The Game

by Tom Wood

  The mother saw him on occasions, of course, like she saw other people on the street or in the park, but she strolled through a simple existence unaware of just how dangerous life could be. She failed to see through the mundane cloak that encased him. She dismissed him as just another man. A local, perhaps. Uninteresting and harmless. She didn’t see the monster. But she would when the time was right.

  That time was coming.

  THIRTEEN

  Vienna, Austria

  Victor’s hotel had a fitness suite located on the ground floor. It was open twenty-four hours a day, which meant Victor could use it in the middle of the night when there were no other guests around. Beneath a high ceiling the room was fitted with rows of exercise bikes, cross trainers, treadmills, step machines and rowing machines that occupied about three-quarters of the space. The rest was filled with resistance machines. No free weights.

  It was quiet. His footsteps echoed. There were speakers positioned throughout the room linked to a music system that could be operated by the guests, if they so chose. Victor left it alone. The only other sound was the thrum of air conditioning that kept the temperature low.

  Including the main entrance, there were four ways in and out. The other three consisted of two short corridors leading to the male and female locker rooms and a door that would open into a room containing maintenance, cleaning and first aid equipment. He tried his hotel key card on the lock for the other door but was greeted with a red light.

  The female locker room was small, with no more than twenty lockers lining two of the four walls. Benches stood before them. A small toilet and a smaller shower room led off from the main area. Victor found no one. All the lockers were unlocked and he checked inside each one to make sure they were empty of anything forgotten by a guest who might come to collect it at this time of night. Nothing.

  He exited it, walking fast, shaking his head and looking embarrassed for the benefit of any security guard who happened to be watching the fitness suite via one of the two cameras. The men’s locker room had a similar layout and was similarly empty of people and belongings.

  The suite’s only entrance was set in one corner and even with mirrors on most of the walls, it was impossible to watch from the majority of the cardiovascular and resistance equipment thanks to several pillars and the machines blocking line of sight. But the door pushed inwards. Victor took a two-euro coin – the only money on him – from a pocket of his shorts and balanced it on the top of the inside handle.

  He began his workout by doing a circuit of the resistance machines. He kept the breaks between sets short and used light weights and high repetitions to maintain his strength without adding excess bulk to his lean muscle mass. It took him an hour to do the circuit and he paused to refuel on protein and carbohydrates from a supplement shake before beginning the second part of his workout with cardiovascular exercises.

  He rowed for thirty minutes, creating intense fatigue in his upper body already weakened from the circuit training. His workout gear now soaked in sweat, he moved to a cycling machine. He kept his heart rate at ninety per cent of maximum for half an hour and moved to the treadmill as the first light of dawn began to brighten the city outside.

  The cardio machines all faced windows that ran along one wall beneath rows of TV screens. Normally, Victor would not have remained exposed before an unarmoured window for any length of time, but to protect the privacy of the hotel’s guests, the fitness suite’s windows were one way. In addition, he used machines adjacent to or behind pillars to provide cover and limit line of sight for any marksman across the street.

  Midway through his run on the treadmill he heard the echoing clink of metal striking a hard surface. The sound was quiet compared to the whine of the treadmill’s machinery and the thump of his feet on the belt, but Victor had chosen a machine close to the door to make sure he heard it.

  He glanced over his shoulder to see a woman enter. She was in her mid twenties, dressed in workout gear, with blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She was slim and toned and he didn’t have to look at her longer than a half a second to know for certain there could be no hidden weapon on her person. Victor dismissed her as a threat and continued his run.

  Her fragrance would have informed him of her approach even if the mirrors had not let him keep track of her movements. He was on the end of the row of treadmills. There were another five to his right. She chose the one next to him.

  He glanced again in case he had missed something the first time, but there wasn’t room to hide a pencil in her clothes, let alone a gun. She was looking his way and saw his eyes flick in her direction.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  He nodded to acknowledge the greeting, but didn’t say anything in return.

  In his peripheral vision he saw the young woman tap the screen of her machine to set up her workout and began at a quick walk. She looked across at his readout.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘that’s an impressive time.’

  He nodded again, and smiled briefly – polite but distracted. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, speaking between inhales, ‘I’m in training for a race. I need to concentrate.’

  ‘Sure, no problem,’ she said. ‘Oh, by the way, did you drop this coin?’

  Victor found Muir waiting outside his room. She didn’t see him straightaway, because she was looking left in the direction of the elevators as Victor rounded the corner from the stairwell. She didn’t hear him approach because his footsteps were quiet even without athletic shoes and carpet to further muffle the sound, only facing him as he entered her peripheral vision. Her shoulder blades came away from the wall next to his door, her legs straightened and she arched her back. She’d been waiting there a long time. She had a key card between her fingers.

  ‘I took a wild guess that you wouldn’t like it if you found me inside your hotel room,’ she said, waving the card for emphasis.

  ‘Not as much as you wouldn’t.’

  She wore grey trousers and a blue blouse underneath a smart leather jacket that was tapered at the waist and flared out around her hips. It made her look less thin than she had the day before but could do nothing for the sunken cheekbones. Her boots had a two-inch heel. Her dark hair was loose and wavy. Behind her glasses her eyes looked tired, but she had applied extra makeup to try and hide the dark circles and bags.

  ‘My body clock is still all over the place,’ she explained, ‘and I figured you would be an early riser.’

  He ignored her and moved to insert his own key card in the slot.

  Muir took a rapid step back. ‘Why don’t I wait for you downstairs while you take a shower?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘You really hum.’

  He looked at her.

  She said, ‘Shall we say I’ll see you in the lobby in about twenty minutes?’

  ‘We have nothing further to discuss. If you had managed to get clearance to answer my question you would have said so by now.’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t have clearance. I spent half the night trying to get it.’

  Victor pushed open his door. ‘Have a good flight back to Washington, Miss Muir. I trust you understand it’s in your best interest to forget you ever met me.’

  ‘Wait,’ she said, and went to grab his arm.

  Her fingers didn’t find their target. Instead they were twisted back on themselves, and her wrist joint hyper-extended. She gasped and sank downwards as he applied pressure. He released her before any serious damage was caused, but only just.

  ‘Go back to Washington, Miss Muir.’

  ‘Wait,’ she said again, grimacing as she rubbed her wrist. ‘I haven’t got clearance, but I’m going to answer your question anyway. I’m going to break the rules because I need your help and I don’t have time to waste waiting for a guy in an office to grant clearance on facts you’ve already worked out for yourself.’

  ‘That’s a sensible attitude to take.’

  ‘I thou
ght you’d agree. I’ll tell you everything you want to know downstairs, okay?’ She sucked in air between her teeth and tried to rub the pain from her wrist.

  ‘Not in the lobby,’ Victor said. ‘But I’m going to get some dinner when I’ve cleaned up. You can join me if you wish.’

  She glanced at her watch. ‘Don’t you mean breakfast?’

  ‘I’m unlikely to get the two confused.’

  ‘Sure, okay. Let’s go get some dinner. At six a.m.’

  FOURTEEN

  Dinner consisted of two hotdogs loaded with onions and ketchup bought from a street vendor. Muir settled for a cream donut, along with a black coffee into which she added three sachets of sugar. Two brown. One white. The sun shone through wispy clouds and they walked along the river, where it was quiet. It was windy and Muir wore a band to keep her hair back. Joggers passed them by on occasion.

  Victor saw nothing of Muir’s team. There were still three he hadn’t identified and he knew they wouldn’t be far; nor would the young guy who had been waiting at the bus stop, the sportswear-clad fifty-year-old called Beatty, and the one disguised as a businessman. They would be tracking Muir easily enough with GPS via her cell phone. Beatty would have argued they needed to maintain visual contact but she would have insisted otherwise. She knew as Victor had spotted them the first time that he would so again, and she didn’t want to antagonise him. He appreciated that uncommon courtesy.

  ‘The diplomat who was killed in Yemen was CIA,’ Muir said, looking away. ‘Non-official cover operative. A NOC. Stanley Charters. Guy was a real hero.’

  ‘What was he doing in Yemen?’

  ‘He was running agents linked to the black market plutonium trade. Which I’m sure you can appreciate is a very rare and complex operation. Anything radioactive automatically becomes the hardest illicit commodity to identify and track. And not just because the traders go to such great lengths to hide it.’

  ‘Because more often than not it’s mostly smoke and mirrors.’

  Muir nodded. ‘There’s a million bad guys out there who want to get their hands on it so there are countless opportunists claiming to have access to hidden Soviet stockpiles and suitcase nukes. It’s ridiculous. Have these people never heard of a half life? Even the few genuine traders out there are mostly trying to sell junk that stopped being denotable over a decade ago, else it was never weapons grade in the first place. As long as the Geiger counter crackles, most buyers don’t know any better. But ninety per cent of sellers don’t even have access to waste product. They’re just charlatans looking to rip off rich jihadists eager to turn up in the middle of nowhere with briefcases full of cash money.’

  ‘But your NOC was onto traders who had the real thing?’

  ‘Charters had a solid gold link to a chain that supposedly ran all the way to the enrichment plants in Pakistan.’

  ‘Hence why he met with a premature demise.’

  Muir nodded again. ‘We don’t know how he got found out, but the body was discovered in his apartment with a straight razor buried in his throat. Yemeni authorities were happy to put it down as a suicide.’

  ‘How did you identify Kooi as the assassin?’

  ‘One of the agents Charters was running was terrified he’d be the next victim. He turned up at the US consulate for protection. He was just one of the network’s smugglers, not that he ever came near anything radioactive, but he’d overheard his boss boast that they had a Dutchman on the books who was cleaning up problems for them. Then it was pure grunt work; a process of elimination. Only so many Europeans entering and exiting Yemen in the right time period. Only so many men. Then of those only one travelling from Amsterdam who also happened to have flown into Pakistan the same week as an asset for the Pakistani secret service, who was supplying them intel about plutonium smuggling, committed suicide by slitting his wrists. You’ll never guess what he cut them with.’

  ‘Sloppy,’ Victor said.

  ‘Don’t approve of the MO?’

  ‘A suicide takes some skill to pull off convincingly, especially with someone more prone to violent death than a regular civilian. But to use the same method for two separate targets for the same client is leaving an unnecessary trail. Perhaps the razor is symbolic to these guys. Whoever is in charge is sending a message to everyone in the network: wherever you are, I can get to you.’

  ‘Makes sense. Kooi likely thought there was enough difference between slit wrists and a razor in the neck that a connection wouldn’t be made, but he could still satisfy the client’s wishes.’

  ‘His intent would have been to slit your NOC’s wrists as he’d done with the Pakistani asset to create a convincing suicide. A razor in the neck is not. He would have been waiting in the apartment for when he came back. Either he made a mistake or the NOC knew he was there, because they fought. Kooi had no choice but to stab him in the neck. But that wasn’t his plan.’

  ‘The Yemeni police report mentioned nothing about signs of struggle in Charters’ apartment.’

  ‘Then they’re lying.’

  ‘Or Kooi covered his tracks.’

  ‘Possible, but unlikely. Unless the NOC lived in a soundproof apartment neighbours would have heard the commotion. Kooi wouldn’t have had time to clean up and set the scene. Easier to bribe or threaten the investigator.’

  Muir frowned and withdrew her phone. ‘I’ve got to pass this on. Give me a minute, please?’

  Victor nodded and stepped away to give Muir a little privacy while she made a call and explained to whoever was on the other end of the line what had just been discussed. She hung up.

  ‘Thank you for accommodating me.’

  ‘No problem.’

  They walked on for a minute in silence. Then Victor said, ‘Why was I sent to kill Kooi? Why not pick him up and find out who hired him to assassinate your man?’

  ‘If only it were that simple. Kooi was a citizen of the Netherlands with no criminal record. He ran a small charity that required him to travel all over the world as an alibi. There was no evidence against him that would stand up in court or would convince the Dutch authorities to extradite him. And we couldn’t just lift him from the middle of Amsterdam and smuggle him out of the country without risking stirring up a hornet’s nest. More importantly, however, we didn’t need to sweat him for intel. The Pakistani asset who turned up crying at the embassy gave us everything we needed to track the client down. He’s now rotting in a prison that doesn’t exist, wishing he was dead, and spilling his guts of everything he knows in the hopes he’ll be let out one day. He won’t, of course. We think we’ve identified about sixty per cent of the plutonium smuggling network so far. It’s only a matter of time until we get the rest. We didn’t need Kooi and we like old school justice at the agency when it comes to our own. We had the opportunity to deal out a little karma that wouldn’t lead back to us, so we took it.’

  ‘In other words: you had me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Muir admitted. ‘And I’d like to thank you for that. Charters was a good guy. We worked together some time ago.’

  ‘You didn’t just work though, did you?’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean you’ve lost fifteen pounds. Recently, because your clothes don’t fit and you haven’t had the time to go shopping for ones that do, except for that leather jacket.’

  ‘Stan and I had a thing while on an op together a couple of years ago. It hurt when he died. It still hurts. So what? I’m still objective here.’

  ‘I didn’t say you weren’t. But you said you’d be honest with me.’

  ‘It was personal information. It’s got nothing to do with this conversation.’

  Victor finished off the last hotdog and used a napkin to clean his fingers. Muir said, ‘For a guy who works out so much I’m surprised you’re not more careful about what you put inside you.’

  ‘I’m not without my vices.’ He dropped the napkin and the greaseproof paper from the hotdogs into a bin. ‘Perhaps it’s about time you told me w
hat I have to do with this sequence of events, aside from Kooi’s death.’

  Muir watched him, then took a breath and said, ‘A few weeks ago the client informed us that he hadn’t hired Kooi directly. He’d used a broker. After Kooi was dead we had some of our people go searching for proof through his personal laptop and phone, but they were clean. We hadn’t expected to find anything, but it doesn’t hurt to be thorough, right?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But they didn’t find a link to any broker to support the client’s claims, and we dismissed it as hot air to try and shift some of the blame.’