Keating was a tall man, an inch over six feet. He had the lean, graceful body of a trained athlete, and it had taken him years of constant painful work to acquire it. The earlier part of his adult life he had spent behind a desk or at embassy parties, like so many other Foreign Service career officers. But that had been a lifetime ago, when he was a minor cog in the Department of State’s global machine. When he was a husband and father.
His wife had been killed in the rioting in Tunis, part of the carefully-orchestrated Third World upheaval that had forced the new World Government down the throats of the white, industrialized nations. His son had died of typhus in the besieged embassy, when they were unable to get medical supplies because the U.S. government could not decide whether it should negotiate with the radicals or send in the Marines.
In the end, they negotiated. But by then it was too late. So now Keating served as a roving attaché to U.S. embassies or consulates, serving where his special talents were needed. He had found those talents in the depths of his agony, his despair, his hatred.
Outwardly he was still a minor diplomatic functionary, an interesting dinner companion, a quietly handsome man with brooding eyes who seemed both unattached and unavailable. That made him a magnetic lure for a certain type of woman, a challenge they could not resist. A few of them had gotten close enough to him to trace the hairline scar across his abdomen, all that remained of the surgery he had needed after his first assignment, in Indonesia. After that particular horror, he had never been surprised or injured again.
With an adamant shake of his head, Keating forced himself to concentrate on the job at hand. The damp cold was seeping into him. His feet were already soaked. The cars still crawled along the rainy boulevard, honking impatiently. The noise was making him irritable, jumpy.
«Terminate with extreme prejudice,» his boss had told him, that sunny afternoon in Virginia. «Do you understand what that means?»
Sitting in the deep leather chair in front of the section chief’s broad walnut desk, Keating nodded. «I may be new to this part of the department, but I’ve been around. It means to do to Rungawa what the Indonesians tried to do to me.»
No one ever used the words kill or assassinate in these cheerfully lit offices. The men behind the desks, in their pinstripe suits, dealt with computer printouts and satellite photographs and euphemisms. Messy, frightening things like blood were never mentioned here.
The section chief steepled his fingers and gave Keating a long, thoughtful stare. He was a distinguished-looking man with silver hair and smoothly tanned skin. He might be the board chairman you meet at the country club, or the type of well-bred gentry who spends the summer racing yachts.
«Any questions, Jeremy?»
Keating shifted slightly in his chair. «Why Rungawa?»
The section chief made a little smile. «Do you like having the World Government order us around, demand that we disband our armed forces, tax us until we’re as poor as the Third World?»
Keating felt emotions burst into flame inside his guts. All the pain of his wife’s death, of his son’s lingering agony, of his hatred for the gloating ignorant sadistic petty tyrants who had killed them—all erupted in a volcanic tide of lava within him. But he clamped down on his bodily responses, used every ounce of training and willpower at his command to force his voice to remain calm. One thing he had learned about this organization, and about this section chief in particular: never let anyone know where you are vulnerable.
«I’ve got no great admiration for the World Government,» he said.
The section chief’s basilisk smile vanished. There was no need to appear friendly to this man. He was an employee, a tool. Despite his attempt to hide his emotions, it was obvious that all Keating lived for was to avenge his wife and child; it would get him killed, eventually, but for now his thirst for vengeance was a valuable handle for manipulating the man.
«Rungawa is the key to everything,» the section chief said, leaning back in his tall swivel chair and rocking slightly.
Keating knew that the World Government, still less than five years old, was meeting in Athens to plan a global economic program. Rungawa would head the Tanzanian delegation.
«The World Government is taking special pains to destroy the United States,» the section chief said, as calmly as he might announce a tennis score. «Washington was forced to accept the World Government, and the people went along with the idea because they thought it would put an end to the threat of nuclear war. Well, it’s done that—at the cost of taxing our economy for every unemployed black, brown, and yellow man, woman, and child in the entire world.»
«And Rungawa?» Keating repeated.
The section chief leaned forward, pressed his palms on his desktop and lowered his voice. «We can’t back out of the World Government, for any number of reasons. But we can—with the aid of certain other Western nations—we can take control of it, if we’re able to break up the solid voting bloc of the Third World nations.»
«Would the Russians—»
«We can make an accommodation with the Russians,» the section chief said impatiently, waving one hand in the air. «Nobody wants to go back to the old cold-war confrontations. It’s the Third World that’s got to be brought to terms.»
«By eliminating Rungawa.»
«Exactly! He’s the glue that holds their bloc together. ‘The Black Saint.’ They practically worship him. Eliminate him and they’ll fall back into their old tangle of bickering selfish politicians, just as OPEC broke up once the oil glut started.»
It had all seemed so simple back there in that comfortable sunny office. Terminate Rungawa and then set about taking the leadership of the World Government. Fix up the damage done by the Third World’s jealous greed. Get the world’s economy back on the right track again.
But here in the rainy black night of Athens, Keating knew it was not that simple at all. His left hand gripped the dart gun in his trench coat pocket. There was enough poison in each dart to kill a man instantly and leave no trace for a coroner to find. The darts themselves dissolved on contact with the air within three minutes. The perfect murder weapon.
Squinting through the rain, Keating saw through the taverna’s big plate-glass window that Rungawa was getting up from his table, preparing to leave the restaurant.
Terminate Rungawa. That was his mission. Kill him and make it look as if he’d had a heart attack. It should be easy enough. One old man, walking alone down the boulevard to his hotel. «The Black Saint» never used bodyguards. He was old enough for a heart attack to be beyond suspicion.
But it was not going to be that easy, Keating saw. Rungawa came out of the tavema accompanied by three younger men. And he did not turn toward his hotel. Instead, he started walking down the boulevard in the opposite direction, toward the narrow tangled streets of the most ancient part of the city, walking toward the Acropolis. In the rain. Walking.
Frowning with puzzled aggravation, Keating stepped out of the doorway and into the pelting rain. It was icy cold. He pulled up his collar and tugged his hat down lower. He hated the rain. Maybe the old bastard will catch pneumonia and die naturally, he thought angrily.
As he started across the boulevard a car splashed by, horn bleating, soaking his trousers. Keating jumped back just in time to avoid being hit. The driver’s furious face, framed by the rain-streaked car window, glared at him as the auto swept past. Swearing methodically under his breath, Keating found another break in the traffic and sprinted across the boulevard, trying to avoid the puddles even though his feet were already wet through.
He stayed well behind Rungawa and his three companions, glad that they were walking instead of driving, miserable to be out in the chilling rain. As far as he could tell, all three of Rungawa’s companions were black, young enough and big enough to be bodyguards. That complicated matters. Had someone warned Rungawa? Was there a leak in the department’s operation?