Assassin

by Tara Moss

  Unsettled, she turned away and flicked off the light.

  Makedde padded back through the dark and crawled into bed, pulling the covers up high. She rolled to one side, paused and then rolled over again. After a minute her pale, sinewy right arm strayed from the sheets to pull the laptop towards her on the bedside table. She flicked open the lid with one finger, the screen coming to life to illuminate the corner of the bed in a soft, alien glow. Could she get any more sleep? She scanned the dim room: the bedroom of Luther Hand, the man she could not shake from her nightmares.

  Wrong.

  Everything is so fucking wrong.

  Mak had lain low here for weeks now, and as if by osmosis she felt she was absorbing Luther’s invisibility, his separation from the world. Part of her was even beginning to relate to the dead assassin.

  The one-bedroom apartment had seemed almost unused when Mak first arrived, holding her gun and jumping at every shadow. She’d learned many things as a private investigator — how to dig up information, how to hack the most basic passwords, how to pick locks. Arriving here, double-checking the address she’d found on Luther’s laptop, she’d been afraid she would have to put her less-than-perfect lock-picking skills to use. But the last key she tried on his keychain had fit the main lock like a puzzle piece, despite looking, at first glance, like a key for a vehicle of some sort. Another fit the dead bolt. She’d let herself in and set off a screeching alarm system, but the little lock and unlock symbols on the key soon proved the solution to that problem. With a simple press of the button the alarm went silent and she was in, sheltered, his Glock shaking in her hand and his home at her disposal. The ease with which she’d entered this inconspicuous fourth-floor apartment and its ability to hide her from the outside world had seemed like an omen of some kind.

  And just like that this had become her temporary home.

  For weeks she couldn’t stand the sight of another person, didn’t feel safe even on La Rambla under cover of evening darkness in the busiest crowd of innocent tourists. But this secure cave had bought her time. And Mak had needed time. Time to recover. Time to learn about her would-be killer. Time to plan.

  She was not sure how long it had been since Luther had last used the apartment. The air had been stale, the fridge empty. There’d been only a few supplies in the cupboards and the microwave had the manufacturer’s plastic wrap still across it. There’d been no personal items in the apartment at all and she wondered if Luther Hand had even left his fingerprints behind. What he had left, though, were clear indications of a man obsessed with security. The balcony doors were covered over with slatted metal shutters made to look like a modern designer addition rather than the security device they were. And he had a small cache of weapons, a fake ID and a few thousand dollars in various currencies stored in a hidden compartment under a loose board beneath the kitchen cupboards. It was secreted so cleverly it had taken her ten full days to discover it. He had a Peugeot in a car spot in the alley outside. She’d checked it and found a sniper’s kit in the boot. It was not as large as the assassin’s kit he had been travelling with when he’d abducted her in France. Outside the farmhouse she’d found a black Mercedes packed with cash, jewels, a similar sniper kit and smaller weapons including a Glock, which had fallen out of the glove box along with four fake passports. The jewels and cash, she presumed, were the spoils of some recent job.

  But most importantly, she’d found this very helpful laptop in a briefcase in the car. It had proved at least as practical as the cash. She’d mined it to find the address of this apartment. According to the collection of title deeds he had filed away, Luther’s lethal trade had bought him a lot of bolt holes in major cities like this — one in Mumbai, another in Moscow and even one in Sydney. And the laptop identified her attacker as Luther Hand. He had other IDs, but Luther was the name he’d used back in the cellar where he’d kept her prisoner for over a week. It was the name she knew him by. The name that haunted her nightmares.

  Luther Hand.

  Mak had torched the Mercedes from the farmhouse and kept the rest. She had his Barcelona apartment now — purchased under the name of Pedro Blanco, which matched one of the false passports from the Merc — his local car, his weapons and at least a fraction of his riches. Mining his computer had been easy. She’d hacked into it as an ‘administrator’, using a technique she’d learned while getting her private investigator licence, and she’d successfully searched and prodded its digital treasures, finding addresses and phone numbers, the title deeds under his various false IDs, vague references to locations and marks, bookmarked news articles about Makedde and the Cavanagh family. She’d also uncovered some cryptic references to what she suspected were bank accounts or codes for bank transactions. He’d made some attempts at coding his files, though clearly he never anticipated someone getting as close as Mak was now.

  And Mak had found photographs of herself on Luther’s laptop.

  There were photographs of other people as well. Candid shots like hers, the subjects clearly unaware they were being photographed.

  She’d checked their names online, to see what she could find:

  Vladimir Gorkesky. Russian national. Missing, presumed dead.

  Susan Falluma. Turkish national. Found shot in the head in her home.

  Nicolas Santer. British national. Missing, presumed dead.

  Nicolas Santer’s disappearance appeared to be the most recent, not counting Mak’s own. It was a big deal back in London, if the online news was anything to go by. Santer had pissed someone off and had fled with a lot of wealth that was not his own. Luther had got rid of him, just as he had got rid of the others.

  They were all marks. They were all dead. Except Mak.

  The assassin had kept notes on his grim work and those who hired him for it. She’d found communications with agents he referred to with single letters. Encrypted emails. Encrypted files. It wasn’t all spelled out, exactly, but it was there. The numbered sequences would be territory codes or bank accounts or phone sequences; the letters indicated names. She’d searched online for matches, but hadn’t found any yet. A professional could, though. A forensic technician could. This little laptop could, perhaps, seal the fate of the Cavanaghs. Here was an electronic trail that led back to them. A real forensic trail — she was sure of it. If she could find a way, she would get it to the police, or to the media. Someone she could entrust with taking the Cavanagh family down. Someone who wouldn’t give up. She had some ideas about who that would be.

  Mak wanted justice for what the Cavanaghs had done. She wanted justice for their innocent victims — the unnamed Thai girl found in the dumpster, Megan Wallace who’d filmed Damien Cavanagh with the girl, and everyone else who had found themselves disposed of in the cover-up.

  Especially Bogey.

  She wanted justice for Bogey — her lover — the man she’d fallen in love with and who Luther had killed for no reason other than the fact he was looking for her in Paris when she was chained up in that cellar. He might have alerted police, so he was silenced.

  Bogey had done nothing. He’d known nothing. He’d simply got in the way.

  Makedde cast her gaze over the icons on the desktop of Luther Hand’s computer as her mind came into focus. She took a sip of water, the glass clinking for an instant against Luther’s loaded Glock on the bedside table. It was nearly five a.m., the computer told her. In Australia it would already be the next day. She wondered what her friends were doing, what her former lover Andy was doing. She thought of him often. Wondering. Would he, in time, forget her? Mak finished the glass and felt the cool water filter all the way down to her hollow, still upset belly. She should probably eat something.

  Resigned to wakefulness, she reached for the remote and flicked on Luther’s flat-screen television to CNN’s news coverage, the volume low. An artificial glow filled the room, along with a reassuring murmur of her native English. She swung her long legs out of the bed again and padded to the kitchen to turn on the kettle and
scoff two dry crackers in quick succession.

  Andy.

  She wondered what he thought had happened to her. She wondered what he would say if he knew.

  Mak prepared a cup of tea, returned to the bathroom and rested it on the sink edge. The air still smelled of Chanel No. 5 and something less pleasant. She washed her hands thoroughly and arranged her tools before her. Years of modelling had taught her about the power of makeup, but now she used it not to beautify but to disguise. Though it was early in the morning and she was unlikely to encounter anyone on the streets, she felt she could not risk leaving the apartment looking too much like her former self. She tied her hair into a tight ponytail at the nape of her neck and raised a makeup brush to her dyed and shaped eyebrows. With a deft hand she darkened them further, emphasising the arch, then applied a quick coat of black mascara over her naturally blonde eyelashes. She smoothed a light layer of 30+ SPF foundation over her skin from forehead to chest, a shade or two paler than her natural complexion. She took another brush and swept a smudge of darkness under her eyes — eyes that seemed a brighter shade of blue-green with her newly black hair. The darkness under her eyelids was not flattering, but it wasn’t meant to be. It gave the effect of shadow, and subtly deeper-set eyes. She painted her full lips with quick dabs of a matte, earthy lipstick. Immediately her sensual mouth appeared smaller. Finally, with a hand that shook slightly, she took her dead lover’s black-rimmed spectacles and slid them on. She’d replaced the original scratched lenses with non-prescription glass. She’d already considered this was, perhaps, an overly morbid ritual, but Bogey’s glasses served the dual purposes of changing her appearance in a simple but effective way, and acting as a kind of link to him. In any event, she couldn’t bring herself to toss them away. This was all she had left of him.

  Bogey would understand, she thought, and that’s what seemed to matter.

  Mak stared into the mirror and wondered what her eyes still had left to see. Transformed, she walked back to the bedroom, slipped on a sports bra and panties, track-pants and a warm, sleeveless hoodie, and tied her running shoes tight over low socks. Strapped against her ribs, where it chafed the least, was a nine-millimetre Glock. She would not leave the apartment without it.

  At five-fifteen she switched off the perimeter alarm system, stepped into the narrow stairwell, turned both bolts until the apartment was secure and switched the alarm back on again. Across from her was the entrance to the only other apartment on her level. She’d watched the owner come and go a couple of times from the safety of the security peephole in Luther’s door. It was an old woman — no threat. And she was never up this early.

  Mak did not bother with the elevator. It was barely large enough to turn around in, and after her experience in that farmhouse cellar she’d developed a strong aversion to small spaces. She preferred the stairs, and she took them now, bouncing a little on each tiled step, stopping to circle her ankles and stretch her legs at the bottom before walking out into the dark, narrow street, Carrer de Bertrellans. There was the typically European smell of urine in the streets, which always seemed to be there before the rains or street cleaners washed it away. Bags of garbage had been left out for collection overnight.

  Mak strode to Santa Anna, warming up with a jog before breaking out in a solid sprint, her running shoes falling quickly and quietly on the old stone streets. The sun was not set to rise for over an hour, and the vast square in front of Barcelona’s dramatic gothic thirteenth-century cathedral, Catedral de la Santa Creu I Santa Eulàlia, was empty save for flocks of pigeons. The skies glowed a midnight blue above, the moon invisible behind low cloud. As she ran briskly across the square, past the remains of first-century Roman aqueducts and city walls, and up the steps of the cathedral, she thought briefly of the tale of Saint Eulàlia, the co-patron of Barcelona to whom the cathedral was dedicated. As the story went, she was a virgin who was stripped naked in the square before a miraculous, sudden snowfall covered her to preserve her modesty. The enraged Romans then sealed her into a barrel and stuck it with sharp knives before rolling her through the streets. Her body lay entombed in the old crypt under the cathedral. Unlike modern Hollywood horror tales, chastity did not exempt young women from torture and death in Roman times, it seemed. But it did make religious martyrdom possible.

  Mak pushed herself harder with every stride up the cathedral steps and along the winding streets around the impressive church, as gargoyles of horned bulls and snarling dogs and unicorns and other mythical creatures peered down at her just as they had watched other passersby for centuries.

  She ran the streets, her mind puzzling over the choices before her and the tasks ahead. Mak was no martyr. She resolved to again stay in during the daylight hours, as was her custom, and spend the evening in her usual spot, practising for what inevitably was to come. But soon, she would need to break out of the security of those routines. She needed to abandon Luther’s apartment. She needed to leave Barcelona.

  And to do that, she had to find a new identity.

  There is no luck, she told herself. Only preparation.

  Preparation is everything.

  She was nearly ready.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dark clouds moved over the shores of Sydney’s moneyed suburb of Rose Bay, the idyllic blue water turning black and choppy. A lone outrigger canoe made its way over increasing white caps, bobbing up and down in the surf next to moored boats. Along the quiet shoreline, joggers rugged up for a sprint back, pulling on hoodies. Mothers turned designer prams around as the first cool drops of rain began to fall.

  Jack Cavanagh, patriarch of one of Australia’s richest and most influential families, observed the darkening autumn day from the railing of the Rosebud — a forty-plus-metre Oceanco Idefix yacht named in reference to Hearst, the American publishing tycoon. The light rain did not bother him, the trade-off being a moment of solitude. After a lunch of fresh seafood accompanied by a view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge designed to impress the visiting VIPs, the other men had moved inside with their host — a publishing magnate and former politician — and the striking boat had begun to make its way back towards Woollahra Sailing Club at a leisurely pace. On deck, the salty air stung Jack’s eyes. He was troubled by what he perceived to be a subtle shift in the dynamic of this once welcoming guild of influential men. The host was hospitable, as always, but Cameron Goldsworthy, the British dotcom billionaire, had seemed to distance himself from Jack in front of the others. And there had been a certain amount of whispering, he’d thought. A kind of discomfort with his presence.

  Jack brought the lip of a delicate flute of champagne to his mouth and sipped. It was losing its fizz.

  He sensed movement on the deck, heard footsteps; Cameron Goldsworthy appeared at his side. ‘I thought we ought to chat,’ the man said.

  ‘Of course,’ Jack replied and gave a tight smile. He and Cameron had unfinished business. An unfinished business deal, to be exact. ‘How long are you in town?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Just a week before heading to Cannes. You?’

  ‘Not going anywhere at the moment,’ Jack replied, his tired eyes watching the horizon again. He balanced his warm flute of champagne on the edge of the rail, fist wrapped around the stem.

  ‘How’s your lovely wife? What is her name again?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Beverley’s fine. And your new bride?’

  ‘Oh, fine.’

  Cameron leaned against the rail and caught Jack’s eye, offering a disingenuous smile with a mouth full of perfectly white cosmetic dental work. Despite being close to Jack in age, he was a man with a vernal, youthful air about him, arguably thanks to the influence of his third, much younger wife, Catriona, a well-known South African fashion model. Their recent lavish wedding had been covered extensively in the press. Jack and his wife, Beverley, had not been invited. It was the first clear signal that there was a problem between the two men, and that there was clearly some reason, beyond cold, hard business, for why the negotiations bet
ween them had stalled, though only six months earlier it had looked likely that one of Goldsworthy’s companies would make a significant investment in Cavanagh Incorporated’s transport arm. In certain ways, Cameron had the lifestyle and international reputation Jack coveted and the association would have been good not only for business reasons but for Jack’s international reputation. Goldsworthy had made a lot of money during the first dotcom boom, investing in all the right places and pulling out before the crash that bankrupted so many in the nineties. He counted several Hollywood celebrities and European royals as close friends. He had his own multimillion-dollar super-yacht, twice the size of the vessel they were on today, and it popped up in all the right places throughout the year: Cannes, Monaco and in Australia for the annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and accompanying billionaire social season.

  Jack watched his companion warily, silently, deciding not to broach the subject of their previous business negotiations. Cameron Goldsworthy, for his part, seemed in no rush to get to this ‘chat’ they needed to have. He put his hand out, detected the light rain and shrugged, and when he pulled a fresh cigar from a pocket in his pale blue Brioni sports jacket, a deck hand arrived out of nowhere to smile unobtrusively and to cut the cigar end for him. The deck hand offered the two men fresh champagne and caviar on blinis, both of which they refused, and then vanished as quickly as he had arrived.