The Mark of the Assassin

Sea. For the next two days the Krista was
    filled with the playful screams and shouts of hundreds of skaters
    gliding over the frozen surface of the Prinsengracht. Each evening he
    would collect Astrid from the bookshop and take her to a different
    restaurant. Afterward they would stroll the windswept canals and drink
    De Koninck beer in the cannabis-scented bars of the Leidseplein. She
    made love to him for two nights, then turned her back to him for the
    next two. Her sleep was fitful, troubled by nightmares. On the night
    before their departure she awoke in a panic, bathed in sweat, grabbing
    for the small Browning automatic she habitually kept on the floor next
    to the bed. She might have blown off Delaroche's head had he not wrested
    the gun from her grasp before she could release the safety. She made
    frenzied love to him and begged him never to leave her. The following
    morning broke cold and gray. They packed in silence and padlocked the
    Krista. Delaroche destroyed his paintings. Astrid telephoned the
    bookshop. She had a family emergency and needed a few days off. She
    would be in touch. They took a taxi to the Centraalstation and caught
    the early-morning train to the town of Hoek van Holland. They took
    another taxi to the ferry terminal and had a late breakfast of bread and
    eggs at a small waterfront cafe One hour later they boarded the car
    ferry for Harwich, across the North Sea, in Britain. The passage usually
    took six hours in good weather, eight or more when the seas turned
    rough. On that day a cold winter storm pushed down from the Norwegian
    Sea. Astrid, who was prone to seasickness, spent much of the journey in
    the lavatory, violently ill, cursing Delaroche's name. Delaroche stayed
    outside on the observation deck, in the glacier-scented air, watching
    the wind-driven rollers breaking across the prow of the ferry. Shortly
    before their arrival, Astrid altered her appearance. She pinned her
    blond hair close to her scalp and covered her head in a black
    shoulder-length wig. Delaroche put on a baseball hat bearing the name of
    an American cigarette and, despite the weather, his Ray-Ban sunglasses.
    The European Community makes the life of the international terrorist
    much easier because, once inside a member nation, travel to the others
    is almost free of risk. Delaroche and Astrid entered the United Kingdom
    on Dutch passports, posing as unmarried tourists, enduring only a
    cursory inspection of their travel documents by a bored British
    official. Still, De-laroche knew the British security forces routinely
    videotaped all arriving passengers, regardless of their passport. He
    knew he and Astrid had just left their first footprints. Night had
    settled over the English coastline by the time De-laroche and Astrid
    boarded the train at Harwich station. Ninety minutes later they arrived
    in London.
    FOR HIS BASE CAMP, Delaroche chose a small service flat in South
    Kensington. He rented it for a week from a company that specialized in
    providing fiats for tourists. His first act was to cancel the "service"
    aspect of the arrangement; the last thing he needed was a maid poking
    her nose into his things. The flat was modest but comfortable, with a
    fully functioning kitchen, a large sitting room, and a separate bedroom.
    The telephone line was direct, no switchboards involved, and there were
    large windows looking down onto the street. They wasted no time. The
    target was an MI-6 officer named Colin Yardley, a fifty-four-year-old
    former field officer who had served in the Soviet Union, the Mideast,
    and lately in Paris and was now awaiting forced retirement in a dead-end
    head-office desk job. He fit the profile of many intelligence officers
    at the end of their careers--burned out, bitter, divorced. He drank too
    much and put himself about with too many women. MI-6 Personnel had told
    him in no uncertain terms to knock it off. Yardley had told the flunkies
    in Personnel to fuck off. It was all in Delaroche's report. Killing him
    would be easy. The challenge would be killing him the right way. Despite
    his years in the field, Yardley had grown lazy and careless now that he
    was back in London. Each evening he took a taxi from MI-6's riverside
    headquarters to a restaurant and bar in Sloane Square. It was there he
    did his hunting: young girls attracted by his sturdy gray good looks,
    wealthy West End divorcees, bored wives looking for a night of anonymous
    sex. He arrived a few minutes after six