The Mark of the Assassin

expensive address. Delaroche admired her work from his
    vantage point in the square. He felt something else--a flash of
    tenderness. He reached inside his coat and felt for the butt of the
    Glock.
    THE NEXT PART went according to plan. Astrid leaned forward and
    whispered in his ear. Yardley paid the check and collected their coats.
    Two minutes later, they were climbing into a taxi. Delaroche watched
    them go. He rose and walked slowly after them, across Sloane Square,
    westward along the King's Road. He was not alarmed when the taxi
    disappeared from sight; he knew exactly where they were going, Yardley's
    home in Wellington Square. Get him inside the house, Astrid. Tell him
    you're in a hurry. Tell him your husband will be crazy if you're gone
    too long.
    Take him straight to bed. Don't worry about the door. I'll take care of
    the door. Delaroche turned left off the King's Road and entered the
    stillness of Wellington Square. The noise of the rush-hour traffic faded
    to a pleasant drone. A gentle rain began to fall. De-laroche walked
    quickly across the square, collar up, hands pushed deeply into his
    pockets. Yardley's house was dark, perfect. The front door lock provided
    little challenge, and after a few seconds he was inside. He heard the
    sound of voices upstairs in the bedroom. Astrid had done her job well.
    When Delaroche entered the room he found Yardley resting against the
    headboard, stripped to his shirt and his socks, masturbating while
    Astrid performed a slow striptease for him at the foot of the bed. For
    an instant Delaroche actually felt sorry for the man. He was about to
    die a most humiliating death. Delaroche removed the Glock from the
    waistband of his trousers and stepped inside the room. Alarm registered
    instantly on Yardley's face. Astrid stopped dancing and stepped aside.
    Delaroche took her place at the end of the bed. Then his arm swung up,
    and he shot Colin Yardley rapidly, three times in the face. The body
    tumbled from the bed onto the floor. Astrid stepped forward, kicked
    Yardley's head with the toe of her Bruno Magli shoe, and spit on his
    face. Astrid the revolutionary.
    DELAROCHE INFORMED THE MANAGEMENT COMPANY that he would have to cut
    short his London vacation due to a family emergency. Before leaving the
    flat he logged on to the laptop and sent a brief encrypted message to
    his employers, informing them that the job had been carried out and
    please wire the specified funds to the specified account in Zurich. He
    and Astrid took a late train to Dover and spent the night in a quaint
    seaside bed and breakfast. In the morning they took the first ferry to
    Calais, where they hired a Renault car and drove northward along the
    Channel coast. By nightfall, they were back aboard the Krista, on the
    quiet Prinsengracht in Amsterdam.
    THE BODY OF COLIN YARDLEY was discovered early that afternoon, as
    Delaroche and Astrid were passing from France into Belgium. mi-6
    Personnel Security became alarmed when he did not arrive for work and
    when repeated calls to his Wellington Square residence went unanswered.
    An mi-6 team broke into the house shortly after 1 P.M. and discovered
    the body in the upstairs bedroom. The Metropolitan Police, however, were
    not informed of the death until four~fifteen. The BBC reported the
    shooting death of an unidentified man on its Nine O'Clock News. By the
    time ITN went on the air at ten, the corpse had a name and a job: Colin
    Yardley, a mid-level Foreign Office clerk. During the program, a
    telephone call arrived at the news desk. The caller said the Provisional
    Irish Republican Army had carried out Yardley's murder. The caller
    provided the special recognition code to prove the claim was authentic.
    By morning BBC reporters had uncovered Yardley's true occupation-that he
    was a career member of the Secret Intelligence Service, mi-6. Jean-Paul
    Delaroche listened to the BBC aboard the Krista. He switched off the
    radio when it was over and then settled in with his maps and his
    computer, plotting the next killing.
    He telephoned Zurich. Herr Becker confirmed one million dollars had been
    wired into the account that morning. De-laroche instructed him to
    transfer the money to four Bahamian accounts, a quarter million for
    each. The sun came out at midday. He borrowed Astrid's bicycle and spent
    the rest of the afternoon painting along the banks of the Amstel River,
    until the image of Yardley's exploded face was erased from his
    conscience.
    CHAPTER