‘Sit,’ the tall man said.
Victor turned around. ‘I prefer to stand.’
The tall man took a step closer. ‘It was an order, not an offer.’
‘All the same,’ Victor said. ‘I think I’ll stand.’
The tall man’s eyes narrowed a fraction. ‘Sit. Down.’
Victor remained standing.
The tall man made a gesture and the patchy-beard guy rushed forward. He had short, blond hair and dark circles beneath his eyes. He was maybe five inches shorter than Victor, but far more heavily built, jacket straining against the strength in his shoulders and arms. In return, Victor knew the guy saw only weakness. Which was how he always preferred it. He offered no resistance as he was flung backwards against the wall. He grunted, but didn’t need to.
Maintaining eye contact with him the whole time, Victor straightened down his jacket and took a step towards his assailant. It was a long step, bringing him well inside the blond guy’s personal space. An unmistakable challenge that was greeted with a smile.
The punch itself was fast but clumsy – they were too close together, no room for the man to get all his power into it, his posture awkward, lacking in balance. Victor tensed his abdominals but didn’t try to stop it. The punch hit square in the gut. He dropped to one knee, coughing.
All three of his captors laughed and Victor continued to cough and splutter far longer than he needed to. The guy who’d punched him stepped back to where the other two stood closer to the door.
‘Perhaps you are ready to sit down now,’ the tall man said.
Victor slowly stood and pulled out one of the plastic chairs. He sat down in his own time.
‘What happens next?’ he asked, a pained and broken edge to his voice.
They gave no response. The tall man took a cell phone from his hip pocket and hit a speed-dial number. He held it to his ear while it rang.
‘We have him,’ was all he said when it connected.
There was a pause, the person on the other end talking.
‘Yes, at the station,’ the tall man answered. ‘No, he is still alive. Do not be concerned, we have him out of the way. Your source can show you where.’ Another pause. The tall man stared at Victor, who sat sheepishly. ‘No, we can take care of it. He has been no trouble at all.’
So far
, Victor silently added.
He noticed the two shorter men weren’t watching him particularly intently. All their attention was on their boss and the phone call. They weren’t worried about Victor – he’d already shown them he could be easily subdued. Good. But all three were clustered together by the door on the far side of the room. Not so good.
The tall man mumbled something and slipped the phone away.
‘Not long, my friend,’ he said to Victor, ‘and then this is all over.’
‘Suits me,’ Victor said back. ‘I hate waiting.’
The tall man smiled and took a step towards the table. Victor could smell cigarette smoke on the man’s clothes.
‘I hope you do not mind me saying, but you are being surprisingly calm about this.’
‘I’m always calm,’ Victor admitted.
The man nodded thoughtfully. ‘I suppose men of our profession must learn to be in control of our nerves.’ He sat down opposite. ‘Did you ever believe that this would be how it all ended?’
‘Can’t say I did.’
The tall man stroked his chin for a moment. ‘How long you been in this business?’
Victor acted as if he had to think. ‘A long time,’ he said eventually.
The tall man nodded. ‘That is what I deduced. Myself, I am relatively inexperienced. But I am a fast learner.’ He smiled, revealing
sharp, irregular teeth. ‘Before, I was a police officer. Not as generous a wage, but it taught me a lot about how not to get caught doing this more profitable work.’
‘Prefer this?’
‘Absolutely, my friend. Not only is it far better paid …’ He flashed another smile. ‘It is a lot more satisfying.’
‘A man should take pleasure from his work.’
‘Indeed.’ He shuffled his seat forward. ‘Though no means of employment is without negatives, of course.’
‘Very true.’
‘Since you are more experienced than I, have you any advice to share with me?’
‘Don’t get killed.’
He smirked. ‘You know, my friend, you really should have listened to your own advice.’
Victor stared at him. ‘I’m not dead yet.’
‘Yet,’ the tall man echoed. He stroked his chin again. ‘I liked what you said before, about being civilised. I think I will use that myself sometime. You do not mind if I steal your line, do you?’
‘Not if I can get a cigarette while we wait.’
The tall man reached into his pocket. ‘Always happy to grant a dying man his last request.’ He smiled at Victor, man to man. ‘My wife keeps telling me to quit.
Yap, yap, yap
in my ear all day long.’
He took out a lighter and packet of cigarettes and put them on the table. He slid them towards Victor.
‘I stopped myself,’ Victor said. ‘About six months ago.’
‘And do you miss it?’
Victor slid the packet closer and toyed with the lighter. ‘Every day.’
The tall man looked at him with a degree of understanding. ‘Is that why you quit, for a woman?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, she will not see you now,’ the tall man said. He checked his watch ‘You have five minutes. Smoke all you wish.’
‘Actually,’ Victor said after he’d edged the cigarette packet a couple of inches closer, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ He set the lighter on top of the packet. ‘Thanks anyway.’
The tall man shrugged. ‘Suit yourself, my friend. Now there is more for me to enjoy.’
He sat forward, reaching across the table. His fingers closed around the cigarette packet.
Victor grabbed the outstretched wrist in his left hand, pulled the piece of broken mirror from his sleeve, reversed his grip and drove the point through the tall man’s hand and into the table below it.
He screamed. Blood poured out from around the glass.
The other two guys hesitated an instant – pure shock. Victor leapt up from the chair, grabbed it, hurled it their way. The guy in glasses reacted in time to dodge, but the one with the patchy beard and blond hair was too slow. The chair struck him in the chest and sent him to the floor.
By the time the guy in glasses regained his balance, Victor had already crossed the room and shoulder-barged him into the wall. He grunted against the hard brick, arms flailing, torso exposed. Victor punched him – a short uppercut to the solar plexus. The man gasped, breathless, face screwed up in pain, sagging against the wall.
Victor turned to face the guy on the floor as he scrambled on to his back, drawing a handgun out from under his jacket – a big .45 calibre suppressed Smith & Wesson automatic. Victor took a quick step forward, kicked the gun from the guy’s hand as it angled up, kicked him again in the side of the head and stamped down on his face. Bone and cartilage crushed under his heel. Blood cascaded over the man’s cheeks.
Victor spun back around to see the gasping man against the wall fumbling for his own gun in its underarm holster. With the suppressor already screwed on, the weapon was too long to draw with speed. An amateur mistake. Victor grabbed the hand on the weapon before it could be withdrawn and elbowed him twice in the face, smashing his glasses and fracturing a cheekbone. Victor felt the strength go in the hand, tore the gun away, pushed the suppressor against his enemy’s stomach and fired twice, turned around again in time to see the man with the smashed nose retrieving the .45 and swinging it in his direction.
Victor shot him three times in the chest.
The tall man screamed – no words – just an incoherent mix of fear, desperation and pleading.
‘No one can hear,’ Victor said. ‘That’s why you brought me all the way to this room, remember?’
The guy shot in the stomach slid down the wall, not dead but dying fast, his broken glasses hanging from one ear. Blood soaked his jacket. A smeared trail of exit-wound gore glistened on the wall behind him. He groaned quietly.
Victor stepped over the corpse on the floor so he could face the tall man. His angular features were warped – half pain, half terror. The skin of his face was white and sweaty with shock. The hand pinned to the table was pure red. Blood pooled around it and dripped from the closest table edge. His other hand, the left, was beneath his overcoat, struggling to get at the gun holstered under his left armpit. Not an easy thing to do at the best of times.
Victor pointed the .45 at the guy’s face and he stopped what he was doing. With his spare hand, Victor reached over and took the gun out for him. He saw it was a Smith & Wesson like the one he already had and tossed it away.
‘
What do you want to know?
’ the tall man yelled. ‘
I will tell you anything
.’
Victor picked up the chair from the other side of the room and placed it next to the table. He brushed off the seat and sat down perpendicular to the tall man.
‘I know you will,’ Victor agreed. ‘You can start by telling me who you were speaking to on the phone. Who’s coming?’
‘A Belarusian. My client. Danil Petrenko.’
‘Will he come alone?’
‘There will be men with him.’
‘How many?’
Victor rested a finger on the top of the glass shard. He didn’t have to move it. The threat was enough.
‘There are four more of us,’ the tall man blurted out. He was frantic, eyes wide and staring at the six-inch glass shard impaled through his hand.
‘Are you part of Petrenko’s crew?’
‘No, we are freelancers. Hired killers.’ He paused a moment, thinking. ‘But we were not going to kill you, my friend,’ he added, quickly. ‘Petrenko just wanted to talk to you.’
‘Try again.’
A desperate look passed over his face. ‘Okay,’ he said after a pause. ‘But I promise it was just business, nothing personal.’
‘It never is.’
‘You understand, I was merely following my orders, doing my job. You know how it is. You are just like me.’
‘I don’t see the similarity.’
‘Petrenko is the one you want, not me.’
‘So I don’t need you then.’
White showed all around the tall man’s irises. ‘Please do not kill me.’
‘How many targets said that to you?’
‘I … I do not know.’
‘I’m guessing a lot. But how many of those times did you spare them?’
There was a brief pause before he said, ‘Sometimes.’
‘Then you’re not very good at what you do.’
‘Please,’ the tall man begged. ‘I have told you everything I know.’
‘You have,’ Victor agreed, ‘but I said nothing about letting you go if you did.’
‘Please.’
Victor stood. ‘You really should have listened to my advice.’
‘Okay, my friend,’ the tall man said, hurriedly, desperately, ‘I have never spared anyone. I am an evil man. But you said it yourself, you are not like me. So do not be like me now. Do not become what I am.’
Victor stared down at him and said, ‘For the things I have done I know the devil saves a place for me in hell. So when I am to burn, what does one more sin matter?’
He angled the .45.
‘
NO …
’
Victor had the Smith & Wesson reloaded and tucked into his waistband. Two spare mags rested in one jacket pocket and the three dead men’s cell phones in the other. Pulling open the room’s door, he saw a young guy in the corridor beyond. He was in his early twenties, with long hair poking out from underneath a dirty cap, wearing overalls, a tool belt hanging from his hips, bobbing his head and mouthing lyrics as headphones blared out metal Victor hadn’t heard with the door closed. He was four feet away and already facing Victor, eyes widening and mouth falling opening at the sight of three dead and bloodied bodies in the room beyond the open door.
In less than a second the Smith & Wesson was out of Victor’s waistband and drawing a bead between the young guy’s eyes.
‘Do you want me to kill you?’ Victor asked.
The kid managed to shake his head.
‘Then throw me your wallet.’
His gaze never leaving Victor, he did as instructed. Victor opened it up and took out a driver’s licence. He held it up for the young guy to see, before slipping it into a pocket.
‘I’ll forget you. You forget me. Deal?’
He nodded, and Victor threw back the wallet. The kid didn’t even try to catch it. It bounced off his chest and fell at his feet.
Victor said, ‘You want to wait there for fifteen minutes before getting help, don’t you?’
Another petrified nod.
Victor stepped around him and used the map in his mind to make his way back along the maze of empty corridors. After a minute, he heard the sounds of the train station. Soon afterwards, he saw the
metal door. The tall man had said they had five minutes before Petrenko arrived. That was three minutes ago.
The platform was crowded with commuters boarding the next train out. There had to be at least thirty men walking briskly along the platform in Victor’s general direction. None looked like the man Victor had seen ascend and then descend in the elevators at the Hotel Europe yesterday. He couldn’t see four hired killers either or the bald guy in the uniform.
He closed the metal door and moved further along the platform, using the commuters and a pillar to conceal him while he watched the door. He hoped Petrenko didn’t bring all of the shooters with him otherwise it was going to get very messy in that room.
A couple of minutes passed and Victor didn’t see anyone go near the door. It was possible that there was another way to get to the room where he’d been taken, but he didn’t believe this team had carte blanche access to the whole train station. More likely the bald train company employee had unlocked this one door for their use and told them the best place to do their business. Victor planned to thank him for that just as soon as the chance presented itself.
The people started to thin out on the platform as the train’s departure time grew closer, enabling Victor to see clearly along to where the platform joined the concourse. Still no sign of Petrenko, a group of assassins, and their guide.
The last of the passengers boarded the train and the doors locked, leaving just two stewards and Victor behind. He looked at his watch and stood as though he was waiting for the next departure, but using the pillar to hide him from view should they show.