Whoever was shot continued to scream, though the volume of his cries gradually diminished as the life drained from him. Another few minutes and he’d be silent. Hurry up and die so I can hear again, Victor silently encouraged.
He managed to blink away the last of the grit from his eyes and could once more make out the Glock. The screams reduced to little more than a whimper until Victor could hear his own breathing. He held the Glock outstretched and waited for some indication of where Krausse and his men were located. He heard no movement, no panicked breaths, only the shot guy’s moans. Victor changed positions, moving towards the far side of the elevator.
The floor creaked beneath his foot.
In response two shotgun blasts hit a nearby stack of crates. Splinters of wood flew off in all directions. He felt some snag his suit jacket. He dropped prone as two handguns opened fire an instant later. Bullets thudded into the crates shielding him, zipped over his head.
The firing didn’t cease. They were shooting at the general area, trusting to firepower and hoping to score a lucky hit. The noise was deafening. For Victor it was either stay put or make a break for it. Moving into the line of fire was a bad tactic, but lying still and hoping not to be hit seemed like an even worse course of action.
Rounds continued to strike his position, hitting the floor, crates, and pillars. Shotgun pellets made a crater in the floorboards close enough for Victor to feel vibrations through the wooden planks. He knew he was running out of time.
There was a lull in the shooting. A handgun stopped firing. At first, he thought someone was reloading, but he heard another sound between the other gunshots.
Water Music
by Handel.
Victor didn’t let the advantage escape. He made his move, quickly peering around the stack of crates. He saw nothing. He tried the other side, and a split second before the phone went silent, Victor saw the
faint blue of the screen glowing through the thin fabric of Krausse’s cheap suit trousers.
Victor angled the Glock and fired. Krausse screamed.
Victor was up on his feet and moving before Shotgun returned fire. The huge flash from the end of the barrel briefly illuminated him and Victor shot back with a double tap. Shotgun fell sideways into an area of light near one of the windows. Very dead.
The last gunman took a shot at Victor. The muzzle flashed on the far side of the warehouse, maybe sixty feet away. Victor fired, on the move, rushing closer. Too eager.
He knew he’d missed before the returning muzzle flash made it obvious. The bullet sparked off a metal pillar to Victor’s left. He headed right, not risking firing back again at this range with only one bullet in the Glock.
Forty-five feet and the gunman fired at him again. He hadn’t changed position, somewhere near the sink. The bullet didn’t come close. He was shooting at noise only and Victor was a fast target. He headed back to the right, clipped a crate with his leg and stumbled. The next round blew a hole through a windowpane.
Less than thirty feet. His enemy fired again, this time from a different position, behind a pillar. The bullet came close enough for Victor to hear the sonic snap. Fifteen feet. Another shot missed and Victor braced for the next one that he felt sure was going to hit.
No shot. Empty gun.
Victor heard the magazine clatter on the floor and the gunman frantically trying to reload. Victor closed the last few yards fast and the gunman came into view – a blurry shape of near black against the darkness. Victor heard a new magazine slammed into place and the shape moved, collapsing backwards, Victor’s last bullet embedded in the gunman’s chest.
Victor stopped, took a much-needed deep breath, and listened. He heard one man groaning somewhere in the dark. Everyone else was dead or dying silently. Victor dropped the empty Glock and prised the fully loaded one from his enemy’s hand. He checked the corpse’s pockets, finding a wallet and a lighter. He took both, glad there hadn’t been any cigarettes as well to test his resolve.
He followed the map in his head to where his shoes lay, slipped them on, and then to where Georg had fallen, the groans growing louder the closer he got. Victor used the lighter to push back the darkness and saw Georg lying on her back, hands pressing down over the bloody mess of her abdomen. Blood pooled on the plastic sheeting beneath her and trickled on to the floor and drained through the gaps in the narrow boards. She stared up at Victor, her ghost-white face contorted by agony. Tears glinted on her cheeks.
‘
Please
…’
Careful to avoid the blood, Victor checked Georg’s pockets. ‘Please what?’
‘Help me.’ Georg’s voice was thin. ‘I’ll pay you … Anything you want.’
Victor held open Georg’s empty wallet. ‘What with?’
Georg didn’t answer. Victor put back the wallet, ignored a cell phone, and pocketed a set of van keys.
‘
Help me
,’ Georg begged again.
‘You’re wearing body armour,’ Victor explained, ‘which is why you took a twelve-gauge to the gut and are still alive. But it’s a concealable vest, so it has maybe nineteen layers of Kevlar. Enough to stop a nine mil travelling at twelve hundred feet per second, but not nine pellets of buckshot at the same speed. Maybe absorbed fifty per cent of the energy though, so none of those pellets reached your spine, but plenty of power left to shred your intestines. And that’s without the slug in your shoulder. You’ll be dead in fifteen minutes maximum. There’s nothing I can do to stop that.’
‘Phone … an ambulance.’
‘And have my voice recorded by the emergency services? I don’t think so.’
He found the guy he’d stabbed and pulled the knife free. Custom-made, all ceramic, with a kris edge and gladiator point. Far too good a weapon to waste in a corpse even without its sentimental value. Victor wiped the blade on the dead man’s jacket before folding it away.
‘I’m sorry … this … happened,’ Georg said.
Her tone of voice really did sound sincere, but in Victor’s experience
excruciating pain had a habit of making people very apologetic. He stood.
‘Help me … please,’ she spluttered between grunts, ‘or kill me …
it hurts
…’
Victor approached and stopped a few inches short of the blood pool. He angled the Glock.
Georg’s gaze tracked the gun, but her eyes closed so she didn’t have to watch. Not that there was enough time to register a muzzle flash and fear the ensuing bullet before impact, or enough time for the brain to recognise its own destruction. But Victor didn’t fire.
Instead, he squatted down and reached into Georg’s duffel coat. He withdrew the cell phone, dialled 112, switched it to speakerphone, and placed it in one of Georg’s hands. Her eyes opened and stared at Victor, shocked.
‘Remember to forget me,’ Victor said before the line connected.
He headed to the elevator as the emergency operator politely asked which service Georg required.
Central Intelligence Agency, Virginia, USA
Associate Deputy Director for the National Clandestine Service Roland Procter took a seat in one of the four black leather armchairs positioned in the corner of his office. The area was set to create an informal space for meetings and discussion, but Procter was usually happier to talk from behind his big desk. His current guest, however, warranted a more even playing field.
Enjoying the chair across from Procter was Clarke, who, though the same age, was at least eighty pounds lighter, several shades paler, and looking not too dissimilar to a French fry in a suit. But if Clarke was a French fry, Procter had to admit he was definitely the hamburger on their collective plate. Though Procter wasn’t sure how much he weighed, it had to be north of two fifty. It wasn’t genetics, it wasn’t big bones, it was just that Procter liked to eat.
Clarke wasn’t CIA and his credentials said Pentagon, but whatever his laminate proclaimed, Procter wasn’t sure exactly who Clarke worked for these days. Clarke could have worked for none of the big agencies or all of them at once, or maybe one that was so secret Procter hadn’t even heard of it. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Clarke shared the same principles as Procter and the same balls to put those principles to good use.
‘I’ve received word from my man,’ Procter began. ‘It seems there was a minor problem last week with the supplier in Hamburg.’
Clarke’s eyebrows rose. ‘What kind of a problem?’
‘The fatal kind.’ Procter gave a quick explanation of the facts as he knew them.
‘Did Tesseract get away clean?’
‘He claims so, and our people in Germany back up his story. The police have the killings down as a gangland incident. Georg, who is in fact a woman, was shot up pretty bad, but she’s had three surgeries and is going to make it. I’m told she’s conscious, and keeping her mouth closed. Not that it would make much difference either way. The cops over there aren’t too concerned about a bunch of criminals blasting holes in each other. Privately, they’re celebrating the destruction of two local gangs. They aren’t looking for anyone, let alone our boy.’
‘Good.’
‘You sound almost disappointed,’ Procter said.
Clarke ignored the barb. ‘We have a real problem though. Regarding Bucharest.’
‘Which is?’
‘One of Kasakov’s people heard Tesseract’s shot. A Russian guy has spoken to someone inside Bucharest PD. They’d found the assassin’s headless corpse by then. It was lying on a rooftop next to a sniper rifle, six hundred yards and a clear line of sight from the front door of the Grand Plaza where Vladimir Kasakov happened to be staying.’
‘So what did Bucharest PD tell him?’
‘What they knew about the shooter. Croatian freelancer, on Interpol’s files. Guy was a real bastard, did mob hits for different people. And now Kasakov knows for sure someone tried to kill him. And he must know that someone intervened on his behalf. Maybe he knows who wants him dead or maybe he doesn’t. But one thing’s for certain: he’s going to want to know who came to his aid and he’s going to keep his head down.’
Procter shrugged. ‘Doesn’t bother me.’
‘It bothers me.’
‘It shouldn’t. We’ll just spin it to throw him off the scent. We’ll make him think that the Croatian guy was killed for some other reason, and Kasakov’s survival was nothing more than a lucky coincidence.’
Clarke had already thought of that, of course, Procter knew, which was why his returning point flowed so easily. ‘True,’ Clarke said, ‘though it would have been better for him to carry on thinking he was beyond threat. Knowing how near he came to being bones in a box
could complicate matters for us. Kasakov might change his plans, increase his security, reduce his profile. Hell, he could retire from arms dealing and take up politics.’
‘It won’t be a problem,’ Procter assured.
‘But if he was too spooked—’
‘Then he’ll calm down. Kasakov is well aware of the risks involved in the dubious way he conducts his life. Trafficking illicit heavy munitions to every dictator, warlord and death squad on the planet isn’t something you stay in long term if you have trouble sleeping at night. Besides, do you really think no one’s tried to take him out before? He’s one tough son of a bitch. It’ll take a hell of a lot more than a gunshot to scare the guy.’
‘There’s a difference between being scared and acting smart.’
‘Trust me, that bastard’s got balls of granite. Did you know that the French secret service tried to take him out back before he was a really big player? He screwed them on an Exocet sale. Came this close too.’ Procter held his thumb and index finger an inch apart.
‘I did not,’ Clarke said evenly.
‘Very few people do. It went down in Morocco, I believe. He was on vacation. A DGSE team went in shooting, took out most of Kasakov’s retinue but only wounded him. Shot half his ear off. Did that stop him? No, it did not. He’s even helped them sell some Mirage jets since then. And let’s remember, the French came a lot closer in Morocco than our Croatian friend just did in Bucharest. I’m telling you, Peter, you don’t need to be concerned about what old Vladdie boy will or will not do.’
Clarke’s face hardened. ‘It’s not with Kasakov where my only concern lies.’
Procter sat forward. ‘We’ve been through this before, and I do understand your reservations about my new employee.’
‘I’m not sure you really do.’
‘Listen, any risk he might potentially pose is more than offset by his value.’
‘That value is still debatable at this stage.’
‘I think you’ll find his value has very recently been demonstrated.’
Clarke shrugged his narrow shoulders dismissively. ‘So the prodigy
passes the first real test, so what? That means he’s useful, so are a lot of people. A lot more manageable people.’
‘I think you’re underestimating just how lucky we were to have him. In case you’ve forgotten, we found out someone was going to try to put a bullet in Kasakov all of forty-eight hours before it went down. Kasakov was off the grid and we had no way of warning him even if we knew where he was. All we had was one lousy intercepted phone call revealing where it was going to happen. We didn’t know who was going to do it or how. We sent Tesseract in blind and he got the job done. This whole op of ours would have crumbled before we got to first base if Kasakov had been killed in Bucharest. So tell me, who else could we have sent, unofficially, to get us out of that potential disaster without also putting us in the spotlight? Me?
You?
’
Clarke straightened in his seat and put his right index finger to good use. ‘Don’t try to bait me, Roland. I have expressed reasonable doubts about who you’ve chosen to employ for this operation, none of which relate to Tesseract’s abilities. May I remind you it’s his loyalty, reliability, and accountability that I have issues with.’
‘You did just remind me,’ Procter said beneath arched eyebrows.
Clarke exhaled strongly. His normally pale face was flushed red.
‘Peter, calm down before you give yourself an aneurysm. You came to me, remember? You asked me for help, not the other way around. Obviously, I’m glad you did, but we agreed at the beginning of our little scheme that you would allow me to run things on the ground as I saw fit. That includes whom I choose to put out there. Tesseract is extremely capable and utterly deniable. Anything about his history before he began working for us is irrelevant to me as long as he produces results.’