The Hunter

by WOOD TOM

  ‘On this is a file. I need its encryption broken.’

  Victor placed it on the table, and Norimov picked it up and examined it closely.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘From a former business acquaintance.’

  Norimov raised a knowing eyebrow. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I did a contract in Paris on Monday, a part of which was the recovery and delivery of that memory stick. When I returned to my hotel there was a kill team waiting. I’d like to know who sent them.’

  Victor thought it prudent to leave out the fact that the someone appeared to be the same person who had hired him, who also happened to work for the CIA.

  ‘Paris? I read about that, but I never would have guessed it was you. You’re not one for making headlines.’

  ‘This time it was unavoidable.’

  Norimov leaned forward. ‘They said eight people were shot dead at that hotel. All you?’

  ‘I only killed seven,’ Victor corrected. ‘Another beforehand. Another since.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t counting.’

  Victor looked at him for a moment. ‘Some habits are harder to break than others.’

  Norimov shook his head. ‘Well, you haven’t lost your touch anyway.’

  Victor ignored the remark. ‘Whoever tried to kill me wanted that drive. As of this moment it’s all I have to go on. If the information on that thing is worth killing for, then I need to know what it is.’

  ‘And what will that achieve?’

  ‘Maybe it will help track down my enemies. Maybe not.’

  ‘But why do you want to? You’ve never cared about revenge before.’

  ‘I don’t care about revenge now,’ Victor said. ‘And I never will.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because they found me.’

  Norimov held his gaze and nodded. ‘I still know people in the organization, computer people, who may be able to help.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But what you ask is highly irregular. People will be suspicious, questions will be asked.’

  ‘Then bribe them. I will cover any expenditure.’

  Norimov looked at him closely. ‘They still want your head, remember?’

  ‘I’m not likely to forget.’

  ‘And you’re willing to take that risk?’

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  The Russian weighed the response for a moment. ‘I always used to think that for a man who is so careful to stay alive you sometimes act as if you have a death wish.’

  Victor made sure to show nothing in his expression.

  Norimov ran a hand over his beard. ‘They’ve asked me about you before, you know? A general, Banarov I think his name was, had died. Suicide. Shot himself in the head with his own pistol. They thought it was you, said they could place you in the country that week.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘That I hadn’t seen you for years.’

  ‘They believed you?’

  ‘Who knows? The investigating officer didn’t like me, I can tell you that for nothing. Aniskovach his name was. I made a point of remembering that one. A rising star I think. He had that look about him, arrogant but clever. He reminded me of you, actually.’ Norimov smiled briefly. ‘He brought with him a list of corpses as long as my dick, wanted to know who out of them you could’ve killed.’

  ‘And you said?’

  ‘That you could’ve killed them all for all I knew, but I told him I’d heard you were dead, so even for you it would be a tall order. That’s when he showed me a photo of you, said it was recent.’

  ‘Taken where?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell. Don’t worry, it was your good side.’ He flashed a grin. ‘Aniskovach wanted you for Banarov though; the others didn’t matter. He was just trying to track you down through one of your other jobs.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘He didn’t have to.’

  Victor nodded.

  ‘So,’ Norimov began, ‘was it you who killed Banarov?’

  Victor’s expression remained blank. ‘I don’t remember.’

  Norimov’s face was serious. ‘But they do, Vasily.’

  ‘Then I’ll be careful to do nothing to jog their memories.’

  ‘And have you thought about me in all this? They don’t like me as it is. What do you think they’ll do if they find out I helped you?’

  ‘When have I ever asked you for a favour?’

  ‘Never.’ Norimov paused. He looked at Victor for a long time before speaking. ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘I’m thinner.’

  ‘No, not that.’

  ‘I’m older.’ He didn’t like saying it.

  The Russian shook his head. ‘It’s something else.’

  Victor stopped himself shifting in his seat.

  ‘One thing I know,’ Norimov said, ‘is that people like us don’t change. We adapt.’

  ‘Necessity.’

  ‘Remember when I told you about what makes you special?’ He didn’t wait for Victor to respond. ‘People like you, like me, we either take that thing inside ourselves that others don’t have and make it work for us, or we stand by and let it destroy us.’

  ‘I still believe that.’

  ‘If I do this for you, then we are even for Chechnya.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Victor agreed without hesitation.

  Norimov nodded slowly. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘You’ll need a copy of the drive.’

  Norimov smiled. ‘Why, don’t you trust me?’

  ‘No.’

  Norimov’s smile disappeared, and he stared hard at Victor.

  Victor stared back.

  Norimov looked away first and plugged the flash drive into his computer. ‘Will it allow me to copy the contents?’

  ‘The information on the drive is encrypted, not the flash drive itself.’

  It took seconds for Norimov to copy the data onto his computer. When the transfer had finished, he pulled the original out of the laptop and handed it back to Victor.

  ‘All done. I’ll copy it onto a disk and give it to my contacts. I’ll delete it from my laptop afterwards, don’t worry.’

  ‘I don’t worry,’ Victor said. ‘And it’ll be safer if we don’t meet here. Somewhere busy instead, somewhere public.’

  There was a glow in Norimov’s face. ‘Like the old days?’

  ‘Exactly like the old days.’

  ‘How do you want to do it?’

  ‘I’ll call your bar, give them a time and place for you to meet me. How long will it take?’

  Norimov stroked his beard for a long moment. He looked away. ‘If the people I know can do it, it won’t take them long.’ He looked back. There was something in his eyes Victor couldn’t read. ‘Forty-eight hours at the most.’

  Victor downed his drink and stood.

  ‘Then I’ll see you on Monday.’

  CHAPTER 39

  Central Intelligence Agency, Virginia, USA

  Sunday

  06:05 EST

  Chambers’s expression was dour. She was perched elegantly on her chair, leaning slightly forward, elbows on the table. ‘I know it’s Sunday and I know it’s early, but I’m sure everyone appreciates the gravity of what we’re doing. Somebody we very much don’t want to see better armed could be recovering those missiles as we speak. This goes beyond arms superiority; this is about global safety. If this technology gets into the wrong hands, our ability to protect our interests as well as our capacity for peacekeeping will be critically diminished. I don’t think anyone around this table wants that to happen.’

  Procter nodded his agreement. Ferguson and Sykes gave their own solemn nods.

  ‘I know none of you need motivational speeches to pull out all the stops,’ Chambers continued. ‘We all know the clock is ticking. It’s been almost a week since Ozols was killed and the informati
on stolen. If we’re going to crack this, it has to be soon.’ She paused and looked at Procter. ‘Are we any closer to finding Ozols’s killer?’

  Procter shook his head. ‘Alvarez is following a lead on who hired Stevenson and his crew, but we’re completely stalled on locating the assassin, I’m afraid to say. With what little we have to go on we can’t even establish whether he’s government or private sector. We have some witness statements that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, some CCTV footage of a man but no face, no solid physical evidence. We missed him by a day in Germany. He probably went to the Czech Republic, but we haven’t heard from him since.

  ‘All departments have been involved in this. Every station has been briefed. We have people on the lookout all over Europe. We can’t find him.’

  Chambers’s brow wrinkled. ‘So he’s just vanished?’

  ‘He could be right under our noses and we wouldn’t necessarily see him. We don’t know who we’re looking for.’

  ‘We must have suspects though,’ Chambers said. ‘Which known assassins can’t be accounted for? What intelligence services are making suspicious movements?’

  ‘Even if we assume he’s not a direct operative for a foreign-intelligence service and that he was hired for this job, of which we have no proof, we’re not starting from a good position. There are hundreds of these guys operating in Europe, maybe even thousands. We know about a tiny percentage of them, and of those we can only rule out another small percentile. That leaves a huge number of suspects, most of whom we have absolutely no information on. And this guy is good, let’s not forget. He’s a needle in a hitman haystack.’

  Chambers removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘Best guess on him?’

  ‘We have a receptionist who says he spoke French like a native, and in Munich the neighbour said he sounded German. Either he’s from both France and Germany or he’s good with languages and could be from anywhere. He has used two British passports so far, so that might suggest he’s from the UK.’ Procter sat straighter. ‘We can speculate until we’re blue in the face, but I think the fact we’re dealing with a dead former Russian and Soviet naval officer who was trying to sell Russian missiles tells me the killer is probably SVR.’

  ‘If that’s the case we’ll never get that technology for ourselves,’ Chambers said. ‘Moscow would just love that.’

  He nodded. ‘It would, but it doesn’t really feel like the Russians, does it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘If this guy’s SVR, then that explains a lot, but who then hired seven guys to kill him after completing the job? Who would know the SVR was sending him there? And gunning Ozols down in an alleyway is pretty basic. No polonium in his tea. Not even a suicide. Just painlessly executing a traitor isn’t really their style.’

  Chambers pushed her hair back behind her ears. ‘I didn’t realize they had any style.’

  Procter noted Sykes’s subservient smile. He looked at Ferguson. So far the old man had barely said a word. ‘What do you think?’

  From behind his glasses Ferguson’s dark eyes met Procter’s. ‘I’m not sure, buddy.’

  The old guy never used Procter’s actual name. It was always buddy, pal, or friend. Procter found it annoying, bordering on insulting, as though Ferguson did so as a sign of disrespect, but Procter told himself he was reading too much into it. And even if he wasn’t, he sure as damnit wasn’t going to get a rep as a precious a-hole by bringing it up or insisting Ferguson call him Mr Roland Procter.

  ‘Russia is your territory, Will,’ Procter said, happy to have returned the overfamiliarity favour. Procter was quite aware Ferguson disliked his first name being shortened. ‘Are the SVR a likely suspect?’

  Ferguson looked at him and considered for a moment. ‘It’s more than a possibility for sure. This is Russian weapons technology we’re talking about, after all. Moscow will do anything it needs to do to protect its secrets.’

  ‘You think it’s their style?’ Chambers asked.

  ‘You think it isn’t?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Don’t think the KGB aren’t more than capable or willing to execute Ozols. If they’d found out what he was up to, then do you honestly think they wouldn’t try to get the information back and silence the leak? And traitors are always punished, no matter where in the world they are.’

  Procter knew Ferguson’s referral to the SVR as the KGB was heritage from his Cold War days. To him they were one and the same. Ferguson may have been something of a hero during those dark days of the twentieth century, but he had failed to upgrade and modernize his thinking. The world had moved on. East and West were no longer ideals, merely compass points.

  Procter continued, ‘But to risk the fallout—’

  ‘What fallout?’ Ferguson actually looked angry. ‘Unless we had irrefutable proof they were behind it, which of course is impossible, the most we would do these days is tell them off. What could we realistically do? And let’s face it, we would have a hard time doing that with a straight face. Remember, we were trying to steal their technology, hardly a sound moral basis for us to criticize their methods. Ozols was a traitor, don’t forget. We would have no right to rattle our sabre, and they wouldn’t care if we did.

  ‘And, may I remind you, this is technology that Moscow refused to sell to us on more than one occasion. Everyone seems to think that because of glasnost the bear has lost its claws, that fifty years of rivalry has been replaced by friendship. It’s a ridiculous notion, and one I can’t believe that America has lapped up so easily. A bear is still a fucking bear. He may be weaker now, but that only means he has to be more cunning.’

  An uneasy silence hung in the air for a moment. Ferguson’s face was flushed. Procter was momentarily lost for words. So the old bastard did carry some resentment about the changing world order and his relegated place within it. Ferguson had obviously spent far too long fighting the communists to let it all go. It was quite pathetic, a shame really, but the sooner Ferguson retired the better.

  ‘So,’ Procter said eventually, ‘what do you think we should do?’

  Ferguson took a calming breath. ‘Finding out what the hell the Russians are really up to would be a good place to start.’

  CHAPTER 40

  Zhukovka, Russia

  Saturday

  21:04 MSK

  Colonel Aniskovach climbed out of the SVR limousine and nodded to the driver, who closed the door behind him. Gravel crunched beneath Aniskovach’s feet as he approached the front of the three-storey dacha. It was built before the revolution and was a huge, resplendent building protected from prying eyes by tall pine trees flecked with snow. For a building with twelve bedrooms, to Aniskovach dacha, which meant ‘cottage,’ seemed a laughably inept description.

  The town of Zhukovka was home to many such houses, owned by Russia’s powerful and wealthy figures. Some people called it the Beverly Hills of Moscow. Aniskovach had never been to Beverly Hills, but he knew enough about it to know that Zhukovka was the more tasteful of the two. A manservant had the front door open for him, and Aniskovach stepped inside from the cold and into the warmth. He unbuttoned his long coat and handed it to the servant.

  Inside, the dacha was even more impressive than outside, and Aniskovach took a moment to take in the marbled floor, panelled walls, and original oil paintings that hung from picture rails. He could hear faint voices, laughter, and soft music drifting into the room from somewhere else in the residence. It sounded like a cocktail or dinner party where the usually very boring guests had been softened up by alcohol enough to finally start having a good time. He was motioned towards a doorway and stepped into a study. The room was empty of people, and he stood in the centre, hands held behind his back, waiting. He tried to look unruffled by the setting and occasion, but he knew that he had been brought here to make an impression, and he would do well to act, at least in some way, as expected.

  A decanter of brandy was visible on a sideboard, two glasses next to
it, all on a silver tray, placed for his host and him to drink while they talked. On a whim he poured himself a glass while he waited. To pour oneself a drink without invitation could be considered particularly rude, but Aniskovach believed his host would see it as a sign of strength and be impressed with his confidence.

  Most people would have been nervous if they were put in a similar position, but Aniskovach was as calm as he had ever been in his life. He checked his reflection in an oval mirror hanging above the room’s fireplace. He’d nicked himself shaving, just a tiny cut on his chin that regrettably marked his looks but, he noted, gave a certain rugged manliness to his striking features. He had a jaw set like an anvil, and with his dark, absorbing eyes he knew he was easily the best-looking man in his department – and, if he wasn’t being modest, the whole organization. He liked to imagine that most of the female employees at headquarters lusted after him.

  Aniskovach heard the footsteps in the hallway outside, but he pretended to be taken by surprise when a voice behind him said, ‘Forgive my tardiness, Gennady.’

  Aniskovach turned around and bowed his head briefly. ‘It is an honour to meet you, comrade Prudnikov.’

  The man in the doorway was tall and heavy-set and wore a well-fitting dinner jacket that shaved off at least ten pounds. He was in his late fifties but looked younger by some years. He wore a friendly smile and was by all reports very personable, but Aniskovach knew him to be quite ruthless. This was the first time he had met the head of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razyedki.

  Aniskovach placed his brandy down and approached his superior. They shook hands, Aniskovach letting Prudnikov be the one to grip harder, though only marginally.

  ‘It is to my regret that we have not had a chance to meet before, Colonel Aniskovach.’ Prudnikov’s eyes glanced at the glass of brandy and then to the decanter, and for a second Aniskovach feared he had offended him, but Prudnikov smiled. ‘You’re a drinker, then, I see – good.’ He released Aniskovach’s hand and moved to pour himself a large measure. ‘I don’t trust a man who doesn’t drink.’