Confessor Read Free Page A

Office. Discover the answer to the big question.”
    “Find out why someone blew him to bits? Yes, easy. There must be hundreds of people out there who had reason to turn Gus into a bonfire.” He raised his head and looked at his old colleague. “You think I’m a fit person to do this? Now you’ve seen me again, you think I’m even trustworthy anymore?”
    “I can see you’re not yourself, but give it a go, Herb. Could be it’s the answer to a lot of your problems. You’ve been sitting down here brooding, building up a head of grief and anger.”
    “Like an old rusty kettle, yes? Be honest, Tony. I know what life’s become for me. If it were up to you, would you put me on to this?”
    The pause went on for thirty seconds too long.
    “Yes.” Kruger laughed for the first time—his old laugh, not a pale imitation. “You wouldn’t even send me out to clean floors in a safe house, right?”
    “Right, Herb. Now that I’ve seen you for myself.”
    “So, it’s easy. You go back and tell them Herbie Kruger ain’t big no more. Gone to seed. Not the man for the job.”
    “I can’t do that, Herb.”
    “Your job at stake, Tony?”
    “I’ve been instructed to deliver you.”
    “Ha! Would you buy a used microdot from this man? Seriously, would you?”
    “Not in your present state, Herb. No. No, I wouldn’t, but I have to. It also appears that I have to get you off the sauce and back in trim. Go and get a shower and shave. You have to meet the local Plod before eleven o’clock.”
    Kruger dry-washed his face with both hands. “Tony, I can’t. I’m out of it. Haven’t got the balls for it anymore.”
    “Herb, this isn’t fieldwork. All you have to do is move backwards and forwards through Gus Keene’s life and come up with a couple of suggestions. Piece of cake. Couple of weeks, that’s all. You’ve got nothing better to do, have you?”
    Kruger gave a great sigh, shook his head and said that he’d take a shower and think about it.
    “Give me your door key.” Worboys flashed him a smile that betokened great affection. “Got a bit of shopping to do.”
    Herbie did not argue, handed him the key and went slowly up the stairs to his bathroom.
    He stripped and caught sight of himself in the mirror, saw the folds of flesh hanging off his long bones and the ravage he had brought to his face. As he showered, Kruger suddenly felt the old tingle, the sensation he had known for all his adult life. As he stepped from the shower, he muttered, “Herbie’s himself again.” Paused, then added, “Well, almost.”
    In Washington it was two forty-five in the morning. Walid and the girl they called Khami had flown in from the New York cell of Intiqam earlier that evening. Their intention was to hit one of the targets of opportunity that had been well researched for them by an intelligence group known to both Intiqam teams by one name, Yussif .
    Walid, in his early forties, was probably the most distinctive man in either group: short and muscular, but with a face badly scarred from smallpox. It was a face he could not disguise, even with the mustache he grew, then shaved off, in six-month cycles.
    Khami was more striking than beautiful. As with so many girls from the Middle East, her hair was black, as were her large eyes. When she wished to make a point, she would open them wide. Men often thought they could drown in the pools of her eyes. More than one had drowned in his own blood while held hypnotically by her gaze.
    They booked into the Willard Hotel as man and wife because the latest information told them that the station chief of Italian foreign intelligence, who had diplomatic cover in D.C., spent most weekends at the Willard in the company of his American girlfriend. It was well known among diplomats, and even the switchboard operators at the Italian Embassy on Fuller Street had a room number for him, with a code word to establish bona fides should he be required to return to the Embassy.
    About the same time