Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

The president turned.

“The Russians have made it clear that they had nothing to do with any threat against the president. They find the suggestion insulting, the bastards.”

The president’s demeanor changed for a second. He looked down at the table we were standing beside. The emotion was there for a moment—raw hurt, slightly afraid. When he looked back at me, it was gone, and he was smiling.

“I’ll let you go, Mike,” the president said. “Miles to go and all that, but I’ll never forget what you did for me and for your country.”

“Mr. President,” I said.

“What happened to Jerry?” he said as Kask appeared again.

“Mr. President, I’m going to catch this guy,” I said.

Chapter 12

The assassin licked away the last of his chocolate crémeux and dropped the spoon and closed his eyes as he leaned back in the tufted banquette.

The restaurant was called Elise. It was on a cobblestoned street on the outskirts of the meatpacking district, and it served Michelin two-star French molecular deconstructive cuisine that was as absurdly good as it was expensive.

The decor was seductively dark in the dining room and bar below, with dramatic lights thrown upward onto gorgeously textured high white limestone walls. With his back to the wall in the darkness, even a man like him could relax, the assassin thought. At least for a moment.

He had just consumed a four-hundred-dollar nine-course chef’s tasting menu that pulled out all the stops: a parade of caviar and white truffle risotto and fried sweetbread piccata and herb-roasted tenderloin of wagyu. All of it arranged like museum-quality art and matched with preposterous precision with the best wines of Burgundy and the Rhône.

He had gone hungry more than once as a young child, and since then, he had never failed to treat food with its proper reverence. To eat meant more than just filling his belly. It was a communion with…something. Life? Death, perhaps? He didn’t know. He was no philosopher, but food was something just…more. It was more than simply a combination of pleasant sensual experiences.

Ecstatically stuffed and drunk, he listened to the surrounding murmur of the expensive restaurant. The plate clacks and conversation and discreet laughter. The festive rattle of the bartender somewhere off to the left, shaking ice cubes. Music to his ears.

“Can I get you anything?” his wife said. “A hot towel, perhaps? Maybe a pillow and a blanket?”

“Absolutely nothing,” the assassin said, opening his eyes with a smile. “That was…”

“Expensive,” his wife said with a frown.

“Oh, yes, it was. And well worth it,” he said, swirling his twenty-one-year-old Elijah Craig single-barrel bourbon.

He’d picked up an addiction to the American spirit three years ago on a job in Osaka, Japan, of all places. The Japanese were nuts, but he was all over their fetish for mastery. Maybe he’d been Japanese in a previous life.

“I don’t understand. The mission failed,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Sweetheart, the helicopter landed on the roof. I mean, I’m one for planning for eventualities, but I didn’t see that one coming. I come out and look up, and there’s the cavalry. You know how close I came to getting pinched?”

“All too well.”

“But I didn’t,” he said, winking as he sipped at the smooth fire of the bourbon. “If that’s not something to celebrate, I don’t know what is.”

“How about finishing the job? You know, getting paid? That helps, with the way you blow it.”

“Darling, I had him,” he said, kissing her hand. “His face was right there. We were in. He can be had. We’ll get another ch

ance. You’ll see. In the meantime, I just got an offer I can’t refuse. A quick little job here in town. You in?”

She rolled her eyes playfully at him.

“Ever the sweet-talker, I see,” she said, smiling. “Count me in, as usual.”

Chapter 13