She pursed her lips. 'You're also afraid I won't be able to shoot him.' Her gaze dropped to his trembling gun hand. 'But I'm not sure you'll even be able to shoot straight.'
He squeezed the Walther until the shaking lessened. 'I'll do fine. You get over there,' he said, pointing at a doorway just beyond, and opposite, the palazzo's entrance. 'He'll be boxed in. He comes out, we make the arrest. Simple.'
'Simple,' she replied curtly, then walked to her assigned doorway as the tourists, thankfully, left the street.
Once she was out of sight, he reexamined his hand. She was right, of course. Angela Yates usually was. He couldn't go on like this, and he wouldn't. It was a miserable job; it was a miserable life.
The palazzo's front door opened.
Bald Nikolai opened it, but remained inside, his tailored jacket arm holding the bloated wooden door so that the pregnant woman- who Charles could now see was very beautiful, her bright green eyes flashing across the square- could step over the threshold and onto the cobbles. Then came Dawdle, touching her elbow. He looked every one of his sixty-two years, and more.
The bodyguard closed the door behind them, and the woman turned to say something to Dawdle, but Dawdle didn't answer. He was looking at Angela, who had emerged from her doorway and was running in his direction. 'Frank!' she shouted.
Charles had missed his cue. He began running, too, the Walther in his hand.
A man's voice shouted from the sky in easy English: 'And her I love, you bastard!' Then a rising wail, like a steam-engine whistle, filled the air.
Unlike the other three people in the street, Charles didn't look up. Distractions, he knew, are usually just that. He hurtled forward. The pregnant woman, eyes aloft, screamed and stepped back. Frank Dawdle was stuck to the ground. Angela's flared jacket dropped as she halted and opened her mouth, but made no sound. Beside the pregnant woman, something pink hit the earth. It was 10:27 a.m.
He stumbled to a stop. Perhaps it was a bomb. But bombs weren't pink, and they didn't hit like that. They exploded or crashed into the ground with hard noises. This pink thing hit with a soft, wretched thump. That's when he knew it was a body. On one side, spread among the splash of blood on the cobblestones, he saw a scatter of long hair-it was the pretty girl he'd spotted on the terrace last night.
He looked up, but the terrace was again empty. The pregnant woman screamed, tripped, and fell backward.
Frank Dawdle produced a pistol and shot wildly three times, the sound echoing off the stones, then turned and ran. Angela bolted after him, shouting, 'Stop! Frank!'
Charles Alexander was trained to follow through with actions even when faced with the unpredictable, but what he saw-the falling girl, the shots, the fleeing man-each thing seemed only to confuse him more.
How did the pregnant woman fit into this?
His breathing was suddenly difficult, but he reached her. She kept screaming. Red face, eyes rolling. Her words were a garbled mess.
His chest really did feel strange, so he sat heavily on the ground beside her. That's when he noticed all the blood. Not the girl's-she was on the other side of the hysterical woman-but his own. He could see that now. It pumped a red blossom into his shirt.
How about that? He was exhausted. Red rivulets filled the spaces between the cobblestones. I'm dead. Off to the left, Angela ran after the dwindling form of Frank Dawdle.
Amid the indecipherable noises coming from the pregnant woman, he heard one clear phrase: 'I'm in labor!'
He blinked at her, wanting to say, But I'm dying, I can't help you. Then he read the desperation in her sweaty face. She really did want to stay alive. Why?
'I need a doctor!' the woman shouted.
'I-' he began, and looked around. Angela and Dawdle had disappeared; they were just distant footfalls around a far corner.
'Get a fucking doctor!' the woman screamed, close to his ear. From around that far corner he heard the three short cracks of Angela's SIG Sauer.
He took out his telephone. The woman was terrified, so he whispered, 'It'll be all right,' and dialed 118, the Italian medical emergency number. In stilted, too-quiet Italian from just one painful lung, he explained that a woman on the Rio Terra Barba Fruttariol was having a baby. Help was promised. He hung up. His blood was no longer a network of rivulets on the ground; it formed an elongated pool.
The woman was calmer now, but she still gasped for breath. She looked desperate. When he gripped her hand, she squeezed back with unexpected strength. Over her heaving belly, he looked at the dead girl in pink. In the distance, Angela reappeared as a small form, hunched, walking like a drunk.
'Who the hell are you?' the pregnant woman finally managed.
'What?'
She took a moment to regulate her breaths, gritted her teeth. 'You've got a gun.'
The Walther was still in his other hand. He released it; it clattered to the ground as a red haze filled his vision.
'What,' she said, then exhaled through pursed lips, blowing three times. 'What the hell are you?'
He choked on his words, so he paused and squeezed her hand tighter. He tried again. 'I'm a Tourist,' he said, though as he blacked out on the cobblestones he knew that he no longer was.
Part One. Problems of the INTERNATIONAL TOURIST TRADE
1
The Tiger. It was the kind of moniker that worked well in Southeast Asia, or India, which was why the Company long assumed the assassin was Asian. Only after 2003, when those few photos trickled in and were verified, did everyone realize he was of European descent. Which raised the question: Why 'the Tiger'?
Company psychologists, unsurprisingly, disagreed. The one remaining Freudian claimed there was a sexual dysfunction the assassin was trying to hide. Another felt it referenced the Chinese 'tiger boys' myth, concerning boys who morphed into tigers when they entered the forest. A New Mexico analyst put forth her own theory that it came from the Native American tiger-symbol, meaning 'confidence, spontaneity, and strength.' To which the Freudian asked in a terse memo, 'When did the tiger become indigenous to North America?'
Milo Weaver didn't care. The Tiger, who was now traveling under the name Samuel Roth (Israeli passport #6173882, b. 6/19/66), had arrived in the United States from Mexico City, landing in Dallas, and Milo had spent the last three nights on his trail, camped in a rental Chevy picked up from Dallas International. Little clues, mere nuances, had kept him moving eastward and south to the fringes of battered New Orleans, then winding north through Mississippi until late last night, near Fayette, when Tom Grainger called from New York. 'Just came over the wire, buddy. They've got a Samuel Roth in Blackdale, Tennessee -domestic abuse arrest.'
'Domestic abuse? Can't be him.'
'Description fits.'
'Okay.' Milo searched the cola-stained map flopping in the warm evening wind. He found Blackdale, a tiny speck. 'Let them know I'm coming. Tell them to put him in solitary. If they've got solitary.'
By the time he rolled into Blackdale that Independence Day morning, his travel companions were three days' worth of crumpled McDonald's cups and bags, highway toll receipts, candy wrappers, and two empty Smirnoff
