by Tom Wood
“Anyway, this is where it gets interesting. At eight fifteen the Paris police were called to a hotel where they found eight dead bodies. Five inside the hotel itself, two in a building opposite, and another in the street. One of the cops I spoke to, off the record, told me that they think one man killed them all. Bullets found in several of the corpses were 5.7 mm subsonics, the same round that killed Ozols, though fired from a different but same-model gun.”
“What the hell happened?” Procter asked.
“At this time I have no idea,” Alvarez answered. “I need to get inside that hotel, watch the security tapes, and look at the police report if I’m going to find out. I haven’t been able to do that on my own.”
“I’ll make sure that happens,” Chambers said.
Ferguson was shaking his head. “Someone killed Ozols and then went on a rampage through a Paris hotel? Doubtful.”
“That’s exactly as it appears,” Alvarez stated firmly.
Chambers asked, “Do we have any indication whatsoever of who this killer represents? I’ll take a guess at this stage.”
“Ozols never told me who else he was negotiating with but I think we can make some educated guesses. Russia and China already have them and Iran has Sunburns, so Ozols wouldn’t go to them. Ozols wanted to deal in Paris so the French probably aren’t involved. But all the other usual suspects would love to get their hands on the Oniks: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, North Korea. If someone found out Ozols was selling to us and not them then it’s not unreasonable to think they’d try and get the information anyway. Sending a professional killer is a hell of a lot cheaper than paying what Ozols wanted as well. And let’s not forget that the Russians might have found out what Ozols was up to and tracked him down.”
“So, to clarify,” Ferguson began, “you’re saying the killer could be working for anyone?”
The voice that came through the speakerphone was deadly serious.
“I’ll still find him.”
TWELVE
Southeast of Charleroi, Belgium
Monday
19:48 CET
“Les billets, si vous plait.”
Victor handed the conductor his ticket and thanked him when it was stamped and returned. The conductor made his way slowly along the aisle, periodically bracing himself against the train’s lateral movement. He looked eighty years old and unlikely to make eighty-one.
It was snowing outside. Flakes had collected on the window to Victor’s right, matted against the corners of the glass. Outside the scenery was invisible in the night, but when Victor leaned his cheek against the cold glass he could just make out fields and hills, the occasional twinkling light in the distance.
The train was two hours from the German border, and it would take into the early hours to reach Munich via Strasbourg, but Victor didn’t allow himself the luxury of sleep. He wasn’t sure that he could, even if he wanted to.
He was the only person in the carriage, sitting in the last row of seats, to the right of the aisle, the wall directly behind him. Sat straight in his seat he could see the far door and anyone who might come through it.
Any assailant entering through the door to Victor’s left wouldn’t see him until he or she was already right next to him. Then, if they were right handed like ninety-percent of the world’s population, they would have to turn their whole body or extend their arm completely in order to shoot at him. In either case it would give him enough time to make sure they didn’t get the chance.
The door opened to Victor’s left and he automatically stiffened in his seat. Adrenaline surged, readying him for attack.
It was a child, a girl, four or five. He relaxed. She didn’t even look at him, just ran down the aisle bumping into seats on either side as she went. When she reached the end of the carriage she turned around and ran back, smiling as she bounced off one seat to the next. She stopped when she reached Victor, seeing him for the first time.
Eyes almost impossibly wide stared at his. He stared back but the intensity of her gaze made him uncomfortable, as though she could see through his eyes, past the veneer of his humanity to glimpse the real him that lay just beneath. But then she smiled, the gaps in her teeth showing, and any notion she possessed such power dissipated.
Feigning a look of puzzlement, Victor leaned forward and reached behind her ear. Her expression mimicked his. When he withdrew his hand he held a coin. A smile took over her face again. He rolled the coin back and forth across his fingers and the smile turned into a laugh.
He switched the coin into his left palm and passed the hand over his right. When he turned his left hand palm up it was empty. She laughed and pointed to his other hand. Maybe she’d seen the trick before, but Victor hoped she was merely perceptive beyond her years. He turned the closed right hand over and opened it. No coin there either. A look of confusion replaced the girl’s smile. He sat there with both hands turned palm up and shrugged.
The door opened and a woman appeared, instantly calling to the girl. The child responded by running off again. Her mother hurried after her, the volume of her voice rising with each shout. She looked flustered as if she had chased the girl down the whole train.
The mother caught the child’s collar before she’d reached the next door and marched her back the way they’d come with a sour expression on her face. In German she chastised her about running off, but the girl didn’t seem to care.
As she came closer Victor caught the child’s eye and gave her a look that said better luck next time. She grinned, and he slipped her the coin as they passed. Her eyes lit up for a second before she was gone and Victor had never felt more alone in his life.
The train rounded a long bend in the track and the overhead lights flickered momentarily. Victor drew a smartphone from his pocket and powered it on. He purchased it while in Charleroi, paying with cash to the shop owner’s delight. When it had loaded he took out the flash drive and plugged it into the USB port. The drive allowed him to access it, but the only file it contained asked for a password when he tried to open it.
He put the flash drive inside his jacket. He forced himself to think when all he wanted to do was shut down. Two hours after completing his assignment Eastern European assassins led by an American tried to kill him at his hotel. He thought about the dossier he’d found in the killers’ van. They may not have had many personal details, but to know his face and where he had been staying required extremely accurate intel.
Only someone who knew he would be in Paris to kill Ozols could have had assassins in place to kill him. He didn’t believe some third party was involved. The broker or client, or both together, had set him up, for safety, to save money, or some other reason he didn’t yet understand. At this moment the why wasn’t his priority. Staying alive was paramount, killing his enemies was secondary. Everything else was immaterial. If knowing why made it easier to protect himself only then did Victor care.
He opened up a file on the smartphone into which he had copied down all the sniper’s details. It was too risky to try to take the actual documents across borders. He needed to find out who had hired Svyatoslav. Maybe it had been Victor’s own broker or maybe someone else entirely. Either way Victor had to know. Svyatoslav resided in Munich so Victor would start his hunt there.
He realized his eyes were closed and forced them open. His body needed the rest, but while his enemies were still out there he couldn’t afford to lessen his vigilance. He had spent his whole life being invisible, yet somehow, despite all the precautions, he’d been seen. Now more than ever he had to be on guard.
And in Victor’s opinion the best form of defense was to attack.
THIRTEEN
Paris, France
Monday
22:48 CET
On the computer monitor a black-and-white image flickered incessantly. The picture was grainy, in places distorted, but the quality was just about adequate. It was low-res CCTV, so Alvarez was hardly expecting crystal clarity, but it would
have been nice if the footage hadn’t given him a bitch of a headache.
He pinched the skin between his eyebrows and wiped the tears from his strained eyes. He felt like shit and guessed he looked no better. He stood in the basement of the U.S. Embassy along with Kennard while a young tech guy whose name he didn’t have time to remember controlled the equipment.
After he’d gotten off the call with headquarters, Chambers evidently had applied pressure on the French because Alvarez had received copies of all pertinent documentation. He’d also been given copies of the security tapes from the hotel in which five people, including a woman no less, had ended up shot to bits. According to the police report one of the two corpses found in the apartment building opposite was another woman, and an elderly one at that. This was the single craziest thing he’d worked on in his time in the CIA.
Alvarez had been an operations officer in the National Clandestine Services, previously known as the Directorate of Operations, for nearly eleven years. Before that he had served in the Marine Corps after leaving college, but life as a jarhead hadn’t been for him. It had felt like treading water, always waiting for something to happen, but it never had. He’d joined up as a punk kid eager to see what he was made of, and the continual training and occasional humanitarian mission hadn’t shown him what he wanted to find out. It had been a different time then, now he would probably get more action than he could stomach. He had joined the forces for the wrong reasons, but he had signed up with the CIA for all the right ones. Alvarez hadn’t looked back since.
On the screen two men entered the elevator.
“Who are these guys?”
While Alvarez stood straight backed with his big arms folded in front of his bigger chest, Kennard was hunched over, sleeves rolled up, elbows resting on the desk as he peered at the monitor. Kennard was a decade or more younger than Alvarez and was technically his number two, but Kennard liked to act as if they were partners. Alvarez, always the diplomat, let it pass to keep their working relationship friendly.
Kennard had an inch or two over him, used too much junk on his hair, and seemed to be on the agency gravy train just to get the health care. He was probably looking at it as a career stepping stone. Join the CIA out of college, get a few years under the belt; get experience and training; and then move on to bigger, better, and more highly paid things in the private sector. Alvarez didn’t have much time for that kind of attitude. He was in the CIA to do his duty as a patriot.
Kennard was usually all mouth and wouldn’t shut up unless his life depended on it, but he hadn’t been his usual cocky self all day. Perhaps the seriousness of the work had finally given the guy a much needed wake-up call. People were dead. This wasn’t some game.
Alvarez flicked through the photocopy of the preliminary case report. It had some extras his original copy didn’t have. He’d acquired the additional information from an agency source inside the Paris police. It had cost the U.S. taxpayer a pretty dollar, but the thick wad of euros had done what the supposed agreement to cooperate had not.
He found the section of the report that listed each of the dead bodies. Apart from the old lady killed outside her front door, none of the corpses had identification. What most did have were radios with earpieces, guns, and ammunition. The French hadn’t ID’d any yet, but Alvarez had fed his copy of the fingerprints into the system and was waiting on the results. Something very big had gone down at the hotel involving some very bad people.
Watching the tapes was a mind-numbing process, but Alvarez’s motivation couldn’t be higher. Andris Ozols had been set to meet Alvarez when he was murdered and the intel he had been carrying stolen. Recovering that information was Alvarez’s priority, but equally important to Alvarez was catching the fucker who killed the Latvian and, at the very least, nailing him to the closest available wall.
Unfortunately the hotel made use of only two CCTV cameras, one in the lobby and one at the rear entrance. Cameras on every floor would have made Alvarez’s life a whole lot easier. With only two tapes of footage to go on, Alvarez had to rely on what the police report told him to piece together what had happened. That report was, however, still frustratingly brief and full of holes. It would be a while before those gaps were filled.
“Here he comes,” Kennard said. “Walking to reception.”
Alvarez looked at the report. “Mr. Bishop, room 407.”
On the screen Alvarez watched the mystery man move from the reception desk to the elevator, where he seemingly waited for it to arrive before suddenly standing by a cigarette machine. Obviously hiding from the two men who stepped out.
Both he and Kennard had watched the relevant parts of the tapes at least twenty times, and it still amazed Alvarez what he was seeing. As the two men stood in the lobby, the killer moved right past them, coming so close it looked as if they were touching, before slipping unnoticed into the elevator.
“Smooth,” Kennard whispered.
Alvarez found himself nodding. “Fast-forward a moment.”
The tech worked the controls and a whizzing sound accompanied the scrambling picture for a few seconds.
“That’s enough,” Alvarez said.
On the screen the two men were clearly anxious, frantically stabbing at the elevator buttons before rushing to the stairwell and disappearing.
Kennard shook his head. “And a few minutes later they’re both corpses.”
“They came to the hotel for him, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “Okay, let’s skip until the other guys come in.”
Alvarez loosened his tie for perhaps the tenth time, while Kennard stared at the screen. The tech worked silently on the fast-forwarding. The room was stuffy. There were no windows and the air conditioner was on its way to machine hell. Outside it was bitterly cold, but Alvarez, Kennard, and the tech geek had been in a ten-by-ten box full of electrical equipment for several long hours. The air was practically poisonous.
“Here we go,” Kennard said.
The man who had to be Ozol’s killer stepped out from the elevator and headed toward the center of the lobby, where he sat down in an armchair. Infuriatingly he kept his face hidden from the camera at all times, not overtly so, but with a gentle angling or inclination of the head ensuring the camera didn’t pick up his features. It was too much to be just luck.
He couldn’t have known where the camera was positioned before he arrived at the hotel, but he had checked in several days before, and the hotel only kept tapes for forty-eight hours. After that they were reused. Alvarez couldn’t see the point of that. The hotel might as well not have any fucking cameras at all. He’d told the manager as much.
The killer reappeared on the recording for just a few seconds, moving through the lobby to the stairwell. Then he was gone again, and that was the last time he appeared on the footage. One body had been found in the kitchen, so to Alvarez it was a reasonable guess that the killer had left that way instead of the tradesman’s, where the second camera was located. Then, more people had been killed in the building opposite, and another in the street itself.
Alvarez stood without moving as the rest of the tape was played on, hoping for something else that might help. He was dog tired. His eyes stung. He was sure Kennard was feeling the same. He guessed the tech geek was used to staring at screens all day and didn’t have a problem with it. He probably found this kind of crap exciting. Freak.
After another thirty minutes Alvarez finally pulled out a chair and sat down.
“We’re not going to get anything more from this.”
Kennard nodded. “Agreed.” He cracked his knuckles. “You think they do Chinese chow in this town? I don’t know about you guys but I could do with some crispy duck. I’m sick of this frog-food crap.”
The tech found his voice. “There’s a good place a couple of blocks west with some damn fine Asian ass waiting tables. I’ll show you.”
“Good.” Kennard slapped his stomach. “I’m starved.”
Alvarez was in no mood to eat
. He spoke, half to himself. “One guy murders Ozols, then two hours later he goes back to his hotel where seven shooters try and kill him, but instead he kills them all.”
“Yeah,” Kennard said, eyes on the door.
“We’ve got a description from the receptionist for a tall or average-height Caucasian with brown or black hair. But it could be dyed. Can’t remember the eye color. Maybe glasses. Some age between twenty-five and forty. He’s got a beard but that’ll be shaved by now if it wasn’t stuck on, so what we’re left with implicates pretty much every other white guy out there.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Kennard agreed. “This is bullshit. We’ve got nothing.” He picked up his jacket.
Alvarez couldn’t argue. He pushed his palm against the grain of his stubble as he thought about what to do next. He was drained but didn’t want to sleep. There was still too much to do. Alvarez’s cell phone rang and he was quick to answer it. When he had hung up he smiled at Kennard.
“You were saying?”
FOURTEEN
Munich, Germany
Tuesday
01:12 CET
It was raining when Victor left the train with fourteen other passengers. The station was mostly empty at that time of night and the amount of open space around Victor gave him some cause for concern. He did his best to exit quickly but without looking like he was trying to do so. Outside the station there were no taxis waiting so he set off on foot. After sitting down on the train for several hours he was glad of the chance to stretch his legs.
He found a fast-food place that was still open and took a seat by the window to eat his meal. Substandard even for junk food, but he needed the calories and there was no quicker way to get refueled. At least the milkshake wasn’t too bad. Vanilla.
