by Tom Wood
Victor looked too, seeing the small tear in his right jacket sleeve. It must have caught on the corner of the front desk as he stumbled.
‘It’s okay,’ Victor said. ‘It can be fixed.’
‘No, it’s ruined.’ The Ukrainian turned to Nikolai, and said in Russian, ‘You stupid fuck, look what you’ve done.’ He faced Victor again. ‘I’m so sorry. And that’s such a nice suit too. I can see you are a man who cares about how he dresses, as do I. I would give you money for a replacement, only I don’t carry any quantity of cash, and who has a chequebook these days?’
‘There’s no need, really,’ Victor said, thinking he’d have drawn less attention to himself if he had back-flipped out of Nikolai’s way.
‘There’s every need.’ The Ukrainian reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a business card. He handed it to Victor. ‘I’m afraid I’m in the middle of a crisis at the moment, otherwise I would take you for a new suit, but here’s my card. Call me and we can work something out. If you are ever in Moscow I will have my tailor make you a suit so fine it will make you weep.’
Victor took the card. In both Cyrillic script and English, it said: Vladimir Kasakov. There was a phone number and a Moscow office address.
‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Kasakov,’ Victor replied.
‘Now, before my employees can do any more damage, you must excuse me.’
Victor nodded and headed to the front entrance. He didn’t turn around, but he felt eyes watching him the whole time.
Outside it was cold and the doorman looked far too frail to be still doing the job at his age, especially in this weather. Victor’s gaze drifted to the eleven-storey building whose ugliness was all too apparent even at over six hundred yards. The assassin had been right to shoot from there. Other buildings were closer, but not as well positioned to command an uninterrupted view of the hotel entrance. Victor would have used it himself, had their roles been reversed. He would have been more careful not to die there, however.
Victor saw his reflection in the hotel’s glass doors and noted that he didn’t look too dissimilar to the man he’d shot. He wore a charcoal grey suit with a white shirt and sky blue tie underneath his black overcoat. Perfect urban camouflage. His dark hair was short and not styled, his beard trimmed short. He looked like a stockbroker or lawyer, one that kept a smart but unremarkable appearance. He blended into the background, seldom seen, rarely noticed. Unremembered.
In a taxi, he unwrapped a stick of peppermint chewing gum and folded it into his mouth. He’d read gum made a good substitute for cigarettes, but no matter how much he chewed he couldn’t inhale any smoke from the stuff.
He had the driver take him to Gara de Nord station where he purchased a ticket to Constanta and boarded the train seven minutes before it was set to depart. He left his seat six minutes later and disembarked five seconds before the doors closed and locked. He left the station by a different exit, climbed into another taxi and told the driver to take him to Her str u Park, where he walked leisurely through the park before exiting and entering the Charles de Gaulle Plaza. He took a seat in the lobby and read a complimentary magazine while he watched the main entrance.
With no one registering on his threat radar after five minutes, he stood and descended the stairs to the lowest level of the underground parking garage. One of the high-speed elevators then carried him to the top floor. He went back down in a different elevator to the fourth floor and used the stairs to return to the lobby. He left the building by a side entrance.
He walked to the closest metro station and stayed on for thirty minutes, switching trains and doubling back on himself before changing routes and leaving at the University of Bucharest station. After a pleasant walk through the campus, a taxi took him to Elisabeta Boulevard near to City Hall and from there he walked the short distance to the entrance of the Ci migiu Gardens.
The park was quiet and peaceful. He passed few people as he made his way to the circular alley of the Rondul Roman where he spent some time looking at its twelve stone busts of famous Romanian writers while he finished his counter surveillance. His precautions were as essential a part of fulfilling a job as squeezing the trigger. The successful execution of a contract depended on remaining unnoticed and untraced. Nearly anyone could kill another person, but few people could get away with it once, let alone time after time.
For years, Victor had plied his trade with complete anonymity. Working freelance, he’d killed quickly, efficiently, silently. Those who employed him had no idea who he was. No one did. He had lived in near isolation — no friends, no family — no one who could betray him and no one to be used against him. It hadn’t lasted, and in hindsight, it was inevitable. He of all people should have known nobody could remain unfound for ever.
When Victor was satisfied he was not being observed, he left the Rondul Roman and walked to the centre of the park where a man-made lake was located. He paused on an ornate footbridge, removed the briefcase from within the suitcase, looked around to make sure he was alone, and discreetly dropped the briefcase into the lake. The rifle weighed just less than fifteen pounds and sank straight to the bottom.
Victor left the park via the south-eastern exit and caught a bus. He took a seat on the top level, at the back, disembarking after half a dozen stops when he was sitting alone with no other travellers nearby. The suitcase remained on the floor by his seat.
His thoughts turned to the man whose life he had saved. When Victor had received the contract he’d been given no information on the assassin’s target, only that he had to survive. Had the incident in the hotel lobby not taken place, Victor would have thought little else about him. But now Victor knew his name, and it was a name he had heard before. Few people in Victor’s profession would not have known it. Vladimir Kasakov was one of the biggest arms dealers on the planet, if not the biggest. He was an international fugitive. Normally, Victor cared little about the motives behind his jobs, but he couldn’t help wondering why his CIA employer would be so keen on saving the life of such a man.
It started to rain again and Victor increased his pace to match those of commuters around him. No one paid him any attention. On the surface, he knew he seemed just like them — flesh and blood, skin and bone — but he also knew that was where the similarities ended.
You know what makes you special? someone had once told him. People like you, like me, we take that thing inside us others don’t have and we make it work for us, or we stand by and let it destroy us.
And he’d spent his life doing just that, making it work for him. But his carefully maintained existence had fallen apart six months before and in the following maelstrom he’d fantasised about retiring, about trying to make a normal life for himself. A fool’s hope, but that had been then. Now, even if Victor wanted to, there was no chance he could walk away from what he did for a living.
He knew his new employer would retire him permanently if he tried.
CHAPTER 3
Tunari, Romania
Steam rose from the washbasin. Victor turned off the hot tap and lowered the razor into the water. He’d already used scissors to trim his beard, and he shaved with the grain of his stubble — neck first, then cheeks, chin and finally upper lip. He was slow, careful. He couldn’t afford to walk around with a cut or shaving rash. After smearing his skin with aftershave balm, he used a set of clippers to cut his black hair to an even half inch.
When he’d finished he looked notably different from the man who had supposedly stayed in room 1312 of the Grand Plaza. The blue-coloured contact lenses and non-prescription glasses he’d worn had been disposed of before checking into his current hotel. It was a busy establishment located near to Otopeni International Airport. Far too busy for anyone to notice one particular guest had checked out with shorter hair and minus a beard. Victor didn’t put much faith in elaborate disguises. Unless prepared by a make-up artist they were seldom completely convincing, especially at close range. Wigs and peeling latex were more likely t
o draw attention than divert it.
He performed an intense thirty-minute workout routine consisting of bodyweight exercises and stretching. After he’d bathed, Victor sat down at the bedroom’s small desk. He picked up a 9 mm P226 SIG Sauer and stripped it down, cleaned it methodically, and reassembled the weapon. The gun was already clean, had never been fired, but it relaxed him to do something so familiar.
His CIA employer had supplied the SIG, like the rifle — a Dakota Longbow. Both had been waiting in the trunk of a plain sedan left for him in the long-stay parking lot of Otopeni International.
Though Victor had to admit it made his work considerably easier not to have to source and move his own weapons, he found the convenience outweighed by the sense of control he relinquished in doing so. For years he had answered to no one but himself, completely self-reliant. Now, being dependent on any person or organisation felt like a weight chained to his ankle.
More importantly, it put him at far greater risk. His employer not only knew whom he was going to kill and when, but also how and where he picked up the tools to do so. With such information a route could be cut straight through his defences.
For the time being he had little choice but to do things their way. The terms of his employment required him to do exactly as told, when told. In return, he was well paid and his CIA handler created a barrier between Victor and certain parties, including the rest of the CIA, who could make his life extremely difficult before extinguishing it. Victor was also prohibited from taking contracts from other sources and had so far honoured that condition. His freelancing days were over. He was now a CIA contractor. An expendable asset. Nothing more than a slave with a gun.
His left arm ached and he rubbed it gently. He had two thin scars — his most recent additions — one on top of his forearm, and one below, where a blade had plunged through his flesh. It had healed well, with no loss of dexterity, and a cosmetic surgeon had ensured the scarring was minimal, but occasionally the wound still caused him pain.
Protocol dictated that windows remained shut and locked, and shutters, blinds or drapes closed at all times. Therefore, to look out of the window, Victor gazed out through the slim opening between the drapes. It gave him a narrow view of the world outside — a glimpse of a world he had given up and could never recapture.
When he realised he was thinking about someone he’d told himself he had to forget, he removed a small bottle of vodka from the mini bar and downed it. It took all his willpower not to have another.
Victor moved the SIG to one side and got out a compact laptop computer. After it had powered on, he entered his password and opened an internet connection to check his Cayman Islands bank account. He was pleased to see a very large sum of money had recently been deposited. Victor had been paid the same amount two days prior, when he’d received the contract. It was the way he always used to operate — half before, half afterwards. This time the fee was higher than the initially agreed terms of his employment to compensate for the job’s short notice.
Up until two days ago, Victor had been preparing for what should have been his first assignment for the CIA. He had been told to expect a second and maybe third job soon after the first’s completion, but then the Bucharest contract had arrived unexpectedly — killing an assassin before he could kill a man his employer wanted to keep alive — with its strict deadline. Victor hadn’t hesitated in accepting it, glad for the chance to get back to work and shake off the rust. It had gone perfectly. His first job in half a year.
In less than a second the gun was in his hand and he was out of the chair.
He’d heard a scream. Female. Victor moved to the door, checked the spyhole. No one. He remained absolutely still, listening intently. He waited ten seconds, hearing nothing further. Keeping the SIG out of his sight down by his side, he opened the door, looked left then right. Clear.
After a minute he sat back down, surprised by the strength of his reaction. The scream could have been for any reason; someone in an adjoining room spilling coffee on their lap or startled in the shower by a spider. Either that or it had only been in his head and he was one more step along the road to insanity.
Keeping the gun in his right hand while he used the laptop’s touch pad with his left thumb, he navigated to the email account created to receive and send communications from his employer. Untraceable, he’d been assured. He had no reason to think otherwise. His employer didn’t want the NSA or GCHQ intercepting his emails to an internationally wanted contract killer. If nothing else, the account seemed to be immune from spam and that alone was enough to make Victor happier than he’d been in a long time.
A message from his employer sat in the inbox. He memorised the number it contained and entered it into the laptop’s VoIP program.
The laptop’s speakers played an imitation dialling tone for the nine seconds it took for the call to connect. The throaty baritone that answered through the computer speakers said, ‘Nice to hear from you again.’
Victor remained silent. He heard a click of a tongue.
‘Not a man to waste words, are you?’
‘Evidently.’
‘All right,’ the control said. ‘We can dispense with the small talk if you like, Mr Tesseract.’
Victor had met his employer only once, nearly seven months before. It had been in a hospital room where the choice to work for the CIA had been offered to him, though it hadn’t been much of a choice at the time. The guy who’d come to see him had been fat, pushing two hundred and fifty pounds, average height, mid-fifties, greying hair, sharp eyes. He’d had the confidence and bearing of a high-ranking official but with the manner of a former field operative. He might as well have had a badge that said Clandestine Services. He hadn’t given his name and neither had he asked for Victor’s. Their conversation had been brief, and Victor full of drugs, but he never forgot a face.
‘I don’t like that code name.’
‘You don’t?’ The voice sounded perplexed, almost offended. ‘I’m quite partial to it myself. Despite the history it carries.’
‘It’s the history I don’t like.’
‘You’ve never struck me as the prone-to-nightmares type.’
‘You have to dream to have nightmares,’ Victor replied. ‘But like you said, that code name has history. It’s been used before. Therefore it’s compromised. That’s why I have a problem with it.’
‘Ah, I see,’ his employer breathed. ‘You shouldn’t worry, my man, everyone who knows its connotations is dead.’
‘I don’t worry,’ Victor corrected. ‘And what you said is inaccurate. You’re alive.’
‘But you can trust me.’
Victor remained silent.
‘You know,’ his employer said, ‘you’d find our arrangement a lot more palatable if you lost some of that paranoia. I might just be the one person in the entire world you can actually trust.’
‘Trust is earned.’
‘So it is possible for me to earn your trust?’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’
A moment of silence, maybe to accommodate a smile, before the voice said, ‘I think you’re forgetting the circumstances in which we met. You were wrapped up in so many bandages you should have been in a sarcophagus, not a hospital room in the back of beyond. If I’d wanted to, I could have sent you to the morgue there and then when it would have been quiet and convenient.’
‘Interesting,’ Victor said, ‘because at the time you told me you had no backup.’
‘Didn’t think I’d meet a lethal assassin all on my lonesome, did you?’
‘Didn’t think I wouldn’t notice your janitor friend with his bought-that-day toolbox, did you?’
After a pause, his employer said, ‘I think this conversation has taken an unnecessary turn for the worst. Let’s reset.’ Another pause. ‘All I wanted to do was congratulate you on your good work this morning.’
‘Noted.’
‘I know it was a rush job, and I want to apologise for your
lack of lead time. Not that it seemed to be a problem for a man of your skills.’
‘I told you before, my ego doesn’t need massaging. Who was the target of the assassin I killed?’
‘He’s not important.’
‘If he’s not important, why don’t you tell me his name?’
‘Because you don’t need to know.’
‘I thought you might have been more original.’
‘It’s a cliche for a reason, my man. You concern yourself purely with the job at hand and I’ll concern myself with everything else. So, let’s get you back on the Farkas contract as soon as possible, okay? There’s a supplier I’d like you to liaise with.’
‘I take it you can tell me this name.’
‘I only know him as Georg. He’s German. Operates out of Hamburg.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘If I had heard of him it would have been a problem.’
‘He’s not Agency, and he’s not an asset. But he is a fixer, and he deals in what you need. I’ve just sent you some supplementary materials. Should be in your inbox any second.’
‘I have them.’ Victor opened the attachment and began absorbing the information.
‘Good. Georg is expecting your call, so read the files, and drop him a line.’
‘It says here I’ll need to meet with him in Hamburg.’
‘Is that an issue?’
‘One, I never meet anyone directly connected with what I do for a living unless I also plan to kill them, and two, Hamburg is Georg’s turf. I’ve never heard of him, you know nothing about him. Me going to him gives him the perfect opportunity for dishonest trading.’
‘I can assure you of Georg’s quality and reliability.’
‘Yet you only know his first name.’
‘He comes highly recommended.’
‘I prefer to reserve my own judgement.’
‘I hate to break this to you, pal, but you don’t work for yourself any longer, and the kind of jobs I need doing will require you to come from under your rock once in a while and interact with the world. I’m not paying you to just pull a trigger.’