“A handshake is all we need, eh Greg?” Oscar proposed spontaneously.
“Certainly is,” Greg agreed, thrusting out his hand.
Marion stood up and gracefully took the outstretched gesture, bowing slightly at the same time. Taking Oscar’s hand next, she said, quietly but clearly,
“I hope we succeed — but most of all that we remain friends.” She looked away shyly.
Remi followed his mother through the handshaking routine.
“So where do we start? And is there something I can be doing?” He looked hopefully at his new partners.
Alex walked along the quay, his mobile telephone held to his ear, carefully detailing his specialist-shopping list for Hans. The most important items he stressed were the ‘depleted uranium underwater magnetic mines’.
“Yes they’re available,” Hans confirmed proudly, “but effecting delivery in Hong Kong! You must be kidding me?” he blustered down the phone.
“You know me Hans. I only joke about your generosity!” Alex coaxed him.
Hans chuckled. “Yes and don’t I know it.”
Alex ignored the comment. “I’ll leave that little conundrum with you for an hour or two, eh?” Alex paused.
Hans chose not to comment.
“Oh and the only other thing is that I need it all within twenty-four hours!” Alex waited for a reaction.
“Normally” Hans replied quite calmly “I can get equipment anywhere, well almost anywhere, within that timescale — but into Communist China, I’m not quite so sure.” He was genuinely concerned.
Normally when he needed “goods” delivered urgently, the RAF cooperated via their network of military bases around the world.
“If General Montgomery only needed twenty four-hours’ notice for his Eighth Army to perform a miracle, I’m sure you can do the same,” Alex encouraged his friend.
“I’ll call you as soon as I have some information,” Hans replied without emotion. I’m going to have to call in a few favours to pull this one off, he mused to himself as he returned the telephone to its cradle.
The two men watched the apartment from the shadows on the other side of the busy road. They’d been contracted to find out what the man had been doing in the Harbour Authority land records room and who, if anyone, he was working for. It had all gone went quite well at first. The man, David, had been cooperative, especially when the short man held the serrated bread knife to his wife’s throat, but that was when she had started the hysterical screaming. The short man had slapped her, ordering her to stop, but the repeated blows failed to silence her.
“You stupid bitch,” he bellowed at her. “Don’t worry I’ll sort her out next door” he shouted at his companion as he dragged her by the hair to a bedroom and closed the door behind them. “Now you stupid bitch, stop that noise.” He’d slapped her again and again but she’d just become even more hysterical. The piercing note penetrated the short man’s head and triggered a fuse in his manic brain. Something snapped and before he knew it he had slashed her throat from ear to ear with the serrated knife. The woman crumpled onto the bed. Her head fell sideways at a strange angle. The noise stopped instantly. The man, however, became enraged by the sight and feel of the warm blood jetting from the severed artery. In a wild frenzy now, he hacked mindlessly at the scraggy tissue and bone until the head fell with a heavy thump to the floor. He stepped back from her body, panting like an exhausted bull. “She won’t scream any more now will she?” he laughed, calling out to his companion with a tremble in his voice.
Curious, the taller man entered the bedroom. “My God! What the fuck have you done?” The perpetrator of many contract killings, even he recoiled in horror at the scene.
“She wouldn’t stop!” The shorter man looked at his companion, pleading for understanding and beginning to tremble as the extra adrenalin in his blood gradually subsided.
“Get yourself into that bathroom and wash that shit off you. We’ve got all we need,” the taller man commanded, looking away in disgust. The shorter blood-drenched man obeyed without question and moved out of the room.
The taller man squared his shoulders and looked down at the broken body, bent down and without any sign of remorse picked up the bloody head and placed it on the pillow. He smiled quietly to himself as an idea came to him. Looking quickly around the room he found what he wanted: a pencil and a piece of paper. He dipped the end of the pencil into the puddle of blood and scribbled a brief note then looked for somewhere conspicuous to leave his masterpiece. He smiled as another macabre idea entered his warped mind and then nipped into the kitchen, opened the cutlery draw and found what he wanted. He returned the bedroom and pinned the note with the crab pick to the woman’s head.
“I think they’ll get the message don’t you?” he said to the shorter man who was emerging from the bathroom drying his hands and brushing down his trousers with a hand towel.
He did not reply just stared in horror.
“Come on. We best get out of here,” the taller man addressed him again. “He made a telephone call, remember. Someone may be on their way to see what’s happening. We’ll wait outside and observe for a while. You OK now?”
The short man looked away and muttered, “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about me,” and dejectedly followed the taller man out of the building.
They concealed themselves in the shadows across the road and had waited for about an hour. When Alex and Ling appeared and mounted the iron staircase, the taller man silently tried a photograph with his infrared night camera; he instantly recognised Ling from the photograph in David’s apartment but not Alex. They waited patiently until the distant sound of the ambulance was followed by the hasty departure of Ling and Alex; the man tried another exposure in the faint hope of a better shot but realised it was probably ineffective. Aware that his employer would expect him to identify the stranger properly, he would have to get much closer.
“Right, we have what we were contracted to do. You go back. I’m going to follow these two for a while, see if I can get a better idea of who the other bloke is. Might be worth a bonus for us!” He emerged from the shadow. “I’ll call you, OK?” he dismissed the short man and crossed the road.
‘That bloke is going to have to go,’ he admitted to himself, looking back to ensure that the man had left — but the street was empty. Pleased to be rid of him, the taller man discreetly followed his quarry to Ling’s apartment block, where he managed a couple more infrared exposures and then slipped away, confident that he had at least one good picture.
The sign on the modest door read General Agents. The building was situated on a street running parallel to the waterfront. A smartly dressed businessman entered and went upstairs to his office. It was large and lavishly furnished; his male secretary had already prepared the daily batch of post and important papers. The businessman nodded a perfunctory good morning.
“Good morning Sir. No urgent calls. You have one meeting at ten o’clock here in the boardroom.”
The man nodded again and the secretary respectfully left the room.
He’d been scanning the mail for about five minutes when his direct line rang; he let it ring three times. It stopped and a few seconds later it rang again. Although he should have been accustomed to the call, even after five years the Syndicate’s simple code always made his blood run cold, he shivered involuntarily as he reached across to the handset.
“Good morning,” he addressed the mouthpiece.
“When you called last night to tell me that you had secured the information, you didn’t tell me that your man had massacred the couple in what is being described as a ritualistic murder!” the voice snapped, and then waited for a reply.