A Time to Die

by Tom Wood

  ‘There are no personal details in your file,’ Fletcher said for the second time.

  ‘There would be a lot of trouble if there were.’

  ‘The photographs and physical description were omitted, as per your request. But aside from your work for us and what we know of your jobs for the CIA, there is nothing else about you because we don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘Good,’ Victor said as Fletcher stared.

  ‘There was a line like subject values anonymity and protects this ruthlessly…’

  ‘The information is accurate. It’s a necessity, for protection against current threats and potential future ones.’

  ‘I get that. You don’t want us to know anything more about you than the minimum, in case we ever turn on you.’

  Victor nodded.

  ‘Yet now I know about the photograph of a train set in a Swiss vault.’

  Victor said nothing.

  ‘But it doesn’t matter if I know,’ Fletcher said, pointed and knowing. His gaze was locked on to Victor. The skin to the left of his Adam’s apple trembled with the thundering pulse below it. ‘It doesn’t matter what I know about you because I’m never going to become a threat to you. Because you’re here to kill me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Victor said.

  TWO

  Fletcher was calm. He didn’t bolt from his seat or attack. He just sat there, looking at Victor for almost a minute as he processed the fact he was facing his killer.

  Fletcher cleared his throat and said, ‘Can I know why?’

  ‘Your mistress from Hong Kong has been passing on your pillow talk to Beijing.’

  He thought about this, then said, ‘That can’t be the reason. That’s no reason to have me killed.’

  ‘London thinks you know,’ Victor explained. ‘They believe you are complicit. They believe you to be a traitor.’

  Fletcher looked at his hands. His palms were on the tabletop and his fingers spread wide. He took a breath and spent a while exhaling.

  ‘I wasn’t at first,’ he confessed. ‘Not when I met her. I was a fool who thought this beautiful young woman was genuinely interested in me. God, it was such a basic bloody honeytrap. So obvious in retrospect. She approached me. In my regular bar, of all places. Can you believe I fell for that? She even drank the same whisky. What a coincidence. The Chinese are still using the spy playbook from the sixties, yet I didn’t see it because I couldn’t take my eyes from her lips. She has the most amazing lips I’ve ever seen. Of course, eventually I realised what was going on. She wasn’t as careful as she should have been asking about work and my movements, which, given the sledgehammer subtlety of her approach, shouldn’t have been any surprise. But it was. I couldn’t believe it because I was already in love with her. Well, in lust anyway. Same thing though, right?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Victor said. ‘But I don’t need to know any of this.’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you, so you’re going to have to listen. Unless you’re planning on doing it right here in the open.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Victor admitted.

  ‘My point, exactly,’ Fletcher said with a measure of triumph, revelling in any victory he could claim while it was still possible. ‘So, yeah, by the time I found out she was an agent I was too into her to break it off. I just couldn’t, even though I knew deep down she only wanted intel, I carried on regardless. I needed those lips on mine, whatever the price. Shit, I’m such an idiot.’

  Victor agreed, but he felt it impolite to voice agreement. Likewise, it seemed rude in this instance to tell a condemned man to watch his language.

  Fletcher sat back in his seat. ‘But even if London found out about me and Ling, that can’t be the only reason they sent you. It can’t be. Not for that alone. Not you.’

  ‘That’s what I was told.’

  ‘Then they’re lying to you.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Victor said.

  Fletcher frowned. ‘You don’t care that you’re being fooled and manipulated?’

  ‘No one in this business ever tells me the truth. I get over it.’

  Fletcher showed an angry smirk. ‘So you’re nothing more than a yes-man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The smirk became a sneer that faded away to a sad sigh. ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘Not for a second.’

  ‘I suppose I should thank you for that small mercy,’ Fletcher said. ‘How are you going to do it?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  Fletcher thought for a moment and Victor saw him going back and forth on the idea before he nodded. ‘Yes, I need to know.’

  ‘Suicide,’ Victor explained. ‘You’re going to go back to your couchette and take an overdose of painkillers. You’ll drift off to sleep and never wake up again. Quiet. Peaceful. No mess. No fuss. No pain.’

  He set a bottle of prescription painkillers on the table. Fletcher stared at it.

  ‘They’re mine, for my bad back.’

  Victor nodded.

  ‘Your fingerprints are on the bottle,’ Fletcher said, looking from the bottle to Victor’s hands.

  ‘No, they’re not.’

  Fletcher slid the bottle closer. ‘I don’t want to be a suicide. I don’t want to die like that.’

  Victor said, ‘You don’t really have a choice. I’m going to accompany you back to your couchette. Trust me when I say that it’s in your best interests to take the pills willingly.’

  Fletcher swallowed. ‘No, you misunderstand. I’m not going to fight or run.’

  ‘I don’t worry,’ Victor said. ‘And it wouldn’t make a difference if you did.’

  Fletcher sighed. ‘I know. Like I said, I read your file. I read the reports. I even saw a video of a massacre you committed in Minsk. I’m a pencil-pusher with a slipped disc who’s terrified of flying. I know there’s nothing I can do to stop the one they call Cleric. But what I mean is: I don’t want my wife to think I killed myself. My wife is a good woman. She doesn’t deserve to have to grieve for me and hate me for leaving her at the same time. Just because I can’t say no to a beautiful woman doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I do, with all my heart, despite what you think.’

  ‘I don’t care if you love your wife or not.’

  ‘And my daughter,’ Fletcher said, composure starting to crack. ‘Sweet Ella. She’s too young to understand, but one day she’ll find out what really happened to her dad and then she’ll think I didn’t love her enough to stay alive to watch her grow up.’

  Victor remained silent.

  Fletcher said, ‘Can’t you shoot me or break my neck? Anything but a suicide.’

  ‘No. Beijing can’t know the leak was found. London want to use your mistress without her knowledge. There can’t be any blame.’

  ‘Then an accident, for God’s sake,’ Fletcher said, talking faster than he was thinking. ‘I can fall in front of a train at the station. I can tie my shoelace and slip and —’

  ‘No,’ Victor said again, insistent but calm and level. ‘You’ll look coerced on the CCTV recordings. It won’t convince anyone.’

  ‘There has to be some other way. There simply has to be. I’ll do anything.’

  Victor thought for a moment. It seemed only polite to consider the plea from a target to alter the method of his own death, whilst accepting the death itself as inevitable. In all his years as a professional assassin, he had never been in such a situation. People had begged before, to no avail, but always to survive, never to die in a manner of their own choosing. Pulling off an accident that attracted no suspicion was no small feat – hence the overdose, either with cooperation or forced – but an accident with the victim’s assistance was a different matter.

  ‘Go to the dining car before it closes,’ he told Fletcher once he had thought through the particulars, ‘and order yourself some dinner.’

  ‘Dinner?’

  Victor said, ‘The dining car’s open, but not for much longer. There is a steak option on the menu.’

&nb
sp; ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘When we’ve finished this conversation I’ll sit here and you go order a nice slab of sirloin. Ask for it well-done. Cut off a big piece. Don’t chew too much before you swallow. The rest will take care of itself.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m going to choke to death. Shit.’

  Fletcher was pale, as if the reality of the situation had only just occurred to him. His cheeks expanded and his lips pursed with heavy breaths. He touched his throat. After a moment, the inevitable question was asked:

  ‘How long will it take?’

  Victor had already worked it out. ‘You’re mid-thirties and out of shape, so maybe ninety seconds until you pass out and don’t wake up.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem very long.’

  Victor didn’t say that it would seem like an eternity to Fletcher while his lungs burned for oxygen they were never going to get.

  He shook his head. ‘My wife doesn’t let me eat red meat. We’re trying to be healthy.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Victor said. ‘It’ll make it more convincing. You’re not used to it.’

  ‘God, when I think of all the pissing quinoa I’ve had to endure, and for what? I should have eaten nothing but bacon. It wouldn’t have made any difference, would it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘She could blame herself, couldn’t she? My wife might think it was her fault for me not being used to steak.’

  ‘Yes,’ Victor admitted. ‘At first perhaps, but people will help her through that. Choking kills almost as many people as fires.’

  ‘And far better than to think I killed myself, right? That’s like leaving her as well as dying. This way I just die.’

  Victor didn’t know. He didn’t understand, but he nodded because he saw Fletcher wanted reassurance.

  ‘Make sure you smile at the waiter while you make your order,’ Victor said.

  ‘I don’t feel like smiling. Smiling is the last thing I want to do. Well, second last.’

  ‘That’s why I’m reminding you. This isn’t going to work if you look like a condemned man.’

  Fletcher nodded his understanding and agreement. He was quiet for a moment.

  ‘Will it…?’

  ‘Yes,’ Victor said. ‘It will hurt. After the first forty-five seconds without oxygen it’s going to be bad, very bad, so think why you’re doing it; picture your wife and daughter. Not long after that it won’t hurt at all, I promise. All the pain will go. You won’t be afraid. Oxygen deprivation will make you feel euphoric. You’ll pass out feeling good.’

  ‘Like autoerotic asphyxiation,’ Fletcher said in a monotone, eyes focused on a point somewhere on the other side of Victor’s head. ‘I didn’t really believe that was true though. I always thought it was kind of an urban myth. Now, I wish I’d tried it. I wish I’d tried everything. I wish I’d told my wife I loved her more often.’

  Victor said nothing. He watched Fletcher’s face. He had aged ten years in ten minutes.

  ‘Have you ever been strangled? Do you know what it’s like?’

  ‘Yes,’ Victor admitted. ‘A few times. But it never reached the euphoric stage, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now.’

  Fletcher said, ‘Then how can you truly know I’ll pass out feeling good?’

  ‘It’s part of the job description to understand how the body works,’ Victor explained. ‘And sometimes, when I’ve choked people to death, they almost look happy at the very end.’

  THREE

  Victor watched Fletcher stand and walk away along the carriage. He said nothing further, but before he turned around had worn the stern expression of both commitment and resolve. He was afraid, but he hid it with a straight back and his head held high. He left the bottle of painkillers on the table. He didn’t need them.

  Victor collected them up and slipped them back into a pocket.

  The dining car was in the middle of the train. Fletcher would be there within three minutes. With only a short time waiting to be served at this time of night, then a moment for ordering, and then cooking and delivering of Fletcher’s food, he should be choking to death in no longer than fifteen minutes. If there hadn’t been an announcement for any doctor on board to head to the dining car within twenty minutes then Victor would go and find out why. The train journeyed nonstop through the night, so there were no scheduled stops to interrupt, and even an emergency one wouldn’t make a difference.

  Fletcher’s acceptance of his fate left a curious impression on Victor, who was glad the job was to be completed as specified by his employer, but he didn’t understand how. He knew enough about psychology and acceptance and fatality to understand that Fletcher would kill himself because he believed he had no other choice, but Victor didn’t get it. His own survival instinct was ingrained so deep and so strong he didn’t know any other way. Civilians lived through each day, thinking of work, families, sex or their favourite TV show, whereas Victor had to survive those same days, knowing one mistake, one unchecked angle or decision made for comfort over security would be enough. Surviving had become unbreakable habit long ago.

  Fletcher stepped through the far door and out of the carriage. Ten minutes later, the door opened again and a man entered.

  The man was all wrong.

  Everything about him said trouble. On Victor’s checklist of telltale signs of a threat, he ticked each and every one. He was the right age to be an effective operative; in this case early forties. He was in shape; strong but not bulky. He had the kind of clothes Victor would select: footwear with a decent tread for running and climbing, and an outfit that was smart but forgettable and on the larger side to aid manoeuvrability. He wore dark trousers and a black hip-length leather jacket, unbuttoned, over a thin sweater of brown wool. Victor didn’t wear gloves because his hands were coated in silicone solution, but this man did. They were slate grey and thin, made of supple leather; maybe calf’s. There was no innocent reason to wear them on a well-heated train that hadn’t been on a cold platform for almost two hours.

  The man had used his left hand to ease open the carriage door, but it was clear he was right-handed from his leading left step. Victor pretended not to register him just as the man pretended not to recognise Victor. The man wasn’t aware he’d been made because he was at a considerable disadvantage: there were a dozen other occupants in the carriage competing for his attention. By the time his gaze found its intended target, Victor had already noticed, assessed and drawn his conclusions, and his eyes were diverted.

  The primary response to any threat was to avoid it. On a train, escape was impractical. Not impossible, because Victor could pull the emergency alarm and when the train stopped and the doors unlocked he could disappear into the night. That, however, would be impractical because Victor’s suit offered no protection against the Russian winter outside.

  Inaction, or waiting, could sometimes be considered the next best option. A threat didn’t always signify an imminent risk. Circumstances could change. A premature reaction would lose the advantage of surprise that might better be exploited at a future point.

  The man approached.

  His hair was short and greying. He had a neat beard that was darker than his hair. The skin between was pale; another sign of a threat in a Caucasian because it meant he didn’t see much sunlight because he most often operated at night.

  With distance and seats between them, the man would need to close in if he intended to fire a gun, and come closer still if he had a knife or other melee weapon to employ. Going up against an enemy with a firearm was always complicated, the more so when Victor himself was unarmed, which was the norm. He had passed through far more metal detectors, and undergone far more pat-downs or wand searches by bodyguards or security personnel than he ever had encountered gunmen. In this instance, Victor had only the door behind him as a means of escape, and to reach it he would have to leave the cover of the seats and make a straight line down the aisle to safety he had next to no chance of reaching because he had yet to encounter a
n assassin too poor a shot to miss his back at that range.

  But Victor saw the assassin was not going to attempt the fulfilment of his contract here and now. The man knew how to dress so he wasn’t stupid, and only a stupid killer would strike in a crowded train carriage monitored by CCTV. This was reconnaissance. He was locating his target.

  The man tried to hide it, but his shoulders squared a fraction as he spotted Victor. The gait didn’t change, and he continued walking along the aisle, moving in a half-shuffled step because the space between seats was too narrow for a man of his size to pass through without skewing hips and shoulders.

  As he neared, Victor remained stationary, his head tilted and his eyes in the direction of the window and the black world outside of it, but his focus on the moving shape in his peripheral vision and reflected on the window glass.

  The man passed him and Victor listened to the footsteps until they were lost within the ambient train noise and the door hissed open at the end of the carriage.

  Waiting in this instance could not be considered a wise choice. It was another seven hours to St Petersburg. Circumstances could not improve in that time, only worsen as the killer had ample opportunity to put into practice whatever he had planned.

  Victor waited for two minutes and stood to follow.

  When escape was impractical and inaction unreasonable, attack was always preferable.

  FOUR

  Victor left the carriage and stepped through the narrow vestibule that bridged the gap to the next carriage. The door hissed open and he felt the change of air pressure on his face. He detected a faint scent of deodorant, left behind by the assassin. The new carriage was identical to the one where he had conversed with Fletcher. It was occupied by a sparse spread of travellers – Victor counted nine individuals with a quick glance. Other night owls, like himself or Fletcher.

  At the far end of the carriage the man with greying hair was stepping through the doorway.