The Hunter

by WOOD TOM

  The man was dressed in a dark suit and overcoat. There was a squeak as the man turned a faucet and began washing his hands. He did so slowly, in a methodical manner, seemingly unbothered by the cold. The reflection of the man’s blue eyes stared at Kennard in the mirror above the sink. This had to be him.

  ‘Blake?’ Kennard asked.

  ‘I’m Dawson,’ the man who was neither Dawson nor Blake answered.

  His British accent confused Kennard, and for a moment he hesitated. But the accent didn’t matter. The code had been completed. Kennard moved to the sinks and reached a hand into his coat. The other man turned violently toward him, so fast that it made Kennard freeze in place.

  ‘It’s not wise to make such moves,’ the man stated flatly.

  Kennard believed him. Slowly finishing the action, he drew a small but thick manila envelope from his inside pocket.

  ‘For you,’ he said.

  The man eyed it for a few seconds, turned, and used the back of his wrist to hit the hand dryer. Kennard stood, envelope in hand, feeling like a chump, waiting for the Brit to finish. After the dryer had completed its cycle the man turned back and took the envelope from Kennard’s fingers.

  ‘You’re supposed to open it now,’ Kennard explained.

  The man tore open the envelope and reached inside. He drew out a sleek smartphone, turned it once over in his hands, and went to slip it into his inside jacket pocket.

  ‘You need to access the files now,’ Kennard said. ‘I was told you’d have the password.’

  The British guy looked at Kennard for a moment then turned on the smartphone and opened the files. Kennard watched his eyes absorb the information, the man’s face illuminated by the glow of the screen. The smartphone contained several files that Kennard had received from his employer. He had no idea what the files contained; the phone was password protected. It was no doubt the operation plans so someone could assess who was to blame for the screw-up. The fact that Kennard’s contact was British meant that it had probably been a joint black-bag op with MI6. And one with potentially severe repercussions, hence all this cloak-and-dagger bullshit. But he was only guessing, and in Kennard’s experience it didn’t pay to do too much thinking in his job.

  The Brit stared at the smartphone for a long time before finally looking up. He gestured to the American.

  ‘I think you should read this as well.’

  Kennard nodded as the phone was handed to him. Text filled the small screen. Kennard tried to read what the document said, but the light stung his eyes and made him squint. It had details: height, weight, hair colour, biographical information, what looked like a CIA record. It was someone’s dossier. There was a photo, slowly coming into focus. A face. His face. Two words above it. Two horrible words.

  John Kennard.

  Kennard was an experienced case officer, highly trained. He didn’t hesitate. He dropped the phone and immediately went for his gun. But the man was already coming forward, too fast to be believed, doing something with his hands, just a blur of movement Kennard didn’t understand. The man grabbed Kennard’s wrist as the gun came out of the holster.

  He tried to get the gun up, angling it so he could take a shot. The man was too strong, too close, Kennard couldn’t see where the gun was pointing. He fired anyway.

  The bang was excruciating, the flash made him blink. He’d missed. The bullet harmlessly shattered tiles around the sink. Kennard fired again. This time the bullet hit a urinal, smashing it into pieces that fell clattering to the floor.

  He grabbed desperately at the man’s arm with his free hand. Kennard was at least three inches taller and far heavier, but he was outmatched by his attacker’s leverage and balance. Then he realized – he didn’t know where the man’s other hand was.

  The breath caught in Kennard’s throat as the blade entered his abdomen, knife easily slicing through skin and muscle. Explosions of agony rushed through his body. His gun fell from fingers too weak to hold it. Kennard gasped as the blade was pulled free and driven back in again and again. And again. The knife plunged so deeply the tip scratched the back of his pelvis.

  Kennard sank down, eyes wide, hands still grabbing uselessly at the man who was killing him. The knife was pulled free a final time, and Kennard slumped onto his knees. He clutched at the torn shreds of his stomach, fingers warm with blood and touching slick innards no longer inside him. Kennard didn’t scream. He couldn’t.

  He felt fingers on his head, grabbing and pulling upwards. Then, on Kennard’s own hair, the man carefully wiped the blood from his knife.

  When the weapon was clean, the man released him. The blade didn’t look like metal – matte black. Kennard watched the man fold the blade away and replace the knife in a wrist sheath hidden on his left forearm. The man moved back over to the washbasin and once again began to methodically wash his hands. Kennard watched helplessly, clutching at the slippery, ragged mess of his stinking guts. He felt so tired.

  By the time the man had finished drying his hands, Kennard’s head hung limply forward. He heard the click of the man’s shoes on the tiled floor, saw the dull black leather as the man walked past him. Kennard heard the creak as the man pushed through the gate, and the slowly lessening sound of his ascending the stairs.

  Kennard reached inside his coat for his cell phone but couldn’t find it. His wallet was gone too. He hadn’t even noticed. He saw it on the floor nearby, empty. To make his death look like a mugging, he realized. The smartphone had gone too.

  Kennard didn’t move, didn’t try to crawl away. There was no point.

  He knew he didn’t have a chance.

  CHAPTER 27

  Marseilles, France

  Friday

  05:03 CET

  Rebecca Sumner adjusted her reading glasses and scrolled through the information displayed on her laptop’s screen. An American attached to the US Embassy had been stabbed to death in Paris last night, just a few hours ago. The police believed it to be a mugging since the dead man’s wallet and phone had been taken. Further in the text it stated that the man worked as a cultural attaché at the embassy, which meant he might actually have been a cultural attaché or, in typical agency style, it could have been a cover for his true position. His name was John Kennard. The name meant nothing to her.

  Rebecca felt the beating of her heart begin to quicken. The timing of it seemed wrong, so close to Monday’s massacre. Her orders had been to stay put and await further instructions, and she had been doing just that. But then the unexpected communiqué had arrived in her in-box and her control hadn’t got back to her about it. And now this. It seemed like too much of a coincidence to be unrelated, or was she just being paranoid? She sat at her desk in the sparsely furnished apartment she had called home for the past few months. The glow of the monitor illuminated her face. She had no other lights on.

  She didn’t know the name of her control, had never met him. Their only communications had been over secure satellite phone links and the Internet. She didn’t know who else was working on the operation or who had ordered it. She was on need to know, and apparently she didn’t need to know very much. What she did know, but which no one had told her, was that the op was off the books, way off the books.

  It had been nearly five days since everything had gone so wrong, and Tuesday had been the last day her control had contacted her with the directive to hold her position and await new orders. So she had. For four days she had lived off whatever was in her cupboards, never venturing outside, always at her computer, always waiting. Twelve hours ago something had happened that changed everything. The killer had sent her a message. That hadn’t been in the script.

  So she’d disobeyed orders and contacted her control by email within minutes of the killer’s message arriving. It always took a few hours for the control to get back to her, but, half a day later, there was still no reply. Her actions had been a clear breach of the strict protocol by which the operation had been run, but she felt the communication had warranted it.
Surely it was a chance to get back on track. She had assumed that she’d received nothing further because those in charge were working out what she should reply back with. But then this John Kennard had been killed.

  On the phone her control had spoken with a West Coast accent; she’d guessed he was an LA native. She stared at the screen for another minute, searching for information. John Kennard was from California, the report said.

  Maybe the reason why her control hadn’t gotten back to her was because he’d been stabbed to death in Paris last night.

  If this Kennard was really her control, then why had no one else contacted her after he’d been killed? It was over seven hours since his death. Plenty of time for her to get a phone call or email. It was late here but not in the States, and no one slept for long on something like this anyway. Her control would have superiors who must know about her role in the operation. But what if no one else knew the control was dead? The op couldn’t be salvaged if no one knew what was going on.

  If they needed to speak, her control always phoned her, but he had given her a special number to call in case of dire emergencies, a cell phone number, and she considered this about as big an emergency as it could get. Rebecca picked up the phone.

  Her wide eyes stared into the darkness when she heard the automated voice say the line was unavailable. She waited a minute and tried again. Unavailable. And again. Still unavailable. Lines like this didn’t become unavailable. Rebecca felt the unnerving compulsion to look over her shoulder at the apartment door.

  She slammed the phone down hard, suddenly understanding what was going on. First what happened in Paris on Monday, then an American from the embassy killed last night, now the emergency line dead. The only explanation was terrifying, but she made a determined effort to remain calm. There must be something you’re missing, she told herself. She pored over all the reports, every scrap of intel she had access to. She needed to prove herself wrong or prove herself right – and quickly.

  Interpol gave her the answer she was dreading. She read through a report that came out of Switzerland. A house had burned down north of Geneva, and a man found dead. Police were looking for the killer. Rebecca’s eyes focused on the address. She had seen that address before. She’d helped find it. They’d tried again, but no one had told her. She was out of the loop. Which could only mean one thing.

  Rebecca grabbed the files from her desk, carried them into the kitchen, and threw them into the sink. She rummaged through her cupboards and found the bottle of super strength rum she’d been saving for a rainy day. Today it was pouring outside and in. She unwrapped the top, tugged off the stopper, and splashed some into the sink. She took the lighter for the stove off its hook, put the end into the sink, and stood well back.

  She clicked the button and the rum ignited. Rebecca took a swig from the bottle and watched the files burn for a moment. It didn’t take her long to throw some clothes into a suitcase. She took practical items, nothing fancy. She had a wardrobe full of clothes she loved but it was no time to be sentimental. She had to get out as fast as possible.

  There was a clean-up job under way; she was certain of it now. All the signs were there. The op had gone wrong and whoever was in charge had pulled the plug, and they were cutting off the loose ends. She knew this kind of thing happened in the old days, but she never would have believed it still occurred in this age. You’d better believe it, she told herself.

  Why the need to start killing people? Just what the hell was really going on? She had the sinking feeling that the op wasn’t just off the books – it was out of the library entirely.

  Her control was already dead. Only seven hours ago. They would be sending someone for her too; they might have sent them already. She looked at her watch. Each passing second brought her own demise hurtling closer.

  Her heart was pounding as she zipped up her laptop and grabbed her personal effects. She left the comms equipment. She didn’t need it, and all the files were on the computer. In the kitchen the thick smoke made her cough as she turned on the faucets to put out the fire in the sink.

  She left the apartment, her throat choked with fear, and walked along the corridor expecting a man with a silenced pistol to appear at any moment. No, she reminded herself, they wouldn’t do it like that. She’d have an accident, maybe take an overdose. Maybe get mugged in a restroom.

  She decided against the elevator and took the stairs. She hurried down them, her face slick with perspiration. On the ground floor she didn’t use the front door but found a fire exit at the back and pushed it open into an alleyway. The cold wind tossed her hair over her shoulders. Rain soaked her.

  Rebecca could hear traffic nearby but could barely see. If she ran they might hear her, so she walked slowly and carefully to the end of the alley. Relief washed over her as she stepped out onto the street.

  Maybe she was wrong, maybe her control had just been unfortunate, but she had spent her life analysing the odds, and the odds told her to get the hell away. She had a car but didn’t go to it. They would know about it. It was registered in her name. Maybe there was a bomb waiting underneath it or the brake cables were severed.

  Rebecca walked down the street, the rain beating down on the top of her head. She felt safer to be near other people. They wouldn’t do anything in public. She hailed a cab, telling the driver to take her to the airport. She had a place she knew she could go, where no one would find her. On the way she thought about what had happened and what might happen, and a plan started to formulate in her mind. By the time she got out of the taxi she knew exactly what she was going to do. It was dangerous, crazy even.

  But it might just keep her alive.

  CHAPTER 28

  Paris, France

  Friday

  08:12 CET

  Alvarez pulled his bulky frame out from the hotel bed of nails and headed for the shower. After three efficient minutes of washing and scrubbing, he got out, dried himself, and dressed. He’d had only a handful of hours of sleep the night before, the same as every other night over the week, and he felt like pounded crap. He was running on fumes, and the fumes were running out. When he was younger he could do whatever the job required, whenever, but things had taken a downward trend somewhere along the road after taking Route 35. Route 40 was just around the corner.

  Things weren’t going to get any easier, with the job or with his body. Time was the worst enemy there was. The way Alvarez saw it you were smart if you knew fighting it was a losing battle, but you were a coward if you didn’t fight anyway. Alvarez had allowed himself an extra half hour in bed in an effort to rejuvenate his brain and sinews. The big-ass yawn told him it hadn’t been enough. The direct hunt for Ozols’s killer may have gone cold but concentrating his efforts on finding out who hired the seven shooters to kill the assassin was generating leads.

  Seven out of the seven dead shooters had been identified, and of those the American, Stevenson, was the focus point of Alvarez’s hunt. Noakes had found a series of photographs on Stevenson’s hard drive of some kind of meeting between Stevenson and an unidentified man, dated a couple weeks before the Paris massacre. A third individual had taken the shots secretly, mainly of the mystery man, an overweight guy in his fifties carrying a briefcase. There were pictures of him arriving at a café in Brussels and taking a seat at one of the tables outside where Stevenson waited; of the two conversing for a while, drinking coffee, and eating pastries; and of the fat guy standing to go, leaving the briefcase beneath the table.

  The photographer had then followed him to his car and taken a few pictures of him driving away. For some reason the guy with the camera had failed to get a shot of the licence plate, but Noakes was doing his best trying to get it from reflected surfaces. So far without luck.

  Stevenson’s bank records showed that he had deposited one hundred thousand euros in cash a day later. No one at the bank had questioned the deposit or notified the authorities about it. The bank manager had since been fired. Alvarez was determined to iden
tify the guy with the briefcase and was working towards that goal with his typical composed efficiency.

  Alvarez’s ability to remain calm in a crisis was one of his most highly prized traits. It took a lot for him to get emotional and even more for him to act on that emotion. In his time in the military he’d been on the receiving end of some hairy situations, and as an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency more than one gun had been pushed in his face. Only once had he genuinely feared for his life, and at that moment he found that fear focused him and made him deadly.

  If anything it was easier for him to deal with danger than it was the more mundane varieties of stress. People not answering the damn phone pissed him off far more than staring down the barrel of a .45.

  Kennard had disappeared off the radar, his phone taunting Alvarez with his all-too-perfectly-well-rehearsed voice-mail message each time Alvarez hit speed dial. The previous evening Alvarez and Kennard had shared a drink in a shitty little Parisian apology of a bar. Alcohol was something Alvarez usually saved for special occasions, but Kennard had been wearing a face like he’d been sucking jalapeños for a couple of days, and Alvarez understood the importance of morale.

  It felt good letting his hair down too. The week had been an ungodly bitch, and he was feeling the effects. A few beers had chilled him out, but Kennard had been a bundle of nervous energy. Something was definitely under the younger guy’s skin, but Kennard was keeping his lips well and truly locked. Woman trouble, Alvarez guessed. Some slutty piece of ass not returning his messages or some other bullshit. After draining the last of his beer, Alvarez had suggested finding a burger joint but Kennard shook his head.

  ‘I would,’ Kennard had said, ‘but I’ve got something I need to do.’

  Alvarez’s eyes widened a fraction. ‘Something, or someone?’