The Game

by Tom Wood

  ‘Do you honestly think I don’t know all that?’

  ‘And,’ she continued as if he had said nothing, ‘if you leave my sight for just a second before the speech begins then I’ll be calling it in before you can be out of the building. Even if you had a helicopter waiting for you outside, you couldn’t get to the mill in time.’

  ‘Again, I know. You’ve done a very good job of orchestrating this.’

  ‘I think you’ll find we’ve done an exceptional job. The plan, even if I do say so myself, is perfect.’

  ‘It’s interesting you say that, because in my experience no plan is perfect. Everything goes wrong as soon as the bullets start flying.’

  ‘Quite the pessimist, aren’t you?’ She looked at her glass. ‘They certainly know how to make it strong in Russia. Let’s go for a little wander, shall we?’ She offered him her hand. He didn’t take it.

  The other two rooms designated for the reception were obvious from their open doors and the guests inside. More ropes and signs made those rooms which were off limits just as obvious. Across the hallway was a study and library. One half of the room contained an antique bureau and swivel chair. On the wall behind the desk hung framed photographs of previous Russian ambassadors, all serious-faced men with grey hair. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with Russian and Italian texts occupied the other wall. Biographies of important Russians were turned face out on eye-level shelves. Guests perused the titles.

  Francesca picked a random book from a shelf. ‘Are you a big reader?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘I’m trying to get to know you.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  She shrugged. ‘I want to remember you accurately.’

  He didn’t respond and she flicked through the book, frowning at pages of indecipherable Cyrillic script. ‘I’ve never seen the point in books.’

  ‘They say you get out of reading what you put in.’

  She nodded as if in agreement, but also absently. She struggled to slide the book back into the gap it had left.

  ‘Let’s take a look at the terrace,’ Victor said. ‘I want to see where it’s going to happen.’

  The last room holding the reception was bathed in a soft glow from gilded brass fixtures on the walls and ceiling that coloured the marble columns and arches in warm hues of yellow and pink. A conference table and chairs dominated one half of the room. The table and chairs were neoclassical antiques, as were the rest of the room’s furnishings. A fireplace stood on the wall behind the head of the table, with a neat pile of logs in the hearth, but only for appearances. The chimney would have been blocked up long ago. Above the fireplace hung a snowy cityscape by Boris Kustodiev. Victor recognised the style and signature from the many hours he’d spent in Moscow galleries, performing counter-surveillance while he enjoyed the artwork. He also recognised a painting by Ivan Aivazovsky on the opposite wall, that depicted naval battleships duelling during the Battle of Navarino. Beneath it stood a Mockba grand piano, white, polished to a mirror sheen. Victor felt the urge to play.

  Guests stood in small groups around the table and piano. Three sets of French doors spaced along the opposite west wall were open. Cool night air seeped in from the terrace outside, where more guests drank and laughed and where the ambassador would make his speech in less than an hour’s time.

  Francesca put her glass down on the conference table. The glass was about forty per cent full.

  ‘Had enough?’ Victor asked, a certain tone to his voice.

  ‘Oh, you’d like me drunk and pliable, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You’re looking a little the worse for wear.’

  ‘After one and a half glasses of fake champagne? Keep dreaming, Felix. I know my limits.’

  ‘Then why are you holding onto that chair?’

  She followed his gaze and snapped her hand away from where it had been gripping the chair’s back.

  ‘Let’s get you some air,’ Victor said.

  He guided her outside onto the terrace, pausing before the closest set of French doors to let her pass through first. The terrace ran the width of the building’s west wall and overlooked the embassy’s small but perfectly maintained garden. Lights mounted in the ground illuminated the rows of plants and flowers. A waist-high stone wall surrounded the terrace. Guests leaned against it and rested their glasses on top. Francesca found a spot at the south wall and leaned against it herself. Victor stood in front of her.

  The foliage of tall trees shielded the terrace from the buildings across the street, but Victor looked to the southwest, to where Hart and Coughlin watched from the five-storey apartment building. They had a good view of the terrace from across the four-way junction, high enough to provide line of sight over the trees to the south of the terrace, which were not as tall as those to the west. There were no lights on the terrace itself, but those from the conference room provided the space with subtle illumination. Victor’s eyes followed the width of darkness that lay between the glow spilling through the French doors and that of the lights in the garden.

  Francesca’s phone chimed and she checked the screen. ‘Hart has a visual on us.’

  Victor nodded in Hart’s direction in way of reply. Hart could see him from the apartment window. He had a good view. But not a great one, because the broad foliage of the taller trees to the west blocked line of sight from the apartment to the northwest corner of the terrace and reduced visibility to the terrace’s entire northern segment. A man standing inside the area of darkness between the two light sources would be almost invisible.

  All Hart had to do was dial a number and the explosives strapped to Victor’s torso would obliterate him from existence. All that would be left of him would be his severed head, blown clear of his body but left intact, eyes still open.

  He looked back to Francesca to avoid Hart or Coughlin noticing where he was looking and perhaps deducing what he was thinking. She had the small of her back against the wall and her elbows resting on top of it. From the apartment across the street she would look relaxed, but Hart and Coughlin couldn’t see her open mouth and her eyebrows raised with the effort of keeping her eyelids from drooping.

  ‘Shampanskoye,’ Victor said. ‘It’s stronger than you would think.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Francesca said after swallowing a couple of times.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the gardens,’ he suggested and took her hands.

  He stepped away and pulled with his arms to bring her away from the wall, and walked with her across the terrace to its northern half.

  ‘I thought we were going to look at the garden,’ Francesca said, voice quiet, as Victor steered her away from the wall and towards the northernmost set of French doors.

  ‘We need to get you some water, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes. My throat is dry.’ She touched her neck.

  ‘You said it would be.’

  ‘When… When did I?’

  Victor didn’t answer. He took her hand away from her neck and led her back into the conference room. They walked by the grand piano, Francesca trailing the fingers of her free hand across its surface, taking a circuitous route across the room. He kept one arm around her waist to help her walk and gave a knowing look to a tall man with white hair who noticed Francesca’s half-closed eyes and vacant expression as they neared.

  She stumbled into the man’s much shorter wife, much to the wife’s shock, and Victor was quick to get Francesca upright on her feet again while the man helped his wife recover.

  ‘I’m so sorry about that,’ Victor said to both as he stepped away from them.

  He headed to the room’s exit with Francesca and into the hallway beyond. The string quartet had begun playing Rosamunde again. Victor had expected them to play a different piece, but perhaps Rosamunde was the ambassador’s favourite.

  As they passed the music room a man said, ‘Is everything all right?’

  He was about six feet tall, with red hair cut short enough that hi
s scalp was visible between the strands.

  ‘Fine,’ Victor replied. ‘She’s just had a little too much.’

  ‘I have not,’ Francesca interjected, words slurring.

  ‘Anything I can do to help?’ the man with red hair asked.

  Victor shook his head. ‘Thanks, but she’ll be okay.’

  The man nodded and Victor led Francesca away, wanting to glance back over his shoulder to see if the man was watching them, but not willing to risk it because he had seen him in the music room, circling the room with his hands free and not talking to anyone.

  Francesca had trouble with the stairs and Victor kept a firm hold of her to make sure they descended without a problem.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said, voice barely more than a whisper.

  He led her down the corridor at the bottom of the stairs to the men’s room and pushed open the door. An overweight man with a thick moustache stood at the furthest urinal. He glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Victor said. ‘She’s going to be sick. You don’t mind, do you?’

  The man didn’t break stream. He cast his gaze over Francesca and responded with an approving nod. He continued to stare at her while Victor took her into one of the cubicles. He toed down the toilet seat, sat Francesca on it, and closed and locked the cubicle door behind him.

  ‘I—’

  He put a finger against her lips and she stopped talking. He waited, hearing the overweight man zip up his flies and then leave without a visit to the sinks. Victor took his finger away.

  ‘Am I drunk?’ she asked.

  ‘In a way. But you feel okay, don’t you?’

  ‘I feel great.’

  He fished Francesca’s phone from her purse. She watched him, but didn’t speak, her head periodically nodding forward before she set it back again. He scrolled through her sent messages. She had sent two messages to the same number. The first had been after they had passed security at 07:33 p.m. The second had been sent twelve minutes later at 07:45 p.m. Victor and Francesca had arrived at the embassy at 07:30 p.m. in sight of Hart and Coughlin. The first message had been sent at the earliest opportunity as the time it took get through the security checks couldn’t be predicted. The next had been sent at a specific time. Leeson had said there would be regular updates. So there would be another at 08:00 p.m. and another fifteen minutes later and so on. Both of the messages Francesca had sent contained just a single word, different each time. Each was followed by a message back from Hart soon afterwards: confirm.

  The clock on the phone gave the time as 7.54 p.m.

  He adjusted Francesca’s seating position and rested her head against the wall of the cubicle. She seemed happy enough like that and wasn’t likely to fall off the toilet seat.

  ‘I’m going to leave you here now,’ he explained, ‘but I’ll be back soon. Okay?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the less people see of you, the better.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you can barely walk. You’ve had a strong dose of Flunitrazepam and you’ve made it worse by drinking alcohol with it. You just need to stay here and wait for me.’

  She frowned. ‘But the… the drug was for you, not me.’

  ‘Yes, but I did a magic trick. You wanted to see one, remember?’

  She nodded. The frown disappeared. She looked confused. ‘Yes, but…?’

  ‘And it was a good trick. You didn’t see me palm the capsule instead of swallowing it and you didn’t see me empty the capsule into your drink, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it was a good trick, wasn’t it?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now you can do a trick of your own and stay here for a few minutes, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  The men’s room door opened and Victor put a finger to Francesca’s lips. She smiled. Two minutes later they were alone again. Victor reached up, gripped the top of the cubicle wall and pulled himself up, hooking his left leg over and then his right. It was difficult to swivel his torso around because of the vest restricting his movement, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. He dropped down on the other side.

  ‘Just wait there,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back soon. Don’t make a sound. Okay?’

  She didn’t respond. Either she had passed out or she was obeying his request, but as long as she stayed quiet he didn’t care which it was. He exited the bathroom and headed down the hallway past the busts and paintings. In the entrance hall he joined a short queue of new arrivals handing over their coats. When he reached the front he handed over the ticket belonging to the tall man with white hair whose pocket he had picked while he was distracted by Francesca stumbling – tripping – into his wife.

  ‘Tan raincoat and fur,’ he said to the attendant.

  The young man who took his ticket nodded and left to seek out the garments from wherever it was they stored them. It wouldn’t be far. There would be a utility room or closet nearby. The embassy would throw enough parties to warrant the space and the stature of the guests would ensure the room’s proximity to the entrance hall. No one liked to wait. The rich and powerful wouldn’t stand for it.

  He returned in less than three minutes with the white-haired man’s raincoat and his wife’s fur. Victor took them, thanked the attendant, and returned to the men’s room. It was empty. He hung the coats over the door of the cubicle, then hoisted himself over the cubicle wall. The vest slowed him down again, but not as much as the first time now he knew what to expect. Francesca still sat exactly as he had left her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  Her eyes stared into his but she didn’t answer.

  He said, ‘You’re allowed to speak now.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m fine. I feel good. Where did you go?’

  ‘Francesca,’ Victor began, squatting down so he could look into her eyes because she couldn’t keep her head upright. ‘It’s nearly eight p.m. In one minute you need to send a message to Hart. An update, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What word do you need to send to let Hart know everything is okay?’

  Her eyes were glassy, the whites bloodshot. ‘It’s a secret.’

  ‘I know,’ Victor said. ‘It’s a code word that only you and he know, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me what it is, please?’

  She stared at him. ‘It’s a secret.’

  ‘Yes, but you need to tell me so I can send it to Hart. That is what you need to do, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you want to do your job properly, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what’s the code I need to send to Hart to let him know everything is okay?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘That’s good, Francesca. You need to tell me the code now. We’ve only got a few seconds left to send it otherwise you’ll be late.’

  ‘I don’t want to be late.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’re handsome.’

  ‘Thank you. Can you tell me the code now, please?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please Francesca, you really need to tell me the code so I can send it to Hart. You want to tell me the code, don’t you?’

  The clock in the corner of the phone’s screen changed to 08.00 p.m.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head and reached for the phone. ‘I have to send it.’

  ‘Tell me instead. I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘No,’ she said again and stretched her fingers towards the phone. ‘You’re not allowed to know. I have to send it.’

  He let her take the phone and watched as she fumbled with it, wondering how many seconds late Hart would accept before aborting the mission. She tapped the screen with a single finger, long delays between taps.

  ‘Done,’ she said and grinned.

  ‘Press send.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She did. ‘Silly me.’

  Victor took the phone from her and stared a
t the screen. She’d sent the word apple. There was no way to know if this was the correct code or a random word. Maybe it was the right code but sent at the wrong time.