The Marching Season (6 page)

CHAPTER 8

MYKONOS * CAIRO

The whitewashed villa clung to the cliffs of Cape Mavros at the mouth of Panormos Bay. For five years it had been empty, except for a drunken group of young British stockbrokers who had rented the house each summer. The previous owners, an American novelist and his stunning Mexican wife, had been driven off by the eternal wind. They had entrusted the property to Stavros, the most prominent real estate agent on the north side of Mykonos, and fled to Tuscany.

The Frenchman called Delaroche—at least Stavros assumed he was French—didn’t seem to mind the wind. He had come to Mykonos the previous winter, with his right hand in a heavy bandage, and purchased the villa after a five-minute inspection. Stavros celebrated his good fortune that evening with endless rounds of wine and ouzo—in the Frenchman’s honor, of course—for the patrons at the taverna in Ano Mera. From that moment on, the enigmatic Monsieur Delaroche was the most popular man on the north side of Mykonos, even though no one but Stavros had ever seen his face.

Within a few weeks of his arrival, there was a good deal of speculation on Mykonos as to just what the Frenchman did for a living. He painted like an angel, but when Stavros offered to arrange a show at a friend’s gallery in Chora, the Frenchman declared that he never sold his work. He cycled like a demon, but when Kristos, the owner of the taverna in Ano Mera, tried to recruit Delaroche for the local club, the Frenchman said he preferred to ride alone. Some speculated he had been born to wealth, but he did all the repairs on his villa himself, and he was known as a frugal customer in the village shops. He had no visitors, threw no parties, and took no women, even though many of the Mykonos girls would gladly have volunteered their services. His days had a clockwork regularity about them. He rode his Italian racing bike, he painted his paintings, he cared for his windswept villa. Most days, at dusk, he could be seen sitting on the rocks at Linos, staring at the sea. It was there, according to myth, that Poseidon had destroyed Ajax the Lesser for the rape of Cassandra.

Delaroche had spent the day on Syros painting. That evening, as the sun set into the sea, he returned to Mykonos by ferry. He stood on the foredeck, smoking a cigarette, as the boat entered Korfos Bay and docked at Chora. He waited until everyone had left the boat before disembarking.

He had purchased a used Volvo station wagon for days when it was too cold and rainy to cycle. The Volvo was waiting in a deserted lot at the ferry terminal. Delaroche opened the rear door and placed his things in the back compartment: a large flat case containing his canvases and his palette, a smaller case with his paints and his brushes. He climbed inside and started the engine.

The drive northward to Cape Mavros took only a few minutes; Mykonos is a small island, about ten miles by six miles, and there was little traffic on the road because of the season. The moonscape terrain passed through the yellow cone of the headlamps—treeless, barren, the rough features smoothed over by thousands of years of human habitation.

Delaroche pulled into the gravel drive outside the villa and climbed out. He had to lean hard on the door to close it in the wind. Whitecaps glowed on Panormos Bay and the Ionian Sea beyond. Delaroche followed the short walkway to the front door and shoved his key in the lock. Before opening the door, he withdrew a Beretta automatic pistol from the shoulder holster beneath his leather jacket. The alarm chirped softly as he stepped inside. He disarmed the system, switched on the lights, and moved through the entire villa, room by room, until he felt certain no one was there.

He was hungry after painting all day, so he went into the kitchen and made supper: an omelette of onions, mushrooms, and cheese, a plate of Parma ham, roasted Greek peppers, and bread fried in olive oil and garlic.

He carried his food to the rustic wooden dining table. He switched on his laptop computer, logged onto the Internet, and read newspapers while he ate. It was quiet except for the wind rattling the windows overlooking the sea.

When he was finished reading he checked his E-mail. There was one message, but when he called it up on his screen it appeared as a meaningless series of characters. He typed in his password, and the gibberish turned to clear text. Delaroche finished eating his supper while he studied the dossier of the next man he would kill.

Jean-Paul Delaroche had lived in France most of his life, but he was not French at all. Code-named October, Delaroche had been an assassin for the KGB. He had lived and operated exclusively in Western Europe and the Middle East, and his mission had been simple: to create chaos within NATO by inflaming tension within the borders of its member nations. When the Soviet Union collapsed, men like Delaroche weren’t absorbed by the KGB’s more presentable successor, the Foreign Intelligence Service; he went into private practice and quickly became the world’s most sought-after contract killer. Now, he worked for just one person, a man he knew only as the Director. For his services he was paid one million dollars a year.

Sea fog hung over the cliffs the following day as Delaroche rode a small Italian motor scooter along the narrow lane above Panormos Bay. He took lunch at the taverna in Ano Mera: fish, rice, bread, and salad, with olive oil and wedges of hard-boiled egg. After lunch he walked through the village to the fruit market. He purchased several melons and placed them in a large paper sack, which he held between his legs as he rode to a deserted patch of track in the barren hills above Merdias Bay.

Delaroche stopped the motor scooter next to an outcropping of rock. He took a melon from the bag and placed it on a ledge of the rock, so it was approximately level with his own head. Next, he removed three more melons and placed them along the pathway about twenty yards apart. The Beretta hung in a shoulder holster beneath his left arm. He drove about two hundred meters down the path, stopped, and turned around. He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled on a pair of black leather gloves.

A year earlier, during his last assignment, the man he had been hired to kill had shot him through the right hand. It was the only time Delaroche had failed to fulfill the terms of a contract. The shooting had left an ugly puckered scar. He could do many things to alter his appearance—grow a beard, wear sunglasses and a hat, color his hair—but he could do nothing about the scar except conceal it.

Suddenly, he opened the bike’s throttle full and raced along the track, dust flying in a plume behind him. He expertly maneuvered his way through the obstacles. He reached beneath his left arm, drew the gun, and leveled it at the approaching target. As he swept past he fired three times.

Delaroche stopped, turned around, and went back to inspect the melon.

None of the three shots had hit its mark.

Delaroche swore softly beneath his breath and replayed the whole thing in his mind, trying to determine why he had missed. He looked down at his hands. He had never worn gloves and didn’t like the way they felt; they robbed his gun hand of sensitivity, and it was difficult to feel the trigger against his forefinger. He removed the gloves, holstered the Beretta, sped down the track to the starting point, and turned around.

He opened the bike’s throttle again and weaved in and out of the melons at speed. He drew the Beretta and fired as he passed the target. The melon disintegrated in a flash of bright yellow.

Delaroche sped away.

Ahmed Hussein was residing in a squat four-story apartment house in Ma’adi, a dusty suburb along the Nile a few miles south of downtown Cairo. Hussein was short, less than five and a half feet tall, and small of frame. His hair was cut close to the scalp, his beard piously unkempt. He took all his meals and received all his visitors inside the flat, venturing outside only to go to the mosque across the street five times each day to pray. Sometimes he stopped in the coffeehouse next to the mosque for tea, but usually his troop of amateur security men insisted he return directly to the flat. Sometimes, they all piled into a dark blue Fiat for the short trip to the mosque; sometimes they walked. It was all in the dossier.

Delaroche began his journey to Cairo three days later, on an overcast windless morning. He took coffee on his terrace above Cape Mavros, a flat sea all around him, and then drove the Volvo into Chora and left it in a parking lot. He could have flown directly to Athens, but he decided to take a ferry to Paros and fly on from there. He was in no rush, and he wanted to watch his tail for signs of surveillance. As the boat cleared Korfos Bay and passed the small island of Delos, he strolled the decks and examined the faces of the other passengers, committing them to memory.

In Paros, Delaroche took a taxi from the waterfront to the airport. He dawdled at a telephone kiosk, a newsagent, and a cafe, all the while checking the faces around him. He boarded the flight to Athens; no one from the ferry was among those on board. Delaroche sat back and enjoyed the short flight, watching the gray-green winter sea passing below his window.

He spent the afternoon in Athens, touring the ancient sites, and in the evening boarded a flight for Rome. He checked into a small hotel off the Via Veneto under the name Karel van der Stadt and began speaking fractured English with a Dutch accent.

Rome was cold and damp, but he was hungry, so he hurried through the drizzle to a good restaurant he knew on the Via Borghese. The waiters brought red wine and endless appetizers: tomato and mozzarella, roasted eggplant and peppers marinated in olive oil and spices, omelette and ham. When the appetizers ended the waiter appeared and said simply, “Meat or fish?” Delaroche ate sea bass and boiled potatoes.

After dinner he went back to his hotel. He sat down at the small writing table and switched on his notebook computer. He logged on to the Internet and downloaded an encrypted file. He typed in his password, and once again the gibberish turned to clear text. The new file was an updated watch report on Ahmed Hussein’s activities in Cairo. Delaroche had worked for a professional intelligence service, and he knew good fieldwork when he saw it. Hussein was under the surveillance of a top-notch service in Cairo, most likely the Mossad.

In the morning, Delaroche took a taxi to Leonardo da Vinci airport and boarded an early afternoon Egypt Air flight to Cairo. He checked into a small hotel in downtown Cairo and changed into lighter clothes. He took a taxi to Ma’adi in the late afternoon. The driver raced along the Corniche, dodging cyclists and donkey carts, as the setting sun turned the Nile into a ribbon of gold.

By dusk, Delaroche was taking sweet tea and pastries in the coffeehouse across from Ahmed Hussein’s flat. The muezzin sounded the evening call to prayer, and the faithful streamed toward the mosque. Ahmed Hussein was among them, surrounded by his motley troop of bodyguards. Delaroche watched Hussein carefully. He ordered more tea and pictured how he would kill him tomorrow.

The following day, Delaroche took lunch on the sun-drenched terrace cafe at the Nile Hilton. He spotted the blond man in the sunglasses, sitting alone among the tourists and rich Egyptians with a large bottle of Stella beer and a half-empty glass. A thin black attache case rested on the chair next to him.

Delaroche walked to the table. “Mind if I join you?” he asked, in Dutch-accented English.

“Actually, I was just leaving,” the man said, and stood up.

Delaroche sat down and ordered lunch.

He placed the attache on the ground next to his feet.

After lunch Delaroche stole a motor scooter. It was parked outside the Nile Hilton, in the madness of Tahrir Square, and it took him a matter of seconds to pick the ignition lock and fire the engine. It was dark blue, coated in a fine layer of Cairo’s powderlike dust, and seemed to be in good working order. There was even a helmet with a dark visor.

Delaroche drove south through the Garden City section of Cairo—past the fortified American embassy, past dilapidated villas, sad reminders of a grander time. The contents of the attache case, a Beretta 9-millimeter automatic and silencer, were now in a holster beneath his left arm. He sped through a narrow alley, past the back of the old Shepherd’s Hotel, turned onto the Corniche, and raced south along the Nile.

He arrived in Ma’adi before sunset. He waited about two hundred yards from the mosque, purchasing flatbread and limes from a peasant boy on the street corner, head covered with the helmet. The amplified voice of the muezzin sounded, and the call to prayer echoed over the neighborhood.

God is most great.

I testify that there is no god but God.

I testify that Muhammad is the Prophet of God.

Come to prayer. Come to success. God is most great. There is no god but God.

Delaroche saw Ahmed Hussein emerge from his apartment house, surrounded by his bodyguards. He crossed the street and entered the mosque. Delaroche gave the boy a few crumpled piastres for the bread and limes, climbed on the motor scooter, and started the engine.

According to the reports, Ahmed Hussein always stayed in the mosque at least ten minutes. Delaroche drove half a block and stopped at a kiosk. He leisurely purchased a pack of Egyptian cigarettes, some candy, and razors. He placed these items in the larger bag containing the bread and limes.

The faithful were beginning to trickle out of the mosque.

Delaroche started the engine.

Ahmed Hussein and his bodyguards emerged from the mosque into the rose-colored dusk.

Delaroche opened the throttle, and the motorbike leaped forward. He raced along the dusty street, dodging pedestrians and slow-moving cars, just the way he had practiced on the track above Merdias Bay, and brought the bike to a sliding stop in front of the mosque. The bodyguards, sensing trouble, tried to close ranks around their man.

Delaroche reached inside his coat and withdrew the Beretta.

He leveled it at Hussein, taking aim at his face; then he lowered the gun a few inches and pulled the trigger rapidly three times. All three shots struck Ahmed Hussein in the chest.

Two of the four bodyguards were pulling weapons from beneath their garments. Delaroche shot one through the heart and the other through the throat. The last two bodyguards threw themselves to the ground next to the bodies. Delaroche gunned the engine and raced away.