by J C Ryan
With only forty or fifty yards between them, Durand could see Shorty’s every small movement, every ripple of a muscle in his jaw. He fancied he could even read the man’s intentions in his body language. It didn’t look good. Durand put a fraction of a pound of pressure on the trigger. He’d have to react with no hesitation if Shorty’s finger so much as twitched. The hundredth of a second head start with his finger already on his trigger would mean the difference between life and death for the Girards and, of course, retirement for him or not.
Durand risked a glance downward at the taxi, which had now stopped. Olivia had emerged and stood waiting for her brother. Presumably, Jean was paying the driver and would be out in a few more seconds. Durand could afford no more attention on the Girards. His eyes snapped toward Shorty, whose finger had now moved to rest lightly on the trigger. Durand cursed under his breath.
Shorty’s intentions were now crystal clear. There was no more time to waste. As soon as Jean stepped out of the taxi, Shorty would take the shot, no question. As much as Durand didn’t want the additional risk, he squeezed the trigger — without regret. If Shorty took his shot, the bastard would ruin Durand’s retirement plans. And by now, he had too much invested in those plans to allow that to happen.
Located as he was, about two yards from the window, and with a highly effective silencer, the shot was virtually inaudible from the street. Even in the building where Durand sat, no one would have heard the whisper of the bullet as it left the chamber, no louder than a zipper being pulled.
Durand regarded his handiwork impassively. The bullet had found its mark in Shorty’s left eye, continuing through his brain and exiting the back of his head to embed itself somewhere in the farther recesses of the building. Shorty was slumped over his rifle, motionless.
Durand gave little thought to the potential damage the bullet could have done as it spent its final energy. But he was plenty nervous about having to take the shot nonetheless. The longer it took for Shorty’s body to be found, the better Durand’s chances of pulling off his plans. Therefore, he was eager to leave the vicinity before some alert gendarme turned up.
Before he could leave, though, he had to wait to listen in on the conversation the Girards were about to have with Mathieu Nabati. It wouldn’t do to have them fail to transfer the money, or worse, to enlist the banker’s help. If there was the slightest hint of that, he’d finish them himself and claim the three million from the Sauidis. The only way to know what his next step would be was to hear what they said.
So, he waited nervously, one ear cocked for sirens, and the other tuned to the receiver where he’d hear the conversation that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams.
***
Girards . . .
Unaware that they’d come within a millisecond of death only moments before, the Girards went into the building and presented themselves in Nabati’s office to keep their appointment.
Nabati, almost fell off his chair when his assistant told him they had arrived. This wasn’t supposed to happen! He never had any intention of seeing them — they were supposed to be dead. If he’d known that death would have occurred right outside the doors of his building but for Durand’s interference, he’d have been even angrier. As it was, he kept his “clients” waiting while he fired off an enraged message to Charlie on his secured, quantum encrypted PDA.
What the f@!$^ is going on? Targets alive and in my reception area. You better fix this immediately!
Clearly, Charlie was at fault. He’d assured Nabati the Girards would never reach his office. He promised they’d be dead long before they could keep their appointment. And yet, they were here, and he’d have to act as if he’d expected them. He’d even have to pretend they were his most valuable clients.
Fortunately, there was no need to fawn over them as an American would. No — he would treat them with typical Swiss efficiency and courtesy. If you could call it courtesy when the atmosphere in his office was as frigid as the North Pole. With outward calm, he greeted the Girards as correctly as he would any valued client, while inside his gut was roiling with rage.
“Please, have a seat. What can I do for you?” he asked.
“We would like to transfer $17 million from these accounts” –Jean held up the black card with the numbered accounts from his father— “to these accounts, in the amounts listed here,” Jean explained, leaning forward with the card and a slip of paper bearing the number of Durand’s accounts and the amount to be transferred to each.
As Nabati accepted the items, concealing his surprise at the strange request, his mind worked furiously to understand the Girards’ purpose in scattering their money into several different accounts.
“As you wish. I see you are leaving a small sum with us,” he said. “May I ask, have we done anything to make you distrust our security?”
“Not at all,” Jean answered, quelling his sister’s comment before she could make it. “We just thought it prudent not to have all our eggs in one basket, so to speak.”
Jean squeezed Olivia’s hand, signaling to her to let her sharply indrawn breath out slowly and go along with him.
“I see,” answered Nabati. It was all he could do to relax his clenched teeth. “I’ll have this done to your specifications immediately. Please wait here.” He made a measured exit from his office, still tightly controlling his temper. It made no difference to him if these children of the traitorous Algosaibi transferred their money to other Swiss banking institutions. They would soon be dead in any case, and $17 million was a paltry sum.
“Immediately” in this case meant in an expedited manner he would oversee himself. It would give Charlie time to make arrangements to correct his operative’s error. That didn’t mean the transactions would happen quickly, as the arrangements were fairly complex and required communications between banks outside of normal business.
Durand heard every word of the conversation. He approved Jean’s sidestepping Nabati’s question, but after Nabati left the room, the silence was alarming. The Girards weren’t talking at all. It made the hour and a half wait almost unbearable for Durand’s nerves. After all, the Girards were safe in Nabati’s office, unaware he’d killed their would-be assassin to save their lives. He, however, was exposed.
If the police were to turn up, it would take a few moments only to deduce where the shot had come from if Shorty’s body was discovered. And that could happen at any moment. If they found him still there, they would have all the evidence they needed to send him to prison for the rest of his life. That Switzerland didn’t have the death penalty was cold comfort. Prison was not his retirement plan, after all. There were no willing Thai prostitutes in Swiss prisons.
Durand paced and checked his watch every few seconds as he waited the eternity for Nabati’s eventual return to his office. He also obsessively scanned the street, on the lookout for the arrival of the police. Even though he was focused on what he was hearing — or in this case, not hearing — from Nabati’s office, he was also attuned to the sound of sirens in the distance. Fortunately, none seemed to be getting closer to his location.
He noticed an attractive woman arrive at the coffee shop below, mostly because she took a seat and took a magazine out of the backpack she was wearing and started reading. As always, he took note of her appearance, not because she was an attractive woman, though she was. He was too nervous to let his libido distract him. No, it was because he always took note of people who passed through his immediate area of interest and those who stayed in the vicinity.
The woman wore a headscarf, dark glasses, and nondescript clothing — a casual shirt and jeans. Her backpack was small, doubling as a purse no doubt. She wore running shoes. His perusal of her attire made him aware she was well-shaped, but he paid no attention to that this time. His gaze moved on to watch others in the street, most of whom, if they stopped at the coffee shop at all, ordered an espresso and drank it like a shot of liquor, hardly stopping on their way to wherever they were going. Only t
he woman remained seated at one of the sidewalk tables as the crowds streamed past her.
At last, Durand heard Nabati telling the Girards their transactions were complete, the transfers all in order. He uttered the usual pleasantries in parting. Durand could almost visualize the handshakes all around. He sighed in relief that it was done.
He’d packed everything already, wiped all the surfaces in the apartment, and left everything as he found it. He even locked the door as he left. Exiting by way of the fire escape, he made his way out the back of the building into a quiet side street where no one would observe him. There was one stop to make before he went to the train station. In an excess of caution, he wanted to change his appearance.
Durand’s interest in the Girards was over. Of course, he had no intention of giving them any more protection, and in fact would not have cared if Shorty had killed them so long as it happened after he had their money. It wasn’t as if they could complain about bad customer service after all. He had the three million reward from the Saudis to hold over their heads, but he doubted he’d ever hear from them again. They weren’t cut out for cloak and dagger. Just innocent bystanders, really. Very, very wealthy innocent bystanders, now just a little less wealthy. Redistribution of wealth is what some politicians would have called it.
Durand thought about his next moves as he changed his appearance, though he didn’t bother with too radical a transformation. His assassin days were over. In fact, he’d never have to work again, his financial needs met for the rest of his life. He was on his way to Paris, $17 million richer, to pick up only the most precious of his few possessions and then move on.
He gave only a brief thought to his girlfriend of four years. Take her along? No . . . she had no idea what he did for a living. It was too risky to tell her, and besides, just hiding himself was going to take all the skill he had. Her presence would also put a damper on that fantasy of willing Thai women. It was best he just quietly disappear. She may be sad for a while, but they’d never been serious. She would move on, a little wiser maybe. And he . . . he would put that $17 million to good use having his pick of the best food and accommodation, the most beautiful, and the most willing, women he could find.
Thus, he didn’t see what happened to the Girards after he left, and would only find out much later what hellish consequences there would be for him because of his murder of Shorty.
Chapter 31 -
In touch soon
In his office, Nabati shot his cuffs and took a deep, calming breath. Charlie wouldn’t dare to fail twice, he had no doubt. The Girards would shortly be eliminated, and any information they had in their possession retrieved. In fact, his expectations were met within minutes.
On the street, the Girards emerged from the bank building and turned toward the coffee shop on their way to a line of taxis a block away. They felt secure that Durand had their backs now that they’d fulfilled their end of the bargain.
“It was fun being multimillionaires while it lasted,” murmured Olivia.
Behind them, a woman with long blonde hair, sunglasses, and a headscarf had stood from her table at the coffee shop. But neither noticed her as Jean pointed out they were still technically multimillionaires with three million left.
“That’s not . . .” Olivia’s comment was cut short as the .22 round from the woman’s silenced pistol entered her brain from the base of her skull.
Jean had no time to react as he too was cut down. They dropped to the ground, dead before they hit, with so little commotion that even the crowds around them didn’t realize what happened until someone tripped over Jean’s body. By that time, the killer was long gone. Her timing and precision were so seamless no one had seen the assassination.
By the time the screaming started, the assassin had walked around the corner and down the block to a large restaurant. Upon entering, she went straight to the ladies’ room, where she shed the wig, sunglasses, and headscarf. The jeans and running shoes went into the garbage bin next, and she shook loose the short pencil skirt that had been rucked around her waist under the casual shirt. She tucked in the shirt and pulled a pair of high-heeled pumps from her backpack. Now she was several inches taller and a few pounds slimmer to a casual observer. She sauntered out of the restaurant in the opposite direction from the commotion she’d left behind.
Meanwhile, the street in front of the bank building had erupted in chaos. As soon as the first pedestrian tripped over a body and started screaming, other passersby started screaming as well, and not a few fled the scene. Naturally, not everyone could see what the screaming was all about, and as they began running in all directions, one or two ran headlong into the ring of horrified witnesses that had begun to form around the bodies. A few people narrowly escaped being trampled. In moments, sirens announced the arrival of the police. By that time, the knot of gawkers had become several deep from front to back, impeding the police from getting to the bodies. Tempers began to flare as the officers were none too gentle in dispersing them, while telling them to stay in the area for questioning.
Nabati acknowledged his assistant’s report that something had happened downstairs but kept his smile to himself until she had left his office.
It took some time for the police to bring the crowd under control and detain as many as they could to question as potential witnesses. The streets were cordoned off, but of course that didn’t stop the media. Hard on the heels of the police, both print and broadcast media were there in droves, getting in the way and annoying the witnesses whose day had been interrupted by the grisly scene. As the ambulances pulled away with the bodies, Nabati received a text on his secure device.
Targets eliminated. Retrieving laptop and flash drive. Will be in touch soon.
Later, when observers were searching frantically for the moment of the murder, they would find the facial recognition software was useless. So many pedestrians had surrounded the victims when they dropped from sight that it was impossible to determine which of them had done the deed. The only thing certain was that whoever had done it had known exactly where the security cameras were and how they operated. The images were grainy, jerky, and failed to even catch the moment the shots were fired. Only the sudden ripple in the human stream gave them the moment the Girards fell.
Chapter 32 -
On the train to Paris
Durand worked his way through the streets, finding back streets where he could deposit the pieces of his weapons unobtrusively as he walked by a rubbish bin here and there. His movements were purposeful but unhurried. Like the woman who’d shot the Girards, he knew a running person drew too much attention. Like her, he found a public place to make his transformation back to the face he saw in his mirror on any morning he wasn’t working.
In his case, he went from bareheaded to wearing a clean but worn baseball cap, and from no glasses to dark sunshades. He picked up the roomy messenger bag he’d carried to his sniper position hours before, and pulled out the laptop and flash drive. The rest went into the rubbish in the department store bathroom, while the items it had concealed were deposited into a new laptop bag he just purchased.
Dissatisfied with the new-looking bag, he scuffed it on the floor a bit, picking it up just before the door opened to admit another man. He nodded to the man, but kept his eyes averted as convention required between strangers in a public restroom.
After leaving the department store, Durand made his way via the same circuitous route to the train station, where he purchased a ticket from Zürich to Basel, some eighty-seven kilometers away.
Basel, a commercial hub whose suburbs spanned three countries, was a bustling metropolis. It was situated in the extreme northwest corner of Switzerland, but extended into both Germany and France as well, where the three countries met. It was well-known among Durand’s peers as the easiest place to cross any border with little notice.
Passport control in the city was understandably lax, each country relying on the other two to do a better job.
Adding to
the relaxed attitude, the Euro Citizenship passport lulled border guards into complacency. Durand’s was stamped with no questions asked, and even though he didn’t expect a hue and cry to have followed him, he breathed a sigh of relief once seated on the train to Paris.
But, while the guards may have been lax, the security cameras and facial recognition systems worked perfectly.
Chapter 33 -
One conclusion
The sensational crime in the heart of Zürich created consternation among the top brass in the police department, as well as outrage among the citizenry. How, the media trumpeted, could two people be gunned down at noon on a sunny day, with hundreds of people within arms’ length, and no one see it happen? In response, dozens of police were tasked with talking to everyone they could round up who’d been there when the bodies were discovered, as well as going door to door and interviewing everyone who lived or did business in the area for several blocks around.
Though the autopsy would later reveal the shots had been fired at point-blank range with a small-caliber weapon, no stone was left unturned, and no theory left untried. An enterprising police sergeant sent his men to the upper stories of the nearby apartment buildings, looking for even more witnesses. Even so, he admitted to his men that it could have been a random act of violence. After all, plenty of that went on in the world these days.
One way or another, they had to be thorough, talking to everyone in all the multi-story buildings and searching every room with a window on the street. In due time, they discovered Shorty’s body. There was no question this time as to where the shooter had been. From the trajectory of the entry wound to the hole in the back wall of the room, not to mention how it had passed through the wall into the next room and embedded itself in the wall there, it could only have come from an apartment directly across the street. The floor where Shorty was found was too high to admit of any other theory. The trajectory was almost flat, no lift to suggest it had come from below, or vice versa.