The Mark of the Assassin (35 page)

Authors: Daniel Silva

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense

BOOK: The Mark of the Assassin

12.98Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Stoltenberg had been good-looking once, but he had gone fleshy with alcohol and rich food. He had short-cropped iron gray hair and ice blue eyes. He wore black—black jeans, black turtleneck, black leather jacket. He was touching Astrid as she danced, and by her expression she enjoyed it very much. After three songs they adjourned to Stoltenberg’s regular table. They talked, close.

After ten minutes they stood and sliced their way across the dance floor toward the door, Stoltenberg pulling Astrid by the hand. Her eyes flashed across Delaroche but did not linger on him.

Astrid the professional.

He looked carefully at her face, and he realized she was frightened.

Business was obviously good for Eric Stoltenberg. He had a large black Mercedes and a driver. He opened Astrid’s door, then walked behind the car and got in next to her. The car roared through the narrow streets, then turned onto the corniche and headed south along the river. Delaroche followed on the motorbike, lights doused, head covered by a helmet. He eased off the throttle as they approached Stoltenberg’s riverfront apartment house. Just like London, he thought. Take him inside, get him into bed, leave a door open if you can. No problems. The Mercedes accelerated suddenly, sweeping past the building. Delaroche swore aloud, then opened up the throttle and chased after them.

“Your name is not Eva Tebbe,” Stoltenberg announced, as the car accelerated. “It is Astrid Vogel. You are a former member of the Red Army Faction.”

“What the hell are you talking about? My name is Eva Tebbe, and I am a tourist from Berlin. Take me back to the club now, you crazy bastard, or I’m going to scream for the police!”

“I knew it was you five minutes after we met. That crazy Saxon accent of yours wasn’t good enough to fool a professional.”

“Professional what? Take me back to the club now!”

“I worked for the Stasi, you idiot! I handled the RAF. You were never in the East, but plenty of your comrades were. We had photographs and complete dossiers on every RAF member, including one Astrid Vogel.”

“My name is Eva Tebbe,” she repeated like a mantra. “I am a tourist from Berlin.”

“I had an old associate fax me this photograph. You’re older now, your hair’s different, but it’s you.”

He reached inside his leather jacket and thrust the photograph before her. Astrid was looking out the window. They had crossed the river into Western Cairo and were moving south toward Giza.

“Look at it,” he screamed, “it’s you—look at it!”

“It’s not me. Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her voice was beginning to lose conviction; she could hear it. So could Stoltenberg, apparently, for he slapped her hard across the mouth with the back of his hand. Her eyes teared, and she tasted blood on her lips.

She looked at the photograph, an old West German identification picture. She was revolutionary gaunt, a how-dare-you-take-my-fucking-picture expression on her face. Kurt Vogel’s spiky haircut, Kurt Vogel’s pebble-lensed spectacles. She always thought it was a bloody awful picture, but when the police put it on a wanted poster she became the sex symbol of the radical Left.

The pyramids lay ahead of them, silhouetted against the deep blue of the desert night. A bone white three-quarter moon hung low in the sky, shining like a torch. She thought, Where the hell are you, Jean-Paul? She resisted the impulse to turn around and look for him. What was it he had said?
I won’t let anyone hurt you.
You’d better do something quickly, darling, she thought, or this man is going to make a liar of you. For some reason he had not searched her body or her handbag. Her gun was there, a small Browning automatic, but she knew she could never get it out in time in the confined space of the backseat. She had no choice but to wait and stall and hope to God that Jean-Paul was there somewhere in the darkness.

The pyramids disappeared. They turned onto a narrow unpaved track, stretching into the desert. Astrid said, “Where are you taking me? If you want to fuck, we can fuck right here. You don’t have to take me to the desert and play these stupid games.”

He slapped her again and said, “Shut up.”

The Mercedes bucked and pitched wildly.

“Who hired you?”

“No one hired me. I’m not who you say I am. I want to go back to my hotel. Please, don’t do this.”

He slapped her again, harder. “Answer me! Who hired you?”

“No one, please.”

“Who’s the man? Your partner, the Frenchman?”

“He’s just a silly man from my tour group. He’s no one.”

“Did you kill Colin Yardley in London?”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Did you murder Colin Yardley in London? Did the Frenchman?”

“I don’t kill people. I work for a magazine in Berlin. I do graphic design. My name is not Astrid Vogel. It’s Eva Tebbe. Please, this is insane. Where are you taking me?”

“A place where no one will hear you scream, and no one will find you after I’ve killed you.” He reached inside his coat again and this time brought out a gun. He pushed the barrel against her neck and pulled her hair. “Now, one more time,” he said. “Who’s the Frenchman? Who hired you?”

“My name is Eva Tebbe. I am a graphic designer from Berlin.”

She thought of her old RAF indoctrination lectures. If you are arrested give them nothing. Defy them, berate them, but give them nothing. They will play games with you, fuck with your head. That’s what policemen do. Give them nothing. In this case the advice had a very practical application, because the moment she told Stoltenberg the truth he would certainly kill her.

He pulled her hair violently, then released her. Her handbag lay on the seat between them. He opened the flap and dug through the contents until he found the Browning. He displayed it for her, as proof of her treachery, and placed it inside his coat.

“He’s very sloppy, this Frenchman of yours, Astrid. He sent you into a very dangerous situation. He knew I worked for the Stasi. He should have realized I might recognize a former Red Army Faction killer. It takes a cold bastard to send a woman into a situation like that.”

The car came to a sliding stop on a desert escarpment overlooking the city. Below them Cairo spread like a giant fan, narrow in the south, broad in the north at the base of the Nile delta. A thousand minarets stretched toward the sky. She wondered which was hers. She wanted to be back in her horrid hotel room, with her toilet that didn’t work, next to her building that was about to crash down.

“You love this man, obviously. That’s why you are willing to endure physical pain for him. He does not feel the same for you, I assure you. Otherwise, he would never have allowed you to approach me. He’s using you, just like those bastards in the RAF used you.”

Stoltenberg said something to the driver in rapid Arabic that Astrid did not understand. The driver opened the door and got out. Stoltenberg shoved the gun into her throat again.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s try this one more time.”

Delaroche killed the bike’s engine when he saw the brake lights of the Mercedes flare red. He silently coasted to a stop, pushed the bike off the track, and approached the car on foot. The moon threw shadows. Cairo murmured in the distance. He froze when he heard a car door open and close. The car remained dark; Stoltenberg, like any decent officer, had disabled his interior light. In the moonlight Delaroche could see the driver, gun in hand, checking the perimeter. Delaroche crouched behind a jagged outcropping of rock and waited for the man to draw nearer. When the driver was about ten yards away, Delaroche stood and leveled his Beretta in the darkness.

Stoltenberg was slapping her again, her face, the back of her head, her breasts. She felt he was beginning to enjoy it. She thought about something else, anything else. She thought of her houseboat on the Prinsengracht, and her little bookstore, and she wished to God that Jean-Paul Delaroche had never come into her life. The front driver’s-side door opened and closed. In the darkness Astrid could barely make out the silhouetted figure of a man behind the wheel. She realized it was not the same man who had been there before.

Stoltenberg was pressing the gun into Astrid’s throat again.

“Anything back there?” Stoltenberg said in Arabic.

The man behind the wheel shook his head.

“Yallah,”
Stoltenberg said. Let’s go.

Delaroche spun around and pointed the Beretta at Stoltenberg’s face.

The German was too stunned to react.

Delaroche fired three times.

“He could have killed me, Jean-Paul.”

She lay on the bed at the Hotel Imperial, dressed in her galabia, smoking one cigarette after the next in the half-darkness. Delaroche lay next to her, dismantling his guns. Her hair was damp from the shower; she had rubbed herself raw, trying to wash away Stoltenberg’s blood. Wind drifted through the open French doors. She shuddered with a chill. The toilet had stopped working again. Delaroche called the front desk and asked someone to fix it, but Mr. Fahmy, the keeper of the secret knowledge, was off that night.
“Bokra, inshallah,”
the clerk said. Tomorrow, God willing.

Delaroche regarded her statement; the professional in him could not dispute it. Eric Stoltenberg had had ample time and opportunity to kill her. He had chosen not to because he needed more information.

“He could have killed you,” Delaroche said, “but he didn’t because you behaved perfectly. You stalled, you told him nothing. You were never alone. I was right behind you the entire time.”

“If he wanted to kill me, you couldn’t have stopped him.”

“This work is not without risk. You know that.”

Stoltenberg’s words ran through her head.

He’s very sloppy, this Frenchman of yours. He sent you into a very dangerous situation.

“I’m not sure I can go on, Jean-Paul.”

“You took the assignment. You took the money. You can’t back out now.”

“I want to go back to Amsterdam, to the Prinsengracht.”

“That door is closed to you now.”

She took inventory of her injuries once more: split lip, bruised cheekbone, a mark like a handprint on her right breast. She had never been in a situation where she was helpless, and she didn’t like it.

“I don’t want to die like an animal in the desert.”

“Nor do I,” he said. “I won’t let that happen to either of us.”

“Where will you go, when this business is finished?”

“Back to Brélés if I can. If not, the Caribbean.”

“And where will I go, now that the door to Amsterdam has been closed to me?”

He put down his guns and lay on top of her.

“You can come with me to the Caribbean.”

“And what will I do there?”

“Whatever you like, or nothing at all.”

“And what will I be to you? Will I be your wife?”

Delaroche shook his head. “No, you will not be my wife.”

“Will there be other women?”

He shook his head again. “No, there will be no other women.”

“I’ll be whatever you want me to be, but you mustn’t humiliate me with other women.”

“I would never humiliate you, Astrid.”

He kissed her mouth gently, so as not to hurt the cut on her lip. He unbuttoned her galabia and kissed her breasts and the ugly mark left by Stoltenberg’s hand. He slid down her body and pushed up the galabia. The terror she had felt hours earlier melted with the exquisite sensation of what he was doing between her thighs.

“Where will we live?” she asked softly.

“By the sea,” he said, and resumed.

“Will you do this to me by the sea, Jean-Paul?”

She felt his head nod between her legs.

“Will you do this to me
often
by the sea, Jean-Paul?”

But it was a silly question, and he did not answer it. She took his head and pulled him tightly against her body. She wanted to tell him she loved him, but she knew such things would never be said aloud. Afterward, he lay next to her, softly breathing.

“Do you sleep at night, Jean-Paul?”

“Some nights are better than others.”

“Do you see them?”

“I see them for a while, and then they go away.”

“Why do you kill them that way? Why do you shoot them in the face three times?”

“Because I want them to know I exist.”

Her eyes closed, and she drifted toward sleep.

“Are you the Beast, Jean-Paul?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Beast,” she repeated. “The Devil. Perhaps you leave your mark on their faces because you’re the Beast.”

“The people I kill are wicked men. If I don’t kill them, someone else will. It’s just business, nothing more.”