“Can you come in?”
“Why?”
A pause. “I need you to see something.”
The prince sighed to the others in the Mercedes. “I’ll be right back.”
His close protection agent called back from the front seat, “I’ll go with you.”
“No need.”
But the guard insisted and climbed out and opened the door for the prince, and the two men crossed the sidewalk.
The prince pressed the button for the door to be unlocked, and he entered the exclusive shop when he heard the click of the lock disengaging. With no attempt to hide his impatience, he climbed the steps up to the sales floor, his bodyguard at his side, and looked around for his wife.
Quickly he realized the little store was empty other than his wife, a single doorman in a dark suit, and a tall, attractive salesclerk standing on the other side of a glass counter from his wife.
The two Saudis passed the security guard standing along the wall.
The prince said, “I told you to get whatever you wanted. Why do I have to see it?”
She stood over a case of necklaces, so his eyes scanned down the merchandise.
Next to him, his guard spoke to his wife as well. “Where is Faisal?”
When she did not immediately answer either man, the prince looked up at her for the first time, and he noticed the terror in her eyes.
“What is it?”
Braam Jaeger drew his silenced .22-caliber pistol and shot the prince’s bodyguard in the back of the head, just behind the ear, at a distance of three feet. The big man pitched forward along with the snap of the round, and he dropped to his knees. Braam stepped closer behind him and shot him execution-style where he knelt, and by the time he lifted his weapon to train it on the prince, he saw the prince was already beginning to run in his direction, back toward the door.
The prince lurched forward, stumbling as he passed by Braam, and slid across the cold marble floor.
Martina Jaeger stood behind the counter, and she held out her own silenced .22. She had shot the man between the shoulder blades from behind.
Braam fired his weapon twice more at the man writhing on the ground at his feet, then he turned and left the showroom, heading down to cover the entrance in case more of the prince’s guards tried to enter. As he walked he holstered his pistol, and from a shoulder holster he drew a Brügger & Thomet machine pistol. It was not a suppressed weapon like the .22, but was fully automatic, fired a larger, heavier nine-millimeter round, and was much more suitable for a real gunfight with multiple attackers than the little .22.
The prince’s wife had dropped to the floor the moment the shooting began, and now she cowered there. “Please! No!”
Martina walked around the showcase slowly, taking her time, her high heels rhythmic on the marble. She stood over the trembling ex-model from the Czech Republic for several seconds, enjoying her fear.
“If you are a smart woman, then you know that I must kill you.”
“No!”
“Yes. We just spent ten minutes talking about platinum bracelets. I have a striking face, perhaps not as beautiful as your own, but certainly you will be able to provide a detailed description of me if I let you walk out of here.”
“I swear to you. I will say nothing!”
“And I saw the way you looked at my brother when you came in. You wanted him for yourself. Pity that won’t happen.” She smiled. “It would be something to see.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
Martina pushed the muzzle of the .22 into the woman’s blond hair. “Stop lying! Stop sniveling! Can’t you die with dignity?”
The Czech woman began to sob loudly.
Martina said, “When I die, I will make my death as graceful as my life. I have self-respect. Honor.”
Just then, Braam Jaeger called out in Dutch from the stairs. “They are coming!”
Martina cleared her head quickly, and she took two steps back from the woman on her knees in front of her.
She was thinking about the inevitable splatter and her ivory blouse.
Just as the prince’s wife looked up at the movement, Martina Jaeger fired four times into her heart. The Czech woman cried out, grabbed at the wounds for an instant, then slumped over dead.
Martina knelt and picked up her tiny hot brass, giving no more thought to the dead bodies lying around her.
Braam walked up to the counter next to Martina and shattered the glass with the butt of his pistol. He and Martina pulled out several trays of rings and necklaces, taking no real time to distinguish specific pieces.
The pair left via the rear of the boutique seconds later, stowing their weapons out of sight and stepping over the two employees of the store and the wife’s bodyguard, all of whom were piled on the floor behind the counter. Even before the Saudi guards were able to break down the front door and rush onto the small sales floor, Braam was behind the wheel of an Aston Martin, and he and his sister were pulling out of the loading area, heading toward Wilshire Boulevard.
Within an hour they would be in the air, leaving Van Nuys Airport, and within fifteen hours they would be back in Holland, waiting for their next operation. They doubted they had long to wait, because it sure seemed like the Russians were really picking up the intensity of their operations.
27
It was Saturday afternoon, and President Jack Ryan was supposed to be with his wife and two youngest kids enjoying the beautiful fall day at their home in Peregrine Cliff. He’d been looking forward to the getaway all week, anticipating looking out over the waters of the Chesapeake Bay surrounded by autumn colors, the leaves floating down all around him.
Instead he looked at a stack of white papers on the table in front of him. A National Intelligence Estimate was a poor substitute for blowing fall leaves. He was stuck here at work, sitting at the conference table in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing.
This meeting could have been held in the Oval Office; there were just a half-dozen in attendance, and this wasn’t an imminent national security situation, but the White House staff had chosen today to clean the carpets in the West Wing, the President’s secretary’s office, and the Cabinet Room. Jack had been told this in advance, but it was only a young uniformed Secret Service guard with an awkward expression on his face standing in the West Colonnade who called out to the President as he opened the door, one step away from entering and trampling all over wet carpet.
That would have made his dark mood even darker, but the moment was saved, and now he was here facing the secretary of energy, the attorney general, and the secretary of state, along with a couple staff members for each of them.
The President sat at the end of the conference table, his head in his hands and his glasses on the papers in front of him. Slowly he rubbed his eyes. The director of the CIA and the director of the Office of National Intelligence were supposed to be here as well, but they hadn’t made it in yet, so his questions about the international intelligence ramifications of the current situation went unanswered, and Ryan wasn’t pleased about this at all.
Ryan slipped his eyeglasses back on and sighed.
“The heir apparent to be the next Saudi minister of petroleum and mineral resources. A prince of the nation, a friend of our government. Where does this assassination take place? Riyadh? Jeddah? London? Istanbul? Nope. Beverly fucking Hills!”
No one spoke.
Ryan shook away a measure of his anger and said, “Dan… who did it?”
Attorney General Dan Murray shrugged his broad shoulders. “LAPD says it looks like a very professional, but very ruthless contract hit dressed up to look like a smash-and-grab robbery. Obviously the perpetrators had intelligence on the security setup, that’s how they knew how to swipe the video footage, as well as get in and get out without being picked up on any cameras in neighboring shops.”