by Tom Wood
When he had finished washing he turned off the shower and dried himself off on one of the several white towels hanging on a rail and wrapped it around his waist. He saw the rail could accommodate another two towels and tried not to imagine the previous two clients who had been here today before him. He slipped into a towelling robe but did not tie it.
The woman was waiting for Victor in the lounge when he stepped out of the bathroom.
‘You take your time, don’t you, honey?’
He shrugged and said, ‘I think your extractor fan is broken. The bathroom’s all steamed up.’
‘Oh, that’s annoying. Be a dear and open the window for me.’
He placed his folded clothes on an armchair in the hallway and returned to the bathroom and did as she asked.
He heard her say, ‘Would you please excuse me for a second?’
‘Of course,’ Victor said.
He used the time to approach the lounge window, standing side on to the wall next to it and peering outside and over the balcony. He saw that there were no conceivable sniping nests from which a marksman could take a shot, so he allowed himself a few extra seconds to gaze outside at the city.
The view from the window showed a sky blanketed by cloud. No sun was visible. He could see an uneven cityscape of sloping rooftops of red tiles and tall chimneys. A scattering of snow lay across them, thicker on the west-facing slopes and patchier on those facing east. The buildings beneath had an understated beauty with their pale pastel-coloured walls and arched windows. Clock towers and spires poked at the grey sky above. For a pleasant moment he watched the swirling gentle spirals of white chimney smoke rise and dissipate, seeming to join the clouds as though they linked Earth to the heavens. He heard the woman return and turned away from the soothing fantasy.
‘Do you like the city?’ the woman asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said, speaking the truth, then added, ‘It’s my first time here,’ which was a lie.
Of all his skills, lying was the one he employed with the most frequency; he spoke more often in lies than truth, existing in a constant state of pretending to be someone he was not – a businessman, a tourist, a nobody. Always unremarkable, always unworthy of attention. It had become second nature to do so because the part he played least of all was himself.
No one saw that side of him other than his victims and the reflection in the mirror of a face that was no longer his.
She stepped closer to him and untied her robe, slipping out of it in an effortless motion that would have been elegant if Victor could have ignored the fact she had performed the move countless times. She stood before him in a white bodice. He looked her over as she expected him to.
She parted his robe and eased it off his shoulders. She spent a long time looking at his body and the many scars and marks that covered his skin. He was used to the stares and the questions that followed. He had been cut and burned and shot and torn and bitten and more. He had whole tales memorised for every one of them, explaining away the more prominent scars as the result of a car crash and the lesser ones as sports injuries; if the person enquiring knew a scar caused by a bullet when they saw it, he had war stories from a military career that was different to his own.
But when the woman had finished examining him and her gaze returned to his, she did not ask a single question. Which was as rare as it was unexpected. Instead, she said to him:
‘I knew that you weren’t boring.’
SIX
The tailor had been cutting suits since the Second World War. He told Victor as much while he waited in the fitting room of the low-ceilinged atelier. The establishment was small but stylish, with a long waiting list of elite clientele. It was owned and run by a single tailor who was so short he had to stand on a rickety three-legged stool to measure Victor’s shoulders.
‘I was a boy cutting fabric for Nazi officers,’ the tailor explained, looking as though he might fall off the stool to his death at any moment. ‘Can you imagine?’
Victor said, ‘I’m not sure I can.’
The tailor snorted. Not quite a laugh, not quite a huff. It sounded to Victor that the man had a chest infection or some persistent pulmonary problem. The tailor did not seem to be any less energetic as a result.
‘I smoke sixty a day,’ he’d bragged. ‘And I’ve outlived all my boyhood friends who did not.’
Victor offered a hand to help the man off the stool, but he batted it away with palpable disdain and dropped down with a creak of floorboards, or maybe knees.
His fingers were stained by the lifetime of smoking he boasted of. Framed black-and-white photographs adorned the walls of the atelier. They showed the old tailor with clients, maybe even celebrities from yesteryear Victor didn’t recognise. In every one the tailor, like his clients, was smoking. One even showed him standing among tobacco plants in some tropical plantation.
The tailor wore a three-piece stone-brown suit complete with pocket square and pocket watch. His glasses were bifocals with thick lenses and the Cuban heels gave him enough height for the top of his shiny scalp to hit five feet if he stood straight-backed, which he did not.
He fetched the bespoke suit from a back room and hung it up on a wheeled rail for Victor to try on.
‘I don’t understand your reasoning, my boy. You already have a charcoal suit. Off the rack, obviously, but of decent enough quality to avoid outright humiliation. Why pay for another?’
‘Do you not want my business?’ Victor asked.
‘I want you to look your best,’ the tailor countered. ‘Is that so hard to comprehend? Is your brain not in proportion to your height?’
Victor couldn’t help but like the man.
‘Charcoal is so unadventurous,’ the tailor said with a tut. ‘It is but the sickly cousin of black. A pauper to be ignored, not a gentleman to be envied. Black is a colour. Charcoal is a shade.’
‘Black is the absence of colour.’
The tailor acted as though he hadn’t heard him. ‘What about it? Black would be more striking. You’ll look good in black.’
‘Everyone looks good in black,’ Victor said.
The tailor looked hopeful. ‘Is that a yes?’
Victor shook his head. ‘I only wear black to a funeral.’
The tailor did his best not to sigh. He looked pained. His face was a spiderweb of deep wrinkles. ‘But of course. Why would you wear black at any other time? Why would anyone want to look his best? What kind of world is it when someone elects to wear what suits him less? What about a nice navy? It’ll be more sophisticated, but still subtle.’
Victor unhooked the jacket and slipped his arms into the sleeves. He said nothing.
The tailor said, ‘I wish you had at least gone for a pinstripe or a colourful lining.’
Suits were important to Victor. He wore one more often than not. A suit gave him an air of authority and respect. In a suit he looked like a man of no small importance while blending in to the masses of office workers, lawyers and bankers found in almost every major city. A suit was ideal camouflage for the urban terrain where he both lived and worked.
Victor buttoned up the jacket and rolled his shoulders.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said, feeling the extra room he had asked for, which made it easier to hide a gun, to fight or climb or run for his life.
The old tailor’s eyebrows rose and arched and a curved fence of closely spaced grooves deepened across his forehead. He wrinkled his nose and blew air out of pursed lips. He did not approve.
‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘That won’t do at all. We need to fix this. It’s terrible. The fit is nothing short of an abomination. I’m ashamed of myself.’
‘I like it the way it is. This is exactly what I asked for.’
‘Then I need to saw open your skull and check you have a brain, my boy. Look here. You don’t need all this room across the chest. Are you planning on getting fat? Are you planning on growing breasts?’
Victor shook his head.
The tail
or chewed his bottom lip. He looked stressed. Sweat beaded on his forehead. ‘Let me bring it in a smidgen. It’ll look all the sharper. Please? I can’t let you walk the streets like this.’
‘I prefer it the way it is,’ Victor replied. ‘You’ve done an excellent job.’
‘I’ve embarrassed my name and the name of my father. How about a tiny tuck?’ He held a finger and thumb a few millimetres apart. ‘Just a little? I promise it will still allow you room to breathe. For me. Please.’
‘This is comfortable.’
‘Comfortable? That’s a filthy word if ever I heard one. Barbaric even. If all we cared about was being comfortable then we would be a huge hideous mass of synthetic materials, shapeless and indistinguishable from one another. Sir, if you came in here for comfort then you must have misread the sign above my door. I do not sell comfort here. I sell suits. I sell style.’
Victor remained silent.
‘Fine,’ the tailor said with a heavy exhale. ‘I give up. We’ll do it your way and you can walk out of here knowing I shall live my last years in a state of unhappiness and shame.’
‘I’m glad we can agree.’
The tailor removed a solid silver cigarette case from his inside jacket pocket and thumbed it open. He held it towards Victor, who shook his head.
‘A gentleman should smoke,’ the tailor said as he took out a cigarette for himself. He didn’t light it. ‘And a man who appreciates a tailored suit needs to smoke. He must know his tobacco like he knows his fabrics.’ The tailor held the unlit cigarette beneath his nostrils and inhaled. ‘Suits are my love, but tobacco is my passion.’
‘I quit,’ Victor said.
‘Then start again,’ the tailor implored. ‘Before it’s too late. But only the best. Good cigarettes are like a good suit. Utterly distinct and separate from the mass-produced garbage so commonplace today. No two varieties of cigarette, if made correctly, are the same. They have a range of flavours and feels that titillate the palate. Like a fine wine, almost.’
‘Most wine tastes like vinegar to me.’
The tailor looked at him with disgust. ‘Your barbarism knows no bounds.’
Victor nodded. The tailor helped him out of the jacket. ‘I’m just going to tidy up these threads and the suit will be ready to collect this afternoon. Or you can wait here and I’ll do it now. Your choice.’
‘I’ll wait, if it’s all the same to you.’
The tailor shrugged. ‘Child, it makes no difference to me what you do. Would you like a drink? Or something to read? I’ll be about twenty minutes. I’m assuming a barbarian such as yourself can actually read? I’m probably giving you too much credit, aren’t I?’
He asked as though he expected an answer.
‘I’ll entertain myself,’ Victor said. ‘Take your time, please.’
The old man nodded and went to leave. He stopped and turned around. ‘And a haircut and shave wouldn’t kill you…’
He trailed off, muttering under his breath as he closed the door behind him.
Alone in the measuring room, surrounded by mannequins, hangers and fabrics, Victor stood still, listening to the quieting footsteps of the old tailor as he shuffled away. A moment later, another door clicked open and then closed again. Victor pictured the tailor settling into a comfortable chair to make the final adjustments to the charcoal suit.
He had twenty minutes.
Victor reached into a trouser pocket and withdrew a mini plastic bottle labelled as containing antibacterial hand gel. There was a small amount of ethanol inside, for the appropriate smell, but the bottle contained clear silicone gel. The consistency wasn’t quite the same as alcohol gel, but it was similar enough to pass a cursory examination. Not even an airport security guard had ever done more than sniff the bottle, let alone apply some and compare it to a genuine product.
He squeezed a blob of silicone gel into his palm and spent two minutes rubbing it over his hands, paying particular attention to his fingertips and palms. The gel was cool and oily. It took a further minute to dry. His hands were now coated in a waterproof barrier, invisible to the naked eye, which would prevent the oil from his skin being left behind on any surfaces he came into contact with. No oil meant no fingerprints.
Three minutes to apply the gel meant seventeen remaining.
He replaced the bottle in his pocket and approached the room’s only window. The sash window was open a crack and the semi-transparent white drapes rippled in the breeze. Victor pushed them to one side and heaved open the window until it was high enough for him to bend over and step through on to the balcony outside.
SEVEN
The balcony was narrow and overlooked an alleyway four metres below that ran through the centre of the block. It was clean and tidy with no discarded refuse. Everything had been placed by diligent boutique owners and store workers in bins or boxes. The sounds of the city were muted and quiet. Victor stepped up on to the black iron railing that surrounded the balcony and used a palm to brace against the brickwork while he found his balance.
He extended his arms above his head. The balcony above was just out of reach of his fingertips. He lowered himself into a half-squat, then leapt straight up, catching hold of cold masonry with eight fingertips because it was too high to also catch with his thumbs. Without them, he lost 40 per cent of the strength of his forearms, but he pulled himself up with the remaining 60.
When his head had cleared the lip of the balcony, he released his left hand and shot it up to grab hold of one of the iron bars. He then did the same with his right hand and heaved himself up enough to get a foot on to the balcony edge. He brushed down his suit to get rid of dust and pollution.
The balcony was the same as that of the tailor’s below, but the window led to a private residence. Victor ducked down so as to reduce the chances of being seen by the two figures – a naked man and woman – moving about inside. They were paying too much attention to one another to care about what might be happening outside the window.
He waited anyway, because he still had more than fifteen minutes before the old tailor returned with his finished suit.
Nine minutes later the two figures in the apartment stumbled from the lounge and disappeared into a bedroom. Victor sidestepped to the far edge of the balcony. A metre further along the exterior wall was another window. This one was open a few inches.
Victor sat on the balcony railing and pivoted round. With one hand holding on to the railing he stretched out the other arm until he could grip the windowpane and slide it higher to create a larger opening. When it was high enough to fit through, he gripped the sill in one hand, released the railing, and swung himself across. He pulled himself up and into the bathroom.
Six minutes left. It was going to be tight.
The bathroom was humid from the shower. The floor was wet in places. Victor avoided the puddles and footprints and eased the door open.
He could hear grunts and the knocking of a headboard against a wall. Outside the bathroom door he found a pile of clothes on the same armchair he had used the previous afternoon.
In a pocket of a suit jacket he found the accountant’s smartphone.
It was locked, as expected, but Victor removed the SIM card and inserted it into a credit-card-sized scanner attached to a second-hand phone he had bought for cash that morning. He activated the app and waited while the scanner extracted all of the data from the SIM and copied it on to the empty SIM in his phone. The scanner had been supplied by Muir, his CIA handler.
In his freelance days he had worked with a range of brokers, most of whom he never met or learned their identity. It had been rare to work directly with a client. Both they and Victor preferred to use professional intermediaries who understood discretion and knew how to put the right people on the right job. At other times they would be associates of the client in some capacity. They might be individual free agents or members of intelligence agencies or executives of private security firms or sometimes board members of multinational corporations
with a cutesy brand image and beyond-ruthless business practices. In his earlier days he had worked for brokers and clients whom he knew, as they in return knew him, at least as well as anyone could. For years he had avoided any personal connection with his work, and it had helped keep him alive far longer than he had believed he would remain breathing. In recent times the majority of his work had come from individuals within the CIA, even though the wider organisation maintained a termination order for him. The arrangement was a good one, and not only for the intermittent donations to his bank account. His handlers kept him off the radar of the rest of the agency. That alone was worth maintaining the relationship. The jobs he received were infrequent and often dangerous, but that danger was offset by the lack of CIA contractors hunting him. They also paid well.
It was as good a business relationship as Victor could hope to have with anyone.
After a short pause the screen changed to denote the new SIM was now a clone of the accountant’s.
One of the perks of working for the CIA was access to such technology.
He removed the accountant’s SIM from the scanner and replaced it inside the smartphone he had taken it from. He slipped it back into the same pocket.
Four minutes remaining, if the tailor wasn’t faster than expected with the adjustments.
Victor crossed the lounge to the bookshelf and found cash placed between two historical fiction hardbacks.
He put some extra cash between the books to cover the cost of the broken extraction fan and exited the apartment the way he had come in. It sounded as if the accountant was almost finished.
