Kill for Me

by Tom Wood

  She frowned, a little uncomfortable. “Is that a question or a statement? Or are you saying you’re not passionate about what you do for a living?”

  Victor shrugged. “It’s just a job. It’s not me. It’s not who I am.”

  “You mean you didn’t dream of being a commodities trader when you were a little boy?”

  “Actually, I dreamed of driving a train. A steam train, ideally. Through the Alps or the Highlands. Somewhere like that.”

  She laughed. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  “Well, now you’ve said that, I might become a train driver just to spite you.”

  She was grinning. “Do. It.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll call you one day in the future and say you can throw coal into the engine.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Is that a euphemism?”

  “I’m . . . not sure.”

  “Don’t make me bring out my kinky side. That’s for when we really get to know each other. Would it offend you if I told you I checked you out? You know, in this day and age it’s hard not to want to take a peek behind the curtain.”

  “That depends on whether you did or not.”

  “Well, I did, so are you offended?”

  “That depends on what you found out about me.”

  She shrugged. “Nothing. You’re a typical normal Canadian. Except . . .” She approached the bed. “Since I figure we’re past the treading-on-eggshells stage, I gotta ask. Some guys are covered in tattoos,” she said, looking him over. “You’re covered in scars. What gives?”

  “They used to look a lot worse.”

  Joanna exhaled, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t. However unpleasant the scars that littered his torso, back, and arms, they would have been more unpleasant had serums and lasers not improved them, little by little, year after year. Even he couldn’t see some of them any longer, but there were those that had caused too much damage or else been too poorly sutured—by himself more often than not—that they would never go away, and still looked as bad today as they always had.

  “Seriously,” she said. “What happened?”

  “A misspent youth, mostly.”

  It was a line he used to end such enquiries, but again he wasn’t joking. Each scar was a lesson, a reminder, of his imperfection, of a mistake not to be repeated.

  He saw by her expression that she wasn’t going to let it go. Few people saw his scars, and of those who did most were satisfied with his vague answers, especially when he was paying for their company, not their questions. She was not one of those women, however, and she was more quizzical than he was used to, and more learned.

  She pointed. “That one above your clavicle. That’s from a bullet.”

  It wasn’t a question. She knew. It would have been pointless to pretend otherwise. It would only draw more suspicion. He had cover stories for each one—I was in a car accident. . . . Someone jumped me outside a bar—but they weren’t going to work here. Lying would only make her more curious for the truth. Victor didn’t want that.

  He nodded. “I was in the army a long time ago.”

  “Which theater did you get shot in?”

  He knew what she meant: Afghanistan or Iraq.

  “Sierra Leone,” he said. “I was attached to a British unit.”

  To his knowledge no American troops had operated in that country in living memory. It was a former part of the British Empire, and British troops had been there from time to time since independence.

  “The Irish Guards were in Sierra Leone,” she said, surprising him with her knowledge. “As well as Paras, and the SAS. So which were you attached to?”

  He didn’t react. “You know your regiments.”

  She shrugged. She didn’t explain how. He imagined she had a cousin or a friend who had been in the military, or perhaps she just liked a certain kind of book.

  “So, are you going to tell me which you were, or is it one of those you-could-tell-me-but-you’d-have-to-kill-me situations?”

  “If I told you my background, then I really would have to kill you.”

  She laughed. “That’s so corny.”

  He smiled, because he wasn’t joking.

  She came closer. “May I?” She gestured to the scar on his trapezius.

  He wasn’t comfortable with any more intimacy than was necessary, but he didn’t want her to know that. She leaned over him. He could smell the scent of the hotel shampoo in her hair. It was too floral, too powerful, as such scents always were.

  “What caliber? Looks small, like a twenty-two, but I don’t imagine the West Side Boys used a whole lot of those.”

  “Seven-six-two, short,” he explained, and when she looked at him with surprised skepticism, he added, “Long-range shot. Ricochet. Didn’t even feel it go in.”

  She checked his back. “You’re lucky it didn’t come out the other side. Would have made a mess.”

  He resisted telling her there was no such thing as luck, and nodded instead.

  Her fingers and palms explored his chest, then abdomen, where she traced a horizontal line. “What about this one?”

  He placed his hands over hers. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. She was looking at his mouth or chin. “Where did you get that little scar?”

  A groove formed between Victor’s eyebrows. “What scar?”

  “Under your jawline. Here.” She pointed.

  He said, “I don’t have a scar there,” thinking he knew about every one he did have, whether she had found them or not.

  “You do,” she insisted. She used a thumb to touch her own chin, underneath the jawbone. “Right here.”

  Confused, he felt with his own thumb, scraping stubble and detecting a tiny groove in the skin.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  “I . . . I didn’t know I had one there.”

  “Really? I’ve only just noticed it.”

  He had many scars on his arms, legs, head, and torso and he knew where each and every one came from—blades, bullets, shrapnel, fire—and who had caused them. But not one under his chin. How could he not remember an injury there?

  “You must have gotten it as a child,” Joanna said. “If you don’t remember it.”

  “I don’t.”

  He shrugged as though it didn’t matter to him, but it did. He didn’t like not knowing, even if he preferred not to think about his childhood. He didn’t like the loss of control over his own memories.

  “You probably fell. Kids fall, don’t they?”

  “I don’t really like to talk about those days.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, retreating. “My bad.”

  He had offended her in a way he didn’t quite understand, but he knew enough to soften the moment. “I’m self-conscious about my scars.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” she said, no longer backing off. “They make you interesting without trying. A hidden-depth kind of thing. In your suit, no one would guess what lies beneath.”

  He said, “That’s the idea.”

  Joanna smiled because she was joking. Like him, she was trying to soften the moment.

  She slipped out of the robe and let it fall to the floor. She held her arms away from her nakedness. “See the difference?” She turned around on the spot. “I’m not interesting at all.”

  She expected a certain kind of response, and he was happy to play along. “Well, I would have to disagree with you there.”

  She placed her hands on her hips. “Prove it.”

  He did as requested.

  * * *

  • • •

  Afterward, Joanna said, “Tell me something about you that no one else knows.”

  Victor said, “There’s lots about me that people don’t know.”

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p; “Then you really have no reason to stall then, do you?” She smiled in both challenge and self-congratulation.

  “I can rub my tummy and pat my head at the same time.”

  He had once said the same thing to someone else, in what seemed like another time. That person was dead. He had killed her, so it felt that he was keeping to the letter of Joanna’s request, if not the spirit. That couldn’t be helped, but he found it distasteful nonetheless. Any time they spent together, any moments they shared, were based on fallacy. She would never know even a hint of who he was.

  She said, “Where are you? You look sad.”

  “I was momentarily thinking about work. It’s hard to switch off at times.”

  “Commodities getting you down?”

  “Actually, things are going well. No more false starts.”

  “So well you’re almost finished here?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, deal is almost complete. Then it’s on to the next one.”

  “Ah,” she said. “The old finite shelf life.”

  “Frustratingly inevitable.”

  “All good things must come to an end.”

  “Don’t they just?”

  “Well, it was a good run we had, wasn’t it? Brief but fun, and over before we got to anything messy. I’m glad we’ll be able to say good-bye when we still like each other.”

  “Are you saying you were getting bored with me?”

  “Clever. You know I’m not saying that. And it’s leaving it a little late in the day to pretend you’re sensitive. Don’t think I’m so easily fooled. I know exactly what you’re doing.”

  “Which is?”

  “You just did it again by asking for more. You’re diverting the conversation away from us, from good-bye. I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t something he said often.

  She was silent in contemplation for a long moment. He could see she was deciding on something, but he had no idea what until she said, “I don’t work at a bank.”

  “Okay,” he said, waiting for elaboration.

  “I do deal mostly deal with finances. That part was true. It’s just not the kind of finances you think. I don’t so much attempt to make money as take it.”

  “You’re not making a lot of sense.”

  “Perhaps this will help explain.” She reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and withdrew her wallet. She took something out he couldn’t see and returned to where he sat on the bed, now holding a business card in her hand. “There are a lot of security considerations with my work, so I’m afraid I can’t just tell anyone I meet what I do. I have to be sure of them first. Which . . . is a problem, naturally. So I understand if this changes your opinion of me, which I don’t want it to, but I don’t want to leave things on a lie.”

  She held out the card, and he took it from her.

  It was nothing fancy. Off-white with black lettering. A certain quality in the thickness, but no more than necessary. It had her full name, her e-mail, her cell phone, and landline. It also had the seal of her employer and her job title.

  Special Agent Joanna Alamaeda, Drug Enforcement Agency.

  “Oh,” Victor said.

  • Chapter 63 •

  Chartering a small fishing boat proved more difficult to do than Victor expected, but purchasing one was inexpensive. He found a hard-up fisherman in need of quick cash who was delighted that anyone would want his run-down vessel. It was sun baked, with warped wood and marked fiberglass. The hull leaked and mollusks covered the bow. It was the kind of boat that no one wanted. Decades old and looking like a strong gust of wind would cause it to capsize, it was perfect for Victor’s requirements. The Pacific off Guatemala’s coast offered some excellent sport fishing, and many gleaming charter boats took tourists and enthusiasts out on a regular basis. Such charter vessels would blend in easier than the fishing boat Victor had purchased, but they would be memorable. There would be documented ownership. It would be easy to check at a later point who had bought it or when it had been stolen. That was no good to Victor. He didn’t want to leave a trail. So he needed a boat that no one wanted, that he could buy for cash from an owner who couldn’t be tracked down.

  He let the owner oversell because there was no reason not to. A proficient fisherman but an old man, he told tall tales of black marlin, blue marlin, and yellowfin tuna. Fifty pounds, one hundred pounds. He had caught them all, solo, with gear that couldn’t handle half the weight. Victor listened with wide eyes and nods of appreciation. He let the old fisherman talk. He took a can of lukewarm beer and popped the tab and didn’t ask why the fisherman poured a splash over the side, although he could guess. He laughed when appropriate and asked the kind of questions he knew the fisherman wanted to answer.

  Victor listened to those answers but his focus was elsewhere. He was thinking about a rival assassin hired by his employers, and the offer he had made. He was also thinking about Joanna and her newly revealed profession.

  Both were the kind of problems Victor could do without, because he couldn’t leave Guatemala with either of them unresolved.

  Despite its sun-bleached hull, chips, and dents, the boat was in good condition. It looked a wreck, but only because age had taken, little by little, the fisherman’s ability to maintain its appearance. He had spent his energy wisely, however, and the propeller worked, the rudder worked, the radio worked. That was all Victor needed. The exhaust smoked and spluttered at first, but he was good with engines, and the fisherman gave him a box of tools and spare parts along with the boat. They were no use to him now.

  It took Victor the better part of a day to get the exhaust manifold cleaned up so it wouldn’t send up smoke signals to advertise his presence to every vessel in sight. The fisherman, now both cash-rich and time-rich, helped him as much as he could. He was no mechanic, but was useful passing and taking tools as required. When the sun set, Victor shared final words with the fisherman, who was having a hard time saying good-bye to the boat. Victor said he would look after it, which was true, but only in part, because even in the best-case scenario the boat would be sent to the bottom of the ocean. The fisherman didn’t need to know that. He had tears in his eyes as Victor untethered the mooring.

  It stank, of course. Once the odor of fish had taken hold it would never let go. Victor didn’t mind. A bad smell meant nothing. He had experienced a lot worse. He brought his gear on board in a series of waterproof bags and stashed them belowdecks. He wasn’t expecting to be boarded by the coast guard, but it would be harder to talk his way out of it with bags on deck just begging to be opened.

  Why do you have a silenced weapon? was not a question that could be explained away.

  He took the time to paint over the boat’s name—Blessed Mother of Christ—with something more generic, more forgettable—Orca—but otherwise let it be. If things went according to plan, he would need to use it for only one night.

  Based on his previous research into Maria’s yacht, in the worst-case scenario there might be thirty gunmen on board, but that would mean every guest was a sicario, which wasn’t the case. All the same, that’s what Victor planned for to ensure there could be no surprises. To provide anything close to round-the-clock protection, half would be on day shift and half on night watch. That meant fifteen awake and wary when Victor attacked. The yacht had six decks, so with an attempt at an even spread that meant no more than three sicarios to avoid per deck. In reality he expected to encounter a fraction of this, but he never planned for best-case scenarios.

  Despite being on the water, he treated the yacht as any other strike point. He would attack in the early morning, at four a.m., when he was awake and alert and his enemies were at their most vulnerable. Victor was always awake at that time. He slept at night only when he had no other choice. It was too dangerous. Every soldier, every killer, was taught to attack in the dead of the nig
ht, when the enemy or target was most vulnerable, when their biorhythms were at their lowest, when their threshold for disturbance was at its highest. It took a lot to wake someone so asleep. A partner climbing out of bed wouldn’t do it. A shutting door wouldn’t either. They could even be touched and remain asleep. It wasn’t just theory. Victor had been taught the same and had proved those lessons accurate many times.

  He would never go after a fellow professional at such a time, because any such professional Victor hoped to catch off guard would not be asleep at that time for that very reason. He wasn’t dealing with professionals here. They might think of themselves as sicarios—hit men—but the only similarity was in name.

  With a yacht so big and so obvious it was easy to observe the arrival of Maria and her entourage. As expected, a motorcade of SUVs pulled up at the marina and dozens of people exited. The security detail had a reasonable level of proficiency, but they were no Secret Service. They allowed Maria to take her time getting to the yacht, but a shot, even if Victor had been able to set up, wouldn’t have been worth taking. They surrounded her in a swarm of moving bodies. An RPG could have taken them all out in one go, but Victor might have trouble explaining that one to the nice people on the restaurant terrace he was using.

  He counted twenty-six people in addition to his target, of which twelve were bodyguards. The other fourteen consisted of three men who looked like lieutenants, another four men who Victor guessed were associates or clients here to be wooed, half a dozen young women to assist with that process, and a well-dressed young man whom Victor took to be Maria’s boyfriend or a gigolo. The twelve-man-strong security detail carried no unconcealed weapons, and although luggage was brought on board that could conceivably include assault rifles or submachine guns, if they weren’t brandishing them now, they were unlikely to be walking around with them on deck.

  Based on his previous estimates, with twelve sicarios instead of thirty, he might have to avoid only six when he attacked. Which meant no more than one to avoid per deck if they were spread out in an even security detail.

  His fishing boat could fit inside the yacht many times over, and the speed disparity between the two meant he could shadow the yacht easily without appearing to do so. When the yacht dropped anchor, the Pacific stretched on to the horizon in all directions, so vast and beautiful it could not be quantified. The blue water met the blue sky, separated by a line of pale yellow that was all that remained of the day.