Taking time out to have a comfortable meal would help the subterfuge, as they looked for all the world like they were just another family killing time before a connecting flight. It would also give Sarah the opportunity to go over their next course of action, as time spent in mental rehearsal was never wasted. Mark had taught her that lesson well.
15
Once Cole had verified that the men were definitely tailing him, he decided to act quickly, before the four of them had time to regroup and develop a plan of their own. He looked through the window at the view outside the colossal ship. The weather was filthy, rain driving hard against the thick glass.
He turned away and traversed the busy corridor, stopping outside a jewellers to peer through the window, watching the door to the men’s toilets just adjacent to the shop with his peripheral vision. He couldn’t see the two men from the parking sector yet, but assumed they would be waiting, hidden, until called by the others.
Of the second pair, the one Cole had labelled ‘Mr Blue’ due to his blue denim jeans, was watching him surreptitiously from inside the jewellers, whilst the other — ‘John Wayne’, because of the curious, bow-legged way he walked — was about ten feet to Cole’s left, sitting on a plastic bench pretending to read a copy of Newsweek.
Out of the corner of his eye Cole saw a lone man push through the toilet door back into the corridor. Cole knew the toilets would now be empty, and took it as his cue to move. Turning away from the shop window, he started to wander down the wide corridor. Acting as if he had just spotted the toilet sign, he stopped as if wondering whether he needed to go, and then pushed through the door into the bathroom beyond.
He didn’t know if the men would follow, but at least it would let him know what the men’s orders were. If they were merely to observe him, possibly with the hope of arresting him after, they would wait patiently outside until he had finished. If, on the other hand, they had orders to kill him, then an empty bathroom would be too good an opportunity to miss and they would soon be joining him.
He made his way to a urinal on the wall straight ahead, stomach turning at the smell of the place. That was another thing that would never change about ferry crossings, he guessed; toilets constantly blocked with vomit from alcohol and general seasickness, along with diarrhoea from disagreeable food. Holding his breath, he unzipped and immediately started to urinate. If the men did enter, Cole’s apparent vulnerability would make them relax, and possibly be more likely to make mistakes. In addition to which, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been, and he actually did need to go quite urgently.
Moments later, he heard the door open behind him. He watched the reflection in the curved metal of the cistern pipes in front of him, and the distorted image showed the two agents entering, the rear man — Mr Blue — placing some sort of jam under the door to stop any unwanted visitors from coming in and spoiling the fun. He’d been right, Cole thought as they approached; their orders were to kill him.
Cole knew the men wouldn’t risk using guns. Silenced weapons could slow the velocity of a bullet sufficiently to negate the telltale sonic crack, but ricochets were always a danger, especially in such a confined space. Additionally, gunshot wounds were messy, and the agents surely wouldn’t want to raise suspicions too much. They wouldn’t want it to appear like a professional hit, not in so public a place.
Cole expected knives, at close quarters; something that could be blamed on a robbery, or an argument. Or maybe they’d use a garrotte, and try to strangle him. Or a taser, hitting him with 50,000 volts and causing a heart attack that would only later be determined as unnatural. Whichever method, Cole knew that they would have to get close.
One of the men approached the urinal next to him. From the heavy footsteps he knew it was John Wayne; Mr Blue was hanging back. As Cole started to zip up, he turned to the man stepping in front of the adjacent urinal, and smiled the slightly coy, self-conscious smile that was common in men’s public toilets around the world. John nodded back, and Cole finished zipping, catching the glint of a knife reflected in the pipes in front of him.
John’s hands went down to his trousers as if to unzip, but then he suddenly burst sideways at Cole, in an attempt to grab and pin him whilst Blue did his work with the knife.
Cole’s reactions were quicker. As soon as John moved, he slammed the callused edge of his hand into the agent’s windpipe, crushing the trachea instantly. The man dropped to his knees and Cole dodged sharply to the side as Blue thrust the knife towards his spine.
Twisting round in a close arc, Cole grabbed Blue with both hands — one secured around the man’s knife-arm, the other gripping his hair — and, using Blue’s own momentum from the forward thrust, he yanked him forwards viciously. Blue’s head smashed into the reinforced porcelain of the urinal with a sickening crunch, and Cole knew the agent was no longer a threat.
Cole also knew that he couldn’t afford to let either man live and so he leant forwards and jerked Blue’s head violently backwards, breaking the neck cleanly. Cole looked down to the left and saw John on the floor, eyes wide as he struggled in vain to breathe. As Cole reached down, the agent’s eyes were pleading, and yet no words came out of the gargling, shattered throat. A moment later, John joined his partner on the dirty toilet floor, his neck also broken.
Cole picked up the knife from the floor, a folding Gerber; easy to conceal but deadly nevertheless. Cole was glad he hadn’t had to use it; the blood would have been hard to cover up. As it was, he still had two bodies to hide, and he went to work quickly.
He pulled Blue’s limp body through into a cubicle, trying as hard as he could to ignore the putrid stench from the stained bowl. He took off the man’s jacket and used it to secure him in a sitting position atop the lavatory, tying the sleeves off around the pipe behind the dead body, which looked grotesque with its unnaturally erect posture. He then pulled off Blue’s belt and pulled the man’s trousers around his ankles, before going back out and pulling John’s heavy body through into the cubicle. Hoisting him up to a higher position, he used Blue’s belt to secure his old partner on top of him, cinching him in tight so that he wouldn’t slip down.
After checking his handiwork, Cole then locked the cubicle door from the inside and climbed out over the top of the doorframe. Looking underneath the door from the outside, he could see a pair of legs, trousers pulled around the ankles down to the leather shoes, and nothing else. Just another passenger using the facilities. The smell would certainly back that one up, Cole thought grimly.
Satisfied, Cole moved towards the exit. From the banging on the door, he could tell someone was impatiently trying to get in, their entry blocked by Blue’s door jam. He wondered if it was one of the other agents, but quickly discounted the possibility. They wouldn’t be trying to get in; they’d be observing off to the side, waiting for their colleagues to come out. The banging door would just be a normal passenger, he decided, probably desperate for a piss. Pulling the jam from the bottom of the door, he decided to play it that way.
He yanked the door open, as if he’d been struggling to do so for some time. Cole acted suitably surprised as the door finally opened and came hurtling towards him at speed, taking a defensive step backwards. The move would also give him a chance to react if he’d been wrong about the person on the other side of the door. Cole had been correct in his initial assumption however, and the passenger stumbled forwards from pushing against the door, surprise written plainly across his own face.
‘Sorry mate,’ said Cole breathlessly, pretending to try and regain his composure, ‘bloody door must have got stuck!’
The other man was trying to regain his own composure, and smiled back at Cole in a mixture of embarrassment and confusion. ‘No worries mate,’ he replied, moving past Cole into the bathroom, ‘I’m just desperate!’ Cole smiled in return, and moved past the man into the corridor.
Although he hadn’t seen the faces of the men in the parking zone, he recognized them instantly now, standing across the passageway, their backs to the outside window. It was the eyes that did it, as always. Neither of them could conceal the surprise, the confusion, the fear.
Cole moved off instantly down the walkway to the left. He would have to care of these two somewhere else.