Oh, God. There she is. She looks fine. She’s smiling. She’s waving. She’s all right.

  Steffi stopped in front of her mother. Linda stood and nodded her appreciation to the staff escort. The matron turned, surveyed the room, and motioned her hand downward toward a group of girls still standing, to take their seats.

  “Why are you here, mother? You usually call the day before you come.”

  “I needed to go to Seattle. I left early so I could stop by.” She hugged Steffi. Linda felt her daughter stiffen and look nervously toward the other girls, now all seated. Linda stepped back, not wanting to embarrass her daughter in front of her classmates.

  “I’m sorry, Steffi. I’m just . . . so happy to see you. That’s all.”

  “We’re the only ones still standing, Mother. Let’s sit down.”

  Linda knew the Hobart system. They all ate the same breakfast brought in on carts and placed between the knife and fork at each table setting. Lunch was done the same way. Dinner included a cafeteria line where the girls could make some choices.

  Today’s breakfast was a coarse oatmeal, so today included a spoon, toast with strawberry jam, and orange juice. After a few bites, Linda and Steffi began talking.

  “Where are we going on our summer trip this year, Mother?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have somewhere you’d like to go?”

  “Paris.”

  “Well. That’s ambitious. What made you pick Paris?”

  “It’s so beautiful and the way the people talk it’s . . . I don’t know, pretty.”

  “Did you see a movie about Paris, or what?”

  “Two actually, part of our extra-credit class on American film history. The first was American in Paris starring a man who could really dance. He sang too.”

  “Gene Kelly. He and Fred Astaire were wonderful dancers. They each made lots of movies.”

  “I’ve never heard of that other one, Fred Astaire?”

  “Astaire. Fred Astaire. He was more elegant in his dancing. Gene Kelly was the more athletic. At least that’s how I saw the difference. Both wonderful. What was the second film?”

  “Forget Paris. I think that was the name. It was super funny. The Star was Billy Crystal. I’d never heard of him, but he was funny. There was some woman named Debra . . . whoever, I think. She was good too.”

  “Paris is different today from when they made those movies.”

  “Different than, Mother, not different from.”

  “It’s good to see you’re learning something here at Hobart.”

  “It’s okay, Mother. It makes no real difference. One is more formally correctly, but both are acceptable. We don’t need to go to Paris. You asked and that’s just what I thought of.”

  “Let me look into it. There’ve been some terrorist attacks in Paris, so safety will be one of the issues. Still, it’s a good idea. I’ve never been to Paris either. It would be fun to see it with you.”

  Steffi wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Class starts in five minutes.”

  “I know, dear. You run along whenever you need to.”

  “Will you be here for dinner?”

  “Not this trip. I’m going to be busy for several days, maybe a week or more. I’ll try to call next time before I pop in.”

  “That’s all right. It’s good to see you, Mother.”

  Linda reached over and put her hand over Steffi’s. “I love you, Stephanie.”

  The girl glanced at the other girls who were all rising and scurrying off to classes. “I love you, too, Mother.”

  With that, Steffi was gone.

  Steffi’s safe. All I have to do to keep her safe is kill someone.

  9

  Ryan was in the bar of Ahmed El Sayed’s hotel when he next saw the self-proclaimed spy and profiteer apparently back from collecting the dead child. It felt odd to think of a child as an “it,” but Ryan didn’t yet know whether the dead child was a boy or girl. He’d requested a girl, but truth was it didn’t matter a great deal. The child was dead. And, if his orders had been followed, the child was beyond recognition by its parents, so it had become an it. Ryan refused to allow himself to further humanize the child.

  El Sayed stepped behind his short bar and, after fussing with various things, briefly turned his eyes in Ryan’s direction, without looking precisely at him. He held that field of vision long enough to nod so slightly as to be nearly imperceptible to anyone other than Ryan, who was alert for his signal. They decided that El Sayed, a well-known local, could best move alone in the largely destroyed city, so Ryan stayed in the hotel when El Sayed went to collect the dead child. The nod meant the child’s remains were now in the basement of the glassblowing shop. When El Sayed left the bar it would signal that Ryan should go into the alley behind the hotel. From there El Sayed would drive him back to the Carlton where Ryan would collect his prey for tonight.

  Assassinations in themselves are not all that difficult. Those who hire the hit generally provide certain information that puts the assassin in the right place at the appointed time. This was true whether the employer was a private citizen or, as in this case, a sovereign government. If the provided information proved faulty or became compromised, that rested with the entity engaging the assassin, who keeps his retainer, but gets nothing more. There are many permutations, but that’s a standard deal structure.

  As for the killing shot itself, it’s expertise, plain and simple, a skill, developed through an investment of substantial practice over a long period of time. Other ingredients are dedication, detachment, and determination, along with the willingness to accept great personal risk for great personal reward—morality aside. To add perspective, more perfection is required than in shooting free throws in a basketball game, due to the greater repercussions that could follow a missed shot. There’s also the possibility that failure could mean no future jobs would ever again be attempted by that shooter.

  The real difficulty is not the shot, but the escape that follows the shot. The assassin needs to carefully plan where to go, and how to get there—exactly. What comes next and next again, over and over, until he’s safely back in his own lair. Such is the format of a carefully orchestrated extraction after taking out the target. In the alternative, the assassin can improvise the entire extraction.

  How the target’s security detail will respond and how the crowd and general population will react will always be in the realm of the uncertain. When the target is a government official, the security will be the police or army depending on where the shot is taken, and the target’s place in that country’s pecking order of power. There’s the question of whether the shooter will be hunted by a highly skilled detective or some clueless political appointee who reached his position by political payoff or nepotism.

  The ideal arrangement is to have the assassin engaged and paid by one who can control or, if necessary, misdirect the police and army. That ideal adds the extra risk of a planned betrayal to have the troops kill the assassin. Killing the assassin dusts out the trail back to the employer of the hit, and avoids the need to pay any balance due the assassin. On that score, Ryan had no concerns. If he did the deed he’d get the dough. He’d worked with the Mossad on previous assignments and found them no less, but no more, honorable than his own government.

  There are always, to one degree or another, changes in bus, train or airplane schedules due to the authorities’ rush to drop a net over the area. That must be expected. In some countries, the inherent inefficiencies and incompetence in the travel system itself lead to unpredictable breakdowns. The more backward and third-world the location of the elimination, the more likely something would cause last minute changes that necessitate improvisation on the part of the assassin. Syria epitomized this kind of environment.

  Ryan’s mission was in the northwestern quadrant of Syria. More precisely, the western portion of the town of Anadan northwest of Aleppo, about seventy-five miles from Syria’s border with Turkey. All this area was loosely under the control and beyond the control of various warring factions. Throughout Syria, control of any town or village, hell, any street corner was constantly subject to change. This chaos can lessen or increase the turmoil that can be the assassin’s friend. In a place with so many factions in conflict with each other, the opposing players are unknowable until the escaping assassin finds himself in the midst of an encounter of some sort. In the coming hours and, if things go awry, possibly days, Ryan expected he’d grapple with some of these imponderables which, due to the ever-changing control, he could not plan for in advance.

  Once his assignment was completed, the shot taken, the target down, Ryan would be on his own until he got to the rendezvous point for his extraction from Syria.

  The nuclear work of the man he was sent to kill would be taken over by another through some process that would be worked through inside Iran. That’s how it is everywhere, for all work, whether it be public or private. The assassination could only temporarily delay Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons. The next person would be better or worse than Astarabadi.

  The Mossad reported that Mostafa Astarabadi would be in the area only two days. The Iranian’s visit had been arranged quietly without the Syrian government formally being advised. His brief return to Anadan, Syria was to attend his nephew’s wedding.

  Ryan had read Mossad’s report on Mostafa Astarabadi and independently researched him as well. Ryan avoided contacting the U.S. intelligence community to learn more about the Iranian. Neither he nor the Mossad wanted the U.S. government to be aware of Ryan’s mission. Often, in the past, when Israeli intelligence shared plans for a covert action with the U.S., the western government had meddled in the decision to the point of whether or not the mission would even be activated.

  Astarabadi had left Anadan, Syria, at sixteen to go to the U.S. for education. Seven years later he returned to the Middle East a changed man. He was a highly educated nuclear physicist, and no longer a strong believer in Islam, at least no longer the fanatic he’d been in his youth. While in the U.S. he met and fell in love with another student, the daughter of a privileged Persian family, a brilliant woman in her own right. By this point, Syria was in rubble and had no real development underway in Astarabadi’s field of expertise. Iran, the name most of the modern world uses for Persia, had an ambitious nuclear program. He accepted a position with the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the major facility under the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. The pay was excellent. His talents were needed and so the Iranian government said his Sunni background would not be an insurmountable problem, particularly after Astarabadi betrayed his Sunni heritage by accepting the Shia sect of his new wife and her family. His Sunni family in Anadan did not know of Astarabadi’s acceptance of Shia.

  Ryan anticipated these intangibles could help him. The extent of that help he couldn’t know. Within minutes of Astarabadi’s death, the Mossad would leak to the Syrian press proof of Astarabadi’s current preference for Shia. The government would still hunt for Ryan. The big unknown was how aggressively the government would hunt for the killer of a man some would consider a traitor for his betrayal of his Sunni upbringing. The resources and energy of the government would undoubtedly continue to focus on its fight against various rebel groups.

  Ryan had contacts arranged by the Mossad, but he didn’t share the specifics of the route he would take to get to his exit point. Ryan dropped exit strategy hints to others inside Syria. In truth, he could follow any of those hinted at, but, unless the plan known to the Mossad collapsed, the alternatives would be used only as red herrings. It was his experience that the most effective extraction plans routinely required some improvisation. In this part of the world, who is friend and who is foe is often indecipherable. Or, as in the case of Ahmed El Sayed, friend and foe are sometimes the same person, depending on which faction was the highest bidder. For all these reasons and more, Ryan arranged and funded alternatives in case they might become necessary.

  Ryan preferred to be on the move, dodging and weaving when necessary rather than finding a spot and waiting or hoping the wave of pursuit would pass him by. Unless forced by circumstance, he would not lie low. He would stay with his primary plan devised in concert with the Mossad. His first alternative, crafted through Ahmed El Sayed, was contact with a drug caravan that regularly moves large shipments of hashish and opium poppies west and south toward the sea near Syria’s coastal border with Lebanon. The operators of these caravans paid the Al-Assad army, as well as the Free Syria Rebel Forces, to assure safe passage for their goods. The soldiers on both sides often have family and friends who profit from the drug traffic by growing or transporting their product. Hashish and poppy derivatives was an ancient trade directly engaged in by many, which indirectly brought profits to many who looked the other way.

  El Sayed brought a representative of the smugglers to Ryan who paid the contact a large deposit, approximately half the agreed fare, with the promise of the other half when they got him inside Lebanon. There, Ryan promised the caravan would be met by an associate who would pay the remainder. Over the centuries, such caravans followed ancient routes to transport various manner of contraband throughout the Middle East. The major changes were trucks replacing camels and roads replacing ancient routes over the countryside.

  Ryan’s first order of business was tonight’s add-on mission, dealing with the man who moved the money for those who were destroying cultures and tearing the heart out of the Middle East. Tomorrow, he would carry out the reason for his being in Syria; his mission for the Mossad. After that, he would rapidly engage Escape Plan A, which could morph into Plan B. Or possibly Plan C, but that would not be his course of movement unless the wheels completely came off his exit strategy. He also had a Plan D, but it was nothing more than hopelessly heading overland toward the Jordanian border.

  It was time to deal with the crooked banker, Henry Benoit.

  10

  Ryan rushed forward on the carpeted hallway in time to hear the hollow latching sound as the door to Henri Benoit’s room in the Citadel Carlton Hotel closed. Ryan waited for a count of fifty before knocking lightly on that door.

  A French-accented man’s voice responded. “Oui, what it is?”

  “A message from my master.”

  “Quelle? Who is your master?”

  “He has forbidden me from speaking his name. You will know by the message. It is sealed. The content unknown to me. Please, I must report to my master that I have handed it to no other.”

  “Stand back,” the voice commanded.

  Ryan, dressed as a common man, lowered his head, the bill of his baseball cap hiding his face while showing the red, black and white of the Syrian national flag adorned with its green stars. His hands were together, palms up, holding a harmless looking envelope with an ancient wax seal across its flap. He imagined Benoit looking through the peephole in the door. Ryan wore Levi’s, a dark tee shirt, and coarse leather sandals. He had dirtied his feet before entering the hotel.

  The door opened partway. Benoit extended his hand out beyond the doorway to his room. “Okay. Okay. Give me the damn message.”

  With Benoit’s arm still in the air, Ryan lowered his shoulder and bulled into the room. The rotund Benoit, unfamiliar with disrespectful behavior, stumbled back. When he recovered his footing he was looking into the barrel of Ryan’s Glock.

  “Empty your pockets on the bed.”

  “How dare you. Who the hell are you?”

  Ryan walked right at him. When within arm’s length, he rammed the end of the Glock into Benoit’s soft center. Benoit slumped down onto the bed, arms spread, hands open on the mattress, gasping for breath.

  “Empty your pockets on the bed. I won’t tell you again.”

  Benoit did as he was told. Ryan took his wallet and removed the cash, a considerable amount.

  “A robbery, you’re a voleur?”

  Ryan slapped him across the face, recoiled, and brought the edge of his open hand into the flab of Benoit’s throat. “This is about far more than you can imagine. Your job is to obey me—precisely. If you please me in this way, you’ll survive. Don’t make me repeat myself. Now get your shoes on. We’re leaving the room.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  Ryan brought the butt of the Glock handle down on Benoit’s collarbone, hard, but not hard enough to break it. “Shut up and do exactly what I say. Questions will not be tolerated. Do this or die. Put your shoes on. We’re leaving the room. If you do anything to arouse suspicion, you’ll die in a pool of your own blood. Do not speak again until we reach our destination.”

  Benoit did as he was told. Ryan led him out of the room. The door locked automatically behind them. Before leaving, Ryan draped a handkerchief over his hand and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob. “Move down the hall. Stay ten feet ahead of me.” When they reached the rear of the hotel, Ryan slipped a hood over Benoit’s head and gently, so he wouldn’t fall, pushed him out onto the small deserted alley behind the Carlton. It was a few minutes past eight, so the sun was fully set. El Sayed parked along the side of the alley, moved closer. Ryan opened the back of Ahmed El Sayed’s van and guided Benoit inside, stepped in himself, and closed the door from the inside. Ryan tied Benoit’s hands, then faced forward and strummed his fingers down the wire partition that separated the back of the van from the driver’s compartment.

  El Sayed, who had remained quiet, nodded and drove out of the alley. Without speaking, El Sayed turned left at the street at the far end of the hotel. He weaved his van around mounds of rubble and a few hand-pushed carts. As they drove, through the window in the rear door, Ryan saw untouched buildings which somehow survived while standing next to others substantially destroyed. Looking forward through the van’s wire partition and windshield, the headlights illuminated eyes peering out through slots in the rubble where some homeless had taken refuge.