Hangman

by Daniel Cole

  Edmunds searched the various signs for directions:

  ← CONFERENCE SUITES

  He accidently kicked over someone’s suitcase and jogged toward the appropriate hallway. As he reached it, he spotted two large men, clearly security, standing outside a set of doors at the end of the corridor, a large crowd filling the room behind them. He took a casual glance in their direction and then continued walking, bringing his phone back up to his ear.

  “Baxter? Are you there?”

  He could hear her yelling at someone in the background: “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “Conference suite 2,” he informed her.

  The van accelerated down the service road at the back of the hotel, coming to a halt outside one of the rear entrances. The sliding door opened and the team clambered out, a series of clicks and beeps accompanying them as they prepped their equipment and tested their comms.

  “Sure they’ve got the right building this time, boss?” asked one of the men.

  The team leader, professionally, ignored the comment.

  “I want you to run to the end of the building and see how many more exits we’ve got to cover,” he told his mouthy colleague. He checked that his Airwave radio was set to the appropriate channel and pushed the “talk” button to speak into his headset. “Team 4 in position. Sitrep to follow.”

  The FBI surveillance unit pulled up alongside Baxter’s Audi on the main road. The car behind honked its horn angrily but grew noticeably more patient when the armed FBI agent climbed out.

  Baxter approached Chase as he passed orders to the teams.

  “Team 3, be aware there is a second access point just around the corner from your position. All units, all units, Trojan is about to enter the building. Repeat: Trojan is about to enter the building.”

  Baxter rolled her eyes.

  With Mitchell halfway back to New Scotland Yard, Chase’s own “undercover” agent stepped out of the van. The man could have been Vin Diesel’s younger, buffer brother. Even Chase was dwarfed by his imposing colleague, who looked absurd dressed in a baggy jumper and jeans.

  “Go!” Chase ordered, sending his agent off down the road.

  Baxter shook her head and resumed her phone call with Edmunds:

  “You’ve got the FBI agent heading in now,” she told him.

  “OK. What does he look like?” Edmunds whispered back.

  Baxter was still watching the man waddling uncomfortably away from them.

  She shrugged. “Like an FBI agent trying not to look like one.”

  “I’ve got eyes on Chase’s agent,” said Edmunds, peering over the crowds in the lobby before rushing back to the vantage point he had found.

  Several corridors led to the conference suites. He had discovered that the next one along spat him out at the door to suite 3, fifteen meters along from the guarded entrance. He glanced around the corner and caught a side-on glimpse of the imposing men behind the open door. The hum of voices spilling out into the corridor suggested scores of people inside, perhaps more, and he had seen two others arrive just while he’d been watching.

  “OK,” he whispered into the phone. “I’ve got a partial visual on the door.”

  “He’s still making his way through the lobby,” Baxter informed him.

  Edmunds watched as a greasy-haired woman approached the doorway. In the split second that she was in view, she had done something strange.

  “Hold on,” he whispered, risking stepping out from his corner to get a better angle.

  The door was still blocking his view.

  “What’s wrong?” Baxter asked urgently.

  “I’m not sure. Tell him to wait.”

  There was a pause.

  “He’s already in the corridor,” was Baxter’s tense reply.

  “Shit,” hissed Edmunds, weighing up his options. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “Should we abort? . . . Edmunds? Should we abort?”

  Edmunds had already made his decision and was halfway to the set of open doors with his phone pressed to his ear. One of the thick-necked men peered around the wood when he heard him approaching, clearly not expecting anyone to come from that direction. As he reached the doorway, Edmunds smiled pleasantly at the man, noting the greasy-haired woman behind him, who was bearing her open blouse to his colleague, no doubt producing her mutilated invitation to gain entry.

  Edmunds broke into inane chatter:

  “I know! If it ever stopped raining we might.” He laughed, turning down the main corridor, where the FBI agent was approaching from the other direction.

  Both men were far too experienced to give in to the urge to make eye contact, to pass a subtle nod or shake of the head as to whether to proceed or not, knowing that the man in the doorway would be watching their every move.

  Edmunds passed the brawny man without breaking stride, unable to tell him that he was less than six seconds away from being discovered.

  He didn’t dare increase his pace.

  “Yeah, not in England, right?” He laughed loudly into his phone before whispering: “Abort! Abort! Abort!”

  Behind him, the FBI agent was just three steps from the doorway when he veered off to the right and ambled casually along the corridor that Edmunds had just come down.

  “There’s got to be another entrance!” Chase yelled into his radio, desperately trying to salvage his floundering operation. He stormed back over to his surveillance vehicle.

  “Chase! Chase!” called Baxter, to get his attention.

  He paused for a moment to look at her.

  She stuck her middle finger up at him: “You’re welcome . . . you prick.”

  She knew it wasn’t a particularly constructive thing to say, but she’d never claimed to be perfect. Chase looked genuinely hurt for a moment, not that she cared, and then he continued speaking to his agent:

  “A window? Is there any way that you could take another pass, or maybe we can take out the guards?” he tried.

  Baxter walked away and leaned against her car. She noticed a fresh scratch on the passenger door and rubbed at it absent-mindedly as she resumed her phone conversation with Edmunds.

  “You just saved the whole operation from these idiots,” she told him, “but they’re still talking about sending someone in.”

  “If they do and Green’s not in there, we’ve lost him,” said Edmunds.

  Her phone started buzzing against her ear. She looked at the screen.

  “Hold on. I’ve got another call . . . Rouche?”

  “I’ve got an idea. Meet me in the café across the road.” He hung up.

  “Edmunds?” she said. “Sit tight. Rouche has got something. I’ll get back to you.”

  She ended the call and scanned the shopfronts on the other side of the street.

  ANGIE’S CAFÉ

  Soaked through and freezing cold, she weaved between the passing traffic and entered the café, triggering a shrill bell above the door. A visible layer of grime seemed to cover every conceivable surface, including Angie herself.

  Rouche was sat at one of the big beige tables, serviettes wedged beneath one of the legs, a disposable plastic cup of coffee between his hands. The moment he saw her, he got to his feet and walked into the toilets. Baxter checked the time. They had just over ten minutes until the meeting was due to start, perhaps even less before Chase and his movie-star doppelgängers charged in and ruined everything.

  Feeling tense, she strode across the room, ignoring the looks from the arse-crack-exhibiting clientele, and entered the toilets, using her shoulder to push the door open rather than risk touching the handle. Confronted with the two options, made even clearer by the addition of graffitied private parts, she pushed on the door to the men’s and stepped inside the revolting room.

  A cold draft poured in from a high frosted window. Two yellowed urinals were overspilling with blue hygiene disks, not that it appeared anybody considered their presence any more than a polite suggestion anyway, opting instead for the piss-covered floor.
>
  Rouche had draped his suit jacket over the side of the cubicle and was washing his hands in the only sink.

  “We couldn’t talk out there?” she asked, glancing at her watch again.

  He seemed distracted, like he hadn’t even heard her.

  “Rouche?”

  He switched off the hot tap and Baxter realized that he hadn’t been washing his hands but something in his hands. Without a word, he handed her the sharp steak knife he’d taken from the kitchen.

  She looked down at it in confusion.

  He started to unbutton his shirt.

  “No! No way, Rouche! Are you crazy?” she said, finally catching up.

  “We need to get in there,” he said simply. He slid off his shirt.

  “We do,” said Baxter evenly. “But we can work out another way.”

  They both knew that wasn’t true.

  “We don’t have time for this,” said Rouche. “Either you can help me or I can do it myself and make even more of a mess.”

  He went to take the knife off her.

  “OK! OK,” she said, looking ill.

  She tentatively stepped up against him and placed her left hand against his bare shoulder. She could feel his warm breath on her forehead.

  She brought the knife up to his skin and hesitated.

  The door behind them swung open and a bulky man froze in the entrance. They both turned around and glared at him. His eyes flicked from Baxter to Rouche to the discarded shirt to the weapon she had pressed to his chest.

  “I’ll come back,” he mumbled, turning on his heel and leaving.

  Baxter faced Rouche once more, secretly appreciative of the extra few moments to steel herself. She deliberated about where to start and then pushed the tip of the blade in gently until she drew blood, slicing a thin line downward until Rouche took hold of her hand.

  “You’re going to get me killed,” he told her shortly, trying to provoke her. “You’ve seen these people’s scars. If you can’t do it properly—”

  “This is for life, Rouche. You know that?”

  He nodded: “Just do it.”

  He removed his emergency tie from his trouser pocket, folded it over on itself, and bit down hard.

  “Do it!” he ordered again, muffled by his makeshift gag.

  Baxter winced and sank the blade into him, forcing herself to ignore his involuntary gasps of pain, the way that his muscles were quivering beneath the skin, the rapid breaths against her hair, as she tore the letters across his chest.

  At one point, he staggered back against the sink, almost losing consciousness as his own warm blood soaked into the waistband of his trousers.

  While he took a moment, Baxter stared in revulsion at what she had done to him and retched. Her hands were covered in his blood.

  PUPPL

  Rouche looked at her incomplete handiwork in the mirror.

  “You didn’t think to mention before that you’ve got shitty handwriting?” he joked, but Baxter was too traumatized even to smile.

  He shoved the gag back into his mouth, stood up straight, and nodded.

  Baxter dug the blade back in to finish the final letters:

  PUPPET

  The second she was done, she dropped the knife into the sink with trembling hands and ran into the cubicle to vomit. When she emerged, less than a minute later, she was horrified to find that Rouche had devised one final torture for himself.

  He had the knife in one hand, a lighter in the other, heating the stained blade from beneath.

  She didn’t think she could take any more.

  “Cauterizing the wounds,” he explained. “I need to stop the bleeding.”

  He didn’t ask her to help.

  He pushed the flat side of the metal into the deepest wound, to the sickening hiss of burning flesh, and worked his way around from there.

  Bent over the sink, he turned to her, eyes watering, struggling to catch his breath.

  “Time?” he asked, barely able to speak.

  “Ten fifty-seven.”

  He nodded, wiping the blood away with coarse paper towels: “Shirt.”

  Baxter stared at him blankly.

  “Shirt, please,” he said, gesturing to the floor.

  Baxter handed it to him, unable to take her eyes off his disfigured chest until he covered it.

  She took out her mobile:

  “Edmunds? I need you to get into a good position . . . Rouche is coming in.”

  Chapter 31

  Sunday, 20 December 2015

  10:59 A.M.

  Edmunds felt sick.

  Just moments earlier, Baxter had informed him of the sacrifice that the CIA agent had made in order to keep their operation alive.

  Edmunds watched as Rouche entered the hotel through the revolving doors. He looked ashen and sweaty, unsteady on his feet as he fiddled with his suit jacket in an attempt to hide his bloody shirt.

  “Eyes on Rouche,” he told Baxter, fighting the urge to rush over and help him. “This isn’t going to work,” he said worriedly. “I don’t think he’s even going to make it to the door.”

  “He’ll make it.”

  Rouche staggered across the reception area holding his chest, attracting several inquiring looks before having to steady himself, just out of sight of the two men guarding the doors. His legs suddenly gave out beneath him. He slumped against the wall, smearing a red mark onto the cream paint.

  Edmunds had unconsciously taken a few steps toward him, but paused when Rouche gave him a subtle shake of the head.

  The numbers on Edmunds’s watch rearranged themselves with a buzzy electrical beep: 11 A.M. He could see the two men down the corridor checking their own wrists.

  “Come on,” he whispered under his breath, his eyes darting from Rouche to the men in the doorway and back again.

  Rouche pushed himself off the wall. He could feel his shirt sticking to his skin and tried to tell himself that it was sweat rather than blood that had saturated the material. It felt as though he had a gaping hole in him. He could feel the breeze that snuck in with each revolution of the door, inside him, as if it were blowing straight through him. Unable to pinpoint any specific source of the pain, his brain told every last nerve in his body that it was burning.

  He forced himself to stand up straight and stepped around the corner into the corridor, walking purposefully toward the open doorway. The two men watched him carefully as he approached. Behind them, the audience looked to have taken their seats, and the hum of conversation was dying down.

  The two men appeared to be brothers, both sharing the same sharp features and imposing way of being fat. Rouche approached the bigger of the two, in a psychological display that he had nothing to hide. He nodded curtly.

  Eyeing him warily, the man directed him just inside the doorway, tactically positioning Rouche so that he could no longer see the other man behind him.

  He gestured to Rouche’s chest.

  Gritting his teeth, Rouche unbuttoned his suit jacket, feeling the wounds ripping back open as he slid his arm out of the sleeve. He didn’t need to look down to assess the damage; the expression on the man’s face was enough.

  His white shirt was now no more than a red-and-brown rag clinging to him, a bandage in need of changing. Suddenly, there was a large, rough hand over his mouth, the stink of nicotine-tainted skin, and a tree trunk of an arm locked around his throat.

  “We’ve got a problem!” Edmunds told Baxter. “They know something’s wrong.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked him, unable to hide the panic in her voice. “If we’re blown, we need to move in now.”

  “I can’t say for sure . . . I can’t see them.”

  Baxter’s voice went distant for a moment:

  “Prepare to breach,” she told someone in the background. Her voice then returned at full volume. “It’s your call, Edmunds.”

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!” said a softly spoken man as he rushed over to the scene in the doorway.

  Several members of
the audience had noticed the disturbance and were watching avidly. Rouche was struggling in vain against the arm around his neck. His shirt had been torn open to reveal the word, rendered almost illegible from where it had bled over the lines, like a poorly colored-in picture.

  “What’s going on?” the newcomer asked the two doormen.

  He was in his late forties, and had an ironically kind face beneath his neat beard considering where they were.

  “You told us to act on anything suspicious, Doc,” said the taller brother. “His scars are fresh,” he explained unnecessarily.

  The doctor gently pulled Rouche’s shirt open and winced at the mess beneath. He met Rouche’s eye and gestured for the other brother to let him speak.

  Rouche gasped as the hand moved away from his mouth and the arm around his throat slackened a little.

  “My, my, what a mess you have made of yourself,” the doctor said, calm but suspicious. He waited for an explanation.

  “I cut them into myself every morning,” said Rouche. It was the best answer he’d been able to come up with.

  The doctor looked undecided. “Who invited you here today?” he asked Rouche.

  “Dr. Green.”

  The answer, although possibly true, was of no use. The FBI had made Alexei Green one of the most famous people on the planet almost overnight. The man stroked his chin as he regarded Rouche:

  “Kill him,” he said with a pained shrug.

  Rouche’s eyes grew wide as the arm tightened around his throat. He kicked out and pulled desperately at the asphyxiating appendage when something caught the doctor’s attention:

  “Stop!” he ordered. He took hold of Rouche’s wrists and raised them out in front of him. “May I?” he asked politely, as if Rouche had any choice.

  He unbuttoned Rouche’s cuffs and rolled the shirtsleeves back to reveal the jagged line of scar tissue torn into his forearms. The doctor delicately ran his fingers along the wrinkled and raised pink skin.

  “Not so fresh.” He smiled at Rouche. “What’s your name?”

  “Damien,” Rouche croaked.

  “You need to learn to follow instructions, Damien,” he said, before addressing the two doormen: “I think we can safely say that Damien is one of ours.”