Soul of the Assassin (10 page)

“No. We wouldn’t. This would make the rendition flap look like a Sunday school debate over the devil’s favorite lie.”

Corrine nodded.

“The Director feels personally responsible for his officer’s murder,” continued the President. “Do you remember the incident, Corrine? No, actually you wouldn’t, as it was just before you came on board,” said McCarthy, answering his own question. “You hadn’t joined the intelligence committee staff yet, had you? Well, Mr. Parnelles had just been appointed as chief of the CIA when his man died, and he took it almost as a personal insult. I believe the officer who was killed had had some association with him earlier as well. I believe he may have worked for him at one time, if memory serves.”

“I think he feels responsible for his people,” said Corrine. “I think that’s natural.”

“Yes, dear, that is natural, but you see, there are sometimes more important things to consider.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell the Italians. Find a way to do it while preserving our operation. And please, take care of this personally.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

McCarthy drummed his fingers on his desk. “The wording on the Iran finding—have you finished it?”

“It’s ready,” she said, mentally changing gears. “We’re not on the strongest grounds, Jonathon.”

“Hopefully we won’t need it. Secretary Steele continues to assure me that the Iranians are about to sign the treaty and give up their weapons, just as North Korea has done. It is a solution I much prefer. I just wish that the Secretary of State would get them to move with a little more
alacrity.”

Several weeks before, McCarthy had decided that the Iranian nuclear program had progressed to a point where it would have to be dealt with decisively. While his administration had been working behind the scenes to get the Iranians to abandon their program, Iran’s Sunni neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt, had concluded that they needed nuclear weapons to counterbalance their traditional Shiite enemies and had secretly begun to work on a bomb together. If they developed one, McCarthy believed, the odds of nuclear war in the Middle East or of terrorists obtaining the weapons would be astronomical.

The President had therefore decided to force the issue—he would offer aid to Iran and a full normalization of relations if they dropped the project. If they didn’t, he would destroy the infrastructure that supported it.

Estimates by the CIA indicated that the program was still vulnerable to coordinated air strikes but would only remain so for a few more months; the President had set an internal deadline for an agreement at the end of the month, a week away. He’d asked Corrine to draw up a legal argument supporting a first strike. “Something a little more thoughtful than might makes right,” he’d said. McCarthy greatly preferred a peaceful settlement, since an attack would bring very serious and not necessarily predictable repercussions; nonetheless, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East was an even worse choice.

“I can have the draft on your desk in an hour,” Corrine said.

“No, no. I only want to make sure it’s ready.” Ever the poker player, McCarthy was thinking about using the finding as a way of forcing the Iranians to ante up—if they balked at Steele’s proposal, he’d have the finding leaked to convince them he meant business.

And if that didn’t work, then he’d have no alternative but to go ahead with the attack.

“Have you been following the situation in Iran?” McCarthy asked.

“Not as closely as I should,” said Corrine. It was a defensive answer; she had actually been reading every report and briefing available.

“There continues to be resistance to the agreement, especially among the Revolutionary Guard. Talk of a coup.”

“No one seems to think that’s serious.”

“Difficult to assess,” said McCarthy.

He wasn’t sure himself how seriously to take the rumors. Iran and its myriad political players remained largely an enigma.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Miss Alston,” he said, glancing at his watch. “It appears I am running late for my next appointment.”

Already out of her chair, Corrine followed him to the door. The President reached for the handle, then paused.

“Your father was asking about you the other day, Corrine. He wanted to make sure you were getting your proper allotment of sleep. I told him you were, but I do not think he believed me.”

“I’m getting plenty of sleep, Tom. He’s just—you know Dad.”

“Longer than you.” McCarthy winked. “But perhaps we would do a better job of convincing him if the e-mails you sent to him did not bear time stamps indicating they were sent at three a.m. It weakens our case considerably, Counselor.”

“Yes sir, Mr. President. I’ll try to remember.”

~ * ~

2

BOLOGNA, ITALY

Ferguson took a walk alone around the block after the conference call ended, working off some steam. The gas theory was a crock. Worse, they’d drifted into decision-by-committee territory; he wasn’t supposed to do anything now until he heard from Corrine Alston.

Undoubtedly, she’d convince the President to notify the Italians, who would probably go apeshit and shut the whole town down. There’d be some cockeyed arrangement with the First Team acting as “consultants” or some such crap. T Rex would be smirking somewhere in the shadows.

Not only would he be tipped off here, but he’d realize that his operation had been compromised. If he was smart—and his track record suggested he was a genius—he’d tear it down and start from scratch. Arna Kerr would be out of work, and they’d spend years trying to find another lead.

Ferguson stopped into a café, and after a quick shot of espresso— for some reason the caffeine calmed him down—got back to work. The first thing to do was check out the university buildings Arna Kerr had gone to. They’d already planted video bugs in the foyers; he was interested in something else, something less obvious. He hoped he’d realize what it was when he saw it.

The art building was a large onetime mansion about a block off the Via Rizzoli. The place was being used as a temporary university building, but the choice was hardly haphazard. Though from the outside the building’s dull brown blocks and gray cornices were overshadowed by the bright bricks of its neighbors, inside the place was as ornate as any palace. The walls of the entrance hallway were covered with marble; baroque-era statues flanked the thick red carpet that brought students and visitors inside. A large double stairway made of marble sat at the far end; its bronze banister was inlaid with gold. On the ceiling above, a bright faux sky featured cherubim amid its puffy clouds.

A security guard looked at Ferguson cross-eyed from a nearby archway as the op scouted around. Ferguson saw him and ambled over in his direction to ask, in English, if the man knew where Professore Pirello’s classes were to be found. The guard told Ferguson in Italian that he was a security guard and not a member of the staff. Ferguson pretended not to understand and repeated the question. When he got roughly the same answer he thanked the guard profusely before walking past him into the main hallway.

Even in the corridor, the building’s proportions gave it a regal feel. The walls had been recently restored and painted, their blue and gold pattern so vivid that it seemed to glow. The hall opened into another wide reception area, this one just as ornate as the one near the front entrance. A set of arched doorways led to a room decorated with late-Renaissance frescoes that ran all the way to the ceiling three stories above. Rather than a faux sky, the ceiling was covered in panels of what looked like gold leaf. It was actually a relatively new coat of paint, carefully applied within the lines of the original paper-thin panels; the genuine gold had been replaced sometime during the nineteenth century, when the owners had fallen on hard times.

Large carts of chairs were being wheeled into the room, and a crew was setting up a stage to the right. Ferguson wandered over and asked two of the workers what they were setting up for.

“They never tell us,” said one of the men.

“Oh, I know what it’s for,” said another. “The genetics conference. Frankenstein will be here.”

The man, an art student in his early twenties who moonlighted as a roustabout to support himself, began a diatribe about genetic mutation and man’s inevitable decline. A large number of scientists from across the world were gathering to talk about using bacteria for man’s good, said the student. It was clearly a disaster in the making.

“I thought this was an art school,” said Ferguson.

The young man, himself an art student, sensed an ally, and gave Ferg a long diatribe in response, claiming that the school and the country were not serious about supporting its artists. His coworker rolled his eyes and went back to work.

“And the conference starts tonight?” asked Ferguson.

“There’s a brochure on the bulletin board in the second-floor lounge,” said the student. He saw his supervisor coming and decided to get back to work. “Read it, brother,” he said, walking away. “You’ll be surprised what they’re up to. Frankenstein in a test tube.”

~ * ~

3

CIA BUILDING 24-442

When Jack Corrigan had first been offered the position with Special Demands, he’d seen it as a shortcut in his overall plan to advance to the upper levels of the intelligence establishment, where he hoped to become the boss of either the Defense Information Agency—his preference—or the CIA itself. He still thought Special Demands was a wise career move, but now realized it was not without its thorns.

Bob Ferguson being the main one.

“Ferguson can’t accept
anything
I tell him,” Corrigan complained when Lauren DiCapri briefed him when he returned to work. “Why would T Rex be going after a scientist?”

“Ferg didn’t say he thought that was the target,” said Lauren. “He just said this conference might be significant and we should get the list.”

“And who’s going to be paying T Rex? Greenpeace?” Corrigan scanned the information on the conference. The topic was bacteria in the food chain and how they could be bred to combat spoilage.

“No fricking way anyone here is going to be important enough to spend a million bucks on bumping off,” Corrigan told Lauren, sliding the folder Lauren had given him back across the desk top. “I’m with Ciello. It’s some sort of gas attack. Tell Ferguson this is a dead end.”

“Ciello went ahead and did some background on the people attending the conference,” said Lauren, pushing the papers back. “There’s one person that’s interesting. Check the last page.”

Frowning, Corrigan leafed through the documents. The final page contained a single paragraph on a man named Artur Rostislawitch. Until three years before, he had been a top scientist with the Russian Federal Research Administration, on loan to a quasi-private laboratory outside of Moscow known to be used by the government for research into germ warfare. There had been some sort of internal shake-up; supposedly Rostislawitch no longer conducted primary research.

“All right, so big deal,” said Corrigan, handing the briefing paper back. “He’s not working with them anymore. This says he’s teaching.”

“Ferg thinks that may be a cover,” said Lauren. “He wants more information on him.”

“You discussed this with Ferguson already?”

“Of course.”

“What do you mean, ‘of course’? You should have waited until I came in.”

Lauren clamped her teeth together. Corrigan was efficient and generally reasonable, but he had a very strict interpretation of the chain of command. He was the
lead
desk officer; she was relief—which to him meant he was the boss, she was whale shit.

“Really, Lauren, you should have told me.”

“The conference starts with a reception in two hours. I didn’t know when you were getting in,” she told him.