by Tom Wood
Deák pushed his hair back behind his ears while the female bartender poured him a large Scotch on the rocks. He then fanned out the thick wad of his winnings as though he was a magician performing a card trick. He stepped back from the bar and adjusted his footing to make sure everyone in the room could see his wealth and success.
The routine had the desired effect. Other patrons couldn’t fail to notice. The wealthy high rollers, cooling their heels between trips to the baccarat table, looked on with measurable disdain. The unsuccessful, using the last of their money to wash away the bitter taste of defeat, gazed at Deák with palatable loathing and envy. The card sharps, taking a break so the pit boss didn’t notice their uncharacteristic run of luck, willed the Hungarian to try his hand on the poker tables so they might relieve him of his burdensome weight of cash. Two hookers, squeezed into cocktail dresses as small as bathing suits and looking for work, readied themselves to help Deák celebrate his good fortune.
Victor found a spot at the bar and shared a raise of eyebrows at Deák’s lack of class with an elderly couple in tailored evening wear, sitting on stools before a pair of tall multicoloured cocktails. The watcher with the brawler’s nose stood a few feet away.
Deák was making an exaggerated play of struggling to control the sizeable fan of euros, which was probably harder to deal with than he’d expected, but finding this out gave him an even greater opportunity to pose. Only four people paid Deák’s routine little or no attention. Victor and the squat Turk or Armenian, whose focus on Deák had nothing to do with his success at the roulette wheel, the female bartender, who had to witness such ridiculous displays on a regular basis, and a man sitting on his own at a corner table, whose gaze momentarily flicked in the Hungarian’s direction but whose expression showed no change.
That man caused Victor’s threat radar to announce a warning.
CHAPTER 6
The first tell was the man’s position. It was an excellent one. Victor liked corners. He liked two solid walls converging behind him and extending out into his peripheral vision, not only guarding his back and flanks but simultaneously enabling him to watch a room without having to turn his head and reveal that watchfulness. Had it not been occupied Victor would have elected to sit there. The two walls extended nine and ten feet respectively before there was anything that interrupted line of sight – a booth to the man’s left, to the right a short corridor that led to the restrooms. The far corner gave the man the best possible field of vision of the room’s open space and provided a perfect uninterrupted view of the entranceway. There were several booths where the man could not see into, but no one could enter or leave the bar without his knowledge.
Sitting alone in a corner could have been for entirely innocent reasons, but the second tell was the man’s appearance. He was approximately five feet eleven inches tall, but height alone revealed nothing. His build had more significance. His shoulders weren’t broad, but they weren’t narrow either. His arms weren’t thick, but they weren’t thin. Most people would describe him as of an average size. But his face was gaunt. The cheekbones were prominent, and his jaw, although weak in bone structure, was clearly defined. He may have been of average size, but his percentage of body fat was minute. And a man of a regular build with such a low proportion of fat carried a lot of muscle. He was dressed in a navy blazer over a charcoal sweater and black trousers. His clothes, although of high quality, were slightly too big for his frame, which both aided faster movement and disguised the physique beneath. As did Victor’s own suit.
Spending a significant portion of the week taking care of himself while not feeling the need to show off that fact was not in itself indicative of ulterior motives, except the third and most important tell was the man’s demeanour. Deák’s lengthy and gratuitous performance with the fan of euros had caused the rest of the bar’s patrons to have a good look, either in disdain, envy, amusement or opportunism. The man in the corner had barely paid any attention. He was uninterested in Deák’s theatrics. He was similarly uninterested in the shapely young prostitutes looking for business. He neither had the seething expression of a man who couldn’t afford to lose half as much as he had nor the easy air of someone having a good time. He wasn’t bored. His face was neutral and unreadable, but clearly he hadn’t randomly picked a casino bar in which to sit alone in the corner.
If he wasn’t a gambler he could be plainclothes security, in the bar to listen out for scams being plotted or to watch out for the disgruntled drinking enough to metamorphose into troublemakers. If so then Victor would have to be aware of him, if not concerned. Victor’s action on Deák was strictly surveillance, and if he continued to be discreet then there would be little for the man in the corner to witness. But if he wasn’t a member of security, the list of probable alternatives was decisively small, and in Victor’s line of work a potential threat was a definite threat until proven otherwise.
Eventually Deák managed to shake out a bill for the female bartender to slide off the bar. She did a good job of hiding her impatience. A blonde hooker, quicker to ditch her less obviously affluent mark than her brunette counterpart, got to him first. She shared a look of friendly rivalry with the brunette. There were no hard feelings. The brunette no doubt showed her fair share of speed on other nights.
The squat brawler was next to be served, identifying himself as a Turk by his accent when he ordered a bottle of beer. He drummed his fingers on the bar’s surface and tried, badly, to look incognito.
When the female bartender turned Victor’s way, he said, ‘I’ll just have an iced water, thank you.’
When she returned with the water, she said, ‘I made it a double. No extra charge.’
Victor just about managed to limit his smile. He left an appreciative tip and settled onto a stool where he could use his peripheral vision to watch Deák and the Turk with the flat nose. Deák chatted to the blonde, who was as good an actress as she was attractive. Regardless of how much her company cost him, Deák would part ways believing she had been as enamoured with him as he was with her.
The man in the corner was out of Victor’s line of sight, but from his seat at the bar Victor would know if he walked past to reach the entranceway. While he didn’t, Victor knew he was sitting in the corner without having to confirm it visually. He judged it too great a risk to observe the man directly. Someone trying so hard to look as if he wasn’t paying attention to anyone would be attuned to attempts at surveillance, especially if the charade of neutrality was for Victor’s benefit.
His list of enemies was extensive. He’d been found before. He could be again, even if the odds were against it. He’d been in Berlin less than a day. He’d followed Deák into the casino less than three hours ago. The time in which to track him down was minimal, but he had to treat the man as a direct threat or risk fatally underestimating any potential danger.
He could rule out any relationship between the man in the corner and the local crew. The Turk had shown no stealth in his communications with the tall guy with the slicked receding hair and the older boss. There had been no interaction between the Turk and the man in the corner.
Victor sipped his water and considered. The situation had become exponentially more complex. His task had been a simple one – follow Deák so as to discover where Adorján Farkas would be staying when he arrived in a week’s time. Now, there was a three-man team waiting to kill Deák and an unaffiliated lone professional of some sort in the same location for unspecified reasons.
Victor didn’t believe in coincidences unless they could be proved beyond doubt. He couldn’t afford to. Not when an error in judgment could mean a subsonic hollow-point rattling around inside his skull.
The female bartender passed Victor on her way to fix a martini for one of the high rollers and asked, ‘How’s that water?’
‘Wet. Cold. The best I’ve ever had.’
She smiled as she poured the cocktail from the chrome shaker.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Anika.’
She smiled back at him a little shyly, picking up on his tone, and excused herself to serve another customer. She hadn’t asked for his name because she didn’t want to give him any further encouragement. She probably had to discourage patrons several times a night. Anika had a lithe, athletic figure and a pretty face that lit up when she smiled. Her skin had an appealing dusky tone too dark for a pure German heritage. Her brown eyes were big and bright and her honey hair was smooth and glossy but not her natural colour. Black was just starting to show at the roots. It was pulled back into a practical ponytail and her make-up was minimal; both no doubt in an attempt to reduce the amount of times men asked her name.
Victor was glad she thought he was hitting on her. He wanted the man in the corner to think the same. While he thought Victor was in the bar to pick up the bartender he wouldn’t be thinking about why else Victor could be there.
Deák had been in the room for twenty minutes when he excused himself from the blonde’s company and headed to the restroom. Victor watched him the whole way, as might anyone who was bored and had witnessed the fan of cash, and as Deák disappeared into the corridor, Victor used the cover of looking away to let his gaze momentarily pass over the man in the corner. He was still there, still pretending to be passing the time, but like Victor his eyes had followed Deák – maybe significant, maybe not – and were now returning to settle on the rest of the bar.
They met with Victor’s.
It was for a split second, a brief moment of chance, but in that instance Victor saw through the illusion of neutrality to the measured watchfulness and calculating intellect that lay beyond. What the man saw in return, Victor didn’t know. He maintained his act of insignificance. He was just a gambler quenching his thirst and hoping to get the bartender’s number.
The Turk turned his whole body to watch Deák head to the men’s room, even stepping away from the bar to maintain his line of sight for as long as possible, short of following him inside. Victor could see the guy debating with himself whether to do just that, but in the end he managed some measure of self-control and remained at the bar. He took out his phone to send an update to his companions.
Victor took a sip of water. To his right was one third of a team eager to kill Deák as soon as it was feasible. To his left was a man whose motives were not discernible, yet Victor could feel the danger radiating from him.
The squat brawler finished his beer and asked for another. He was anxious and drinking fast because watching Deák by himself in the bar hadn’t been part of the plan, and now Deák was out of his sight. One bottle of beer wouldn’t have much of an effect on a guy that solid, but if he drank subsequent bottles as fast that might put enough alcohol in his bloodstream to benefit Victor later on.
Reflected shapes rippled on bottles of liquor behind the bar.
The man from the corner approached and put down his empty glass two feet from where Victor sat. The man kept his gaze forward, patiently waiting for his turn to be served, and ordered a Coke from Anika. He spoke in German, but had a foreign accent. He didn’t say enough words for Victor to identify it, but it sounded as if he spoke Russian more often than not.
He said, ‘Are you having a good night?’
CHAPTER 7
The man spoke while looking ahead at the wall behind the bar which was lined with bottles of spirits and liqueurs standing on shelves that almost reached the ceiling. It took Victor a second to realise he was the recipient of the question.
‘Up and down,’ Victor answered.
‘Mostly up,’ came the reply as the man turned to face him. ‘From what I saw of you on the blackjack table.’
Victor did his best not to show his surprise. He hadn’t seen the man on the casino floor. It could be a bluff, hoping to draw a reaction.
Victor shrugged. ‘My luck seems to be holding.’
Now the man was close Victor saw the flecks of white in the neat brown hair above the ears. His skin was almost colourless over the gaunt face, with fine lines across the forehead and around the eyes. His eyebrows were thin and jet black. He’d shaved today but the dark stubble had resurfaced so that his cheeks, upper lip and chin were as grey as graphite. His eyes were small and the irises pale green.
The man nodded slowly and considered Victor’s response for a long moment. Then asked, ‘So you are someone who believes in luck?’
‘Of course,’ Victor lied.
The man with green eyes nodded again, as if Victor had confirmed something of greater significance, and said, ‘I find it a difficult concept to accept. How can anything in this existence be the result of pure random chance? You roll a die and it comes up a one. You roll again and it is a six. You can’t control which number is rolled so you call it luck. Yet if you roll that die six thousand times you will roll one thousand sixes and one thousand ones and a thousand of every other number. More or less. It is probability. It is causality. It is the only outcome. So it cannot be luck, can it?’
Victor revised his deduction on the man’s accent. He spoke German as would someone would who had Russian as a first language, but Victor didn’t believe the man was from the federation itself. The accent was from one of the states east of the Black Sea. Most likely Georgia, Chechnya, or perhaps from one of the many –stans in that region.
‘Maybe not,’ Victor said in answer to the man’s question, ‘but on a six-sided die the six is on the opposite side to the one. And that side has the least number of dots carved out. So it is fractionally heavier than any other side and gravity will ensure it comes to rest on the table surface more than any other. Therefore it will roll marginally more sixes than other numbers.’
The man nodded. ‘Then we are in agreement that it has nothing to do with luck.’
Anika returned with his Coke. He didn’t thank her. He left no tip. He paid with his right hand, took the change with his right hand, and picked up the drink with his right hand.
‘This has been both interesting and enlightening,’ the man with green eyes said before he returned to the corner.
The conversation could have been nothing more than small talk, but it could also have been a ruse to test out his suspicions on Victor. In the same way Victor had noted the man as someone who didn’t belong, he could have been similarly noted. Although he hadn’t been sitting in a corner to attract that first level of scrutiny.
Victor opened up the encrypted internet feature on his phone to log on to the secure email account he used to deal with his CIA employer. Two separate parties potentially interested in Deák or Farkas warranted the risk of communicating with someone he didn’t trust. And Victor hadn’t completely dismissed the possibility that the man with green eyes was there for him. How his employer responded could prove crucial.
He composed a message:
Observed suspected professional in Berlin, possibly interested in Deák and/or Farkas. Five feet eleven inches tall. Two hundred pounds. Approximately forty years old. Right-handed. Brown hair. Green eyes. Not German. Speaks Russian. Likely from east of the Black Sea. Possibly Georgian or Chechen. Do either Farkas or Deák have any enemies beyond mob rivals that I should know about?
Victor tapped send.
When Deák returned from the restrooms he was only halfway through redoing his belt, but finally managed to get the buckle centred by the time he reached his drink. He whispered something to the blonde, who giggled as though she’d regressed a decade in age. He ordered another Scotch for himself and a glass of rosé for her.
Victor wasn’t sure how long he would have to wait to receive a response from his employer. It was still before six p.m. in Virginia, so there was a good chance he would get one before Deák left. There was a distinct possibility any reply would tell him nothing based on what little information he’d been able to give, but it might tell him everything. He would have liked to have sent a photo along with the description, but even though the camer
a on the phone wouldn’t flash or otherwise give away that Victor was taking a picture, the man in the corner would notice a phone being angled towards him.
With his new Scotch in hand Deák led the blonde to a booth out of Victor’s field of view. Normally, he would have waited a moment and made a subtle adjustment to his seating position so as to keep Deák in his peripheral vision, but the man in the corner would surely notice. Whatever the reason for the man’s presence, Victor didn’t want to reveal his own if there was still a chance the man hadn’t yet worked it out.
The squat Turk with the flat nose ran a palm over his curly hair and changed positions, taking a seat at a small table in the centre of the room so he could keep Deák in view. Deák was too far away to create any meaningful reflection on the bottles behind the bar, but the Turk was close enough. Victor didn’t need to watch Deák when the Turk’s reaction would tell him everything he needed to know.
It had been forty minutes since Victor had sent the message to his employer when the phone in his pocket vibrated to inform him he’d received a reply. The Turk was still at his stool, which meant Deák was still in the booth with the blonde.
The email read:
That description matches that of a Chechen killer Interpol believes to be in Germany. He’s known as Ishmael Basayev. He’s forty-two years old, a former GRU operative with a long list of high profile freelance hits on his résumé. Basayev is believed to be in the employ of a warlord/people trafficker in Grozny and now works exclusively for that network. Interpol have been trying to track down Basayev for years, but he shares your gift for anonymity so no photo is available. Rumor has it that Basayev is hunting for a thief who stole from his boss. No ID on the thief so cannot confirm if it is Deák or Farkas, but Farkas’ organization is involved in people trafficking so I don’t like the coincidence. Basayev or not, your boy must not interfere with our objective.
