The President Is Missing(36)

This is our code for a status update: so far so good. But I’m not sure everything is so good so far. I’m late to the ball game. Did he already come and go? Did I miss him?

That couldn’t be. But there’s nothing I can do but sit here and wait and watch the game. The Mets pitcher has a live arm but overthrows his split-fingered fastball, which is why it won’t drop. The Nationals leadoff hitter, a lefty, is in an obvious bunt situation with men on first and second and the third baseman staying back. The pitcher should throw high and inside, but he doesn’t. He gets lucky when the batter can’t get the bunt down either time he tries. Ultimately, with two strikes, the kid lofts a long fly ball to deep left field, toward me. Instinctively the crowd rises, but he got under it too much, and the Mets left fielder hauls it in short of the warning track.

When we all sit back down, someone in my peripheral vision is still standing, angling down the row toward me. He is wearing a Nationals cap that looks brand-new, but otherwise he looks completely out of place at a baseball game. I know instantly that the seat he’s going to take is the open one next to mine.

This man is Nina’s partner. It’s time.





Chapter

22



The assassin known as Bach closes the door, locking herself in the small bathroom. She draws a shaky breath, drops to her knees, and vomits into the toilet.

When she’s done, her eyes stinging, her stomach knotted up, she takes a breath and falls back on her haunches. This is no good. Unacceptable.

When she’s able to, she stands up, flushes the toilet, and uses Clorox wipes to thoroughly scrub the toilet, then flushes the wipes, too. No trace evidence, no DNA.

That is the last time she will vomit tonight. Period.

She checks herself in the dingy mirror above the sink. Her wig is blond, a bun. Her uniform is sky blue. Not optimal, but she didn’t get to pick the outfits worn by the cleaning crew at the Camden South Capitol apartments.

When she emerges from the bathroom into the maintenance room, the three men are still standing there, likewise dressed in light-blue shirts and dark trousers. One of the men is so muscular that his biceps and chest nearly bulge out of his shirt. She took an instant dislike to him when she met him earlier today. First because he stands out. Nobody in their profession should stand out. And second because he has probably relied too often on his brute strength and not enough on wits and skill and a nasty temperament.

The other two are acceptable. Wiry and solid but not physically impressive. Homely, forgettable faces.

“Feeling better?” the muscle-bound guy says. The other two react with a smile until they see the look on Bach’s face.

“Better than you’re going to feel,” she says, “if you ask me that again.”

Don’t mess with a woman in her first trimester of pregnancy, with morning sickness that isn’t limited, apparently, to the morning. Especially one who specializes in high-risk assassinations.

She turns to the leader of the trio, a bald man with a glass eye.

He raises his hands in apology. “No disrespect, no disrespect,” he says. His English is good, though heavily accented—the Czech Republic, if she’s guessing.

She puts out her hand. The leader hands her an earbud. She fits it in her ear, and the man does the same.

“Status?” she asks.

Through her earbud comes the answer. “He has arrived. Our team is ready.”

“Then we will all take our positions,” she says.

With her weapon case and duffel bag in tow, Bach takes the freight elevator. While inside, she removes a black coat from her bag and puts it on. She removes her wig for the time being and puts on a black ski cap. She is now dressed from head to toe in black.

She gets off the elevator at the top and climbs the stairs to the door to the roof. As promised, it is unlocked. The wind on the roof is swirling, but it’s nothing for which she can’t adjust. She feels certain it will rain at some point. But at least it has held off until now. Had this silly sporting event been canceled altogether, her operation would have been aborted.

So now she must be prepared for the rain interrupting this sports contest, forcing thousands of people out at once, hidden amid a sea of umbrellas. She once killed a Turkish ambassador by firing a bullet through an umbrella into his brain, but he was with only one other person on a quiet street. Her problem tonight will be acquiring her target in the first scenario—should a mass of people move simultaneously through the exits.

That’s what the ground teams are for.

She opens her weapon case using the thumb recognition and assembles Anna Magdalena, her semiautomatic rifle, mounting the tactical scope, loading the magazine.

She moves into place, crouching down under the cover of near darkness. The sun will set in less than twenty minutes, which will obscure her position on the roof all the more.

She gets herself into position and focuses the scope. She finds the entrance she’s looking for, the left-field gate.

She will wait. It could be five minutes. It could be three hours. And then she will be called upon to act almost immediately with deadly precision. But this is what she does, and she has never failed.

Oh, how she longs to put on her headphones and listen to a piano concerto! But every job is different, and for this one, she needs an advance team giving her prompts in her ear. They could come at any time, so instead of listening to Andrea Bacchetti playing Keyboard Concerto no. 4 at the Teatro Olimpico di Vicenza, she listens to automobile traffic, the cheers of a crowded stadium, blasts of organ music revving up the crowd, and occasional updates from the advance team.