The Assassin

by Andrew Britton

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

More than a year has passed since Ryan Kealey prevented the assassination of multiple world leaders in the nation's capital. While his work is brilliant, he's considered damaged goods. Now he's about to become a key player in a plot of unimaginable scale. For something big is about to go down in New York City.

When a top Iranian source reveals that Iran is planning to bomb the United Nations, U.S. Intelligence begins counter-measures. Only Kealey sees it as a smokescreen for another, far more involved plot. But getting anyone to believe him isn't going to be easy. With only his ally, London's newest assistant chief, Naomi Kharmai, by his side, Ryan will have to operate outside the lines in order to prevent a terrible attack in a city on lockdown.

A weapon of catastrophic power has been stolen from war-torn Iraq and has made its way to the U.S. The man who has it is Kealey's nemesis, William Vanderveen, an international criminal mastermind who has no objective other than pure terror and who will stop at nothing to achieve it. Making matters worse, Vanderveen's being helped by someone on the inside with high ranking security clearance. Even the halls of the CIA are no longer safe from possible espionage and treason. Now, as Kealey and Kharmai race to put the pieces together, they will confront a ghost from the past and be forced to question the people they trust most in a desperate investigation where only this is for certain-time is running out.

Release date: February 1, 2008

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 608

Sample

BAGHDAD

Anita Zaid folded her arms as she glared across the cavernous lobby of the Babylon Hotel. Not for the first time, she found herself hoping that the target of her righteous anger would suddenly come down with some sort of exotic fever, something specific to overly glamorous, thunder-stealing network reporters. Better yet, maybe her menacing stare could somehow infect the woman with subconscious doubt, leading to an irrepressible stutter whenever she stepped in front of the cameras. Anita momentarily brightened with this notion but knew it was asking a lot; unfortunately, Penelope Marshall had a reputation for handling the crushing pressure of televised journalism with the skill of a seasoned pro, despite her relative youth.

It should have been perfect. Anita was fortunate enough to have the best source possible, a cousin assigned to the Ministry of Defense. The man’s access was incredible and well worth a generous stipend, which her employer would have gladly paid. In this respect, however, she was lucky again. All her cousin’s assistance cost her was the occasional visit to his modest home on the outskirts of Baghdad, where he was given to bad cooking and good-natured but endless complaints about the Americans, much to the dismay of his long-suffering wife. His latest tip had arrived just forty minutes earlier, and for once, Anita was in the perfect position to act on it, bored senseless and lounging over cold coffee in a Green Zone café with Tim Hoffman, her American cameraman. Twenty minutes and a couple of irritating stops at various checkpoints had seen her out of the zone and into the leafy streets of the Jadriya residential district, the unlikely site of the Babylon Hotel.

As she looked for a hole in the building crowd, Anita brushed her hair back from her face and sighed in mounting frustration. She had worked for London-based Independent Television for five years now and was beginning to wonder how much longer she could put up with the long hours and low pay. Her position as ITV’s Middle East correspondent was a natural fit, as she’d been born and raised in Mosul before immigrating to England at the age of seventeen, where she’d earned a BA with honors in English at Cambridge. Intellectually speaking, she knew she was too young to be burned out—she had just turned thirty-six, after all—but at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel that she might be missing out on better-paying, less-demanding opportunities. The desire to move on to something better had grown stronger in recent months, and days like today definitely didn’t help.

The trouble had started soon after they’d arrived at the hotel. Spotting the bulky black cases in Hoffman’s hands, the manager had stopped them as soon as they’d walked in, insisting that Zaid pay for “a room” if she intended to set up camp in his lobby. What the man really wanted was glaringly obvious and not at all surprising. Anita was very familiar with the way things had worked before the American invasion, when bribes had been the rule rather than the exception. In the months leading up to the war, Saddam’s Information Ministry had strictly controlled the movements and access of every Western journalist, and she had quickly learned to adapt, though not before enduring several heated arguments with the tightfisted accountants at ITV.

Unfortunately, the Babylon’s manager had demanded immediate payment in cash, which Anita didn’t have on hand, and the delay had given somebody time to send word up to Marshall’s room. Penny Marshall was CNN’s latest and brightest star, a twenty-something blonde from New Zealand. After hearing the news, the young woman had somehow managed to hustle downstairs in the space of three minutes, looking like she’d just stepped out of make-up. As it turned out, her presence at the hotel was pure coincidence. Her cameramen—she had two of them, Anita noticed, with a twinge of jealousy—had followed her down a few minutes later, shabbily dressed men with identical beer bellies. On arrival, they’d staked their claim in loud and spectacular fashion, which was exactly what Anita had hoped to avoid. The presence of both camera crews had opened the floodgates, and now every journalist in the city seemed to be aware of the man’s imminent arrival. Zaid had clearly suffered the most; what had started as a respectable shot was now obscured by a rectangular lens hood and the heavily teased hair of the regional correspondent for CBS News.

“Anita, we’ve got to find something better,” Hoffman finally said, poking his bearded face out from behind his camera. “From this position, I’ll have him on-screen for less than five seconds, and that’s a best-case scenario. The interview’s out, you know. He won’t hear one word over this bloody lot.”

She turned away, rolling her eyes in exasperation. Despite having been born and raised in New Hampshire, Hoffman had been adopting British speech patterns for as long as she’d known him. At first, she had shrugged it off, thinking it was a joke, but then, less than two weeks into their partnership, she’d been disheartened to learn just how seriously he took his British “heritage.” Anita had coached him against the annoying habit on several occasions, but this time she let it slide and began weighing her options, trying to visualize the shot from various locations. The second-floor balcony was no good; from where she was standing, she could see that the angle was all wrong, and besides, there seemed to be a number of security men blocking the stairs. At the same time, pulling back wouldn’t help in the least; in fact, it would put her on the outskirts, where her separation from the crowd, ironically, would be too great. Viewers wanted a sense of excitement, a sense of being in the thick of things, but they also wanted exclusive material. A good compromise was nearly impossible to find, and Hoffman wasn’t helping at all.

“You know, I’d be surprised if the man even shows up,” he remarked in a languid drawl. “Once he finds out the press is here, he’ll probably stay in the zone. Besides, if he was coming, he would have been here an hour ago.”

“He’ll come,” Anita said, trying to push down her own rising doubts. Although the Sunni-dominated insurgency had been surprisingly quiet of late, the number of attacks had been increasing steadily since 2003, rising at a rate of approximately 14 percent per year. In accordance with the growing threat, Baghdad’s major hotels—especially those that catered primarily to Westerners—had substantially enhanced their collective security measures, but the danger was still very real. “This place is like a fortress, Tim. Didn’t you see the gates outside? Besides, the man has bodyguards, police escorts…He’ll come. You’ll see.”

 

As Zaid maneuvered for position in the lobby, radio calls were steadily streaming out to the static posts that had already been set up on both ends of Abu Nuwas Street, 300 yards in either direction. Inside the building, the reporters had been watched from the start by a rotating group of plain-clothes officers with the Iraqi Police Service. The men who comprised the advance team had been carefully selected for their religious and political affiliations; all were Shiite Muslims, and most belonged to the Dawa Party, not unlike the man they were assigned to protect. From their position on the second floor, the security officers were able to maintain a constant watch on the crowd below. As they scanned for suspicious activity, the frequent reports they muttered into their radios were routed straight through to the lead vehicle of the approaching convoy.

Five minutes after the advance team vetted the group of reporters, a black Ford Explorer squealed to a halt in front of the building. The doors swung open, revealing four additional security officers. Each man carried an M4A1 assault rifle and an M9 Beretta pistol, weapons supplied by the U.S. Department of Defense. They climbed out of the vehicle and scattered, two moving across the road as the other two formed an identical pattern in front of the Babylon Hotel. The goal was to set up a hasty perimeter for the car that would follow, a close-quarter protection technique perfected by the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service many years earlier. Having learned the maneuver from their American training officers, the guards put it to use with rapid precision, calling in on a dedicated radio link once the area was secure. A white Mercedes sedan appeared a moment later, hunkering low on its wheels, gliding to a gentle halt beside the curb. A security officer reached for the door handle; the man stepped into the street, carefully avoiding a minefield of muddy puddles. The officers converged, and the man was swept from view.

 

Inside the building, Anita Zaid was navigating the outskirts of the crowd when the reporters pressed forward without warning, their voices erupting in a torrent of unintelligible questions.

“Oh, shit,” Hoffman said. “Come on, we’ve got to—”

“No! We do it right here.” Anita swore under her breath, furious at being caught out of position, but determined to make the best of it. She turned her back to the crowd and fixed her hair, checked her mic, and smoothed her shirt in one fast motion. “Give me the count, Tim. Let’s go. We’ll make it work.”

As Hoffman settled the camera onto his shoulder, Anita felt herself slipping into the mode she knew so well: restrained enthusiasm, shoulders back, chin up…She was completely calm, a poised professional. This was the best part of her job, and as she looked into the lens and silently composed her introduction, she was reminded of why she loved her work so much.

“Okay, you’re on in five, four—”

Hoffman’s voice was suddenly drowned out by a thunderous boom overhead. Confined by the building’s walls, the sound was strangely muffled, and Anita didn’t immediately recognize it for what it was. Apparently, neither did anyone else; they were all looking up in confusion, except for the visitor’s bodyguards, who were already dragging their charge back to the doors. The noise was almost like thunder, but sharper, not as prolonged….

And then came the second explosion.

Turning to the right, she saw it unfold with terrible clarity. A massive fireball emerged from the eastern stairwell, engulfing Penny Marshall, her crew, and a dozen bystanders in a blossoming cloud of orange fire. Anita had no time to react as something hard and hot heaved her into the air, twisting her limbs in directions they were simply not designed for.

When she finally hit the ground, she did so awkwardly, something sharp lancing up her right arm. She blacked out for a split second, and when she came back, the pain was the first thing she noticed, but it was more than pain; it was pure agony.

She hurt all over, but her injuries, as bad as they were, were eclipsed by the surrounding images. She couldn’t hear for some reason, and the silent scenes played out in a nightmarish collage: bloodied arms and splayed fingers tearing the air, mouths stretching open in silent screams, the dancing, blazing figures of those who’d been closest to the opposite stairwell.

It was just too much. Too much, too fast. Anita tried to let out her own scream of horror and pain, but it lodged in her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to block out what she was seeing, but it was too late; the images were already seared into her mind. If that wasn’t enough, an elusive piece of information was pressing against her subconscious, trying to inform her of a more serious problem.

And then she realized she didn’t hurt anymore.

The knowledge swept over her in a terrible wave. No pain meant no chance…She didn’t know where that thought had come from, but it played over and over in her mind like a terrible mantra, and she knew it was right. No pain, no chance. No pain, no chance. No pain…

She desperately wanted to feel something, anything, but her surroundings were already slipping away. As the darkness moved in, she wasn’t sure if the debris falling around her was real or part of a panic-induced hallucination. Pieces of plaster and marble were dropping down from the ceiling, smaller chunks at first, and then giant slabs of heavy material, crashing down to the blood-streaked floor.

Only a few seconds had passed, but no one was dancing anymore; the bodies lay still, black figures wreathed in orange flames. Anita tried to move her arms, her eyes fixed on the shattered main entrance and the open air beyond, but nothing was working.

And then she felt a sharp, sudden pressure at the back of her neck, and the darkness closed in once and for all.

Dusk was settling over the city skyline, layers of gray falling through rain-laden clouds as a black Lincoln Town Car sped south along the river on the George Washington Parkway. From the front passenger seat, Jonathan Harper gazed out across the Potomac as riverside lamps pushed weak yellow light over the black water. Although his eyes never strayed from the passing scenery, his mind was in another place altogether, fixed on the news that had come into his office less than four hours earlier. As a result, he wasn’t really paying attention to the radio, which was tuned to a local news station and playing softly in the background. When the commentary began to align with his own ruminations, though, he leaned forward and turned up the volume.

“In Baghdad today, U.S. and Iraqi forces were put on high alert. Additional checkpoints were set up throughout the city, and the State Department updated the travel warnings already in place. This, following the attempted assassination of Nuri al-Maliki in the Iraqi capital. At approximately 12:14 AM Baghdad time, a pair of massive bombs tore apart the second and third floors of the Babylon Hotel, located just south of the International Zone. According to embassy officials, the prime minister survived the near-simultaneous blasts, although his condition is believed to be critical. Preliminary reports indicate that as many as twenty-five American civilians, mostly reporters embedded with the U.S. forces, are still unaccounted for and believed dead in the aftermath of the attack.

“In a press briefing held earlier today at the White House, President David Brenneman condemned the bombing and offered condolences to the families of those who were killed. In a surprising sidebar, he also reaffirmed his commitment to the goal of force reductions in the region. These reductions are an integral part of the president’s reelection platform, as they provide for the scaled withdrawal of U.S. forces over the course of five years. The president’s plan, which also calls for the return of four of eighteen provinces to Iraqi control by next April, has been ridiculed by the Democratic leadership as too conservative in scope. Even so, with this most recent incident, many are wondering if the president will be forced to rescind his promise to the families of America’s servicemen and women, a move which would almost certainly cost him the election in November.

“Moving on to other news, demonstrations in Beirut were brought to a halt yesterday when—”

Harper switched off the radio. The report hadn’t told him anything new, which wasn’t surprising. He already knew far more about the current situation than the Washington press corps ever would, despite their collective fact-gathering abilities.

As both the deputy director of operations (DDO) and director of the newly formed National Clandestine Service, Jonathan Harper shared the number three spot in the Central Intelligence Agency with his counterpart in the Intelligence Directorate. Despite his seniority, only a handful of people on the Hill could have picked him out of a crowd. The reason for this was simple: the name of the presiding DDO was almost never released to the public, the sole exception being Jim Pavitt’s appearance before the 9/11 Commission in 2004. Even Harper’s appearance seemed to lend itself to anonymity. His wife often joked that the conservative Brooks Brothers suits he favored were hardly worth the cost, as they made him all but invisible in a well-dressed city such as Washington, D.C.

It was, of course, an image he had long cultivated, and for good reason; his ability to blend into the background had saved his life on more than one occasion in his early years with the Agency. He’d spent much of the eighties running agents in the former Soviet Union, as well as sneaking high-value defectors out of the country through the western wastelands of Belarus and Bulgaria. Recently, his roles had been better suited to his age and station, which made them more ambiguous and much less interesting. Among other things, he had been assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office and a number of foreign embassies before assuming his current position four years earlier.

Harper’s gaze drifted back to the window as his driver turned left on 17th Street. He wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming meeting, as he knew it probably wouldn’t go well for him. As it stood, the Agency’s presence in Iraq was extremely limited, despite popular belief to the contrary. He had made a case for additional funding and personnel earlier in the year, only to see his proposal shot down by the newly installed deputy executive director. This fact, he was sure, had not been revealed to the president. Harper’s immediate supervisor was a skilled politician in her own right and more than capable of presenting the facts in accordance with her own ambitions. As a result, Harper was sure that she had managed to relieve herself of most of the blame for this latest intelligence failure.

Worst of all was the timing. With the presidential election looming on the horizon, Brenneman was facing public unrest over the ongoing war, sagging approval ratings, and a popular adversary in California Governor Richard Fiske. Iraq, of course, was the key issue; the governor’s proposal called for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces on the order of 72,000 soldiers over the course of eighteen months, with scaled reductions to follow. Privately, Harper believed it to be an empty promise, but the American public had seized the opportunity to rid itself of a war for which the costs were rapidly becoming untenable. Brenneman’s proposal was far less ambitious by comparison, calling for the gradual replacement of U.S. forces by combat-ready units of the Iraqi Army. Since the latest statistics suggested that less than 20,000 Iraqi troops currently met the requirements, the president’s plan had taken fire from politicians on both sides of the partisan divide, as well as from the public at large.

Harper’s vehicle approached the southwest gate of the White House, braking to a gentle halt next to the guardhouse. A pair of officers from the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service emerged immediately and proceeded with the security check. The gates swung open a moment later, and the Town Car rolled up West Executive Avenue to the first-floor entrance of the West Wing.

Harper climbed out of the vehicle and immediately caught sight of his escort. Darrell Reed was a senior advisor to the president and the deputy chief of staff. He was a lean black man with an easy smile and a genteel manner, but Harper knew that Reed’s affable nature did not extend to the cutthroat world of D.C. politics. The deputy chief could be as ruthless as the next man in the exercise of his considerable power, as he had demonstrated on countless occasions.

Reed smiled as he approached and offered his hand. “John, how are you?”

“Well, I think that remains to be seen. Ask me again when this meeting is over.”

The deputy chief shook his head, the small grin fading. “The president is not a happy man, I can tell you that much. Ford’s already here, and they’ve had some words.”

Harper grimaced. “She’s supposed to be in Israel with the director.”

“She was on her way back to take care of some routine business,” Reed replied. “The president called her in this morning.” He cleared his throat. “It’s the timing, John, and the civilian casualties. He wants some answers.”

“So do I, but it’s going to take some time.”

“Unfortunately, that’s the one thing we don’t really have.”

Harper nodded glumly; he knew what Reed was referring to. In the press briefing earlier that day, the president had assured the American public that the murder of U.S. civilians in Iraq would not go unpunished. With the election less than two months away, those words would not be soon forgotten.

“We haven’t even seen a claim of responsibility yet. I just hope he can follow through on the promise.”

“Well, that’s where you come in. He’s expecting you.”

Harper shrugged. “Lead the way.”

Once inside, they passed through another security check and began the 70-foot walk to the Oval Office. As always, Harper couldn’t help but think about how easy it was to get into this building. It was all an illusion, of course; despite the apparent lack of security, he was well aware that the Secret Service had eyes, electronic or otherwise, on virtually every part of the West Wing, including the adjacent hallways that led to the president’s corner office. When they stepped into the room, the deputy chief of staff gestured to one of the couches scattered over the presidential rug and said, “Take a seat, John. I’ll go and see what’s holding him up.”

“Thanks, Darrell.”

Reed walked out, giving the DDO the opportunity to briefly examine his surroundings. It wasn’t often that he found himself alone in the president’s office, and the small space contained enough of his country’s past to keep Jonathan Harper, a self-proclaimed history buff, absorbed for hours. His eyes drifted over numerous oil paintings, most of which had nautical themes, before coming to rest on the towering colonnade windows. Soft light from the bulbs in the Rose Garden spilled through the panes, working with the dim interior lamps to illuminate the polished surface of the president’s desk.

Harper knew that the beautifully detailed piece had been crafted from the hull of the HMS Resolute, a British vessel abandoned in the Arctic Circle in 1854. In 1855, the ship was discovered by an American whaler as it was drifting over 1,200 miles from its original position, having dislodged itself from the ice in which it was mired. Over the course of the following year, the vessel was restored by the American government and returned to England as a gesture of goodwill. When the Resolute was retired in 1879, Queen Victoria commissioned a desk made from the timbers, which she then presented to Rutherford B. Hayes. Almost every president since had used the desk during the course of his administration.

He was about to stand to get a closer look when the door leading to the Cabinet Room was pulled open. Harper rose as President David Brenneman walked in, followed soon thereafter by Rachel Ford. The deputy director of Central Intelligence, or deputy DCI, was a pale, trim woman in her early forties. As usual, her shoulder-length hair was slightly askew, tendrils of dark red framing her attractive, albeit sharp-featured, face.

Brenneman approached and offered his hand. “Good to see you, John. How’s Julie?”

Harper nearly smiled at the mention of his wife, but stopped himself when he saw the president’s grave expression. “She’s doing well, sir, thanks.”

“Glad to hear it.” Brenneman forced a tight smile of his own and gestured to the couch. “Please, take a seat, both of you. Make yourselves comfortable.”

The president walked behind his desk, shrugging off his suit jacket as the two CIA officials picked out chairs. A navy steward moved into the room and deposited a tray bearing a small carafe, cups, and creamer. The man withdrew as Brenneman joined them in the meeting area, smoothing a blue silk tie against his crisp white shirt.

“So,” he said, fixing them both with a serious look. “I have quite a few questions for both of you, but first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. My advisors seem to agree that this was a deliberate assassination attempt, as opposed to a random attack on a target of opportunity. I know how it’s being carried in the press, but I’d like to hear your opinions.”

“I don’t think there’s any question.” Ford crossed her legs and focused her gaze on the president. “Of course, I’d like to know what he was doing outside the zone in the first place. Setting that aside, though, it’s just too much of a coincidence. A ‘target of opportunity’ would warrant nothing more than a suicide bomber on foot or an RPG. We certainly wouldn’t be seeing anything like the devastation that actually transpired.” She didn’t need to expand on this; they had all seen the video footage aired by CNN.

“I agree,” Harper said. “And there’s something else: the Babylon has gates that are manned by the Iraqi Police Service. It would have been almost impossible to get something past them without a great deal of planning.”

“Or their help,” Brenneman muttered.

“That, too,” Harper conceded. “We’ll be looking into that, sir, but it might be difficult, since they’ll be the ones tasked with the investigation.”

“That’s true.” Ford fired her subordinate a disapproving glance. “We do need to be careful about whom we trust in the IPS, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to cut them out of the loop. That will set a negative tone at a very sensitive time, especially if al-Maliki doesn’t survive the assassination attempt.”

And you’re advising the president on things that don’t concern you, Harper thought. Ford was an outside appointee; most of her career had been spent serving the constituents of Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. After four terms in the House, she had turned her attention to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she’d served as dean prior to accepting the president’s nomination earlier in the year. In Harper’s opinion, she still had a lot to learn about her new position, particularly the limits of her questionable expertise.

It looked like Brenneman caught it, too. He glanced sideways at his deputy DCI, the message clear in his stern expression, but she missed it entirely as a noise intruded. Ford snatched her cell phone off the table and flipped it open impatiently. “What is it?” She listened intently, then turned to the president. “Sir, this is urgent. May I…?”

He nodded abruptly. Ford jumped to her feet and walked into the adjacent Cabinet Room, closing the door behind her somewhat harder than necessary. Brenneman shot his subordinate a bemused glance. Harper worked to keep his face impassive, but suspected the president knew exactly what he was thinking.

His suspicions were confirmed an instant later. “Something on your mind, John?”

Harper shook his head in the negative. Leaning forward to pour himself some coffee, he idly wondered why he harbored such an intense, transparent dislike for Rachel Ford. It wasn’t that he found her lacking in intellect; her education, beginning with Sarah Lawrence and culminating in a JD from Harvard Law, could hardly be found wanting. The fact that she was technically his superior didn’t bother him, either; Jonathan held no reservations when it came to working for a woman. After all, he had done so often enough in the past, and it had never been a problem before. In short, he didn’t know how the animosity, which was decidedly mutual, had come about.

The president was leafing through a briefing folder. “Seventeen American casualties? Is that right?”

The DDO cleared his throat and said, “Actually, sir, that report is several hours old. The latest numbers in from the embassy confirm nineteen dead. Five more are critically injured.”

Brenneman’s dark brown eyes grew darker still, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he tossed the folder onto the table and appraised his visitor for a long moment. Finally, he said, “She brought up a good point, you know.”

Harper was momentarily caught off-guard. “Al-Maliki,” Brenneman reminded him. “What was he doing outside the zone?”

The other man considered his response for a moment, wondering if the president’s main concern lay with the American loss of life or the attempted assassination of the Iraqi prime minister. “Sir, when was the last time you were in Baghdad?”

“Six months ago, I think. I went to address the troops and to take a look at the new embassy.”

“What were the roads like?”

“God awful, and that’s probably generous on my part. Of course, it’s a straight shot from the airport to the zone, so at least the travel time wasn’t too bad.”

“A straight shot for you, sir. Moving around Baghdad is different for everyone else, even senior Iraqi officials.”

A slight frown appeared on the president’s face. “How so?”

“Well, first they have to fill out a form that states where they’re going and why. Then they have to request vehicles and bodyguards. All of this has to be done the day before a scheduled movement. It’s very inconvenient, especially when, even after all of that, you still get stopped at three different checkpoints on your way in and out. Most of the top guys look for ways to avoid it.”

“Like avoiding the zone entirely.”

“Exactly. Only problem is, once you’re outside, you’re fair game.”

Brenneman nodded slowly, a little piqued at Harper’s description. Iraq had topped his foreign policy agenda for the past fou