The voice that came through the speakerphone was deadly serious.
“I’ll still find him.”
TWELVE
Southeast of Charleroi, Belgium
Monday
19:48 CET
“Les billets, si vous plait.”
Victor handed the conductor his ticket and thanked him when it was stamped and returned. The conductor made his way slowly along the aisle, periodically bracing himself against the train’s lateral movement. He looked eighty years old and unlikely to make eighty-one.
It was snowing outside. Flakes had collected on the window to Victor’s right, matted against the corners of the glass. Outside the scenery was invisible in the night, but when Victor leaned his cheek against the cold glass he could just make out fields and hills, the occasional twinkling light in the distance.
The train was two hours from the German border, and it would take into the early hours to reach Munich via Strasbourg, but Victor didn’t allow himself the luxury of sleep. He wasn’t sure that he could, even if he wanted to.
He was the only person in the carriage, sitting in the last row of seats, to the right of the aisle, the wall directly behind him. Sat straight in his seat he could see the far door and anyone who might come through it.
Any assailant entering through the door to Victor’s left wouldn’t see him until he or she was already right next to him. Then, if they were right handed like ninety-percent of the world’s population, they would have to turn their whole body or extend their arm completely in order to shoot at him. In either case it would give him enough time to make sure they didn’t get the chance.
The door opened to Victor’s left and he automatically stiffened in his seat. Adrenaline surged, readying him for attack.
It was a child, a girl, four or five. He relaxed. She didn’t even look at him, just ran down the aisle bumping into seats on either side as she went. When she reached the end of the carriage she turned around and ran back, smiling as she bounced off one seat to the next. She stopped when she reached Victor, seeing him for the first time.
Eyes almost impossibly wide stared at his. He stared back but the intensity of her gaze made him uncomfortable, as though she could see through his eyes, past the veneer of his humanity to glimpse the real him that lay just beneath. But then she smiled, the gaps in her teeth showing, and any notion she possessed such power dissipated.
Feigning a look of puzzlement, Victor leaned forward and reached behind her ear. Her expression mimicked his. When he withdrew his hand he held a coin. A smile took over her face again. He rolled the coin back and forth across his fingers and the smile turned into a laugh.
He switched the coin into his left palm and passed the hand over his right. When he turned his left hand palm up it was empty. She laughed and pointed to his other hand. Maybe she’d seen the trick before, but Victor hoped she was merely perceptive beyond her years. He turned the closed right hand over and opened it. No coin there either. A look of confusion replaced the girl’s smile. He sat there with both hands turned palm up and shrugged.
The door opened and a woman appeared, instantly calling to the girl. The child responded by running off again. Her mother hurried after her, the volume of her voice rising with each shout. She looked flustered as if she had chased the girl down the whole train.
The mother caught the child’s collar before she’d reached the next door and marched her back the way they’d come with a sour expression on her face. In German she chastised her about running off, but the girl didn’t seem to care.
As she came closer Victor caught the child’s eye and gave her a look that said better luck next time. She grinned, and he slipped her the coin as they passed. Her eyes lit up for a second before she was gone and Victor had never felt more alone in his life.
The train rounded a long bend in the track and the overhead lights flickered momentarily. Victor drew a smartphone from his pocket and powered it on. He purchased it while in Charleroi, paying with cash to the shop owner’s delight. When it had loaded he took out the flash drive and plugged it into the USB port. The drive allowed him to access it, but the only file it contained asked for a password when he tried to open it.
He put the flash drive inside his jacket. He forced himself to think when all he wanted to do was shut down. Two hours after completing his assignment Eastern European assassins led by an American tried to kill him at his hotel. He thought about the dossier he’d found in the killers’ van. They may not have had many personal details, but to know his face and where he had been staying required extremely accurate intel.
Only someone who knew he would be in Paris to kill Ozols could have had assassins in place to kill him. He didn’t believe some third party was involved. The broker or client, or both together, had set him up, for safety, to save money, or some other reason he didn’t yet understand. At this moment the why wasn’t his priority. Staying alive was paramount, killing his enemies was secondary. Everything else was immaterial. If knowing why made it easier to protect himself only then did Victor care.
He opened up a file on the smartphone into which he had copied down all the sniper’s details. It was too risky to try to take the actual documents across borders. He needed to find out who had hired Svyatoslav. Maybe it had been Victor’s own broker or maybe someone else entirely. Either way Victor had to know. Svyatoslav resided in Munich so Victor would start his hunt there.
He realized his eyes were closed and forced them open. His body needed the rest, but while his enemies were still out there he couldn’t afford to lessen his vigilance. He had spent his whole life being invisible, yet somehow, despite all the precautions, he’d been seen. Now more than ever he had to be on guard.
And in Victor’s opinion the best form of defense was to attack.
THIRTEEN
Paris, France
Monday
22:48 CET
On the computer monitor a black-and-white image flickered incessantly. The picture was grainy, in places distorted, but the quality was just about adequate. It was low-res CCTV, so Alvarez was hardly expecting crystal clarity, but it would have been nice if the footage hadn’t given him a bitch of a headache.
He pinched the skin between his eyebrows and wiped the tears from his strained eyes. He felt like shit and guessed he looked no better. He stood in the basement of the U.S. Embassy along with Kennard while a young tech guy whose name he didn’t have time to remember controlled the equipment.
After he’d gotten off the call with headquarters, Chambers evidently had applied pressure on the French because Alvarez had received copies of all pertinent documentation. He’d also been given copies of the security tapes from the hotel in which five people, including a woman no less, had ended up shot to bits. According to the police report one of the two corpses found in the apartment building opposite was another woman, and an elderly one at that. This was the single craziest thing he’d worked on in his time in the CIA.
Alvarez had been an operations officer in the National Clandestine Services, previously known as the Directorate of Operations, for nearly eleven years. Before that he had served in the Marine Corps after leaving college, but life as a jarhead hadn’t been for him. It had felt like treading water, always waiting for something to happen, but it never had. He’d joined up as a punk kid eager to see what he was made of, and the continual training and occasional humanitarian mission hadn’t shown him what he wanted to find out. It had been a different time then, now he would probably get more action than he could stomach. He had joined the forces for the wrong reasons, but he had signed up with the CIA for all the right ones. Alvarez hadn’t looked back since.