CHAPTER 73
17:22 EAT
The two killers stared at each other for a single long moment. Reed held the advantage, his enemy was half-turned away, hands gripping another man, pinning him against the back of the elevator. But Reed didn’t move.
Reed was rarely surprised, but he was as good as paralysed. Tesseract was dead. He had died in a hotel room in Nicosia, blown into atoms by an expertly placed bomb. Tesseract was dead, yet he was standing no more than four feet away. Reed stared forward blankly, his expression one of disbelief as his brain tried to rationalize what was obvious. He had failed.
Reed reacted second, only beginning to draw the Glock as Tesseract was already wrenching the other man away from the wall.
Victor swung Aniskovach one hundred and eighty degrees and threw him out of the elevator just as Reed extended his arm and fired; the man took the bullet meant for Tesseract in the chest, momentarily contorting before crashing into Reed. Both men were sent flailing.
Reed hit the floor first, on his back, Aniskovach’s body landing on top of him an instant later. He didn’t have time to brace himself, and the impact momentarily stunned his body but reignited his mind.
He couldn’t see Tesseract, and there wasn’t time to get out from under the dead weight, so Reed angled the Glock and fired blind.
Victor hit the button for the lobby and threw himself to the side of the elevator, back pressed flat against the panelled wood a split second before bullets struck the back wall. The mirror smashed, and Victor shielded his face with his arm against the explosions of glass. Jagged pieces rained down onto the floor. The doors closed.
A triangle of indentations appeared in the metal on Victor’s side. The elevator descended and the firing ceased. Avoiding the broken glass, Victor grabbed the Russian’s gun from the far corner. A 9 mm Browning. He ejected and checked the magazine, slammed it back in, worked the slide, and thumbed off the safety. Ready.
In seconds the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened. Before Victor stepped out into the lobby he used his knuckle to hit the buttons for the second, third, and fourth floors, and quickly stepped out before the doors closed behind him. There was no one nearby.
He had the Browning tucked into the front of his waistband with his shirt hanging loose to cover it. His right hand hovered by the grip as he walked cautiously forward. His gaze was fixed to the stairwell entrance, figuring the assassin would race down after him. It would take him considerably longer than Victor to reach the lobby, but still not long.
The assassin would know that too, and he would also calculate that Victor knew it. Taking the stairs would be the fastest way down, but in doing so the assassin would have to take the risk that Victor was waiting for him. There were other safer ways to the ground floor that would take longer. If their roles were reversed, Victor wasn’t sure what he would do.
He had no time to think about it further since he saw a group of men exit the hotel bar. They were all white, skins sunburned or shiny and starting to tan. The men were dressed as civilians but had the unmistakable bearing of military types. Victor knew they were Russians even before he heard them speak.
A couple of them glanced his way, but the others didn’t pay Victor any attention. Some carried rucksacks and looked weary from travel, while the rest seemed fresher. They’d obviously travelled separately in two groups to avoid suspicion. It made sense. It was the largest hotel in town and close to the port. Tourists were commonplace here, making it the ideal location to remain anonymous.
Any desire Victor had to wait and ambush the assassin disappeared now that there were seven, most likely armed, Russian soldiers in the lobby. The new arrivals started walking towards the elevator. Victor headed straight for the exit at a measured pace, just a guest hurrying on his way into town. A few of the Russians looked his way but nothing more. The ones without rucksacks congregated in the centre of the lobby.
As Victor passed the first group he hoped none of the seven had been involved in the St Petersburg’s incident. They would have seen that photo Norimov mentioned. If they had and Victor was recognized, he wouldn’t have much chance of escaping. He approached the middle of the lobby, veering to the right to avoid the Russians, estimating there had been enough time for the assassin to reach the bottom of the stairs. But the door remained closed.
The assassin clearly had something else in mind.
*
Reed made his way down the stairwell, taking deep, quick breaths as anger threatened to explode through his calm exterior. Tesseract was alive. Reed had failed to kill him. He had survived the bomb. No, Tesseract had found the trap and set it off to fool Reed into thinking he had been successful. The Englishman’s teeth ground together. He remembered thinking of Tesseract as an amateur, but if Tesseract was an amateur, what did that make Reed?
Reed could not remember the last time he had lost his temper, but now he felt the purest rage. Tesseract had beaten him, made a fool of him. Reed needed vindication.
He knew he would never beat the elevator to the lobby, and, if he took the stairs to the ground floor, Tesseract would be waiting to ambush him. Reed had no intentions of rushing into a trap.
He reached the third floor and entered the corridor. He quickly moved towards a window at the opposite end that he knew would give him a perfect vantage point. It overlooked the street outside the front of the hotel, and from that position Reed could wait for Tesseract to emerge from the main entrance and place two hollow points into the back of his skull.
Reed ejected the half-empty magazine from the Glock, the muscles in his jaw flexing periodically beneath the skin. He had never experienced emotion towards a target before, but now it overwhelmed him. Reed turned his head, hearing a door opening behind him, and saw the target he was in Tanzania to kill enter the corridor from his room. He was heading for the elevator when he looked Reed’s way and spotted the gun in Reed’s hand.
Sykes backed off, wide eyed, open-mouthed, retreating inside his room.
Reed placed the ejected mag in a pocket, reloaded a full one. He opened the window and stood with the Glock out before him, aiming at where he expected Tesseract to appear.
In his peripheral vision he saw one of the target’s hulking hirelings emerge from same room where the target had just fled to. He moved well, fast, a pistol clutched in both hands, held down, and to the side, the safety grip people are trained to use to stop them shooting someone by mistake. The downside was that it took an extra split second to acquire a target.
Without moving his head Reed shot the guy twice in the chest. The impact sent him tumbling backwards, deflecting off the wall before hitting the floor as a dead man.
Reed re-established his aim on the street outside and waited patiently. It would have taken seconds to kick the target’s door open and fulfil the contract, but that would give Tesseract enough time to escape. Reed did not care about the job he was in Tanga to complete. He cared only about the man he had failed to kill. The man who had beaten him. He cared only about winning.
He cared only about killing Tesseract.
Two floors above, Aniskovach regained consciousness and pulled himself to his feet. Each breath was agony. He pressed his left hand against a wall for support while his right found the bullet embedded in his armoured vest. He checked underneath for blood, but the bullet hadn’t gone through the other side.
The SVR colonel had always been a cautious man, but after coming close to death in St Petersburg Aniskovach had adopted a safety-first approach to operations. Despite the pain, it felt good to be alive. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out for but hoped there was still time. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.