by Andy Maslen
He checked the time. His Breitling, a gift from his father, told him it was 2.00 p.m. An hour before he could call Carl Mortensen, whose website and biography had checked out. He made some tea, taking his time to measure out teaspoons of Earl Grey, Kenyan Orange Pekoe and English Breakfast – the house blend, as he called it. Once it was poured, after timing it to exactly four-and-a-half minutes, he took it through to the sitting room and squatted in front of his music hard drive.
With Frank Zappa singing “Joe’s Garage,” he sat in a brown leather armchair, its cushion still scarred from Seamus’s long claws, and sipped his tea, wondering about the threats he might have to deflect in Kazakhstan.
Bosnia was the furthest east he’d ever fought in mainland Europe. An unholy place where atrocities were committed in the name of God, of land, of national identity. Where a three-hundred-year-old vendetta was seen as a short-term argument between families. He and Britta had fought side by side there. Their mission had been to capture a Bosnian Serb militia commander and transport him to a UN holding facility from where he could be brought before the International Criminal Court and charged with war crimes.
Gabriel’s eyes drooped. Mortensen’s call the previous night had disrupted his sleep, and he’d only dozed fitfully between then and six, when Britta had woken, demanded one last bout of athletic sex, then showered and left.
He placed the mug of tea beside the chair on a low table made from an African tribal drum, set an alarm on his phone for 2.50 p.m., and closed his eyes. His PTSD often caused nightmares, but the daylight hours seemed to bring fewer of them, and he’d found himself favouring catnaps as a way of recovering from the broken nights when he awoke, screaming, sweating and, on one memorable occasion, attempting to strangle Britta.
He was at a funeral. A pall bearer. But the coffin was ridiculously small, a little bigger than a hat box. Together with the other five men, he stumbled through ankle-deep mud to the graveside. They could each only manage to keep a single hand under the box, and Gabriel was anxious lest the whole thing should tumble from their grasp, spilling its contents into the mud.
He looked over to the minister and the mourners gathered by the edge of the neat, rectangular hole, edged with what looked like Astroturf. There among them stood Smudge Smith, the lost SAS trooper whose body Gabriel had finally managed to retrieve from Mozambique just a few weeks earlier. He was smiling, his handsome brown face whole and unblemished.
“But if you’re there, Smudge,” Gabriel said, “who’s in the box?”
“Take a look, boss.”
The other pallbearers stood back, respectfully. Holding the box by himself, Gabriel looked over at them. They were grinning widely, revealing mouths lined with bullets instead of teeth: sharp-pointed 7.62mm rifle rounds that glinted evilly in the sun.
He placed the box on the ground and opened the flaps. Inside was a rough, undyed cotton carrier bag the colour of bone. He lifted it clear. He could hear sniggering from the mourners and when he looked over at them, they were pointing straight at him with long, yellow fingernails.
The bag was growing heavy in his hands. He reached into its cinched neck and spread it open with his fingers. Peering out at him was a face. His own face. The neck was a bloody tangle of sinews and torn blood vessels. A black hole, crusted with blood, formed a third eye in the dead centre of his forehead.
The cracked lips opened, and the head – his head – spoke to him.
“Every soldier meets his Maker in the end, captain. Some sooner than others. Be careful. You get too close to her, and you’ll only have to leave her.”
Then it coughed, and a fine mist of blood sprayed into Gabriel’s face.
“No!” he shouted, and dropped the bag, staggering back into the muscular arms of a group of teenaged boys who’d surrounded him while he was mesmerised by his own disembodied head.
“Hey, Wolfe!” the tallest of the boys jeered at him. “My father told me he had your mother in a brothel. Said she was cheap at the price.”
Then they shoved him hard, pushing and jostling him towards the open grave. He struggled, but the ringleader pulled a long-bladed knife and held it to Gabriel’s throat.
“Don’t struggle, Wolfe, or I’ll slit your throat like a pig.” Then he shouted, “Now! In he goes, the little mongrel.”
The boys flung him into the open grave, one sticking a rugby-boot-shod foot out to trip him so that he toppled headfirst into the dark. The last thing he saw before his head smashed into the hard soil at the bottom was Britta’s tear-streaked face, peering over the edge.
He jerked awake with a moan of dismay. It was 2.45 p.m. He reached for the tea – cold – and swigged it anyway. He felt sick, and wiped his palm across his forehead, which was clammy with greasy, cold sweat. What had his shrink told him about dreams? “I don’t go in for that Freudian bullshit,” she’d said, which shocked, coming as it did from that friendly, brown-skinned face framed by a bright, fuchsia-pink hijab. “If you want to interpret your dreams, think of them as your subconscious trying to tell you something really simple: what you want, or maybe what you’re afraid of. Like your hallucinations, they’re just the you that senses things on a deep emotional level trying to get a message through to the you that pretends everything’s about facts, and reason, and analysis and planning.”
“So, basically, I’ve laid Smudge to rest, and his ghost, only now I’m scared of losing Britta. Of dying on a mission and never getting to have a life with her. Is that it, Fariyah?” he asked the empty room.
He shook his head and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. He drank it at the sink. A bottle of single malt whisky – Laphraoig – sat off to one side, in front of a row of tall Kilner jars, each one containing a different type of flour. He reached for the bottle, unscrewed the cap, poured an inch of the smoky, seaweedy whisky into a tumbler sitting on the draining rack, swallowed half, then took the remainder upstairs to his office.
Mortensen answered on the third ring.
“Gabriel, good of you to call back. Thank you. So, what do you want to know?”
“There are three criteria I employ when accepting new clients, Carl. One, they can afford me. Two, they pay a deposit in advance. Three, they brief me fully. In my line of work, the last condition is the most important.”
Mortensen chuckled. “Fair enough, and, may I say, unusually frank for a Brit. You guys are normally so busy being polite, you forget to talk about money. I appreciate your frankness, so let me repay you in kind. One, I don’t know what you charge, but I am fairly confident I can afford your services. I own SBOE outright and every test launch costs me personally one-point-five million US. So what’s your day rate?”
Gabriel was just about to quote the rate Don Webster paid him: £1,000 a day. Then he clamped his lips together for a second and recalibrated his response.
“£2,000 a day plus expenses.”
“Which is fine. Hell, let’s not make life needlessly complicated. Why don’t we call it £3,000 a day all in?”
“That’s very generous. Thank you.”
“Good. It’s no more than you’re worth, I’m sure. My trip’s for four days, so I make that twelve grand in total. Send me your bank details after this call and I’ll wire you the money. And finally, the briefing. Like I said, the big picture is my upcoming trip to Kazakhstan. I know to you Special Forces guys, that’s probably a cakewalk. But for me? A tech guy? I’m not afraid to admit it – it frightens me. I can give you more detail, but I’d prefer to do it face to face. Can you meet me? In London? I’m staying at the Ritz.”
They agreed to meet for lunch two days later.
A Contract
VENICE
That evening, at 8.00 p.m., Sasha opened the door of her suite at The Gritti Palace on Campo Santa Maria del Giglio. Erin stood there, her weight on one hip. She had changed for their second meeting and now wore a different pair of tailored trousers. They were black and silky, the wide hems covering the toes of her shoes. Her emerald-green blo
use was open at the neck to reveal a thin gold chain that descended into the space between her breasts. She carried a slim, black, leather, clutch bag fastened with a gold clasp.
Sasha had changed into a long, black, halter neck dress. Both women were showing they meant business, but in different ways. Both wore clothes that displayed their bodies. But where Erin’s was all curves and sex appeal, Sasha’s was a muscular, panther’s build, with rounded deltoids and sleek biceps and triceps, the results of many hours of training from the age of nineteen, when she’d first embarked on her chosen trade. She looked Erin up and down, taking her time.
“You look good enough to eat,” she said, finishing her appraisal. “Come in. Drink? I have some champagne on ice.”
“Thank you. You look good, too.”
The room was painted a beautiful shade of duck-egg blue and finished in high Venetian style as imagined by the hotel’s owners. Gold was a predominant theme, painted, layered and gilded onto almost every surface. Four reproduction Louis XIV side chairs, resplendent in gilded carving and watered silk upholstery the colour of sunflowers, gathered like courtiers around a similarly ornate table topped with swirling walnut inlaid with ebony and more gold. Beside the table was a low chaise longue, upholstered in gold velvet. Set in gold candlesticks were a couple of dozen tall, white candles, their wicks trimmed perfectly so the flames were smooth-sided yellow tulips.
The table was laid with two places. To one side, a smaller table was crowded with silver chafing dishes. Their gleaming, domed lids permitted tendrils of steam to curl out, carrying delicious aromas of seafood, herbs, wine and garlic. The centre of the table bore a gold ice bucket from which the foiled neck of a champagne bottle protruded at an angle.
Sasha poured Erin a glass of champagne and topped up her own. The glasses, engraved with twining ivy leaves, were the shallow bowls known as coupes rather than the tall flutes served at Florian’s.
They clinked glasses. Sasha held hers up to the light.
“Much prettier, don’t you think?” she asked. “More decadent, somehow. People claim they were modelled on Marie Antoinette’s breasts, did you know that?”
Erin smiled. “Not much to get hold of, was there?”
Sasha beckoned her guest to the table.
“I hope you like lobster.”
The lobster was served out of its shell and dressed in a pale broth of white wine, cream and butter, in which delicate, green fronds of fresh dill floated. Erin spoke.
“Perhaps we should clear the way for a more substantive discussion by getting the subject of money out of the way. Timur wouldn’t enlighten me as to your fees.”
“No. He wouldn’t. Mr Kamenko is a very discreet man, bless him. Well, my fees start at three million US dollars.”
“That’s fine. And by ‘start’ you mean?”
“Adult male. No political office above regional or state government. National pols, heads of state, women, celebrities and younger targets cost more.”
“Scruples?”
“Publicity.”
“And you do children?”
“I’ve never been asked.”
“That’s not a proper answer.”
“Are you asking me to kill any children?”
“No.”
“Then, it’s not a proper question.”
Erin laughed. “Fair enough. I anticipate a maximum of five human targets, at least one of which will be a woman. Plus help with the destruction of property. Why don’t we call it twenty million for the package?”
Sasha put her cutlery down. She looked Erin in the eye.
“You’re something of a mystery woman, aren’t you, Erin?”
“What do you mean?”
“I Googled you. Do you know how many hits I got?”
“Enlighten me.”
“None. Not a single reference. Which struck me as peculiar. People in my line of work aren’t on Google, though some advertise on the dark web. Trailer trash aren’t on Google. African nomads, with whom, by the way, I have travelled, aren’t on Google. But women with sufficient wealth to jet about having coffee in Florian’s at two days’ notice, women with grand political ambitions, women with twenty million to drop on an assassin: those people are on Google. So tell me, Erin Ayers, what’s going on?”
Erin took a mouthful of the succulent lobster meat and took her time chewing it. Then she sipped her champagne. She dabbed her lips with the white and gold damask napkin, and smiled.
“I enjoy my privacy, what can I say? My wealth is inherited, and such business dealings as I have, I conduct through intermediaries. It isn’t difficult to hide oneself away from prying eyes, especially if one has dirt on the CEOs of the big internet companies. Which, believe me, I do. Now, shall we discuss business, or do you want to continue interrogating me? Perhaps this will establish my bona fides.”
She reached over to pick her clutch bag up off the sofa beside her. Twisting the overlapping arms of the clasp, which unfastened with a muted click, she opened the bag and withdrew a thin rectangular package, wrapped in black tissue paper. From the way she gripped it, it appeared to be heavy. Erin offered the package to Sasha.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” Sasha asked, moving her plate to one side and placing the package in front of her, though she was fairly sure she knew. It wasn’t the first time a client had tried to impress her this way.
Using her fingertips, she separated the leaves of tissue paper and spread them apart with a soft rustle. As the slim ingot of gold became visible, she smiled. It was the approximate dimensions of a mobile phone, but much heavier. The gold gleamed in the candlelight. On its face were stamped the words:
PAMP
SUISSE
1 KILO
FINE GOLD
ESSAYEUR
FONDEUR
“You know,” Sasha said, “in the old days of the gold rush in California, they used to bite coins to check they were really gold.”
“Be my guest,” Erin said. “Although you don’t want to damage a tooth.”
“No need. In the entire time I’ve been pursuing my profession, only one person has ever tried to cross me. Can you guess what happened to him?”
Erin raised her eyes to the ceiling. Then brought them back to bear on Sasha.
“Did he have an accident?”
“He did!” Sasha clapped her hands as if Erin had solved a particular thorny logic problem. “He fell into a wood chipper.” She took a mouthful of the champagne. “Twice.”
“Did he really? How careless of him. Me, I like my life. The bar’s worth a smidgeon under thirty-eight-and-a-half thousand dollars at today’s spot price. Call it a gift to seal the deal.”
Sasha rewrapped the ingot and placed to one side.
“Fine. And thank you. You’re a woman of means. You dress well. And I like your style. So who’s this unfortunate man who came between you and your political ambitions?”
Erin leant forwards.
“His name is Gabriel Wolfe.”
How to Make a Killer
VENICE
SASHA threw her head back and laughed, a full-throated sound that made the champagne glasses ring.
“Oh, dear God, will that boy never stop causing trouble?”
Erin frowned. “You know him?”
Sasha nodded then dabbed her eyes with her napkin. “You could say that, darling. I’ve been hired to kill him before.”
Erin raised her eyebrows. “And yet he lives.”
“It’s complicated.” As she said this, Sasha thought of the trick Gabriel had pulled in a Hong Kong nightclub belonging to a Triad boss. Doping her, then hypnotising her into thinking she’d already fulfilled the contract on him. As he’d then gone on to kill her client, she’d decided to walk away. Oh, come on, sweetheart, her inner voice teased. You fancy him, plain and simple.
“I hope I’m placing my faith in the right person, Sasha. Three million is a lot of money to spend on somebody who misses.”
Sasha placed her glas
s in front of her. Looked Erin in the eye, and spoke.
“I have completed sixty-one contracts since I embarked on my chosen profession. In my training, I put down four men, for whom I wasn’t paid. And the event that pushed me into this line of work saw two men lose their lives. That’s sixty-seven occasions when I haven’t missed.”
“And one where you did.”
“And one where, owing to some exceptionally unusual circumstances, the contract was nullified before I could complete it.”
Erin nodded. “You said, ‘pushed you’ into your line of work. What happened?”
Sasha looked away from Erin, closed her eyes and thought back twenty-five years. She sighed, then opened her eyes. “Do you have time for a little story of what happens to nice English girls when they’re too trusting?”
Erin reached for the champagne, refilled their glasses and leaned back in her chair. “I love stories.”
Sasha’s voice deepened fractionally and lost its playful tone as she began to tell her story.
“Picture an eighteen-year-old girl from a little rural village in Kent. Awkward, socially isolated, homeschooled by her hippie parents, picked on by gangs of girls from the local comprehensive whenever she gets away from her tofu-eating mummy and daddy for a couple of hours at the weekend. Passed around by a gang of bikers she falls in with. Eventually, she’s raped by one of them, beaten badly, but still goes back to them.
“An aunt leaves the girl some money, and she buys a plane ticket to LA. Just like that. She’s never been out of the country before and after eleven hours on a jumbo jet, she arrives at LAX with a few pairs of knickers, a couple of T-shirts and a spare pair of jeans in a bag, a few hundred dollars in cash, and a massive sense of liberation.
“The girl gets through immigration, baggage reclaim and customs, and finds herself in the arrivals lounge with so many stars in her eyes it’s like a galaxy in her head. She’s looking around for a taxi when this big, handsome guy – leather jacket, Gucci loafers, designer stubble – comes up to her.