Marlon did not know whether his father believed that Allah had been merciful to him, or whether he felt he had been abandoned. All he knew was that he’d used what little strength was left inside him to cause an uproar inside Severus Domna, to cause outrage and, hopefully, out of that outrage the beginnings of a difficult debate concerning the soul of the organization.
Benjamin El-Arian, clever devil, had seen through the veil of the suicide and had forbidden any debate whatsoever. And so, Marlon, all that was left of the once mighty Etana dynasty, without whose vision the Domna would not exist, had been reduced to taking orders from Benjamin El-Arian. He had become a whipped dog, begging for whatever scraps El-Arian saw fit to throw to him.
Just after noon, Marlon saw movement at the front door to Hererra’s house. Jalal Essai and Don Fernando emerged. They spoke for a few minutes before shaking hands in the Western style. Hererra climbed into a car parked at the curb and drove off alone. When the car was out of sight, Essai turned and began to walk toward the water. Marlon followed at a discreet distance.
Essai’s pace was no more than a casual stroll, he gave the impression that he had nothing to do and nowhere to go. He followed Essai along the crescent waterfront, where Essai picked up several newspapers from a kiosk vendor. About a mile farther on he approached a café with a blue-and-white awning. A red anchor logo was stitched onto the awning’s center.
Marlon Etana observed Essai seat himself at a table facing the water and proceed to order lunch. Marlon took several deep breaths, then retreated a distance so he could keep Essai in sight but also have a wider field of vision. Stepping into the shadows of a doorway, he checked that his pistol was loaded and functional. Then he drew a noise suppressor out of his pocket and screwed it onto the end of the barrel. He gave himself over to one of his Zen-inspired deep-breathing exercises.
The moment he saw a figure pass by a second time, Etana walked briskly along the waterline, a man with an urgent purpose. The man followed. Benjamin El-Arian had set him on Etana to make sure he terminated Jalal Essai. And if by some chance Etana failed, the shadow would take over the mission.
Etana led his shadow to the far end of the beachhead, beyond the piers and harbors, out along a strip of beach whose unpleasant constitution ensured it was deserted until the middle of the night, when, he had observed, kids used it to party, drink, and have clandestine sex. Etana had found it a nauseating sight, another vivid example of the corruption of the West.
A fishing boat, turned keel-up, sat up on a block of wood. The boat was rotting, the keel line encrusted with barnacles, entwined with dried seaweed. A faint odor of decomposition floated off the impromptu structure, which, to Marlon, seemed appropriate. He chose a perch along the keel and shook out a cigarette. As he put the cigarette between his lips, he drew his pistol with its elongated barrel and, turning, shot the shadow between the eyes. There was some noise, but none at all when the body hit the sand.
Pocketing the pistol, Etana walked over to the shadow and, grabbing him by the back of his collar, dragged him the fifty or so yards to the upturned boat. With some difficulty, he jammed the corpse into the open space beneath the craft. It already smelled bad enough that a decomposing body would not arouse any attention for days, maybe a week. By then the seagulls would surely have done their work, and no one would be able to identify the corpse.
Dusting off his hands, Marlon Etana drew smoke deep into his lungs and started back the way he had come. There was no one around, no one to see him. Best of all, there was no one to report back to Benjamin El-Arian.
Now it was time, he thought, to engage with Jalal Essai.
Boris Karpov wanted to murder someone. If one of the German cops was still stalking the back alley—as they had been for the past three hours while the forensics team in the watchmaker’s shop methodically went about its business—the German would have been a dead man.
In the darkness that had descended over Munich, Boris had found his legs spasming, cramping, then, worst of all, growing weak. His head pounded with his need to urinate. He felt that if he didn’t pee soon his bladder would surely burst. And yet his mouth was as dry as a desert, his lips all but pasted together.
At last, the lights had gone out in Hermann Bolger’s shop, the flashlights of the alley cops were extinguished, and, save for a dog barking hoarsely, all fell silent. Boris made himself wait another agonizing thirty minutes. Toward the end, he’d had to bite his lip to keep from moaning.
Finally, when he judged it safe, he swung onto the downspout and shinnied down. It was tough going because his legs were all but useless. Twice he felt his hands, slippery with sweat, lose their grip and he was obliged to try to clamp the metal with his knees. This worked, but just barely.
On the ground at last, he squeezed between two garbage cans, and, crouching down, peed like a female. He let out a soft groan of relief. The pent-up water went on and on, creating a veritable lake. Getting his legs to work was a different matter. His muscles were so tight that the pain almost overwhelmed him when he stood up.
Acutely aware that he needed to put as much distance as he could between him and Bolger’s shop, he nevertheless spent the next several minutes stretching gingerly and then more vigorously. He had no choice, really; his legs wouldn’t have taken him to the end of the alley without giving out. He cursed his time as an administrator when he’d failed to keep up with his often brutal exercise routine. While he worked out, silently and without respite, he concentrated on breathing slowly and deeply.
When his legs had returned to a semblance of normalcy, he set out for the far end of the alley. He heard the soft swishing sounds of traffic and, now and again, a drunken laugh or two.
At the mouth of the alley he stopped, more cautious than ever. A slow, dull drizzle wet the streets, just like in those American spy movies. The city was filled with the throaty rumble of approaching thunder. All of a sudden the rain came down harder, bouncing off the concrete sidewalk and the asphalt street. He put up the collar of his coat and hunched his shoulders.
He looked and listened for anything anomalous. He’d been blindsided; a trap had been sprung where there should have been no trap. His security had been breached. How had it happened? There was only one person he had come into contact with since he had arrived in Munich: Wagner, the contact he had met at the Neue Pinakothek museum. And unless Karpov had been shadowed from the airport to the watchmaker’s, it was Wagner who had informed someone at the Mosque of Boris’s inquiries. Sensing a tail was more art than science, and Boris was a master at smelling a shadow—he was certain he had not been tailed.
That left Wagner, or whatever his real name was, and Karpov would be in danger until he terminated the security breach. The sensible thing to do was to call Ivan and inform his friend that Wagner was playing both sides. If anyone knew Wagner’s real name and whereabouts it would be Ivan. He pulled out his cell phone and was about to punch in the number when a sudden flash of lightning illuminated a man standing in a doorway almost directly opposite the mouth of the alley. A moment later thunder cracked and boomed.
Boris put the phone to his ear as if he were actually making a call and spoke as if in a conversation with someone. Meanwhile he forced his eyes to look left and right, down the street, ignoring the now heavily shadowed doorway dead ahead.
He pocketed the phone, then, hands deep in the pockets of his coat, emerged from the alley and headed left, hurrying through the rain. Three blocks along, he entered a biergarten. It was warm and bustling and smelled of wurst and sauerkraut and beer. An enormous skylight ran the length of the establishment, giving the illusion of being outdoors without the weather problems. Shaking off the excess wetness, he wound his way around patrons and servers and took a seat at a long table near the rear.