The Mark of the Assassin

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-Barth 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