The Assassin by Stephen Coonts Page A

yogurt.
    “Good morning, Tommy,” she said brightly. She had long hair that she wore frizzy, which hid most of her face. What you saw was the mountain of hair above the sweatshirt—today she was advertising New York University—and, peeking out of the hair, the big glasses, which magnified her green eyes. The glasses dwarfed her nose, which was working overtime holding those things up.
    “That your breakfast?” I asked, glancing at the yogurt.
    She flourished a plastic spoon. “Oh, yes. I’m so healthy that sometimes I can’t stand myself.”
    “A common affliction among certain classes,” I replied politely. I slurped at my coffee, which was still warm.
    “We haven’t really had a chance to get to know each other,” Robin said as she tore off the foil from her yogurt.
    “Hmm.”
    “Mr. Grafton said you’re single.”
    “He did-“
    “And unattached.”
    I made a mental note to remind the admiral that loose lips sink ships.
    “So am I,” she said brightly.
    I said something polite and hit the road. Didn’t really want any more coffee, after all.
    “Do you have any grandkids?” Sal Molina asked Jake Grafton. They were in the basement of Molina’s Bethesda home. Molina was sitting on the floor putting a tricycle together. Parts were strewn around, and he had the directions within easy reach. Grafton found a clean spot on the sofa and sat down.
    “Not yet,” Grafton said. “Amy is still looking for Mr. Right.”
    “That damn guy is hard to find,” Sal admitted. With his glasses in place, he glanced at the directions, then selected a washer and cotter pin from a small pile and began installing a rear wheel. “Talk to me,” he said. “Alexander Surkov.”
    “Surkov was Oleg Tchernychenko’s chief lieutenant, and presumably Tchernychenko told him about the data-mining op we put in Tchernychenko’s company. Tchernychenko trusted him, and we needed a bag man, a man to carry money, around Europe and the Middle East to our soldiers. So through Tchernychenko, we used Surkov. I thought he would be better than an American at delivering the money.”
    “But you didn’t trust him?”
    “He was in a position to betray my people.”
    “What do you think? Did he sell us out?”
    Grafton took his time with that question. “Surkov was living very well in the U.K., even for an expatriate with serious connections, making serious money. It’s possible he was selling information to anyone with cash to buy.”
    “To al-Qaeda? Abu Qasim?”
    “Perhaps. Or he may have sold information about Tchernychenko’s business to one of his boss’ competitors. Or to the Russian government. In any event, he deposited a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in his London bank three weeks ago, a check drawn on the account of a shell corporation based in the Seychelles. The check was good.”
    “How likely is it that the Russians poisoned him?”
    “The two men who ate dinner with him are the most probable villains, but one wonders if the orders really came from Moscow.” Grafton told Molina about his meeting with Janos Ilin as Sal finished with one of the tricycle’s rear wheels and began on the second one.
    “The amazing thing,” Grafton concluded, “is that I had a man watching Surkov when he was poisoned. That is, assuming the British police’s theory that he was poisoned at the restaurant holds up.”
    “You had a tail on Surkov?”
    “We couldn’t watch him around the clock—we don’t have the resources—so we were doing the best we could with what we had. We monitored his landline and cell phone. Tommy Carmellini bugged his apartment and his car. Tommy was also keeping a discreet eye on who he met.”
    “Why?”
    “We lost two men last month. One of them and his girlfriend were tortured, then murdered. They took down Abdul-Zahra Mohammed, who had been running a money-laundering operation through a Russian company Tchernychenko has a finger in. The al-Qaeda guys aren’t stupid. Sooner or later they are