The Assassin Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t you?”
    “I’m getting a little whiff of evil,” Grafton agreed. “And if he’s really hidden in there somewhere, some of those seven people are probably going to get killed. Maybe all of them. If we put bodyguards around them, we’ll never see the tiger.”
    “Presumably Winchester and the others know what’s on the line.”
    “I doubt it,” Grafton said sourly. “They think getting arrested is the big risk. They’ve all got tons of money, armies of lawyers, gilt-edged reputations. They know they can beat the charges or plead them out and get some minimum sentence. Here and abroad. They’re all filthy rich, so they don’t really care about money or bad publicity. The Americans will think a pardon is a possibility when the president leaves office. The last thing on their minds is winding up in a coffin.”
    Sal Molina was not squeamish. “Innocent people get murdered every day by terrorists. Casualties are inevitable.”
    Jake Grafton only grunted. He worked on his beer and idly watched the ball game on television.
    Sal Molina took a long pull of beer, then said, “Car bombs alone kill dozens of people around the globe every day. True, Abu Qasim and his minions aren’t responsible for all of them, or even most of them, but they do their share. And they are the people capable of pulling off big, complex operations, such as shooting down airliners, blowing up trains, sinking ships, assassinating heads of state … How many casualties are you willing to take to get Qasim?”
    Abu Qasim was the most dangerous terrorist alive, in the opinion of most of the people in the upper echelons of the intelligence community. Grafton had crossed swords with him once before, and Qasim escaped alive. And Marisa Petrou had been close by.
    Sal Molina, the lawyer, bored in. “One … ten … a hundred … a thousand ?”
    “That if the question, isn’t it?” Grafton murmured. “Winchester and his buddies better update their wills and get right with the man upstairs.”
    “You’ll give it a try, then?”
    Grafton finished his beer and crushed the can in his fist. “I don’t think that using this cabal creates more risk for my people. In the final analysis, the job is fighting terrorism, one way or the other.”
    “Winchester and his friends are all volunteers,” Molina said, “for whatever reasons they think are good enough. Your clandestine operators are also volunteers.”
    “Don’t give me that shit, Sal. We don’t send people to commit suicide. Not for God, or Allah, or the holy flag, or any other reason under the sun. We send people to take calculated risks to achieve results that we hope will benefit all the citizens of this republic. And I’m the idiot who calculates the risks and has to live with the outcome, good or bad.”
    The silence that followed that comment was broken when Molina murmured, “Sorry.”
    “All things considered,” Jake Grafton finally said, “I think we should give it a try.”
    Winchester’s estate in eastern Connecticut comprised almost fifty acres. His wife owned thoroughbreds, and although she was gone, the horses weren’t. They sported in pastures doing horsey things behind carefully painted white board fences. The barn was recognizably a barn, painted white and trimmed in red and blue. It had paved floors and stalls and mechanized hay-bale-moving equipment. I thought it needed a chew mail pouch sign on the side, but there wasn’t one.
    I stood in the middle of the barn looking at the horses, some of whom were in their stalls looking at me. They looked a lot smarter than some of the people I spend my time with.
    “It doesn’t even smell like a barn,” I said to Jake Grafton, who was standing beside me looking around in silent amazement. “Look up there.” I pointed. “Aren’t those odorizers of some type? I thought I smelled lavender.”
    Grafton looked, shook his head and walked out of the barn without saying good-bye to the horses. I trailed along behind