The Game

by Tom Wood

  ‘So what is Jaeger doing in there?’

  ‘I could take a guess, but that’s not how I like to do things. When I know more, I’ll pass it on.’

  ‘Can you get in there?’

  ‘Not easily. But if the opportunity is there, I’m taking it.’

  ‘Leave it for now. Maybe when you’ve been there longer Leeson will trust you enough to let you inside too. Better that than breaking in and leaving evidence behind. You’ll be top of the list of suspects by default.’

  ‘I’m not in the habit of leaving evidence behind.’

  ‘Even so, I’m asking you not to.’

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘But you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. You want to know what Leeson is planning, and now I’m here, I need to know. Because he wants Kooi for a specific reason, for a specific skill Kooi has or a specific role he can fulfil. I need to know what that is before Leeson gives me my orders. Finding out what’s in the barn might help me get the answer we’re both after.’

  ‘It might also get you killed.’

  ‘So might crossing the road.’

  ‘Just promise me you’ll be careful, okay?’

  Victor didn’t.

  Muir said, ‘How are we doing for time?’

  ‘I can give you another few minutes. Then I’ll have to get back to the farmhouse. If someone knows I’m gone I can justify my absence as a middle-of-the-night run because I couldn’t sleep, but the longer I’m out the harder sell that will be.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s go back to what happened in Rome. So, we don’t know what he’s done, but Leeson has angered a Georgian mob enough for them to send a six-man crew over to Italy to kill him. This mob is based in Odessa and some of its members are former Russian intelligence. And you killed the whole hit team?’

  ‘Leeson got one.’

  ‘No possible way one of the corpses could be alive in a hospital bed?’

  ‘I didn’t shoot to wound.’

  ‘I’ll liaise with the Italians and get hold of the crime scene intel. With a bit of luck Leeson’s prints will be recoverable from his tumbler or knife and fork.’

  ‘There’s a shotgun he used. A good set of prints should be recoverable.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘You understand I couldn’t leave his gun behind?’

  ‘Hey, I know. That would have been perfect, but we know that one reason Kooi was hired is because he – you – are calm and careful. Leaving his sidearm behind is something only an absolute amateur would have done. Even if Leeson himself didn’t consider it, one of your teammates could have done. Your cover is precarious enough as it is without doing anything to make it more so.’

  He was glad she could see the same angles he could, and what she didn’t understand about the business she learned fast. He wouldn’t have taken the job had he not felt she could.

  She said, ‘But even if we can get a set of Leeson’s prints, it only helps us if he’s on someone’s files. Which seems unlikely considering how careful he is the rest of the time.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s so careful because he’s on someone’s file.’

  ‘We’ve got a good relationship with Italian intelligence. Once the lab geeks have finished with the crime scene I’m sure I’ll get the results quickly. But it’s going to take them a while to sift through all the evidence with a crime this spectacular.’

  ‘Spectacular?’

  ‘Complex, then.’

  ‘How soon can you get here?’ Victor asked.

  ‘This time tomorrow.’

  ‘Then you need to call your Rome station and get someone to the parking garage.’

  ‘Why? The Italians aren’t going to let us near it just yet.’

  ‘Then he’s going to have to be creative because he needs to go to the third floor. There’s a beige Alfa Romeo in the northeast corner.’ He gave Muir the licence number. ‘He needs to jimmy the door and hot wire it, so he has to be good at field craft. Then he needs to drive it away and take it somewhere quiet. Are you making a note of this?’

  ‘Yes, yes. What is going on here? What’s special about this car?’

  ‘There’s one of the six Georgians in the trunk.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘He’s young and only the team’s driver, but he’s been travelling and lodging with the others so I figured he might know something about Leeson, or he’ll be able to point to someone who does. But I didn’t have time to interrogate him myself, so I did the next best thing.’

  ‘What? Wait. You told me all six were dead.’

  ‘No I didn’t. You asked if I was responsible for all the deaths and I said Leeson killed one of the Georgians.’

  ‘Oh man, so you’re telling me you knocked out one of these mobsters and hid him in the trunk of a car smack bang in the middle of a major crime scene?’

  ‘I didn’t knock him out. I tied him up and gagged him. I told him I’d let him out again in twelve hours.’

  ‘He won’t still be there,’ Muir said, the volume of her voice a good six decibels louder than it had been previously. ‘One of the cops at the scene will have heard him by now.’

  ‘You don’t know how well I secured him,’ Victor said back. ‘He couldn’t have made much of a noise and I muffled his ears so he wouldn’t know what was happening around him. Besides, I told him if I heard him so much as clear his throat I’d kill him like I did his five friends, only I would take my time. He believed me.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. What about the garage’s CCTV?’

  ‘The system was basic. Cameras covered the ramps and ticket machines but there were a number of blind spots.’

  ‘And what if the car’s owner has driven it away?’

  ‘The Alfa Romeo is part of a crime scene, as you said. Rome PD will maintain the integrity of the scene for at least twelve hours before letting cars leave. That gives you six hours to make sure your guy is first on scene when they do. And I’m sure the owner of the vehicle could be persuaded to let you borrow it for an hour if an incentive is offered. But it’s up to you how you sort it out.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?’

  ‘Because I’m telling you now,’ Victor said. ‘Time’s up. I need to get back.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  Victor woke at 6 a.m. An hour’s sleep was not enough to recharge him after the escapades of the previous day, but he wanted to be up before his three teammates. Specifically, he didn’t want to be asleep while they were awake. He remained in his room until he heard Dietrich’s door open opposite, and then the heavy footfalls of Jaeger a while later. Victor waited another ten minutes and then headed downstairs.

  It was cool in the kitchen. Light streamed in through the window above the sink. He filled a cast iron kettle with water and placed it on the stove. In a cupboard, he found a cafetiere and a hand grinder and downstairs in the single-room cellar he located a one-kilogram sack of roasted coffee beans, of which he took a handful. They smelt fantastic.

  The cellar was at least ten degrees lower in temperature than the kitchen and made a reasonable cool room. He dropped the beans into a pocket of his trousers, slipped a packet of butter into the other, tucked a loaf of bread under his left arm and in his left hand picked up a tray of large brown hen’s eggs.

  Coughlin was sat at the table when Victor re-entered the kitchen. He had left the cellar door open, but still hadn’t heard the Brit. Coughlin was not as physically dangerous as Dietrich or Jaeger, and though young he was measured and reputedly good with a rifle and quiet. Victor made a mental note to kill him at close range, when the time came.

  ‘Making coffee?’

  Victor nodded. ‘How do you take it?’

  ‘As nature intended. Looks like you’re going to make breakfast too.’

  There was a hint of hopefulness in his voice. Victor nodded again.

  ‘Scrambled egg on toast then, mate,’ Coughlin said, then added: ‘Cheers.’

  Victor ground the coffee beans. H
e stood to the left of the sink so he could see Coughlin’s reflection in the window while he had his back to him. Coughlin picked at his nails and tossed the fragments to the floor. He didn’t look up at Victor once.

  While he waited for the kettle to boil he cracked eggs into a glass bowl and whisked them with butter and a little water because there had been no milk in the basement, before adding black pepper and salt. He cooked the mixture in a copper skillet while he sliced bread and toasted it.

  The kettle took a long time to boil because Victor had filled it with twice as much water as he needed. It started hissing as he placed the scrambled eggs on toast on the table before Coughlin, who wasted no time hacking off a chunk.

  ‘It’s good,’ he said, chewing.

  Victor prepared the coffee and left it to brew for five minutes while he made some breakfast for himself. He poured them both a cup and sat down perpendicular to Coughlin, at one end of the table, his back to the stove and facing the door that led outside.

  ‘Ah, that’s the shit,’ Coughlin said after his first slurp. ‘Much better than that horrible sludge Dietrich makes.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Victor asked.

  ‘Probably running.’

  ‘Jaeger?’

  Coughlin shrugged and shook his head. ‘He’s always in the barn.’

  ‘What’s he doing in there?’

  ‘How would I know?’ He gulped down some more coffee. ‘You should ask Dietrich to make you a cup just so you can see how bad it is.’ He smirked. ‘Idiot could get a glass of water wrong.’

  Victor turned up the corners of his mouth in response. ‘I take it he’s better at his job than he is in the kitchen.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Top-up?’ Victor said, gesturing to the cafetiere.

  Coughlin shovelled the last of the breakfast into his mouth and nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’ve been here for a while, right?’

  Coughlin nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What have you been doing?’

  He looked at Victor. ‘We’re not supposed to discuss the job.’

  ‘We’re just talking here. I don’t know anything about what we’re doing here.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘So what harm is there in telling me how you’ve been spending your time?’

  Coughlin shrugged. He slurped some coffee. ‘Me and Dietrich stole an ambulance.’

  ‘What for?’

  Coughlin shrugged again. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  Before he could answer, Jaeger entered and washed his hands at the sink, working up a lather with a block of carbolic soap and rubbing his palms together for several seconds. He washed each of his fingers in turn, then the back of his hand, and then did it all over again. Coughlin paid the long and careful routine no attention because he had seen Jaeger often enough for it to be a normal part of the day. After drying his hands on a towel, Jaeger said, ‘Who cooked breakfast?’

  Coughlin pointed. ‘Kooi did.’

  ‘Was it good?’

  Coughlin nodded. ‘Best I’ve had here.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Kooi too.’

  ‘Would you like some?’ Victor asked.

  ‘I don’t drink it. But you can cook me some food if you want to.’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘That’s pretty selfish.’

  ‘It’s pretty lazy not to make your own. Takes all of five minutes.’

  ‘I don’t want any. I’ve already eaten. I just wanted to see if you would make me some.’

  ‘Why?’

  Jaeger shrugged his big shoulders. ‘Just because.’

  He left the kitchen. Stairs groaned a moment later.

  ‘Dangerous combination,’ Coughlin said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Being that big and that strange. Can’t be a good mix. Like cooking with napalm.’

  Victor nodded. ‘Was he here before you?’

  ‘Yeah, and I’ve traded more words with you in one than I have with him in five. Did you see the way he washes his hands?’

  Victor nodded again.

  ‘And?’ Coughlin asked, pointedly.

  ‘Maybe he’s got an obsessive-compulsive tic.’

  ‘Or?’ Coughlin asked, even more pointedly.

  ‘Or he really wanted to be sure there were no traces left behind of whatever it was that had got on his hands.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  They held eye contact for a moment, but Coughlin didn’t say anything further and Victor didn’t either because Dietrich pushed open the exterior door. He wore khaki shorts and an undershirt dark from sweat. His face and shaven head glistened and his mouth was open. As before, he had his combat knife sheafed on his belt.

  He turned on the cold tap and leant over the sink to drink straight from the flow for almost a minute. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of a hand and said, ‘What are you ladies talking about?’

  Victor said nothing, but Coughlin elected to answer: ‘Your lack of culinary expertise compared with Kooi here.’

  Coughlin picked some crumbs up from his plate and ate them for emphasis.

  Dietrich looked at Victor. ‘I leave a woman’s work to a woman.’

  He didn’t respond. He heard the rumble of an approaching engine and then the crunch of gravel beneath tyres. Both other men looked towards the kitchen window and to the driveway outside. It wasn’t just expectation, but trepidation too. Not because they were expecting Leeson or Francesca and the arrival of the two made them nervous. They looked through the window because they thought someone else might appear.

  The other guy.

  The team member Victor hadn’t met yet. The one they already knew. The one they respected. The one they were afraid of.

  But Victor knew it wasn’t going to be the new guy even before the Toyota minivan came into view, because he knew the tone of that vehicle’s engine. So either the other guy drove a comparable vehicle or Dietrich and Coughlin didn’t pay the same level of attention Victor did. But few people he encountered did, else he would have died long before now, and his chances of surviving the impersonation of Kooi would be negligible.

  Francesca walked through the doorway. She wore a flowing white halter-neck dress, patterned with undulating chrysanthemums, that stopped well above the knee. Dietrich and Coughlin didn’t attempt to hide their stares. She smiled briefly at Victor.

  Leeson followed after a moment. He wore a different linen suit. Something was different about him too. He still displayed the veneer of confidence that had cracked apart last night in Rome, but his eyes were different. Victor wasn’t sure why: whether the weight of killing a man pressed down on his soul – which Victor doubted – or whether Leeson knew something today he hadn’t known yesterday.

  Victor stood, because he had a dangerous killer to each of his flanks and a wall behind him, while a table blocked his route out of the building. He watched Leeson, ready for the first word or change in expression that would indicate his cover was blown.

  FORTY-FIVE

  He would prefer to deal with Dietrich first – the biggest threat – but he was out of immediate attacking range, so Coughlin would get the knife resting next to Victor’s plate. It was a blunt, un-serrated butter knife, no good at cutting, but driven down with strength and skill would impale the hand Coughlin had helpfully left resting on the kitchen table. That one-second attack would take Coughlin out of the fight just long enough for Victor to deal with the others.

  The problem then was that Victor would have used up his closest and most effective improvised weapon to immobilise Coughlin. A fork in the back of the hand wouldn’t penetrate to anywhere near the same degree but he wanted the knife in his hand when he went for Dietrich.

  If Victor went for Dietrich first, he would lose precious time covering the distance and present his back to Coughlin while he dealt with Dietrich. Even though Victor didn’t consider Coughlin a threat in a one-on-
one confrontation, he didn’t like the idea of losing sight of him during the attack. He had to immobilise Coughlin fast and first with the knife, which meant he needed another weapon for Dietrich.

  The kettle. It was still on the stove. He’d filled it with more water than he’d needed for the cafetiere so he would have a short-range missile within reach should he need one. He couldn’t miss with a quick throw, and Victor only needed to slow Dietrich down enough to stop him drawing the knife from his belt sheath before Victor got to it first and used it to expose Dietrich’s intestinal tract to the elements.