The Mark of the Assassin

her mouth gently, so as not to hurt the cut on her lip. He
    unbuttoned her galabia and kissed her breasts and the ugly mark left by
    Stoltenberg's hand. He slid down her body and pushed up the galabia. The
    terror she had felt hours earlier melted with the exquisite sensation of
    what he was doing between her thighs. "Where will we live?" she asked
    softly. "By the sea," he said, and resumed. "Will you do this to me by
    the sea, Jean-Paul?"
    She felt his head nod between her legs. "Will you do this to me often by
    the sea, Jean-Paul?"
    But it was a silly question, and he did not answer it. She took his head
    and pulled him tightly against her body. She wanted to tell him she
    loved him, but she knew such things would never be said aloud.
    Afterward, he lay next to her, softly breathing. "Do you sleep at night,
    Jean-Paul?"
    "Some nights are better than others."
    "Do you see them?"
    "I see them for a while, and then they go away."
    "Why do you kill them that way? Why do you shoot them in the face three
    times?"
    "Because I want them to know I exist."
    Her eyes closed, and she drifted toward sleep. "Are you the Beast,
    Jean-Paul?"
    "What are you talking about?"
    "The Beast," she repeated. "The Devil. Perhaps you leave your mark on
    their faces because you're the Beast."
    "The people I kill are wicked men. If I don't kill them, someone else
    will. It's just business, nothing more."
    "It's more than business with you, Jean-Paul. It's--" She hesitated, and
    for a moment he thought she was finally asleep. "It's art, Jean-Paul.
    Your killing is like art."
    "Go to sleep, Astrid."
    "Wait for me to fall asleep before you do, Jean-Paul."
    "I'll wait," he said. She was quiet for another moment; then she said,
    "When you retire, what will become of Arbatov?"
    "I suppose he'll have to retire too," Delaroche said. "He's an old man
    anyway."
    Are you the Devil, Jean-Paul?" Astrid said, but she was asleep before he
    could answer.
    SHE DUG IT FROM HER BAG in the moments before dawn, the little item from
    Le Monde about a retired Russian diplomat killed by street thugs in
    Paris. Delaroche was sleeping--or pretending to sleep, she was never
    sure. She carried the clipping to Fahmy's treacherous balcony and read
    it once more in the beige dawn. Perhaps it wasn't Jean-Paul, she
    thought. Perhaps it really was just a robbery. Cairo stirred beneath
    her. A zabbaleen entered the alley, a little girl, dressed in rags,
    sleepily flicking an ass with a switch. The muezzin screamed. A thousand
    more joined in. She touched a match to the clipping and held it aloft
    until flame engulfed it. Then she released it and watched it drift
    downward, until it came to rest on a pile of garbage and turned to gray
    ash.
    CHAPTER 29.
    Cairo.
    THE TAXI RIDE from the airport had taken nearly as long as the flight
    from Rome. It was hot, even for November, and there was no
    air-conditioning in the well-worn little Flat. Michael sat back and
    tried to relax. He knew getting agitated would only make matters worse;
    Cairo was like a trick knot that became tighter the more you struggled.
    The driver assumed Michael was a rich Egyptian back from a Roman
    holiday, and he prattled on about how bad things had become. He had the
    modest robe and unkempt beard of a devout Muslim. The road was choked
    with every conceivable type of transport: cars, buses, and trucks
    belching diesel fumes, donkey carts, bicycles, and pedestrians. A wispy
    boy shoved a live chicken in Michael's face and asked if he wanted to
    buy it. The driver shouted him away. A colossal image of the Egyptian
    president smiled down benevolently from a roadside billboard. "He
    wouldn't be smiling if he were stuck in this traffic with the rest of
    us," the driver murmured. Michael had never lived in Cairo, but he had
    spent a great deal of time there. He had served as the control officer
    for an important agent inside the Mukhabarat, the all-pervasive Egyptian
    security service. The agent didn't want to be debriefed by an officer
    from Cairo Station--he knew the embassy and the CIA residents were well
    monitored--so Michael slipped into Egypt from time to time, posing as a
    businessman, and did the debriefing himself. The agent provided valuable
    intelligence on the state of radical Islam in Egypt, the most important
    U.S. ally in the Arab world. Sometimes the information flowed the other
    way. When Michael learned of a plot to assassinate the Egyptian interior
    minister, he passed the information to this