by Tom Wood
CHAPTER 12
Southeast of Charleroi, Belgium
Monday
19:48 CET
‘Les billets, si vous pla i t.’
Victor handed the conductor his ticket and thanked him when it was stamped and returned. The conductor made his way slowly along the aisle, periodically bracing himself against the train’s lateral movement. He looked eighty years old and unlikely to make eighty-one.
It was snowing outside. Flakes had collected on the window to Victor’s right, matted against the corners of the glass. Outside the scenery was invisible in the night, but when Victor leaned his cheek against the cold glass he could just make out fields and hills, the occasional twinkling light in the distance.
The train was two hours from the German border, and it would take into the early hours to reach Munich via Strasbourg, but Victor didn’t allow himself the luxury of sleep. He wasn’t sure that he could, even if he wanted to.
He was the only person in the carriage, sitting in the last row of seats, to the right of the aisle, the wall directly behind him. Sat straight in his seat he could see the far door and anyone who might come through it.
The door opened to Victor’s left and he automatically stiffened in his seat. Adrenaline surged, readying him for attack.
It was a child, a girl, four or five. She didn’t even look at him, just ran down the aisle bumping into seats on either side as she went. When she reached the end of the carriage she turned around and ran back, smiling as she bounced off one seat to the next. She stopped when she reached Victor, seeing him for the first time.
Eyes almost impossibly wide stared at his. He stared back but the intensity of her gaze made him uncomfortable, as though she could see through his eyes, past the veneer of his humanity to glimpse the real him that lay just beneath. But then she smiled, the gaps in her teeth showing, and any notion she possessed such power dissipated.
Feigning a look of puzzlement, Victor leaned forward and reached behind her ear. Her expression mimicked his. When he withdrew his hand he held a coin. A smile took over her face again. He rolled the coin back and forth across his fingers and the smile turned into a laugh.
He switched the coin into his left palm and passed the hand over his right. When he turned his left hand palm up it was empty. She laughed and pointed to his other hand. Maybe she’d seen the trick before, but Victor hoped she was merely perceptive beyond her years. He turned the closed right hand over and opened it. No coin there either. A look of confusion replaced the girl’s smile. He sat there with both hands turned palm up and shrugged.
The door opened and a woman appeared, instantly calling to the girl in German. The child responded by running off again. Her mother hurried after her, the volume of her voice rising with each shout. She looked flustered as if she had chased the girl down the whole train.
The mother caught the child’s collar before she’d reached the next door and marched her back the way they’d come with a sour expression on her face. She chastised her about running off, but the girl didn’t seem to care.
As she came closer Victor caught the child’s eye and gave her a look that said better luck next time. She grinned, and he slipped her the coin as they passed. Her eyes lit up for a second before she was gone and Victor had never felt more alone in his life.
The train rounded a long bend in the track and the overhead lights flickered momentarily. Victor drew a smartphone from his pocket and powered it on. He’d purchased it while in Charleroi, paying with cash to the shop owner’s delight. When it had loaded he took out the flash drive and plugged it into the USB port. The drive allowed him access, but the only file it contained asked for a password when he tried to open it.
He forced himself to think when all he wanted to do was shut down. Two hours after completing his assignment Eastern European assassins led by an American tried to kill him at his hotel. He thought about the dossier he’d found in the killers’ van. They may not have had many personal details, but to know his face and where he had been staying required extremely accurate intel.
Only someone who knew he would be in Paris to kill Ozols could have had assassins in place to kill him. He didn’t believe some third party was involved. The broker or client, or both together, had set him up, for safety, to save money, or some other reason he didn’t yet understand. At this moment the why wasn’t his priority. Staying alive was paramount, killing his enemies was secondary. Everything else was immaterial. If knowing why made it easier to protect himself only then did Victor care.
He opened up a file on the smartphone into which he had copied down all Svyatoslav’s details. It was too risky to try to take the actual documents across borders. He needed to find out who had hired Svyatoslav. Maybe it had been Victor’s own broker or maybe someone else entirely. Either way Victor had to know. Svyatoslav resided in Munich so Victor would start his hunt there.
He realized his eyes were closed and forced them open. His body needed the rest, but while his enemies were still out there he couldn’t afford to lessen his vigilance. He had spent his whole life being invisible, yet somehow, despite all the precautions, he’d been seen. Now more than ever he had to be on guard.
And in Victor’s opinion the best form of defence was to attack.
CHAPTER 13
Paris, France
Monday
22:48 CET
On the computer monitor a black-and-white image flickered incessantly. The picture was grainy, in places distorted, but the quality was just about adequate. It was low-res CCTV, so Alvarez was hardly expecting crystal clarity, but it would have been nice if the footage hadn’t given him a bitch of a headache.
He pinched the skin between his eyebrows and wiped the tears from his strained eyes. He felt like shit and guessed he looked no better. He stood in the basement of the US Embassy along with Kennard while a young tech guy whose name he didn’t have time to remember controlled the equipment.
After he’d got off the call with headquarters, Chambers evidently had applied pressure on the French because Alvarez had received copies of all pertinent documentation. He’d also been given copies of the security recordings from the hotel in which five people, including a woman no less, had ended up shot to bits. According to the police report one of the two corpses found in the apartment building opposite was another woman, and an elderly one at that. This was the single craziest thing he’d worked on in his time in the CIA.
Alvarez had been an operations officer in the National Clandestine Services, previously known as the Directorate of Operations, for nearly eleven years. Before that he had served in the Marine Corps after leaving college, but life as a jarhead hadn’t been for him. It had felt like treading water, always waiting for something to happen, but it never had. He’d joined up as a punk kid eager to see what he was made of, and the continual training and occasional humanitarian mission hadn’t shown him what he wanted to find out. It had been a different time then, now he would probably get more action than he could stomach. He had joined the forces for the wrong reasons, but he had signed up with the CIA for all the right ones. Alvarez hadn’t looked back since.
On the screen two men entered the elevator.
‘Who are these guys?’
While Alvarez stood straight backed with his big arms folded in front of his bigger chest, Kennard was hunched over, sleeves rolled up, elbows resting on the desk as he peered at the monitor. Kennard was a decade or more younger than Alvarez and was technically his number two, but Kennard liked to act as if they were partners. Alvarez, always the diplomat, let it pass to keep their working relationship friendly.
Kennard had an inch or two over him, used too much junk on his hair, and seemed to be on the agency gravy train just to get the health care. He was probably looking at it as a career stepping stone. Join the CIA out of college, get a few years under the belt; get experience and training; and then move on to bigger, better, and more highly paid things in the private sector. Alvarez didn’t have much time for t
hat kind of attitude. He was in the CIA to do his duty as a patriot.
Kennard was usually all mouth and wouldn’t shut up unless his life depended on it, but he hadn’t been his usual cocky self all day. Perhaps the seriousness of the work had finally given the guy a much needed wake-up call. People were dead. This wasn’t some game.
Alvarez flicked through the photocopy of the preliminary case report. It had some extras his original copy didn’t have. He’d acquired the additional information from an agency source inside the Paris police. It had cost the US taxpayer a pretty dollar, but the thick wad of euros had done what the supposed agreement to cooperate had not.
He found the section of the report that listed each of the dead bodies. Apart from the old lady killed outside her front door, none of the corpses had identification. What most did have were radios with earpieces, guns, and ammunition. The French hadn’t ID’d any yet, but Alvarez had fed his copy of the fingerprints into the system and was waiting on the results. Something very big involving some very bad people had gone down at the hotel.
Watching the recordings was a mind-numbing process, but Alvarez’s motivation couldn’t be higher. Andris Ozols had been set to meet Alvarez when he was murdered and the intel he had been carrying stolen. Recovering that information was Alvarez’s priority, but equally important to Alvarez was catching the fucker who killed the Latvian and, at the very least, nailing him to the closest available wall.
Unfortunately the hotel made use of only two CCTV cameras, one in the lobby and one at the rear entrance. Cameras on every floor would have made Alvarez’s life a whole lot easier. With only two lots of footage to go on, Alvarez had to rely on what the police report told him to piece together what had happened. That report was, however, still frustratingly brief and full of holes. It would be a while before those gaps were filled.
‘Here he comes,’ Kennard said. ‘Walking to reception.’
Alvarez looked at the report. ‘Mr Bishop, room 407.’
On the screen Alvarez watched the mystery man move from the reception desk to the elevator, where he seemingly waited for it to arrive before suddenly standing to one side. Obviously hiding from the two men who stepped out.
Both he and Kennard had watched the relevant parts at least twenty times, and it still amazed Alvarez what he was seeing. As one of the soon-to-be-dead guys stood in the lobby, the killer moved right past him, coming so close it looked as if they were touching, before slipping unnoticed into the elevator.
‘Smooth,’ Kennard whispered.
Alvarez found himself nodding. ‘Fast-forward a moment.’
The tech worked the controls and a whizzing sound accompanied the scrambling picture for a few seconds.
‘That’s enough,’ Alvarez said.
On the screen there were now two men, clearly anxious, frantically stabbing at the elevator buttons before rushing to the stairwell and disappearing.
Kennard shook his head. ‘And a few minutes later they’re both corpses.’
‘They came to the hotel for him, not the other way around,’ Alvarez said. ‘Okay, let’s skip until the other guys come in.’
Alvarez loosened his tie for perhaps the tenth time, while Kennard stared at the screen. The tech worked silently on the fast-forwarding. The room was stuffy. There were no windows and the air conditioner was on its way to machine hell. Outside it was bitterly cold, but Alvarez, Kennard, and the tech geek had been in a ten-by-ten box full of electrical equipment for several long hours. The air was practically poisonous.
‘Here we go,’ Kennard said.
The man who had to be Ozols’s killer stepped out from the elevator and sat down in an armchair. Infuriatingly he kept his face hidden from the camera at all times, not overtly so, but with a gentle angling or inclination of the head ensuring the camera didn’t pick up his features. It was too much to be just luck.
He couldn’t have known where the camera was positioned before he arrived at the hotel, but he had checked in several days before, and the hotel only kept recordings for forty-eight hours. After that they were reused. Alvarez couldn’t see the point of that. The hotel might as well not have any cameras at all. He’d told the manager as much.
The killer reappeared on the recording for just a few seconds, moving through the lobby to the stairwell. Then he was gone again, and that was the last time he appeared on the footage. One body had been found in the kitchen, so to Alvarez it was a reasonable guess that the killer had left that way instead of the tradesman’s, where the second camera was located. Then, more people had been killed in the building opposite, and another in the street itself.
Alvarez stood without moving as the rest of the recording played on, hoping for something else that might help. He was dog tired. His eyes stung. He was sure Kennard was feeling the same. He guessed the tech geek was used to staring at screens all day and didn’t have a problem with it. He probably found this kind of crap exciting. Freak.
After another thirty minutes Alvarez finally pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘We’re not going to get anything more from this.’
Kennard nodded. ‘Agreed.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘You think they do Chinese chow in this town? I don’t know about you guys but I could do with some crispy duck. I’m sick of this frogfood crap.’
The tech found his voice. ‘There’s a good place a couple of blocks west with some damn fine Asian ass waiting tables. I’ll show you.’
‘Good.’ Kennard slapped his stomach. ‘I’m starved.’
Alvarez was in no mood to eat. He spoke, half to himself. ‘One guy murders Ozols, then two hours later he goes back to his hotel where seven shooters try and kill him, but instead he kills them all.’
‘Yeah,’ Kennard said, eyes on the door.
‘We’ve got a description from the receptionist for a tall or average-height Caucasian with brown or black hair. But it could be dyed. Can’t remember the eye colour. Maybe glasses. Some age between twenty-five and forty. He’s got a beard but that’ll be shaved by now if it wasn’t stuck on, so what we’re left with implicates pretty much every other white guy out there.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Kennard agreed. ‘This is bullshit. We’ve got nothing.’ He picked up his jacket.
Alvarez couldn’t argue. He pushed his palm against the grain of his stubble as he thought about what to do next. He was drained but didn’t want to sleep. There was still too much to do. His cell phone rang and he was quick to answer it. When he had hung up he smiled at Kennard.
‘You were saying?’
CHAPTER 14
Munich, Germany
Tuesday
01:12 CET
It was raining when Victor left the train with fourteen other passengers. The station was mostly empty at that time of night and the amount of open space around Victor gave him some cause for concern. He did his best to exit quickly but without looking like he was he trying to do so. Outside the station there were no taxis waiting so he set off on foot. After sitting down on the train for several hours he was glad of the chance to stretch his legs.
He found a fast-food place that was still open and took a seat by the window to eat his meal. Substandard even for junk food, but he needed the calories and there was no quicker way to get refuelled. At least the milkshake wasn’t too bad. Vanilla.
He hailed a taxi, telling the driver the name of Svyatoslav’s street, acting as if he didn’t speak German so he wouldn’t have to talk inanities during the journey. The building was a four-storey apartment block in the east of Munich. The area was affluent, a nineties development of expensive river-view apartments and spacious housing.
The building’s main door was dead bolted, and a security camera and light made it too risky to pick, so he spent the night sampling Munich’s all-night bars, allowing himself no more than one drink an hour. He used his time eyeing members of the opposite sex like the other single men. He stayed a maximum of two hours per bar to avoid people remembering him too easily. At si
x he took breakfast in a small cafe before heading back to the building, a takeout black coffee in hand, steam clouding in the frigid air.
He stood on the opposite side of the road to the building, shielded from the drizzle by a bus shelter. The shelter also gave him a reason for waiting on the street should anyone notice him. Svyatoslav lived in apartment 318 according to the hotel records, but there was always the chance he wasn’t really Mikhail Svyatoslav. Victor was pretty confident this wasn’t the case. Svyatoslav’s passport was too well used to be a random identity and so was either genuine or his only cover. It contained numerous stamps for trips to countries outside the European Union, mostly old Soviet states — Estonia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, among others. He either travelled frequently for work or had been a keen tourist with an unimaginative taste in destinations. In any case, the address the identity corresponded to would be worth investigating.
Victor took a sip of the coffee. It was typical German fare. Awful. They made world-class firearms but seemingly couldn’t brew a good cup of coffee if the survival of their nation depended on it. Assuming they’d run out of guns.
Victor watched four people leave the building but no one enter. They were all dressed in suits, long coats, carrying briefcases. City drones on their way to service the hive. Between sips of coffee he watched people walking in the direction of the building, trying to gauge who intended to enter.
The morning was cold, damp, the sky above invisible beyond slate grey clouds. In summer Germany could be beautiful, but more so than any other European country Victor found it oppressive in winter. The Viking hell was a cold realm called Niflheim, and Victor imagined the Northmen had feared something not dissimilar to Germany in November.
He took another sip of coffee and saw a man with a woollen coat hurrying into the street, a metallic briefcase in hand. He had a long, pale face, dark hair. Victor recognized him, had seen the man leave the building ten minutes before. Better than perfect.