The Perfect Assassin (9 page)

Jacobs inquired about any other business. General Gabriel said there had been a grenade attack on a troop convoy near the Lebanese border. He also reported that the Syrians had launched an SA-6 surface-to-air missile the previous night. There were no Israeli aircraft in the area and the missile seemed unguided, so it was likely a technical glitch. “One less they have to fire at us,” he reasoned. Anton Bloch said a headquarters Mossad man had been killed while on vacation in London, but that it appeared to be an accident. All in all, a quiet day aside from
Polaris Venture.
The Cabinet adjourned and its members filed out of the War Room.

After all had left, the Prime Minister sat alone and directed a circumspect gaze at the map with a big black
X
on the far wall. A “nonevent,” he’d said. To everyone except those sixteen people who’d been on board. And their families. Jacobs knew why he had lost his temper with Steiner. One of his own men was out there. Bloch had told him the name — David Slaton. A man gone off to do his duty. No one had expected it to be a dangerous mission, but those were the ones that always stung you. Jacobs had commanded an IDF infantry company in the ’73 war. His unit took thirty percent casualties, but he was proud that he’d never left any dead or wounded behind. Looking at a map full of ocean he knew General Van Ruut must be having similar thoughts. Van Ruut had fifteen men out there.

Jacobs got up, walked to Bloch’s seat and picked up the remote control. He’d never met David Slaton. Hadn’t selected him for the mission. All the same, as Slaton’s commander, he’d made the final decision to leave him out in the ocean, with no real attempt made at a rescue. At the time, there seemed to be sound, practical reasons for doing so. But now they escaped the Prime Minister. Jacobs pressed the button that turned off the projector and the screen went blank.

Windsom
crashed along at eight knots. The sky was dark, and strong southwesterly winds drove a following sea. Christine looked to port and saw the Isles of Scilly passing ten miles abeam. The craggy islands of rock jutted up defiantly, sentries locked in a perpetual battle against the crashing swells. It was the same sight that had been seen for centuries, ever since sailors began venturing into the open ocean southwest of England. To see it on the return voyage was traditionally a good thing, a transitional signal that the hardships of sea were behind and the comforts of port ahead. Christine saw nothing hopeful in it.

She watched her tormentor at the bow. He had just changed out the jib, going with a smaller, heavier canvas in the strengthening wind. Now he was stowing the bigger sail into the forward hatch. His movement was sure and confident, no relation to the broken creature she’d dragged aboard four days ago. She was quite sure he’d never done any serious sailing before, yet Christine was amazed at how fast he picked it all up. The new sail was up, the old one stowed, and now he was on his way back, no doubt to ask what he should do next.

The last days had been a strange, awkward experience. At times they were a crew, tending to chores on the boat, taking meals together. Then uncertainty would prevail over the sleeping arrangements or a clipped conversation. When they did talk it was always about her, never giving Christine insight to the man or his intentions.

Christine looked again at the sky. A line of clouds, almost black, was immediately to the west and bearing down fast. The weather forecast, taken from the one radio he allowed her to use, had been right. It was going to be a serious blow.

She had wanted to outrun it, hoping to make a case for ducking into the first port, which happened to be Penzance. But now it was clear they were going to get caught, and maybe that was for the better. Christine still didn’t know where he planned to pull in, or what he would do with her. She had tried to obliquely broach the subject a number of times, but neither his answers nor his expressions gave anything away. In the distance, Christine could just make out Land’s End.

England. Freedom. It seemed so very far away.

The gust hit suddenly twenty minutes later.
Windsom
heeled over so far that her side cabin windows went under for a moment. Christine stayed at the tiller and reefed in the main, leaving out just enough sail to keep up steerage. She decided to roll in the jib, but the line wouldn’t move when she pulled it. The seas were still following, and
Windsom
surfed ahead awkwardly on huge twelve-foot swells. Sheets of cold rain lashed across the ocean, making undulating patterns on a crazy, uneven surface. Christine had to get more sail in. She gave a few sharp tugs on the line that controlled the mechanism at the base of the sail. Nothing. It was jammed.

“Great,” she fretted. Christine looked below and saw him at the charts. His legs bent in concert with the boat’s wild gyrations, and he showed no interest whatsoever in nature’s display above deck.

“I need your help!” she shouted over the static noise of wind-driven rain slapping against the fiberglass deck.

He poked his head out. “What?”

“The reefing mechanism on the bow is jammed,” she said, holding up the offending slack line. “I need you to go up front and take a look.”

He looked at the sky, the unpleasantness of which was momentarily accentuated by a close-in bolt of lightning and the associated
crack
! He frowned.

“Either that or come steer and I’ll go up. The autopilot doesn’t work well in seas like this.”

“All right, all right. I’ll go,” he shouted. “Have you got another rain coat?”

She shook her head. “Sorry.” Christine had already donned the only set of foul weather gear.

He took off the sweatshirt he was wearing, an oversized one that said U CONN on front. Being the only thing on board that fit, he’d had no reservations about commandeering it. Underneath were the same clothes he’d been wearing for probably a week.

He bolted up and began winding a path through rigging toward the bow pulpit. Christine suddenly realized he wasn’t wearing a lifeline, but again, there was only one — it was, after all, supposed to be a solo voyage. He reached the bow, bent down over the reefing mechanism and had it free in a matter of seconds. She pulled the line and took in the sail.

“That’s good,” she yelled, adding a thumbs-up in case he couldn’t hear over the wind and rain.

As he started back aft, a big wave hit
Windsom
awkwardly and she lurched hard. He lost his balance for a moment before grabbing a stanchion to steady himself. Christine suddenly looked at the main sheet, the line that held the boom in place. If she released it, the boom would swing free. In this wind it would waylay anything in its path — and in a matter of seconds
he
would be in that path. This was the chance she’d been hoping for! She needed time to think, but there wasn’t any. Another big wave crashed into
Windsom,
sending a sheet of spray over everything.

Christine reached for the rope and undid the hitch that held it secure. Now one turn around the cleat and her hand were the only things holding it in place. She could see his legs as he moved behind the sail.
One more step …

Her hand seemed to act on its own. Christine let go. It only took a second for the free line to rip through a series of pulleys as
Windsom
’s big metal boom flew outward. It struck him squarely in the chest. There was a sickening thud and she heard a guttural sound as air expelled from his lungs. He flipped clear over the side, the sound of his splash lost in a storm-driven sea.

Christine jumped up and looked over the side. He surfaced just behind the boat and instinctively made a grasping lunge for the stern, but at the speed
Windsom
was traveling there was no chance. After a few moments of stunned inaction, Christine turned the boat hard to port and into the wind.
Windsom
’s momentum slowed and she came to a gradual stop, her loose sail snapping wildly in the heavy squall. Christine saw him clearly a hundred feet back, a picture strikingly similar to the one she’d seen four days ago. It seemed like a lifetime.

He made no attempt to swim to the boat, no wave or shout, and so he already knew it had been no accident. He just sat there treading water in a freezing ocean. Rain continued to sweep down and they stared at one another in a surreal standoff, the victor and the vanquished.

Christine could hardly believe it. She had done it! Her captor was in the water and she was free, having beaten the thug at his own game. With one pull on a rope,
Windsom
would be under way, and he would never threaten anyone again.

Then her moment of elation ebbed. The water here was so cold that no one could last more than an hour or two. And the coast was at least ten miles off — he could never swim it, even if he knew which way to go. No, she thought, pull the sheet on the mainsail and I’d be killing him, as surely as putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. Christine had acted instinctively, when there was no time to think about consequences. But now there was time, and she knew what she had to do.

She went aft and unlashed a yellow horseshoe life ring. It was stenciled with
Windsom
’s name in an arc of big black letters. She attached the life ring to a line and heaved it out to him.

“Can’t say I don’t take care of my patients,” Christine mumbled in frustration. “Hypocrites, I hope you’re proud.”

He swam slowly to the ring and pulled himself in, taking more than one breaking wave in the face as he made his way back. She kicked the boarding ladder down into the water, but made no attempt to help him up as
Windsom
’s stern rose and fell severely on the big waves. She knew he’d make it. This guy was indestructible.

True to form, after being thrown off the ladder twice, he managed to boost himself up. Slowly, like a mountaineer at the summit, he reached the top and clambered over the transom to face her.

He said nothing. His lips were already blue, his breathing rapid from the exertion of getting back aboard. He simply stood in a driving rain and stared at her with an odd, quizzical look, as if he was completely confounded by what she’d just done.

Christine wondered what amazed him so. That she had put him over the side? Or that she had let him back aboard? Not sure what to expect, she simply held her ground and stared back, defiant in the victory. It was as though the tables were turned from that other day, when he had burst in as she was changing clothes; this time she was seeing
him
naked, seeing something human behind the cloak that always obscured his thoughts and feelings. He searched her eyes, desperate for some explanation. Christine wasn’t going to offer any. She turned away and began tending to the boat.

“Go below and get dried off,” she said.

Without a word, he did.

Viktor Wysinski sat in a lounge chair and squinted against the bright tropical sun. Morocco’s white sand and water were merciless in their reflective properties, and the stocky ex-commando put a hand over his eyes to shield them as the young girl approached. Her long brown legs carried her effortlessly through loose sand. She carried two tall, tropical drinks, one of which she handed to him before sprawling her lithe figure onto the lounge next to his.

“
No salt, Veektor,
” she said with a thick French accent and a smile.

Wysinski said nothing as he took the drink. He was a short, thickly built barrel of a man. His meaty face was topped by a standard flattop haircut, the same “style” he’d been sporting for twenty years with the Israeli Defense Forces.

He had retired two years ago with the rank of captain, much farther down the ladder than he’d once hoped for. Those traits that had served him well early in his career had eventually stunted his advancement. Wysinski’s manner was as brutish as his appearance — fine qualities for a lieutenant, but not field-grade material. He had never understood how his peers, the ones who took desk jobs and went to all the goddamn commander’s cocktail receptions, had managed to get promoted over a warrior like himself. In his book, soldiers killed the enemy. But it was the rear echelon pussies who made full-bird colonel while they sat on their fat arses in command centers writing “mission statements” and “contingency plans.” If nothing else, Wysinski was proud of the fact that he’d spent his entire career in the field, always in the fight. Even in retirement.

He picked up his newspaper and shook off the sand. The Moroccan dailies were all in French, and a two-day old
New York Times,
discarded on a table in the hotel’s lobby, had been the only thing he could find that wouldn’t require an interpreter. He scanned for a few minutes, found nothing, and wondered if that was good or bad. Who cares? he decided.

Wysinski crumpled the paper and looked out at the beach. The sun was at its equatorial apex. Behind him, in the dusty maze of alleys and low sandstone buildings that made up Rabat, the natives had enough sense to huddle in whatever shade they could find. But here, along that narrow strip where cool water met land, it was the opposite. People were everywhere. People from other places. The young and beautiful frolicking, the old and rich watching from the shade of umbrellas. Wysinski eyed them all contemptuously. He had never been the first, but —

“Sweem?”

The thin voice shattered his concentration.

“Sweem?”
the girl repeated, gesturing hopefully toward the water.

“No,” he waved her off. “No, later.”

The girl pouted and flipped onto her stomach, a well-designed act that not only expressed dissatisfaction, but also added an element of symmetry to her vulcanizing process. She was a beautiful thing, and spirited. But very young — sixteen, seventeen perhaps. Of all the girls available at the bar last night, she had been the prize. Her worthless brother had negotiated a steep price, but she’d been worth every dirham. Now there was a bastard, Wysinski thought. If I had a sister like her I’d cut the throat of any man who looked at her the wrong way. Maybe I should do her a favor before I leave and — again, his thought process was interrupted, this time by a steward.