The Mark of the Assassin

wall, and down the other side on the rope ladder. On
    the King's Road he caught a taxi and went to Victoria Station. He
    purchased a ticket to Rome with the cash from Graham's safe. The train
    was leaving in an hour. Wheaton, if he were smart, would be watching the
    airports and the rail stations. Michael purchased a waterproof hat at a
    kiosk and pulled it low over his brow. He went outside and waited in the
    rain. Five minutes before the train was due to depart he went back
    inside the station and walked quickly to the platform. He boarded the
    train and quickly found an empty compartment. He sat alone in the
    half-darkness for a long time, listening to the rhythmic clatter of the
    train, looking at his reflection in the glass, thinking about it all.
    Then, as the train cleared the Channel tunnel and raced southward across
    France toward Paris, he fell into a light, dreamless sleep.
    London THE DIRECTOR WATCHED the ITN ten o'clock news as his chauffeured
    silver Jaguar purred through the streets of the West End. He had dined
    poorly on overcooked lamb at his Mayfair supper club, where the rest of
    the members believed he was a successful international venture
    capitalist, an accurate description of his work to a degree. A handful
    suspected he had done a lap or two for Intelligence once upon a time.
    One or two knew the truth--that he had actually been the
    director-general, the legendary C, of the Secret Intelligence Service.
    Thank God he had worked for the Service in the old days, when the
    Department officially did not exist and directors had the good sense to
    keep their names and photographs out of the newspapers. Imagine, the
    head of the Service granting an interview to The Guardian--heresy,
    lunacy. The Director believed spies and intelligence services were
    rather like rats and cockroaches. Better to keep up the pretense they
    don't really exist. Helps a free society sleep better at night. The
    attack on the Dover-to-Calais ferry dominated the news. The Director was
    furious, though his tranquil face projected nothing but bored insolence.
    After a lifetime in the shadows his dissembling was art. He was narrow
    of head and hips, with sandstone hair gone to gray and bleached
    surgeon's hands that always seemed to be holding a smoldering cigarette
    of a length fit for a glossy magazine advertisement. His eyes were the
    color of seawater in winter, his mouth small and cruel. He lived alone
    in St. John's Wood with a boy from the Society for protection and a
    pretty girl who did paperwork and looked after him. He had never
    married, had no children, no known parentage. The office jesters at the
    Service used to say he had been found in early middle age in a basket on
    the banks of the Thames, dressed in a chalk-stripe suit, Guards tie, and
    handmade shoes. He switched off the television and looked out his
    window, watching the London night sweep past. He detested failure more
    than anything else, even betrayal. Betrayal required intelligence and
    ruthlessness, failure only stupidity or lack of concentration. The men
    he had dispatched for the job on the ferry had been given every resource
    needed to guarantee success, yet they had failed. Michael Osbourne
    clearly was a worthy opponent, a man of talent, intelligence, and
    ingenuity. Osbourne was good; his killer would have to be better. The
    car drew to a stop outside the house. His driver, a former member of the
    elite Special Air Service commandos, escorted the Director to the front
    entrance and saw him inside. The girl was waiting, a toffee-colored
    Jamaican sculpture called Daphne. She wore a white blouse, unbuttoned to
    the ledge of her ample breasts, and a black skirt that fell midway
    across bare thighs. Sun-streaked brown hair lay about square shoulders.
    "Mr. Elliott is on the line from Colorado, sir," she said. There was a
    trace of East Indian lilt in her voice that the Director had spent
    thousands of pounds in speech therapy to eliminate. Names were permitted
    inside the Mayfair residence, for it was swept for bugs regularly and
    the walls were impermeable to outside directional microphones. The
    Director went into the study and punched the flashing light on his black
    multiline telephone. Daphne came into the room, poured a half inch of
    thirty-year-old scotch into a tumbler, and handed it to him. She
    remained in the room as he spoke, for there were no secrets between
    them. "What went wrong?" Elliott said. "Mr. Awad brought protection, and
    so