The Good Assassin: A Novel by Paul Vidich

Author:Paul Vidich [Vidich, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Espionage, Historical, Political
ISBN: 9781501110443
Google: IDOMDAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01HMXUTE4
Barnesnoble: B01HMXUTE4
Goodreads: 34259508
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2017-04-17T05:00:00+00:00

5

* * *

HURRICANE

AT DAWN Mueller lay in a guestroom in Hacienda Madrigal with the wind howling outside. He and Graham had arrived as the hurricane hit, and any questions about what had kept them out were lost to the household’s urgent storm preparations. No one had a moment to pull them aside and ask why they’d been delayed.

Electricity was knocked out first. Then the telephone. Transistor radios lost signal too. Mueller felt the crushing loneliness of the dark guestroom. Rain pelted the roof with the intensity of mad birds throwing themselves at the red tiles. It was too much to be alone. In time he made his way through the storm’s murky darkness with a whiskey bottle sprouting a lit candle and joined the small community in the living room gathered around wicked storm lamps. Mueller felt helpless in the midst of Jack’s heroic effort to coax a prize bull into the barn against the wind’s fury, his help waved off, so he’d joined the other guests. Liz politely declined his offer to help Maximo, the caretaker, take inventory of candles, flashlights, foodstuffs, and potable water. The loyal servant, a runty man with a limp, claimed his authority over the tasks with grandiose confidence. “He came with the house,” Liz whispered. “He grew up here. It’s more his house than ours.” She pointed to a large rug on the living room floor and announced to the room, “There is a storm cellar if we need it.”

Mueller was among a few neighbors with homes close to the flood-prone river who sought shelter in Hacienda Madrigal. A few Americans, he saw. Katie was there, but when he looked again she was gone, and no one saw her leave. Graham? Among the small group there was a certain nervous pleasure and false sense of excitement. At the time, Mueller was unable to formulate this assessment—it only came to him later, thinking in retrospect—nonetheless, he felt it in the mood in the room, and he sensed it in the curious defiant way that the guests willed themselves to have a good time. It was this oblique feeling that Mueller began to sense was the worried giddiness of strangers brought together by looming jeopardy.

The conversation came out of nowhere. Mueller was talking to the wife of an ITT executive, a big women dressed boldly in tennis whites for a garden party, who had insisted on addressing Mueller as professor, and extracted information on New Haven with intense questions that came in clipped staccato rhythm, and Mueller knew that nothing short of rudeness was going to save him from her inquisition—so when he heard his name called from behind he was quick to shift his attention.

“You’re George Mueller, aren’t you?”

Mueller looked at an Englishman he’d seen earlier when he entered the room. Tall man, thin, droopy eyelids, and a lazy shock of hair that he repeatedly pushed off his forehead. Younger side of middle age. Mueller, whose eyes had barely scanned the room when he entered,

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