The wood panel explodes above my head, and I drop to the ground and lie pressed against the wet stone steps, sucking in oxygen, my heart pounding, my arteries pumped with adrenaline. I want to scramble to my feet and make a run for it, but I force myself to stay motionless. Here, I’m hidden by the yew trees and shrubs in my front yard. Standing, I’m an easy target.
My face is a few inches from my copy of The Washington Post in its plastic wrapper to protect it from the rain. Another giveaway I hadn’t yet returned home from police headquarters. I must do something about that problem in the future.
Assuming I have a future.
I’d parked my car in front of my house rather than in my garage, where it would normally be tucked away. It’s a 1964, fire-engine-red Corvette convertible. That might as well be a billboard advertisement: This is where Marko Zorn lives. Come and get me. I’m an idiot.
This is a quiet neighborhood of single-family homes, most built in the 1920s, with large yards and wide front porches where people once sat and drank iced tea on warm days. It’s a typical Friday early-spring evening and my neighbors are at home from work, drinking martinis, and watching the evening news. The TV screens flicker dimly behind drawn curtains. It’s twilight and beginning to rain. No one was on the porches or in the street when I arrived. No one is watching my house.
Except, of course, someone is watching.
He must be hidden behind one of the cars parked across the street or maybe he’s in Mrs. Euler’s garden, crouched among the red rambler roses, waiting for me, waiting for me to open my front door, waiting for me to give him a clear shot. How could I have not spotted him?
I must be getting sloppy.
The shooter now has a problem: Did he see me duck to pick up my newspaper just as he pulled the trigger? He has to be certain he’s made a kill; otherwise he won’t be paid. That means he must leave his hiding place and cross the street and, to do that, he must show himself.
I figure I have maybe twenty seconds before my killer walks up the path to my house to finish me off. I grope in my pocket for my cell phone—the only weapon I have on me. In the dimness, I can’t make out the buttons that control my home security system, so I punch randomly and the lights in the house are suddenly ablaze. The light in one of the bedrooms flashes on, then off; the exterior security lights flood my front lawn illuminating me as well. I kill the floodlights and push more buttons until one activates the shrieking burglar alarm. I think I may even have turned on my kitchen toaster oven. I switch the lights off, then on, then off again, turning my street into a kind of demented amusement park filled with the sound of barking dogs.
I hit the panic alarm on the ignition key fob of my Corvette, and the air shivers with a blaring new siren that harmonizes with the burglar alarm. I remotely key the Corvette’s ignition and activate the car’s entertainment system. Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria bursts into the twilight: very pretty but not quite the effect I was hoping for, so I switch to another channel and land on a rock station and pump the volume up to maximum.
Perfect.
I call 911 and report a “disturbance in progress” on my street, having to yell to make myself heard above the noise. I identify myself as a police officer and give my address.
In minutes, my crankier neighbors switch on their porch lights and emerge from their homes to find out what’s happened to their peaceful neighborhood. They stand on their porches and stare in awe at my house as it flashes on and off to the sound of what seems to be mariachi hip-hop.
The sound of a new siren shatters what’s left of the neighborhood peace. A police cruiser, lights flashing, swings around the corner at the end of my block, stops in front of my house, and two uniformed cops emerge. Time, I decide, to end the sound-and-light show. The street goes dark: the rock and roll stops; the barking dogs fall silent.
My phone rings, and when I pick up, a gravelly baritone announces: “We must talk. Ten o’clock. The usual place.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something just now,” I say. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”
“It can’t wait.” The phone connection is cut. He never stays on the line more than a few seconds in case his phone calls are being traced. Which they certainly must be by any number of hostile
organizations—public and private.
Two uniformed DC police officers appear from behind my azalea bushes and look down at me.
“Show us your ID,” says one cop.
“Marko Zorn, Metropolitan Police, Homicide.” I get to my feet, slipping the phone into my pocket. I move as nonchalantly and as inconspicuously as I can to stand between the two cops and my front door. I don’t want them to see the hole in the wood panel and ask questions about what happened. I’m not sure why I’m doing this, but for the moment I don’t want to have to explain that a few minutes ago somebody tried to kill me using a high-powered rifle.
***
At that moment, as I’m soon to learn, the great actress takes a revolver from its bracket on the wall strides across the stage to the drawing room door, where she stops, turns, and says, her voice in a trembling rage: “You are evil and your evil will be exposed this night.” She steps into the drawing room, closing the door behind her. At 9:42, someone puts a bullet through her head.
(c) Otho Eskin, Oceanview Publishing, 2021. Shared with permission from the publisher.
The Most Elusive Assassin in the World Versus D.C. Homicide Detective Marko Zorn
Washington, D.C. homicide detective Marko Zorn is investigating the murder of an actress—an old love—when he is assigned to protect the visiting prime minister of Montenegro, the beautiful Nina Voychek.
Political enemies are planning her assassination—this, he knows—but now it’s apparent that he, too, is a target. As he foils the initial attempts on his life, he pulls out all stops—deploying his sometimes nefarious resources—to hunt whoever is targeting him and prevent an international tragedy on American soil.
Decoded messages, Supermax prisoner interviews, mafia lawyers, and an ancient Black Mountain curse swirl among the icons of D.C. Marko and his young partner, Lucy, face down what may be multiple assassins with diverging agendas. Or are they facing one assassin—the deadliest and most elusive on the international stage?
Thriller Spy | Thriller [Oceanview Publishing, On Sale: December 7, 2021, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781608094622 / eISBN: 9781608094639]
A lawyer and former diplomat, Otho Eskin served in the US Army and in the United States Foreign Service in Washington and in Syria, Yugoslavia, Iceland and Berlin (then the capital of the German Democratic Republic). He was Vice-Chairman of the US delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, participated in the negotiations on the International Space Station, was principal US negotiator of several international agreements on seabed mining and was the US representative to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. He speaks French, German and Serbo-Croatian. He was a frequent speaker at conferences and has testified before the US Congress and commissions.
Otho Eskin has also written plays including: Act of God, Murder As A Fine Art, Duet, Julie, Final Analysis, Season In Hell, among others, which have been professionally produced in Washington, New York and in Europe.
Otho is married and lives in Washington, DC.
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