The Assassin (Max Doerr Book 1) (9 page)

Steve
frowned, turned to the keyboard, typed something and clicked the mouse again,
and then turned the monitor so Doerr could see it. “See here. Samuel Bolenback
– end of service, fifteenth November, 2010.”

Doerr
moved forward to see the monitor. He saw the same date, and the icy hand of
realization gripped the back of his neck, and his blood ran cold. A feeling of
anger and sadness spread through his body at an intensity that he had never
felt before in his life.

“Now
get the hell out of here,” Steve ordered.

FBI
SPECIAL AGENT Josh Miller sat on a chair in the forty-sixth floor of the FBI
office in Manhattan. He had joined the FBI when he was twenty-three, the youngest
age allowed by the FBI for a new recruit. Five years back, when he was twenty-seven,
he had tracked down the seventh man on the ten-most-wanted list, in Mexico
City. Soon after, he was promoted to the elite team.

Sitting
on his chair, he looked at the file on the DEA administrator’s murder. A single
.50 caliber Remington Magnum bullet had hit the man’s head, killing him
instantly. Judging by the angle at which the slug had entered the skull, it
must have come from a height of thirty to fifty floors up. The closest building
of that height was at a distance of about fifteen hundred feet from the
murdered man. Miller knew the sniper was a darn good one. The question that
remained was whether the killer was as good at covering his tracks. But he was
sure in his mind that the killer’s days of freedom were numbered. The FBI profiler
and the behavioral specialist would arrive at the scene tomorrow.

Miller
looked outside but could only see a tall glass building, belonging to a bank, blocking
his view. As he gazed at the glass walls, he could see his boss, O’Brien,
approaching. O’Brien reported directly to the FBI director.

O’Brien
stopped in front of Miller’s cubicle.

Miller
turned his black revolving chair to face his boss. “So far, we don’t have a solid
lead.”

“We
are becoming the butt of a joke,” O’Brien said, not even trying to hide his
frustration. “The Internet is abuzz with messages like ‘cops do more when a
homeless guy dies in another city.’”

“We’re
doing everything we can. So far, we’ve gathered only minor details. No suspect
yet.”

O’Brien
took a step forward and looked straight into Miller’s eyes. “Let me hear the
minor details.”

“We
interviewed some people – shopkeepers, guards in the nearby residential
buildings. One man reported he saw a tall man rush out of the building
immediately after the shooting. He carried a large carry-on suitcase. A guard in
another building said he saw two men enter the building. One carried a duffel
bag. The guard never saw the two men leave. He didn’t get a good look at them
either.”

O’Brien
shook his head and tapped his knuckles on the table; light reflected off his
shiny bald head. “We gotta do something. The press is baying for blood. They’re
saying terrorists are here, killing anyone they want.”

“Terrorist
or not,” Miller said, “the shooter was a darn good one. He put a bullet right
in the middle of the DEA administrator’s head and didn’t need to take a second
shot. He must have had real good training – Marines, Navy or Army. I don’t
think this is a terrorist job.”

IT
WAS OCTOBER, and the colors of fall were arriving in Virginia. Doerr drove his
rented crimson-color Chevy Impala on Route 270 toward Langley, and the traffic
was getting thicker. The memory of the mammoth white CIA buildings was fresh in
his mind. After he had been rebuffed by the office at Thirty-Third Street, he
was desperate to talk to someone he knew.

He
had phoned Lazarus, who had been his boss when he had quit the agency three
years ago. The call had gone to voicemail, and he left three messages, but
there was no callback. Doerr was headed for the CIA Headquarters, not to see Lazarus,
but his old buddy Andrew, who worked in the Science and Technology division.
Andrew had held a desk job at Langley for almost fifteen years, and Doerr knew
his area of expertise was cell phones and other wireless devices.

When
Doerr reached the parking lot, it was already ten a.m. He hurried through the
lot to the concrete walkway. An elderly man held the glass door open for him.
Thanking him, Doerr went straight to the reception desk.

“I’m
Dawn,” the receptionist greeted him. “How can I help you?”

“I’m
here to meet Andrew,” Doerr said. “Andrew Johnson.”

The
heavyset lady looked at him over her rimless glasses and asked, “Your name?”

“Max
Doerr.”

“ID,
please.”

Doerr
opened his wallet and handed over his New York driver’s license. He watched the
lady put the license inside a slot, and the black machine made a cracking
noise. After a few more seconds, the license came out. The lady gave him a visitor
tag, and Doerr affixed it to his shirt.

The
receptionist pointed to the waiting area in the corner and lifted the black
handset of the phone, indicating he should go and wait while she called Andrew.
Doerr proceeded to the designated area, which was empty but for a black leather
cushiony sofa.

Not
much has changed here in three years
, he thought.

Doerr
decided not to sit; he stood in the middle of the room and waited.

Five
minutes later, Andrew was standing in front of him. “It’s been a long time,” he
said, grinning. “How you doing, buddy?”

“Great.”
Doerr took a step closer to Andrew and said, “How is it going?”

“Good.
Now come on,” Andrew said and then walked to the elevator, scanned his ID card
and pressed the elevator button. Doerr followed him.

Once
they were inside the elevator, Doerr asked, “What kind of work are you doing
these days?”

“We’re
working on some pretty interesting stuff in the mobile area. Now we can pinpoint
a cellphone’s location within two seconds.” Andrew obviously took a lot of
pride in what he did. “The goal is to be able to tell where someone is – in
real time – as the person walks through…let’s say a mall or a large office,
like this one, from where a communication signal isn’t all that great.”

Doerr
was thinking through his next plan of action. He desperately wanted to talk to Lazarus.
But he was sure if he told that to Andrew, he would not agree and might even
escort him out.

Doerr
followed Andrew to his cubicle. The table was strewn with at least fifty mobile
phones. Old Nokia phones, Samsungs, an iPhone – all kinds of phones. Andrew
showed him a printout of the white paper he had written.

“It
will be published in
Discover
magazine next month,” Andrew said proudly.

“I
thought all the work you guys do is confidential.”

“It
is. But sometimes we collaborate with outsiders, such as researchers in universities,
who are desperate to publish their work. So we allow them to publish, but they
have to withhold any stuff that directly concerns us.” Andrew held up the
printout. “This will be published under the name of Professor McClusky of Yale.
He does a lot of work for us. I never get any recognition for the work I do,”
Andrew sighed, “at least not outside the agency.”

“We
never get any outside recognition for anything,” Doerr said.

They
carried on their conversation a while longer. “Let’s go for lunch,” Andrew
said. “It’s 12:30.”

They
headed for the cafeteria. Doerr picked up a grilled chicken salad and a bottle
of Diet Snapple. He finished his lunch quickly while Andrew munched his
sandwich.

Doerr
suddenly stood up. “All right. It was so nice to see you. I must be going.”

Doerr
pushed his chair back, took one last look at Andrew’s bewildered face, and
without giving him a chance to reply, he walked away briskly. He felt bad using
Andrew to gain entry into the CIA office. But he had to do it, and Andrew wouldn’t
be in any sort of trouble for letting him in.

Doerr
walked through the wide door out of the cafeteria and into the marbled walkway
that connected to the main building. He took the next turn and then another, so
Andrew wouldn’t be able to see him, if he was following.

He
walked to the area where Lazarus’s office was located. On the way, he watched the
antennas outside that were capturing signals from satellites orbiting two
hundred miles above.

Doerr
took the elevator to the third floor and then walked straight to Lazarus’s
office.

The
door was wide open. Two monitors lay on the glass-covered table, and Lazarus was
talking on the phone, holding a pen in his right hand. His face was pointed
away from the door, so he didn’t see Doerr at first. There was a book rack in
the room, holding at least a hundred books and some thick folders. Doerr knew
some of those folders held secret information about the world’s most notorious
men. On top of the rack were four world map globes. On the other side there
were six big clocks hanging on the wall that indicated local times in different
parts of the world.

“How
are you?” Lazarus greeted Doerr. A thin, cautious smile showed on his face. “I
will have to call you back,” he said into the phone and hung up.

“I’m
good.” Doerr took two steps inside and said, “How are
you
?”

“Good.
What brings you here?”

“Listen,
Lazarus, I’m in trouble,” Doerr got to the point quickly. He rested his hands
on top of the high wood chair.

“Oh
yeah, I got your voicemails.” Lazarus looked at him, and then his eyes veered
away. “But I’ve been busy. I was about to call you.”

Doerr
knew his old boss was lying, but he played along. “It’s okay.”

“The
thing is, Max, Samuel doesn’t work for us anymore. He left us a year back, I
think,” Lazarus said. “I don’t know why he left, though. So whatever you did
for him must be for the new organization where he works.” The smile returned to
Lazarus’s face.

Doerr
was now sure Samuel didn’t really work for the CIA.
But then who did he work
for?

When
Doerr had left voicemail for Lazarus, he had told him only that he did some operations
in Bangkok and London for Samuel. He hadn’t mentioned about the DEA administrator;
he couldn’t. “I’m worried, Lazarus. What I did for him in London and Bangkok
was illegal if he wasn’t authorized by the CIA.”

Lazarus
sat up straight. His large belly touched the table. “Where exactly did you work
for him?” he asked with a gloomy face.

“One
was in London, and one in Bangkok,” Doerr said.

“I
know that. Where exactly in Bangkok and London?”

“In
Bangkok, it was in Sukumvit area. In London, it was in Maida Vale,” Doerr said
and realized that when he worked for Samuel, he had always worked through
Samuel and never really worked directly with anyone else at the CIA. When he
needed the CIA techies to do something for him, he had passed the request
through Samuel and got the result through Samuel as well. The report on what
happened to the Jordanian terrorist came through Samuel’s mouth only.  

“I
can’t really help you on this, Max. Maybe you should contact the police.”

“Police?
You must be joking.”

“I
am not joking, Max. You left the agency on your own volition a long time ago, and
now I have no relationship with you. I won’t be able to provide any kind of
help,” Lazarus said and turned his face away.

Doerr
knew the conversation was nearing its end. “Come on, Lazarus, help me. I worked
for
you
– and the agency – for thirteen years. I risked my life to bring
down those bad guys. You gotta help me track down Samuel and see what he was up
to.”

“First
of all, you did not work for me for thirteen years. Maybe you did for the
agency, but not me. And secondly, it would be illegal for me to help you in any
way.”

“Illegal?
Come on!”

“Listen,
Max, there’s nothing I can do for you,” Lazarus said with a touch of anger and
shook his head. “How did you get in here, anyway?”  

Doerr
stood up and walked out without answering. He had worked for Lazarus for so
many years, and this was what he got in return. He was livid that he had come
to Lazarus, who was his last chance, and had been rebuffed like a street dog.
Now he could do only one thing – take matters into his own hands.

He
thought of calling Gayle but decided not to. He didn’t want to pass his pain to
the person he loved most. He went back to his car and turned the music system
to some dance music and drove to the highway. But it didn’t calm him, so he
headed for the nearest gas station to pick up a pack of Marlboro.

Doerr
drove at more than eighty miles an hour on Highway I-95 South. He knew that
Samuel had lived in an old apartment in Richmond, and that was where Doerr was
headed. Samuel might have moved out, but it was worth a shot.

When
he reached the Green Knoll apartment complex in Richmond, it was 3 p.m. The
complex must have had at least a hundred units. The connecting roads were
empty. Doerr passed the kids’ playground that had a seesaw and a slide, but no
kids were playing there. He drove on and passed two deep brown painted
buildings, and then he stopped at the third one. Unit 2C, where Samuel used to
live, was on the second floor. Doerr got out of the car, glanced at the purple
daisies on the ground, and headed for the stairs.

He
went upstairs and wiggled the doorknob of apartment 2C. It was locked. Samuel might
be out. He looked for a spare key under the doormat but found nothing. He went
back downstairs and walked through the dingy hallway to the other side of the
building. Now the building was on his right, and the perfectly mowed green
pasture lay to his left. The apartment had a balcony; nobody was around, and Doerr
started thinking about getting upstairs to check out Samuel’s apartment, to see
if he could get a clue about where to find him. He looked at the drainpipe, but
it looked much too light to bear his weight.

He
walked around to find something he could use to climb. At the end of the
building he saw a long wooden log with a metal prong attached.

Perfect
, he
thought. He brought it back underneath the unit, attaching the prong to the
railing of the balcony above. He started climbing. The thick wooden log cracked
but held his weight. As he climbed, he felt the old pain in his hip; he ignored
it, and soon, he was standing in front of the glass back door of apartment 2C.

He
tried to peek inside, but everything looked dark. He took his shirt off and
wrapped it around his sweaty right elbow; turning around and placing his back to
the door, he raised his arm and smashed through the glass with his elbow. The
door cracked, but the glass did not shatter. One more whack was all he needed
to smash the door enough for him to carefully insert his hand and unlock the
latch.

He
stepped inside but could see no one. He turned the lights on and heard some
noise coming from the bedroom. He instantly became more alert and picked up the
long glass vase that sat on the corner table, ready to hit, in case someone
came out and attacked him. He tiptoed to the bedroom door and held his breath. A
black and white cat sat on the bed, looking at him, giving the impression it
was about to pounce. Ignoring it, he walked inside. He saw a large, framed
photo of a young couple, and the man looked nothing like Samuel.

Doerr
quickly moved back to the living room and saw a stack of mail in the center of
the coffee table. The name on the first envelope was Jennifer Statenburg; another
envelope showed Michael Statenburg. Some had both names. He realized Samuel
must have moved out.

Soon,
Doerr was back on the highway, this time driving north, heading home to New
York. The drive was long and boring. Traffic was heavy, so he took a break at
six p.m. at a highway rest area. When he set off again, the traffic had eased but
only a little bit.

He
reached his apartment late in the evening. After a quick cold shower to wash
away the stress of the day, he ate a light dinner of a tuna sandwich with two pickles.
He flopped down on the bed afterwards, but wasn’t able to sleep. The memory of
his painful loss accompanied him no matter how hard he tried to remove it from
his brain. Images of how Billy might have fought for his life in that very
apartment played in his mind.

He
stood up, went to the medicine cabinet and popped two sleeping pills.

It
wasn’t enough to put him to sleep. An hour later, he left the building,
deciding to go for a walk. It was after one a.m., and the street was empty – no
cars, no pedestrians. He strolled ten blocks and saw a NYPD police car slow
down as it passed him, but then it moved on.

He
took a right turn at the next junction. He was going to take another turn a few
blocks later and circle back to his apartment. There was no noise except for
the occasional siren of a police car or an ambulance vehicle in the distance.
He walked past the next junction quickly, passing a few houses and a narrow
alleyway. While passing, he turned his head toward the alley. 

He
thought he saw a man crouch down, but he wasn’t sure, and he continued to walk.
He heard a woman’s voice, a grunt, more like a scream. He stopped walking and
watched the next signal turn green from red, and then he heard it again – a
call for help. He thought for a second.
Should I just keep walking?
 

He
turned. When he reached the mouth of the alley, he heard it again. It was a
woman desperately seeking help, being held down by a man.

Doerr
ran over and saw immediately what was going on. The man had his jeans pulled
down to his knees, and the woman was on the ground beneath him. Her leather jacket
lay nearby, and her shirt was torn. Doerr had no doubt what the man was
about to do to the woman: throughout the ages bad men had done this, and the
weaker sex suffered.

“Please
help,” the woman cried. 

Doerr
pulled the man up by his shirt collar and made him stand straight before punching
him in the face. The man was about five feet eight and perhaps weighed in at
around a hundred and sixty pounds. 

Blood
spurted from the man’s nose, and the woman scrambled to her feet, grabbing her
jacket and clutching it about herself. 

The
man wiped his face with his left palm and took a look at it. He turned his head
left and then right, obviously riled by the sight of his own blood. He gave Doerr
a piercing look, and then the man put his hand in his jacket pocket and withdrew
a gun. To Doerr, it looked like a 9mm pistol. The woman put her hands to her
face, fearful of what would happen next. 

“Now
you see,” the man said angrily and pointed the gun at Doerr’s head and took a
few steps toward him. 

Doerr
straightened up and was tense at first. Then he noticed how the man was holding
the firearm, cocked to the side, barrel slanted toward the ground. Instantly,
he realized that the man was no pro. Doerr’s nerves calmed. He knew that a
gun should be pointed at the enemy’s head, not at anything else.

“Now
what?” The man took one step back and shook his gun. “Are you going to leave or
not?”

Doerr
raised his hands, “Okay. I’ll leave, but she’s leaving too.” He pointed to the
woman. 

“No
way!” The man was stepping forward again. “She’s my bitch. Who the hell are
you?” 

Doerr
lowered his eyes, and the man continued to move forward. Doerr wanted to
give the impression that he wasn’t watching the gun anymore, but he kept an eye
on the man’s finger over the trigger, obliquely.

When
the man was close enough, Doerr made his move. He swung his right hand, which
landed on the man’s wrist like a heavy ax. The gun fell from his grasp, and Doerr
grabbed the man by his long hair and threw him to the ground, everything happening
in a fraction of a second.

Doerr
immediately crouched down over the man’s body, pinning him to the floor with
his right elbow on the man’s throat.

The
woman, who looked Latino to Doerr, was crying in relief. “Thank you so much.”

“What
were you doing here at this hour?” Doerr asked.

“I
was going home from work – at the hospital a couple of blocks over – and that
guy dragged me here.” She pointed to the would-be rapist. “I can’t thank you
enough.”

“It’s
okay. Now go,” Doerr said and loosened the pressure of his elbow on the man’s throat,
letting him breathe.

Doerr
watched the woman hurry away, taking a left turn out of the alley and disappearing
from view. Doerr kept the man pinned down for a few more minutes and then said,
“Stay down, and I won’t kill you.”

Doerr
stood up and retrieved the gun. It was a 9mm Colt. He took the six-bullet magazine
out and checked it before returning it to the gun.

He
leveled the gun at the man, who froze. “Get the hell out of here.”

The
man looked at Doerr, and then he backed away, slowly at first, and then breaking
into a run.

Doerr
tucked the gun in his pocket and then walked back to his apartment.

He
woke up at eleven a.m. the next morning, when most New Yorkers were at work or
school. He grabbed his iPhone and called Gayle. It went straight to voicemail,
and he left a message, asking her to call back immediately. Living all by
himself was becoming too much to bear, and he wanted her back. While he waited,
he decided to visit the library.

He
received Gayle’s call in the afternoon, and she agreed to come home after work.
On his way back from the library, Doerr realized that the fridge in the
apartment was nearly empty, so he picked up four bags of groceries before
returning to his apartment and waiting for Gayle.

When
Gayle got home, they caught up for a while, chatting over a drink on the sofa,
and then they headed for the bedroom, where they made passionate love.

Earlier,
over the phone, Doerr had told her about rejoining the agency and the two jobs
he had done overseas for Samuel. He could not tell her that he had killed a
very important man and the FBI would be looking for him, the way a thirsty man
looks for water in a desert.

Gayle
took a bath and then cooked pasta with salmon and some mashed potatoes. After a
long time, Doerr enjoyed a home-cooked dinner with her, so much so that he
almost forgot his troubles. The tension in his mind was gone, and he laughed.

But
the stress came flooding back when they turned on the TV. On CNN, Doerr saw a
woman’s face that looked familiar. But he could not put a name to her.

He
turned up the volume. The newswoman kept talking, “Irene Clark, thirty-two, was
found dead when police broke into her apartment. Her mother had raised the
alarm after Irene failed to return her calls. The slain woman was living alone,
in the Fifth Avenue area, after separating from her rich husband. A divorce
case was going on in the New York City Civil Court.”

Gayle
said something, but Doerr shushed her. “Wait.”

“There
are speculations that the husband is somehow behind this.” The newswoman
continued. “But police say they have uncovered no evidence so far to back that
theory. They found three guns and a long-range rifle in her apartment.”

Doerr
froze as he saw a shot of the building on the TV. It was the same building
where Samuel had dragged him to take that shot. Now he remembered why the woman
looked so familiar. He had seen Irene’s picture on Samuel’s phone and in a large,
framed photograph in the condo. In the picture, she had worn a whitish dress
and a diamond broche that had held the dress together, a Mona Lisa-like smile on
her face.

Doerr
stood up and started pacing. He had no doubt about who killed the woman.

Samuel,
Samuel, Samuel
–
eliminating witnesses. That’s what he is
doing.

“What’s
wrong, Max?” Gayle asked.

“You
see what’s going on,” Doerr stood in front of her and pointed to the TV. “Helpless
people are being murdered in the city every day.”

“But
we live in New York.” She stood up and faced him. “It happens here all the
time.”

“But
this? This…” Doerr stopped in the middle of the sentence. He wished he could
tell everything to his wife. That he was the one who had taken a shot with the
M107 rifle from the condo they were just showing on the TV. He wished he could
tell her everything, someday.

FBI
SPECIAL AGENT Josh Miller was sweating in his chair, and he tried to loosen his
black tie. His boss sat across the table. Speculations about who killed the DEA
administrator and Irene Clark were splattered all over the
New York Times
,
other newspapers and the Internet, and Miller had no clue about who had killed them.

Miller
had been investigating the murder of the DEA man for over a month and had interviewed
more than a hundred people. He had access to the best forensic experts in the
country and was backed up by a team of twenty FBI special agents.

“Do
you have a name?” O’Brien asked and gave him a look that was typical of a
school teacher encountering a student giving a lame excuse for unfinished
homework.

“Not
yet.” Miller sighed and continued in an unsteady tone. “We found the murder weapon
for Clark’s death. The bullet in her head matched the gun found in her
apartment. Gunpowder residue was found on her fingers. There was a M107 rifle
in her apartment, which matched the bullet fragments found in the DEA administrator’s
body. There were several other guns found in her apartment, all of which had
only her fingerprints on them. It looks like she was a gun enthusiast. We
talked to her estranged husband, who says she was never into guns.”

“Maybe
she picked up the hobby recently,” O’Brien adjusted his tie, “to avoid boredom,
or for protection, or maybe both, who knows.” He swung his hand.