The Mark of the Assassin

PLO
    spokesman. Shamron had no qualms about his work. Palestinian guerrillas
    broke into his family home in 1964 and murdered his parents as they
    slept. His hatred of Palestinians and their leaders was limitless. But
    now his hatred had turned to those Israelis who would make peace with
    killers like Arafat and Assad. He had spent his life defending Israel;
    he dreamed of a Greater Israel stretching from the Sinai to the West
    Bank. Now the peacemakers wanted to give it all away. The prime minister
    was talking openly about giving back the Golan to entice Assad to the
    peace table. Shamron remembered the dark days before 1967, when Syrian
    shells rained down on the northern Galilee from the Heights. Arafat was
    running Gaza and the West Bank. He wanted a separate Palestinian state
    with Jerusalem as its capital. Jerusalem! Shamron would never allow that
    to happen. He had sworn to use whatever means necessary to stop the
    so-called peace process dead in its tracks. If everything continued
    according to plan, he might very well have his wish. Assad would never
    come to the peace table now. Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank would boil
    over with rage when they awoke to news of the American strikes. The army
    would have to go in. There would be another round of terror and revenge.
    The peace process would be put on hold. Ari Shamron finished his tea and
    crushed out his cigarette. It was the best million dollars he ever
    spent.
    THREE THOUSAND MILES to the north, in Moscow, a similar vigil was being
    kept at the headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the
    successor to the KGB. The man in the window was General Constantin
    Kalnikov. It was just after dawn and bitter for October, even by
    Moscow's standards. Snow, driven by Siberian winds, swirled in the
    square below. Business was taking him to the Caribbean island of St.
    Maarten in a few weeks. He would enjoy a break from the never-ending
    cold. Kalnikov shuddered and drew the heavy curtains. He sat down at his
    desk and began working his way through a stack of papers. A committed
    communist, Constantin Kalnikov was recruited by the KGB in 1968. He rose
    to the top of the Second Chief Directorate, the KGB section responsible
    for counterintelligence and crushing internal subversion. When the
    Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the KGB, Kalnikov kept a senior post
    in the new service, the SVR. Kalnikov now ran Russia's intelligence
    operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The job was a joke. His
    budget was so small he had no money to pay agents or informers. He was
    powerless, just like the rest of Russia. Kalnikov had watched Boris
    Yeltsin and his successor run the Russian economy into the ground. He
    had watched the once-feared Red Army humiliated in Chechnya, watched her
    tanks rusting for lack of spare parts and fuel, watched her troops go
    hungry. He had seen the vaunted KGB turned into the laughingstock of the
    intelligence world. He knew there was nothing he could do to reverse
    Russia's course. Russia was like a vast ship casting about on a rough
    sea. She took a long time to change course, a long time to stop.
    Kalnikov had given up on his Russia, but he had not given up on himself.
    He had a family, after all--a wife, Katya, and three fine sons. Their
    photographs were the only personal touches in his otherwise cold and
    sterile office. Kalnikov had decided to use his position to enrich
    himself. He was the leader of a group of men--army officers,
    intelligence officers, members of the mafiya--who were selling Russia's
    military hardware on the open market to the highest bidder. Kalnikov and
    his men had sold nuclear technology, weapons-grade uranium, and missile
    technology to Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and Pakistan. They had
    made tens of millions of dollars in the process. He switched on CNN and
    listened to a panel of experts discussing President Beckwith's speech.
    Beckwith wanted to build a missile defense system, a shield to protect
    the United States from international madmen. Those madmen would be
    beating down Kalnikov's door soon. They would want to grab as much
    hardware as they could, and quickly. President James Beckwith had just
    started an international arms race, a race that would make Kalnikov and
    his cohorts even richer. Constantin Kalnikov smiled to himself. It was
    the best million dollars he ever spent.
    IT WAS RAINING as Elizabeth Osbourne drove westward along Massachusetts
    Avenue toward Georgetown. It had