The Final Hour (Victor The Assassin 7)

by Tom Wood

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s not all.’ He unfastened a few buttons of his shirt so he could open it up to show Victor his shoulder and some of his back. There were more scars; thumb-sized, discoloured and wrinkled. Burns.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Victor said again.

  Alberto didn’t seem to hear. ‘I gave you up as soon as she cut me.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It didn’t stop them using a blowtorch on me. Israelis, right?’

  Victor nodded.

  ‘What did you do to them?’

  ‘I killed some of their people. They got between me and a target.’

  ‘Have they caught up with you yet?’

  ‘Maybe a month after they tortured you.’

  ‘How many more did you kill getting away?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve only got one life for them to take revenge upon.’

  ‘So many enemies. Is it worth it?’

  Victor ignored the question because Giordano’s shoulder was bumped by a passing man, and bumped hard.

  There was no apology. Giordano made no reference to it.

  The man said, ‘Say hi to your sister for me,’ as he walked away.

  Victor saw it was one of the three men he had identified as trouble.

  ‘You know those guys?’ he asked.

  Giordano nodded.

  ‘What’s their problem?’

  ‘That was nothing. Just a reminder to pay my debts.’

  Victor didn’t ask anything further because he understood. Giordano had borrowed from the wrong people. The brothers were loan sharks.

  ‘I can help you, Alberto. I can set you up wherever you want. Any country. Just name it.’

  ‘I’m happy where I am. Or, as happy as I could hope to be, given the circumstances.’

  ‘Money then. However you want it: cash, jewellery, transfer —’

  ‘I don’t want your money. Who knows who will come looking for it someday.’

  ‘Then what can I do to help you, to make amends, Alberto? Anything, just name it.’

  The younger man exhaled as he thought. He fastened the buttons of his shirt. ‘Give yourself up to Mossad.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ Alberto insisted. ‘You’re just trying not to. You can’t magic my scars away, any more than you can erase the memories of how I got them. But what you can do is ensure no Israeli spy gives me any more of them. While you’re still out there, they’ll still be looking. Who knows where or when they might spot you. Maybe they’ll trace you here and they’ll want to know the name on the passport I arranged for you. But this time I won’t be able to tell them and they won’t believe me. They’ll have to make sure I’m telling the truth. Will they let me go twice? But none of that will happen if you take a flight to Tel Aviv. There’ll never be any need for them to come looking for you then, will there?’

  ‘Alberto, I…’

  ‘Don’t worry, Vernon – or whatever your name really is – you don’t have to say anything. I know you’re not going to do that. That’s why I can say it. I’d never ask anyone to sacrifice themselves for me, regardless of what they’d done. But I can ask you to, can’t I? Because there’s not a chance in hell you would. You’re not going to sacrifice yourself for anyone, least of all for a nothing like me.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Cornish had been accurate in everything he had told Raven. He had told Raven Paolo Totti wasn’t trying to hide, and he wasn’t. Totti didn’t keep a low profile. He kept the opposite, in fact. He was something of a minor celebrity in the region. Paparazzi snapped his picture whenever he had a new girl on his arm or whenever he pulled up outside a premiere in a gleaming Rolls. He was one of the new mafia, the son of an old boss in the Cosa Nostra, who had followed in his father’s footsteps in principle only. He was a brash club owner and playboy who had a large following on social media thanks to his lavish lifestyle and flamboyant personality. Every day he uploaded selfies showing off his wealth.

  Raven scrolled through his updates with a sense of bewilderment. At first it was almost impossible to accept the Consensus had ever considered using such a man. He represented everything they went out of their way to avoid. Totti’s infamy and pursuit of even higher celebrity seemed in direct competition to their philosophy of anonymity. It didn’t take long, however, for her to understand his usefulness. Totti’s reputation provided perfect misdirection. No one was ever going to question for whom he worked, because he made it so very clear he was his own man, his own boss. He spared no opportunity to brag about this whenever he could.

  She had spent a few days learning all she could about his operations, which was easy enough. Because of his celebrity, people wanted to share what they knew. Totti didn’t seek to punish those who spoke about their connections to him. He revelled in it. When she had enough background, she posed as a reporter to ask questions of the local police, who were more vague but didn’t seem all that interested in pursuing a known mafioso. There was a simple reason for this: Totti wasn’t involved in narcotics. He might be rich, brash and arrogant, but he wasn’t poisoning kids. There were no political points to score going after him and diverting efforts away from the drug trade. Totti knew this, and thought himself invincible, but the truth was there wasn’t the will to bring him down. No one was interested in him enough to put in the groundwork. There were worse criminals out there to be dealt with first.

  The connection to Cornish and the Consensus as a whole made more sense when she discovered local business owners had been intimidated and coerced into signing away assets to Totti at below-market rates. It made even more sense when these businesses proved to have high cash turnovers. The clubs, bars, restaurants and cafés all seemed profitable, but only a few hours with a calculator and the numbers didn’t add up. It wasn’t hard to work out his main source of income was laundering money for other criminals, doctoring the books of those businesses to legitimise dirty money.

  So it made sense that the Consensus would use him as a go-between. Totti no doubt imagined he was doing deals with the same mobsters he always dealt with; he’d have no idea he was being used by a foreign collective with more power and influence than he could imagine. But, as with Cornish, Totti would know a name or a have a phone number or something that would take Raven one step closer to her enemies, to salvation.

  Totti had some personal protection, but nothing serious enough to give Raven cause for concern. His crew was small and seemed to be comprised of his closest and oldest friends. None of them had been in the military. None of them had any security training. There was a good chance that none of them had ever drawn a weapon in anger. However, with paparazzi and groupies, hangers-on and fans everywhere he went, getting close enough to Totti to have a chat with him was a serious challenge. Raven would have preferred dodging the bullets of battle-hardened mercs than trying to avoid having her face snapped by swarms of cameras.

  She found she wouldn’t have to because, as with many of the fame hungry, Totti placed extreme value on his privacy. The glamorous lifestyle he led and revelled in only had appeal when it could be switched off again. Celebrity had no worth if it couldn’t be controlled. He had several residences in his name – apartments in the city – but the home where he spent the most time was an out-of-town villa in Fregene. The villa stood alone in countryside, surrounded by vineyards on three sides and the sea on the other, accessible via a mile-long driveway guarded by his crew. No photographer, or cop for that matter, could get anywhere near him when he wanted to step out of the limelight.

  It would have been time-consuming to get close enough for decent recon under normal circumstances, but Totti posted so many photos of his villa, gardens and private beach to his social media accounts that Raven didn’t need blueprints to have an accurate plan of both the villa’s interior and surroundings. There were even videos to give her a better sense of scale and proportion. She had identified every member of his crew from these photos and videos, and knew
his personal retinue numbered four – one friend who acted as the designated driver and PR officer, two who were around to look tough and give him street cred, and his best friend, who was also the business manager/accountant. She also knew that there could be anywhere between two and six young women present at the villa; they weren’t prostitutes, and all seemed to be there of their own volition, attracted by Totti’s wealth and fame and hungry for their own, updating their own social media with their exploits.

  The most useful revelation that came from analysing the various uploads was that Totti had a sophisticated security system comprised of top-end motion sensors and cameras. They would have been a challenge had Raven not been able to learn exactly where they were positioned.

  She reminded herself to thank him for doing the hard work for her.

  Given the proliferation of security measures in and around the villa, Raven decided on an approach from the west, to the back of the house, where she had to cross the least open ground. Which meant coming from his private beach.

  For this, Raven acquired – stole – a small pleasure boat that she took from Fiumicino down the coast and anchored three miles off the shore. She waited until two a.m. and dropped backwards off the boat. The water was cold, but the neoprene dry suit took the edge off. She had an oxygen tank and breathing apparatus, goggles, fins, and a waterproof bag strapped to her waist containing what she would need on dry land.

  She needed no light as she swam close to the surface and had studied the topography and currents of this part of the coast. There was a cloudless sky but no moon, so plenty of starlight reached the surface, but not enough to make her rethink her approach.

  She was a strong swimmer but swam at a slow, comfortable pace and reached the beach in twenty minutes, her heart rate still low and her breathing even. The beach was short and narrow, but for Totti’s exclusive use. There were sun loungers, a fire pit and barbecue equipment. The beach was beautiful white sand under the night sky. Black water lapped against it. Deprived of the sea’s support, the scuba equipment was awkward and heavy. Her feet sank into the sand.

  Clear of the water, she removed the goggles and stripped off the fins, tank and breathing apparatus. The dry suit came off next and she hid it and the scuba gear amongst the rocks. From the waterproof bag she took a change of clothes, rolled up tight – trousers, long-sleeved shirt, climbing shoes, beanie hat and gloves, all black. She dressed, and emptied the final items from the bag – a Heckler & Koch P7 pistol, suppressor, magazines, a shoulder rig to hold the gun and ammo, and a multi-tool.

  She would have liked some night-vision equipment, body armour and various other useful pieces of kit, but logistics were always an issue for her. As she was a lone gun, she had no assets to smuggle weapons and equipment, no limitless funds to purchase what was needed in a country, on site. She didn’t have backup or supporting intelligence. It was commonplace to be unprepared, but no one said it would be easy.

  There were narrow steps carved from the rock that led up the cliff face, but Totti was security conscious and it was covered by a thermal-imaging camera. Not impossible to disable without giving herself away, but far easier to avoid. The cliff face was only 56 metres in height.

  Raven had been a climber long before she had begun considering a career in intelligence work. She had climbed trees instead of playing with dolls and spent every spring break in the Rockies; while her peers fantasised about fairytale weddings she had dreamed about the Eiger and K2.

  A little bottle in the waterproof bag contained liquid chalk. She coated her hands and began her climb. She was a stronger climber than she was a swimmer, and had taken it easy in the water to save energy for the climb. A free climb – she couldn’t swim with all the equipment necessary – was always strenuous.

  She found her starting point, took a deep breath, then leapt up to take her first handhold. She pulled with her back and arms as she swung her legs up to find purchase. The cliff face was damp from proximity to the surf, but the liquid chalk helped mitigate that and the starlight reflecting off that dampness helped her to better see the texture of the rock.

  Despite the exertion and the danger of falling, she enjoyed the climb. It had been a long time since she had scaled any kind of natural rock face. In recent years she had scaled more walls than she had cliffs, and reached more rooftops than she ever had mountain peaks.

  At the top of the cliff she lay on her back until her breathing returned to normal and then surveyed her surroundings. The villa lay some 200 metres away, illuminated by the starlight. She saw no lights on, no glow from windows or outside lighting. It was a home, not a fortress.

  A long swimming pool and lawns lay between the cliff and the villa, but with enough trees to provide a covered route to close the distance. There were cameras, but they had been installed by civilians to protect against gangsters, who were still civilians. They covered perhaps 90 per cent of the villa’s exterior, but Raven was a lot smaller than the remaining 10 per cent. She crept through the gardens to the immediate rear of the villa, detecting no one patrolling. Totti’s crew was far too small to provide twenty-four-hour protection on a building this size. The isolation, the cameras and his reputation had formed enough of a barrier until now that nothing stronger had been required.

  No one really expected an assassin to turn up where they lived.

  Raven had the multi-tool to help gain access via a window or patio door, but there was no need. French doors had not only been left unlocked, but open. Maybe to allow a pleasant sea breeze inside.

  She couldn’t help but shake her head.

  The climbing shoes were good for deadening the sound of her footsteps on the tiled floors she found inside. With the P7 in hand, she swept the ground floor, expecting to find no one and finding no one. All the bedrooms were upstairs, after all. She had to be thorough, regardless. Assumptions were always dangerous.

  She paused in a small utility room that housed monitors linked to the security cameras as well as the more traditional white goods. There were no cameras present in the bedrooms upstairs, but the landing leading to them was covered, as well as the main rooms and hallways downstairs. Raven used the multi-tool to unscrew the apparatus and gain access to the hard drive where the footage was recorded. She slipped it into her small rucksack.

  Raven ascended the stairs, taking extra time to lighten her footsteps and cancel out the amplifying echo of the stairwell.

  At the top, she paused to listen. She heard nothing but the faraway surf seeping through open windows. Totti’s bedroom was at the end of the hallway, accessible through a heavy door that stood ajar. The other rooms housed his crew. For now, she ignored them.

  She eased open the door to Totti’s room enough for her to slip inside and, gun leading, approached the bed.

  It was a huge, circular bed, draped with silk sheets the colour of pearls. Drapes rustled in the breeze from open windows that stood behind. Two figures lay in the bed. One female. One male.

  The lack of snoring or heavy breathing was the first clue.

  The absence of rising chests the second.

  Raven was already spinning on the spot before she had seen the blood on the sheets.

  A voice from the darkness said, ‘Drop the weapon.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  She didn’t. No way. Not her style. Raven had already begun her turn, already committed to action, and shot towards the voice and a blurry shape of darkness as she continued her movement – dropping low to make herself a smaller target, then dodging laterally to throw off an enemy’s aim.

  The P7 was a small weapon, compact and concealable. It had no real range, but at point-blank she couldn’t miss.

  Two shots. Always two. She never fired only once.

  The blurry shape across the bedroom changed; distorting; falling, hitting the floor and going slack.

  Where there was one enemy there were likely more, so she kept moving, knowing the villa’s layout and the probable points of hiding, such as —

&nbs
p; The en suite bathroom, which she pivoted towards, sights lining up on the expanding line of smooth blackness as the door opened from the inside; firing when that line of blackness roughened.

  Another man. Same clothes. Same approximate shape. Another gunman. Another killer sent by her enemies.

  A trap.

  No time to consider how they knew – although it wasn’t hard to guess – and nothing to gain by distracting herself over such inconsequential questions as how and why.

  Live first, evaluate later.

  She put another two rounds into this latest gunman, because he didn’t go down as expected; then, as he did drop, she pivoted back to land another two on the first guy, because like the second he was wearing body armour she hadn’t seen in the darkness, and he had recovered enough to be trying to line up his own shot from the floor.

  The bullets struck his cheek and eyebrow. The floor tiles became a mess of ejected brain and bone fragment.

  A decent ambush, but not a great one, because she was still alive. She had been faster, her instincts tipping her off before she had crossed the threshold.

  Hidden in place, the two gunmen couldn’t know her movements.

  Surveillance then, outside, passing on her whereabouts.

  Target has reached the villa…

  Her focus had been on Totti’s security, not external threats. She knew better than that.

  A poor ambush, she re-evaluated, even if she had helped them out a little. Then she realised: it wasn’t just an ambush, but a set-up.

  They wanted to blame her for Totti’s death, hence the attack in the bedroom instead of gunning her down elsewhere, making use of their numbers.

  Always a narrative. Always someone to take the fall.

  She had done the hard work for the Consensus: from Canada to Rome, from Cornish to Totti.

  She checked the first guy’s gun: it wasn’t a firearm, but a tranquilliser gun.

  Drop your weapon, he had said.