The Perfect Assassin Page 14

  Chatham’s eyes closed and a near orgasmic expression set across his face. “Exquisite,” he declared. “You say these two were from the embassy. Were they Mossad?”

  “Ah, yes, one we’re quite sure about, the other probably.”

  “What do we know about the attacker?”

  “Nothing really, although forensics hasn’t had a go at it yet. The motel manager got a look at him, but he was rather far off.”

  Chatham made a mental note of the brand name on the box of chocolates. The coconut crème had been quite nice.

  “As I said, the woman is a story all her own. She was at this motel by courtesy of the local authorities. Yesterday she sailed into Penzance in a small boat that looked like it had just made its way through a typhoon. Seems she was on her way to the States when she found a man floating about in the middle of the ocean. She claims to have rescued the chap who, in turn, commandeered her boat and forced her to sail to England. When they arrived, near Land’s End, he disabled the boat and left her stranded while he went ashore in a rowboat. Something like that.”

  Chatham looked up idly at the ceiling, “That would mean this woman has now been abducted twice in a matter of days. How unfortunate. Did the police take a description of this man she claimed to have rescued?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t seen it yet. Do you suppose the same chap has taken her again? Right after letting her go?”

  “I don’t think he took her the first time. It seems he took her boat and she went along for the ride. But to answer your question, I see three possibilities. First, that the same man did come back. Second, that someone else came looking for her because she’d rescued this man. Or third, that her story is not truthful, and she herself is involved in some sort of mischief.”

  Shearer pondered. “Or perhaps a combination of those things.”

  Chatham smiled at his new boss.

  The Assistant Commissioner looked pointedly at his watch and stood up. “Well, the facts are a bit thin right now. I think it’s gone beyond the sort of thing the local boys in Penzance are accustomed to handling.”

  “This woman, do you happen to know her nationality?”

  “I believe she’s American.”

  “Ah,” Chatham said.

  “I’ll have to press on now, Inspector. As I said, Home Office is all revved over this one. Call me daily and let me know how things are progressing. Chief Bickerstaff is the man to talk to in Penzance. Glad I had the chance to meet you — again.”

  “I’ll get right out to Penzance this evening.” Chatham shook hands in parting and walked to the door, happy that the new Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations was not nearly as big a twit as the last.

  “Oh, and Inspector …”

  Chatham turned to see Shearer holding out the remainder of the box of chocolates.

  “Perhaps you should have these. Never been one for sweets myself. Just don’t ever tell Mrs. Shearer.”

  Chatham made no effort to conceal his pleasure. He walked over slowly and took the box as though it held the Crown Jewels. “You have my word as a gentleman,” he said reverently.

  As soon as he was in the hallway, Chatham opened the box and selected another. Mint crème. Yes, he thought, this Assistant Commissioner would do nicely.

  The morning air was laden in fog and a steady drizzle. Christine peered through the rain-splattered window of the Peugeot, barely able to see David at a newsstand across the street. They had spent the previous afternoon and evening driving to London, by way of a long, circuitous route. Stopping an hour short of the outskirts, Slaton had pulled off and found a quiet spot to park among a stand of trees. There, they’d gotten a few hours sleep. Christine had dozed fitfully, at least relieved that he no longer insisted on keeping an arm draped over her. At first light they were back under way, fighting the morning rush hour traffic into Kensington.

  Christine yawned as she watched him jog back to the car, dodging traffic, with a pair of newspapers under one arm. When he clambered into the driver’s seat, cold droplets of rain sprayed around inside the car. He tossed one of the papers into her lap.

  “See what you can find,” he said.

  “Find?”

  He leafed quickly through the Times, oblivious to the question. Seconds later he spotted what he was after on page six.

  “Here it is.” He showed her the headline: MURDER IN PENZANCE. Slaton read silently while Christine opened up the Evening Standard and found it on page nine. A minute later, they swapped.

  “They both say basically the same thing,” Christine said. “You’re wanted for murdering a man, putting another in the hospital, and possibly kidnapping me.”

  “They haven’t gotten hold of a picture of you yet. That’s good.”

  “You think they’ll put my picture in the paper?”

  “By this time tomorrow you’ll either be a beautiful, rich heiress who’s been kidnapped, or a devilish accomplice to murder.”

  “Accomplice? What are you talking about?”

  “I mean the media, along with the police, are going to consider the possibility that you might be on my side in this. They know we were together on Windsom, so if someone sees us now, and you’re not screaming and trying to run away … well, it could give the wrong impression. That’s the kind of thing the press loves to get a grip on and spin as they see fit.”

  Christine was dumbstruck. “On your side? I just want my life back. But according to you, there are people out there who want to kill me.”

  “I know it sounds paranoid, but you saw it for yourself yesterday. Either way, this story will move up a few pages tomorrow. Especially once the papers track down some photographs and get a look at you.”

  She glared at him, but he was still engrossed in the article. Christine reckoned that was probably as direct a compliment as this man ever paid a woman. Her doubts returned, and she wondered again if she’d made the right choice. Had the two men at the motel meant her harm? Or was this man beside her the threat? She tried to convince herself that if she just went to the police and told them everything, things would work out. Certainly they could protect her.

  Slaton tapped an index finger on the newspaper. “There’s no reference here to the fact that Itzaak and his friend worked at the embassy. The police must know that by now, but they’re keeping it quiet. It’s either a diplomatic favor, or my government requested it.”

  She fell silent and he looked up, seeming to sense her indecision.

  “Still not sure about me, huh?”

  “No,” she said, “not completely.”

  “Can’t say that I blame you.”

  The interior of the car grew quiet, the only sounds coming from out-side — people and machines, sloshing through rain on their daily routines.

  “I’m a little confused myself,” he said, finally breaking the silence. He pointed out the window. Cars and trucks streamed by incessantly and scores of people scurried in all directions on the sidewalks. “You can still go if you want,” he offered. “We’re in London. It’s a big place. Lots of people, police everywhere. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I wanted to hold you prisoner. I’ve got work to do, and this is where it starts.”

  “Where does it end?”

  He looked away and didn’t answer, which gave Christine no comfort. Did he not want to tell her? Or did he not know?

  “I feel like I should believe you,” she said. “I think you’re right. Those two men were going to kill me. But what you did to them — that scares me too.” An image came to Christine. The man she knew as Harding, his face frozen in death. As a doctor she had seen bodies before, but there had been something else yesterday. Something in the man’s last, terminal expression. Surprise. Or maybe fear.

  “Yesterday when you were questioning that man, you said you would find them. You said ‘Tell them the keeden will find them.’ Something like that. What does it mean?”

  He gazed at the gloom outside. His hesitation told Christine she’d hit on something, and if
an answer came it would be the truth.

  “Kidon,” he finally said, still looking away. “It’s a part of Mossad. There are only a few of us, and we have a very special mission.”

  Christine steeled herself. “And what is that?”

  “Kidon is Hebrew for bayonet. We’re assassins.”

  Prime Minister Jacobs arrived at his office following a tedious working breakfast with the Foreign Minister. Anton Bloch was waiting, his bulky frame planted squarely in the center of the room. Jacobs didn’t like the brooding look on his face.

  “Now what?”

  “Polaris Venture again.”

  Jacobs stiffened. “Good news or bad?”

  “We’ve found Slaton. He was picked out of the ocean by a private boat.”

  “That’s wonderful! He made it—”

  Bloch waved a hand. “Yesterday, in England, he killed one of our London men and put another in the hospital.”

  “What? He’s killed one of our own people?”

  “I didn’t believe it at first either, but the man in the hospital is sure. It was Slaton.”

  Jacobs sat down gingerly, his mind spinning through the possibilities.

  “Let me tell you all of it,” Bloch started. “We got a tip from a source in Scotland Yard. It seems a small sailboat pulled into Penzance, that’s a port in southwestern England, and the skipper claimed to have rescued someone from a ship that had gone down. The name given was Polaris Venture.”

  “So Slaton was on this sailboat?”

  “Not when it pulled into port. The American was alone.”

  “What did this fellow say happened to Slaton?”

  “She said he got off hours earlier and rowed ashore in a dinghy. The situation was pretty murky, so I ordered London to send a team to find out what was going on. They were supposed to be discreet, but for some reason they approached this woman and ran into Slaton. He killed one of the men, put the other in the hospital, and ran off with the American woman in tow. I don’t know much more. We haven’t been able to talk to Itzaak yet. He’s the one that survived. The local police are keeping a close eye on him, and I’m sure Scotland Yard is involved now.”

  Jacobs sank even lower in his chair. “Why would Slaton try to eliminate two of his own? And why take this woman with him?”

  “I don’t know about the woman, but I can tell you without a doubt that he wasn’t trying to kill Itzaak.”

  “How could you know that?”

  Bloch dropped a thick file onto the Prime Minister’s desk. Absent were the usual title and security classifications. Jacobs opened it and winced at the one word emblazoned in red on the inside cover — kidon. Beneath that was the standard Mossad black and white, official glossy of David Slaton. Jacobs knew men like this existed, and he knew it was the kind of thing that could be poison to a politician. Yet it bothered him on an even more basic level.

  “If this man had wanted Itzaak dead, we wouldn’t have a team headed to the hospital right now.”

  Jacobs rubbed his temples. “Do you think he sabotaged Polaris Venture?”

  “The American woman, a Dr. Christine Palmer, spoke to the police yesterday. Said she found Slaton nearly dead, floating around in the middle of the ocean. If that’s true, he either wasn’t the saboteur, or he mucked up his escape in a big way. Knowing Slaton, I doubt that.”

  “You say, ‘If that’s true.’ Do you think this woman might be lying? Could she be involved?”

  Bloch shrugged his beefy shoulders. “It’s something we’ll have to look into. None of it makes much sense right now, but I’d sure like to talk to Slaton.”

  Jacobs shook his head. He’d have to call yet another Cabinet meeting. What a shouting match that would be. He looked again at the file on his desk.

  “How well do you know this man, Anton? Do you still trust him?”

  “I know him as well as anyone. I recruited him. His father was an officer in the Haganah. He helped design the guerrilla tactics that made us such a thorn to the British and Arabs. In the War of Independence, Ramon Slaton was the leader of the underwater demolition team that sank the Emir Farouk. Nine men destroyed the flagship of the Egyptian Navy.”

  “Ramon Slaton …” Jacobs pondered, “I’ve heard that name but I don’t associate it with the War of Independence.”

  “After winning the military battle we were faced with a very different set of problems. We had to start up a nation. Infrastructure, schools, health care. You couldn’t even mail a letter. It all took money and the new government had none. What it did have was a high level of support from expatriate Jewish communities. That and a world whose conscience was still haunted by the Holocaust. Ramon Slaton became an unofficial emissary, working the public and private coffers of Europe to get everything from missiles to plowshares.”

  “Ramon Slaton — Cyprus!” Jacobs said with a burst of recognition.

  “Yes, that was where it ended. He and his wife were gunned down on a street corner. A bodyguard killed the attacker, an Egyptian.” Bloch pointed to the folder on Jacobs’ desk. “The boy was nine years old at the time.”

  “Where was he when it happened?”

  “At school in Geneva. He was the only child, and with no other immediate family he was taken in by some friends of his parents. They lived on Kibbutz Gissonar. Later, when we screened him for recruitment, these years were given special attention. For the most part he channeled his grief constructively. He continued as a superior student and was strong athletically. But he also acquired an interest in the military. His adoptive father was a company commander in the Reserves, and he gave the boy a basic introduction to the tools of war. He spent two years at this new home, finally getting stability back into his life. Then it happened. He was home on Kibbutz Gissonar on the eve of the Yom Kippur War.”

  Jacobs envisioned it. “Directly in the path of two Syrian armored divisions.”

  “As a country, we were completely unprepared. The few armored units we had in the area were forced to pull back until reinforcements arrived. The people of the kibbutz used every car, truck, and bicycle to evacuate the women and children. When the Syrian tanks arrived, two dozen men and three World War II vintage rifles were all that stood between the Syrian army and the main pumping station of our National Water System. Some of the men hid. The ones who tried to fight were mostly mowed down by machine gun fire from the leading tanks and armored personnel carriers.”

  “And the boy?”

  “It was chaos, but he used his head. He acted alone, with nothing more than one of the old rifles and his knowledge of the area. He moved along the perimeter of the village looking for an opportunity. It came in the form of an APC with an overheated engine. The thing ground to a stop, spewing smoke. The rear door opened and soldiers began to stagger out, coughing and rubbing their eyes. The Syrians didn’t seem worried about being out in the open, probably thanks to the lack of resistance they’d seen so far. They milled around and began arguing. The boy saw his chance. He held his fire until he was sure the APC was empty. Then he let loose on the five soldiers, taking four before his gun jammed. The last one ran to the village for cover. The boy removed the bayonet from his rifle and killed the man by hand.”

  Jacobs shook his head, “I’ve heard other stories,” he said, “but a child …”

  Bloch nodded.

  “Did the boy tell you this?”

  “Eventually he filled in the blanks, but during his initial Mossad screening interviews he refused to talk about it. Most of it came to light by way of a witness, this idiot Captain who was in the Signals Intelligence Division. When the Syrians crossed the border, this fellow had to take a jeep and collect code books from a series of command bunkers that were about to be overrun. He was racing just minutes ahead of the Arab tanks when he lost control of his jeep passing through Kibbutz Gissonar. Went into a ditch and the jeep turned over on him. Broke his leg badly. The fool managed to take cover, and from there he had a bird’s-eye view of the whole thing.”

&nbs
p; “I see,” Jacobs said, lowering his head in thought. “And is this what brought Slaton to the attention of Mossad?”

  “In part. It also had to do with the fact that his father was a very influential man, one who died in service to the state.”

  “What happened to the boy after the war?”

  “He went back to school, eventually entering Tel Aviv University. He studied Biology and Western Languages. He had an exceptional gift for languages. Textbook speech is fine for the university or ordering dinner in a restaurant, but our section prefers those who have been immersed in a native country — regional accents and usages, slang. You can only get that kind of proficiency by living in a place, and the boy had spent time at several schools in Europe. He tested out at the highest level in three languages. We usually hope for one.”

  “How old was he when you recruited him?”

  “We began actively screening when he was nineteen, in university. Two years later we approached him with the offer of a “government position.” It usually takes six months of interviews, background checks, and psychological evaluations before the recruits get an idea of the kind of work they’re being sized up for. We watch closely for a reaction.”

  “And what is the usual reaction when a person realizes they’re being chosen to work in the world’s most elite intelligence agency?”

  “Mild surprise, perhaps. We hope for as little reaction as possible. These people are used to being the best and brightest in their class. But to say they’ve been chosen is premature. Most don’t pass the screening, and of those, less than half complete the entire training process.”

  “Ramon Slaton’s son made it through.”

  “He was at the top of his group, both academically and physically. We also discovered that his success against the Syrians was no fluke. As a boy, he apparently did a lot of hunting. Rabbits, quail, that kind of thing. By the time he got to us, his marksmanship was uncanny. He outshot every instructor at the range on his first day. Slaton was clearly something special, so in view of his performance and his family history, we elected to train him as a kidon.”