on horseback rather than by car.
It was much too difficult to get a bead on a man if you didn’t know him. That was what the assassin’s employers didn’t understand; it was why the first two attempts had failed: they hadn’t given the assassin sufficient information.
The first shot had been in London. They’d given him a photograph of Devenko, a place and a time-“You’ll have no trouble. You’ve got five days to arrange your getaway and the exact scheme-that’s up to you. But he’s got Haymarket tickets on the twenty-ninth. The interval’s at nine-fifty and the curtain comes down at eleven-ten. You might think about catching him on his way back to the car afterward-at least that’s the way I’d handle it. But it’s your gambit.”
It was only a voice on a telephone. He’d tried to get more: “Where does he live? What’s his routine? What’s he like?”
But the employer refused to be drawn. “You’ve got all you need to go on. You’re supposed to kill him, not marry him-what difference does all that make?”
So he’d botched the first one because he’d had no way of anticipating the speed and agility with which the target was capable of reacting. He’d paced the target toward the underground garage until the moment came when no one else was abroad in the blacked-out street. Then he’d quickened his pace and drawn the gun but the target heard all of that and without even looking behind him he’d dived between two parked lorries and that was that: the assassin ran forward and snapped a running shot but he knew he’d missed and then the target was out of sight in the heavy shadows and you couldn’t go running through the streets of London brandishing a 7.62 Luger with a big perforated silencer screwed to the barrel.
“He’s faster than the telegraph,” he’d reported back. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Well you know it now.”
It was nearly a month before the employer called back. “You’d better not blow it this time. It’s an RAF airfield in Kent-Biggin Hill, do you know it?”
“I can find it.”
“They’re flying him from Scotland. Some sort of conference with three or four Russian exiles. It’s set up for a hotel in Maidstone but we want him taken out before the meeting-so it’s got to be the airfield or the road. It’s the A20.”
“I know the road. What kind of car will he be in?”
“It’s a Bentley saloon, grey, two or three years old.”
“Number plate?”
“Angel Kevin six three three.”
“Chauffeur?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then that’s two of them. The price is higher.”
“The price is the same, after your last fiasco.”
He didn’t fight the point too hard; only a token face-saving riposte: “I’d have had him last time if you hadn’t been so jealous with information.”
“Never mind. It’s July fourteen. The meeting in Maidstone’s set for eight in the evening. You’ll have to work back from there to get his ETA at Biggin Hill.”
“There’s another way. Where does the Bentley live?”
“It belongs to one of the White Russians. He lives in London but he’ll be staying at the hotel in Maidstone. The name’s Ivanov. He’s got a detached house in Highgate. Shepherd’s Hill, Number Forty-three. They’ll be going down to Maidstone sometime on the fourteenth.”
“Bastille Day,” the assassin remarked, and cradled the phone.
On the fourteenth he’d parked on the verge with the nose of his Morris pointed out toward the main road; got out of the car with a brush and a jar of black watercolor ink. His license plate number was IPF 311; he closed the characters to make it read TBE 814. Then he screwed a new silencer onto the Luger and put on a white jacket, a pair of clear-glass spectacles and a white trilby hat. Any witnesses would remember only the disguise, and there would be at least one witness: if they weren’t going to pay for the chauffeur he wasn’t going to give them the chauffeur.
He had to wait more than an hour. Several cars and military vehicles came out of the service road and he kept watch in the driving mirror until the Bentley’s big square snout appeared.
He put the first bullet into the front tire because he wanted to prevent the target escaping. Then he had a clear shot at Devenko and no way to miss it because they hadn’t spotted the source of the trouble yet. He squeezed the trigger with firm gentle pressure and the Luger recoiled, mildly as it always did; the bullet left a small grey smear on the window, obscuring his view of Devenko’s left eye.
“It’s your own fault again, blast you. If you’d told me I’d have worked a way around it.”
“Around what?”
“It’s bulletproof glass in that Bentley.”
So this time he’d do it his own way. He turned into the passage behind the villa’s dining hall and let himself into a walk-in cleaning cupboard. It took a moment to find the light switch. He screwed a stubby silencer onto the Luger and then checked the loads and worked the jack-leg-action to seat the top cartridge so that he wouldn’t need to thrash around cocking it when the time came. He set the safety and slid the pistol down between his belt and his trouser-band against his left ribs under the formal jacket; unobtrusive but instantly available to his right hand. There were flatter automatics than the Luger but the flat ones didn’t fit his hand as well: didn’t point as naturally. The 7.62 bullets were small, the equivalent of. 32 caliber, but he’d loaded them himself with the maximum charge of smokeless powder and at close range he had no qualms about their stopping power: the bullets were perforated into quarters and designed to expand violently on contact.
He had a pocket mirror and he inspected his disguise. The coat and slacks were cut very generously to make him look heavy; the dress Oxfords had five-centimeter lifts in them. They’d remember him as a man of substantial bulk and height when in fact he was five-feet-nine and weighed just over 150 pounds.
The rest of it was more traditionally stagy. He had a partial skullcap spirit-gummed over his forehead to hide the widow’s peak of his natural hairline; they’d remember him as half bald. He’d darkened the rest of his red-brown hair with a dye-pomade designed to cover grey; it gave him a Mediterranean cast he had confirmed with a pencil- thin divided mustache gummed to his upper lip. His features were unexceptional: he had always had the benefit of an anonymous appearance and he had learned long ago to eschew striking disguises.
It was all nicely in place in the mirror. He switched off the light, adjusted the hang of his jacket over the Luger in his belt and eased the door open a crack.
The hallway was empty of servants. He went toward the front of the villa, ready to smile, pleasant-faced, nerveless, almost jaunty with businesslike confidence because this time he knew the quarry.
5
Heads turned when Irina entered the ballroom. She hardly noticed; she was used to it.
She smiled and gave her hand to a marquis; she presented her cheek for the tall marchioness’s ritual kiss and bussed the air two points to the starboard of her face. Voices rolled around her-hearty shouts in courtly French and Spanish and High German and the best St. Petersburg Russian; beneath them the orchestra played Chopin.
The wheeling dancers cut across her view of the crowd but she had a glimpse of a large man with a bald spot and her curiosity was stimulated: some vague familiarity perhaps.
Alex was approaching and she smiled when a dowager buttonholed him. Then a mutter ran through the crowd and the guests were turning in waves to stare toward the wide gallery doors. She heard the murmured name Devenko and felt several sudden glances whip toward her and slide away; then the doors parted and Vassily was there with his high austere eyes and stunning white mane. His handsome head dipped regally in acknowledgment of something someone said to him; he lifted one hard long hand as if in benediction to them all.
He had aged. Not the hair; that had been white since his twenties. But she saw deep vertical lines between his eyebrows and he looked tired.
