by Andy Maslen
VENICE
TWO days later, at 10.30 a.m., Sasha Beck took up position at a table outside Caffè Florian on the Piazza San Marco. It was at the end of the row nearest the front wall of the caffè itself. It gave her a view not only of the people strolling in the piazza, but also everybody sipping or nibbling at the expensive treats ferried to them by the self-important waiters bustling between the tables, their white jackets as spotless as the tablecloths.
As a matter of habit, Sasha tended to wear all black, although when circumstances demanded it, she might lighten the look with white or gold. Or camouflage, either military or improvised. She had once completed a job disguised as a homeless person, camping in a cardboard box outside a bank headquarters for two weeks. That had cost her client dear. Today, with the sun beating down from a clear blue sky that might have been painted by Titian, she had reverted to her signature look. Tailored trousers in a silk and cashmere blend that flattered her athletic limbs without being so tight as to impede her should she need to run. A black silk blouse. A black leather biker jacket with sterling silver buckles, zips and press studs in the shape of skulls, and pockets stuffed with banknotes in a range of currencies including dollars, euros and sterling. Her feet were shod with black-and-silver Nike sneakers. They looked unimpressive. Just another pair of high tops with a few decorative flourishes. The price had been anything but. On her most recent trip to New York, she’d visited a sneaker store on Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Flight Club, it was called, and her momentary misreading of the sign as Fight Club had appealed to her.
The place looked more like a shrine than a shoe shop. Around the walls, from floor to ceiling, single sneakers were displayed like relics in Lucite cases. In front of them, on tiptoe if they were young, or interested in the topmost shoes, or genuflecting in front of the models at knee-level, were the worshippers. Mainly black kids, although a good smattering of white youngsters, too, most with eye-rolling parents in tow, a few on their own, whispering oaths at the prices quoted.
“How may I help you today?” a slim black girl with braces and heavy-framed glasses had asked Sasha.
“Tell me, darling, which are the most expensive sneakers here?”
“Oh, right,” the girl said, beaming her silvery smile at Sasha. “Come over here.”
She led her to a second room, down the centre of which ran a single-width Lucite case. The sneakers within were even more garish than those in the main part of the store. Some appeared to be caught in their cuboid plastic boxes in mid-metamorphosis from pupa to some exotic insect, the colours unimaginably bright, laces replaced with fittings whose workings Sasha could only guess at.
The girl pointed at a dull-looking black sneaker sandwiched between a shoe the iridescent blue of a Kingfisher, and a gold number mounted on a translucent sole in which crystals appeared to float.
“That’s it.”
“How much, darling?”
“Um, well, it’s thirty thousand. It’s a collaboration with Eminem. Only two pairs in each size.”
“My, my, what a clever chap Mr Mathers is,” Sasha said, before buying the shoes.
Beneath her table at Florian’s, leaning against her right calf, was a black ostrich-skin handbag. She had shot the bird herself while on safari in Kenya. It had been her second two-legged kill of the day. The raised circular bumps where the feathers had been – quills, the leatherworker in Nairobi had called them – reminded her of small-calibre bullet holes. Inside the handbag were the usual items a woman of means might carry.
Her phone was bespoke, its case milled from a single piece of billet aluminium at the same factory that produced switchgear for Spyker, an exclusive Dutch manufacturer of hand-built sports cars. It never left her side, containing as it did the numbers of her clients. One of them had confided in her that he believed there were combined bounties of over three hundred million US dollars on the heads of the fifty-five or so people in her contacts. The FBI, Homeland Security, NSA and CIA in the US; the French Sûreté; the British Metropolitan Police Service and MI5; the Bundespolizei in Germany; the Kremlin and its internal security agency, the FSB: all these and a dozen other security and law enforcement agencies around the world had the faces of the men – and occasionally women – on Sasha’s phone on their “Most Wanted” lists.
There were a few cosmetics – including a Chanel lipstick in Ultraberry – that Sasha applied each morning before leaving whichever of her residences or favoured hotels she was staying in at the time.
And there was her gun.
No, not her gun.
One of her guns.
Sasha Beck, as befitted a woman in her trade, owned a great many weapons. Most were simply collectors’ items, much as trout fishermen might collect antique bamboo rods, or antiquaries might collect first editions. Some were gifts from grateful clients. One African ruler had presented her with a gold-plated Browning Hi Power 9mm pistol in a box made from mahogany harvested from his own forest. The grips, chequered and engraved with her initials, were fashioned from the tibias of a man she had killed for him.
The weapon in the ostrich-skin handbag was one of her working weapons: a Smith & Wesson M&P 40 Shield. Not a big pistol. Not a flashy one, either. No gold or camouflage, no gaping maw designed to spit out bullets half an inch in diameter. But it worked. Every time she pulled the trigger. It had a snub snout, a narrow body and a squat grip. They were all features that made it perfect as a concealed carry weapon – at once easy to hide and easy to draw – without the risk of one of its protruding parts snagging on the suede lining of her bag, or her pocket. It was fitted with a single accessory: a green laser sight by Crimson Trace, snug in the angle between the underside of the barrel and the front of the trigger guard.
In front of her was a small cup of exquisitely well-made coffee, its flavour a mixture of spice, chocolate and dried fruit. To its left, a white side plate bore a swirl of buttery, flaky pastry filled with a mixture of ground pistachios, chocolate and sour cherries. Trapped under the plate was a small slip of paper generated by the till. The amount, excluding service, was forty-three euros. Roughly the cost of the eight .40-calibre hollow point rounds in the magazine of the Shield, plus the fifty in her hotel room.
She checked the time. Quarter to eleven. She paused to admire the elegant black-and-white face of her watch, a Limited Edition Christopher Ward C9 D-Type, made in England. Some of her contemporaries favoured the more obvious bling from Rolex, Tag Heuer, and Patek Philippe. Sasha, in her way, was a patriot. Yes, she’d killed British targets. And yes, some, though by no means all, of them had been pillars of the establishment. But the country itself and its institutions, those she held in high regard. And she tried to buy British whenever she could. Sadly for Sasha, although Accuracy International – the manufacturer of what it claimed were the world’s finest sniper rifles – was based on England’s south coast, the firm’s supply chain was locked down tighter than The Bank of England’s gold vaults. There being no other British manufacturers, she used a Knight M110C in the US, a SIG Sauer Tactical 2 in continental Europe, and in the UK, a Remington MSR.
Across the piazza, a movement caught her eye.
Amongst the tourists, with their stupid selfie sticks and brightly coloured rucksacks, a dark-haired woman was striding towards Florian’s. Sasha narrowed her eyes and observed her progress.
“Hello, darling,” she whispered. “You wouldn’t happen to be Erin Ayers by any chance, would you?”
Sasha Beck, Erin Ayers
THE woman wove expertly between the milling groups of picture-takers, gawping at themselves as they posed in front of Florian’s or tried to capture themselves with Saint Mark’s Basilica in the background. A scowl made her otherwise beautiful face turn ugly as an overweight Asian teen in a lime-green windcheater backed into her. She stopped to say, “Watch where you’re going, you idiot,” Sasha decoded from her lips, and the boy put his hands out in a “sorry” gesture. Then she arrived at the perimeter of Florian’s rectangular arrangement of white-framed wi
cker chairs and began scanning the customers.
I could stand and wave, Sasha thought. But that’s terribly gauche, and besides, darling, you said Timur referred you to me, so let’s see if you can find me.
Sasha remained sitting, watching with a half-smile on those deep-red lips. The woman she was waiting for was dressed simply, but in that effortless style that only the very rich and the very stylish manage. A cream silk blouse, cut to accentuate her breasts, which, Sasha admiringly noted, were magnificent: large and high. Navy trousers cut high on the waist and fastened at the front with two parallel vertical rows of three brass buttons. A sky-blue cashmere sweater draped over her shoulders and knotted so that the sleeves covered her cleavage. And Louboutin stilettos in navy suede, their scarlet soles the giveaway.
Erin Ayers was sweeping her gaze methodically along the rows of affluent punters scooping gobs of cream from the tops of their hot chocolates, or dabbing crumbs of smoked salmon club sandwiches from the corners of their lips. Then she stopped.
Ooh! Target acquired, darling?
The woman’s smile appeared to Sasha to be full of genuine warmth. Ayers came over, turning sideways to slide between a pair of chairs creaking under the weight of their obese German occupants, then stood in front of Sasha, hand outstretched.
“Miss Beck, I presume,” she said.
“Mizz Ayers. Delighted. Please, sit. I’ll find a waiter.”
Ayers sat. “I wouldn’t bother. They’re a bloody law unto themselves here. They come when they’re ready.”
Sasha smiled, then lifted her eyes and locked on to a young woman on the far side of the tables. She lifted her chin a fraction and raised one dark, arching eyebrow. Twenty seconds later, the young woman arrived at their table.
“Thank you, Jelena, darling,” she said in flawless, unaccented Serbian. “Would you bring me another of these delightful coffees, and whatever this lady is having.”
The woman smiled and turned to Ayers, speaking in English now.
“Yes, madam?”
“A Bellini, please. And a croissant al prosciutto crudo di San Daniele.”
The waitress’s face fell, then brightened again, as if a cloud had flitted across the sun. “I am so sorry, madam. Bellinis only when peaches are in season and as it’s April …”
“Please tell Signor Rafi that it’s for Erin Ayers. He likes to oblige me.”
Confused, but wilting under the hard stare of this supremely confident customer, the woman turn on her heel and scooted off towards the kitchen.
Sasha tilted her head to one side, smiling at the other woman’s display of confidence.
“So we both know Florian’s. How delightful for us. Tell me, Mizz Ayers, how do you know Timur?”
“I think we should drop the formalities first, don’t you? You call me Erin, and I’ll call you Sasha.”
“Very well. Erin. Irish? You don’t have the colouring. More of an English rose complexion, though those emerald eyes are straight out of the land of the Blarney Stone.”
“Not Irish,” Erin said, her nose wrinkling, just for a split second. “English, as you say. My family goes back to William the Conqueror.”
“French, then.” Another smile. How much needling can you take, darling?
“And you, Sasha. You sound very county, but is that breeding or Saturday morning elocution lessons, I wonder?”
“Touché! I think we’d better stop fencing before one of us gets wounded, don’t you?” And as I know my edged weapons better than you do, darling, I have no fears for my safety.
Erin nodded. “I think we’ve established we’re both women of the world, so yes, by all means. After all, I intend to hire you.”
“Well, let’s not jump the gun, no pun intended. In my line of work—or should I say, at the level at which I operate within my line of work—it is I who takes on clients, not the other way around. So, as I asked, how do you know Timur? He is not the easiest man with whom to get acquainted.”
“He and I go way back. I helped him set up his business and then his party. Ultra-nationalism is very fashionable in Central Asia right now, but it wasn’t always so. Without the financial backing I provided, Kazakh Purity would have remained a little club of disgruntled fascists firebombing mosques.”
“Is that your interest? Politics?”
“You could say that. I had ambitions once before, but at the moment I am focusing on my business interests.”
“And that’s what brings you to me, is it? Business?”
Jelena appeared then, bearing a silver tray aloft on the tented fingertips of one outstretched hand. From the tray she took a champagne flute filled with a pale-yellow liquid, topped with half an inch of white froth. It smelled of peaches.
“Your Bellini, Madam,” she said with a smile, placing the tall glass before Erin. “Chef Rafi says he is most pleased you are back.”
She then arranged Sasha’s second coffee and the croissant filled with cured ham on the table, tucked the second till receipt on top of the first, placed them both under Erin’s plate and removed the empty cup and plate from in front of Sasha.
Erin took a sip of the Bellini. “Oh, God that is excellent. Now, is it business? No. Not precisely. I think you could say this is more of a personal commission.”
“Oh, good,” Sasha said, sipping her coffee and then replacing the small, white cup carefully in the saucer with a quiet clink. “Personal is so much more fun. Tell all, darling.”
Sasha watched as her prospective client sipped delicately at her Bellini then nibbled at her croissant. The woman was attractive, but had she had some work done? The forehead seemed suspiciously wrinkle-free for someone who, from her voice, attitude and sophistication, Sasha judged to be in her thirties. To a casual observer her almond-shaped eyes would simply be pretty, with long lashes accentuated by black mascara, expertly applied. But Sasha’s observational skills were anything but casual. Over the years she had honed them to an edge as sharp as any of the blades in her possession. She applied them now to the woman in front of her.
Yes. There were ultra-fine silver scars, almost invisible, just inside the line of her eyebrows. Two more at the corners of her mouth, which was accentuated with a frosted pink lipstick. The dark-brown hair looked real enough, but wigs, Sasha knew, were so good these days. An Orthodox Jewish friend of hers, whose religious views necessitated her wearing a wig over her own clipped scalp, had confided in Sasha one day that her wigs were made with real human hair collected from women in India who were paid for their locks. Or it could simply be the work of a good colourist. What are you hiding from, darling? You’re far too young to need it.
“There is a man,” Erin said.
“There usually is,” Sasha said, winking.
Erin’s brow did, finally, crease a little as she frowned at the interruption.
“He caused me a great deal of trouble. I had plans that were almost perfect and he came along and fucked them up for me. Now I want him to suffer for it, the way I did.”
“Are you sure this really needs my services? Dealing with interpersonal,” Sasha paused for a beat, “friction is hardly a job for a woman like me. Perhaps you two could talk it out?”
Erin’s green eyes flashed. Sasha enjoyed watching the younger woman struggle to control her emotions.
“Forgive me, Sasha, I didn’t fly from Manhattan to meet you to receive a homily on the need for truth and reconciliation. This man wronged me in ways you cannot begin to imagine, and I want him to pay.”
“What on earth can he have done to you, darling? You’re clearly a very affluent and powerful woman.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. I like to know at the very least the rough outlines of the project I’m taking on.” Another pause. “If I take it on.”
Erin inhaled slowly, then let it out in a sigh. She appeared to have reached a decision.
“Very well. Some years ago, I had political ambitions. I suppose you might call them grand ambitions. An
d at the eleventh hour, after many years’ planning, this man, whom I had trusted, betrayed me utterly.”
“And now you want payback.”
“And now I want payback.”
“If I,” another pause, indicating that Erin should follow her example and adopt a code, “take care of him for you, it will cost.”
Erin Ayers smiled, her lips widening and hiding those silvery scars in natural creases at the corners of her mouth.
“I don’t want you to take care of him.”
Sasha took a sip of her coffee. Not hot enough. She frowned with displeasure.
“Then, forgive me, darling, but why are we sitting here?”
“I want you to help me take away from him everything he cares about. When you have done all that for me, I will take care of him myself.”
Intrigued now, Sasha sat forward.
“We should discuss this further. In private.”
Erin smiled again. It was the smile of a woman used to getting her own way and who believed she was about to again.
Funeral Rites
SALISBURY
BACK in his cottage in a village outside Salisbury, Gabriel felt an odd sense of emptiness. Living on his own since leaving the army, he’d become used to solitude. He’d deflected questions about whether he was lonely with a stock answer, “I’m alone, but I’m not lonely.” And until recently, it had been the truth. For a time, he’d had the company of a brindle greyhound called Seamus. He’d taken him home from a rescue centre a few years earlier, and they’d become used to each other’s company. Then, while Gabriel was in the US working on the mission that was to lead him back to a job with Don Webster, his old CO in the SAS, Seamus had been killed by a car while chasing a rabbit. Gabriel hadn’t replaced Seamus. His work took him away too often for it to be fair to a dog. And he always had the option of a dog walk with Julia and Scout.
Now things had changed. He could look into the future and see a different sort of life to the one he’d always imagined for himself. One with a wife. And children. That was what Britta’d said. “Otherwise what’s the point?”