She pulls the trigger. Reginald collapses heavily to the side. She crouches beside him and uses his suit jacket to wipe her fingerprints from the gun. I’m assuming she acquired it from one of the guards. She then tosses it down next to him.
She stands, moves over to me, and kisses my cheek. “You’re right. This was easy. Let’s go.”
She walks past me, toward the door. I smile to myself as I turn and head after her.
We reach the main area of the upper floor and join the final group of guests rushing down the stairs. We leave through the main entrance and make our way across the courtyard, camouflaged in the crowds of people lingering outside, anxiously looking back at the museum to see if there really was a fire.
We head out of the main entrance and take a left. A minute later, we’re lost in the streets of a typical spring evening in Paris.
20
22:15 CEST
I’m lying on the bed in our discreet, crappy hotel room above the vape shop. My arms are crossed behind my head, and I’m staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Beside me, Ruby’s lying on her front, legs bent up behind her as she studies her phone.
After leaving the museum, we called Corbeau and told him Reginald was dead. He asked how we did it, so we told him the abridged version—which, frankly, sounded more professional.
He thanked us for taking the job off his hands and said he would e-mail us the information we wanted about Holt’s assassin bodyguard. That’s what Ruby’s currently reading.
I just hope it was worth it.
She sighs. “Okay. It says here the guy we’re looking for is called Armen Falikov. A Russian national who has spent the last ten years traveling Europe and North America, working contracts primarily supplied by Fortin.”
I nod. “The name sounds familiar, although I couldn’t have picked him out of a line-up until now. He has a decent rep.”
“Fortin’s name keeps coming up, I notice…”
“I’m not concerned about him. He’s a controller, and he runs one of biggest safe houses in Europe. He’s a prick, but I don’t think he has an agenda outside of self-preservation.”
“Fair. So, Holt hired Falikov through Fortin for a job in Berlin about three months ago.”
“Who was the target?”
“I’m just looking now.” She scrolls down the screen for a moment. “Okay. It was a known arms dealer called Hans… um… Hans…”
I cross my fingers and mutter, “Please say Gruber. Please say Gruber.”
Ruby glares at me. “Do you mind? That’s not even a good movie.”
My jaw hangs open. “You take that back. You take that back right now.”
She rolls her eyes and ignores me. “Anyway, Hans the German arms dealer got real dead, and Holt swooped in to stake his claim.”
“Right. So, Holt was simply wiping out the competition?”
“Sounds like it. Word has it he was so impressed with Falikov’s work, he paid for exclusivity.”
“Not uncommon.”
Ruby looks up from the screen. “You ever get offered an exclusive gig?”
I nod. “A couple of times, yeah. Not my thing. Staying independent meant I could charge more and work less. Also meant I didn’t have to work contracts I didn’t like. What about you?”
“Yeah. Once. It was when I was just starting out. This old businessman had a lot of corporate enemies. His pitch was that he wanted to wipe out his competition one at a time and wanted to use someone he trusted.”
“How did that turn out?”
She pushes herself upright and sits cross-legged facing me. “Turns out, he wasn’t so much interested in giving me targets as he was suggesting which outfits he wanted to see me in.”
“Ah. Right. So, what happened?”
She shrugs. “I did a little preemptive pro bono work and left.”
I smile. “Sounds about right.”
She goes back to scrolling through the e-mail.
“What else does Corbeau say?” I ask.
She sighs again. “Honestly? Not a whole lot.”
I sit upright against the wall. There’s no headboard.
“That’s it? Falikov was in Berlin three months ago. That’s all we have to go on?”
She tosses the phone aside. “Looks like it.”
“Jesus. After everything we went through to do that fucking job…”
“Hey, it’s not nothing. We now know Holt has been conquering the black-market arms game across Europe for a while. Maybe the team has found something out from his Serbian buyers that connects some dots for us?”
My phone starts ringing. It’s vibrating and sliding across the table opposite the bed. I push myself off the bed and walk over to it. I glance at the screen.
“Speak of the devils.” I answer and put it on speaker. “Adam, it’s Adrian. You’re on with me and Ruby.”
“Hey, Boss,” he says, sounding a little flustered. “You’re on with all of us here.”
“Tell me you have some good news.”
“We have news,” says Link. “Not sure I’d call it good.”
Ruby and I exchange raised eyebrows of concern.
“Tell me,” I say.
Rayne clears his throat. “No one else showed, so we made the approach like we had planned. It worked perfectly. We secured five of the six buyers and interrogated the last one. He was pretty keen to tell us what we wanted to know.”
“Did you believe him?” asks Ruby.
“I did, yeah.”
“So, what did he say?” I ask.
“Here’s the kicker. They weren’t buying. They were selling.”
Ruby and I look at each other, more confused than anything else.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Positive,” replies Rayne. “Those crates, Holt was buying them from the Serbians.”
“I thought he was the gun-running entrepreneur,” says Ruby. “What would he need to buy?”
“It was experimental tech,” says Jessie. “Proprietary propulsion engines, top of the line satellite navigation and targeting equipment, guidance systems…”
“Jessie, that means nothing to me,” I say. “You’re gonna have to dumb that way down.”
She doesn’t skip a beat. “Holt just bought all the parts of a next-gen stealth attack drone. It’s a prototype we think matches up with one that was stolen from a military base in Kuala Lumpur about three weeks ago.”
“How bad is this?”
My question is met with silence, which is never a good sign.
“Guys. Talk to me. How bad is this?”
“Well,” says Jessie, “if he can assemble it, he will have control of the most advanced UAV out there. Its stealth technology makes it virtually undetectable, and its near-unlimited range means he could, in theory, take out any target from anywhere in the world.”
“Right. So, it’s pretty bad, then?” I pace along the side of the bed for a moment. “Okay. We have to assume Holt can actually build this thing. No point in buying it otherwise. But why would he buy it at all?”
“The guy we spoke to didn’t know,” says Link. “But he seemed pretty scared of Holt.”
“Yeah. The way I see it, there are three possibilities. One, he’s buying it to sell it on for a profit. That’s the best-case scenario. Two, he’s buying it on behalf of someone who wants to use it, which would be bad. If Holt’s just a middleman, that means we’re not even close to stopping the real threat.”
“That is bad,” agrees Rayne. “What’s the third?”
“That’s the worst-case. Third, Holt’s buying it to use it himself.”
“Is that worse?” asks Jessie. “If he’s going to sell it to some militia group or a country looking to establish dominance somewhere, we have a potential terrorist threat to deal with.”
I sit beside Ruby on the bed. “No, that would actually be preferable. If Holt has a buyer lined up for it, the chances are they have an agenda, whether that’s political or religious. People with agendas are pred
ictable. They have a specific goal in mind. You know what they want, you can figure out how they aim to get it and stop them. Agendas are easy.”
“Surely, the same applies to Holt?” asks Link.
“That’s the thing,” I say. “I’m not sure someone like Holt would have an agenda. An opportunistic arms dealer like him… imagine someone in his position whose only motivation was to watch the world burn. Him buying this drone for himself is the nightmare scenario here.”
The line falls silent. Beside me, Ruby places a hand on my leg and squeezes gently. I let the gravity of my words sink in. This is a learning experience for them all. Another lesson in having the right mindset. To fight in this new war like Schultz wants, they need to understand the enemy. They need to see that people like Holt exist. That some people thrive on chaos for the sake of something to do. The world is rebuilding. Part of it is stronger than it’s ever been. Much of it is still in turmoil. If we suffer another 4/17 now, there won’t be any coming back from it. Not again.
“Did he say anything else to you?” I ask finally.
“Nothing of any use,” says Rayne. “Although, he did say Holt’s bodyguard always addressed him by a nickname, which confused them when they first met.”
“What was the nickname?”
“I couldn’t understand what he was saying in Serbian, but we think it roughly translates as horizon.”
I feel my eyes pop wide. My jaw hangs open. My surroundings fade away from my periphery.
Horizon.
It can’t be…
That has to be a coincidence.
Except we know they don’t exist. Not in our world.
My mind flashes back to my faked execution. To my life in Dubai. To Josh.
If this means what I think it does, then the nightmare scenario just got a whole lot worse.
I can’t believe it.
Holt is…
Oh my God.
“Hello?” says Rayne. “You still there, Boss?”
Ruby looks at me, concerned. I’m aware of her reaching for the phone. I sit down heavily on the edge of the bed, staring blankly ahead.
“Thanks, everyone,” she says. “You’ve done good work. Clean up there and get yourselves back to London. Don’t kill anyone you don’t have to along the way. We’ll meet you in the penthouse tomorrow.”
She ends the call and places the phone on the desk. She stands, then crouches in front of me, resting her arms on my thighs. She takes my hands in hers.
“Adrian, I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “But this doesn’t necessarily mean anything. The Order is gone. You saw to that, remember? This could be a simple case of lost in translation, or…”
She stops as she sees my expression harden. My eyes re-focus.
“Yeah.” She sighs. “If this means what we think it does, what’s the move?”
I push her aside and stand, picking up my phone again.
“I need to make a call,” I say absently as I pace away. “I need to speak to Schultz. I have to warn him that Holt is a much bigger threat than anyone realizes.” I turn back to her. “Pack up our things and get ready to leave. We don’t have a lot of time.”
I dial a number and hold the phone to my ear, preparing for the hardest conversation of my life.
21
April 27, 2020 – 13:34 BST
I’m standing in the penthouse in London, resting against the island in the kitchen. My arms are folded across my chest. I’m staring at the floor, vision blurred, lost in my own head.
In front of me, spread out across the large sofa, is the team. On the other side of the counter behind me, leaning forward, is Ruby.
Everyone’s burned out. It’s been a long couple of days for us all, with little sleep and a lot of traveling. Any disillusion Ruby or I might have felt after what proved to be a largely unsuccessful trip to Paris is overshadowed by what the team discovered in Serbia.
Now I need to tell them why.
Ruby understands the threat here. She knows what it means to go up against someone like Holt. I fear the team might not, and therein lies the problem. If they view this as just another step, just another obstacle, just another enemy… they’ll die.
Link gets to his feet and begins pacing back and forth next to the sofa. His light brown skin glistens in the daylight shining through the large windows. He’s wearing a muscle shirt and jogging pants. He probably went for a run or a workout after landing early this morning. The guy’s a unit.
The others watch me patiently. I can feel their eyes on me. I can sense the concern and confusion.
“So, what’s the deal?” asks Link. “You went all quiet and weird on the phone last night. Kinda like you have now. What’s going on?”
I don’t look up. “I’m trying to figure out the best way of explaining it to you. You just need to give me a minute.”
He idles away, flinging his arms in the arm with frustration.
“This is bullshit, man,” he mutters.
“Hey,” says Jessie. “Take a breath, Link. We’re all tired, okay? Let the man think.”
I pull myself out of the trance and stare at the room. First, I glance back at Ruby. She seems fixated on the kitchen counter. That’s fair. She knows what’s really going on here.
Then I look out at the team. Jessie looks tired. She has dark rings around her eyes, and she’s leaning forward against the back of the sofa, resting on her arms. Link is… Link. Easily frustrated and lacking in patience. He just wants to know what’s going on. Wants to know what comes next. I get that. Rayne is sitting quietly. He’s watching me intently. Studying me. He doesn’t look tired. He doesn’t look frustrated. I reckon he knows something’s wrong. He’ll know it was something he said because of my reaction at the time. He’ll be curious more than anything.
I nod, mostly to myself. “Okay. Adam, you said the Serbians heard Falikov refer to Holt as Horizon, right?”
He shrugs. “Yeah. Translation was a little rough around the edges, but it seemed like he thought it was a nickname. I know that’s what freaked you out, Boss. You gonna tell us why?”
“It’s not a nickname. It’s a title.”
Link sits back down next to Rayne. Jessie sits up, suddenly awake with interest piqued. Ruby doesn’t move.
“Any of you heard of The Order of Sabbah?” I ask.
They stare blankly at me.
“I figured.” I take a deep breath. “The Order was a secret society of assassins, likely hundreds of years old, who shaped the progress of society by ensuring the wrong people didn’t end up in positions of power.”
Jessie frowns. “Are you being serious?”
I nod. “Yes. The underworld of… contractors Ruby and I were a part of never believed they existed. Everyone thought they were just a twisted fairytale. A campfire story for killers. Including me.”
“Were they not?” asks Rayne.
I shake my head. “No. Turns out, they were real. They recruited me shortly after I killed President Cunningham a few years ago. Not long after I joined their ranks, I made them somewhat less clandestine than they would’ve liked.”
Link huffs. “Go figure.”
“This underworld you two are a part of,” says Jessie, gesturing to Ruby and me, “is that not the same thing as The Order?”
I shake my head again. “The underworld and the Order were like… Protestants and Catholics. Two sides of the same coin. Same goals, just vastly different opinions on how to reach them.”
Link rubs his eyes and sighs. “So, what… was there some kind of civil war of assassins the world just didn’t fucking notice?”
“It never got to that stage.”
“What happened, then?” asks Rayne. “You keep referring to The Order in the past tense. Are they not around anymore?”
“No, they’re not. I took them down before they could execute their endgame.”
“What, all of them?”
I nod. “Yes. The Order crumbled and fell when I killed their leader.”
“Damn.”
“What happened to the people who were involved in it?” asks Jessie. “If they were as big and old as you say, surely, hundreds of people wouldn’t just disappear.”
“More like thousands,” I say, shrugging. “But that’s pretty much exactly what happened. The hierarchy fell. All the assassins that worked for them went to ground. Some slipped into our underworld and continued working. But many… I don’t know. They went quiet. My guess is they figured that was the safest option. The Order controlled businesses all over the world. They had infiltrated governments, communities… even the Vatican. Ultimately, it became what we thought it was all along—a ghost story.”
“What does any of this have to do with Holt and Horizon?” asks Link.
“The Order was a global organization,” I explain. “It had chapters on every continent, in every country, in many cities. Dozens of them across the globe. Each of these chapters was managed by one person. They didn’t have a name, just a title: Horizon. They were incredibly smart and dangerous people, and their ability to plan ahead and strategize was unparalleled. Think of a chess grandmaster on steroids. They were responsible for dispatching hundreds of the best killers the world has ever known to carry out hits according to The Order’s big plans. I went up against the one who recruited me. He sent half of Europe to kill me. Took me weeks to track him down in the aftermath.”
Rayne got to his feet. “Jesus. You’re saying Holt is one of these Horizon guys?”
I nod. “I am. Too much of a coincidence. It also makes perfect sense. We know he appeared on the illegal arms scene out of nowhere in the last couple of years. No one’s ever gotten close to him. And now a man who makes being ten moves ahead look like you’re asleep at the wheel has an undetectable drone capable of waging war, which he can control from anywhere.”
Jessie rubs her face, as if stimulating consciousness. “Well, I guess that explains why you went quiet.”
“So, what’s the move?” asks Link.
“I spoke with President Schultz last night,” I say to them. “He understands the gravity of the situation and has said we will have every resource we need made available to us, including NSA satellites and CIA tracking software. The priority is finding Holt before he does something stupid with that drone.”
The Devil You Know Page 16