“You just have to know how to ask.”
“And you do?”
She nodded.
“And what’s my role in this?”
“You don’t have one. At least not yet. After I have the information you’ll use it.”
“Sounds simple.”
She shrugged.
“And are you confident this will work, what you’ve proposed?”
It was the end of the interview.
Yes, she lived.
No, she died.
Victor saw her thinking carefully about her response. He watched her closely. Her lips pursed momentarily and she swallowed before answering.
“Yes,” she said, voice strong, assured.
“Good answer.”
She smiled slightly, misunderstanding.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew the flash drive. He flicked his wrist, threw it to her, impressed when she deftly snatched it out of the air in one hand. Good reflexes and dexterity. She looked it over for a moment before looking up at him questioningly. He saw her wanting to ask why he’d lied but she didn’t say anything. She moved over to her computer and plugged it into the side. Victor stepped forward to watch. She sighed when she was asked to input a password.
“They didn’t give it to you then?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I was never supposed to come this close to it. I know a little about cryptography, but I can’t tell what level of encryption it is. If it’s low end I could probably break it myself in a few days with the software on my computer. Simple brute-force attack. But if I was transporting something people would kill over, I’d make sure it was high-end encryption, the best I could get. My laptop doesn’t have the processing power to even scratch the surface of those kinds of ciphers.”
“I have an acquaintance,” Victor said. “Someone who may be able to help decrypt it. I stress may. I’ll try them while you collect the information on the account.”
“If anyone can hack this, my contact at Langley could.”
“No. It puts it too close to our enemies.”
“Does it matter? If they intercept it maybe they won’t come after us.”
“Given their efforts to kill me so far I can’t see them giving up quite so easily. And if they did get their hands on it they’ll know I gave the drive to you. I’ve compromised myself by meeting you. I don’t want them to know that.”
“I’ll try and decrypt it myself then.”
“I prefer my way.”
“We can do both,” the broker said.
“As we can’t do both simultaneously, I’ll try mine first.”
“Who says we can’t do both at the same time?”
“The laws of physics. We only have only drive.”
She didn’t speak. Her fingers worked the keyboard for a few seconds. Victor watched the file copying across from the drive to her computer. It took seconds.
“I never thought to try,” he found himself saying.
“The file carries the encryption, not the drive itself. It’s just a commercial memory stick, a carrier, nothing special, no hardware-based security. Now you can try your way and I can try mine.”
“And double our chances.”
She smiled at him. “See, we’ve made a good team already.”
He found himself looking at her lips. “Stop right there,” he said, as he raised his eyes back to hers. “We are not a team.”
“Then what are we?”
He struggled for a second thinking about how to describe them, but without success, then said, “Nothing.”
The broker looked away. “Okay.”
“Neither of us should be under any illusion about why we’re both doing this. You’re only helping me because you need me. I’m only helping you because for the moment you can help me, too.” He avoided saying he needed her. “That’s the end of it.”
“And what’s going to happen when I can’t help you anymore?”
It took guts to say it. Victor respected that.
“At that point we’ll part ways,” he said. “And you’ll never see me again.”
THIRTY-THREE
Marseilles, France
Saturday
01:59 CET
Reed held his palm over the sink. He felt no heat, but the air smelled faintly of burned paper and alcohol. He moved around the kitchen slowly, then into the lounge area. The communications equipment looked state-of-the-art and was cool to his touch. He stood in the darkness, seeing with the dim light of the city filtering into the apartment and his own natural night vision. He made his way to the bedroom, noting the open wardrobe and drawer, the discarded garments on the bed.
He found an all-night café where he ordered a black tea and composed an e-mail on his smartphone, explaining with an economy of words that the target had left recently, and in a hurry. He asked what he should do next.
The waitress who brought him his tea wanted to flirt, but Reed pretended not to be able to speak French. She still tried despite the perceived language barrier, and he politely ignored her. Not for the first time, he mused, that life would be far easier as an ugly man. He finished his tea with a minimum of fuss and went on his way. He had a room booked at a fine hotel on the seafront and set off on foot, the ground wet from the rain but the air pleasant and cool.
He enjoyed the walk, listening to the sounds of talking, laughter, and music drifting out of bars and clubs. Reed was neither disappointed nor annoyed that the target was not where the dossier claimed she would be. It was not in his nature to become emotional when working. There was a secondary-potential strike point listed where he could try if his anonymous client wished.
There were five targets in total that his client wanted removed, the first of which Reed had left dying in one of Paris’s less-than-hygienic abodes. Aside from the Marseilles disappearing act, that left three more, one in Milan, one in London, the last in a yet-to-be-established location.
As yet there were no stipulations on how the remaining targets were to be eliminated, but Reed prided himself on killing efficiently, subtly, and reliably. These were the reasons he had been hired and were the reasons he was able to charge such a pretty penny for his services. Suicides and accidents were his specialty, and when there wasn’t the opportunity for such a demonstration of his talents, he would select another means of death that didn’t spell out assassination.
At times in Reed’s line of work a more direct approach was needed. Some targets were too well protected, skilled, or just too careful to be removed discreetly. In such cases, Reed opted for more appropriate methods of removal than those he usually employed. He found the nine millimeter variety was usually quite sufficient but he preferred sharpened ceramic for a more personal touch.
The last of the listed targets held particular interest to Reed. There was no name, just a code name, and that alone told Reed much. This nameless man was a contract killer, and by all accounts a good one at that. If the information he had been given was correct this Tesseract had killed seven gunmen who tried to ambush him at a hotel, as well as avoiding another assassination attempt in Switzerland. Reed had to admire such performances, even if the results had been achieved with rather less finesse than he liked to enact himself.
Reed looked forward to the killing of this target. Other professionals were always the most difficult to execute cleanly, but Reed enjoyed a challenge. Like Reed himself, the experienced ones were almost obsessively paranoid in how they conducted themselves, and the precautions they took were more often than not especially extensive-not forgetting the little fact that they tended to be more than capable of fighting back. Which was exactly why they were such good fun to murder.
The fact that this quarry was in possession of skill appealed to Reed, who judged his own achievements in relation to the quality of his victims. He killed for money, whether it was the Queen’s or some private client’s banknote, but he still took pride in his craft. Participating in a sporting kill gave Reed considerable personal satisfaction, even if, by the very nature of his own abilities, such contests were so heavily stacked in his favor. But it was only in performing against the very best opposition that one’s true aptitude could be measured.