Free The Cassandra Sanction by Scott Mariani Page A

remember?’
    ‘There’s faith, Raul, and then there’s self-delusion.’ Ben turnedaway from him and went to the window, stood there for a moment looking down at the street. Night had fallen and the drizzle had returned, spitting diagonally from a charcoal sky and haloed in the street lamps. One of them was flickering intermittently. Further down on the opposite side, light flooded across the slick pavement from the windows of a café-restaurant. The street was empty apart fromthe parked vehicles that lined the kerbs and the occasional passing car.
    ‘Please,’ said Raul’s voice behind him.
    Ben went on gazing out of the window for a while. His jaw was wound so tight that his teeth hurt. But under all his anger was a thread of sympathy for Raul that he couldn’t so easily let go of. He knew he should, and he knew he was being stupid and weak, but there it was.
    He turned from the window to face Raul and said, ‘All right. One more chance. But I’m warning you. Any more surprises, and you’re on your own. I mean it.’
    ‘There won’t be,’ Raul said, brightening. ‘Thank you. From my heart.’ He gave a weak smile.
    Ben grunted and did not return the smile. ‘In the morning we’ll go and talk to Klein. Now let’s eat.’
    Down in the street below, bathed inthe intermittent glow from the flickering street lamp, the watcher sat perfectly still inside the plain black Fiat panel van with an easy view of the apartment windows. He had been sitting there since not long after the silver Kia had parked at the opposite kerb outside the apartment building and its two occupants had disappeared inside. The van’s smoked glass hid him from passersby and allowed himto use the compact but powerful Canon 8x25 image-stabilising mini-binocs that were part of his kit. Another part was the Walther PPX nine-millimetre handgun nestling in its Kydex concealment holster on his belt. Those weren’t all that he had brought with him.
    Seeing a figure appear at one of the apartment’s windows that overlooked the street, he picked up the binocs. The man at the windowwas the blond one who’d hooked up with Raul Fuentes over the last couple of days. They knew all about him, his name, his former occupation, his level of expertise. Hence the Walther PPX. What they didn’t yet know, and were keen to discover, was how and why he’d suddenly appeared in the picture.
    The watcher went on watching. Ben Hope was half-silhouetted in the light from the apartment, butenough showed of his face to make out his grim expression through the image-stabilised field of view. His hair was a little longer than in the photograph in the file the watcher had been shown. After a few moments, Ben Hope turned away from the window and his lips moved as though he were speaking, then he disappeared from sight. He could only have been talking to Fuentes. That would be confirmedby the watcher’s teammates who were monitoring the bugged conversation back at base.
    The watcher lowered his binoculars, satisfied that neither of the men inside the apartment was about to emerge to disturb the next phase of the operation.
    He zippered up his black nylon jacket and pulled the woollen beanie hat tight down over his ears, partly to keep the rain off, partly to hide his features.Picking up a small black backpack from the passenger seat, he opened the van door and stepped quietly out. A quick upwards glance at the apartment windows to ensure nobody was watching him; then he moved quickly and silently across the street and slipped between the silver Kia and the Audi parked behind it. He took the small unit from the backpack and knelt beside the Kia as if he needed totie a loose shoelace.
    The unit clamped without a sound to the inside of the car’s rear wheel arch. The watcher checked that it was secure, then continued walking down the street until he was out of sight of the building. He crossed the road and doubled back on himself, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, like