Hit List

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Terry followed her on foot?’

  ‘No, he’d hired another car this afternoon. Said he’ll call in as soon as he’s got anything to report.’

  Eve nodded and punched out a number on her mobile. ‘Why don’t you take a shower and change?’ she suggested to Slater.

  Slater agreed gratefully. The edges of the room were beginning to blur. Fishing the Stechkin and the Tokarev from his pockets he dropped them on the bed next to Leon. ‘From Serbia, with love.’

  Leon looked down at the heavy automatics. ‘This is not fashionable weaponry,’ he observed.

  ‘These guys have fairly old-fashioned values,’ said Slater.

  For ten full minutes he stood beneath the power-shower in Leon’s room, letting the hot water blast away the sweat and fear of the day.

  He returned, smartly dressed, to find a pot of freshly brewed coffee waiting on a tray. Leon had disappeared.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Eve asked, cautiously.

  ‘Better,’ said Slater.

  ‘Up to keeping going?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Eve looked at Chris, and then back at Slater. ‘The position is this. I’ve just been talking to Andreas at the Inter-Lux and he needs back-up for tomorrow morning. Two people. The problem is there’s only one room free there – and that’s a double. Now the ideal arrangement is that Chris or I go with Leon or Terry and let you recharge your batteries. The trouble is – we’ve lost Terry for the time being and we’re pretty sure that a mixed-race or two-woman couple would stick out. The staff would remember us and it’s very important that that doesn’t happen. So, basically’ – she folded her arms across her chest — ‘it’s you and me again. Up for it?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Slater.

  ELEVEN

  ‘So, where are we going for our week of passion?’ Slater asked, pulling out into the fast lane to overtake a line of slow-moving trucks.

  ‘Better make it somewhere boring,’ said Eve. ‘How about London?’

  ‘Why not Venice?’ suggested Slater. ‘Lovers always go to Venice.’

  ‘Maybe, but that wouldn’t explain why we were taking an eleven-stone trunk with us. My suggestion is that Neil Clissold and Eve Benbow are two single English people, working in Paris, who have come together as a result of a shared love of old books. As we’re going to spend a few days together in London, we’re taking a trunkful of books back with us.’

  ‘So where did we meet?’

  ‘At the flea-market, let’s say. At the Porte de Clignancourt.’

  ‘So what were we buying?’

  ‘You were buying, let’s see, books about Indochina, perhaps – and the battle of Dien Bien Phu. I was after, um . . .’

  ‘An illustrated guide to old rose varieties?’ suggested Slater.

  ‘That would be nice,’ said Eve. ‘What made you think of that?’

  ‘I used to spend school holidays with my mother’s sister. She had a big book, all in French, about roses.’

  ‘OK. So what happened? How did we actually make contact?’

  ‘You asked me in English to pass you a book from a pile. I asked how you knew I was English, you told me the French don’t wear Clarks desert boots. We had dinner together that night at . . . Fuck off!’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘No, not you. That guy flashing at me.’

  ‘Well, cool it. We don’t want anyone taking our number. Where were we?’

  ‘Deciding where to have dinner.’

  ‘We ate at a brasserie on the lie St Louis. A place where all the rugby supporters go.’

  ‘OK, and it was deafening. There had been an international, France had won, and we had to shout at each other. We drank too much Alsatian beer and ate too much pork.’

  ‘Pig is definitely the theme of the day, isn’t it?’

  ‘It does seem to be,’ Slater agreed. ‘How much further, do you reckon?’

  ‘Well, the last sign said Aéroport Charles de Gaulle ten kilometres, and according to Andreas the hotel itself is two kilometres from the airport, and signposted.’

  Dusk was falling when they finally pulled up at the front entrance to the Inter-Lux. The hotel was vast, spotlit, and American-styled, and while two porters struggled inside with the heavy trunk a driver relieved Slater of the keys to the Peugeot. When men like Fanon-Khayat went to ground, he mused, they did so in comfort.

  Arm in arm, he and Eve sauntered through the lavishly appointed hotel entrance and checked in under the names in their false passports. In an alcove, apparently reading a tourist brochure, sat Andreas, and when they had been given their room-key, their tour of the lobby’s amenities and luxury concession-booths took them straight past him.

  ‘Room nine thirty-three,’ murmured Eve. ‘Give it ten minutes.’

  They made a leisurely progress to the lifts. The trunk reached their room before they did, and Slater handed the waiting porters a hundred francs each. Given the dead weight of the thing he reckoned they’d earned it.

  Parting the curtains, Slater looked out over several smaller hotels, the still-busy motorway and the lights of the airport complex. He was no longer feeling tired, and in some curious way the day’s events seemed to belong to another time-frame. He felt razor-sharp – as alert as he’d ever been. Part of him knew that this feeling was false and a symptom of stress-fatigue; part of him didn’t care.

  Andreas was business-like. ‘Fanon-Khayat’s in his room on the fourth floor. Room four-twenty-seven. Hasn’t come out since he checked in this afternoon. Given that this is an airport hotel, though, I shouldn’t think that anyone’s surprised at guests keeping odd hours. How are we doing for weapons?’

  ‘I’ve got the nine-mil Glock and ammunition,’ said Eve. ‘We thought it would lessen the risk of compromise if we didn’t bring more than one firearm. What do you reckon the options are? Would he open the door if one of us knocked?’

  ‘He doesn’t know that I followed him here,’ said Andreas, ‘but I think we have to assume that an unexplained knock would spook him. He’s got a “Do not Disturb” sign on his door, and it’s a good bet that he’s armed.’

  ‘Can we pick his lock?’ asked Slater.

  ‘He’s right in the middle of a corridor,’ said Andreas. ‘And the locks, as you’ve seen, are those plastic card-locks. We could get in if we had a programmer and a blank card, but . . .’

  ‘The room-staff have master-keys, though,’ Eve cut in. ‘Could we steal one?’

  ‘Possible,’ agreed Andreas. ‘But hard to do without the staff-member noticing. I’ve checked the cleaners out: they have the key-cards on little chains attached to their belt-loops or round their necks.’

  ‘Fire-alarm?’ suggested Eve. ‘Let it off, rush in and take him out in all the confusion?’

  ‘There’d be hotel-staff checking in all the rooms,’ said Andreas. ‘I thought of the fire-alarm, but we’d never be able to get rid of the body in time. It’s a last resort, I agree, but—’

  ‘As we said, there must be people checking in and out at all hours,’ Slater said. ‘So the rooms must need to be made up at all hours. So there must be cleaners here at all hours.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Eve said. ‘I’m going straight down. Four-twenty-seven did you say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  When she had gone, Andreas turned to Slater. ‘You look completely spaced out,’ he grinned, shaking his head. ‘I got the basic story from the OP team. How you were almost made into pork scratchings and how Eve blew the bad boys away with her little ceramic Glock.’

  ‘I’ve never, ever been so glad to see anyone in my life,’ said Slater. ‘I was just about to cut my wrists with the knife Chris gave me. That farmyard was the most sinister place I’ve ever been, and that includes Iraq.’

  ‘Eve’s pretty resourceful,’ Andreas agreed. ‘I’d put money on her getting into that room within five minutes.’

  It was closer to ten minutes, but eventually Eve rang Andreas’s mobile. She was whispering
.

  ‘I’m in his bathroom. Fanon-Khayat’s asleep. Can you guys come down? The door’s on the latch.’

  They took the lift down, and Andreas led Slater to Room 427. They could hear Fanon-Khayat’s snores from the deserted corridor, and silently they let themselves in and relocked the door. On the bed, in a dressing gown, Fanon-Khayat lay open-mouthed. Pills strewed the bedside table and the curtains had been drawn on the gathering dusk. On the TV screen the porn channel was playing, and a woman in a St Trinian’s style schoolgirl costume was being pensively buggered by a man in a cowboy hat. Something about the cowboy looked strangely familiar to Slater.

  At the other end of the room, Eve stood by the open bathroom door.

  ‘With the pillow?’ Slater whispered.

  She nodded.

  It was over fast. Slater held Fanon-Khayat down, while Andreas stifled him with the down-filled pillow. As the Lebanese weakly kicked and bucked beneath him, Slater concentrated on trying to remember where he had seen the cowboy before. Concentrated on distancing himself from the present moment, the present killing.

  But without success. He was unable to remember where he’d seen the cowboy before, and he was unable to escape the moment. Eventually Fanon-Khayat was still, and Andreas lifted the pillow.

  ‘Thanks, guys,’ Eve said, checking the dead man’s wrist for a pulse as if she were a nurse, finding none, and replacing it on his chest. ‘I was pretty sure bringing you in would be better than my shooting him and making a mess of the sheets and walls and so on.’

  ‘We’ve got a bit of time,’ Slater said. ‘He won’t have ordered any room-service if he was asleep. And the sign on the door will keep people away. How did you get in here, in the end?’

  ‘Well,’ she smiled. ‘I found a nice Portuguese lady cleaning a room out in the next corridor, and asked her what time the shops in the lobby shut. Told her I’d seen a rather nice Bottega Veneta bag I fancied. She said she thought the boutiques were still open, and I nipped down and bought the bag.’

  ‘That’s it?’ asked Andreas, indicating a smart creation in woven leather.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Eve. ‘A snip at £450, give or take a quid or twenty. I thought it might be nice for Debbie – a little something from Paris at the taxpayers’ expense.’

  ‘What about Ray?’ asked Andreas. ‘We can’t not get him a present. That would be discriminatory.’

  ‘Do you want to hear the rest?’ asked Eve.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Andreas. ‘Go on.’

  ‘When I came back, I showed the housemaid the bag. She said it was terrible how expensive things were in the lobby – that they were a tenth of the price in the supermarkets, and so on. I then told her I’d done something really silly, that I’d left my key inside my room, and that my husband was asleep and I didn’t want to wake him – he tended to be a bit grumpy first thing, you know how men are – so could she very sweetly let me in with her pass key? Well, she was fine about it – I could see her calculating that someone who’d just spent over four thousand francs on a handbag was pretty unlikely to be a sneak-thief – and old Fanon-Khayat here was snoring away so loud you could hear him half-way down the corridor. So she let me in with her key, and voilà, we parted the best of friends.’

  ‘And she’s not going to mention this to anyone?’ asked Andreas.

  ‘Why should she? Stuff like this must happen all the time – stupid rich people forgetting their keys. Just to prove how stupid and rich I was I gave her a five-hundred-franc note. She won’t mention it. Anyway, there I was, there he was, and the rest you know. Firewall accomplished.’

  The three of them set to work, collecting everything connected to the dead man and placing it on the bed. It didn’t take long – he hadn’t even brought a change of clothes. He had, however, brought his passport, driving licence, phone, credit cards and the silenced Sig Sauer, all of which Andreas now pocketed. For the next twenty-four hours he was going to occupy the hotel as Antoine Fanon-Khayat – it was for this reason that he had not booked himself into the hotel when he arrived.

  The dead man had brought one other thing, which Slater found in the breast pocket of a jacket slung over a chair. A compact disc, which Eve immediately pocketed.

  ‘Mission accomplished?’ Slater asked her.

  ‘Well, there’s a bit of tidying up to do, but basically yes. As soon as we’ve packed this guy away we can go down to the restaurant and have a good meal. Would you two nip upstairs and get the trunk?’

  Slater nodded, and he and Andreas took the lift to the ninth floor. Inside his and Eve’s room, Slater unlocked the trunk. Inside were two sleeping bags and a large double duvet. From each of the sleeping bags he dragged a twenty-litre plastic jerrycan of water.

  ‘Heavy in, heavy out, eh?’ said Andreas.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Slater, lugging the jerrycans towards the bath. ‘It would look a bit odd if our trunk somehow put on eleven stones in weight overnight. If anyone asks me and Eve about it we’re book collectors. Book collectors having a passionate sexual affair.’

  ‘When did you last read a proper book?’ smiled Andreas.

  ‘I’m reading one by Salman Rushdie right now,’ said Slater.

  ‘Fuck off!’ said Andreas.

  The water gurgled from the jerrycans and splashed into the bath. ‘Just check, would you, if Leon remembered to put in a knife,’ said Slater. ‘We’ll need to hack these up to make room for Fanon-Khayat.’

  ‘He remembered,’ said Andreas, tossing a Stanley knife on to the bed. ‘He’s Mr Forward Planning, is Leon. He also knows Paris like the back of his hand, which is useful when you need trunks and jerrycans at six o’clock on a Saturday evening.’

  Finally they were ready.

  ‘You call the lift and hold it open,’ said Slater. ‘I’ll get the trunk over there.’

  They had to let three lifts go but eventually an empty one arrived, and they got the trunk down to room 427 unobserved. Both Slater and Andreas were conscious that porters, rather than guests, hauled the luggage in five-star hotels.

  As Eve and Andreas emptied the trunk, Slater started to manhandle the dead man into the smaller of the two sleeping-bags. With Andreas’s help, he then manoeuvred the first sleeping-bag into the second, stuffed the hacked up pieces of plastic jerrycan in after it, and crammed the mummy-like result into the trunk. With the duvet tightly packed around the body so as to allow no shifting when the trunk was carried, the lid was then forced shut.

  Experimentally, Slater and Andreas then lifted an end each. The trunk was heavy, but not noticeably heavier than when it had been carried into the hotel. In the unlikely event of the same porters carrying it out again, no difference would be detectable. Nor, even when they tilted the trunk sharply, did the body shift.

  ‘I think,’ said Andreas, ‘we’re cooking with gas.’

  ‘Simon!’ said Slater, remembering.

  The others stared at him.

  ‘Snaking the schoolgirl on the TV when we first came in. The guy in the cowboy hat. His name’s Simon. He did the same to a woman I used to guard.’

  ‘Not Grace Litvinoff, by any chance?’ asked Eve drily. ‘I believe she’s quite keen on the odd bit of rough.’

  It was Slater’s turn to stare.

  Eve smiled sweetly. ‘If the cowboy hat fits,’ she said, ‘wear it!’

  They made it back to the ninth floor room without incident. Leon had taken care to buy them a trunk with comfortable carrying handles, and Slater and Andreas were able to carry it to the lift as if it weighed much less than Fanon-Khayat’s eleven and a half stone. In the event, no one took any notice of them, and the trunk was soon ritually laid on the floor at the end of the bed.

  The atmosphere, Slater thought, was a weird one. In the Regiment, after a terrorist kill or a successful contact, they’d all pile into the bar and get hammered. Right now, however, the three of them were planning to celebrate a day of quite extreme violence with a quiet dinner.

  Eve had called the
back-up team to report that Fanon-Khayat was down and the disc recovered. Terry, she discovered from Chris, had followed Branca Fanon-Khayat.

  Although Branca gave a convincing impression of being a shopaholic trophy wife, Leon and Chris had agreed that it was essential to keep tabs on her. How would she react when her husband’s bodyguards failed to reappear? Would she seek the help of the French police or security services? Would she attempt to contact associates of her husband’s? Anything was possible.

  In fact, Terry had discovered, Branca had gone to a house in the eleventh arrondissement, where a vast party was under way. The host was a Franco-Tunisian rap star called Gil Dazat, the music was loud, and the crowd – chic, louche and international – was spilling out into the street. Terry had simply climbed the stairs and joined in. Branca was there on the arm of an expensively dressed young man whom Terry quickly identified as the resident drug-dealer. Business was brisk and quite openly conducted, and from the way that the guests greeted them it was clear that the dealer and Branca were an established couple. Terry had reported his intention of staying at the party in order to ID the young man – it was the kind of information that could well come in useful.

  What amazed Slater was Branca’s sang-froid. On the evening of a day in which she and her husband had been held at gunpoint by the trigger-man of a hostile government – an event that had so traumatised her husband that he had gone into hiding – she had elected to dress up and go out on the town with her underworld boyfriend. In a way, he thought, you had to take off your hat to the girl. Having lived through the bombing of Belgrade, Branca Fanon-Khayat knew how to prioritise. Drink, dance, for tomorrow we die . . .

  He said as much to Andreas and Eve over the langoustine and baby octopus salad at dinner. Andreas had checked Fanon-Khayat’s phone and found no text or voice messages. Unless the arms-dealer had cleared his phone earlier, Branca hadn’t attempted to ring him.

  ‘I’d love to know what she’s wearing tonight,’ said Eve. ‘That chiffon coat this morning was just too much.’

  ‘Pity she had to wear all that stuff underneath,’ said Andreas. ‘Just the coat would have looked better.’