Adolfo picked up his cigarette, drew on it one last time, then ground it out. He removed the audiocassette from the recorder and slipped it into his shirt pocket, beneath his heavy black sweater. As he did so, his hand brushed the shoulder holster in which he carried a 9mm Beretta. The gun was one that had been used by U.S. Navy SEALs in Iraq and retrieved by coalition forces. It had made its way to the General through the Syrian weapons underground. Adolfo slipped in a tape of native Catalonian guitar music and pressed PLAY. The first song was called “Salou,” a song for two guitars. It was a paean to the magnificent illuminated fountain in the beautiful town south of Barcelona. The young man listened for a moment, humming along with the lilting tune. One guitar played the melody while the other made pizzicato sounds like water droplets hitting the fountain. The music the instruments made was enchanting.
Reluctantly, Adolfo turned off the tape. He took a short breath and grabbed the detonator. Then he doused the battery-powered lantern that swung from an overhead hook and went upstairs to the deck.
The moon had slid behind a narrow bank of clouds. That was good. The crew of the yacht probably wouldn’t pay attention anyway to a fishing boat over six hundred feet off their portside stern. In these waters, fishermen often trolled for night-feeders. But the men on the yacht would be less likely even to see him if the moon were hidden. Adolfo looked at the boat. It was dark save for its navigation lights and a glow from behind the drawn curtain of the midcabin porthole.
After several minutes Adolfo heard the muffled growl of a small boat. The sound was coming from behind him, from the direction of the shore. He turned completely around and watched a small, dark shape head toward the yacht. It was traveling about forty miles an hour. From the light slap of the hull upon the water Adolfo judged it to be a small, two-person runabout. He watched as it pulled up to the near side of the yacht. A rope ladder was unrolled from the deck. A man stood unsteadily in the passenger’s seat of the rocking vessel.
That had to be the assassin.
The detonator felt slick in Adolfo’s perspiring hand. He gripped it tightly, his finger hovering above the lower button.
The seas were unusually active. They seemed to be reflecting the times themselves, uneasy and roiling below the surface. There were only four or five seconds from the peak of one uproll to the peak of the next. But Adolfo stood at the edge of the rolling deck with the sure poise of a lifelong fisherman. According to the General, he needed to be in a direct and unobstructed line with the plastique. Though they could have given him a more sophisticated trigger than the line-of-sight transmitter, these were more commonly available and less easy to trace.
Adolfo watched as the yacht rocked gently from side to side. The assassin started uncertainly up the short ladder and the runabout moved away to keep from being rocked by the yacht’s swells. A man appeared on deck. He was a fat man smoking a cigar — clearly not one of the crewmen. Adolfo waited. He knew exactly where he’d placed the explosives and he also knew the precise moment when they’d be exposed by the roll of the boat.
The yacht tilted to port, toward him. Then it rolled away. Adolfo lowered the side of his thumb onto the bottom button. One more roll, he told himself. The ship was inclined toward the starboard for just a moment. Then gently, gracefully, it righted itself for a moment before angling back to port. The hull of the yacht rose, revealing the area just below the waterline. It was dark and Adolfo couldn’t see it, but he knew that the package he’d left was there. He pushed hard with his thumb. The green light on the box went off and the red light ignited.
The portside bottom of the hull exploded with a white-yellow flash. The man on the ladder evaporated as the blast followed a nearly straight line from prow to stern. The fat man flew away from the blast into the darkness and the deck crumpled inward as the entire vessel shuddered. Splinters of wood, shards of fiberglass, and torn, jagged pieces of metal from the midcabin rode the blast into air. Burning chunks arced brightly against the sky while broken fragments, which had been blown straight along the sea, plopped and sizzled in the water just yards from Adolfo’s fishing boat. Smoke rose in thick sheets from the opening in the hull until the yacht listed to port. Then it became steam. The yacht seemed to stop there for a moment, holding at an angle as water rushed through the huge breach; Adolfo could hear the distinctive, hollow roar of the sea as it poured in. Then the yacht slowly rolled onto its side. Less than half a minute after the capsizing, the wake caused the fishing boat to rock quickly from side to side. Adolfo easily retained his balance. The moon returned from behind the clouds then, its bright image jiggling on the waves with giddy agitation.
Dropping the detonator into the water, the young man turned from the sea and hurried back into the cabin. He radioed his associates that the job had been accomplished. Then he walked to the controls, stood behind the wheel, and turned the boat toward the wreckage. He wanted to be able to tell investigators that he had raced to the scene to look for survivors.
He felt the weight of the 9mm weapon under his sweater. He also wanted to make sure there weren’t any survivors.
SIX
Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert was in a gray frame of mind as he arrived in Paul Hood’s bright, windowless basement office. In contrast to the warm fluorescence of the overhead lights, the gloomy mood was much too familiar. Not long ago they’d mourned the deaths of Striker team members Bass Moore, killed in North Korea, and Lt. Col. Charles Squires, who died in Siberia preventing a second Russian Revolution.
For Herbert, the psychological resources he needed to deal with death were highly refined. Whenever he learned of the demise of enemies of his country — or when it had been necessary, early in his intelligence career, to participate in some of those killings — he never had any problems. The life and security of his country came before any other considerations. As Herbert had put it so many times, “The deeds are dirty but my conscience is clean.”
But this was different.
Although Herbert’s wife, Yvonne, had been killed nearly sixteen years ago in the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, he was still mourning her death. The loss still seemed fresh. Too fresh, he thought almost every night since the attack. Restaurants, movie theaters, and even a park bench they had frequented became shrines to him. Each night he lay in bed gazing at her photograph on his night table. Some nights the framed picture was moonlit, some nights it was just a dark shape. But bright or dark, seen or remembered, for better or for worse, Yvonne never left his bedside. And she never left his thoughts. Herbert had long ago adjusted to having lost his legs in the Beirut explosion. Actually, he’d more than adjusted. His wheelchair and all its electronic conveniences now seemed an integral part of his body. But he had never adjusted to losing Yvonne.
Yvonne had been a fellow CIA agent — a formidable enemy, a devoted friend, and the wittiest person he’d ever known. She had been his life and his lover. When they were together, even on the job, the physical boundaries of the universe seemed very small. It was defined by her eyes and by the curve of her neck, by the warmth of her fingers and the playfulness of her toes. But what a rich and full universe that had been. So rich that there were still mornings when, half-awake, Herbert would reach his hand under her pillow and search for hers. Not finding it, he’d squeeze her lumpy pillow in his empty fingers and silently curse the killers who’d taken her from him. Killers who had gone unpunished. Who were still permitted to enjoy their own lives, their own loves.