by Tom Wood
One minute later she had a name, address and phone number. All fake, she knew, but left for her to find, so that she could find him. After all, she owed him.
The only question now that she needed answering regarded the burner phone itself: was it here so the assassin could call his employers or so they could call him?
The phone rang.
NINETEEN
Switzerland had once been Victor’s country of residence. Not home, because although he had lived for some years in a chalet near Saint-Maurice, he had never felt settled. It had been a house, and he had been quite fond of it, but nothing more. He wondered if it had been rebuilt after the explosion and fire that had destroyed it and any trace of his existence there, or else if nature had reclaimed the land. He would never go back to find out. He was curious, but not nostalgic.
He arrived in the country via a flight from Madrid, having first travelled from Holland, and Germany before that. As usual, he avoided travelling in a straight line if possible.
There was a delay landing in Geneva and as they circled overhead the cabin crew offered complimentary food by way of apology. Victor declined. He avoided the food served on flights. He had little concern his meal would be tampered with – an assassin would have to predict he would eat, as well as his chosen option, and slip poison inside without detection – but food poisoning was a legitimate risk. The statistics were shocking. Besides, eating kept him occupied, and he didn’t like to be so confined and immobile with people all around him. There were many reasons why no killer worth concern would make an attempt on board an aeroplane, but it was impossible for Victor to switch off the instincts that had kept him alive thus far.
In Geneva, he spent several hours rotating through taxis, trains and trams, choosing destinations at random, doubling back on himself, and pausing at intervals to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He took an afternoon train to Zurich and was the last person to board before the doors locked. He selected a seat in a carriage with few other people. One of whom was a woman. She had short dark hair cut in a choppy style. He looked at her longer than he should because she reminded him of someone, and she noticed. She looked back. She mistook his intention and smiled. He couldn’t bring himself to do the same.
The journey was a little under three hours and he slept most of the way in a series of naps that were no substitute for proper sleep, but that ensured he arrived without too much fatigue. Zurich was cold. It always was when he visited. A thin layer of early snow coated the pavement and rooftops. A lazy shower of flakes turned hats and shoulders white. It was the kind of snow that people liked, but wouldn’t like tomorrow when it had formed ice, blocking their driveways and waiting to slip them up.
Wilders’ apartment was where he’d said it would be. It was located inside a handsome block in a nice, quiet neighbourhood of the Fluntern district, with tree-lined streets and polite pedestrians. Victor kept his coat open and his hands free of his pockets regardless of the chill or that these details would make him stand out to a careful observer. Some precautions just couldn’t be ignored.
He spent a day observing who came and went and looking out for surveillance until he was satisfied that no one working for Phoenix was waiting for him. The building was accessible by a heavy door and intercom system, easy to bypass – Delivery for apartment twenty-three – but he waited for the morning and rush hour. It was a simple enough trick he had used before. He loitered outside until he heard the door begin to open and thanked the harried, but polite, commuter for holding it open for him.
There was a decent lock on Wilders’ door, but nothing that Victor hadn’t picked countless times. He was inside before any neighbour could grow suspicious. The apartment wasn’t lived in, that was clear. It was furnished, but there was a large pile of circulars behind the front door. There were no letters addressed to a named occupier, Wilders or otherwise. The fridge was as bare as Victor had expected, with nothing but condiments.
The safe wasn’t set into a wall, but in the walk-in closet. Victor had graph paper, pencils and a stethoscope with him in case it had a dial, but the safe was electronic. For that he had a compact laptop and software to deliver a brute-force attack of combinations and the safe clicked open within a minute. He had expected a hard drive or thumb drive, or maybe even a disk of some sort. Instead, he found paper. The safe was empty except for a two-inch-thick stack of documents: files, receipts, handwritten notes, some sketches, photographs, brochures, purchase orders, invoices, fliers and other correspondence that seemed inconsequential or unrelated. A quick flick through showed that Wilders had indeed been collecting information for some years. The collection seemed haphazard and random, which made sense because Wilders hadn’t known how to get close to Phoenix. He’d been gathering anything that could be useful, but hadn’t found any links. Victor could see why. It made little sense to him. Paperwork had never been his strong point – he didn’t need to be good at record-keeping to be an effective killer – but he knew someone who could sift through Wilders’ haul and maybe find something the broker could not.
He left the apartment and took a five-minute stroll to the nearest high street and to a mobile phone retailer.
‘I’d like to buy a handset,’ he said to the awkward teenager who served him. ‘Whichever one has the best camera.’
TWENTY
It had been a shrill sound. A polyphonic ringtone, electronic and crass. Raven let it ring in her hand, looking at the little LED display and ‘unknown’ in place of a caller ID. Should she let it ring? Would they leave a message? She had only a few seconds to decide one way or the other before the call ended. She turned the car key and started up the engine. The dashboard instruments came to life and she tapped on the radio and increased the volume. She pressed one hand flat against one ear while bringing the phone up to the other and accepting the call.
‘Yes?’ she said, lowering her tone in imitation of the assassin’s.
It was never going to be perfect, but with the loud music as background noise, it was enough to convince the voice on the other end of the line to say, ‘Is it done?’
‘Yes,’ she said again.
‘Confirmation code, please.’
She squeezed her eyes shut. She had no idea what it could be, or perhaps just asking was a test and silence was the answer. She thought back to her own time working for the Consensus without her knowledge, under the guise of government work, but she had never communicated with her handlers in this way.
In the end it didn’t matter. She took too long, because the voice said, ‘Miss Stone, I presume.’
She switched off the radio. There was no point in pretending. ‘No one calls me Miss Stone. How about Ms Stone? Sounds sexy, right?’
‘Not quite as sick as your hospital records suggest.’
She produced a weak cough. ‘I’m so very poorly. Please send help. I’m all alone and defenceless.’
‘I wouldn’t feel too smug if I were you. We have many men at our disposal.’
‘Great,’ she said. ‘I’ll take them down one at a time. Or send a team. That would be better. It would save me a lot of time.’
The voice on the end of the line said, ‘You need to know that we’re never going to give up. You’re never going to be safe. We’re going to keep looking and we’re going to find you again.’
‘You won’t have to look very hard,’ she said.
A pause before the voice said, ‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I’m coming for you. Like I came for the others. Like I’m going to keep coming until every last one of you is a corpse.’
‘What do you think you can achieve through threats impossible to realise?’
‘You say impossible, I say improbable – let’s agree to disagree. As for right now, as for this conversation, I’ve already achieved what I set out to.’
‘Which is?’
‘Hearing your voice.’
He said, ‘My voice tells you nothing.’
‘You’re a man, obviously. A
merican. You’re in your fifties. You have a deep voice, but it has a raspy quality. So you’re out of shape. A smoker. A long-term smoker, so it’s going to show in your face. Your skin will be thin, your eyes washed out with dark circles underneath. You fumbled and took a while to transfer the phone from one ear to the other, so you’re lacking in dexterity, you’re not a shooter, you’re no field operative. You’re a middle-aged, out-of-shape manager. Someone important. Someone who’s going to be missed.’
He huffed. ‘Do you honestly think it matters that you know some generic details about me? You’ve just described millions of men.’
She kept watch over the lot as she talked, wary of people leaving the hospital or cars arriving.
She said, ‘Yes, I do, because if I were wrong you would do your best to make me believe I was right. Assuming you have any intelligence, and I’ll take it as given you’re competent. The Consensus have already vetted you in that department. If I were wrong then you would let me lead myself in the wrong direction, but you’re not doing that. You’re challenging the value of what I know, because it has value. But I lied when I said what I wanted was your voice. It wasn’t your voice. I got all that in the first few words. What I wanted was for you to keep talking so I could listen to what was going on in the background. You’ve let me talk because you’ve been trying to learn something about me, something you can pass up the food chain, something of value to cover your failure to kill me. You think you’ve been playing me but I’ve been playing you, and whereas you’ve learned nothing, I’ve learned plenty.’
There was a long pause as he decided whether she was bluffing or not, whether continuing the conversation would only give her more, but ultimately he needed more now. He needed to know.
He said, ‘What have you learned?’
‘There’s a lot of background noise, so you’re speaking outside. I can’t hear voices, so you’re not on a populated street. You’re on a balcony then, because something is amplifying the sound of your footsteps as you pace around, so you’re overlooking a back alley with a building only a few metres across the street. That church bell chimed four times, so it’s four p.m. where you are. And that’s a small engine with a high rev, obviously a moped. It’s going a little fast for a back alley, so it’s not really a back alley but an actual street. So you’re somewhere warm enough to be standing on a balcony at this time of year, in a city where mopeds are common, because what are the odds of an unusual vehicle driving past your balcony? And that rhythmic thump of tyres is caused by paving stones. So, in summary: warm, with lots of churches, narrow paved streets where mopeds are common. I hope you’re not just there for work and you have time to see all of the sights. I have to see the Sistine Chapel every time I visit. I just have to.’
She heard him inhale and exhale in a loud, angry breath. ‘I’ll be gone long before you get here.’
‘Ah, so you are just in Rome temporarily. Thanks for confirming that, and that you’re there for some business activity. I’ll be paying very close attention to what makes the news in the coming days and weeks. How ironclad is your operation, exactly? Because either I’m going to find out what you’re doing, or you’re going to have to cancel it and explain to your superior how you screwed it up. You’ll probably get a second chance, right? These guys are forgiving. Ah, but you’ve already spent that second chance, haven’t you? Because this is not today’s first balls-up: your assassin failed to kill me as well. Wow, two failures in the same day. Man, I wouldn’t like to be you right now.’
There was a long silence. She heard no background noise so she pictured him with his hand over the phone. Maybe a mouthed expletive or snarl of rage before a moment of calm thought and deliberation, which would lead to panic because there was no way back from what he’d said and she’d learned.
Except one way out, which he came to of his own volition:
‘I can help you,’ the voice said, ‘if you help me in return.’
She smiled at herself in the rear-view mirror. ‘How can you possibly help me?’
‘You want to know more about them. I have information.’
‘And who are we talking about here?’ she asked.
‘The Consensus – that’s what you call them, isn’t it?’
‘I’m glad that name is finally catching on. What can you tell me that I don’t already know?’
‘You’ll help me?’
‘What do you need my help for?’
The voice said, ‘To stay alive, of course. Like you said: I’ve already blown my second chance. Now, I either wake up in the middle of the night with a pillow over my face, or I do what you did. I turn against them. I use what I know to protect myself. But I’m no spy, like you. I’m no field agent. I’ll need help. I’ll need protection.’
Raven said, ‘And what do you know in return for that?’
‘There’s a bank, here in Rome. Roma Investimenti. That’s why I’m in the city. They launder money. I have three suitcases of dirty cash to deposit.’
‘That would never have made the news.’
‘It would next week because the banker who laundered it is going to commit suicide.’
‘Why would he do that? Is he depressed?’
The voice said, ‘He’s going to die because they want to bring down the whole bank. The money is mob money, stolen mob money. The banker is going to leave a suicide note detailing what he’s been doing. The bank won’t survive the fallout. The corruption goes too deep. It’ll land half the board of directors in jail.’
‘Why do they want to bring down the bank?’
‘How would I know? But I guess they want to destabilise the markets, affect currency prices, you name it. It’s above my paygrade. You know how they work.’
‘All too well, unfortunately.’
I could have been the one helping the banker to commit suicide.
The voice said, ‘So you’ll help me?’
‘To stay alive? That’s not going to work, I’m afraid.’
‘But you said —’
‘I said nothing. You let yourself think otherwise. Maybe if you were like me and didn’t know what you’d landed yourself in I might go out of my way to keep you breathing. But you’re no clueless foot soldier. You’re a lieutenant. You’re an officer. You’re like the man who sent me out to do the dirty work.’
‘I’m just following orders. That’s what we all do.’
‘Not me,’ she said. ‘Not any more. Now, I follow my own orders. And you know what? It feels great.’
‘They’ll kill me. Please.’
Raven said, ‘I have more sympathy for the assassin who tried to slit my throat than the man who gave him his orders. I’m glad they’re going to kill you. Then it’s one less asshole of theirs I have to kill myself.’
‘I’ll tell them about this conversation. I’ll tell them you know about the bank, the banker. They’ll be waiting for you.’
‘Even better,’ she said. ‘That would save me tracking them down. But if you did do that, they’d definitely kill you and then you’d blow your only possible option for staying alive long enough to see Christmas. I’ll tell you what to do, what I’d do: take all that money and run. Three suitcases full, you said? Wow, that’s a lot, isn’t it? Probably enough to set you up anywhere in the world with a new identity. Must be a difficult choice: bags of cash or certain death. Jeez, what would I do in your place?’
Silence on the line.
‘Shame about your physical condition, though. All those smokes and the spare tyre around your waist are really going to slow you down out there. Rest assured I’ll be checking the internationals for an article about a fat American middle-aged businessman who died in Europe under suspicious circumstances.’
‘You bitch.’
While he screamed obscenities down the line, Raven said in her best cheery tone, ‘Great chat. Really good catching up. Take care.’
He hung up before she could.
Despite what she said on the phone she hadn’t been in a rush t
o go to Rome. She didn’t know who she was looking for and was nowhere near well enough to travel to a foreign city where Consensus assets could be waiting for her. It would take weeks to recover, to get back her strength and fitness. She didn’t know about the long-term consequences. Maybe there would be nerve damage, brain damage, or damage to her cardiovascular system. She was still in pain from the encounter with the assassin, still exhausted from it. She couldn’t go after her enemies in Rome in her condition, but she had killed another one with just a phone call. If the guy on the end of the phone line told his superior about their conversation, either freely or under duress, or if he ran with the money, the plan against the bank would be forfeited. The banker wouldn’t die in an apparent suicide. The bank wouldn’t collapse. No currency or stock or market would be affected. Another scheme destroyed because of her, because of a phone call.
Raven had felt pretty pleased with herself. She still did, a year later.
She would take her revenge, however she could, one bone saw or phone call at a time.
That banker had been most surprised to learn he was going to die, that his former business acquaintances were planning on having him killed. He had taken some convincing, but what she told him about the fifty-something chain-smoking American male she’d spoken to was an uncanny match for his business partner who had drowned while sailing in calm weather. He had thanked her by revealing everything he knew, which included the name of the lawyer who had brokered the deal in the first place. A man named Samuel Cornish.
Echoing heels focused Raven’s gaze.
A well-dressed woman approached her.
‘Mr Cornish will see you now.’
TWENTY-ONE
