The Hunter v-1

by Tom Wood

  There was a part of Victor that told him any time he spent with her only compromised him further. She had set him up before. He could never be sure she wouldn’t do so again. He knew he should just kill her now and be done with it. He spent his whole existence managing risk, and the survivalist part of him screamed that this was too much of a risk to take.

  But the flip side of the coin had considerable weight to it. In one conversation he had learned more from her than he had in several days on his own. And there were still things he did not know or understand. He would listen to what she had to say and then decide whether or not to kill her. Not for revenge — which meant nothing to him — but for his own protection. The broker knew too much about him. She couldn’t know it, but she was interviewing for her life.

  The broker reappeared. She took a sip of water and placed the glass down on a table. ‘Where did I get to?’

  ‘Black bag.’

  She said, ‘At first I thought the operation was simply unsanctioned. I didn’t know that it was completely illegal or I would never have signed to it. Now, that helps us because it means we’re against only a few people. As long as it stays the way it is we can do something about it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘If they want us dead to kill the connection between them and Ozols’s assassination, the reverse must also be true. We go after those who ordered it, everyone who knows about it. Maybe two or three people. Cut off the head and the body dies.’

  ‘When you say we, you mean me, right?’

  ‘But I’ll help you find them,’ the broker said. ‘At the moment we don’t know who our enemy is. I only had contact with one person, my control, and they’ve already had him killed. But I can find out who’s behind this.’

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  ‘We follow the money. That’s how we do it.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Where there’s money, there’s a trail. The money from the Paris job was deposited into your Swiss bank account from another numbered account that I had control over. It was transferred into my account from, you guessed it, yet another numbered account.’

  ‘How does that help us? The account could have been set up purely for the Ozols killing.’

  ‘That’s not the case.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I used to work for them, remember?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten. What’s your point?’

  ‘My point is that you used to work for them too.’

  ‘No I haven’t.’ He wanted to throttle the truth out of her. ‘I’m freelance. I work for private clients. And I don’t like games. Just tell me.’

  ‘I’m telling you that the Ozols job wasn’t the first one you’ve done for them. Over the last three months you’ve done three other contracts, through me, for the CIA.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘You think I’m lying. Why would I?’ He couldn’t answer. ‘I’ve been your broker three times, each time pretending to be a different person, acting out a different character. The job before this one, in Sweden, you killed an arms dealer. The time before that a Saudi. Do I have to go on?’

  Victor looked away.

  ‘That’s how you people found out where I lived,’ he said, half to himself, now understanding. ‘The other jobs were dummies just to track me down.’

  ‘Not exactly. They were legitimate targets. Very nasty people, but yes, the jobs were covers for the surveillance. And it took three intensive ops just to get one shitty photo-fit put together. But we got where you lived.’ There was a measure of pride in her voice that made his teeth grind. ‘No one thought it would take so long. You were better than anyone thought.’

  He shook his head. ‘You people.’

  ‘Don’t you dare.’ She actually looked angry. ‘You’re a hired murderer, remember? You have no right to judge anything anyone else does.’

  He had to admit she had a good point.

  She continued. ‘Don’t think I want to be here. It makes me fucking sick just being this close to someone like you.’

  ‘Don’t swear.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said don’t swear.’

  She glared at him. ‘Don’t swear? Why the hell not?

  A line appeared between Victor’s eyebrows. ‘That includes blasphemy.’

  It took her a few seconds to see that he was being serious. She widened her stance. ‘Let’s get this straight. You don’t tell me what I can or can’t say.’

  ‘I just did. Get used to it.’

  She scowled. ‘I think you’re forgetting I’m not working for you on this. We’re working together. That means you don’t tell me what to do or say and vice versa. You understand me?’

  Victor checked his watch. ‘Have you finished?’

  The broker took a series of calming breaths. She wanted to say more, he could tell, a lot more. He could imagine her practising being strong in front of a mirror.

  ‘You were saying something about a money trail,’ he said calmly.

  She took another breath and swallowed. The look in her eyes told him she was telling herself to drop it, that he wasn’t worth the effort. It was a minute before she finally spoke, a measure of time he guessed would reassure her pride that she hadn’t backed down too easily.

  She spoke. ‘The money that was paid into your account came from me, which came to me from someone else’s account, who probably got it from someone else’s, and so on. So we track backward, account to account until we find who started the first account.’

  ‘And you know how to do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded, almost believing she knew what she was talking about. ‘How?’

  She was sitting down now, perched on the arm of the sofa. He heard wood creak when she moved. She spoke with her hands a lot, gesturing, emphasizing, illustrating. Victor remained standing, his back to the wall next to the window so he could watch her and the door at the same time.

  ‘We find out who or what that first account belongs to,’ she said.

  There was a commotion outside. Some pimp yelling at his property. Victor had the window open so he could listen for people arriving.

  ‘You’ve said that already. How do we find that out?’

  ‘From the bank.’

  ‘Bankers don’t hand out information on their customers.’

  ‘You just have to know how to ask.’

  ‘And you do?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And what’s my role in this?’

  ‘You don’t have one. At least not yet. After I have the information you’ll use it.’

  ‘Sounds simple.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘And are you confident this will work, what you’ve proposed?’ It was the end of the interview.

  Yes, she lived.

  No, she died.

  Victor saw her thinking carefully about her response. He watched her closely. Her lips pursed momentarily and she swallowed before answering.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, voice strong, assured.

  ‘Good answer.’

  She smiled slightly, misunderstanding.

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew the flash drive. He flicked his wrist, threw it to her, impressed when she deftly snatched it out of the air in one hand. Good reflexes and dexterity. She looked it over for a moment before looking up at him questioningly. He saw her wanting to ask why he’d lied but she didn’t say anything. She moved over to her computer and plugged it into the side. Victor stepped forward to watch. She sighed when she was asked to input a password.

  ‘They didn’t give it to you then?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I was never supposed to come this close to it. I know a little about cryptography, but I can’t tell what level of encryption it is. If it’s low end I could probably break it myself in a few days with the software on my computer. Simple brute-force attack. But if I was transporting something people would kill over, I’d make sure it was high-end encryption, the
best I could get. My laptop doesn’t have the processing power to even scratch the surface of those kinds of ciphers.’

  ‘I have an acquaintance,’ Victor said. ‘Someone who may be able to help decrypt it. I stress may. I’ll try them while you collect the information on the account.’

  ‘If anyone can hack this, my contact at Langley could.’

  ‘No. It puts it too close to our enemies.’

  ‘Does it matter? If they intercept it maybe they won’t come after us.’

  ‘Given their efforts to kill me so far I can’t see them giving up quite so easily. And if they did get their hands on it they’ll know I gave the drive to you. I’ve compromised myself by meeting you. I don’t want them to know that.’

  ‘I’ll try and decrypt it myself then.’

  ‘I prefer my way.’

  ‘We can do both,’ the broker said.

  ‘As we can’t do both simultaneously, I’ll try mine first.’

  ‘Who says we can’t do both at the same time?’

  ‘The laws of physics. We only have only drive.’

  She didn’t speak. Her fingers worked the keyboard for a few seconds. Victor watched the file copying across from the drive to her computer. It took seconds.

  ‘I never thought to try,’ he found himself saying.

  ‘The file carries the encryption, not the drive itself. It’s just a commercial memory stick, a carrier, nothing special, no hardware-based security. Now you can try your way and I can try mine.’

  ‘And double our chances.’

  She smiled at him. ‘See, we’ve made a good team already.’

  He found himself looking at her lips. ‘Stop right there,’ he said, as he raised his eyes back to hers. ‘We are not a team.’

  ‘Then what are we?’

  He struggled for a second, thinking about how to describe them, but without success, then said, ‘Nothing.’

  The broker looked away. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Neither of us should be under any illusion about why we’re both doing this. You’re only helping me because you need me. I’m only helping you because for the moment you can help me, too.’ He avoided saying he needed her. ‘That’s the end of it.’

  ‘And what’s going to happen when I can’t help you any more?’

  It took guts to say it. Victor respected that.

  ‘At that point we’ll part ways,’ he said. ‘And you’ll never see me again.’

  CHAPTER 33

  Marseilles, France

  Saturday

  01:59 CET

  Reed held his palm over the sink. He felt no heat, but the air smelled faintly of burned paper and alcohol. He moved around the kitchen slowly, then into the lounge area. The communications equipment looked state-of-the-art and was cool to his touch. He stood in the darkness, seeing with the dim light of the city filtering into the apartment and his own natural night vision. He made his way to the bedroom, noting the open wardrobe and drawer, the discarded garments on the bed.

  He found an all-night cafe where he ordered a black tea and composed an email on his smartphone, explaining with an economy of words that the target had left recently, and in a hurry. He asked what he should do next.

  The waitress who brought him his tea wanted to flirt, but Reed pretended not to be able to speak French. She still tried despite the perceived language barrier, and he politely ignored her. Not for the first time, he mused, that life would be far easier as an ugly man. He finished his tea with a minimum of fuss and went on his way. He had a room booked at a fine hotel on the seafront and set off on foot, the ground wet from the rain but the air pleasant and cool.

  He enjoyed the walk, listening to the sounds of talking, laughter, and music drifting out of bars and clubs. Reed was neither disappointed nor annoyed that the target was not where the dossier claimed she would be. It was not in his nature to become emotional when working. There was a secondary-potential strike point listed where he could try if his anonymous client wished.

  There were five targets in total that his client wanted removed, the first of which Reed had left dying in one of Paris’s less-than-hygienic abodes. Aside from the Marseilles disappearing act, that left three more: one in Milan, one in London, the last in a yet-to-be-established location.

  As yet there were no stipulations on how the remaining targets were to be eliminated, but Reed prided himself on killing efficiently, subtly, and reliably. These were the reasons he had been hired and were the reasons he was able to charge such a pretty penny for his services. Suicides and accidents were his speciality, and when there wasn’t the opportunity for such a demonstration of his talents, he would select another means of death that didn’t spell out assassination.

  At times in Reed’s line of work a more direct approach was needed. Some targets were too well protected, skilled, or just too careful to be removed discreetly. In such cases, Reed opted for more appropriate methods of removal than those he usually employed. He found the nine millimetre variety was usually quite sufficient but he preferred sharpened ceramic for a more personal touch.

  The last of the listed targets held particular interest to Reed. There was no name, just a code name, and that alone told Reed much. This nameless man was a contract killer, and by all accounts a good one at that. If the information he had been given was correct this Tesseract had killed seven gunmen who tried to ambush him at a hotel, as well as avoiding another assassination attempt in Switzerland. Reed had to admire such performances, even if the results had been achieved with rather less finesse than he liked to enact himself.

  Reed looked forward to the killing of this target. Other professionals were always the most difficult to execute cleanly, but Reed enjoyed a challenge. Like Reed himself, the experienced ones were almost obsessively paranoid in how they conducted themselves, and the precautions they took were more often than not especially extensive — not forgetting the little fact that they tended to be more than capable of fighting back. Which was exactly why they were such good fun to murder.

  The fact that this quarry was in possession of skill appealed to Reed, who judged his own achievements in relation to the quality of his victims. He killed for money, whether it was his country’s or some private client’s banknote, but he still took pride in his craft. Participating in a sporting kill gave Reed considerable personal satisfaction, even if, by the very nature of his own abilities, such contests were so heavily stacked in his favour. But it was only in performing against the very best opposition that one’s true aptitude could be measured.

  Reed walked across the vacant parking lot behind a fast-food restaurant. The smell of heart disease ruined the otherwise pleasant evening air. He just hoped this Tesseract was good enough not to get himself apprehended by the authorities before Reed caught up with him. That would be most unsatisfying.

  Footsteps.

  Boots, trainers. Multiple feet on the asphalt behind him, making no effort to conceal their noise. Not professionals.

  Reed knew what he was going to see before he turned around. A gang of adolescent toughs and degenerate twenty-somethings approached him. They were a mix of races, almost all with heads shaved, clothes a mix of baggy sportswear and knock-off designer labels, cheap jewellery abundant and gaudy.

  They spread out, and he allowed himself to be surrounded so the braver ones would naturally face him. Cowards at his back did not bother him. Some struck bizarre poses, and if Reed didn’t know better he would assume they had spinal deformities. He counted twelve, six or seven of which he could tell by their physiques were capable of handling themselves and by their demeanours were more than willing to. The others didn’t carry the same capabilities or confidence.

  ‘You’re passing through my kingdom,’ one said in French, the largest and most brashly dressed. ‘So you have to pay the tax.’

  Reed held his gaze. ‘Trust me when I say that you do not want to do this.’

  The large youth stared at Reed with something approaching disbelief, obviously unused to facing
anything but dread. The complete absence of fear in Reed’s unblinking eyes caused his expression to falter. He looked at the others. Reed knew the kid had come too far to back down now.

  He drew a gun from his jacket and held it loosely in his hand. A nickel plated Beretta. It looked like it was polished regularly, but Reed doubted the working parts would be cleaned with the same diligence. The guy raised the gun to Reed’s face, a poor grip, holding it horizontally to complete his perception of cool.

  ‘Wallet, phone, watch,’ the leader demanded.

  Two of the others showed their own weapons. One held his revolver loosely by his side, the other lifted his shirt and rested his fingers on the automatic tucked into his waistband. Reed said nothing, merely stared unblinking at the person before him, the kid who knew he was out of his depth.

  ‘Fucking hand them over.’

  Reed’s expression remained blank. ‘Why?’

  ‘Say what?’

  In that moment when confusion combined with anxiety, Reed grabbed the outstretched arm before him, wrapping his left hand around the wrist and pulling the kid forward sharply, directing the gun away and to the side. He took hold of the kid’s lower triceps with his free hand and twisted the wrist in his grip, locking the arm. He wrenched it downwards, hard — against the joint — snapping the arm at the elbow and into an inverted V.

  The gun clattered on the asphalt and the awful wail momentarily stunned the others. Reed released the wrist and the kid collapsed. Among the screams he managed to find his voice.

  ‘FUCKING KILL HIM.’

  Reed sprang forward towards the other drawn gun, knocked the weapon aside as it was raised to fire, using his forward impetus to multiply the force of the elbow he sent into his enemy’s face. His head snapped backward, blood splashing from his mouth, and the kid went down heavy, out cold, jaw broken.

  The other youth armed with a gun backed off, palms showing, eyes wide, head shaking. Reed ignored him, heard the click of a switchblade opening, turned, sidestepped as his attacker lunged and overextended himself into empty air, stumbling, completely off balance, arms flailing.