by Will Jordan
The side street was mostly used as a service entrance for the line of shops and restaurants that backed onto it. Flanked by three-storey buildings on both sides, it was nearly always in shadow. The road itself was littered with big steel bins set beside the rear doors of kitchens and other work places, many overflowing with plastic bags.
The place reeked of spoiled food. Still, it was a perfect place for a takedown. The unsavoury odours meant that few pedestrians came this way, the shops and restaurants were still closed, and the shadows and big steel bins meant that he would be hidden from prying eyes on the main road. Not that he expected anyone to be passing so early in the day anyway.
As Giroux approached the corner, his hand reached inside his jacket and gripped the moulded handle of the police baton hidden within. It was an old-fashioned wooden weapon, the kind that had long since been superseded by the lightweight telescopic night sticks used by today’s police officers. But it was simple and reliable, and he knew from experience that a good solid blow to the base of the skull would drop a man like a brick. And if that failed, he also had a knife concealed in a sheath at the small of his back.
Some men in his profession carried guns, but what was the point? Guns were expensive, not always reliable, and needed to be carefully looked after. Most importantly, guns made noise, and noise attracted attention. Takedowns were supposed to be quick and quiet, and in that regard he’d yet to find a better tool than this sturdy wooden baton.
He was almost there now. He removed the baton from his coat pocket and pushed it up into his sleeve so that it was hidden from casual view. His target wouldn’t even know what had hit him. He took a deep breath, ready for another profitable day.
He never expected what happened next.
Rounding the corner, he suddenly found himself face to face with his target. The man was just standing there, hands by his sides, staring at him with those vivid green eyes.
‘Why are you following me?’ he demanded, speaking in accented but perfectly understandable French.
Shit.
Giroux had been wrong. This man wasn’t as blissfully unaware as he’d thought. Maybe he’d heard something during the approach, maybe he had noticed him before and grown suspicious of his reappearance today. Either way, he had lost the element of surprise. But Giroux still had the baton, his opponent was unarmed, and he was already psyched up for what he was about to do.
No way was he losing this contract.
Reacting instinctively, he loosened his grip on the baton, allowing it to fall down into his hand. At the same moment, he launched himself forward, swinging the club around to strike his opponent a sharp, vicious blow across the jaw. Perhaps this takedown wouldn’t be as quick or clean as he’d planned, but the end result would be the same.
But the man was no longer there. Moving with frightening speed, he had ducked aside just as Giroux swung, throwing him off balance. He tried to adjust his posture for another swing, but even as he did so he felt the baton yanked out of his hand. Turning right to face his opponent once more, he was just in time to see a clenched fist coming right at him.
There was a sickening crunch and an explosion of white light as the punch connected. The impact sent Giroux, already off balance, sprawling on the ground in a heap, stars flashing across his vision and blood streaming from a broken nose. He had landed in a pool of fetid water, strewn with discarded trash. Within moments it had soaked into his jeans and jacket.
Snorting and coughing the blood out of his throat, tears streaming from his eyes, Giroux looked up at the man who only moments before had seemed like such an easy mark. He was standing a few yards away, looking as calm and relaxed as when he’d strolled out of the bakery.
This was a new and very unwelcome experience. Giroux was no stranger to violence, but he was used to inflicting it, not receiving it. He was used to ambushing people, catching them unawares and subduing them before they knew what was happening. He wasn’t used to his targets fighting back. But this one was.
Anger and fear flared up in him, the former magnified by the latter. He wasn’t used to being afraid of people, and he didn’t like it.
Clenching his teeth, he scrambled to his feet and reached for the knife at his back.
‘You’ve already made one mistake today,’ his enemy warned. ‘Don’t make another.’
But Giroux wasn’t hearing him. His hand went for the knife, fingers closing around the haft. Just as he yanked it out and swiped in a wide arc to catch his opponent across the midriff, the man took a step backward, swung the police baton down and knocked the blade right out of his hand, breaking a couple of Giroux’s fingers in the process.
Giroux had no time to register the injury. Before he could recover, his opponent closed in, placed one foot behind his and gave him a single powerful shove in the middle of his chest. He tripped and went down a second time, hitting his head on the rough cobbled road as he fell.
A moment later, he gasped as he felt the blade of his own knife pressed against his throat. His vision was blurred by blood and tears, but he knew his fearsome opponent was kneeling on top of him, one knee pressed into his chest. He could kill him whenever he wanted. Fear, sheer and absolute, charged through him.
‘Now you’ve made two big mistakes. You tried to kill me, and you tried to do it alone,’ he said, his voice low and menacing. ‘Don’t make another mistake by forcing me to ask a third time. Why have you been following me?’
‘T-to steal from you,’ Giroux stammered.
He gasped as the knife was pressed in harder, causing blood to well up.
‘Are you working for someone? Think carefully before you answer, my friend.’
‘It is the truth! I swear it!’ Giroux pleaded. There was no pretext of playing tough now; he was begging for his life, and he knew it. ‘You s-seemed like an easy mark. I thought you were just a rich tourist.’
The man’s intense green eyes were locked with his own, seeming to penetrate his very soul. Finally, with some reluctance, the pressure of the blade eased.
Keeping him pinned to the dirty ground, the man rifled through his pockets until he found Giroux’s creased, grubby and disappointingly empty wallet. Still, even he possessed a few cards and scraps of identification that his erstwhile victim had no problem rooting out.
‘Philippe Giroux, right?’ he remarked, comparing the battered and bleeding face before him with the far more youthful one on his expired driver’s licence.
‘Yes.’
‘Right then, Philippe. Obviously you’re not the brightest guy, so I’ll keep this simple. If you try something like this again, I’ll kill you. If you follow me, I’ll kill you. In fact, if I ever see your face again in Marseille, or anywhere else for that matter, I’ll kill you. If you understand what I’ve just said, say yes.’
Giroux stared at him. The look in his eyes told him this was a man who had made good on such threats before, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
‘Yes,’ he said at last.
‘Good.’ The knife was removed from his throat and tossed into a walled courtyard nearby. ‘Don’t forget to wash up.’
Without saying another word, the man stood up, picked up his bag of goods from the bakery, and walked off as if nothing had happened.
Chapter 2
Set halfway up a gentle hill a couple of miles east of Marseille, overlooking a sheltered bay and the vast swathe of the Mediterranean beyond, the old French villa enjoyed views that would have made most estate agents green with envy. Unfortunately for Ryan Drake, the view was just about the only thing this place had going for it.
In need of a place to lay low after being forced to go on the run from the Agency last year, Drake had chanced upon the old, dilapidated villa about six months ago. Clearly the building had suffered from decades of neglect, but for him it had seemed ideal. A cheap, isolated, easily defensible building in an elevated position, with only a dusty single-track road leading up to it.
Nobody could approach closer than ha
lf a mile without his knowledge. And given that the nearest house was on the far side of the bay, he had little concerns about his neighbours spying on him. In short, it was a perfect safe house.
Posing as a foreign property investor looking for a restoration project, he’d put in a cash bid the very next day. Needless to say, his offer had been accepted almost immediately.
He hardly considered himself a rich man, but like any deniable CIA operative with an ounce of foresight and pragmatism, he’d set up a pretty comprehensive security blanket during his time with the Agency – false identities, travel documents, passports and a decent financial reserve that he could tap into. A man like him never knew when he might have to disappear in a hurry, and last year in Libya that fear had proven all too real.
Some modernization required, the property listing had said. That was a euphemistic way of looking at it, he’d soon realized.
The previous owner had obviously been a bit of a hoarder, because the place had been packed with junk of all descriptions – everything from old newspapers, magazines and pictures to ancient television sets, radios, ornaments, broken furniture and a hundred other things he hadn’t bothered to look at. There had even been an artificial leg hidden away in a corner of the basement. Drake had been tempted to put an ad in the local Lost and Found, since its owner was sure to be missing it by now.
Still, six months down the line, things had improved marginally. The plumbing worked, when it felt like it. The boiler, like a moody teenager, would alternate between being cooperative and useful, to not wanting anything to do with him. And the electrical system, installed in 1936 as the yellowed sticker on the fuse box proudly proclaimed, couldn’t be counted on if more than three lights were turned on at once. He’d done what he could to get it back into working order, but his modest electrical expertise was no match for the madness of 1930s French building practices.
Swinging the big oak door closed behind him, Drake walked through the wide tiled hallway to the kitchen, set his bag of bread and pastries down on the counter and started the kettle boiling.
Glancing at his hand, he frowned when he noticed a trace of dried blood on his grazed knuckles. He had barely thought about the fight on his long walk home; he’d just carried on with his morning routine as if nothing had happened.
For a while after he’d noticed the man observing him, it had crossed his mind that the guy might be a real player – a professional hit man sent by the Agency to hunt him down and kill him. There were plenty such men on the payroll.
But their brief scuffle earlier had taught Drake otherwise. The man’s attack had been clumsy and stupid. He was a street thug; nothing more. There were a lot of them in Marseille these days, ready to prey on the rich Brits, Russians and Americans who flocked here every summer.
As he ran his hand under the cold tap at the sink, watching another man’s blood wash away and disappear down the plug hole, he felt a familiar throb of pain radiating out from his knuckles. He’d broken his hand in a boxing match many years earlier, the damage forestalling whatever aspirations he’d had as a professional fighter. It had healed well enough, but the old injury still troubled him now and again.
He hadn’t felt the pain at the time; the adrenaline had been pumping and he had been too intent on not getting clubbed or knifed to death to worry about it, but now that he’d had a chance to calm down, it was starting to catch up with him.
It had been a while since he’d found himself in a situation like that. More than a while, actually. Living a simple life, the past six months had been deceptively quiet and uneventful. A man could almost forget his past if he spent enough time in a place like this.
Almost.
Standing by the sink, he paused for a moment, playing over the events again in his mind. Street thugs he could handle, but not if the situation escalated into something more. Even if his actions today had been necessary for self-defence, he had called attention to himself by beating that man down.
There was a chance of course that Philippe Giroux would heed his warning and steer well clear of Marseille, perhaps finding a new town in which to prey on unwary travellers. A chance, but Drake sensed it was unlikely. Street criminals were as territorial as a pack of wolves, and just as vicious when provoked. There was no telling who Giroux might talk to about the mysterious foreigner who had nearly killed him this morning, no telling where the rumours might end up.
Perhaps it was time to move on, find a new place to lay low. That would be the smart thing, the prudent thing to do to ensure his survival. Why then was he so reluctant to contemplate it?
The click of the kettle snapped him out of his dark musings. Turning off the tap, he shook his hand a few times to get most of the water off, then emptied the boiling water into a waiting coffee pot. As he made for the fridge to get some cheese and jam, he decided to put his earlier thoughts on hold, at least until after breakfast.
Making decisions on an empty stomach was never a wise move.
A short while later Drake was sitting at a weathered old wooden table – one of the few items salvaged from the original owner – on the villa’s outdoor terrace, staring at the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean as he waited for his laptop to boot up. It was already shaping up to be a warm day, the sun rising slowly into an almost cloudless sky.
He took a sip of coffee, watching as a big motor boat powered through the light swell about a hundred yards offshore, waves and foam churning in its wake. Even from this distance he could make out the young women in bikinis sunning themselves on the stern deck, while a couple of older guys in garish shirts messed around in the wheelhouse. The sort of people that Giroux would have an easy time relieving of some not-very-hard-earned cash.
‘Enjoying the view, huh?’ a voice chided him.
Drake felt a pair of slender hands slide across his shoulders, pausing to tighten their grip a little as they reached his neck.
‘I see you eyeing up those bikinis, you know.’
He glanced up as Samantha McKnight walked into view, barefoot on the stone terrace, dressed only in briefs and a white tank top. Her dark hair was tousled from sleep – or lack of it, given what they’d been up to last night – and her face untouched by make-up. Not that she needed it. Already an attractive woman, life in the Mediterranean sun had tanned her naturally pale skin, endowing her with a glow that he found most pleasantly diverting.
Drake grinned. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘Sure you wouldn’t. Not when I’ve got a gun in my bedside drawer.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve seen your shooting,’ Drake teased her. ‘Anyway, what’s with the Rip Van Winkle routine? I’ve been up for hours already.’
‘I spent ten years in the army, getting woken up by asshole drill instructors at 5 a.m. The way I see it, I’ve earned some downtime.’ She grinned playfully, her eyes glinting like the sea behind her. ‘Plus I lost a couple of hours last night.’
‘Play your cards right and you might lose a couple more today,’ he said, eyeing her over the rim of his coffee cup. The sea breeze had stirred up, flattening the tank top against the contours of her body, giving the momentary impression that she was wearing nothing at all.
It was an impression that wasn’t lost on him.
‘Keep dreaming.’ Reaching down, she snatched up his plate of untouched croissants, leaping nimbly beyond his reach before he could stop her. ‘Especially when you hog all the food.’
‘Hey! I had to walk four bloody miles for those!’ Drake protested.
‘And I truly appreciate such a noble sacrifice for your helpless maiden.’ McKnight gave him a look of mock seriousness, before tearing off a chunk of pastry, dipping it in the jam and popping it in her mouth.
Helpless and maiden were not words Drake would choose to describe Samantha McKnight. Nonetheless, eyeing the graceful lines of her body, the soft curve of her breasts that her minimal clothing did little to hide, he felt less inclined to argue the point.
She settled herself on a chai
r beside him, her long legs stretched out before her, and for a few moments seemed to lose herself in the view. She was smiling; the kind of smile that came so easy to her now.
‘You know something? I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of being by the sea. The sound of the waves, the smell of salt in the air, the endless horizon…’ she said wistfully. ‘No matter how many times I wake up to it, it still feels new every time.’
Drake decided not to dwell on that last statement. ‘Beats a rainy Monday morning in Croydon, that’s for sure.’
She glanced sidelong at him. ‘Hey, give me a break. I’m a Kansas girl – didn’t even see the ocean for the first time until I was nineteen. Couldn’t believe there was so much water in the world.’
Drake cocked an eyebrow, resisting the obvious joke about her not being in Kansas any more. ‘Parents not big travellers, then?’ he asked instead.
At this, her smile faded a little. ‘Mom didn’t stick around too long, so it was just me and Dad. And no, he wasn’t big on travelling.’
He felt bad for dredging up unhappy memories. ‘I’m sorry.’
She looked at him, and there was a sadness in her eyes that seemed quite out of sync with her usually buoyant personality. Then, with a single blink, the dark cloud seemed to pass and she was herself again.
‘Don’t be. He was a great father.’
As she resumed her breakfast, Drake turned his attention back to the laptop and opened his email to check for messages from his former teammates Cole Mason and Keira Frost. Once part of an elite group known as a Shepherd team, tasked with finding and rescuing lost Agency personnel, their attempts at exposing the secrets of the Agency’s corrupt Deputy Director Marcus Cain had led to them being branded as criminals and traitors. Now they were on the run like Drake and McKnight, maintaining loose contact via anonymous email accounts.
There was the usual round of spam offering Rolex watches to ‘Gentleman with high ambition but low moneys’, and another effort by the deposed king of Nigeria to get Drake’s bank details. The guy really must have been desperate; this was his third email in the past month.
