He walked for four minutes along the same street. People walked ahead of him, behind him, on the opposite side of the road. Mostly men, the odd couple. No single women. He crossed over the street and looked in store windows to check the reflections of anyone walking behind on the far side of the road. No one, but there was a man and a woman on the same side as him. Not the couple with the camera. That would have been too obvious. These both looked in their thirties, both in reasonable shape, unremarkable clothes. Potentials.
He stood with his hand near his waistband, within a short distance of the gun tucked there. The couple didn’t react and walked straight past him.
He walked some more. After two minutes the couple stopped under a bus shelter and sat down. A perfectly normal action or a smart way to step out of the game now their target was behind them and out of sight. Victor kept the same pace as he passed. He used what windows he could to keep watching but within seconds he’d gone too far to get an angle.
Cars rolled by intermittently in both directions. Victor walked towards the flow of traffic on the near lane so a Kidon vehicle couldn’t come up behind him. Traffic was light. Too light for a van to roll up next to him without warning. The cars that went by were mostly small European sedans. He saw a blue four-door Peugeot that looked familiar, but it was hard to be sure.
He checked his watch. Adrianna should be almost at the airport by now. It was close to the city. Even if the Kidon had sent people there after realising what was happening, they wouldn’t catch up that lead. He willed her to do exactly as instructed and take the first flight out, whatever it may be.
He watched the unmistakable shape of a minivan approaching. It seemed to slow as it neared. He looked to the row of stores to his left. No alleyways or side streets. No flimsy doors or unbarred windows. He tensed in readiness. His best bet would be to sprint across the road the second the van got close, adopt a shooting stance, kill the driver and keep shooting until his gun clicked empty and he felt the burning sting of a bullet penetrating his flesh.
But the van drove by without slowing. In minutes Victor was the only pedestrian in sight and the space between passing vehicles grew enough to cause him concern. He had to get off the street. He took the next turning that presented itself.
Victor walked along the side street, down another when he reached an intersection. The streets were darker, quieter, narrower. Far less people. He was still heading into the city centre, but taking a less direct route. It started to rain lightly. He walked two miles in twenty-seven minutes, darting down alleyways, doubling back, doing everything
possible to lose them, but knowing they were near and he was only delaying the inevitable.
He pictured Adrianna now in a departure lounge, if not safely in a seat and fastening her belt. She would be traumatised, but she was safe. In time she would learn to deal with her fear. He hoped she could one day forgive him, but he knew how he’d spoken to her would make that a false hope. If he had been comforting and understanding, then maybe. But he had been harsh and uncaring because he’d had to make her afraid to save her life.
He kept his hands outside of his pockets and his jacket open. He paid attention to every sound, every shadow. Each time he heard an engine he calculated how far away it was and in which direction it was heading. Every person he saw, he absorbed their manner, age, looks, build, clothes, evaluating the probability of them being a Kidon operative.
The street Victor walked down had a cobbled surface and five-storey buildings flanking either side. To Victor’s left was paving with a low kerb. To his right there was no sidewalk. The buildings were drab grey brick. Signs for stores fronted by security gates provided muted colour. The rain was fine and cold. No wind.
There was one other person on the street. Fifty yards ahead, at the intersection, a woman stood talking on a cell phone. She paced back and forth beneath the glow of a streetlamp. Victor’s footsteps echoed. Few lights were on in the windows above the closed stores.
He felt the urge to light a cigarette and wished he still smoked. If his mental map of Sofia was accurate, there was a metro station about a block away. A few minutes and he would be in the relative safety of a clean, modern carriage. He would ride it to the train station and take any train he could. He was so close.
He noticed footsteps behind him. Someone had just turned on to the street on the opposite side of the road – a man, by the weight of the footsteps and the time between them.
Victor walked on. He felt a prickling at the back of his neck. Including himself, there were three people on the street now. A lot for a quiet street at that time of night. The woman continued to talk into her phone. She hadn’t looked at him once.
He increased his pace. There were no alleyways leading off the street except back the way he had come. The intersection was forty yards away. The woman beneath the streetlight was short and slender. Flat practical shoes.
Victor looked up. No one at any windows or on any rooftops. He heard the rumble of an approaching engine. The footsteps behind him hadn’t grown quieter. They should have. The walker was matching his pace.
A car turned into the street from the intersection ahead. Its headlights swept over the woman. Victor averted his eyes to preserve his night vision. The car crawled his way at fifteen miles per hour. It was a plain sedan. A Peugeot. Blue. Four doors. The nearside windows were all up. It didn’t slow down or speed up. Victor’s right hand hovered over the FN’s grip. The Peugeot passed him on his right side.
Another car pulled into the road. Victor heard the Peugeot behind him slow down. As it did, the woman put away her phone and turned in his direction. She was twenty yards away. She had short boyish hair and a plain face. Victor glanced over his shoulder. The man walking on the opposite side of the street was tall, six-four, and strongly built. Buzz cut. The shadows hid any other details. The Peugeot was slowing down further behind him as the second car accelerated hard.
Two cars, two pedestrians. Victor couldn’t keep eyes on them all. Which was the point.
He snapped his gaze back to the woman, and needing no other evidence, drew his gun. The woman was already reaching into her coat to do the same. Victor didn’t need to look back to know the big guy across the street would be readying his own weapon. Positioned on opposite sides of the street meant they could safely shoot at him without endangering the other.
Headlights swept in his direction, momentarily blinding Victor as he took a shot. The crack from the unsuppressed Five-seveN echoed between the overlooking buildings.
He didn’t see if he’d hit, and had no opportunity to check as the second car hurtled closer, straight at him. Another French sedan. A
Renault. Ten yards away, then five. There was only time to fire at the driver or jump out of the way. If he killed the driver, it wouldn’t stop the car slamming into him. Victor leapt right, into the road.
The car roared past where he’d been standing, and Victor rolled on the asphalt, absorbing the energy that would otherwise induce injury.
Doors were opening before the Renault had even stopped. Two people charged out. A woman from the passenger seat, a man from the back. Victor rose into a kneel, drawing a bead on the man, who was closer, but shouts from the big guy on the far side of the street and the woman with the plain face stopped him squeezing the trigger. Covered from two angles, there was nothing Victor could do. If he fired, he died.
The FN clattered on the road surface and Victor showed his palms.
The Peugeot had stopped sixty yards at the end of the street to block off the intersection from other vehicles. The Renault was less than ten yards away.
He recognised the woman now hurrying towards him from the Renault’s open passenger door. She looked markedly different with a gun instead of a camera, the friendly smile replaced by a cold stare. She covered him from a distance of five feet. The driver stayed behind the wheel. The man from the back had a pale, gaunt face and held the same gun. Beretta 92FS. Suppressed. Victor glanced over his shoulder to see the slender woman with the plain face remained stationary near the streetlamp, in a combat stance, gun aimed at his back.
The man with the Beretta aimed it at Victor and shouted, ‘
Don’t move
.’
He spoke in Russian, just as Victor had spoken in Minsk.
The big guy approached. He was strongly muscled but a lean two hundred and twenty pounds. No excess bulk. Loose trousers, open sports jacket, T-shirt beneath. He searched Victor, locating the all-ceramic folding knife in seconds and tossing it away.
‘Hands,’ he demanded.
Victor held them out, shoulder-width apart. The big guy grabbed Victor’s wrists. The strength of the grip was huge. The guy looped plasticuffs around both of Victor’s wrists and fastened it tight enough for the skin to bulge white around the straps.
He took Victor by the right triceps, pulled him to the car. Victor didn’t let the pain show or resist as he was thrown into the back of the Renault. The big guy gave some order in Hebrew and the original two from the car climbed in – the man on to the seat next to Victor, the woman into the passenger seat. The short woman under the streetlight slipped her gun away, and rushed over to the Peugeot, climbing into the back. The big guy got into the passenger seat.
Already Victor could feel the tingling in his hands caused by the blocked circulation. He sat himself upright. He was behind the driver. The guy on the back seat with him kept as much distance between them as possible, but didn’t take his gaze off Victor. He kept his gun pointed at Victor at all times. The Beretta was chambered for 9 mm rounds, double action, safety off, hammer cocked. All he had to do was squeeze and Victor would take one in the sternum. The Israeli held the gun in his right hand and kept it parallel to his chest. It was too far away for Victor to risk grabbing, even if his hands weren’t bound.
The blonde woman in the passenger seat turned to face him. She had a triumphant expression on her face. ‘Put on your seat belt.’
She spoke with her British accent. She probably had been British, originally. Victor held up his bound wrists.
She smirked. ‘That won’t stop you.’
Victor reached behind his left shoulder and pulled the belt across his chest and fastened it. He did so as awkwardly as he could. When it clicked in place, the woman in the passenger seat turned away. She said something in Hebrew to the driver. None of the three Israelis in the car had on their belts to ensure speed of movement while he in turn was locked in place.
The Renault pulled away, following close to the Peugeot. Rehearsed moves. The driver kept the car a little above the speed limit, like anyone else who didn’t want a ticket and who had nothing to hide. They drove through the narrow streets of Sofia, staying directly behind the lead car at all times. The passenger periodically looked back to check on Victor. The Israeli on the back seat didn’t look away once.
Victor felt the adrenalin in his system speed up his heart rate. His
pulse thundered in his ears. He looked up, staring through the window to his left. He saw the twinkling of lights in the night sky from an ascending plane and watched until those lights had disappeared into the darkness.
The pain in Victor’s wrists continued to build. His wrists were locked together, skin to skin. The tingling sensation in his hands worsened. He could make fists with his hands but precious few other movements. Soon they would be too numb to move.
They took a right turn then two lefts, bringing the car out of the backstreets and on to a wide avenue. Traffic lights glowed up ahead. Red glimmered through the raindrops on the windshield.
The Renault slowed down and stopped. Victor could reach the door handle and be rolling on to the road before anyone could react, but a Kidon team was too professional to leave the child lock disengaged. He could try anyway – on the minute chance the lock was malfunctioning – but Victor didn’t want to make them even more alert by trying something destined to fail. Instead, he sat passive, defeated. His only chance was for them to underestimate him.
His knees pressed against the back of the driver’s seat. He was a tall, the other fake tourist, and had the seat back to compensate for his long legs. There was little room for Victor to manoeuvre. He looked to his right, at the guy with the gun. The Israeli had a slim build and pale face beneath dark curly hair. He wore jeans and a nylon jacket. He was calm if not relaxed. The muzzle of the Beretta was slightly inclined, angled at Victor’s centre mass. The guy looked like he very much wanted to squeeze the trigger, but his orders would be to only shoot if absolutely necessary. A dead man couldn’t talk, after all.
The light changed and the Renault pulled away, one car length behind the Peugeot, maintaining formation, but without looking like it. They drove in silence. The radio was off. No one spoke. The woman in the passenger seat turned to look at Victor again, this time
smiling to herself, and looked away. It was becoming difficult to move his fingers.
He couldn’t see his watch, but he was good keeping track of time without one. Nine minutes had passed since he’d been captured. The scene outside his window changed as they left central Sofia. He saw factories and warehouses, open-air car showrooms, apartment blocks, areas of wasteland. Wherever they were taking him, he sensed it was close. When he reached it his chances of escape would drastically reduce.
The Israeli in the nylon jacket on the back seat continued to stare. He blinked regularly, keeping his eyes moist, removing the need to involuntarily blink at the wrong moment. Even if Victor could somehow get close enough to avoid the gun, he couldn’t disarm the man while his hands were tied and the seat belt locked him in place. And that was before the woman in the passenger seat got involved. Similarly, Victor couldn’t attack the driver while under the watchful gaze of the guy on the back seat. Maybe when the car stopped at their destination he would have a window of opportunity. The problem with that was the second car full of Kidon assassins that would have stopped too.