“Hold on.”
“What’s going on?”
“They’re turning around.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. They’re retracing their steps.”
Gabriel looked up at the monitor just as they entered the shot again, this time from the opposite direction. Once again the woman was facing the street, and once again the man had his hand in the back pocket of her jeans. They stopped at the door of Number 56. The man drew a key from his pocket.
19 SURREY, ENGLAND
AT THE STRATFORD CLINIC IT WAS JUST AFTER TEN in the evening when Amira Assaf came out of the elevator and set off down the fourth-floor corridor. Rounding the first corner, she spotted the bodyguard, sitting on a chair outside Miss Martinson’s room. He looked up as Amira approached and closed the book he was reading.
“I need to make sure she’s sleeping comfortably,” Amira said.
The bodyguard nodded and got to his feet. He wasn’t surprised by Amira’s request. She’d been stopping by the room every night at this time for the past month.
She opened the door and went inside. The bodyguard followed after her and closed the door behind him. A lamp, dimmed to its lowest setting, was burning softly. Amira went to the side of the bed and looked down. Miss Martinson was sound asleep. Hardly a surprise-Amira had given her twice her usual dosage of sedative. She’d be out for several more hours.
Amira adjusted the blankets, then opened the top drawer of the bedside table. The gun, a silenced Walther nine-millimeter, was precisely where she had left it earlier that afternoon while Miss Martinson was still in the solarium. She seized the weapon by the grip, then spun round and leveled the gun at the bodyguard’s chest. He reached inside his jacket in a lightning-fast movement. Before his hand emerged, Amira fired twice, the double-tap of a trained killer. Both shots struck the upper chest. The bodyguard tumbled backward onto the floor. Amira stood over him and fired two more shots.
SHE DREW A SERIES of deep breaths to quell the intense wave of nausea that washed over her. Then she went to the telephone and dialed an internal hospital extension.
“Would you please ask Hamid to come up to Miss Martinson’s room? There’s some linen that needs to be collected before the truck leaves.”
She hung up the phone, then took the dead man by the arms and dragged him into the bathroom. The carpet was smeared with blood. Amira was not concerned by this. Her intention was not to conceal the crime, only to delay its discovery by a few hours.
There was a knock at the door.
“Yes?”
“It’s Hamid.”
She unlocked the door and opened it. Hamid wheeled in a laundry cart.
“You all right?”
Amira nodded. Hamid wheeled the cart next to the bed while Amira pulled away the blankets and sheets. Miss Martinson, frail and scarred, lay motionless. Hamid lifted her by her torso, Amira by her legs, and together they lowered her gently into the laundry cart. Amira concealed her beneath a layer of sheets.
She went out into the corridor to make certain it was clear, then looked back at Hamid and motioned for him to join her. Hamid rolled the cart out of the room and started toward the elevator. Amira closed the door, then inserted her passkey into the lock and snapped it off.
She met Hamid at the elevator and pressed the call button. The wait seemed an eternity. When finally the doors opened, they wheeled the cart into the empty chamber. Amira pressed the button for the ground floor and they sunk slowly downward.
The ground-floor foyer was deserted. Hamid went out first and turned to the right, toward the doorway that led to the rear courtyard. Amira followed after him. Outside, a van was idling with its rear cargo doors open. On the side was stenciled the name of a local laundry supply company. The usual driver was lying in a stand of beech trees two miles from the hospital with a bullet in his neck.
Hamid lifted the laundry bag out of the cart and placed it gently into the back of the van, then closed the doors and climbed into the front passenger seat. Amira watched the van roll off, then she went back inside and walked to the head nurse’s station. Ginger was on duty.
“I’m not feeling terribly well tonight, Ginger. Think you can get by without me?”
“No problem, luv. Need a ride?”
Amira shook her head. “I can manage on the bike. See you tomorrow night.”
Amira went to the staff locker room. Before stripping off her uniform she hid the gun inside her backpack. Then she changed into jeans, a heavy woolen sweater, and a leather jacket. A moment later she was walking across the rear courtyard with her bag across her back.
She climbed on the bike and started the engine, then accelerated out of the courtyard. As she rounded the back of the old mansion she glanced up at Miss Martinson’s window: one light burning softly, no sign of trouble. She raced along the drive and rolled to a stop at the guardhouse. The man on duty bid her a good night, then opened the gate. Amira turned onto the road and twisted the throttle. Ten minutes later she was racing along the A24 motorway, heading south to the sea.
20 MARSEILLES
GABRIEL SLIPPED INTO HIS STATEROOM AND CLOSED the door. He went to the closet and peeled back a parcel of loose carpet, exposing the door of the floor safe. He worked the tumbler and lifted the lid. Inside were three handguns: a Beretta 92FS, a Jericho 941PS Police Special, and a Barak SP-21. Carefully he lifted each of the weapons out and laid them on the bed. The Beretta and the Jericho were both nine-millimeter weapons. The magazine for the Beretta had a fifteen-round capacity, the Jericho sixteen. The Barak-squat, black, and ugly-fired a larger and more destructive.45-caliber round, though it held only eight shots.
He field-stripped the guns, beginning with the Beretta and ending with the Barak. Each weapon appeared in perfect working order. He reassembled and loaded the weapons, then tested the weight and balance of each, deliberating over which to use. The hit was not likely to be a covert and quiet affair. It would probably take place on a busy street, perhaps in broad daylight. Making certain Khaled was dead was the first priority. For that, Gabriel needed power and reliability. He selected the Barak as his primary weapon and the Beretta 92FS as his backup. He also decided he would work without a silencer. A silencer made the weapon too difficult to conceal and too unwieldy to draw and fire. Besides, what was the point of using a silencer if the act was witnessed by a crowd of people on the street?
He went into the bathroom and stood for a moment before the mirror, examining his face. Then he opened the medicine cabinet and removed a pair of scissors, a razor, and a can of shaving cream. He trimmed the beard down to stubble, then removed the rest with the razor. His hair was still dyed gray. Nothing to be done about that.
He stripped off his clothes and showered quickly, then went back into the stateroom to dress. He pulled on his underwear and socks, then a pair of dark-blue denim trousers and rubber-soled suede brogues. He attached his radio unit to the waistband of his jeans on the left hip, then ran a wire to his ear and a second one to his left wrist. After securing the wires with strips of black tape, he pulled on a long-sleeved black shirt. The Beretta he shoved down the waistband of his jeans, at the small of his back. The Barak was compact enough to fit in the pocket of his leather jacket. His GPS tracking beacon, a small disk about the size of a one-euro coin, he slipped into the front pocket of his jeans.
He sat on the end of the bed and waited. Five minutes later there was a knock at the door. The clock read 2:12 A.M.
“HOW CERTAIN ARE your experts?”
The prime minister looked up at the bank of video monitors and waited for an answer. In one of the monitors was Lev’s image. The director-general of Shabak, Moshe Yariv, occupied the second; General Amos Sharret, chief of Aman, the third.