The Hunter

by WOOD TOM

  ‘I’m part of the chain. The operation failed. You lived; they didn’t get the drive; and now they need to cut all the links to make it clean.’

  ‘Guilty by association?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘But they haven’t got to you yet.’

  ‘I didn’t give them the chance.’

  ‘Why exactly did you bring me here?’

  The broker moved from where she had been standing, a couple of steps to the left. Nervous release maybe. Victor watched her. Light from the lamp accentuated her cheekbones, danced on her full lips.

  ‘Because we can help each other,’ she said.

  ‘Help each other to do what?’

  ‘Remain breathing.’

  ‘I hope you’re not suggesting we try and give them the drive and pray they leave us alone.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We take out our enemies.’

  He wanted to say, to where? Some people just didn’t like to say kill. Ridiculous euphemisms, however, were fine to say. He supposed it helped them sleep at night.

  ‘And how are we going to do that? I can’t kill the entire CIA. I don’t have that many bullets.’

  ‘The hit on Ozols wasn’t officially sanctioned,’ the broker said.

  ‘It was strictly off the books, old-school black bag. Someone ordered it, people implemented it, but the wider organization doesn’t know about it.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘There are lots of different reasons,’ she explained. ‘Starting with the way I was approached for the job. I had anonymous phone calls and meetings. I wasn’t told who I was working for or with, or what exactly I was working toward. It went way beyond need to know. Plus the fact that they needed you, a contract killer, one with no prior agency links. If it was a white job they wouldn’t have needed to kill you afterward or me or my control when it went wrong. They would have just used their own people or known contractors in the first place. Whoever is behind this really doesn’t want the rest of the CIA to know what they’re up to.’

  ‘The shooters who ambushed me in Paris,’ Victor said. ‘They were private sector. They didn’t know who they were working for.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And I had a run in with an American killer at my house.’

  He didn’t say where that had been. To some extent it didn’t matter; he wouldn’t be moving back, but revealing personal information unnecessarily was one habit he wasn’t about to start.

  ‘In Switzerland, I know,’ she said. The fact she knew stung him, but he hid it. ‘It would’ve been a contractor, not an operative.’

  Her voice carried weight, even if she didn’t explain herself. He believed her. No need to tell her he’d originally thought the opposite.

  ‘You’d already iced their shooters in Paris,’ she said, adding to the ridiculous euphemism count. ‘So they didn’t have much choice but to risk using someone closer to home to get the job done. They wouldn’t have been able to take the chance you might disappear while they assembled another unaffiliated execution team.’

  Victor nodded, accepting the assessment. ‘This means that the wider agency isn’t looking for us at least.’

  ‘Yes, for the time being. But at any time something could happen to bring this out into the open. That bloodbath at your hotel attracted a lot of attention. I’m sure the legitimate CIA has people looking into it. Plus the French and the Swiss are now in on the party. Things are getting pretty crowded, even without the people who want us dead.’

  ‘So we’ll get to them before they get to us.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But how?’

  She looked at him closely. ‘So you’re on board?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  CHAPTER 32

  01:50 CET

  Victor stood so he could see the front door and the entrance to the kitchen without moving his head. The broker was getting herself a glass of water. He heard her open a cupboard, then four seconds later the faucet began running. The sound of water hitting the metal sink. If the sound didn’t change within another four seconds he would go into the kitchen to find out what she was really doing. After three seconds he heard the glass filling.

  There was a part of Victor that told him any time he spent with her only compromised him further. She had set him up before. He could never be sure she wouldn’t do so again. He knew he should just kill her now and be done with it. He spent his whole existence managing risk, and the survivalist part of him screamed that this was too much of a risk to take.

  But the flip side of the coin had considerable weight to it. In one conversation he had learned more from her than he had in several days on his own. And there were still things he did not know or understand. He would listen to what she had to say and then decide whether or not to kill her. Not for revenge – which meant nothing to him – but for his own protection. The broker knew too much about him. She couldn’t know it, but she was interviewing for her life.

  The broker reappeared. She took a sip of water and placed the glass down on a table. ‘Where did I get to?’

  ‘Black bag.’

  She said, ‘At first I thought the operation was simply unsanctioned. I didn’t know that it was completely illegal or I would never have signed to it. Now, that helps us because it means we’re against only a few people. As long as it stays the way it is we can do something about it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘If they want us dead to kill the connection between them and Ozols’s assassination, the reverse must also be true. We go after those who ordered it, everyone who knows about it. Maybe two or three people. Cut off the head and the body dies.’

  ‘When you say we, you mean me, right?’

  ‘But I’ll help you find them,’ the broker said. ‘At the moment we don’t know who our enemy is. I only had contact with one person, my control, and they’ve already had him killed. But I can find out who’s behind this.’

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  ‘We follow the money. That’s how we do it.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Where there’s money, there’s a trail. The money from the Paris job was deposited into your Swiss bank account from another numbered account that I had control over. It was transferred into my account from, you guessed it, yet another numbered account.’

  ‘How does that help us? The account could have been set up purely for the Ozols killing.’

  ‘That’s not the case.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I used to work for them, remember?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten. What’s your point?’

  ‘My point is that you used to work for them too.’

  ‘No I haven’t.’ He wanted to throttle the truth out of her. ‘I’m freelance. I work for private clients. And I don’t like games. Just tell me.’

  ‘I’m telling you that the Ozols job wasn’t the first one you’ve done for them. Over the last three months you’ve done three other contracts, through me, for the CIA.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘You think I’m lying. Why would I?’ He couldn’t answer. ‘I’ve been your broker three times, each time pretending to be a different person, acting out a different character. The job before this one, in Sweden, you killed an arms dealer. The time before that a Saudi. Do I have to go on?’

  Victor looked away.

  ‘That’s how you people found out where I lived,’ he said, half to himself, now understanding. ‘The other jobs were dummies just to track me down.’

  ‘Not exactly. They were legitimate targets. Very nasty people, but yes, the jobs were covers for the surveillance. And it took three intensive ops just to get one shitty photo-fit put together. But we got where you lived.’ There was a measure of pride in her voice that made his teeth grind. ‘No one thought it would take so long. You were better than anyone thought.’

  He shook his head. ‘You
people.’

  ‘Don’t you dare.’ She actually looked angry. ‘You’re a hired murderer, remember? You have no right to judge anything anyone else does.’

  He had to admit she had a good point.

  She continued. ‘Don’t think I want to be here. It makes me fucking sick just being this close to someone like you.’

  ‘Don’t swear.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said don’t swear.’

  She glared at him. ‘Don’t swear? Why the hell not?

  A line appeared between Victor’s eyebrows. ‘That includes blasphemy.’

  It took her a few seconds to see that he was being serious. She widened her stance. ‘Let’s get this straight. You don’t tell me what I can or can’t say.’

  ‘I just did. Get used to it.’

  She scowled. ‘I think you’re forgetting I’m not working for you on this. We’re working together. That means you don’t tell me what to do or say and vice versa. You understand me?’

  Victor checked his watch. ‘Have you finished?’

  The broker took a series of calming breaths. She wanted to say more, he could tell, a lot more. He could imagine her practising being strong in front of a mirror.

  ‘You were saying something about a money trail,’ he said calmly.

  She took another breath and swallowed. The look in her eyes told him she was telling herself to drop it, that he wasn’t worth the effort. It was a minute before she finally spoke, a measure of time he guessed would reassure her pride that she hadn’t backed down too easily.

  She spoke. ‘The money that was paid into your account came from me, which came to me from someone else’s account, who probably got it from someone else’s, and so on. So we track backward, account to account until we find who started the first account.’

  ‘And you know how to do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded, almost believing she knew what she was talking about. ‘How?’

  She was sitting down now, perched on the arm of the sofa. He heard wood creak when she moved. She spoke with her hands a lot, gesturing, emphasizing, illustrating. Victor remained standing, his back to the wall next to the window so he could watch her and the door at the same time.

  ‘We find out who or what that first account belongs to,’ she said.

  There was a commotion outside. Some pimp yelling at his property. Victor had the window open so he could listen for people arriving.

  ‘You’ve said that already. How do we find that out?’

  ‘From the bank.’

  ‘Bankers don’t hand out information on their customers.’

  ‘You just have to know how to ask.’

  ‘And you do?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And what’s my role in this?’

  ‘You don’t have one. At least not yet. After I have the information you’ll use it.’

  ‘Sounds simple.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘And are you confident this will work, what you’ve proposed?’ It was the end of the interview.

  Yes, she lived.

  No, she died.

  Victor saw her thinking carefully about her response. He watched her closely. Her lips pursed momentarily and she swallowed before answering.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, voice strong, assured.

  ‘Good answer.’

  She smiled slightly, misunderstanding.

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew the flash drive. He flicked his wrist, threw it to her, impressed when she deftly snatched it out of the air in one hand. Good reflexes and dexterity. She looked it over for a moment before looking up at him questioningly. He saw her wanting to ask why he’d lied but she didn’t say anything. She moved over to her computer and plugged it into the side. Victor stepped forward to watch. She sighed when she was asked to input a password.

  ‘They didn’t give it to you then?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I was never supposed to come this close to it. I know a little about cryptography, but I can’t tell what level of encryption it is. If it’s low end I could probably break it myself in a few days with the software on my computer. Simple brute-force attack. But if I was transporting something people would kill over, I’d make sure it was high-end encryption, the best I could get. My laptop doesn’t have the processing power to even scratch the surface of those kinds of ciphers.’

  ‘I have an acquaintance,’ Victor said. ‘Someone who may be able to help decrypt it. I stress may. I’ll try them while you collect the information on the account.’

  ‘If anyone can hack this, my contact at Langley could.’

  ‘No. It puts it too close to our enemies.’

  ‘Does it matter? If they intercept it maybe they won’t come after us.’

  ‘Given their efforts to kill me so far I can’t see them giving up quite so easily. And if they did get their hands on it they’ll know I gave the drive to you. I’ve compromised myself by meeting you. I don’t want them to know that.’

  ‘I’ll try and decrypt it myself then.’

  ‘I prefer my way.’

  ‘We can do both,’ the broker said.

  ‘As we can’t do both simultaneously, I’ll try mine first.’

  ‘Who says we can’t do both at the same time?’

  ‘The laws of physics. We only have only drive.’

  She didn’t speak. Her fingers worked the keyboard for a few seconds. Victor watched the file copying across from the drive to her computer. It took seconds.

  ‘I never thought to try,’ he found himself saying.

  ‘The file carries the encryption, not the drive itself. It’s just a commercial memory stick, a carrier, nothing special, no hardware-based security. Now you can try your way and I can try mine.’

  ‘And double our chances.’

  She smiled at him. ‘See, we’ve made a good team already.’

  He found himself looking at her lips. ‘Stop right there,’ he said, as he raised his eyes back to hers. ‘We are not a team.’

  ‘Then what are we?’

  He struggled for a second, thinking about how to describe them, but without success, then said, ‘Nothing.’

  The broker looked away. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Neither of us should be under any illusion about why we’re both doing this. You’re only helping me because you need me. I’m only helping you because for the moment you can help me, too.’ He avoided saying he needed her. ‘That’s the end of it.’

  ‘And what’s going to happen when I can’t help you any more?’

  It took guts to say it. Victor respected that.

  ‘At that point we’ll part ways,’ he said. ‘And you’ll never see me again.’

  CHAPTER 33

  Marseilles, France

  Saturday

  01:59 CET

  Reed held his palm over the sink. He felt no heat, but the air smelled faintly of burned paper and alcohol. He moved around the kitchen slowly, then into the lounge area. The communications equipment looked state-of-the-art and was cool to his touch. He stood in the darkness, seeing with the dim light of the city filtering into the apartment and his own natural night vision. He made his way to the bedroom, noting the open wardrobe and drawer, the discarded garments on the bed.

  He found an all-night café where he ordered a black tea and composed an email on his smartphone, explaining with an economy of words that the target had left recently, and in a hurry. He asked what he should do next.

  The waitress who brought him his tea wanted to flirt, but Reed pretended not to be able to speak French. She still tried despite the perceived language barrier, and he politely ignored her. Not for the first time, he mused, that life would be far easier as an ugly man. He finished his tea with a minimum of fuss and went on his way. He had a room booked at a fine hotel on the seafront and set off on foot, the ground wet from the rain but the air pleasant and cool.

  He enjoyed the walk, listening to the sounds of talking, laughter, and music drifting out of b
ars and clubs. Reed was neither disappointed nor annoyed that the target was not where the dossier claimed she would be. It was not in his nature to become emotional when working. There was a secondary-potential strike point listed where he could try if his anonymous client wished.

  There were five targets in total that his client wanted removed, the first of which Reed had left dying in one of Paris’s less-than-hygienic abodes. Aside from the Marseilles disappearing act, that left three more: one in Milan, one in London, the last in a yet-to-be-established location.

  As yet there were no stipulations on how the remaining targets were to be eliminated, but Reed prided himself on killing efficiently, subtly, and reliably. These were the reasons he had been hired and were the reasons he was able to charge such a pretty penny for his services. Suicides and accidents were his speciality, and when there wasn’t the opportunity for such a demonstration of his talents, he would select another means of death that didn’t spell out assassination.

  At times in Reed’s line of work a more direct approach was needed. Some targets were too well protected, skilled, or just too careful to be removed discreetly. In such cases, Reed opted for more appropriate methods of removal than those he usually employed. He found the nine millimetre variety was usually quite sufficient but he preferred sharpened ceramic for a more personal touch.

  The last of the listed targets held particular interest to Reed. There was no name, just a code name, and that alone told Reed much. This nameless man was a contract killer, and by all accounts a good one at that. If the information he had been given was correct this Tesseract had killed seven gunmen who tried to ambush him at a hotel, as well as avoiding another assassination attempt in Switzerland. Reed had to admire such performances, even if the results had been achieved with rather less finesse than he liked to enact himself.

  Reed looked forward to the killing of this target. Other professionals were always the most difficult to execute cleanly, but Reed enjoyed a challenge. Like Reed himself, the experienced ones were almost obsessively paranoid in how they conducted themselves, and the precautions they took were more often than not especially extensive – not forgetting the little fact that they tended to be more than capable of fighting back. Which was exactly why they were such good fun to murder.