The Marching Season by Daniel Silva

legs as he rode to a deserted patch of track in the barren hills above Merdias Bay.
    Delaroche stopped the motor scooter next to an outcropping of rock. He took a melon from the bag and placed it on a ledge of the rock, so it was approximately level with his own head. Next, he removed three more melons and placed them along the pathway about twenty yards apart. The Beretta hung in a shoulder holster beneath his left arm. He drove about two hundred meters down the path, stopped, and turned around. He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled on a pair of black leather gloves.
    76 Daniel Silva
    A year earlier, during his last assignment, the man he had been hired to kill had shot him through the right hand. It was the only time Delaroche had failed to fulfill the terms of a contract. The shooting had left an ugly puckered scar. He could do many things to alter his appearance—grow a beard, wear sunglasses and a hat, color his hair—but he could do nothing about the scar except conceal it.
    Suddenly, he opened the bike's throttle full and raced along the track, dust flying in a plume behind him. He expertly maneuvered his way through the obstacles. He reached beneath his left arm, drew the gun, and leveled it at the approaching target. As he swept past he fired three times.
    Delaroche stopped, turned around, and went back to inspect the melon.
    None of the three shots had hit its mark.
    Delaroche swore softly beneath his breath and replayed the whole thing in his mind, trying to determine why he had missed. He looked down at his hands. He had never worn gloves and didn't like the way they felt; they robbed his gun hand of sensitivity, and it was difficult to feel the trigger against his forefinger. He removed the gloves, holstered the Beretta, sped down the track to the starting point, and turned around.
    He opened the bike's throttle again and weaved in and out of the melons at speed. He drew the Beretta and fired as he passed the target. The melon disintegrated in a flash of bright yellow.
    Delaroche sped away.
    Ahmed Hussein was residing in a squat four-story apartment house in Ma'adi, a dusty suburb along the Nile a few miles south of downtown Cairo. Hussein was short, less than five and a half feet tall, and small of frame. His hair was cut close to the scalp,
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    his beard piously unkempt. He took all his meals and received all his visitors inside the flat, venturing outside only to go to the mosque across the street five times each day to pray. Sometimes he stopped in the coffeehouse next to the mosque for tea, but usually his troop of amateur security men insisted he return directly to the flat. Sometimes, they all piled into a dark blue Fiat for the short trip to the mosque; sometimes they walked. It was all in the dossier.
    Delaroche began his journey to Cairo three days later, on an overcast windless morning. He took coffee on his terrace above Cape Mavros, a flat sea all around him, and then drove the Volvo into Chora and left it in a parking lot. He could have flown directly to Athens, but he decided to take a ferry to Paros and fly on from there. He was in no rush, and he wanted to watch his tail for signs of surveillance. As the boat cleared Korfos Bay and passed the small island of Delos, he strolled the decks and examined the faces of the other passengers, committing them to memory.
    In Paros, Delaroche took a taxi from the waterfront to the airport. He dawdled at a telephone kiosk, a newsagent, and a cafe, all the while checking the faces around him. He boarded the flight to Athens; no one from the ferry was among those on board. Delaroche sat back and enjoyed the short flight, watching the gray-green winter sea passing below his window.
    He spent the afternoon in Athens, touring the ancient sites, and in the evening boarded a flight for Rome. He checked into a small hotel off the Via Veneto under the name Karel van der Stadt and began speaking fractured English with a Dutch accent.
    Rome