine waited until the dark-skinned Arab grinned, before putting down his hands. For a second he was tempted to take them out just for the hell of it, but the Arab was still grinning as he turned and walked out the door.

Coming out on deck, Caine immediately spotted the massive bulk of Ibn Sallah at the rail, his curly brown hair fluttering in the chill wind. He was smoking a Havana cigar, and as Caine approached, Ibn Sallah impatiently checked his gold Patek-Philippe watch. There was plenty of room at the rail, since only a few of the holiday sailors stayed on deck to brave the wind and the choppy waves. Caine leaned against the rail about two feet from Ibn Sallah. For a while the two men looked out at the water, saying nothing. Ibn Sallah tossed his cigar into the water and turned slightly toward Caine.

“Why should I talk to you?” he asked.

“Because I'm the man who hit Abu Daud in Paris.” Ibn Sallah's eyes narrowed, as though he were photographing Caine in his mind, then he seemed to relax. That was when he was most dangerous, Caine thought, like a lion who appeared to be reclining when he was really crouching.

“What makes you think I won't kill you?” Ibn Sallah murmured.

“Not here,” Caine replied. “Besides, now that you Arabs are rich, you're becoming respectable.”

A wide smile cracked Ibn Sallah's face open like a walnut and for a moment they were almost at ease with each other. Then his brow furrowed and he shook his head.

“Daud had a very pretty wife and three small children,” he said.

“It was business,” Caine replied.

“A sad business. They liked to live high. The best clubs, a big car,
vous comprenez
. They had no money put away. Now she's a prostitute.”

“You can hear sadder stories from any life insurance salesman.”

“Still, a sad business,” Ibn Sallah said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his cashmere overcoat.

“Sure. Tell that to the Israelis the next time somebody decides to celebrate the Fourth of July on a crowded Tel Aviv bus. Like I said, it was strictly business, not personal.”

“Speaking of business, what does the Company want from the Moukhabarat? No”—Ibn Sallah raised his hand mildly—“don't bother to deny that you're with the Company. Your accent in French is too American, not to mention your clothes and the typical American drunk act last night. You're from the Company.” He shrugged with an expressive Levantine gesture and added speculatively, “So what does the Company want of me?”

“This isn't Company business.”

“Then what is it?”

“Free enterprise.”

“Of course.” Ibn Sallah shook his head sagely. I was forgetting how incredibly materialistic you Americans are.”

“I don't remember us Americans taking out a patent on greed. Besides I read your dossier. I expected better of you than these clichés,” Caine retorted sharply, looking directly at Ibn Sallah for the first time, his green eyes calm and still as the unfathomed depths of the lake. Ibn Sallah returned Caine's glance with his own dark serious gaze, then the corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement.

“You're not taping this, by any chance, with one of those marvelous little miniaturized things you Company types are so fond of?” Ibn Sallah remarked, dismissing the idea with a disdainful wave of his hand.

“I told you, this isn't Company business.”

“
Vous comprenez
,” Ibn Sallah continued, “you Americans are always inventing the most incredible devices: poisoned fléchettes the size of phonograph needles, transmitters no bigger than a pinhead, VX nerve-gas cartridges concealed in clip-on ballpoint pens …”

“Not to mention frozen pizza and the banana daiquiri,” Caine put in.

Ibn Sallah's booming laugh was almost lost in the hiss of spray whipped off the whitecaps by the wind. The sun was hidden behind the bleak clouds lowing over the lake. The boat plowed a widening triangle of ripples. A flock of gulls hovered over the wake of the boat, piercing the wind with cries that were almost human, as they waited to swoop down upon the garbage of the boat's passage. Ibn Sallah shook his head bemusedly.

“Americans,” he said definitively. “What is one to make of such a people? So strong, so clever and sincere, and yet you are such children. Do you know what it is like to come from a land where half the people are starving and the other half don't care? No,” he added with a sigh. “You are obsessed with your trinkets and your empire, worrying about calories and profits while the rest of the world struggles to survive.”

“You don't exactly look like you're starving,” Caine replied.

“Better and better.” Ibn Sallah's laugh boomed again. “As you say, business is business.”

“Then let's cut the shit and get to it.”

Ibn Sallah looked at Caine with an air of appraisal mingled with a faint touch of approval. Caine took out a cigarette and lit it, cupping his hands around the match to protect it from the chill gray wind that flung ‘the spray of the boat's passage across the deck.

“Then, down to business,” Ibn Sallah said. “What is it you wish of me, monsieur?”

“I want an answer to a question. Just one word, yes or no. It won't compromise your position or have any effect on your country's politics. It has nothing to do with the Company or the Moukhabarat. I'll pay you five thousand dollars in Swiss francs for the one word and you'll never see or hear of me again. Not an unprofitable morning's work,” Caine added dryly.

“Suppose I decide that it is official business and refuse to answer?” Ibn Sallah asked quietly.

“Then I'll take that as a yes and proceed accordingly.”

“Suppose I simply lie and take the money?”

“You won't,” Caine responded confidently. “Because first of all I'll find out that you lied fairly quickly and all you'll have done is cost me a slight delay. Perhaps a week or two.” He shrugged.