The Assassin. Andrew Britton
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“Come on, we’ve got to—”
“No! We do it right here.” Anita swore under her breath, furious at being caught out of position, but determined to make the best of it. She turned her back to the crowd and fixed her hair, checked her mic, and smoothed her shirt in one fast motion. “Give me the count, Tim. Let’s go. We’ll make it work.”
As Hoffman settled the camera onto his shoulder, Anita felt herself slipping into the mode she knew so well: restrained enthusiasm, shoulders back, chin up…She was completely calm, a poised professional. This was the best part of her job, and as she looked into the lens and silently composed her introduction, she was reminded of why she loved her work so much.
“Okay, you’re on in five, four—”
Hoffman’s voice was suddenly drowned out by a thunderous boom overhead. Confined by the building’s walls, the sound was strangely muffled, and Anita didn’t immediately recognize it for what it was. Apparently, neither did anyone else; they were all looking up in confusion, except for the visitor’s bodyguards, who were already dragging their charge back to the doors. The noise was almost like thunder, but sharper, not as prolonged….
And then came the second explosion.
Turning to the right, she saw it unfold with terrible clarity. A massive fireball emerged from the eastern stairwell, engulfing Penny Marshall, her crew, and a dozen bystanders in a blossoming cloud of orange fire. Anita had no time to react as something hard and hot heaved her into the air, twisting her limbs in directions they were simply not designed for.
When she finally hit the ground, she did so awkwardly, something sharp lancing up her right arm. She blacked out for a split second, and when she came back, the pain was the first thing she noticed, but it was more than pain; it was pure agony.
She hurt all over, but her injuries, as bad as they were, were eclipsed by the surrounding images. She couldn’t hear for some reason, and the silent scenes played out in a nightmarish collage: bloodied arms and splayed fingers tearing the air, mouths stretching open in silent screams, the dancing, blazing figures of those who’d been closest to the opposite stairwell.
It was just too much. Too much, too fast. Anita tried to let out her own scream of horror and pain, but it lodged in her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to block out what she was seeing, but it was too late; the images were already seared into her mind. If that wasn’t enough, an elusive piece of information was pressing against her subconscious, trying to inform her of a more serious problem.
And then she realized she didn’t hurt anymore.
The knowledge swept over her in a terrible wave. No pain meant no chance…She didn’t know where that thought had come from, but it played over and over in her mind like a terrible mantra, and she knew it was right. No pain, no chance. No pain, no chance. No pain…
She desperately wanted to feel something, anything, but her surroundings were already slipping away. As the darkness moved in, she wasn’t sure if the debris falling around her was real or part of a panic-induced hallucination. Pieces of plaster and marble were dropping down from the ceiling, smaller chunks at first, and then giant slabs of heavy material, crashing down to the blood-streaked floor.
Only a few seconds had passed, but no one was dancing anymore; the bodies lay still, black figures wreathed in orange flames. Anita tried to move her arms, her eyes fixed on the shattered main entrance and the open air beyond, but nothing was working.
And then she felt a sharp, sudden pressure at the back of her neck, and the darkness closed in once and for all.
CHAPTER 1
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dusk was settling over the city skyline, layers of gray falling through rain-laden clouds as a black Lincoln Town Car sped south along the river on the George Washington Parkway. From the front passenger seat, Jonathan Harper gazed out across the Potomac as riverside lamps pushed weak yellow light over the black water. Although his eyes never strayed from the passing scenery, his mind was in another place altogether, fixed on the news that had come into his office less than four hours earlier. As a result, he wasn’t really paying attention to the radio, which was tuned to a local news station and playing softly in the background. When the commentary began to align with his own ruminations, though, he leaned forward and turned up the volume.
“In Baghdad today, U.S. and Iraqi forces were put on high alert. Additional checkpoints were set up throughout the city, and the State Department updated the travel warnings already in place. This, following the attempted assassination of Nuri al-Maliki in the Iraqi capital. At approximately 12:14 AM Baghdad time, a pair of massive bombs tore apart the second and third floors of the Babylon Hotel, located just south of the International Zone. According to embassy officials, the prime minister survived the near-simultaneous blasts, although his condition is believed to be critical. Preliminary reports indicate that as many as twenty-five American civilians, mostly reporters embedded with the U.S. forces, are still unaccounted for and believed dead in the aftermath of the attack.
“In a press briefing held earlier today at the White House, President David Brenneman condemned the bombing and offered condolences to the families of those who were killed. In a surprising sidebar, he also reaffirmed his commitment to the goal of force reductions in the region. These reductions are an integral part of the president’s reelection platform, as they provide for the scaled withdrawal of U.S. forces over the course of five years. The president’s plan, which also calls for the return of four of eighteen provinces to Iraqi control by next April, has been ridiculed by the Democratic leadership as too conservative in scope. Even so, with this most recent incident, many are wondering if the president will be forced to rescind his promise to the families of America’s servicemen and women, a move which would almost certainly cost him the election in November.
“Moving on to other news, demonstrations in Beirut were brought to a halt yesterday when—”
Harper switched off the radio. The report hadn’t told him anything new, which wasn’t surprising. He already knew far more about the current situation than the Washington press corps ever would, despite their collective fact-gathering abilities.
As both the deputy director of operations (DDO) and director of the newly formed National Clandestine Service, Jonathan Harper shared the number three spot in the Central Intelligence Agency with his counterpart in the Intelligence Directorate. Despite his seniority, only a handful of people on the Hill could have picked him out of a crowd. The reason for this was simple: the name of the presiding DDO was almost never released to the public, the sole exception being Jim Pavitt’s appearance before the 9/11 Commission in 2004. Even Harper’s appearance seemed to lend itself to anonymity. His wife often joked that the conservative Brooks Brothers suits he favored were hardly worth the cost, as they made him all but invisible in a well-dressed city such as Washington, D.C.
It was, of course, an image he had long cultivated, and for good reason; his ability to blend into the background had saved his life on more than one occasion in his early years with the Agency. He’d spent much of the eighties running agents in the former Soviet Union, as well as sneaking high-value defectors out of the country through the western wastelands of Belarus and Bulgaria. Recently, his roles had been better suited to his age and station, which made them more ambiguous and much less interesting. Among other things, he had been assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office and a number of foreign embassies before assuming his current position four years earlier.
Harper’s gaze drifted back to the window as his driver turned left on 17th Street. He wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming meeting, as he knew it probably wouldn’t go well for him. As it stood, the Agency’s presence in Iraq was extremely limited, despite popular belief to the contrary. He had made a case for additional funding and personnel earlier in the year, only to see his proposal shot down by the newly installed deputy executive director. This fact, he was sure, had not been revealed to the president. Harper’s immediate supervisor was a skilled politician in her own right and more than capable of presenting the facts in accordance with her own ambitions. As a result, Harper was sure that she had managed to relieve