The Mark of the Assassin by Daniel Silva

Author:Daniel Silva [Silva, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Published: 2011-04-06T21:00:00+00:00

Michael unbuttoned his coat and lit a cigarette. Drozdov followed suit,

brow furrowed as he smoked, as if searching for the best place to start

the story. Michael had handled many agents. He knew when it was best to

push and when it was best to sit back and just listen. He had no

leverage over Drozdov; Drozdov would talk only if he wanted to talk. "We

weren't very good at killing people, contrary to popular belief in the

West," Drozdov said finally. "Oh, inside the Soviet Union we were very

efficient. But outside the Soviet bloc, in the West, we were quite awful

when it came to wet affairs. One of our top assassins, Nikolai Khokhlov,

had second thoughts while attempting to kill a Ukrainian resistance

leader and defected. We tried to kill him and botched that job, too. For

the longest time the Politburo simply gave up assassination as a tool of

the trade."

Drozdov dropped his cigarette butt in the mud and ground it out with the

toe of his Wellington. "In the late 1960s, this changed. We looked at

the West and saw internal strife everywhere: the Irish, the Basques, the

German Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Palestinians. Also, we had our own

business to attend to--dissidents, defectors, you understand.

Assassinations, as you know, were handled by Department Five of the

First Chief Directorate. Department Five wanted a highly trained

assassin, permanently based in the West, who could carry out killings on

short notice. That assassin was October."

Michael said, "Who is he?"

"I came to Department Five after he was in place in the West. His file

said nothing of his real identity. There were rumors, of course. That he

was the illegitimate son of a very senior KGB officer: a general,

perhaps the chairman himself. These are all rumors, nothing more. He was

taken by the KGB at a very early age and given intensive schooling and

training. In 1968, as a teenager, he was sent into the West through

Czechoslovakia, posing as a refugee. He eventually moved to Paris. He

posed as a homeless street urchin and was taken in by a Catholic

orphanage. Over the years he established an airtight French identity. He

went to French schools, had a French passport, everything. He even

endured his mandatory service in the French army."

"And then he started killing."

"We used him primarily to promote instability in the West, to make

problems for Western governments. He killed on both sides of the divide.

He stirred the pot, so to speak. Blew on the flames. And he was very

good at his job. He prided himself on the fact that he never botched a

single assignment. He wouldn't use any of the devices we offered to make

his work easier, the cyanide-tipped bullets or the weapons that

dispensed poison gas. He developed his own signature method of killing."

"Three bullets to the face."

"Brutal, effective, quite dramatic."

Michael had seen his work close up; he didn't need a description from

Drozdov of the effect of the assassin's chosen method. "Did he have a

control officer?" Michael asked evenly. "Yes, he would only work with

one officer, a man named Mikhail Arbatov. I tried to replace Arbatov

once, but October threatened to kill the man. Arbatov was the closest

thing to family October ever had.

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