The Mark of the Assassin (49 page)
“There’s nothing I hate more than Washington on Inauguration Day,” Carter said the following evening. “I could use some sea air and some of Cannon’s wine. Mind if I come up for a couple of days?”
“How much longer do I have to put up with these goons?” Michael asked the next afternoon as he bumped along the sixth fairway of the Gardiners Bay Country Club in a golf cart. A pair of CIA security officers in matching Patagonia parkas rode in a cart behind them, muttering into handheld radios.
“Shit, I trickled into the rough,” Carter said, as he lurched to a stop next to his ball and climbed out of the cart. He pulled a nine-iron from his bag and prepared for a 140-yard shot to the green.
“Are you going to answer my question?” Michael said.
“Jesus, Michael, come on. Not while I’m addressing the ball.”
Carter struck the shot. The ball plopped into the left bunker.
“Goddammit, Osbourne!”
“Go easy on yourself, Tiger. It’s thirty-eight degrees out here.”
Carter climbed into the cart and drove toward the green.
“Those
goons,
as you put it, are here to protect you and your family, Michael, and they’ll stay until I’m satisfied your life is no longer in any danger.”
goons,
as you put it, are here to protect you and your family, Michael, and they’ll stay until I’m satisfied your life is no longer in any danger.”
“Right now my life is in danger because I’m riding in an open golf cart in the middle of winter.”
“I’ll take you home after nine and play the back alone.”
“You’re insane.”
“You should take up the game.”
“I have enough frustration in my life. Self-inflicted wounds I can live without. Besides, I’ll be lucky if I can ever raise a beer with this arm, let alone swing a golf club.”
“How’s Elizabeth doing?”
“As well as can be expected, Adrian. Killing takes its toll, even when it’s in self-defense. The fact that you were able to keep it from going public has made it easier for her. I can’t thank you enough.”
“She’s a gem,” Carter said. “I’ve always said you’re the luckiest man I know.”
Carter’s chip rolled past the cup, leaving him with a ten-foot putt for bogie. “Fuck it,” he said. “It’s too goddamned cold for golf. Let’s spend the afternoon by the fire getting drunk.”
“Did you read it?” Michael asked, as Carter pulled the cork from an Italian merlot and poured two glasses.
“Yes, I read it. I had one of two choices—shit-can it or pass it up the line.”
“Which choice did you make?”
“I chose the coward’s route. Passed it up the line with no comment.”
“You’re a chickenshit.”
“It’s called the bureaucratic shuffle. Protecting one’s flank.”
“Protecting one’s ass.”
“Same thing. You could learn a thing or two from me. Your ass is usually fully exposed, hanging in the wind.”
“I’m a field man, Adrian. Field men make lousy desk men. You always said so yourself.”
“That’s true.”
“So how come you became such a great desk man?”
“Because I wanted a life, and I couldn’t have a life if I was running from one shithole to the next, trying to remember what my cover name was that week.”
“Who’d you give my memo to?”
“Monica Tyler, of course.”
“Let me guess—she shit-canned it.”
“In a New York minute.”
“I didn’t expect her to do anything else.”
“So why did you write it?”
“Because I believe it to be true.”
“You seriously believe Mitchell Elliott, with the assistance of a secret band of rogue operatives, brought down that airliner so he could build his missile defense system?”
Michael nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“That falls into the category of a charge too dangerous to make—not without conclusive proof. Monica recognized that, and so did I. Frankly, what bothers me is why an officer of your experience can’t see it.”
Elizabeth knocked and entered the room. The senator had convinced her to take the
Athena
out on the bay with him for a couple of hours. Her face was bright red with the cold. She stood before the fire and warmed her backside against the flames.
Athena
out on the bay with him for a couple of hours. Her face was bright red with the cold. She stood before the fire and warmed her backside against the flames.
Carter said, “I thought you were supposed to be taking it easy.”
“Dad did all the sailing,” she said. “I just drank herbal tea and tried to keep from freezing to death.”
“Everything all right?” Carter asked.
“Everything’s fine. The babies are perfect.”
“God, that’s wonderful,” he said, and a large smile broke across his usually placid face.
“What were you boys talking about?”
“Shop,” Carter said.
“Okay, I’m leaving.”
“Stay,” Michael said.
“Michael, some of this is—”
“She can hear it firsthand, or she can hear it later in bed. Take your pick, Adrian.”
“Stay,” he said. “Besides, it’s nice to have something beautiful to look at. Make yourself useful, Michael, and pour me some more wine. Elizabeth?”
She shook her head. “I’m off booze and cigarettes for a while.”
Carter drank some wine and said, “We received a report from the French service two days ago. They believe they’ve discovered the cover identity of October. He was living along the Breton coast under the name Jean-Paul Delaroche. A village called Brélés.”
“Jesus, we’ve been there, Michael.”
“He lived quietly in a cottage overlooking the Channel. It seems he was also a talented painter. The French are keeping it quiet, as only the French can do. We have a worldwide alert for him, but so far we’ve had no sightings. We’ve also heard from a number of different sources that he’s actually dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“Apparently, whoever hired him to kill you wasn’t pleased that he failed to fulfill the contract.”
“I hope they tortured him first,” Elizabeth said.
Michael was looking out the window, toward the dock and the white-capped bay beyond.
Elizabeth said, “What are you thinking about, Michael?”
“I’d just like to see a body, that’s all.”
“We all would,” Carter said. “But these things usually don’t work like that.”
He finished the wine and held out his glass for more. Elizabeth opened another bottle. The senator came into the room, face red, hair windblown. “I see you’ve raided the cellar,” he said. “Pour me a vast amount, please.”
Carter said, “I have one other piece of serious business before we get too drunk.”
“If you must,” Michael said.
“Monica has agreed to drop all disciplinary proceedings against you. She thinks they’re inappropriate at this point, given what you and Elizabeth have endured.”
“Oh, isn’t that nice of Monica.”
“Come on, Michael. She’s serious. She thinks the whole thing got out of hand. She wants to put it behind us and move on.”
Michael looked at Elizabeth, then back at Carter. “Tell her thanks, but no thanks,” he said.
“You
want
the disciplinary proceedings to go forward?”
want
the disciplinary proceedings to go forward?”
“No, I want out,” Michael said. “I’ve decided to leave the Agency.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Dead serious,” Michael said. “Sorry, poor choice of words. Okay, now we can get drunk.”
Elizabeth crossed the room, leaned down, and kissed Michael’s lips. “Are you sure, Michael? Don’t do it for me.”
“I’ve never been so sure about anything in my entire life. And I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for us.” Then he touched her stomach. “And for them.”
She kissed him again and said, “Thank you, Michael. I love you. I hope you know that.”
“I know,” he said. “God, I know.”
Carter looked at his watch and said, “Oh, shit!”
“What?” Michael and Elizabeth said in unison.
“We missed Beckwith’s address.”
And they all burst out laughing.
EPILOGUE
MYKONOS, GREECE
It was the villa no one wanted. It clung to a clifftop overlooking the sea, exposed to the eternal wind. Stavros, the real estate agent, had given up on the idea of selling the property. He simply rented it each year to the same clan of young British stockbrokers who pillaged the island each August for three drunken weeks.
The Frenchman with the injured hand spent just five minutes in the house. He toured the bedrooms and the living room and inspected the views from the stone terrace. He paid particular attention to the kitchen, which made him frown.
“I know men who can do the work for you, if you wish to undertake renovations,” Stavros said.
“That won’t be necessary,” the Frenchman said. “I’ll do the work myself.”
“But your hand,” Stavros said, nodding at the bandage.
“It’s nothing,” the Frenchman said. “A kitchen accident. It will heal soon.”
Stavros frowned, as though he found the story unconvincing. “It’s a popular rental,” he continued. “If you wish to leave the island at the high season, I’m certain I can fetch a good price for it, especially if you make repairs.”
“The villa is no longer for rent.”
“Very well. When would you like to—”
“Tomorrow,” the Frenchman said. “Give me an account number, and I’ll have the money wired this afternoon.”
“But, monsieur, you are not Greek. It’s not so easy for a foreigner to buy property. There are forms to fill out, legal documents. These things take time.”
“See to it, Mr. Stavros. But I’m moving in here tomorrow morning.”
He spent the remainder of winter inside. When his hand had healed sufficiently he went to work, mending the villa with the devotion of a monk copying the ancient books. Kristos, the man from the home supplies store, offered to find good men to help with the work, but the Frenchman politely refused. He replaced the kitchen appliances and laid a new ceramic countertop. He repainted the entire interior. He carted away the old furniture—ghastly modern pieces—and filled the rooms with rustic Grecian chairs and tables. In March, when the weather warmed, he turned his attention to the exterior. He patched cracks in the walls and put down a coat of gleaming whitewash. He replaced the broken tiles on the roof and the broken stones on the terrace. By the middle of April, the villa no one wanted was the finest in the village.
The Italian racing bicycle arrived that same week. Each morning he rode along the winding coast roads and up and down the steep hills in the center of the island. Gradually, as the days lengthened, he spent more and more time in the village. He dawdled over the olives and rice and lamb in the marketplace. A few afternoons each week he took his lunch in the taverna, always with a book for protection. Sometimes he bought broiled sea bass from the boys on the beach and ate the fish alone in a grotto where gray seals played. He ventured into the wineshop. At first he drank only French and Italian wines, but after a time he developed a taste for inexpensive Greek varieties. When the clerk suggested more costly vintages, the Frenchman would shake his head and hand the bottle back. The renovations, he explained, had put a dent in his finances.
At first his Greek was limited, a few staccato sentences, a vague untraceable accent. But remarkably, within two months he could conduct his business in passable Greek with the accent of an islander.
The village women made gentle advances, but he took no lovers. He had only one pair of visitors, a small Englishman with eyes the color of winter seawater and a mulatto goddess who sunbathed nude in the May sunshine. The Briton and the goddess stayed for three days. Each evening they dined on the terrace late into the night.
In May he began to paint. At first he could hold his brushes for only a few minutes at a time because of the scar tissue in his right hand. Then, slowly, gradually, the scar tissue stretched and gave way, and he was able to work for several hours at a time. For many weeks he painted the scenes around the villa—the seascapes, the clusters of whitewashed cottages, the flowers on the hillsides, the old men taking wine and olives at the taverna. The villa reflected the changing colors of each passing day: a dusty pink at dawn, a filtered raw sienna at dusk that took weeks of patient experimentation to re-create on his palette.
In August he began painting the woman.
She was blond, with striking blue eyes and pale luminous skin. According to his cleaning lady, he worked without a model from a handful of crude pencil sketches. “Clearly,” she told the other girls in the village, “the Frenchman is working from memory.”
It was a large work, about six feet by four feet. The woman wore only a white blouse, unbuttoned to her navel, tinged with the raw sienna of the setting sun. Her long body was draped over a small wooden chair, facing backward. One hand rested beneath her chin; the other held something that looked like a gun, though no one would put a gun in the hand of a woman so beautiful, the maid said. Not even a recluse Frenchman.
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