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There was a tap on the car window. Asare looked out to see his chief security officer reaching for the door handle. The massive car door swung open and the previously muffled sound of the crowd was suddenly full volume. Asare glanced at his assistant and turned on his full-wattage diplomat’s smile.
“Let’s do some good,” he said. “Showtime.”
CHAPTER 32
MEED WAS OUT of practice. In her prime—maybe age 14—she could have made the free climb up the building in two minutes. Now it was taking her twice as long. She kept to the shadows on the dark side of the column in order to stay hidden from spectators below. Her arms ached. Her legs burned. Her fingers were raw from finding handholds on the stone. But the last stretch was a snap. The elaborate carving on the eleventh-floor corner offered an easy foothold for her final move. As Meed swung herself over the granite top rail, she found herself facing a disorienting maze of plants and grass—a foreign landscape for a city rooftop. She stayed low, skirting around the perimeter of the roof to the west-facing side. From below, she could hear the echo of the PA system from the speaker’s platform, where a man was speaking in a smooth, friendly baritone.
“So, thank you, my friends,” the man was saying, “for this very warm Chicago welcome, and for the support you’ve given to the pursuit of peace.…”
As she reached the corner, Meed saw the sniper in a crouch below the wall, his cheek nestled against the stock of his flat-black rifle. He was totally focused—too focused to notice Meed moving quietly behind the vegetation. She saw him tighten his grip and adjust his eye against the scope. She saw his finger slide from the trigger guard to the trigger.Now!
Meed covered the short stretch between them in a split second. She kicked the long barrel into the air as the shot rang out, echoing against the opposite building. Shrill screams rose from the street below. Meed dropped hard onto the sniper’s back, her elbow in his ribs. He rolled hard to the opposite side and pulled free, then sprang to his feet. When he lifted his head, Meed took a step back, stunned. In an instant, she recognized the sniper’s face—still smooth and boyish. It had hardly changed in sixteen years.
Rishi.
He stared back at her, his expression quickly morphing from shock to recognition to fury. He unbuttoned the bulky police jacket and stripped down to his black T-shirt.
“Meed! Goddamn you!” he said. “This is not your business!”
Meed stayed cool, watching for his next move, knowing just how dangerous he was. “Does it pay well, Rishi?” she asked. “Is it worth it?”
Rishi moved back from the edge of the wall. “You should know they only pay for a body,” he said with a sneer. Suddenly, there was a blade in his hand. “Maybe I can still provide one.”
Meed slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out a knife of her own. The two former classmates circled each other slowly at the edge of a large rectangle of greenery, blocking out the shouts and sirens from below. Rishi lunged. The blade sliced the shoulder of Meed’s jacket. She followed his momentum and kicked his right leg out from underneath him. Rishi landed hard on the stone roof as his knife flew into the greenery. In a flash, Meed was on top of him, knife raised, but in the next second, Rishi hooked her legs and flipped her over. His right hand grabbed her wrist, pinning her knife hand against the roof, while his left hand hooked around her throat. Meed gasped as her windpipe was crushed flat. She tried to twist her head and punch with her free hand, but Rishi’s grip got tighter. Meed’s vision started to cloud. Jagged flares appeared in her periphery. Her chest heaved. Her back arched violently. She could feel herself fading.
Losing. Dying. Rishi leaned forward, applying more force. Feeling Rishi’s weight shift, Meed slipped one knee out from under his leg and brought it up hard into his crotch. For a split second, his grip on her throat relaxed. That was enough.
Meed shoved Rishi’s head hard to the side and rolled with him until she was on top again, her knee in his solar plexus, her knife blade poking the skin over his jugular.
“You were always better with a gun than a knife,” she gasped, her voice tight and pained.
“We all have our talents,” Rishi replied in a harsh whisper. In spite of the knife at his throat and the knee in his gut, his face suddenly relaxed. He almost looked like a kid again.
“They’ve never stopped looking for you, Meed,” he said. “Kamenev won’t stop until you’re dead.”
“Then he should have made me the target,” said Meed.
There was a loud bang as a metal door flew open on the other side of the roof, followed by heavy boot steps. Meed rolled to the side and crawled behind a stand of grass, leaving Rishi in the open as the cops rounded the corner. He sat up slowly as the officers shouted their commands: “Don’t move! Lie flat! Arms out!”
From where she was hidden, Meed could see the section of wall where Rishi’s rifle was still leaning. It was just five feet away. Suddenly Rishi jumped up and dashed toward the edge. He paused there and turned back toward Meed. Then he gave her an eerie smile.
“Stop! Freeze!” the lead officer shouted. Meed crouched back down, expecting to hear a volley of gunfire. Death by SWAT. But no shots came. The next sound she heard was the sickening crack of a body striking the street far below. As bootsteps rushed forward from the other side of the roof, Meed faded into the garden. In seconds, she was gone.
CHAPTER 33
HOURS LATER, MEED’S thighs were trembling and the muscles in her lower back were threatening to spasm. She had spent the long afternoon braced in a shadow of one of the building’s side columns, waiting for the excitement to fade. It was after dark when she made her final descent, a few inches at a time. By the time she dropped the last few feet to the sidewalk, pedestrians hardly noticed. The security cordons were gone. The only remaining flashing lights reflected from the messy suicide scene at the front of the building.
As she walked back through the city, Meed kept her eyes down, her head low.
She knew Rishi had told her the truth. A save like this had been a huge risk. What if it had all been a lure? What if there were other assassins on other rooftops, aiming down at her? She tugged her beret tight over her hair and walked west, then south again. Twenty minutes later, when she was certain she wasn’t being tailed, she headed for home.
The moment she walked out of the elevator into the loft, she saw a pile of chains lying loose across the workout bench. She looked to the right. The professor was enjoying a protein shake in the kitchen, his feet up on the counter. As soon as he saw Meed, he lifted his hand triumphantly.
He was holding a hairpin.
“Lose something?” he asked with a self-satisfied grin. So proud of himself.
“I shouldn’t have made it so obvious,” said Meed. The professor’s cheer faded a little. He held up the small cake of clay, with a hole where the fuse had been pulled out.
