The question caught Victor off balance. “Excuse me?”
“I said, what do I call you? You were always referred to as Tesseract in our-”
“Why Tesseract?”
“I don’t know, it’s just a code name,” she answered. “So, what shall I call you?”
“You don’t need to call me anything,” Victor said.
“Okay.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“It’s the company that wants you dead.”
She delivered the information as if it were a huge revelation. There was no change in his expression.
“You already know,” she stated, surprised.
He nodded.
“But how?”
“If you expected me to be shocked, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I haven’t been standing idle since this thing started.”
“What else do you know?”
“I’m not here to answer your questions. For now let’s stick to what you know.”
The broker nodded and folded her arms in front of her chest. “This has to work both ways.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to anything to that effect.”
She stared at him for a moment as if she was considering a particularly choice retort. But he’d broken her will and instead she said simply, “It’s the CIA who wants you dead because it was the CIA who hired you.”
Victor’s face showed nothing, but his mind was a mess with questions. So it was a CIA setup from the beginning. “How do you know that?” He found he disliked having to ask her questions immensely.
“Because I used to work for them,” she answered.
“Used to?”
“They want me dead too.”
“Explain.”
“They killed my control and cut me loose. They want me dead just as much they want you.”
“What about the flash drive?”
“There’s something on it they want. Information, obviously.”
“Information on what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what good are you?”
“Ask me something else and find out.”
“Who was the man I killed?”
“Andris Ozols.”
“I didn’t ask for his name. Who was he?”
“A former officer in the Russian navy.”
“That wasn’t in the dossier.”
“You didn’t need to know.”
The muscles in his jaw flexed momentarily. “What was he doing in Paris?”
“Selling the drive to someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t need to know?”
“I guess not.”
“What about the flash drive? Can you decrypt it?”
“Do you have it?”
“No,” he said.
“But you have it somewhere?”
“Yes. Can you decrypt it?”
“Maybe. But I won’t know until I try. I have friends at the agency who-”
“Not an option,” he said and immediately had an idea. Something he hadn’t considered until now.
She saw him thinking. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said. He changed the subject. “So they wanted me to get the drive before the buyer got hold of it?”
“Yes.”
“I assume at that point it would be considerably harder to obtain. The buyer must be too well protected or someone they didn’t dare kill.”
“Who are you thinking?”
Victor kept his thoughts to himself. “Why didn’t the CIA just do it, why use me? And why try and kill me afterward?”
“Those two questions share the same answer.” The broker took a step forward. “But I can’t be sure.”
“Then why am I listening to you?”
“Because you don’t have a choice.”
Victor was surprised by her words and more surprised by the strength of her tone. He reassessed his opinion on her will.
“And neither do I,” she continued. “But what I do know is that they tried to have you killed to cover up the operation. They don’t want Ozols’s death ever coming back to haunt them.”
Victor listened, face showing nothing.
The broker continued, “If the plan had worked all anyone would have to go on is the body of a killer in a Paris hotel room with no clue as to who hired you. At best they would have realized that you were a hired gun with no affiliation to anyone. Any connection between you and those who ordered Ozols’s death would have been neatly severed.”
“And that’s it? They want me dead to cover up a job that I actually did? It’s not as though I’m going to advertise what I’d done. If nothing else it’s not the best way to generate new clients.”
Victor realized there was more emotion in his voice than he would have liked to have revealed.
“True,” she said. “But they couldn’t risk your being captured, interrogated.”
“I couldn’t have told anyone anything because I don’t know anything.”
“Be that as it may, if you’re dead they don’t have to worry. The link to those who ordered the hit dies when you do.”
“But why use me? Why not some punk? Any amateur could have killed Ozols. The CIA didn’t need me to do it.”
“Because some punk wouldn’t have taken a fraction of your precautions. Someone else would have left a trail to follow. At the time I wasn’t told why, but we needed a killer who had no record, someone who was capable but to all intents and purposes didn’t exist. They needed someone who was invisible, and you fit the criteria. I suppose you can take that as a compliment.”
“I’m flattered.”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic.”
Victor ignored the comment. “And how do you fit into all this? Why do they want you dead too?”
“I’m part of the chain. The operation failed. You lived; they didn’t get the drive; and now they need to cut all the links to make it clean.”
“Guilty by association?”
“Something like that.”
“But they haven’t gotten to you yet.”
“I didn’t give them the chance.”
“Why exactly did you bring me here?”
The broker moved from where she had been standing, a couple of steps to the left. Nervous release maybe. Victor watched her. Light from the lamp accentuated her cheekbones, danced on her full lips.
“Because we can help each other,” she said.
“Help each other to do what?”
“Remain breathing.”
“I hope you’re not suggesting we try and give them the drive and pray they leave us alone.”
“Of course not.”
“Then what?”
“We take out our enemies.”
He wanted to say, to where? Some people just didn’t like to say kill. Ridiculous euphemisms, however, were fine to say. He supposed it helped them sleep at night.
“And how are we going to do that? I can’t kill the entire CIA. I don’t have that many bullets.”
“The hit on Ozols wasn’t officially sanctioned,” the broker said. “It was strictly off the books, old-school black bag. Someone ordered it, people implemented it, but the wider organization doesn’t know about it.”
“Why do you think that?”
“There are lots of different reasons,” she explained. “Starting with the way I was approached for the job. I had anonymous phone calls and meetings. I wasn’t told who I was working for or with or what exactly I was working toward. It went way beyond need to know. Plus the fact that they needed you, a contract killer, one with no prior agency links. If it was a white job they wouldn’t have needed to kill you afterward or me or my control when it went wrong. They would have just used their own people or known contractors in the first place. Whoever is behind this really doesn’t want the rest of the CIA to know what they’re up to.”
“The shooters who ambushed me in Paris,” Victor said. “They were private sector. They didn’t know who they were working for.”
“Exactly.”
“And I had a run in with an American killer at my house.”
He didn’t say where that had been. To some extent it didn’t matter; he wouldn’t be moving back, but revealing personal information unnecessarily was one habit he wasn’t about to start.
“In Switzerland, I know,” she said. The fact she knew stung him, but he hid it. “It would’ve been a contractor, not an operative.”