The Mark of the Assassin Read online

  The man with the pockmarked face worked for Britain’s Security Service, better known as MI5, which is responsible for counterintelligence, internal subversion, and counterterrorism within the British Isles. He hand-carried the copy of the fax to MI5’s glass and steel headquarters overlooking the Thames and presented it to the senior duty officer.

  The duty officer quickly made two calls. The first was reluctantly placed to his counterpart at the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, which is responsible for gathering intelligence overseas and therefore considers itself the more glamorous and significant of the two services. The second call was to MI5’s liaison officer at the CIA’s generously staffed London Station, located across town within the U.S. embassy complex at Grosvenor Square.

  Within two minutes a copy of the letter was sent to Grosvenor Square by secure fax. Ten minutes later a typist had entered it into the computer system and forwarded it to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The agency’s computer system automatically distributes cables based on key words and classification. The cable from London went to the offices of the director, the deputy directors for intelligence and operations, the executive director, and the duty officer on the Middle East desk. It was also routed directly to the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.

  Seconds later it appeared on the computer screen of the officer assigned to the Islamic extremist group called the Sword of Gaza. The officer’s name was Michael Osbourne.

  6

  CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Headquarters, Michael Osbourne’s father always said, was the place good field men went to wither and die. His father had been a case officer in the Soviet Directorate. He had recruited and run agents from Moscow to Rome to the Philippines. James Angleton, the famed CIA counterintelligence officer who engaged in a destructive mole hunt for twenty years, ruined his career, the same way he ruined the careers of hundreds of other loyal officers. He spent his final years writing useless assessments and shuffling paper, and he left the Agency bitter and disillusioned. Three years after retirement he died of cancer.

  Michael’s return to headquarters was as reluctant as his father’s but brought on by different circumstances. The opposition knew his true name and occupation, and it was no longer safe for him to operate undercover in the field. He accepted his fate rather like a model prisoner takes to a life sentence. Still, he never forgot his father’s admonition about the perils of life at Langley.

  They worked together in a single room, known affectionately as the bull pen, on Corridor F of the sixth floor. It looked more like the newsroom of a failing metropolitan daily than the nerve center of the CIA’s counterterrorism operation. There was Alan, a bookish FBI accountant who tracked the secret flow of illicit money through the world’s most discreet and dirty banks. There was Cynthia, a flaxen angel of British birth who knew more about the IRA than anyone else on earth. Her cramped cubicle was hung with brooding photographs of Irish guerrillas, including the boy who blew off her brother’s hand with a pipe bomb. She gazed at them throughout the day, the way a girl might stare at a poster of the latest teen heartthrob.

  There was Stephen, alias Eurotrash, whose task was to monitor the various terrorist and nationalist movements of Western Europe. And there was Blaze, a six-foot-four-inch gringo from New Mexico who spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and at least ten Indian dialects. Blaze focused on the guerrillas and terrorists of Central and South America. He dressed like his targets in sandals and loose-fitting Indian garb, despite repeated written warnings from Personnel. He considered himself the modern equivalent of the samurai, a true warrior poet, and he practiced martial arts with Cynthia when the work was slow.

  Michael sat in the corner next to Gigabyte, a flaking, pimply boy of twenty-two who surfed the Internet all day, searching the ether world for terrorist communication. Alternative rock music blared from his headphones, and Michael had seen things on his screen that awakened him in the middle of the night. He erected a barrier of old files to shield the view, but when Gigabyte snickered, or when his rock music grew suddenly louder, Michael knew it was best to close his eyes and place his head facedown on the desk.

  The wall clock hung next to a three-foot cardboard gunman in silhouette, stamped with the circular red international symbol for no. It was nearly 11:30 p.m., and Michael had been working since five that morning. The bull pen was far from deserted. Peru’s Shining Path had kidnapped a government minister, and Blaze was pacing, working the telephones. France’s Direct Action had bombed a Paris Metro station; Eurotrash was hunched over his computer terminal reading message traffic. The IRA had murdered a Protestant developer in front of his wife and children; Cynthia was on the secure line to London, feeding intelligence to Britain’s MI5. Thankfully, Gigabyte had gone to a nightclub with a group of friends who believed he created Web sites for a living.

  Michael had fifteen minutes before he briefed the executive director on developments in the case. The claim of responsibility for the attack on the jetliner had been forwarded to Langley an hour ago. Michael read it for the fifth time. He reviewed the preliminary forensic studies performed by the FBI lab on the Boston Whaler found adrift off Long Island that morning. He studied the photographs of the corpse found on the boat.

  Ten minutes left. He could run downstairs to the swill pit and grab a bite to eat, or he could telephone Elizabeth. He had missed her appointment at Georgetown, and he knew they would very likely quarrel. It was not a conversation he wanted to conduct on an Agency telephone. He shut down his computer and stepped out of the bull pen.

  The corridor was starkly lit and quiet. The Agency’s Fine Arts Commission had tried to brighten the hallway with a display of Indonesian folk art, but it was still as cold and sterile as intensive care. He followed the corridor to a bank of large elevators, took one down to the basement, then followed another anonymous hall to the swill pit. It was late, the selection worse than usual. Michael ordered a fish sandwich and French fries from the bleary-eyed woman behind the counter. She punched at the cash register as if she wanted to do it harm, snatched Michael’s money, and gave him the change.

  Michael ate while he walked. It was dreadful—cold, cooked hours earlier—but it was better than yet another bag of chips. He finished half the sandwich and a few of the fries and tossed the rest in a trash can. He glanced at his watch: five minutes. Enough time for a cigarette. He took the elevator up one level, then walked through a glass doorway giving onto a large center courtyard. William Webster had outlawed smoking inside the building. Those still afflicted with the habit were forced to huddle like refugees in the courtyard or around the exits. After years of working undercover in Europe and the Middle East, cigarettes and smoking had become part of his tradecraft. Michael was unable and unwilling to give them up just because he was now at headquarters.

  Dead leaves swirled across the expanse of the courtyard. Michael turned his back to the wind and lit a cigarette. It was cold and very dark; the only light came from the glow of office windows above him, tinted green by soundproof glass. In the old days his office was the back streets of Berlin or Athens or Rome. He was still more comfortable in a Cairo coffeehouse than Starbucks in Georgetown. He glanced quickly at his watch. Another relaxing dinner. He stuffed his cigarette into a sand-filled ashtray and went inside.

  The briefing room was directly across the hall from the bull pen—small, cramped, most of it consumed by a large rectangular table of cheap government-issue wood. On one wall hung the emblems of every government agency with a role in the Center. On the wall opposite the doorway was a projection screen. Michael arrived at precisely 11:45 p.m. He was straightening his tie when two men entered the room.

  The first was Adrian Carter, the director of the Counterterrorism Center and an operations veteran of twenty years. He was small and pale, with sparse gray hair and bags beneath his eyes that gave him the appearance of perpetual boredom. Michael and Carter had a professional and personal friendship dating back fifteen years. T
he second was Eric McManus, the Center’s deputy director. McManus was big and bluff with an easy smile, a thick head of ginger-gray hair, and a trace of south Boston in his voice. He was FBI and looked it: navy blue suit, crisp white shirt, red tie. When Michael’s father worked for the Agency, an FBI man in such a senior role would be considered heresy. CIA officers of the old school thought FBI agents could fit everything they knew about intelligence on the backs of their gold shields. That was not the case with McManus, a Harvard-trained lawyer who worked in FBI counterintelligence for twenty years before his assignment to the Center.

  Monica Tyler, as was her habit, entered the room last and precisely five minutes late. She regarded her time as priceless, never to be wasted by others. A pair of identical male factotums trailed softly after her, each fervently clutching a leather-bound briefing book. Except for Personnel, no one within the Agency claimed to know who they were or who had spawned them. The office wits said they were conveyed with Monica from her Wall Street investment firm, along with her private bathroom and mahogany office furniture. They were slender and sinewy, dark-eyed and watchful, and silent as pallbearers. They seemed to move in slow union, like performers in an underwater ballet. Since no one knew their true names, they were christened Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Monica’s detractors referred to them as Tyler’s eunuchs.

  McManus and Carter got to their feet without enthusiasm as Monica entered the room. She squeezed past McManus’s bulky frame and took her customary seat at the head of the table, where she could see the screen and the briefer with an easy turn of her regal head. Tweedledee placed a leather-bound notebook on the table in front of her as though it were an ancient tablet and then sat behind her against the wall, next to Tweedledum.

  “Monica, this is Michael Osbourne,” Carter said. “Michael’s dealt with counterterror most of his career and has been working on the Sword of Gaza since the group surfaced.”

  Tyler looked at Michael and nodded, as though she had been told something she did not know. Michael knew that was not the case. Monica was renowned for reading the files of any officer with whom she came in contact. The rumor mill said she wouldn’t bump into an officer at the water cooler without first having read his fitness reports.

  She turned her gaze from Michael to the blank screen. Her short blond hair was perfectly styled, her makeup fresh. She wore a black suit with a high-collared white blouse beneath. One hand lay across the table; the other held a slender gold pen. She nibbled at the tip. Monica Tyler had no life other than her work; it was the one personal trait she made no attempt to conceal from her colleagues. The Director brought her to the Agency because she had followed him to every government job he’d ever had. She knew nothing of intelligence, but she was brilliant and an extremely quick study. She usually could be found in her seventh-floor office late into the night, reading briefing books and old files. She had the corporate lawyer’s gift for knowing the right question to ask. Michael had seen her reduce ill-prepared briefers to ashes.

  Carter nodded at Osbourne. He dimmed the lights and began the briefing. He pressed a button on a panel at the back of the room, and a photograph appeared on the screen.

  “This is Hassan Mahmoud. He was born in Gaza, grew up in a refugee camp, and joined Hamas during the Intifada. He is a committed Islamic revolutionary and is opposed to peace with Israel. He was trained in the camps of Lebanon and Iran. He is an expert bomb maker and a deadly gunman. He split from Hamas after the peace accords were signed and joined the Sword of Gaza. He is suspected of taking part in the assassination of an Israeli businessman in Madrid and the failed attempt to kill the Jordanian prime minister in Paris last year.”

  Michael paused. “This next photograph is rather graphic.” He switched to the next image. Carter and McManus both winced. Monica Tyler’s face betrayed no emotion.

  “We believe this is Hassan Mahmoud now. The body was found in a Boston Whaler twenty miles off Long Island. He was shot in the face three times. The launch tube of the Stinger was found next to him. Preliminary analysis has confirmed the missile was fired from the Whaler. The stern of the craft was blackened, and the lab has discovered residue matching the type of solid rocket fuel used in Stingers.”

  “Who shot him and why?” Monica asked. “And how did he get away?”

  “We don’t know the answers to those questions yet. We have a theory, though.”

  Monica raised an eyebrow and turned her attention from the screen to Osbourne. She had the straight, expressionless gaze of a therapist. Michael could feel her eyes probing for weakness. “Let’s hear it,” she said.

  Michael switched to the next image, an aerial photograph of a large oceangoing yacht towing a boat. “This photograph was taken off the coast of Florida four days before the jetliner was shot down. The yacht is registered in the name of a French national. We’ve checked it out, and we’re fairly certain the Frenchman in question does not exist. We do know it left the Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy eight days before the attack. The boat on the back is a twenty-foot Boston Whaler Dauntless, the same model that the body was found on.”

  “Where’s the Whaler now?”

  “At the Bureau’s lab,” McManus said.

  “And the yacht?”

  “No sign of it,” Michael said. “The Navy and the Coast Guard are looking now. Satellite photographs of that part of the Atlantic are being reviewed.”

  “So on the night of the attack,” Tyler said, “the small craft heads close to Long Island while the yacht remains well offshore, safely outside American territorial waters.”

  “So it would appear, yes.”

  “And when the shooter returns to the yacht, his colleagues kill him?”

  “So it would appear.”

  “But why? Why leave the body? Why leave the launch tube?”

  “All very good questions, for which we have no answers at this time.”

  “Go on, Michael.”

  “Earlier this evening a claim of responsibility was faxed to the London Times in the name of the Sword of Gaza.”

  “An attack like this doesn’t fit their profile, though.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Michael pressed the button, and the next image appeared on the screen, a brief outline of the Sword of Gaza. “The group formed in 1996, after the election of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. Its sole aim is to destroy the peace accords by assassinating anyone who supports it, Arab or Jew. It has never operated inside Israel or the territories. Instead, it operates mainly in Europe and the Arab world. The group is small, extremely compartmentalized, and very professional. We believe it has fewer than thirty committed action agents and a support staff of about one hundred. It maintains no permanent headquarters, and we rarely know where its members are from one week to the next. It receives virtually all its funding from Tehran, but it maintains training facilities in Libya and Syria as well.”

  Michael changed the image. “Here are some attacks attributed to the group. The shooting death of that Israeli businessman in Madrid carried out by Hassan Mahmoud.” The image changed again, a scene of carnage on a Paris street. “The failed attack on the Jordanian prime minister. He survived; six members of his party weren’t so lucky.” Another image, blood and bodies in an Arab capital. “A bombing in Tunis that left the Egyptian deputy foreign minister dead along with twenty-five innocent bystanders. The list goes on. An Israeli diplomat in Rome. Another in Vienna. An aide to Yasser Arafat in Cairo. A Palestinian businessman in Cyprus.”

  “But never an attack on an airliner,” Tyler said, when the last image vanished from the screen.

  “None that we know of. In fact, we believe they’ve never struck an American target before.”

  Michael switched on the lights. Monica Tyler said, “The Director is scheduled to brief the President at eight a.m. tomorrow. During that meeting, the President will decide whether to order air strikes against those training facilities. The President wants answers. Gentlemen, in your opinion, did the Sword of Gaza shoot down that
airliner?”

  Michael looked first at Carter, then at McManus. Carter took it upon himself to answer the question, since he was the senior man there. He cleared his throat gently before speaking.

  “Monica, for all we know as of this moment, it might have been the Sword of Gaza, or it might have been the Washington Redskins.”

  “That last remark was a thing of beauty,” Michael said, as they walked out the front doors and into the night. He turned up his collar against the cold and lit a cigarette.

  Carter walked next to him, one hand clutching a briefcase, the other rammed into his pocket. Carter always managed to look slightly lost and vaguely irritated. Those who did not know him tended to underestimate him, a quality that served him well both in the field and in the bureaucratic trenches of Langley. He spoke six languages and could melt into the backstreets of Warsaw or Athens or Beirut with equal ease.

  Someone must have told him to spruce up his wardrobe for headquarters, because he was always immaculately turned out in costly English and Italian suits. Fine clothing did not hang naturally on Carter’s short, slouching frame; a thousand-dollar Armani ended up looking like a cheap knockoff from one of the suspect boutiques along Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. Michael always thought he looked slightly ridiculous, like a clerk in an exclusive men’s shop who wore suits he could not afford. But Carter was an obsessive who never did anything halfway—his tradecraft, his wife and family, his jazz. His newest passion was golf, and he restlessly practiced his stroke with plastic golf balls in his small glass-enclosed office. Once Michael slipped a real ball among the replicas. Carter promptly launched it through his office window during a conference call with Monica Tyler and the Director. The following day Carter received a bill for the repairs and a reprimand from Personnel.

  “She drives me nuts sometimes,” Carter muttered softly. He had served as Michael’s control officer when Michael was working without official cover and couldn’t come to embassies. Even now, walking toward the west parking lot of headquarters, they moved as though they were conducting a debriefing under hostile surveillance. “She thinks gathering intelligence is as easy as putting together a quarterly earnings report.”