© 1990

Writing as Jill Barkin

SPRING, 1983

All spring days should be so verdant, all April suns so warm, all assassins so reliable.

They looked like ordinary tourists. Dressed in cotton slacks and knit shirts, the four dark-haired men entered Rome's Leonardo da Vinci terminal through different doors and quietly took their places. They were waiting for the arrival of one of the passengers for the four-fifteen flight to Athens. The Uzis packed in their carry-on bags were loaded and capable of firing 650 r.p.m.

Jacobsen would be traveling alone, under a Belgian passport, they'd been told, and could be expected to check in by 3:40 at the latest. So stationed within machine-gun range of the check-in counter, they waited, relying on Jacobsen's weakness for order-a dangerous vice for a courier. The plan had been walked through so many times it was etched on their memories like a perfectly choreographed ballet: From 3:30 to 4:00, get in, assassinate Jacobsen, and get out. At 4:07 their driver would leave, with or without them.

With an apparent casualness that disguised the adrenaline pumping through their senses, each watched the clock behind the counter. The minutes ticked by. Three-forty came and went… By 3:45 a restless unease set in. Where was he? Were the planners wrong? The men waiting were zealots, not accountants: They followed orders. And if the orders were faulty… Two of the men were visibly sweating, although the air conditioning was on in the modern glass-fronted terminal.

Three-fifty. The crowd was increasing. Children were everywhere. Was it a holiday? One of the Italian saints' days? A toddler's ball rolled too close to one of the waiting men and he roughly kicked it away. Three fifty-two. One of the assassins extracted a cigarette from his shirt pocket, lit it, and inhaled deeply on the dark Turkish blend.