THE PERFECT KILL (25 page)

“Go ahead,” he said abruptly. “I’ll have a small Scotch and ice.”

She moved to the table and poured the two Scotches. She brought his over and then moved back to the end of the bed and remained standing there. He could sense the tension in her.

Quietly, he said, “Sit down, Nicole. You can talk to me about any single thing in the world.”

She sat down and said hesitantly, “Well, it’s about me and Maxie.”

“I guessed that.”

She smiled and said, “Yes…You see when we were in Florida we talked a lot.”

“Just talked?”

Her smile widened. “Most of the time,” she said. “He’s decided he wants to get out of the business and do something else. I’ve decided I want to do the same. He’s saved quite a bit of money and so have I…what with the money you’ve given me over the past weeks.”

“I gave you nothing,” he said sternly. “You earned every cent. So what are you planning?”

Her mood lightened and so did her voice. “We thought we’d open a small bistro and bar. He would run the bar and I’d look after the bistro. Do the cooking and so on.”

His eyes widened. “Cooking!”

She said defiantly, “I’m a very good cook. I learned from my grandmother.”

He raised a placating hand. “OK…where?”

“Here in Brussels. I know a place for sale near the market…it’s ideal. The old couple who own it are retiring.”

“So what’s the problem?”

She sighed and said, “There are two, you and Blondie.”

“How so?”

“Well with you it’s to do with Maxie. He says he’s going to quit completely and he means it. But I know that if you ever call on him, he’ll come.” She had been looking down at the blanket. Now, she raised her head and looked him in the eye. “I know that. He worships you.”

Thoughtfully Creasy said, “It’s not a problem, Nicole.” He smiled at her. “The only time you or he will ever see me again is when I eat and drink at your bistro…what are you going to call it?”

Her face brightened. “Maxie’s,” she answered. “But he told me that he thinks this operation that you’re on is not finished yet.”

“That’s true,” Creasy conceded. “But his involvement is. Now what’s the problem with Blondie?”

Her face went sombre again. “That’s my problem,” she muttered.

“When Blondie takes on a girl, it’s understood at the start that she stays for at least a year…I’ve only been here five months. Blondie is very powerful in this city and I wouldn’t want to start out with her as an enemy.”

“And you want me to talk to her?” Creasy asked.

She nodded glumly.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said.

“It will be all right?”

“That’s a promise,” he answered. “Now go away and let me sleep.”

She drained the last of her Scotch, stood up and looked down at him.

“Do you want me to get into bed with you?” she asked. “It would be the last time.”

Equally seriously he replied, “Nicole, I’ve done one or two stupid things in my life but going to bed with Maxie MacDonald’s woman never was and never will be one of them.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

“You don’t have to.”

The first rain came to Gozo in late October and within two weeks the seemingly barren island was carpeted in green.

The beauty of it was enough to break Leonie’s heart. Her six months were up and she would be leaving in the morning. She was driving to the Schembris to say her farewells and not looking forward to it. She would merely tell them, and anyone else who asked, that she was going away for a few weeks and would be back. But they would know differently.

She simply did not want to leave but Creasy had been implacable.

“A deal is a deal,” he had stated flatly, and without a word he had handed her the plastic wallet containing her ticket and the letter from the Notary.

Now, as she drove down the track to the Schembri farmhouse, she just prayed that she wouldn’t break down in front of them.

“You’re an actress,” she told herself sternly. “Act your role out to the last.”

The farewells, in fact, went like a scene in a choreographed play, with all the players knowing their parts, but not relishing them. Joey and Maria were also there. She was given a glass of wine and they sat out on the patio, watched the sun set and said the sort of things people say in such a mechanical situation. It was only at the end, when they walked to the car, that the emotions began to show. She held on to Laura for a long time, feeling the strength in the woman and trying to draw some of it to herself.

“I will never forget you,” she said against her cheek. “I cannot thank you enough.”

Laura squeezed her hard and replied in a low voice: “You certainly won’t forget me. In the new year, I’m going to make Paul take me to London for a holiday. Meanwhile, I’ll write. God bless you.”

In the morning, Creasy drove her down to the ferry in the jeep, with Michael and her suitcase on the back seat. They drove in silence. At Mgarr they climbed out of the jeep and Michael carried her suitcase across the ramp and gave it to a deck-hand he knew. Then he came back onto the jetty.

They stood in a silent triangle and Creasy said, “The taxi will be waiting on the other side.” He looked at his watch. “You have plenty of time to make your flight. Goodbye and thank you. You did better than anyone could have expected.” He gripped her by the shoulders, bent down and kissed her on both cheeks, then stepped back.

She turned and looked at Michael. He was staring down at the ground, his face a blank mask.

“Goodbye, Michael,” she said softly.

He lifted his head and she saw the pain in his eyes. Quickly she moved forward and put her arms around him.

She fought against her emotions, saying to herself, “Play your role out to the end…to the very end.” She kissed him on the cheek and said, “Take care of yourself, Michael. Make me proud of you.” Then she pulled away and without looking back, walked across the ramp. She went up the steps to the top deck and stood at the stern rail, looking down at the two men standing by the jeep. She waved and they waved back. The last cars were being loaded.

Michael turned to Creasy and said, “I’m going with her on the ferry. I’ll make sure she gets her taxi all right. Don’t wait for me. I’ll get a lift back to the house.”

As Michael turned towards the ramp, Creasy said, “I’ll wait for you at Gleneagles.”

At Cirkewwa Michael carried her suitcase to the waiting taxi. During the crossing, he had been very taciturn, simply standing beside her at the rail and looking at the receding island. The driver put her suitcase in the trunk and opened the back door. She turned to Michael. He was about four feet away. He did not come closer. He simply stated flatly, “I will see you again.”

Then he turned and walked back to the ferry.

Ahmed Jibril left his office ten minutes after receiving a phone call from Colonel Jomah. An armed convoy of jeeps was hastily arranged and instructions given to send on clothing, certain files and his Macintosh computer. The convoy consisted of two jeeps in front of his bullet-proof Mercedes and two jeeps behind.

As he left the outskirts of Damascus, Jibril considered the situation. He was one of the world’s experts in dispensing terror and of course he knew the possible consequences. During his entire adult life it had been necessary to take extreme precautions. He had learned to live with the nagging physical fear that at any time, a bullet or a bomb could instantly end his life.

But this was different. He could not define how it was different but when Colonel Jomah had given him the brief details on the phone, he had felt his whole body go cold. He had felt akin to a man in a dark, locked room, knowing that there was a deadly snake somewhere close to him. So he had decided to go to the PFLP-GC training camp at Ein Tazur where security would be even tighter than at his headquarters in Damascus.

During the drive, his mind ranged over the tactics for his defence. Of course the best defence is attack, but attack where and how? This man Creasy was supposed to be dead. Very obviously, that wasn’t the case. Also very obviously, he was able to call on extremely competent help and direct it brilliantly.

They arrived at the camp in the early evening. Jibril’s son Jihad, who commanded it, was waiting inside the gates.

He embraced his father and asked immediately, “What happened, father?”

Jibril shrugged nonchalantly, patted his son’s cheek and said, “I decided to spend some time with the fighters. After sitting in an office too long, I need to draw some inspiration from them.”

Jihad smiled. “You will give them inspiration,” he answered. “You always have…how long can you stay?”

“I’m not sure,” his father replied. “At least three weeks. I’ll get involved with the training…it will do me good.” He smiled. “It will make me young again.”

He took his son’s arm and they walked together to the large, reinforced concrete blockhouse, which was the camp’s nerve centre.

Colonel Jomah arrived the next afternoon. In the privacy of Jihad’s office, which Jibril had commandeered, he silently handed over a fat folder. Jibril placed it on the desk, but before opening it, poured a coffee for his guest and chatted about other subjects, which is what every well-mannered Arab should do. Then he opened the folder and pulled out the newspaper clippings and photographs. He studied them carefully. When he came to the photograph of the blackened twisted truck, lying on its back, the Colonel murmured, “That was an RPG7.”

Jibril looked up at him and asked casually, “Are there any leads at all on this man Creasy?”

Slowly the Colonel shook his head.

“Nothing. In the old days, we could have asked the KGB for help, but now they’re virtually useless.” He stood and picked up his braided cap from the desk. “You will stay here long, Ahmed?” he asked.

“As long as necessary.”

The Colonel smiled slightly and turned to go, saying, “I think that’s wise.”

“Dunga Justo Basne.”

Michael was lying spreadeagled on his stomach beside the swimming pool. He turned his head to look at the small, brown man sitting on a cane chair a few feet away. He was wearing immaculately creased grey flannel trousers, a starched white shirt and highly polished black shoes. His face was round and unlined, with small, black eyes. His short hair was neatly combed. He looked as though he might have been sitting in a leather chair in an army officers’ club.

“Dunga Justo Basne,” he repeated. “Those three words are the Gurkha sniper’s bible. They mean “still as stone”. Now this is how your training starts. I want you to lie there and not move more than a stone would move for the next half hour. You have to let your brain send the message to every part of your body, even to the tips of every hair on your head.”

Michael settled his cheek against the hard limestone slabs, narrowed his eyes and lay still. The small man watched him.

After ten seconds, he said, “You moved.”

“I did not.”

“You moved the little finger of your left hand and also your right foot. Even such a move could be death for a sniper. Stand up a moment.”

Michael stood up, as did the small Nepalese. He took Michael by the arm and they walked to the edge of the pool deck. They looked down over the green fields and the small man pointed up to the sky and said, “A hawk can be as high as a thousand feet, but if a mouse moves its tail half an inch, the hawk will see it. A sniper must have in his mind that he’s being watched always by a hawk. It makes the difference between living or dying. Today you will lie still as a stone for half an hour. Tomorrow, for an hour. The next day for two hours. You will lie over stones and pieces of wood, in great discomfort. I will be here for thirty days. On the day before I leave, you will lie Dunga Justo Basne from dawn to sunset. If you cannot, I will have failed…and so will you.”

“Will I get to shoot the rifle?” Michael asked with a trace of sarcasm.

“Yes. After you can lie Dunga Justo Basne for more than four hours.”

The small man had arrived the night before. Creasy had picked him up from the ferry. At the house, he had made the introductions. “This is my son Michael. This is my friend Captain Rambahadur Rai. Late of the 2nd/10th Gurkhas. He will be your teacher.”

During dinner that night Michael had covertly studied the small man. He would have placed him at no more than forty-five.

He sat erect in his chair and all his movements while he ate were precise and controlled. Creasy had told him that Rambahadur Rai had been decorated seven times by the British, during the Malayan Communist War in the fifties, and in North Borneo fighting the Indonesians, in the early sixties. The decorations included the Military Cross with bar.

Now Michael lay again on the limestone paving concentrating his mind and body not to move. He was dressed only in his swimsuit. In Gozo, there is a variety of fly that bites with a sting sharper than that of a mosquito.

One such fly landed on Michael’s right ankle and bit him. His leg twitched.

“You moved!”

“The flies sting,” Michael said defiantly.

“Do they sting worse than a bullet?” Rai said. Then he stood up and walked over to a clump of young trees. He tore a long, thin branch from one of them and stripped off the leaves. He pulled his chair up close to Michael, holding the willowy branch in his right hand. Then he sat down and said, “Dunga,” thus shortening the “bible”.

Michael lay still for several minutes and he was bitten again by a fly on his right arm. He twitched involuntarily. A second later he yelped, as the branch thwacked across his buttocks.

“Dunga!”

Unseen, Creasy was standing on the balcony outside his study, looking down at the scene. He was smiling. Twenty years before, he thought he had been an expert sniper, trained both by the Marines and the French Foreign Legion. Then he had met Rambahadur Rai and realised that he was an amateur. He had submitted himself to the same training that Michael was now starting out on.

Over the next ten minutes, the branch thwacked down three more times, until Michael twisted, sat up and said angrily, “It can’t be done!”

Creasy went down the steps, walked past the pool to the garden and picked up three large limestone rocks. He then walked over to the two men and laid the rocks next to Michael, with a gap of about a foot between them. Then from his back pocket he took out a wad of notes, peeled off ten and put them under one of the stones. He nodded at Rambahadur.