Assassin: A Novel Read online

  “Aiuto! Aiuto!” the man shouted at them, screaming now for help, calling for the police. “Chiamate una polizia! Subito! Subito!”

  There were always a few carabinieri hanging about St. Mark’s Square, Stanfield thought feverishly. He’d just have to find one to get this goddamned thing off his back. But what could they do? Shoot it down? He was getting winded now, he realized, looking over his shoulder at that horrible flashing red eye as he raced into the nearly empty piazza. Very few people around, and no one at the distant café tables lining the square paid much attention to the screaming man since they could see no one chasing him. A drunk. A loco.

  What the fuck am I going to do? Simon Stanfield thought feverishly. I’m fast running out of gas here. And options. The familiar shapes of the Basilica of St. Mark and the Doge’s Palace loomed up before him. Can’t run much farther. Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide. His only hope was the goddamned thing hadn’t yet closed the gap. If it were meant to take him out, surely it could have easily done so already.

  Maybe this was just a really God-awful nightmare. Or this little flying horror was someone’s incredibly elaborate idea of a practical joke. Or maybe he had acquired his own personal smart bomb. He was not only running out of gas, but ideas as well. And then he had a good one.

  He angled right and made straight for the tall tower of the Campanile, swung hard right into the piazzetta leading to the canal. Pumping his knees now, Stanfield passed through the columns of San Marco and San Teodoro and kept on going. The thing was getting closer now, louder, and the chirps had solidified into a single keening note. He couldn’t see it, but he guessed the red eye wasn’t blinking anymore either.

  The Grand Canal was maybe twenty yards away.

  He might make it.

  He put his head down and barreled forward, just like the old days, an enraged bull of a Navy fullback bound for the end zone, no defenders, nothing standing between him and glory. He reached the edge, filled his lungs with air, and dove, flew into the Grand Canal.

  He clawed his way down through the cold murky water, and then he stopped, hung there a moment treading water. He opened his eyes and looked up. He couldn’t believe it.

  The little red-eyed bastard had stopped too.

  It was hovering just above him, a glowing red oval contracting and expanding on the undulating surface of the water.

  Gotcha, Stanfield thought, relief flooding him along with the realization that he’d finally managed to outwit the goddamn thing. That’s when he saw the red eye nose over and break the surface, then streak downward through the shadows towards him, growing larger and larger until it obliterated everything.

  Few people actually witnessed the strange death of Simon Clarkson Stanfield, and those who did, did so from too far away to be able to tell exactly what they’d seen.

  There were a number of gondoliers ferrying a group of late night revelers from late supper at the Hotel Cipriani back to the Danieli. Singing and laughing, few even heard the muffled explosion in the dark waters just off Venezia’s most famous plaza. One alert gondolier, Giovanni Cavalli, not only heard it, but saw the water erupt into a frothy pinkish mushroom about fifty yards from his passing gondola.

  But, Giovanni was in the midst of a full-throated rendition of “Santa Lucia” as he poled by; his clients were enraptured, and the gondolier made no move to pole over and take a closer look. Whatever he’d seen had looked so unpleasant as to surely dampen the Americans’ generosity of spirit and perhaps seal their pockets as well. Minutes later, as his gondola slid to a stop at the Hotel Danieli’s dock, he ended the solo with his famous tremolo obbligato, bowing deeply to the vigorous applause, sweeping his straw hat low before him like a matador.

  Early next morning in the Campo San Barnaba, the gondolier Giovanni Cavalli and his mother were inspecting the ripe tomatoes on the vegetable barge moored along the seawall of the plaza. Giovanni noticed the owner, his friend Marco, wrap some newly purchased fagiolini in the front page of today’s Il Giornale and hand them to an old woman.

  “Scusi,” Giovanni said, taking the bundle of green beans from the startled woman and unwrapping it. He dumped her carefully selected vegetables, just weighed and paid for, back on the heaping mound of fagiolini.

  “Ma che diavolo vuole?” the woman shrieked, asking him what the devil he wanted as he turned his back on her and spread the front page out over Marco’s beautiful vegetables. There was a picture of a very handsome silver-haired man with a huge headline that screamed: Murder In Piazza San Marco!

  “Momento, eh?” Giovanni said to the outraged woman, “Scusi, scusi.” Ignoring the woman’s flailing fists, which felt like small birds crashing blindly against his back, Giovanni devoured every word. There had indeed been a most bizarre murder in the piazza last night. An American had died under the most curious of circumstances. Witnesses said the apparently deranged man dove into the Grand Canal and simply exploded. Police were initially convinced the man had been a terrorist wearing a bomb belt who had somehow run amok. Later, when they learned the identity of the victim, a shockwave rippled throughout Italy and down the long corridors of power in Washington, D.C. The dead man was Simon Clarkson Stanfield.

  The recently appointed American Ambassador to Italy.

  Chapter One

  The Cotswolds

  THE GODS WOULD NEVER HAVE THE NERVE TO RAIN ON HIS wedding. Or, so Commander Alexander Hawke told himself. The BBC weather forecast for the Cotswolds region of England had called for light rain Saturday evening through Sunday. But Hawke, standing on the church steps of St. John’s, basking in the May sunshine, had known better.

  Hawke’s best man, Ambrose Congreve, had also decided today, Sunday, would be a perfect day. Simple deduction, really, the detective had concluded. Half the people would say that it was too hot, while the other half would say that it was too cold. Ergo, perfect. Still, he had brought along a large umbrella.

  “Not a cloud in the sky, Constable,” Hawke pointed out, his cool, penetrating blue eyes fixed on Congreve. “I told you we wouldn’t need that bloody umbrella.”

  Hawke was standing stiffly in his Royal Navy ceremonial uniform, tall and slender as a lance. Marshal Ney’s ornamental sword, a gift from his late grandfather, now polished to gleaming perfection, hung from his hip. His unruly hair, pitch-black and curly, was slicked back from his high forehead, every strand in place.

  If the groom looked too good to be true, Ambrose Congreve would assure you that this, indeed, was the case.

  Hawke’s mood had been uncharacteristically prickly all morning long. There was a definite tightness in his voice and, were Ambrose to be perfectly honest, he’d been rather snappish. Curt. Impatient.

  Where, Congreve wondered, was the easygoing, carefree bachelor, the blasé youth of yore? All morning long the best man had been giving this storybook groom a decidedly wide berth.

  Heaving one of his more ill-disguised sighs, Ambrose peered hopefully up into the now cloudless sky. It wasn’t as though Ambrose actually wished for rain on this radiant wedding day. It was just that he so despised, detested really, being wrong. “Ah. You never do know, do you?” he said to his young friend.

  “Yes, you do,” Hawke said, “Sometimes you actually do know, Constable. You’ve got the ring, I daresay?”

  “Unless it has mysteriously teleported itself from my waistcoat pocket to a parallel universe in the five minutes since your last enquiry, yes, I imagine it’s still there.”

  “Very funny. You must amuse yourself no end. And, why are we so bloody early? All this lollygagging about. Even the vicar isn’t here yet.”

  The Scotland Yard man gave his friend a narrow look and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled a small silver shooter’s flask from inside his morning coat. He unscrewed the cap and offered the flagon to the groom, who clearly was in need of fortification.

  Rising early that morning, a cheery Congreve had breakfasted alone in the butler’s pantry and then hurried out into the Hawkesmoor
gardens to paint. It was delightful sitting there beside the limpid stream. Lilacs were in bud and an unseasonably late snowfall had all but melted away. The light haze of spring green in the treetops had recently solidified. Beside the old dry-stone wall meandering through the orchard, a profusion of daffodils thick as weeds.

  He’d been sitting at his easel, slaving over what he judged to be one of his better watercolour efforts to date, when the memory of Hawke’s earlier remark stung him like a bee. Hawke had made the comment to the aged retainer, Pelham, but Ambrose, lingering at the half-opened Dutch door leading to the garden, had overheard.

  I think Ambrose’s paintings are not nearly as bad as they look, don’t you agree, Pelham?

  Of course, Hawke, his oldest and dearest friend, had meant the jibe to be witty and amusing, but, still—that’s when a solitary raindrop spattered his picture and interrupted his revery.

  He looked up. A substantial pile of gravid purple clouds was building in the west. More rain today, of all days? Ah, well, he sighed. The fat raindrop’s effect on his picture was not altogether unpleasant. Gave it a bit of cheek, he thought, and decided the painting was at last finished. This lily study was to be his gift for the bride. The title, whilst obvious to some, had for the artist a certain poetic ring. He called it The Wedding Lilies.

  Packing up his folding stool, his papers, paints, pots and brushes, he looked again at the purple clouds. The best man had decided on the spot that, while an umbrella may or may not come in handy on Alexander Hawke’s wedding day, the brandy flask was a must. Grooms, in his experience, traditionally needed a bracer when the hour was at hand.

  Hawke tilted back a quick swig.

  When Ambrose recapped the flask and slipped it back inside his black cutaway without taking a bracer for himself, Hawke shot him a surprised look.

  “Not even joining the groom in a prenuptial?” Hawke demanded of his companion. “What on earth is the world coming to?”

  “I can’t drink, I’m on duty,” Congreve said, suddenly busy with his calabash pipe, tamping some of Peterson’s Irish Blend into the bowl. “Sorry, but there it is.”

  “Duty? Not in any official sense.”

  “No, just common sense. I’m responsible for delivering you to the altar, dear boy, and I fully intend to discharge my duties properly.”

  Ambrose Congreve tried to appear stern. To his lifelong chagrin, achieving that cast of expression had never been easy. He had the bright blue eyes of a healthy baby, set in a keen but, some might say, sensitive face. His complexion, even at fifty, had the permanent pinkish pigmentation of a man who’d once had freckles lightly sprinkled across his nose.

  For all that, he was a lifelong copper who took his duties extremely seriously.

  Having gained an upper rung at the Metropolitan Police, he had had a distinguished career at New Scotland Yard, retiring four years earlier as Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. But the Yard’s current Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, unable to fill Congreve’s shoes at CID, still retained his services from time to time. Sir John was even kind enough to let him keep the use of a small office in the old Special Branch building in Whitehall Street. In the event, however, Congreve spent precious little time in that cold, damp chamber.

  Numerous globe-trotting escapades with the fidgety groom now standing beside him on the church steps had mercifully kept the famous criminalist away from his humble office and hot on the trail of various villains and scoundrels these last five years or so. Their last adventure had been a somewhat heated affair involving some rather unsavory Cuban military chaps down in the Caribbean.

  Now, on this bright morning in May, on the steps of this small “chapel of ease” in the picturesque if unfortunately named village of Upper Slaughter, the groom was giving a first-rate impression of a lamb on his way to the slaughter. Hawke’s glacial blue eyes, normally indomitable, finally wandered from the study of a lark singing in a nearby laurel to rest uneasily upon Congreve’s bemused face. Hawke’s gaze, Congreve often noted, had weight.

  “Interesting. Since I was a child, I’ve always wondered why they call this place a ‘chapel of ease,’ ” Hawke remarked.

  “Any sense of ‘ease’ being notable by its current absence?”

  “Precisely.”

  “These small chapels were originally built to ease the overflowing congregations at the main churches.”

  “Ah. That explains it. Well. My own personal demon of deduction strikes again. I’ll have another nip of that brandy if you don’t mind. Cough it up.”

  Congreve, a shortish, round figure of a man, removed his black silk top hat and ran his fingers through his disorderly thatch of chestnut brown hair. Alex had nowhere near the tolerance for alcohol he himself possessed, even at his somewhat advanced age; and so he hesitated, stalling, pinching the upturned points of his waxed moustache.

  “And, of course,” Congreve said, with a sweeping gesture that included a good deal of Gloucestershire, “Every one of those yew trees you see growing in this and every other churchyard were ordered planted there by King Edward I in the fourteenth century.”

  “Really? Why on earth should young Eddie have gone to all that bother in the first place?”

  “Provide his troops with a plentiful supply of proper wood for longbows.” Congreve had removed the flask but hesitated in the uncorking of it. “You know, dear boy, it was King Edward who—”

  “Good lord,” Hawke said, exasperated.

  “What?”

  “I want brandy, not arboreal folklore for God’s sake, Ambrose. Fork it over.”

  “Ah. Smell that air.”

  “What about it?”

  “Sweet. Mulchy.”

  “Ambrose!”

  “Alex, it’s only natural for the groom to experience certain feelings of—anxiety—at a time like this, but I really think…ah, well, here comes the wedding party.” Ambrose quickly slipped the flask back into his inside pocket.

  A procession of automobiles was winding its way up the twisting lane, bounded on either side by the hawthorn hedges, leading to the little church of St. John’s. It was a beautiful chapel really, nestled in a small valley of yews, pear trees, laurel, and rhododendron, many just now coming into full pink and white bloom, the trees filtering light onto dappled grass. The surrounding hillsides were green with leafy old forests, towering oaks, elms, and gnarled Spanish chestnuts many hundreds of years old.

  The little Norman church was built of the mellow golden limestone so familiar here in Gloucestershire. St. John’s had been the scene of countless Hawke family weddings, christenings, and funerals. Alexander Hawke himself, red-faced with rage, age two, had been christened in the baptismal font just inside the entrance. Only a mile or so from this wooded glen, stood Hawke’s ancestral country home.

  Hawkesmoor still held a prominent place in Alex’s heart and he visited his country house as frequently as possible. The foundation of the centuries old house, which overlooked a vast parkland, was built in 1150, with additions dating from the fourteenth century to the end of the reign of Elizabeth I. The roofline was a fine mix of distinctive gables and elaborate chimneys. Alex had long found great peace there, wandering about a rolling landscape laid out centuries earlier by Capability Brown.

  At the head of the parade of automobiles was Alex’s gunmetal grey 1939 Bentley Saloon. Behind the wheel, Alex could see the massive figure and smiling face of Stokely Jones, former U.S. Navy SEAL and NYPD copper and a founding member of Alexander Hawke’s merry band of warriors. Sitting up front with Stokely was Pelham Grenville, the stalwart octogenarian and family retainer who had helped to raise young Alex following the tragic murder of the boy’s parents. After the subsequent death of Alex’s grandfather, Pelham and a number of uniformly disappointed headmasters had assumed sole responsibility for the boy’s upbringing.

  “Let’s duck inside, Ambrose,” Alex said, with the first hint of a smile. “Vicky and her father are in one of those cars. Apparently, it’s unlucky f
or the groom to see the bride prior to the ceremony.”

  Congreve’s eyebrows shot straight up.

  “Yes, I believe I mentioned that custom to you any number of times at the reception last evening. At any rate, we’re supposed to have a final rendezvous with the vicar in his offices prior to the ceremony. He is here, actually, I saw his bicycle propped by the vicarage doorway as we drove up.”

  “Quickly, Constable, I think I see their car.”

  Congreve breathed a brief sigh of relief that Hawke had not bolted on him, and then followed his friend through the graceful Norman arch into the cool darkness of the little church. Now the event itself was inescapably set in motion, Alex seemed to be shaking off his case of the heebie-jeebies. Here was a man who wouldn’t blink in the face of a cocked gun. Amazing what a wedding could do to a chap, Ambrose thought, glad he’d so far managed to avoid the experience.

  The church could not have looked lovelier, Ambrose observed as they approached the rear door leading to the vicar’s office. Because of the narrow leaded glass windows, candles were needed even at this time of day and the churchwarden had lit them all. Their waxy scent mixed with the lily of the valley on the altar caused a rising tide of emotions within Ambrose’s heart. Not mixed emotions exactly, but something akin.

  He adored Vicky, everyone did. She was not only a great beauty, but also a dedicated child neurologist who had recently won acclaim for her series of children’s books. Alex had met Dr. Victoria Sweet at a dinner party thrown in her honor at the American ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park, Winfield House. Her father, the retired United States senator from Louisiana, was an old family friend of the current ambassador to the Court of St. James, Patrick Brickhouse Kelly.

  Kelly, a former U.S. Army tank commander, had come across Hawke during the first Gulf War. Hawke and “Brick,” as he called the tall, redheaded man, had remained close friends since the war. The soft-spoken American ambassador, whom Congreve now glimpsed sprinting up a side pathway to the chapel, had saved Hawke’s life in the closing days of the conflict. Now, Hawke’s chief usher was late.