The Final Hour (Victor The Assassin 7)

by Tom Wood

  The door to the penthouse was closed and they took up their positions, ready.

  Bradley gave the countdown to breach with his fingers: three, two —

  One.

  They charged through the door and into the apartment, beginning to spread out to clear the rooms one at a time searching for the target, searching for vengeance, but he smelled the gas and yelled —

  ‘ABORT.’

  The gas exploded, demolishing the kitchen, the partition wall and sending a huge fireball and concussive wave through the penthouse, consuming the SAD team before they could retreat. The apartment became an inferno, lit by flames but dark with smoke.

  Victor, lying in the bathtub with the Estonian’s corpse shielding him, escaped the fireball and shockwave almost unscathed. The latter blasted the bathroom door off its hinges and deposited it on top of the tub, trapping him in place until he managed to work his way out, but by the time he did the bathroom was filling with black smoke.

  His eyes filled with water, and he coughed and retched. He grabbed a hand towel to try and shield his mouth and nose. The hallway was aflame. He could barely see. The heat was incredible.

  He held out his arm perpendicular to find the width and to brace himself as he stumbled from wall to wall, trying to avoid the flames. He manoeuvred around burning furniture, gaze sweeping for anything that might injure him or that could be used to his advantage. His eyes stung from the smoke and heat and the strain of continued staring in an effort to focus the shapeless blurs and colours. He stumbled on a corpse, losing balance, the sleeve of his suit jacket catching fire as he fell against a burning door frame, but managed to stay on his feet.

  He saw there was no way out. The fire was too bad, blocking off the exit. He changed direction, shaking the sleeve as he continued, the smoke clearing enough for him to see the window at the other end of the hallway.

  He grabbed a burning chair as he ran, throwing it at the window so the glass shattered as he reached it and threw himself through the rainfall of shards; landing on the scaffolding one floor below, body slamming into aluminium piping; feeling the crunch in his flank as ribs cracked, but rising despite the pain, despite the fatigue, hearing the wail of multiple sirens and knowing he had a matter of moments before the police arrived. There wasn’t time to descend the scaffolding, but he saw the mouth of the rubble chute.

  It was wide enough for him to fit into, but too wide to slow his descent enough to survive the eight-storey rush to the ground. He didn’t know what was in the skip at the bottom. Could be full of convenient soft wood, or maybe hard bricks or worse. Maybe he would be lucky and the skip was full of mattresses. Victor didn’t believe in luck.

  He drew the babysitter’s knife and climbed into the chute. He stabbed the knife into the tough plastic.

  He didn’t hesitate and dropped.

  He fell at a hellish speed, even with his limbs splayed to create friction and the knife slowing his descent. The chute was designed for waste, not a person. He saw nothing but darkness. All he could hear was a rush of icy air and the scrape of the knife slicing against plastic as he fell.

  Two seconds, four. He didn’t know how fast he fell, but he expected death to greet him at the bottom. This was no tactical manoeuvre. This was an act of desperation. He had no choice. Fall, else die in the fire, or get captured by the police.

  The knife jammed in the chute – maybe blunted enough by the tough plastic to catch; maybe caught on something more solid – and his wrist jolted against the sudden force it was asked to support and failed.

  The pain was fierce but he thrust his palms against the inside of the chute, trying to slow himself, and he smelled his own burnt flesh before he shot out of the bottom of the chute.

  There was no skip, and his ankles and knees crunched with the collision of hitting the ground, but the lack of a skip with solid walls let him roll with the impact, over and over again, across an empty communal parking area until he finally stopped, face down on the cold asphalt, winded, bleeding and grimacing, his right wrist already swollen, the hand paralysed, both palms almost skinless.

  He lay there for a brief moment until he knew for certain he was still alive, then stood, and stumbled into the night.

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  FIFTY-NINE

  Procter’s front lawn was dark in the shadow of the tall trees that stood below the sun. A tiny spider spun a web between the posts supporting the porch. The web was invisible in the glare of the low sun. The spider looked suspended in mid-air. Levitating.

  ‘The house and the land is Patricia showing me she still cares. I’ve always been a city boy who yearned for the country, but when you work for the Agency and your wife works for the government, you’re going to spend your life in a townhouse. Maybe I turned on the old emotional blackmail with my injury, but she did what was best for my convalescence. We still have the brownstone, and she spends most of the week there, but that’s another story – and you don’t need to hear it, even if you came all this way just to catch up.’

  ‘I’m in no particular rush,’ Alvarez said.

  ‘In a way. It’s like a slow dance, not that you’re old enough to have ever been to a real dance hall. You slow dance with the girl you like and you try your best not to poke her with your hard-on, but all the while you’re trying to do exactly that.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Alvarez said. ‘Are you the hard-on, or am I?’

  ‘I’m saying the pleasantries are make believe. They’re window dressing.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying.’

  Procter looked towards the setting sun. ‘Do you ever stop and think that the last honest conversation you ever had was when you were a kid? Do you ever think that as adults we never say what we really mean and every conversation is just two people doing everything they can to avoid the truth?’

  ‘I’m more inclined to believe that every conversation is just two people fighting with words.’

  ‘Therein lies the difference between us.’

  Alvarez said, ‘I’m fighting you with words while you try and avoid the truth?’

  ‘I’d say that’s exactly what we’re doing.’

  ‘That sounds surprisingly honest for someone who believes adults can’t have an honest conversation.’

  ‘Moments of honesty do not an honest conversation make.’

  ‘Like I said: fighting with words. But we don’t need to, because we’re way beyond all that.’

  ‘There’s no reason for you to be here. At least, no good reason.’

  Alvarez said nothing.

  Procter said, ‘I take it you’re feeling sorry for yourself. I take it you came here with the intention of giving me a piece of your mind.’

  Alvarez said, ‘It started with us chatting on your porch. Maybe this can become a regular thing.’

  Procter sipped lemonade. Patricia had made up a batch for him. A fat jug sat on the table next to him. Ice cubes clinked together as he set the finished glass back down. The evenings were getting chilly, but Procter didn’t care.

  ‘This stuff is delicious,’ Procter said, ‘but only if you like it tart. However many lemons your mother used to use when you were a kid, Patricia doubles it. I warn you, it’s like paint stripper for your throat. Delicious paint stripper.’

  Alvarez was undeterred. He filled a glass and took a big gulp, swallowed, and grimaced.

  ‘Told you,’ Procter said.

  Alvarez cleared his throat and set the glass down again. ‘It is tasty.’ His voice was hoarse.

  Procter smiled. ‘So.’

  ‘So,’ Alvarez echoed.

  ‘I told you last time that I’m content just sitting out here. You’ll get bored first, believe me.’

  ‘You know I’ll get what I want eventually. It’ll save us both a lot of time if you just lay it all out for me.’

  ‘I’ve never found ignorance to be a particularly dignified tactic.’

  ‘Then change tactic.’

  ‘I’ve also found going
down without a fight to be significantly less dignified.’

  ‘You’ve mentioned dignity twice now, yet I don’t detect a hint of irony in your voice.’

  ‘If you think you can insult me into a confession, you’re very much mistaken.’

  ‘I don’t intend to insult, but I’m not going to go easy on you, either with what you’ve done or what you say.’

  ‘I read the report,’ Procter said. ‘You made something of a mess over in Finland, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I made mistakes, yes. But I broke no laws.’

  Procter gave him a look.

  ‘I broke none of our laws,’ he corrected.

  ‘Do you believe he’s dead?’ Procter asked.

  Alvarez took his time answering. ‘Unidentified male corpse of approximately the same size was found in the ruins. Just bones, basically. Incinerated in the fire.’

  ‘You don’t seem convinced.’

  ‘I don’t think I would be convinced unless I saw him dying myself,’ Alvarez said. ‘But it doesn’t matter what I think or don’t think or know or don’t know. You may have no authority over my actions, but the Director of National Intelligence sure does. As far as he’s concerned, Tesseract is a corpse and that’s the end of it. I don’t get to argue otherwise. I got good men killed over in Helsinki and another two will never work in the field again. Contractors, technically, but CIA in everything but name. My stock is rock bottom right now. For a long time I’m going to need to ask permission just to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘To let you know you’ve won for now, but I’m not going to give up the fight.’

  ‘Then I look forward to seeing you in the ring.’

  Alvarez was confused.

  Procter said, ‘Didn’t I mention it? I’ll be back at CIA soon enough.’ He patted his hip. ‘I’m set to make a full recovery. I’m part robot, granted. But a soon-to-be fully functioning robot. We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.’

  Alvarez couldn’t hide his disgust. He didn’t try.

  ‘You’re nowhere near fifty, Antonio. The grey-haired men who run the intelligence world only give these jobs to other men with grey hair. It’s not about experience, it’s about balls. Old men don’t like young men. You only get to certain places in life when your dick starts to shrivel up. It’s compensation. It’s the unwritten rule. Yet you jumped the queue. You didn’t stop to ask why? You didn’t wonder what makes you so very special?’

  ‘I have useful friends,’ he said, thinking about his golfing partner. ‘But what are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘That you’re not biting the hand that feeds you, you’re attempting to take the whole arm.’

  ‘Are you saying that you got me the job?’

  ‘I’m saying you’ve never had a more useful friend than I can be.’

  ‘I might have to disagree with you on that.’

  ‘Maybe, but I think one day you’ll see why you’re wrong, you’ll see what you’re forgetting. Because all that I have done, all the laws I have broken, have not been for me, but for this country. I’m a patriot, like you. More so, because I’ll do whatever it takes to keep us all safe.’

  ‘You can rationalise it however you want, but if you go off the reservation, you should pay for it.’

  ‘Pay for what, exactly? For taking someone bad and making them do some good? Is that what you want to punish me for?’

  ‘I don’t make the rules.’

  ‘No, but you’re going to have to break some if you’re ever going to get what you want.’

  He was shaking his head before Procter had finished. ‘No. That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve done things by the book up until now. That’s the way it’s going to stay. I’m not like you.’

  Procter laughed. In part to provoke, but part of it was genuine too. ‘You think you’re going to get a guy like me without getting dirty yourself? Please.’

  Alvarez was silent.

  ‘We need to be careful of the lies we tell ourselves, Antonio. Sooner or later we start believing them. After that, how can we tell what the truth even looks like?’

  SIXTY

  The Festival Theatre in Edinburgh was a modern construction, but its metal-and-glass exterior was offset by an auditorium that was classically lavish and grand. It was beautiful enough to appreciate without any performance. Victor had seats at the back of the stalls, which had generous legroom and a perfect view. He would have preferred to be closer to the orchestra pit so he could see the musicians work their magic, but he couldn’t tolerate people sitting behind him when it could be avoided. The performance was spectacular – The Marriage of Figaro – the production sumptuous, but, as was only right, the singing was the true joy. He had purchased two tickets so he could sit with the aisle to one side of him and an empty seat to the other. It felt wrong to deny someone else the chance to see such majesty, but protocol came before all else. At the interval, he waited a minute to let plenty of other people leave ahead of him – to the bars and toilets – and he slipped away amongst the crowd.

  He hadn’t seen an entire opera for years. It was too much of a risk to remain in a confined public space for so long. He hoped to be able to catch another production, but in another city, weeks or months from now, arriving for the second act, leaving before the third. Then, on another continent, maybe years from now, watching that final act, and then able to piece his memories together to form a single, uninterrupted performance. He only had to live that long. But such goals helped him to stay breathing for another day.

  ‘How are you enjoying the show?’ a woman asked him as they passed in a corridor – she had been sitting on the same row.

  ‘Tremendous, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t wait for the next act.’

  He smiled. ‘Me neither.’

  Victor liked the Scots and he liked Scotland. He was fond of the accent in particular. It was one of the few he could not imitate with confidence. There were so many inflections and colloquialisms it was beyond his repertoire. He could pass as almost any European he chose to embody, but even Victor had limits.

  He was only passing through, staying over for one night, having flown in from Reykjavik via Dublin, on his way to London. Not ideal after his recent trip to Scotland, but there were only so many ways to enter the UK. It was a long train journey south from Edinburgh to London and although comfortable enough, he could not relax. His last long trip on a train had been most unpleasant. He was keen to ensure this one was uneventful. He rubbed his thigh.

  He sat on a leather seat in the first-class carriage, alone on a table for four people. The three other seats were all reserved with white tickets, but they were empty because Victor had booked all four. He placed his luggage on the seat opposite him to discourage anyone from asking if they were taken.

  The sun was on his left and caused green leaves to shine yellow. The first-class windows had curtains, but he used the glare as an excuse to wear sunglasses. He welcomed the chance to further disguise his watchfulness.

  A trolley holding drinks and snacks came his way along the aisle.

  ‘Refreshments, sir?’

  ‘I’ll take a coffee.’

  ‘Milk?’

  He thought of the little packet of single-serving milk. He thought of what Raven might say about the plastic-leaking chemicals and the ultra-heat treatment destroying the micronutrients and the natural fat skimmed off, rendering all those fat-soluble vitamins useless, and the cattle bred to produce more milk than nature ever intended and growth hormones and anabolic steroids and antibiotics and feed that was anything but grass.

  ‘Black, please.’

  She nodded and poured from a brushed-steel flask into a paper cup.

  ‘And some sugar.’

  She raised an eyebrow in the same way he sometimes did.

  He couldn’t stop himself. ‘You’re surprised?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Well, maybe not surprised. I like to guess what people will ask for. You know, to pa
ss the time. I’m right more often than not. Some days seventy-thirty. I figured you for plain black.’

  ‘I have a sweet tooth.’

  She smiled and dropped three sachets of sugar on to the table next to his coffee. He watched her go. She was Eastern European. He guessed Latvian from her accent, but he also detected a hint of Estonian. He was almost intrigued enough to ask her about her background, but even if he was prepared to break protocol and make himself more memorable – and he was not – she would be asked where she was from every single day by curious passengers who didn’t stop to think she might not want to have the same conversation again and again. He didn’t want to make her job harder than it was already.

  The coffee was awful.

  In London, he booked a room for the night at three separate hotels, calling ahead from payphones, using the same name for each booking, and then found a fourth one that afternoon, stayed in the room for two hours, then left the light on and the shower running while he slipped out a tradesman’s entrance to find a fifth hotel to actually sleep inside.

  The next morning, the hotel was quiet save for the rustle of Sunday newspapers and the tinkling of a fountain outside. From his seat on a low couch Victor could see the statue, a cherub, spouting water. A Union flag fluttered on a tall flagpole, the breeze not strong enough to lift it proud. It seemed sad and almost dying. It was made of silk and looked thin and weak, dirtied by pollution. The sky behind it was the colour of granite.

  The drawing room had a high ceiling and a once-thick carpet trodden down to almost no depth over years of use.

  His coffee was brought alongside a small jug of hot milk and a little plate of shortbread biscuits. The young man assured him the orange juice had been squeezed fresh and his smoked salmon omelette used only the finest ingredients.

  After breakfast, he took a cab to the closest railway station, bought a ticket to the furthest destination available, then hailed another cab outside and had the driver drive around in circles until he climbed out at random and walked on foot back to the station and caught the train. He disembarked at the first station, jumping back on at the last second, feigning confusion, before leaving at the next station and catching a train back to the city.