That belief had caused Mabus to bring together thirteen others and forge them as self-styled Disciples of Judas. Those thirteen had cast their nets out, recruiting others to their faith. Together they formed the Shrieks. Their purpose? The only one that made any sort of sense to the Russian was an attack on the very foundations the Catholic Church was built upon. After all Judas was their Messiah, not Jesus. Why should the world pray to the cross and drink the blood of Christ if his entire life was a lie? What salvation was there in that? It was a seductive way of reasoning.
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He checked it. Lethe’s data packet had arrived. He opened it, checking the locations, dates and times, and realized there were far too many for comfort. Protecting the man was going to be a nightmare. Even without walking the parade route he knew there would be far too many places an assassin could hide. Modern sniper rifles made it possible for a skilled shooter to be so far removed from the scene that chasing them was next to impossible if so many of the variables of the murder weren’t already fixed. So, of course, the last ting Konstantin was going to do was waste his time trying to protect the Pope. Besides, he had his personal guard, willing to take a bullet for him and earn their place in heaven. And of course, the entire BKA would be on high alert from the moment he stepped out into public. No, Konstantin would put his particular skills set to a slightly different use. As the old football adage went, attack was the best form of defense.
He would find the man and kill him before he could pull the trigger.
That gave him anything from three hours to two full days to find the assassin, depending upon when he had decided to take the shot.
The train rolled on. Konstantin found himself drowsing. He let himself slide into a shallow sleep. He had no idea when he might sleep again.
While he slept he dreamed in Russian. In his dream Mabus was the snake in the darkness, whispering with its forked tongue. He held his Glock but couldn’t see what he was aiming at. And then he saw it, the snake coming out of the darkness. He pulled the trigger again and again and again, making the snake writhe. He shot ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred bullets into its cold skin. He was a snake charmer, making it rise. Then the creature arced forward and bit him. He fired and fired and fired again.
He woke with a start, lurching forward in his seat.
The ICE train was pulling into a town that looked like it had been lifted straight from the fairy tale world of Grimms’ fables.
The driver announced the next station. It wasn’t Koblenz. He closed his eyes again. This time he did not allow himself to sleep. He was hungry, he realized. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. He walked along to the restaurant car and ordered a too-hot cup of black coffee and a microwaved pizza slice in a silver-lined box along with a cinnamon bun dripping white icing, and a candy bar. It was all sugar food. Fast energy junk. But he didn’t feel like a sit-down silver-service dinner, which was the only alternative, so it would have to do.
He worked his way back through the train, rolling with the motion of the car as it leaned into the long curves in the track, until he was back in his seat. He sipped at the coffee. He ate the pizza in six bites, barely taking the time to chew before he swallowed, he was so hungry. He licked the stringy cheese from his fingers.
If he thought like a Russian, it made sense that the Disciples of Judas would want the Church’s “papa” dead. It was a bold move. It was a strike right at the heart of their false messiah. It obeyed the Moscow Ru come hard, come fast and leave them frightened. It was just like breaking down the door at four a.m. and dragging a man out of bed, naked, kicking, screaming and, most important of all, helpless. But more than that, with the eyes of the world watching, it turned the murder of one man into a spectacle.
The driver announced Koblenz Hauptbahnhof.
Konstantin wrapped the bun in the napkin it came with and crammed it and the candy bar into his pocket and moved toward the door.
He stepped off the train straight onto the set of a macabre morality tale straight from the Grimms’ repertoire. It was fitting, given the gingerbread quality of the houses and the quaint narrowness of the cobbled streets. There were police waiting at the end of the platform. Instinctively Konstantin reached for his pocket for his papers. The fear was ingrained in him. It took him a moment to remember this wasn’t Moscow and these men weren’t looking for traitors to the Soviet cause. They didn’t care if he was a defector, but it was hard for him to forget that he was exactly that. He walked toward the station house. Not too quickly, not too slowly. The policeman nodded slightly as he past. Konstantin inclined his head a fraction.
The station house had that unique railway station smell, a combination of flowers, fast-food grease, diesel engines and the desperation of a place where people were forever saying goodbye.
There were ten uniformed officers that he could see spread out across the platforms and the main entrance. In the few minutes it took him to walk across to the coffee stand beside the ticket office, buy a piping hot Americano that came served in a paper cup thin enough to burn the fingers, sit down on a bench and drink it, they didn’t challenge a single traveler. He didn’t know what they were looking for, but they obviously didn’t see it in the faces of the bald businessmen, the skinhead in the torn Clash tee-shirt that said London was calling, or the woman in the high heels and A-line skirt whose powerful calf muscles turned all the heads as she walked by. They didn’t see it in the bearded man in his college professor jacket with worn-out elbows, or the lanky student with his sunglasses and dyed-black hair that hung down past his shoulders.
He took the crushed bun from his pocket and unwrapped the napkin. The icing stuck to the tissue, the tissue stuck to the bun and then both stuck to his fingers as he tried to tease them apart. Konstantin took his time, savoring the bun. A tramp came and sat down on the bench beside him. He smelled as though he hadn’t bathed in a month; it was that sour stench that reached down his throat and made him want to gag. Konstantin took the candy bar from him pocket and offered it to the man, who took it, peeled it out of its wrapper and ate it hungrily. Pigeons gathered around their feet. One hopped up onto the bench beside the tramp. A woman came and sat on the other end of the bench and started to read a newspaper. The tramp spread his arms out, trying to shoo the birds away, but that only brought more. Together they looked like a curious reworking of the Last Supper: Jesus, Mary, Judas and the birds.
Konstantin finished his coffee and threw the sticky napkin in the bin.
The police guarding the station watched him walk toward them. The timetables and maps were on the wall beside them.
They didn’t stop him.
He took his phone from his pocket. At less than two inches squared the route map was almost useless, but it was enough for him to check up against the street map beside the timetables and ICE, Inter City and regional rail schematic maps. He studied the two for a few minutes, committing them to memory. “Do you need any help?” the nearest of the uniformed officers asked, seeing him staring at the street map.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Konstantin told him without looking away from the map. The parade route followed the line of the Rhine for two of its three miles before turning in toward the Old Town. There were several landmarks, including, of course, the massive Ehrenbrietstein citadel on the opposite bank of the river. Then there was the aluminum factory and the automotive brakes manufacturing plant. Both had a lot to offer in terms of isolation, but without seeing them he had no way of knowing whether they presented a genuine shot. Office buildings, hotels, boarding houses-those were the kind of places he was most interested in. Places offering a view, which meant they had to be a few stories above ground level. That almost certainly discounted a lot of the older buildings of the Old Town, meaning the shooter would probably favor the new town with its wider streets and higher buildings. But again, he wouldn’t know for sure without walking the parade route.