by Tom Wood
Such fees permitted him to stay in hotels like the Covent Garden, which was perhaps his favourite in London. This was his second stay. The last had been five years before, and he would not use the hotel again for a similar length of time to ensure CCTV recordings had long since been destroyed and any staff still working there had forgotten about him by the time he returned. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why he had a different name and nationality to his previous visit. With other hotels he deemed four years between stays a sufficient interval to avoid such problems. But with the Covent Garden he wanted to make extra sure no one recognised him. He didn’t want to deal with such a problem here. He was far too fond of the amiable staff.
Victor was halfway through his second bourbon while reading about West Ham’s disappointing 1-0 loss at home when a woman entered the drawing room. She didn’t so much walk, as glide in an effortless gait. The sixty-year-old man watched her without blinking as she selected a place to sit and he received an elbow in the arm from his companion.
The woman’s hair was brown. Halfway between blonde and black. Victor didn’t know if this particular shade had a name, but he knew where it sat on the colour spectrum. Such details were important to note. As was her height: five feet five inches. Her limbs were slim but toned. He estimated she weighed forty-five kilograms with a trim 17 per cent body fat. He accepted he could be off by a per cent either way and a kilo or two, but no more. Her age was more difficult to tell. The bar had soft lighting and make-up and creams and cosmetic procedures and supplements were improving all the time. She looked about thirty, but he guessed she was a little older than he was. He looked younger than people thought, even before his face had been cut and filed and filled and re-contoured countless times by the same surgeons who kept Hollywood stars ageless. His work had been done at intervals over the past decade not for vanity but to keep him ahead of his enemies and the ever-increasing presence of CCTV and facial recognition technology.
Victor recognised the glances that she cast his way and he returned them. She was attractive and alone. She wore no wedding ring but she was tanned and even across the room his keen eyes could see the paler band of skin around the finger. He imagined her as a corporate executive by the cut of her suit and the shoes he estimated had cost more than his entire outfit.
He took his drink over to the other side of the room and said, ‘May I join you?’
She took her time responding, in a play of making up her mind. ‘Why do you want to?’
‘Because I’d rather talk than read.’
She didn’t expect such a response. ‘You don’t like newspapers?’
‘The news is depressing.’
‘You don’t look sad to me.’
‘That’s the bourbon.’
She gestured. ‘Please, have a seat.’
‘Thank you.’ He sat opposite her. ‘I’m Leonard.’
‘Abigail.’
She offered her hand and he took it. Her nails were manicured and polished. Her skin was cool and so soft it was almost without texture.
‘I’m so glad you have a normal name, Leonard.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I have this theory about people with unusual or exotic names. In my experience they’re all utterly, mind-numbingly boring.’
‘Please explain,’ Victor said. ‘I’m something of a fan of names.’
‘What a curious thing to be a fan of, Leonard. My theory is that people who have interesting names are never interesting themselves because every time they introduce themselves to someone new there inevitably will be a conversation about their name. Oh, what an unusual name you have, I must know where it comes from…’
‘I see,’ Victor said. ‘So they have the same conversation every time they meet someone and as a result never learn the art of small talk.’
‘Which is absolutely an art in my opinion.’
‘I would disagree, but only in that label. Small talk is more of a science, because it can be learned and mastered, whereas art relies on innate talent.’
She considered. ‘Hmm. Seeing as I always consider myself to be right I’m not fond of being disagreed with, but you may have a point there.’
‘And in finding such middle ground we are able to continue the small talk and not digress into argument.’
‘We can always negotiate,’ Abigail said with a smile. ‘And yes, I was hoping you’d notice that little piece of conversational acquiescence, especially as I’m entirely self-taught.’ She grinned, pleased with herself, and he humoured her with a small smile of his own. ‘Aren’t you glad your parents didn’t give you an interesting name now, Leonard?’
‘I have a confession to make: Leonard’s not my real name.’
‘And my name isn’t Abigail. So we have something in common already. Besides being equally good at chit-chat.’
‘I wonder what else we’ll be equally good at.’
Her lips pursed for a moment. ‘I hope you’re not going to be lewd, Leonard.’
‘Not yet, at least.’
She examined her nails. ‘How has your day played out? Mine has been a tiresome bore, so I do hope we haven’t both suffered.’
‘I’ve been working late.’
‘Tut, tut, Leonard,’ she said. ‘You know what they say about all work and no play.’
‘I do, but I have a new job offer I’m considering.’
‘You must be very much in demand to have such a luxury. What’s to consider? I take it they’re offering you sufficient remuneration.’
‘Substantial remuneration,’ Victor said. ‘But a former employee warned me the company doesn’t play fair with its people.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘And do you with your employers?’
He shook his head. ‘Never.’
She winked at him. ‘Then there’s no problem, is there?’
‘The company is under the assumption I’ll take the job. They think I can’t say no.’
She said, ‘Ah, I see. So, it’s only your ego keeping you from saying yes. Is that a decent enough reason to turn the job down?’
‘I don’t like to be predictable.’
‘Ah, but you’re not by virtue of the fact you’re unsure whether to say yes. They, however, believe you to be predictable. That’s exactly where you want them to be.’
‘Do you want to know what I do?’
‘Not really. I don’t like getting to know someone via their CV. I hope there’s more to you than just your profession, Leonard.’
‘I’m not sure even I know.’
She smiled a little, as if she had set a trap that he had walked into of his own free will. ‘Do you like to take risks, Leonard?’
‘No.’
‘That sounds like a surprisingly honest answer.’
Victor nodded. ‘That’s because it is.’
‘I would suggest that most, if not all, men would say yes when asked that question by a strange woman they approached in a hotel, don’t you think?’
‘It felt like the right moment for veracity.’
‘I like your use of words, Leonard. A man under forty with an expansive vocabulary is something of a rarity I’ve found. Why is it that you don’t like to take risks? No, don’t tell me: you like to be in control. Or would saying you like to be in charge be more… accurate?’
‘Now who’s being lewd?’
‘I never said I was a lady. Is that a problem for you?’
‘Quite the opposite.’
‘Excellent, then you won’t have a problem with me inviting myself back to your room.’
She watched his eyes with a careful stare.
‘Let’s go back to your room instead.’
He watched hers with as much care.
‘Sure,’ she said after a moment for deliberation, and stood. ‘Let’s go.’
NINE
Her room was identical to Victor’s own, but one floor higher. A little small, because the hotel had stood for a century or more, but decorated and furnished to a grand ta
ste that teetered on the brink of extravagance yet managed to remain understated.
Like his own room, Abigail’s appeared almost unoccupied. The bed had not been slept in and her belongings were either still inside the wheeled suitcase that lay in one corner or had been distributed amongst the wardrobe and drawers available. The scent of her perfume lingering in the air and the suitcase were the only signs of habitation besides a single pillow on the king-sized bed that had been disturbed.
She reached out to him and he allowed her to grip his arm while she stood on alternate single legs to remove her shoes. She placed them by the door.
She asked, ‘Would you like something from the minibar?’
‘Sparkling water, please.’
‘Nothing stronger?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve already had a lot to drink.’
Her gaze searched him. In the dimly lit drawing room he hadn’t noticed, but she had amazing dark eyes, full of joy and energy. ‘You don’t seem drunk to me.’
‘Can’t be too careful.’
She smiled, playful. ‘Wise.’
Squatting, she took a glass bottle of water from the room’s minibar and a miniature bottle of vodka for herself.
‘Could you pour while I use the facilities?’
Victor said, ‘Sure.’
She took her clutch bag into the room’s en suite and left Victor alone for almost four minutes. When she returned he had poured the vodka over ice into a tumbler and was sipping from the bottle of water.
‘No glass for you? How uncouth.’
‘I’m yet to be civilised.’
‘That sounds delightfully intriguing.’
He handed her the tumbler and she finished the vodka in one swallow. He took the glass back from her and set it down while she slipped off her dress. She faced him.
‘Don’t keep me waiting,’ she said.
He didn’t.
After, he dressed while she showered and he waited for her to return. She was quick in the shower, and exited the en suite wearing one of the hotel robes provided. It was brilliant white and thick. She had washed her brown hair and it sat wrapped in a bun at the back of her head.
‘Wouldn’t you like to shower too?’ she said when she saw him in his suit.
Victor said, ‘I don’t shower as a general rule.’
She laughed in surprise and distaste. ‘You don’t?’
‘But I’ll bathe later in my own room.’
Her nose wrinkled as she crossed the room with a hairdryer and plugged it in a socket near the right side of the bed. She took a seat. She switched the hairdryer to her left hand and thumbed a switch while her right hand moved out of Victor’s line of sight.
The hairdryer roared and she looked his way. Her right hand appeared a moment later with an automatic handgun in her grip. It was a .22 calibre SIG with a suppressor, small and compact.
She aimed it at his chest and squeezed the trigger.
Victor didn’t hear the click of the hammer falling because the hairdryer blocked out any other sound, as she had intended it to. Even a low-powered .22 wasn’t silent when suppressed.
While she sat still in a moment of confusion he placed a single .22 cartridge on to the room’s desk. It had a conical slug and a steel core for piercing body armour. The low-powered bullet would have no chance of penetrating even the slimmest of Kevlar vests otherwise. The shape meant less physical trauma and hydrostatic shock to the body as a result, but a shot to the heart was still a shot to the heart.
She deactivated the hairdryer. ‘I’m not used to the weight,’ she said, referencing the SIG. ‘I couldn’t tell it was empty.’
Victor was silent.
‘While I was in the shower?’ she asked.
He nodded.
‘That’s why you let me go first. I thought you were being a gentleman.’
‘I am a gentleman.’
‘How did you know?’
Victor saw no harm in explaining. ‘You hadn’t slept in the bed but the right pillow wasn’t perfect. In a hotel like this they always are.’
‘I thought I’d put it back as I found it.’
‘You’re no maid. You shouldn’t have hidden the gun between the mattress and headboard.’
‘I wanted it close by.’
Victor didn’t respond. He wasn’t a teacher giving a lesson.
‘Do you want to know who sent me? We don’t have to get unpleasant. We can always negotiate, remember.’
‘I already know who: open contract, brokered by Phoenix.’
‘Biggest contract I ever competed for. There must be a dozen separate killers gunning for you. What did you do to piss off the client?’
‘I can’t even be sure who the client is this time.’
‘This time?’
‘You’re not the first assassin to come after me. You’re not even the first this week who tried to kill me.’
‘That explains that nasty cut on your thigh. Popular boy, aren’t you?’
‘It’s my winning personality.’
She said, ‘Did you suspect before? When we were chit-chatting in the drawing room?’
‘You did nothing wrong.’
‘That’s not answering my question.’
Victor said, ‘I suspect everyone I encounter will attempt to kill me.’
‘Too much of a stretch for the pretty girl in the hotel to find you cute?’
‘Call it professional paranoia.’
She smirked. ‘But it’s not paranoia if they’re really after you, is it?’
He nodded. ‘It’s saved me plenty of times before.’
‘Why even come back to my room if you knew I was a threat?’
‘I didn’t know, not for sure. But I find it’s better to test my paranoia in a private setting.’
‘I can’t argue with that.’ She then frowned for a second, thinking. ‘But if you noticed the pillow, why did you go through with having sex with me?’
‘I’m a man.’
‘A man who doesn’t like to take risks, you told me before.’
‘My survival depends on not taking risks,’ Victor explained. ‘But, every once in a while, I’ll roll the dice so I can feel alive.’
She accepted this with a small nod. ‘Now I understand why you didn’t want to go back to your room. You didn’t want any evidence of my presence left behind.’
‘That’s correct.’
Her voice was even, but quiet. ‘You’re not going to let me go, are you?’
His was the same. ‘No, I’m not.’
She took a breath and stood to face him. Her amazing eyes seemed polished in the dim light. ‘Don’t keep me waiting.’
Again, he didn’t.
When it was done he moved her body to the bathtub and placed the privacy sign on the bedroom door. Even for London it was too late for stores to be open so he sat in the room’s armchair until morning before leaving in search of hard-shell luggage, a hacksaw and waterproof refuse sacks.
TEN
It wasn’t raining, but the clouds over London looked ready to drench the city. Victor’s counter surveillance took him all over the city, on buses and on the tube, walking and in cabs. He had no specific destination so could allow himself to be directed by randomness – alighting a bus after four stops because he boarded with four people; asking a black cab driver to pull over after nine minutes and seven seconds because the vehicle’s radio was tuned to 97 FM, and so on – and he found himself in an area he had once operated within.
Not ideal, but not a significant problem either because it didn’t take Victor long to find what he was looking for. Occupying a paved square, under the shadow of a clock tower, was a small market with stalls selling fake designer clothes, faded and furled paperbacks, counterfeit movies in several formats, cheap shoes and food produce. It was like any other market in any poor area of any European city. Traders shouted over one another and local residents shuffled between stalls, browsing and haggling. There were two stalls selling what he needed and he
ignored the overselling while he perused the range of mobile phones that the original owners had sold for cash to buy the next handset as well as those that had been stolen, unlocked and presented for sale for what he needed. There were plenty to choose from, ranging from ancient handsets that looked like relics but would survive the apocalypse to sleek smartphones only months old that wouldn’t survive being sat on.
Victor bought the cheapest he could find because he wanted a phone that was a phone and nothing else, and the greater the functionality of the device the greater the risk of compromise. He paid extra for a charger held together with electrical tape and bought credit from a nearby store. He charged the phone in a coffee shop while he enjoyed a red-hot double espresso, surrounded by young people on their laptops.
By the time he had finished, the phone had more than enough battery charge for his requirements. He left the coffee shop and entered the international calling code for Germany, the Hamburg area code, and a local number that he had memorised what seemed like a lifetime ago.
He would ditch the phone as soon as the call had been ended. A second-hand phone that used prepaid credit was close to untraceable. Victor didn’t carry a phone unless he needed it for a specific reason. At best phones were portable tracking devices; at worst they were portable recording devices. Even if there had been some way to stop the GPS ping and ensure no outside body could hack the firmware, Victor wouldn’t carry one. He had seen the effect they had on other people. He imagined some future subspecies of human with neck muscles so weak from millennia of atrophy that eyes no longer pointed forward, but down.
Victor had no friends and few acquaintances. He did, however, have access to the services of many individuals across the world who offered skills or assistance to him that ranged from useful to essential. Some of these he had been using for the duration of his professional career; others he knew of and what they could provide but had never called upon; a select few he had encountered during contracts or their preparation and had made sure to remember for when he needed them.