movements. We checked everyone who had stayed in the hotels nearby for up to two weeks before.”
“Why was he there?”
“Vacation.”
Ferguson smirked.
“No, really, he was taking a vacation,” said Parnelles. “This is an out-of-the-way town on the Channel. He liked France, and he’d just spent a year in Asia. So it was different.”
“What did the French say about the murder?”
Parnelles settled down in his seat and took a sip of his drink — Scotch — before answering.
“The local police, of course, were incompetent. They believed it was a terrorist attack.”
“Just because a car blew up?”
“I really don’t know why you’re being sarcastic, Robert. You’re not taking this seriously”
Ferguson took another sip of the bourbon. Generally Parnelles wasn’t quite this worked up. In fact, Ferguson couldn’t remember the last time Parnelles had briefed him personally on a mission — let alone asked him up to Maine to do so.
“Yes, it did look as if it were the work of terrorists,” admitted Parnelles. “But why terrorists would blow up a car at that place and time — of course the police had no answers. A small village on the French coast? Terrorists would never operate there. Clearly, Dalton was the target. We went to the ministry, of course, but they got it into their heads that we were lying.”
“About what?”
“That Michael was working, instead of being on vacation.”
“Was he?”
“You’re being very contrary tonight, Robert. I just told you he wasn’t.”
Bad publicity about the CIA’s secret rendition program had caused a great deal of friction in Europe just prior to Dalton’s death. The French believed that the Agency was withholding information about what Dalton had been working on — they thought it involved something in France — and in Parnelles’s view had been less than cooperative out of spite.
Ferguson — who admittedly had never cared much for anything French, let alone their spies — knew that the French security service seldom displayed anything approaching alacrity, even when pursuing their own priorities. But he let that observation pass.
“If Dalton was targeted, then something must have happened in Asia,” Ferguson told Parnelles. “What was it?”
“Unimportant, Bob. The point is, what I’m getting to — we know who killed him. He was a contract killer known as T Rex.”
“Like the dinosaur.”
“Exactly. He kills everything in his wake. He’s extreme. T Rex.”
Actually the name had been used in a text message intercepted by the National Security Agency just before another assassination, this one of a wealthy businessman visiting Lisbon. Ferguson had already seen the information in the text brief of his mission. There had been other “jobs” as well: T Rex had been implicated in the murder of a Thai government minister and a suspected fund-raiser for Hezbollah, to name just two. Parnelles ran down the list of known and suspected victims, impressive in both length and variety.
Tired of sitting, Ferguson began bouncing his right leg up and down. His foot was just touching the fringe of a hand-woven wool rug Parnelles had retrieved from Iran toward the end of the shah’s reign — bad days, Parnelles had said once. It was all he said, ever, on the subject to Ferguson.
“You seem distracted, Bobby.” Parnelles glanced at Ferg’s foot, tapping on the carpet.
“Foot fell asleep.” Ferguson bounded up from the chair. “Can’t sit too long.”
He did a little jig in front of the chair. “So what’s the real story, General? Who is T Rex?”
“We don’t know.”
“The Israelis hired him, and we can’t figure it out?”
“The Israelis
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Figure out who he is. Apprehend him. Bring him here for trial.”
“That’s what Slott told me this afternoon.” Ferguson glanced at his watch. “Yesterday afternoon.”
He got up from the chair and walked around the study. It was as familiar to him as his own condo — more so. He’d played hide-and-seek here as a kid.
Taking T Rex in Italy was sensitive. The Agency was still smarting over a well-publicized trial of several of its members, fortunately in absentia, for the rendition of a suspected terrorist a few years before. The Italian court had found that the man was not a terrorist and had been kidnapped by the CIA, albeit with help from the Italian secret services. The political situation argued for the use of the elite First Team — officially, the Office of Special Demands — a small group of highly trained operatives headed by Ferguson and occasionally assisted by a Special Forces army group.
But the job might have been done by other CIA agents, including a special paramilitary team trained in renditions.
“So when I bring back T Rex,” said Ferguson, “what happens? You put him on trial?”
Parnelles frowned.
“If a situation develops where he can’t be brought to trial,” he said, picking his words very carefully, “that would be something we could all live with.”
2
It was simply and finally about the money, nothing else. Early on the assassin believed it was about the challenge, the chase and kill, but that was a lie. There was an element of that, certainly, but it was no more than an element, a small part, not the main motive.
The real motive was greed. Money. There was no denying that, not after all these years.
Many people lied to themselves; it was necessary in this business. But growing older, the assassin made it a policy to be honest when assessing personal motives and vices. Once begun, the practice had been liberating. It saved considerable time, and created clarity.
And clarity was of the essence.
The person they called T Rex pushed back the curtains, watching the dawn come over the city. Bologna would be the perfect place. The assassin already knew it well, spoke Italian fluently, and envisioned an easy time at the borders.
Everything was already moving toward its resolution. It was like an opera, complicated and beautiful.
But again, it wasn’t about aesthetics; it was money.
This one would be the last. The payoff would be sufficient to guarantee that. Retirement waited in Thailand. The papers were already prepared.
There was more risk here than in any of the other jobs he had done, but that seemed only fitting. A capstone, a challenge at the endgame.
But really, it was about money, not the pleasure of killing people.
3
Ferguson woke around five a.m., and helped himself to the coffee the night watch team protecting Parnelles had made in the kitchen. The coffee was bitter and burnt, but it was enough to get him going. He went out onto the
