Columbus

by Derek Haas

  Most often, it is this type of security I find myself up against: lax, poorly conceived, untrained. These guards—and the ones riding in the Mercedes—are simply window-dressing, as empty and impotent as a scarecrow in a field. They work as a deterrent against amateur thieves and muggers and kidnappers, but are worthless against a professional contract killer.

  And herein lies the rub: it is my duty, my obligation, to keep my concentration at the highest level, to eliminate my prey flawlessly, even when faced with unworthy opposition. This is how I became what the Russians call a Silver Bear, an assassin who commands top fees because he never defaults on a job. I became one by never underestimating my mark, by treating every job as if it were my last.

  “Your espresso.”

  “Merci.”

  The shop owner has shuffled over carrying a saucer and a small cup and I keep my face pleasant and unmemorable.

  “This weather . . . pfff,” he says and I just want him to hand me my drink and move back to the counter. I’ve learned not to start up conversations, not to engage with Europeans who spot an English-speaker and want to practice the language. There is a way of holding my face still, of acting like I am deep in thought, concentrating on the paper, that makes waiters or shop owners leave the food behind and walk away without thinking further of it, without thinking “I should remember this asshole. I better keep an eye on him.”

  My behavior is working, the man is already whispering perdons as he sets down the saucer, is already taking one step backward, but he didn’t place the saucer carefully on the railing and the plate and cup topple over, spilling espresso all over my pants before crashing to the floor.

  He starts cursing himself in French, all apologies and wishes for forgiveness and how could he be such an oaf, and I just tell him not to worry about it, it’s cool, don’t worry at all, but now others are looking at me in the shop and my anonymity is slightly compromised.

  Bad luck. You can remain focused, hone your concentration, but you are powerless against luck when it sours and turns against you. I cannot allow it to build, so I am up and moving out the door, leaving five euros behind which should be enough to make him happy his error didn’t cost him my business.

  I am going to kill Noel today. I am going to kill him on this street, when I see the guards receive the phone call and the black Mercedes pull out of the gate and turn in this direction, toward the end of the narrow lane. I am going to be seated on an old Honda motorcycle, idling on the left side of the road. When he drives past me I am going to shoot him in the face through his driver’s side window. The car will be moving when I shoot him, which will cause the vehicle to continue forward into a row of parked cars, so that by the time his bodyguards and any on-lookers realize what is happening, I will be ten blocks away.

  I was planning on having five minutes after I hear the white phone ring to quietly pay for my drink and head out, still reading my newspaper, and then I would sit on top of the motorcycle, folding the paper back, appearing like I’m finishing an article while my right hand slips inside my jacket and finds my Glock. But now that plan has to be modified.

  I can’t loiter at the end of the street, can’t draw any suspicion to myself. The time Noel leaves varies each afternoon; the only clue is the white phone ringing.

  I should abort, should do this job tomorrow, but I hesitated too long in Rome, didn’t get started on my surveillance until the sixth week on this job and the contractor is expecting a dead body by the time the sun sets tonight. I have put all my eggs in the white phone basket. My two previous scouts proved it would be an effective strategy, a way to exploit his flawed sense of security.

  I can’t go back to square one anyway; the café owner would remember me now. If I entered his shop tomorrow at the same time, he would have another reason to recognize my face and make contact and continue to apologize and my anonymity would be surrendered completely. It has to be today.

  I deserve this bad luck because I am mentally unprepared. Risina. Even now my thoughts are drifting to the last conversation we had, seated in the train station in Rome, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.

  “There is something about you, Jack, between the words that you say.”

  “You’re making me sound more interesting than I am. . . . ” I had a hard time looking away from her. I am a man who is always checking angles, noting the body language of strangers in my periphery. And yet my eyes continued to lock on hers like she was the only one in the station.

  “For someone who loves books as much as I do, I’m terrible at reading people. But with you, I feel like there’s a missing chapter. Someone maybe ripped it free and you’re reluctant to put it back.”

  “Who told you you were bad at reading people?”

  “I know I am, Jack. I’ve had very few . . . I’ve gotten to know very few people.”

  “Well, I’m glad you want to get to know me.”

  “I do. I want to know—”

  The white phone is ringing, snapping me back to the present. My luck isn’t so bad after all, I am halfway to the small Honda motorcycle and I no longer have to come up with a plan to loiter and watch the street. Anton Noel has unwittingly sealed his fate by simply leaving his office early. It didn’t take me long after I landed in Paris to find evil in the man to exploit. I learned through Ryan that his company, Ventus-Safori, is famous for rushing experimental drugs to market, for paying off France’s government drug administration to ensure their pills are first on pharmacy shelves. This has resulted in three recalls since Noel rose to power, twice after the deaths of more than a dozen adults due to heart complications from hastily manufactured cholesterol blockers. And once, following the deaths of three infants from a cold medicine that should never have been allowed on the market. Internal memos revealed all three were known to be risky, but bribes in the right places assured millions of Euros were made before the company’s troubled medications could be removed from store counters. All lawsuits were fought vigorously, and the company’s stock price withstood the bad press. I had little doubt Anton Noel had carefully factored in the risks and was more concerned with profits than with his customers’ health. Or lack thereof.

  The black Mercedes is emerging from the gate as the two guards stand sentinel on either side, providing their hapless guise of security.

  I am seated on the motorcycle as planned, my right hand gripping the handle of the automatic pistol. In the rectangle of my side-view mirror, I can see the car turning my way and heading up the street. Just a few more seconds and Noel will be dead and the spilled coffee on my pants will just be a nuisance instead of a premonition of more bad luck to come and I can head back to Rome to see that smile on Risina’s face and that one strand of hair kissing her cheek and the car pulls up alongside me, about to pass. My gun is out and up and only then do I realize Noel is not behind the wheel but riding in the passenger seat.

  The file said he always drove. Always. My two previous visits to the Rue St. Antoine confirmed the veracity of this statement, and my strategy was conceived to exploit it. So why this fucking day? Why right now of all times in the year for him to let his bodyguard drive and he is hunched over a BlackBerry in the passenger seat, punching in God knows what and his bodyguard’s eyes go wide as he spots my pistol just a foot from his window and the wave of bad luck rolls over my head and my second of hesitation is enough.

  The guard jams on the accelerator like he’s trying to kick his heel through the floorboard and the Mercedes jumps like a whipped horse just as I register what is happening and fire my pistol. I only catch the bodyguard’s shoulder through the window, but it might be enough. On any other day, it would probably be enough.

  Instead of crashing, the Mercedes is tearing down the Rue St. Antoine, clipping the sides of parked vehicles as my thumb hits the ignition and I straddle the Honda while one hand holds my Glock and I gun the motorcycle after the fleeing sedan.

  I allowed this to happen, hell I caused this to happen because I took this j
ob lightly. I blinked, I stayed in Rome when I should have been here dissecting an infinite number of preferable ways to kill this target instead of cavalierly choosing this way, this ridiculously flawed, inept way.

  No more. I set my jaw and drop my eyes into slits and pin down the throttle while the heel of my boot hovers over the back brake like a wild ram steeling itself for an attack. I am Columbus, I am a Silver Bear, and when Anton Noel leaves that Mercedes it will be at the hands of a coroner.

  Ahead, the sedan whips into a hard right down a one-way commercial street in the middle of the Jewish quarter and I unleash the ram, slam hard on the rear brake as I lower my center of gravity so the motorcycle almost lays on its side and then springs up again, closing ground like a shark after a wounded swimmer.

  Bad luck can be trumped by an experienced killer and the driver must be bleeding with little way to staunch the flow from his gunshot wound and his arm must be useless now. I can spot the second bodyguard swiveling in the back seat, trying to keep tabs on me while over his shoulder Noel’s face has blanched and his eyes are open and filled with fear.

  I have to force the driver into a mistake.

  Traffic ahead causes the Mercedes to make another clipped right turn down a narrow street and I realize the driver can only make right turns, it is too difficult for him to mount a left with just his good arm to spin the wheel. Maybe with a little practice, but he’s had none, and I don’t think he’s used to driving the boss’s car anyway.

  The frigid weather has kept most pedestrians off the sidewalk, but a few are crossing the street ahead and it is time to make my move. I throttle the motorcycle forward and to the left of the Mercedes, aligning myself with the back bumper, so close to the rear windshield that I can practically smell the breath of the second bodyguard. He has a pistol up, a snub-nosed .38, a show weapon, a gun he has probably never fired and he is afraid, afraid to even take a potshot at me, afraid the gun might kick back and hit him in the face.

  As I suspected, the driver is unable to steer into me. I can hear Noel shouting in French in the front seat, but the second bodyguard ignores his pleas, won’t take aim, is swiveling in his seat trying to keep an eye on me, and I brake quickly and sweep the bike around the backside of the Mercedes so I am now on the right bumper and the intersection is practically on us and the driver thinks I have made a mistake and now he can bump me off my perch.

  He jerks the wheel to the right, oversteering as I believed he would and the front of the car smashes into a parked Peugeot van just shy of the intersection and its inertia keeps it going so it flips wildly and starts tumbling like a pair of dice, smashing into a couple of unfortunate pedestrians, killing them instantly, before sliding belly up to a stop.

  In the next moment, I am off the motorcycle and walking calmly, purposefully to the passenger door of the car. It only takes me an instant to crouch down and look at the bleeding, helpless visage of Anton Noel.

  “Aide—” he mutters a moment before I shoot him in the face.

  Men and women race into the street from nearby buildings, bewildered by the sudden eruption of the accident, and somewhere in the distance, the bleating two-note shriek of a French police siren fills the air.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I STAND AT A PAY PHONE OUTSIDE THE TRAIN STATION IN NAPLES, WAITING FOR IT TO RING. I am angry. The emotion has been brewing inside me for three days, unabated.

  I failed. I was sloppy, I was unprepared, and two pedestrians died in Paris because they chose to brave the cold and cross an avenue at the most unfortunate of times. They are dead and here I stand, alive and empty.

  Le Monde reported their names as Jerome Coulfret, a forty-five-year-old jeweler, and Jason Baseden, a twenty-eight-year-old fitness instructor. They did not know each other. Further information about them is scant. They are merely a footnote to the professional execution of Anton Noel, the pharmaceutical CIO shot down as he left work in the middle of the afternoon in Paris.

  Though I am waiting for it, the phone’s ring manages to startle me.

  “You are safe?”

  Ryan’s voice is unemotional, impassive.

  “Yes.”

  “The city is on edge. Investigations are under way.”

  “I understand.”

  He pauses, and I wait. There is more he wants to say.

  “I have been doing what I do for a quarter of a century. I have no regrets. So tell me why I’m having misgivings about our relationship now.”

  “I fucked up. What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say you are committed to your work.”

  I press the receiver against my forehead and close my eyes. I’d like to tell him I don’t need a goddamn lecture—that I’m more angry with myself than he could ever be—but maybe I do need to hear it from him. Maybe I do need a good tongue-lashing, a slap in the face. Something, anything to push me back to the surface where I can breathe fresh air again.

  “I underestimated the time necessary to complete this job. It won’t happen again.”

  “I’m not assuaged.”

  “Well, there’s nothing I can—”

  “You can stop seeing the bookshop owner.”

  I feel a dull pulse in my ear where the cool plastic of the phone receiver presses against it. I don’t know why I’m surprised; a good fence finds out everything about his targets, and similarly knows everything about his assassins. I won’t insult him by asking how or why he was tailing me. I know he was right to do so. And I know he was right to tell me to stop seeing Risina.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  He wants to say more, but it is his turn to be circumspect. After a moment, his voice comes through the phone again, softer.

  “We should meet. Discuss our strategy for the remainder of the year where we can talk freely. I think it might be time to evaluate a return to work in America.”

  “Okay.”

  “A week from today.”

  “Okay.”

  There is no need for us to discuss over a telephone where this encounter will take place. We have planned our meetings sequentially. The last one was in Turin. The next one will be here, at the train station in Naples. We always meet at noon.

  I’m about to say “goodbye,” but the line has gone dead in my hand.

  The Piazza Navona is a giant oval surrounding an Egyptian obelisk and a large fountain in the heart of Rome. The emperor Maxentius built the oval in the fourth century as a stadium for chariot races, where losing competitors were often executed before they left the competing ground. I wonder how much blood has been spilled here over the centuries, what forgotten man once stood where I stand, defeated, waiting for a sword to run him through.

  Risina is eating lunch alone.

  The day is unseasonably warm, and the cafes and shops are crowded. She is waiting for me to join her, but I can’t seem to get my feet to move.

  This life asks so goddamn much of me and in return, I get what? Solitude. Anonymity. A name hung on me without meaning. Money in an account I rarely touch. Fleeting human connections severed violently, dispassionately. I have become faceless, a living ghost, a walking embodiment of a vengeful god, meting out punishment with remorseless certitude. I have to trick myself into thinking the punishment is deserved, but that’s just a minor inconvenience, right?

  And the secret—the truth I keep tucked away like a stolen painting—is I like it. I like the power, I like the excitement, I like the hunt. My first fence, Vespucci, once said we held a power reserved for God, that we know our target’s future long before he or she does. This power wore him down like those heavy stones on the old man’s chest, but it is the opposite for me: a lift, a tonic.

  The question is: at what cost? At what point does the necessity for some kind of lasting human connection tip the scales away from the thrill, the allure, the power of the hunt? At what point does it tip to an empty nothingness? I’m not sure I know the answer.

  An elderly man stands near me, his hand on the back of a
bench, watching people as they pass. He wears a simple smile, and his clothes, though old, are pressed and clean. He is humming a tune to himself, something old and classical, a short, happy melody I vaguely recognize. A young woman in her twenties approaches, kisses him warmly on both cheeks, and I only catch a concerned question from her in Italian . . .

  “You are warm, Grandfather?”

  . . . before they shuffle away. I swallow hard, can feel my hand balling into a fist, can feel the weight in the scales tipping off its median. I sneak one last look at Risina, and, before I make a decision I might regret, I leave the Piazza Navona alone.

  In Naples, a week later, I am thumbing through my first-edition copy of The Compleat Angler, biding my time while I wait for Ryan to step off the train from Rome.

  I have had time to think, to get my mind right, and there is only one solution. There has always been only one solution. I have decided I will tell her. I have to tell her.

  I won’t need to hear the reproof from Ryan, the judgmental tone in his voice. I know what I have to do. I know the only way the scales can tip.

  I will never have grandchildren to comfort me when I’m old, to ask me if I’m warm enough as I stand contentedly in the middle of a crowded square humming a tune. I can’t have things that can be taken from me, that can be used as leverage against me. I chose this life, and the cost is mine to bear. I will have to jettison Risina before the sinking ship drowns us both.

  I am standing with my back to a corner made by a newspaper stand adjoining the rail-station wall. The terminal is always bustling as passengers try to dodge the thieves, liars, and beggars aiming to separate them from their money. It is easy to fade into the backdrop here.