by Tom Wood
She said, ‘Would you like to see my identification?’
Her voice was quiet. She sounded dehydrated.
Victor said, ‘I don’t need to, do I? I saw the sign.’
‘But I’m going to need to know it’s definitely you.’
There couldn’t be a prearranged code because this wasn’t prearranged, so he said, ‘You were sent by a West Ham fan.’
She caught herself before she said something she didn’t want to. Instead, she first composed the words in her mind, then asked, ‘How many siblings are there?’
‘He’s the eldest of seven.’
‘Okay, that’s good enough. You need to come with me.’
She’d started to walk away before he could say, ‘No chance.’
She slowed but didn’t stop. It seemed beyond her comprehension that he might refuse. ‘I’ll give you a lift into the city.’
‘I don’t need a lift. And I certainly don’t get into cars with strangers.’ He paused. ‘Even ones as attractive as you.’
She was attractive, albeit tired and stressed, but he said so only to catch her off guard. He wanted to test her. She might not have seen his photograph, but she knew more about him than he knew about her. He wanted to redress that balance.
She absorbed his comment and didn’t react apart from the absence of a reaction, which wasn’t the same thing. ‘You need to hear what I have to say.’
‘You can tell me now. We don’t have to get into a car to talk.’
‘It’s freezing out here. Let’s go somewhere warm and sit down. Are you hungry? I know I am. I could eat a horse, I tell you. If not then I’ll buy you a coffee. Or a beer.’
Victor said, ‘I like how you’re trying to be friendly with me after I said you were attractive. Trying to hook me by appealing to my maleness. But there’s really no need. I don’t actually find you attractive.’
‘Okay.’
‘You rushed to Belgrade to give me a message in person, so it can’t be new files; you haven’t had time to memorise anything significant. Therefore it won’t take long enough for you to get that cold.’
‘You’re wrong. It is significant.’
‘I don’t care. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what it is.’
Her glossy lips pursed instead of arguing further. She saw he was inflexible.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I concede. We don’t have time to argue, so I’ll tell you now. You need to hear it.’
‘Go on.’
‘Banik’s dead. He was murdered.’
FIFTY
The British woman’s car was parked some thirty metres from the main airport entrance, over the access road and beyond steel barriers in a short-stay parking lot. It was a boxy Lada, old and cheap. Not a rental, so it must be one of the Embassy’s or owned by the local MI6 station. It wouldn’t be a personal vehicle. The guy behind the wheel was slumped down in his seat, which was reclined way back so his head was level with the dashboard. He was big and out of shape. A camera with a large lens sat on the dash, obvious when they were close, but impossible to detect at range.
‘I want that memory stick,’ Victor said as the woman opened the passenger-side rear door. She held it open for him.
The man behind the wheel worked the manual adjuster and the driver’s seat inclined in jerky movements. The whole car rocked.
‘It wasn’t recording,’ he said. ‘I was only using the zoom.’
Victor reached a hand into the vehicle, but didn’t climb inside. ‘The memory card.’
‘Chill,’ he said. ‘It’s empty. There’s nothing on it to be worried about.’
‘Then there’s no reason not to give it to me, is there?’
The guy hesitated.
‘You either give it to me,’ Victor said. ‘Or I take it.’
There was no challenge or threat in his tone, but the British man understood what Victor meant and he didn’t like it one bit. He stared hard at Victor, reacting with a challenge. It was hard to square up when twisted around in a car seat, but he tried his best.
‘Hand him the bloody disk,’ the woman said. ‘It’s not like you bought it yourself.’
The guy behind the wheel sighed and dragged the camera from its perch. He spent a moment digging his nail into a groove and prising open a sliver of plastic. He used a fat finger and thumb to drag out the card and tossed it in Victor’s general direction with a fast, un-telegraphed throw, hoping to catch him off guard and salvage some kind of personal victory or revenge.
Victor snatched it out of the air and crushed it in his fist.
The guy looked away. ‘There was nothing on it.’
Whether he was telling the truth or not, it didn’t matter now, so Victor saw no point in commenting further. If the guy wanted the last word that bad, he could have it. Victor’s ego didn’t need it.
He slipped the crushed memory card into a pocket of his suit trousers. There was no point keeping what remained, but he couldn’t abide littering. He disliked it even more than cursing.
The woman said, ‘Have a seat.’
‘You first.’
She looked at him, trying to decipher his intention, but there was nothing in his expression to enlighten her. He watched her eyes glance down – to his pocket – and he saw she concluded that if he intended to kill them then he would not have needed to first destroy the card. That could be done afterwards. He softened his face a little so she wouldn’t continue the line of thought and conclude destroying the memory card first was a good way to lower their guard in case he decided on killing them later.
The woman nodded and climbed into the back of the Lada. Despite her fatigue she was limber and her movements were effortless and almost graceful. He imagined she had been a gymnast as a child or practised yoga as an adult.
Victor waited until she had shuffled behind the driver’s seat before climbing in himself. Had they been preparing to go somewhere he would have preferred to sit in her place to better attack the driver, but he was only here to talk. He wasn’t going to let them take him anywhere, whatever their plans.
The Lada was old and he could see the locking mechanism on the far rear door was up and disengaged. No child lock activated. He closed the door behind him.
‘I’m Monique,’ the woman said. ‘This is Dennis.’
Victor remained silent.
The woman who called herself Monique was half-turned in the back seat so she could face him. He didn’t mirror her position. He sat with his feet in the footwell, knees parallel to one another and facing the passenger seat so he could be out of the door fast if necessary. He didn’t want to lose time repositioning in an enclosed environment. Having to turn his head to look over his right shoulder was a small price to pay to gain that small advantage, should he need it.
‘Thank you for coming with me,’ Monique said. ‘Thank you for making this about as easy as it could be. You could have made my life a lot more difficult.’
I still might, Victor thought.
She continued: ‘As I said, Banik was murdered. He was shot and killed on his driveway, climbing out of his car. Two shots to the heart from a .22, followed by one to the head once he was on the ground. No one heard the shots.’
Victor wasn’t surprised. Guns were never silent, but a low-powered subsonic bullet fired from a top-of-the-range suppressor could be quiet enough that even had people heard the sound they would have failed to recognise it as a gunshot. Given the low proliferation of firearms in the UK, it made sense that neighbours wouldn’t identify a gunshot when they heard one. A car backfiring or even a firework would be the first thought a Londoner had.
‘Sounds like a professional hit so far, right?’ the woman said.
Victor nodded. He had killed people using the same method. For a brief moment he thought of a contract in Paris he had fulfilled – one that he had considered simple, even easy – but it had caused his life to spiral out of control. He was still trying to put it back together.
‘What?’ the woman ask
ed, seeing his expression change. She was observant or he was slipping.
‘No powder burns at the wound sites,’ Victor said, to change the subject.
‘That’s right. Because he would have taken a headshot at point-blank range?’
‘Not necessarily. A .22 can ricochet off the skull if the angle is right. That’s why he went for the heart. The headshot was insurance. No such thing as overkill.’
‘Then how did you know there were no powder burns?’
‘I guessed,’ Victor said, and she seemed satisfied. Any thought of his face changing as he remembered that fateful job in Paris had been forgotten and any chance of her understanding him better had disappeared along with it.
‘It gets worse, I’m afraid.’
Victor raised an eyebrow. ‘Doesn’t it always?’
‘You know why we’re here, right?’
He looked from her to the guy. ‘I didn’t at first, but I do now. This isn’t a courtesy call to let me know my handler is dead. You’re investigating Banik’s murder and I’m a suspect.’
‘Prime suspect,’ the woman corrected.
FIFTY-ONE
They were both watching him with unblinking eyes. The roar of planes taking off, descending to land and circling overhead filled the silence. It was not the calm rumble of trains coming and going, but angry. The Brits were tense, worried about a violent reaction, but he sat still and calm. He wanted more information before he did anything.
‘Ah,’ Victor said. ‘Of course I am.’
‘Can you prove you weren’t in London recently?’
‘I have been in London,’ he answered. ‘As you already know. I was there to meet Banik, as you also know. But you’re getting nothing else from me. Don’t even think I’ll provide proof of anything I’ve done or haven’t done.’
‘I thought you might say something along those lines.’
‘You can’t arrest me. This isn’t London. This is Belgrade. You have no jurisdiction here in Serbia, and even if you had, you have no evidence because the killer knew what he was doing. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the last thing you want to do is try and take me into custody.’
‘I know you didn’t do it,’ the woman said. ‘I don’t know anything about you – anything real, I mean – but I know you’re not stupid.’
‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’
‘Maybe I phrased that clumsily, but you’re not going to shoot dead your own handler outside his house, are you?’
There was no need to answer or discuss the point any further. He glanced between them. ‘Why am I prime suspect?’
‘I’ll get to that in a minute.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I’ve told you,’ the woman said. ‘We’re here to talk to you about Banik’s death.’
‘What else?’
A moment of silence followed. The guy behind the wheel avoided eye contact.
Victor said, ‘You’ve made it clear you don’t think I killed Banik, so you didn’t need to come here to tell me that. You didn’t even need to tell me he was dead, let alone assassinated. You could have waited until I’d completed my job, but here you are. I want to know why, and I want to know now. I understand why you’ve told me about Banik and why you’ve told me you don’t think it’s me. You want to encourage trust. You want me to be grateful. You want me to be more on side when you present me with the real reason why you’re here. Those MI6 classes in pop psychology you sat through aren’t going to pay off with me. So let’s not waste time. Tell me now.’
The woman had turned her gaze to the man before Victor had finished speaking.
She said, ‘We need your help.’
‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘And I’m still waiting for you to get to the point.’
She rubbed her hands together. It was almost as cold inside the car as outside. The guy had kept the engine off to maintain covert surveillance, so there wasn’t any heat. He had better clothes for the temperature and about double the woman’s natural insulation. His window was open a crack too, so the glass wouldn’t steam up while he was conducting surveillance. Victor felt the chill but he had a high threshold for discomfort even if his level of physical fitness didn’t ensure his fast metabolism doubled as a portable furnace.
‘London still wants you to kill Rados,’ the woman explained. ‘I appreciate it if you feel resistance now that your handler is dead.’
‘Dead is a heart attack or hit by a bus. A double-tap to the heart followed by one in the head is an execution.’
‘Like I said, it’s understandable if you want to back out.’
‘I don’t need to back out,’ Victor said. ‘I’m already out.’
‘Then this is when I reel you back in.’
He thought of the Armenian woman in Rados’ brothel, the woman he had made a deal with. If you help me, I’ll help you. That’s how simple it can be if you’ll let it, he had told her and meant it.
Monique noted a change in his expression, so he said, ‘When you try to reel me back in.’
She exhaled. ‘Okay, I hear what you’re saying and you’ve been right so far. But there’s still a job to be done that is separate from Banik’s… execution. He presented you with the contract, but it wasn’t his call. He was only a messenger.’
‘It’s bad manners to speak ill of the dead. You’re here to bring me a message. I’m a messenger too, when it comes down to it.’
She nodded in a sign of placatory agreement. ‘Banik told you about Leonard Fletcher, I’m sure. He told you how Fletcher was selling secrets… the girl… the affair… Chinese intelligence. Yes?’
Victor nodded and said, ‘Okay,’ so she would continue.
‘And I bet he even told you Fletcher had sold your file.’
He had an idea what she was getting at. ‘Go on.’
She shot a glance to the guy and he looked pleased, as if it was a foregone conclusion they had Victor on board. Then she said, ‘But that last part was bullshit. It was —’
‘You can say bogus, if you want. Or you can say incorrect or false or a lie.’
She frowned, confused. ‘Yeah,’ she said, still unsure what point he was trying to make. ‘It was a lie. Fletcher didn’t sell your file, Banik did.’
‘Hence I’m prime suspect in his murder.’
She nodded. ‘Of course. Banik sells you out to the broker named Phoenix and puts killers looking for a big payday on your trail. You find out, and kill him. It’s logical. It makes sense. Some of us would even say it’s justified.’
‘Was Banik working with Fletcher?’
‘We don’t know. Maybe he got the idea from him. Maybe they were collaborating.’
‘They killed each other,’ Victor said. ‘Banik sent me after Fletcher, but Fletcher had already sent someone after Banik. It just took them longer to fulfil the contract than I did.’
‘I’m looking into that idea,’ she said. He saw she was telling the truth. It was reassuring to deal with people who could think more than one step ahead. ‘There is a contract out on you, brokered as Banik said by an agent named Phoenix. That’s been there for a few months, at least. But Banik tried to cash in on that fact to help his own cause. Fletcher wanted him dead. He wanted Fletcher dead. To hide that, he would have you fall victim to another contract killer who was after the bounty on your head. No one would question that. He hasn’t sent anyone after you. He’s simply made the right people aware of your movements, taking advantage of your – how shall we put this? – popularity. We know for certain that one freelancer was in London at the same time as you when you met up with Banik.’
Victor didn’t react.
‘You’re lucky you didn’t cross paths.’
‘I think I see where this is going.’
‘I wouldn’t have expected anything less.’
Victor said, ‘You’re about to threaten me.’
She shook her head, a groove between her eyebrows. ‘I wouldn’t do that. I’m here to help.’
&nb
sp; ‘No,’ Victor said. ‘You’re here to offer help. You’re going to tell me that if I continue with the Rados contract you’ll help me with my own problem.’
‘We can help each other, yes.’
‘Such as offer me intelligence on this female professional on my tail, I’m guessing.’
She nodded. ‘We have a whole file on her. She’s a bad-ass. You’ll never see her coming.’
‘Burn the file,’ Victor said. ‘She’s at the bottom of the Thames in six neat pieces.’
The woman stared at him, searching for the untruth. ‘You’re lying.’
‘You didn’t tell me she was female. Check the guest list at the Covent Garden Hotel. A woman matching her description checked in nearly two weeks ago but hasn’t checked out. Vanished into thin air, in fact.’
‘I am going to check, you know.’
Victor said, ‘What else do you have to offer?’
‘Okay, assuming you’re telling the truth, your file is still out there with a powerful broker chasing a big payday. One tried and failed, so all credit to you. But you know as well as I do that there could be others.’
Victor thought about the German with greying hair on the train to St Petersburg. The assassin who had tricked him and stabbed him. That assassin was still out there. The residual pain in his thigh seemed to worsen for a moment. The wound hadn’t yet healed fully. He was going to have another ugly scar.
‘The sooner that file is retrieved, the easier you’ll sleep.’
‘How do I even know you can find Phoenix?’
‘It’s what I do.’
There was enough weight behind her voice that he almost believed her. She was confident in herself.
‘And until Phoenix is found, we’ll do everything we can to watch your back. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.’
‘A deal I wouldn’t need if your organisation didn’t suffer from endemic corruption. Every single one of your people I’ve dealt with or come across in the last few years has been playing by their own rules. That’s an even higher hit rate than the CIA, which is saying something.’