The Mark of the Assassin by Daniel Silva Read Free Book Online Page A

Building. Susanna thought she knew where Elliott was dining tonight.
    The car made a series of left turns and two minutes later stopped at the South Gate of the White House grounds. A uniformed Secret Service agent stepped forward, peered into the back of the sedan, and ordered the driver to proceed.
    Susanna Dayton kept driving. She needed a place to wait. Sitting in a parked car for any length of time around the White House was not a good idea these days. The Secret Service had tightened security after a series of attacks on the mansion. She might be approached and questioned. A report might be taken.
    She parked on 17th Street. There was a small café across the street from the Old EOB that stayed open late. She grabbed her bag, bulging with newspapers, magazines, and her laptop, and got out. She hurried across the street through the rain and ducked into the café. The place was empty. She ordered a tuna sandwich and a cup of coffee and made a place for herself at a window table while she waited.
    She pulled the laptop from her bag, adjusted the screen, and turned on the power. Then she inserted a disk into the floppy drive and opened a file. When it came onto the screen, the file appeared as a meaningless series of letters and characters. Susanna was cautious by nature—many of her colleagues preferred the word “paranoid”—and she used encryption software to protect all her sensitive files. She typed a seven-letter code name, and the file came to life.
    The sandwich and coffee arrived. She scrolled down through the file: names, dates, places, amounts. Everything she knew about the elusive Mitchell Elliott and his links to President Beckwith. She added the events of this evening to the file.
    Then she shut down the computer and settled in for a long wait.

5
     
    LONDON
     
    The fax arrived in the Times newsroom shortly after midnight. It remained on the machine untouched for nearly twenty minutes, until a young assistant bothered to retrieve it. The assistant read it quickly once and took it to the night editor, Niles Ferguson. A thirty-year veteran, Ferguson had seen many faxes like it before—from the IRA, the PLO, Islamic Jihad, and the crazies who simply claim responsibility anytime someone dies violently. This one didn’t look like the work of a lunatic.
    Ferguson had a special telephone number for situations like these. He punched it and waited. A woman’s voice answered, pleasant, faintly erotic.
    “This is Niles Ferguson, the Times. I just received a rather interesting fax in our newsroom. I’m no expert, but it looks authentic. Perhaps you should have a look.”
    Ferguson made a copy of the fax and kept the original for himself. He personally carried it downstairs to the lobby and waited. Five minutes later the car arrived. A young man with pockmarked skin and a cigarette between his lips came into the lobby and took possession of the fax. Niles Ferguson went back upstairs.
    The man with the pockmarked face worked for Britain’s Security Service, better known as MI5, which is responsible for counterintelligence, internal subversion, and counterterrorism within the British Isles. He hand-carried the copy of the fax to MI5’s glass and steel headquarters overlooking the Thames and presented it to the senior duty officer.
    The duty officer quickly made two calls. The first was reluctantly placed to his counterpart at the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, which is responsible for gathering intelligence overseas and therefore considers itself the more glamorous and significant of the two services. The second call was to MI5’s liaison officer at the CIA’s generously staffed London Station, located across town within the U.S. embassy complex at Grosvenor Square.
    Within two minutes a copy of the letter was sent to Grosvenor Square by secure fax. Ten minutes later a typist had entered it into the computer system and forwarded it to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The agency’s