by Tom Wood
Lowering himself out of the window, he inched along the sill until he could stretch one hand across to grab hold of the balcony railing while he supported his weight with the other.
Less than a minute after his return to the fitting room the door opened and the old tailor came in.
‘All done,’ the tailor said as he hung up the suit. ‘And when I say all done what I really mean is the abomination is complete.’
Victor said, ‘I’ll need a tie as well.’
‘Let me guess,’ the tailor said with an exaggerated sigh, ‘something plain? Nothing with even the remotest hint of style? Something insufferably boring?’
Victor raised an eyebrow. ‘How did you know?’
EIGHT
Muir had supplied a lot of intelligence regarding Al-Waleed and the accountant, but what the CIA hadn’t been able to supply was the time and place of the meeting with the Turkish banker, Caglayan. That wouldn’t be arranged until the day of the meet, and with only a short amount of warning. The CIA, via the NSA, were more than capable of intercepting phone calls or emails or any other method of electronic communication, but Caglayan trusted no one, least of all a spoilt Saudi prince who donated money to terrorists to ease his conscience. The Turk would use a prepaid mobile phone purchased that day to contact the accountant, and insisted the accountant did the same. Then, only Caglayan and Al-Waleed himself would be present to make the drop off. The Turk would not tolerate the presence of the prince’s retinue.
It was almost impossible to intercept such communications, which was why Victor had needed to clone the accountant’s new SIM card. When Caglayan sent a message to the accountant stating the time and location for the meeting, Victor received the same message.
The dossier Muir had supplied on Caglayan contained almost as much intel as the one on the prince. Most of it was as inconsequential, but the salient facts were that the Turk was a sadistic, vengeful man suspected of the torture and murder of rivals and betrayers. He was the type who would respond to an attempt on his life with extreme violence. When both Caglayan and Al-Waleed were found dead with all the forensic evidence suggesting they had shot one another, the narrative would suggest a deal-gone-wrong between a terrorist sponsor and terrorist middleman. Muir was more than happy for an individual as unpleasant as Caglayan to be collateral damage in the prince’s assassination.
The meeting was to take place in the basement of a disused office building on the corner of a city block that was in the process of regeneration. The ugly decades-old concrete from the middle of the last century was being torn down and replaced with a sleeker, modern construction. The basement was accessible through the main building or via a side entrance that comprised a wooden gate and through it a doorway.
Victor approached the gate at nine p.m. as instructed in the original message. With little warning, he had not been able to conduct a proper reconnoitre of the area or plan an attack strategy. He would have to improvise.
The street outside the basement entrance was wide and empty. On the opposite side of the road was the rear of a large office building. It was a modern structure, five storeys high, with windows that did not open. Victor liked that. There would be no marksmen sitting out of sight behind high-powered rifles. But maybe someone was waiting on the roof. Victor could see no one, but the sky above was dark and the street below was well lit by street lamps. A sniper on the roof would be all but invisible.
Victor, meanwhile, would be exposed and vulnerable, though only for a short time, because the basement entrance was ten metres from an intersection. But it was still enough time for someone with a rifle to spot him, take aim, and shoot before he made it into the safety of the building.
The taxi arrived on time, pulling up outside the basement entrance as per his specific instructions. He was pleased to see the firm had sent a big people carrier – again as he had asked.
He turned the corner on to the street after a ten-count, imagining if there was a sniper overlooking they would have already settled behind their scope, reticle hovering over the taxi, ready to shoot whomever climbed out of the sliding doors.
Victor walked fast because he knew he would pass through the scope’s magnified viewfinder. His appearance would surprise any sniper, who would have to re-aim, by which time he would be through the door and out of sight.
The wood was old and warped and covered with cracked and flaking paint, but had a new magnetic locking mechanism activated with a keycard. The door had been left ajar.
He pushed it open and stepped through. No shot sounded. No searing pain consumed him.
Either the deception had worked, or there was no sniper to deceive. Prevention over cure.
On the far side of the entrance was an antechamber with a single flight of metal steps leading down to basement level and a trade elevator to lift heavy goods. A single light flickered on a moment after the door opened. He saw the motion detector high on one wall. The light fixture was hidden behind a bulbous shade that looked as ugly as it was out of place. The walls were breeze blocks covered in white gloss that had dirtied to almost grey. They looked as though they had never been cleaned. The ceiling soared above Victor’s head. A card reader to unlock the door glowed green. Insulated wires and pipes created a maze on the wall to his right, leading to a row of enclosed circuit breakers.
The taxi would leave after a few minutes when it was obvious the fare was a no-show. He felt guilty for wasting the driver’s time.
The steps were steep and narrow. Wooden handrails ran on either side of them, the varnish worn down in places to bare wood. At the bottom of the steps the entrance chamber narrowed and then opened out into a room that served as a junction for the two halves of the basement. A narrow-fronted elevator provided access to the main offices above ground. Adjacent to it was an even narrower staircase leading to the upper floors. Under the stairs was a door plastered with labels and signs warning of the danger of electrocution on the other side. Much of the floor was taken up with a haphazard pile of unused pallets, broken chairs and unwanted tables. On the far side he could see a door with fat copper pipes snaking into the wall next to it. No sign denoted the purpose of the room beyond, but Victor pictured a massive gas boiler system.
A set of glass double doors led to an area where the renovation work had been completed. A floor plan had been tacked to the left-hand door. He spent a moment memorising the image, noting the uneven walls and protrusions that created odd angles and areas that could be used as cover and concealment if necessary. The beige carpeting in the refurbished room was new and unmarked. Victor could detect the scent of fresh paint and cleaning chemicals. The air tasted metallic.
The main office space comprised two areas of similar size arranged in a rough L-shape. Half a dozen large desks were dotted about the first area, with room for maybe twice that number. There was also a small kitchenette, complete with sink, cupboards, refrigerator and coffee machine. A leather sofa sat before a coffee table nearby. Unlike the rest of the furnishings, the sofa appeared to have been there forever. The leather was worn and frayed, but still looked comfortable. Victor imagined stressed workers slumping on it in exasperation or taking a nap while everyone else was out to lunch. For all the dangers of his profession, being chained to a desk five days a week seemed a far worse kind of hell. It might prove even more dangerous too – at least he knew he would not miss when he pushed the muzzle of a pistol against his temple to end the misery.
No sign of Caglayan. No sign of the prince.
Victor backtracked and entered the second half of the basement, accessible through the other set of double doors. This half was in the process of being renovated. No floor plan had been fixed to the wall to show the layout, because that layout had yet to be finished. On the other side of the open doors were neat piles of building materials – cement, tools, piping, shelves and boxes of screws and nails. Opposite, leaning against one wall of an adjoining antechamber, was a huge mound of waste material that had been stripped out from the depth
s of the basement – insulation, dry wall, ceiling tiles and rolls of soiled carpet. Plastic hazard tape had been stretched across the pile and tied to pipes on either side to keep the whole lot from falling over.
The antechamber opened out to a corner of the basement with no light fixtures. It was illuminated by a free-standing lamp that struggled to push back the gloom. The area had no floor in places, the dark holes marked off by hazard tape, the weak light failing to reach the bottom of the foundations below. A cold draught found Victor’s ankles. Yellow-painted stepladders leaned against one wall next to a fire escape on the other side of the chequerboard floor.
Fluorescent strip lights ran along the ceiling of the central corridor, flickering into life as soon as Victor crept through the opening. Pipes and cables were fixed to the ceiling above them. The corridor was about three metres wide and twenty long, with several closed and open doors and doorways, some with plastic sheeting hanging before them to limit the transfer of dust and fumes, leading off to unused rooms yet to be furnished or areas that were little more than construction sites.
The corridor opened out on to a large area in a partial state of construction. As with the area at the other end of the antechamber there were no permanent light fixtures here. More free-standing lamps were spread out to light the space in a dim white glow. Victor’s shadow stretched out far behind him.
Holes in the floor were marked with tape. In some places plastic barriers provided temporary walls around areas that had no flooring at all. Pillars held up the ceiling, some covered with new dividing walls. Steel pipes and copper pipes ran from ceiling to floor in places. Replacement piping was stacked and laid out on the floor nearby, ready to be used to reroute the existing systems to free up more space. Plastic sheeting suspended from girders on the ceiling sealed off areas by their level of renovation.
No Caglayan or Al-Waleed here either. The whole basement was empty. Victor drew his handgun – an FN Five-seven – because he knew he’d walked straight into a trap.
A second later, the lights went out.
NINE
Victor was moving before the assassin appeared, knowing he was exposed and vulnerable to multiple points of entry. He threw himself to the floor as a shape moved in his peripheral vision, silhouetted by ambient light shining through the high windows. Average height, but slim and lithe and female.
He had no time to consider this uncommonality because suppressed automatic fire echoed as the shape swept a sub-machine gun his way.
A spray of bullets cracked masonry and pinged off steel pillars. The burst was short and controlled – a snapshot at his diving form, halted as soon as he had made it into cover.
He waited a beat to test the assassin’s intentions and to take a sample of her resolve. Would she hurry to catch him out while he was prone, or wait until he showed himself again?
The second option proved to be correct as he heard no footsteps. This enemy was patient – not one to act in haste and leave herself vulnerable.
In the darkness he had seen little other than her outline, but it had been enough to note she wore no thermal-imaging goggles.
He edged towards where she had appeared, creeping on his stomach. The floor was uneven. The concrete was cold. He detected the quiet crackle of plastic, his own exhales and the rustle of his clothes and scrape of his shoes on the floor. So close to the floor the near darkness hid him well but limited his line of sight. Victor rose on to one knee so he could see beyond the clusters of pipes and pillars and hanging wires to view the assassin’s previous firing point. Had she moved too or remained in cover? If she was good, she would have moved. She would know no position to be perfect, to be impregnable.
Victor swept with the gun, seeking a route the assassin might have taken to another firing position. He saw a wall of vertical pipes, and a scatter of sacks and crates that would have provided spots of cover between there and the original position. Victor would have taken that route, settling behind the pipes and finding a gap through which to fire.
He dropped just as rounds burned through the air above him.
He raised his gun to fire blind – not to hit, because he did not believe any measure of chance could direct a blind shot across twenty metres and send it between dense pipes capable of causing ricochets, but to convince the shooter he had such delusions.
In his head, Victor kept track of the rounds fired – one, then three, five – fourteen remaining in the magazine, with one in the chamber. Losing track meant running out of ammunition at the worst possible moment. People died that way. Victor knew this because he had made sure they did.
Then, after he had used up half the FN’s magazine to cement the deception, he leapt up, sprinted, dodged around the pillars, heading left, then right, taking a short zigzag until he had covered the empty ground, his heart rate soaring to send blood to his pumping limbs. Rounds chased him, slicing off wood and cutting through low-hanging cables as he ducked below them, but the pillars and darkness combined for near-perfect cover.
Victor turned and braced against the pillar, eyes fixed along the FN’s sights at the area to which the assassin had withdrawn. If she retreated Victor would spot her, but if she edged sideways, she could remain unseen in the crowd of crates and pipes and other obstacles. The pillars there provided a great deal of protection. Victor’s gaze turned to every swirling cloud of dust or echoing noise.
Rounds pinged off the pillar before him. He fought the instinct to duck or back away, eyes searching the darkness for the light or rippling gases from the suppressor.
Plastic sheeting shredded next to Victor’s arm. He twisted and backed away, responding to the distant muzzle flashes with shots of his own. A round sparked off a pillar and ricocheted through the shoulder pad of his jacket. He dropped low behind an unfinished wall to reload the pistol with his second magazine.
He rose up a fraction, still squatting low, and tried to locate his attacker. She wore black attire, which meant she was almost indistinguishable from the darkness behind her. Utilising the protection of the low wall, he fired a spread of rounds, spent cartridges bouncing and clinking off the wall, and dropped back behind its cover. The figure in black fired in return, the sub-machine gun’s suppressor reducing its sound and flash. Rounds sliced the air above Victor’s shoulder. He popped up to fire back, not risking staying up to get a good aim, but the missed shots struck near enough to persuade the assassin to retreat into better cover herself.
She fired as she moved, the burst of rounds hitting the unfinished wall protecting Victor. He used an arm to shield his eyes as dust swirled above his head and fragments of concrete rained down over him.
Another burst followed, and another, continuing the destruction, disintegrating concrete in a relentless barrage. When it stopped, Victor was covered in a layer of dust and rubble. He held his breath, unwilling to breathe – then the inevitable cough or sneeze would follow and give away his exact position.
He swept dust from his face and inched along the floor, on his back, moving in a straight line to maintain the concealment for as long as possible.
His body responded to danger like anyone else’s. Hormones were released. Instincts kicked in. Ancient man only needed to run away or stand his ground. Physiological responses prepared him for this. For Victor it was more complicated than that.
He breathed, deep and slow, filling his lungs with air between each deliberate exhale. The controlled breathing fought the autonomic nervous system, counteracting the adrenaline in his blood that sought to boost his heart rate to better supply his muscles with the oxygen and energy needed for effective fight or flight. The problem with the system was a high heart rate meant a reduction in fine motor skills. Ancient man didn’t need those to flee from a sabre-toothed tiger or pummel a rival. Ancient man had no cars to hotwire or locks to pick and guns to aim.
A round punched a hole in a nearby barrel and diesel trickled out. Victor cupped his hand beneath the flow. He smeared it over his face and arms and any area of ex
posed pale skin. It darkened him, but only a little, and the slick coating caught the light and made him more visible – at least until he gathered up handfuls of ash and dust to throw over the diesel. It was far from perfect camouflage, but it might take his enemy a second longer to spot him and that was all the time he would need.
He backed off until he reached one of the exterior walls and headed down the connecting corridor, intending to circle around and flank the woman. The corridor was narrow with awkward obstacles of rubble and an uneven cement floor covered in a layer of dirt and junk before it opened into a large room. Gleaming galvanised steel pillars supported the ceiling above Victor. Crates and pallets of building materials were piled in neat stacks or strewn in equal proportion. Spilled oil shone in the dim light, bright on sections of piping and uneven surfaces. He stalked, fast but controlled, rounding the obstacles and ducking low-hanging wires bowed by their own weight.
When he reached the previous area, he crept forward into the darkness and the shafts of ambient city light bisecting it. Dust and mould spores swirled through the light, not drifting in lazy patterns as they would if they had not been recently disturbed by a passing figure interrupting the flow of air.
His enemy was near.
He glimpsed a ripple of black in the darkness and lowered himself to one knee, waiting and listening. The ripple became a blur and he tracked ahead of it with the gun’s iron sights, but not squeezing the trigger, unwilling to give away his position on a shot that had only a small chance of hitting its mark.
He moved, fast and low, while the assassin ducked back into cover. When she reappeared, she had moved too and they exchanged fire, gunshots loud and echoing despite the suppressors, bullets clanging and clattering off metal and thumping into masonry. A ricochet made Victor back off. He turned side-on to reduce the width of his profile and reloaded the FN, slipping the three-quarters-empty mag into a pocket, not wanting to discard the few remaining rounds any more than he wanted his enemy to hear the magazine clattering on the ground.
