As afraid as Hawthorn was now, he did take solace in his belief that he had some time to come up with a plan to get himself out of this mess.
And then the football match began. One of the Serbs had mentioned it earlier in the evening; apparently all work would stop so the twenty or so Balkan men on the property could enjoy the match on the television in the living room; minus those men needed to protect the property, the Serbs promised.
At that moment Hawthorn knew the situation had just changed. Would the other spy come for him, knowing the entire force around them would be distracted for two hours or more?
Shortly before the match began, both Hawthorn and the other spy made excuses to return to their rooms for the evening. They’d also made eye contact at that time, as if to say to each other, “Let’s do this.”
As soon as the match kicked off and the noise from downstairs rocked the villa, Hawthorn told himself he would not sit here on his bed and wait to be murdered.
If he was going to act, he was going to act now.
He screwed the silencer into the CZ pistol slowly, steeling his body and his mind for what was to come. He was no assassin. Yes, he’d had training in weapons and hand-to-hand action, but that was long ago and he’d not been particularly good at it.
He dressed in the darkest clothing he had, he slipped the weapon into the small of his back, under his shirt, and then he left his room.
It was a unique feature of the villa that all the second-floor bedrooms had windows that looked out on the grounds. For this reason there was no inside access from one room to another, but rather two hallways that cut the second floor into sections, and each hallway led to outdoor walkways that wrapped around the second floor.
The walkways, one to the south and one to the north, each had a pair of guards walking back and forth the length of them. Hawthorn knew the only way to get to the room on the far side of the villa without encountering these sentries was to climb to the tile roof and move carefully all the way to the other end.
He stepped outside his room, climbed onto the roof, and almost fell immediately. But when he had his footing he began moving slowly, up and over on his hands and knees. It was slow going; it took him ten minutes to cover one third of the distance.
He checked his watch and realized his lack of progress, and he began to panic. He knew the match would last at least another hour, but at half time some of the men might return to their rooms to check their e-mails or attend to other things. He hadn’t thought about half time till he’d foolishly climbed onto the roof and committed himself, and now his heart pounded with terror. This realization that he did not have as much time as he thought he did made him rush now; he rose higher, and he moved faster.
A weakened tile cracked loudly, broke free, and then began sliding along the roof down towards the northern outdoor walkway.
Hawthorn went flat and prayed.
He heard the two guards below him, and he lifted his head and leaned out a little to see. Two Serbs stood on the walkway. Clearly they had heard the noise, but they only looked around in confusion.
He wanted to give them time to move on, but he didn’t think he had the time to spare. It occurred to him that if he killed the men, he could make better time to his target, because he would be able to move along the walkway instead of the roof.
He tried to think of another alternative, but he came up with nothing else.
The realization that he was going to shoot these two guards came slowly, but it did come. He lay flat on the roof, a gun in his hand, trying his best to justify the actions he was about to take. They were Serbian gangsters, working with al Qaeda to equip them with weapons.
Yes, he could do this.
He steeled himself to accept the necessity of his actions.
He rose a little, pointed the pistol at the first man, and waited for the crowd two levels below him to roar again.
A bad call from the referee caused a dozen men to shout at the television.
Hawthorn fired once, striking the first guard in the back of the head. The flash of light from the gunshot shocked the Mossad asset, but he recovered quickly, shifted his aim to the second man, and fired again. The second shot came right before the shouts below died down.
Both Serbs lay dead on the walkway, but Hawthorn worried they could be seen by someone in the back garden, or even on the hillside beyond. He slipped the gun, its barrel scorching hot, into the small of his back, and then he slid down, over the side of the roof, dropping down the rest of the way.
It took all his strength to drag the men and their guns inside. He pulled, then pushed, and even rolled them, one at a time, into a closet in the hallway on the second floor. While he was doing this, the noises from the living room came up an open stairwell. It sounded like the men below were just feet away, and their voices caused Hawthorn to have to fight the urge to run.
He did what he could to push the fear out of his mind. By the time he finished stashing the bodies, the noise had abated, and he relaxed a little.
The Israeli asset moved down the walkway now, towards his target’s room. He knew he’d have to move quickly, and after the act, he could not return. No, he would continue on downstairs, and make his way out the front gate, hopeful the guards there would be distracted by the match.
He entered the hallway off the walkway, and he stepped up to his target’s door. With his hand on the latch he hesitated, tried to get control of his heart before it hammered its way out of his chest.
Hawthorn opened the door slowly. There, on the bed just five meters away, the Arab spy saw him. Hawthorn checked the man’s hands and saw nothing but a silver pen in his right hand, and some papers in his left.
The papers fell to the floor.
Hawthorn braced himself to kill again, and he raised his weapon, hoping like hell this room was far removed enough from the main floor so no one would hear.
He locked his arm to fire, aiming for the man’s chest.
No words were spoken.
And then, just ahead and on his left, movement through the open window. A black form. Hawthorn thought it too small to be a person at first, but the form grew as it entered, sailing through the air, and he watched as a man landed silently and adroitly on both feet. A gymnast, but a gymnast in black, his face masked.
A gymnast with a gun. He held a black pistol in his hand, a long suppressor protruding from the end of it.
Hawthorn felt relief wash over him. The Mossad had sent a killer, after all. A real killer, here to save him. Manny Aurbach had promised to keep Hawthorn safe, and the old man had come through. Manny had cut too close for comfort, certainly, but—
Hawthorn saw the armed man raise his gun — not at the Arab spy by the bed, but at Hawthorn himself.
No!
“Istanna!” Wait!
The Israeli asset never felt the bullet that killed him.
69
Catherine King spoke in soft tones to convey her sympathy to the man on the other end of the phone. “The man you rescued was a spy, but he worked for a Middle Eastern intelligence agency. After all this time the Israelis still aren’t sure which one. He’d also infiltrated al Qaeda — the core AQ in Pakistan. The Mossad thinks his job was to discover the identity of the Israeli plant in al Qaeda. He’d done this somehow, and then he lured Hawthorn to Italy to murder him. You happened to show up when Hawthorn realized he’d been compromised. It was kill or be killed, so Hawthorn decided to act.”
The pain his Court’s stomach moved to his back, to his chest. He’d heaved early in Catherine’s story, as the details began to fit his reminiscence, but with everything turned upside down.