Requiem for an Assassin (21 page)

A
BEGINNER WOULD HAVE
looked more closely, checking his perceptions, telling himself until it was too late it couldn’t be so. Someone with a bit more seasoning would have glanced away, but only after a startled reaction, and some visible effort, which would have warned the enemy he’d been spotted. A real survivor understands the essentials instantly. And what couldn’t be understood now, I would consider later.

I took the steps to the sidewalk and set down the box so I was standing between it and the bike. I put my back to Mr. Blond and started “unlocking” the bike chain, watching him in the side-view mirror attached to my shades. He was twenty yards away, not hurrying, but not taking his time, either. He was wearing a black wool hat, not so much against the cold, I was sure, as to make him harder to describe if there were witnesses. It might have been enough to throw me off, too, but his gait had that same liquid ease I remembered from Saigon, and that was all I’d needed to make him here.

How he’d found me didn’t matter for the moment. What he was here for, I could assume. My main advantage was clear: not only had I given no sign I spotted him, he didn’t even realize I knew who he was.

Now that my back was to him and he didn’t know I was watching, I looked more closely in the side-view mirror attached to the helmet. He had on a black, waist-length leather coat and, I now noted, gloves. It was how I would have done it. The hat to obscure features; the gloves to prevent prints; the coat as light armor in case something goes awry and the target rallies with a weapon. He was wearing shoes with thick soles, almost certainly rubber, and his footfalls were noiseless.

However he planned to do it, it would be close. If it were a gun, it would be small caliber for reduced noise profile, and he’d want the muzzle right against my head. Even if it were a suppressed larger caliber, he’d want to be as close as possible to be sure of the shot. A knife, of course, would be quietest of all. Regardless, by giving him my back, I would increase his confidence, change the implicit risk/reward calculus I knew was running through his mind, reduce the apparent dangers of proximity and thereby encourage him to enter the range I wanted.

I watched in the side-view. Ten yards now. A fresh dump of adrenaline surged through my gut and my limbs.

Eight yards. I unwound the bike chain from the frame. It was over three feet long and close to ten pounds, and attached at both ends by a heavy steel lock. I took hold of the end opposite the lock, pretending to wrap the chain around the stalk under the seat, letting him see my hands at work, keeping his confidence high.

Five yards. His right hand dipped into his coat pocket and eased out, his arm staying close to his body, his hand just in front of his thigh. His thumb flicked a lever and a blade appeared. A decent bet, I thought, that he’d decided to exploit the apparent opportunity to take me from behind by cutting my throat. The advantages would be certainty of lethality, and blood spurting away from him rather than onto his clothes.

Three yards. My heart was thudding like a war drum in my chest. I fought the screaming urge to turn and face him before he got any closer.

Two yards. He started to ease to the right to get around the box I’d set down.
Now.

I spun clockwise, the chain in my right hand, the lock on the end of it coming around like the racket on the world’s nastiest tennis backhand. Mr. Blond’s reaction was instantaneous and showed a lot of training: he brought his left hand up to the right side of his face, turtled his shoulders, dropped through his hips, and, most important, stepped forward, inside the arc of the chain, where a blow would deliver less force. But I’d anticipated all of it, and action beats reaction every time. Between the length of my arm, the length of the chain, and the flex of my hips and legs, I had a lot of room to adjust. I drew in by an equivalent distance, and the lock snaked around and blasted into his upraised left hand and right temple like the end of a medieval flail.

His head snapped to the left and he staggered in the same direction. The chain came about, and as it passed my centerline, I swiveled my hips and swung it in again, forehand this time, coming in from my right. Mr. Blond’s weight was on his left foot and he couldn’t move out of the way. But somehow, even with his circuits scrambled as they must have been, he managed to drop his weight and get his left hand up again, high this time, palm out, his forearm protecting his face. The lock blasted his arm back into his head and rocked him to the right. But with a wounded quickness that amazed me, he managed to snake his arm around the chain and get a hold of it before it bounced past him.

I tried to yank the chain away. Mistake: he pulled in the other direction and used the counterforce to find his balance. His left foot was forward now, a few inches from my right, our bodies mirror images attached by the short length of chain. He took a half-step in with his right foot, and a left sidekick blurred into my ribs. The impact knocked the wind out of me and plowed me backward into the bike. Only my grip on the chain kept me from going over.

He still had the knife in his right hand, close to his body. I felt what he was about to do: shuffle step in, engage me with his left hand, stab with his right. And my side was wide open.

I reached back with my left hand. He shot forward off his left leg, the right foot trailing, closing the distance, the knife coming into range. My groping fingers closed around the bike frame. His weight was carrying him forward now, the momentum channeled through his legs and into his knife hand. Supercharged with fear and adrenaline, I swung the bike around like a discus thrower, getting it between us just as he closed and went for my guts with the knife. His hand punched through the wheel spokes and I twisted away a half-inch from the blade.

He froze there for a split second, his left hand still gripping the chain, his right caught in the bike wheel, trying to process these novel circumstances. I didn’t know what kind of training he had, but it was a safe bet getting a bicycle wrapped around you wasn’t part of the curriculum. Plunge forward? Jerk back? Let go of the chain? So many options, so few neurons…

I didn’t give him time to come up with something effective. I sacrificed my hold on the chain and grabbed the bike wheel with both hands, twisting and rotating it to my left. His elbow was pushed into his body, and his hand cranked past his shoulder. He howled in pain, his fingers came open, and he lost the knife. I twisted harder, and he bent sideways at the waist to keep his elbow from being broken. His right knee was torqued at almost ninety and twisted in, and he had too much weight on it to get it out of the way. I rotated counterclockwise, raised my right foot, and stomped down through the back of his knee, breaking it. He howled again and as he collapsed over his ruined leg, I twisted the wheel harder, and his elbow snapped, too.

I let go of the wheel and he went down on his back, the bike on top of him. He made a hell of an effort to scramble out from under it, but he was short two functioning limbs and his progress was minimal. I stepped wide of him, my eyes scanning the ground. There, the knife. I scooped it up, a distant part of my brain registering from the distinctive logo on the blade that it was an Emerson, the recurve edge making it the Commander model, one of Dox’s favorites.

Mr. Blond managed to sit up. He took hold of the bike frame with his left hand and jerked his ruined arm out of the spokes, screaming with the effort. He stared at me, panting, his nostrils flaring with exertion, his face glistening with sweat. He pushed the bike forward as though to shield himself, but he had only one good arm and his mobility was destroyed.

“One chance,” I said. “Tell me where Dox is and I’ll let you live.”

“Jakarta,” he said, through clenched teeth.

No. They wouldn’t keep the boat in the same place after a call. He was lying.

Then again, so was I.

I feinted left and he overreacted, and I stepped easily behind him. He dropped the bike and tried to spin, but I stepped in close and shoved a knee in his back, rotating with him as he frantically continued to try to turn and face me. I covered his eyes with my left hand and cut his throat with my right.

The cut was deep but fast, and I had my hand out of the way just ahead of the geyser that followed. A horrible gurgling sound poured forth, an interrupted, bubbling scream. He fell to his side and turtled his chin in and clasped his neck with his good hand, blood pouring through his fingers. I stepped back, but that hot, acrid smell filled the air and invaded my senses, enrapturing me for an instant in the insane killing joy I had first felt in Vietnam, that almost orgasmic rush that only comes from killing a man who has just been trying his hardest to do the same to you.

I stood there for a moment, the iceman propitiated, exulting, watching as Mr. Blond struggled to get up, his legs kicking, a pool of blood spreading on the sidewalk all around him. Then the kicking slowed and his hands fell away. A long, burbling sigh issued forth, his head dropped to the pavement, and the tension drained out of his limbs. One foot continued to scrape slowly back and forth, back and forth, whether reflex or the body’s last, futile efforts to fight I couldn’t say and didn’t care.

I glanced around. A dozen bystanders stood rooted, mouths agape, shocked, not comprehending, struggling to come to grips with the evidence of their own senses. They were all twenty-and thirtysomethings with fashionable bags and trimmed goatees who’d come here for an upscale lunch of Moroccan couscous or to acquire a fabulous pair of Italian platform shoes. A safe bet none of them had ever even witnessed a dead body, let alone one newly created with a knife before their very eyes. I saw no immediate problems, neither accomplices nor anyone who looked the least bit likely to try to intervene. I would have expected more than one, but…Dox had said four people on the boat. Maybe Hilger couldn’t spare more than Mr. Blond.

I badly wanted to check for ID, but there were too many people, and not enough time. Besides, it was almost certain he was traveling sterile. I closed the knife and pocketed it, threw the chain over my head, and picked up the box. I righted the bike and almost got on, but looked down at the front wheel in time. It was too badly bent to rotate cleanly through the metal struts on either side of it.
Shit.

I laid the bike down flat and stomped on the wheel, truing it sufficiently to turn. I could have just jettisoned it, and the box, too, but I preferred to leave nothing behind. And besides, I could create more distance faster on the bike.

In my peripheral vision, I saw people taking out cell phones now, snapping pictures, shooting video, and I was glad for the balaclava, helmet, and sunglasses. Keeping my head down, I got on the bike and pedaled away north on Mott, against traffic so no one in a car could try to follow me. The front wheel wobbled but it held.

I made a right on Houston, rode as fast as I could four blocks to Forsyth, then made another right, again against traffic. There was a dumpster at the northeast end of Sara D. Roosevelt Park and I stopped next to it. I used Mr. Blond’s knife to open the box and upended it into the dumpster, spilling out the styrofoam peanuts. Then I sliced open the box’s other end, folded it flat, and threw it into the dumpster, too. Witnesses would describe the box the bike messenger had been carrying, and doubtless it had been captured on some cell phone cameras, too. It couldn’t be traced back to me, but there was no advantage to making it easy to find, either. Layers of defense. Always layers.

I cut east on Stanton. Two blocks further on, I paused just long enough to dump the knife and the bike chain in a sewer. I pedaled south on Allen until I found another dumpster, this one for the bike helmet and side-view mirror. When I reached Canal, I got off the bike and leaned it against a building, confident someone would appropriate it inside fifteen minutes. Even if no one did, and the police picked it up, it was sterile. The serial number was gone, I’d paid cash when I bought it, and I’d wiped it down completely for prints before setting off that morning. More layers.

On foot now, I headed west on Canal, then north on Eldridge, then west again on Hester and into the park. As I walked, I pulled off the balaclava and the shades and stripped off the peacoat. Underneath, I was wearing my new shirt, sport jacket, and tie. Shorn of the bulky coat, my build now appeared considerably slimmer. I carried myself differently, too, imagining myself as a professional, a man who wore a tie and jacket every day and worked in an office. Anyone looking for a bike messenger now would go right by me. I took the gloves off last, and left everything on the ground near a trash can. There were homeless men in the park, and I expected the remnants of my bike messenger persona would disappear no less quickly than the bike itself.

I pulled out the second pair of sunglasses, the round ones, from inside the jacket and slipped them on, then checked the iPhone to see where Accinelli had parked. The Bowery lot, the same place I’d seen him the first time. A little closer to Mott Street than I would have liked, but no one was going to make me now. Regardless, I couldn’t leave the transmitter under his car. Probably no one would find it, and even if someone did, no one could trace it back to me, but…the way I saw it, there was still a slim chance Accinelli’s death could be ruled accidental. Maybe a heart attack from the fright of witnessing a bloody murder not ten steps from where he stood, something like that. Not likely, but…things were happening too fast for me to consider it all right now. I didn’t want to leave behind evidence suggesting Accinelli had been targeted. I’d stick with the original plan and figure out the rest later.

I heard sirens from west on Prince Street, and glanced over as I came to the Bowery lot. There was a police barricade in place, a uniformed cop directing traffic from in front of it. The lot attendant was standing outside his booth, watching.

“Excuse me,” I said, walking over. “I think I dropped my MP3 player the last time I parked here. Can I take a quick look?”