The Game (5 page)

From the archway glowing with ultraviolet light, the unshaven young guy with the big grin emerged with an even bigger grin. He walked a little awkwardly. The dancer followed a few paces behind him. She used her fingers to comb the knots out of her hair extensions and had a look on her face that said it was just another day at the office. Her eyes met with Victor’s as his gaze swept her way and she smiled, practised and sultry as though he had brightened her life with his mere presence. He didn’t need to gesture for her to head in his direction.

She had a slow, awkward walk because her skin-tight dress hugged her legs to her knees and let only an inch of air pass between them. She was no older than twenty, with hair so blonde it was almost white. Her skin was a deep caramel colour. Her smile widened as she grew closer to Victor, recognising the quality of his garments and speculating on the limit of his credit card. He made sure to smile back and stare lustfully for the benefit of the two watchers. He held open the chair next to him, patting the seat with his palm for the dancer to sit beside him.

‘I’m Claudia,’ she said as she sat, one manicured hand immediately resting on his nearest thigh.

‘Alfred Schule,’ Victor said back.

‘Pleasure to meet you, Alfred.’

He let her ask him a few pointless questions that were designed to relax him and make him feel as though she was genuinely interested in what he did for a living and where he lived, and not purely concerned with how much money he might spend on her. He played along and soon she was laughing at everything he said.

‘I need you to do something for me, Claudia.’ He took his wallet from his jacket and placed some cash on the table, watching her gaze lock onto it. ‘I want you to slap me across the cheek.’

She smiled despite her confusion. ‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘I want you to slap me as hard as you can. As though I’ve stepped out of line. Then I want you to grab a friend and tell her to entertain the man in the sportswear near the bar. I’ll buy him a dance.’ He placed some more cash on the table. ‘And I’d like to pay you to make sure the man with the briefcase sitting in the corner has a similarly good time. I want you and your friend to make them feel extra special. Tell them it’s on the house because they’re first timers. And they’re both pretty shy, so don’t take no for an answer. Okay?’

She looked at him and back to the cash and then nodded. ‘Sure, whatever you want. It’s your money.’ She scooped it off the table. ‘But I’d really rather dance for you.’

‘Another time, perhaps.’

She folded the money and slipped it under her dress. She frowned. ‘Are you sure you want me to slap you?’

‘Hard as you can.’

‘No one’s ever asked me to slap them before. On the face, at least.’ She laughed. ‘I’m not sure I can do it.’

‘Don’t think about it. Just do it.’

‘Hard as I can?’

‘Yes, please. Slap me. Hard as you can.’

‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. ‘Pretend I’ve insulted you or tried to grab you.’

‘But you seem like a nice guy.’

‘Trust me, I’m really not.’

She raised her right hand a fraction and her gaze fell to his cheek. She tensed and frowned but didn’t slap him.

‘I can’t do it.’ She laughed again.

‘But if I asked you to strip naked, you could do that, right?’

She didn’t answer. Her smile faltered.

He said, ‘Is taking your clothes off the absolute limit of your skills?’

The bait and tone worked.

It was a good slap.

She caught the side of his face with the entire inside of her hand, her fingertips making contact between his cheekbone and ear, her palm spread across his cheek. She was no stranger to slapping, and knew how to put her weight into it. The result was a significant sting to Victor’s face and a notably loud noise. He felt moisture form in the corner of his eye.

She glared at him and stood.

He sat looking sheepish as she sought out a friend. He didn’t need to check to know both watchers would have seen the incident. He bought another drink from the bartender and sat back down with it at his table, knowing the watchers would see him do so and expect him to remain in the club for at least as long as it had taken him to drink the first orange juice.

He took a sip and noted Claudia making her way over to the guy in the suit with the briefcase, while another dancer headed towards the one in the sportswear. They were both predictably good at their jobs, and having already been paid for their services, were fast and efficient in their actions. The two watchers didn’t try to turn them away. They had to go along with the attention, or else risk identifying themselves as men who weren’t interested in strippers and therefore shouldn’t be in a strip joint.

Victor waited a minute, until both watchers were sat with their hands on their thighs and their knees apart, while the women danced between their legs and on their laps, their writhing bodies and swaying hair impeding line of sight.

He stood and headed for the exit, knowing it would only take ten seconds until the watchers noticed he was gone. But that didn’t matter. They couldn’t hurl the dancers away for the reason they couldn’t say no in the first instance, and similarly they couldn’t send an update through their throat mikes with a woman on top of them.

He figured he had a thirty-second head start. He only needed twenty.

The doorman saw him approach and opened the door for him.

Victor nodded his thanks and said, ‘I’ve got a feeling there are a couple of guys back there who are going to try and slip out without paying.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Just thought I’d give you a heads up. One’s in a suit, the other in sportswear. They came in separately but I think they’re a team of con artists.’

‘Oh, right. Thanks for the information.’

‘You’re very welcome.’

‘Have a good day, sir.’ The doorman looked very pleased the dull afternoon shift was about to liven up.

Victor emerged onto the street outside. The sun stung his eyes a little after twenty minutes inside a dark club. He saw his ‘wife’ straight away. On the far side of the road a woman stood in front of an antique store. Her dark brown hair, chestnut where it reflected the sunshine, was tied up. She wore casual clothes – jeans and a corduroy jacket – and had a large patent leather handbag over her left shoulder. She wasn’t tall and that told Victor a significant detail about her. He couldn’t see her face, because she had her back to the road as she seemed to browse the furniture and ornaments in the store window – an action that let her watch the strip club’s entrance via its reflection in the glass. He saw no other potential watchers nearby. She was alone.

The weak link.

Victor knew she’d spotted him leave the strip joint. She couldn’t fail to. She stood in a good position, at a good angle. No one could enter or exit the club without her knowledge. He knew she was watching him as he stepped off the kerb and onto the road. She didn’t move. She couldn’t. She stood pretending to browse the goods displayed through the window of the antique store. She didn’t yet know he had slipped his shadows. She had to maintain her cover. If she reacted in any way she might needlessly identify herself. She was hoping there was something she didn’t understand; that walking in her direction was coincidental; that whatever he was doing, wherever he was going, it didn’t involve her. She was still hoping when he was three metres away.

He hurried across the road to avoid the steady flow of traffic, the increased speed of his walk expected and entirely innocent. Except it wasn’t.

When he hadn’t changed direction at two metres, she must have known he was coming for her. By that point she still had time to react, and began to turn so that her back was not presented to him, but she hesitated because she was distracted by the shadows in the club yelling updates into their throat mikes.

The loud voices in her ear served to distract her for only a second, but by the time she had shaken off her surprise Victor was less than a metre behind her and it was far too late.

He put his open left hand on the small of her back, stepped around to face her as she swivelled in his direction, and thrust the tips of his locked fingers against her abdomen, an inch below her sternum.

She was underweight, with a wafer-thin layer of body fat on her stomach, which would have made it easier for Victor to find the spot with his fingertips had he not known exactly where to apply pressure. She gasped at the sudden and intense pain and instinctively tensed her stomach against the attack, but it did no good. Victor’s fingertips pushed against the linea alba – the narrow strip of connective tissue that ran vertically down the centre of the wall of abdominal muscle. Protecting her intestines from the pressure of Victor’s attack was just a few millimetres of soft flesh.

He used his left hand to push her face into his shoulder, as though they were embracing, to muffle her cry as he pushed harder, knowing from experience how debilitating the resulting waves of agony and nausea could be. Her hands gripped his arms but the pain weakened her and she didn’t have the strength to push him away or fight. He closed his eyes and smiled for the benefit of anyone who should happen to look their way.

Her legs trembled and Victor felt her begin to fall, so he eased the pressure on her stomach to prevent her collapsing, and held her upright. He led her away, walking fast and pulling her along with him, knowing that the two shadows would be rushing for the club’s exit but when they did there would be a huge doorman to get past first.

‘No, wait…’

Victor led her to the mouth of an alleyway between two storefronts, stabbing his fingertips hard against her stomach when he felt her tense and try to slow. He could hear the muffled sound of commotion emanating through the woman’s earpiece. One of the watchers had left his radio on send. He couldn’t discern the exact nature of the sounds, but it seemed that they were tangling with the doorman.

The alley was wide, and empty of garbage or bins or anything else that would stop a delivery car or van backing into it. When they had gone three metres into it, Victor reached into the woman’s patent leather handbag, having felt nothing hard against his torso as he’d held her close and her clothing offering no other room for a hiding place. He felt a document folder against the back of his hand as his fingers closed around the grip of a handgun. He knew it was a Glock 19 before he withdrew it from the bag.

He only had to give her a light shove to create distance, as she was too weak to resist. She was weaker than he thought because she stumbled a few steps, wildly off balance, and couldn’t stop herself crashing to the ground.

But she was smart and resourceful and well trained, because she immediately rolled over to face him regardless of any shock or pain of impact, showing her palms as he pointed the muzzle of the Glock at her forehead.

‘
Wait
,’ she gasped, eyes wide behind black-framed glasses that were skewed from the fall.

Panic warped her features. She looked about thirty. Her face was thin and drawn.

‘Wait,’ she said again, ‘I’m no threat to you.’

‘Your entire team is no threat to me. So now you’re unarmed and prone, what does that make you?’

Her breaths were quick and short. White showed all around her eyes. ‘Put the gun down, please. You don’t need it. Please.’

‘Anyone who has seen my face up close, heard my voice and knows enough about me to lead a surveillance op is a problem I can do without,’ Victor said. ‘So I would recommend thinking very carefully before you speak again, because the next thing out of your mouth will determine whether I walk from this alleyway or run.’

There was no hesitation. She said, ‘My name is Janice Muir. I’m CIA. Roland Procter sent me.’

‘Then,’ Victor said as he heard a horn blare and tyres screech on the road behind him, ‘you had better tell your team to back off, because two of them are about to get killed.’

He pointed the Glock at the mouth of the alleyway.

Muir took a split second to process the situation, then thumbed her throat mike and yelled, ‘STAND DOWN, STAND DOWN.’

The two watchers from the club – the one in sportswear, the other in a suit – had their guns drawn but lowered as they entered the alleyway. Both had hard stares that told Victor they didn’t much appreciate him pointing a firearm in their direction, but they didn’t comment on it and he didn’t care. They came in slowly and obviously because Muir had told them what to expect, but for the same reason they were deliberate and cautious.

The guy in the sportswear said, ‘Are you all right, Janice?’

Muir was on one knee and bent over because of the fall and the pain in her stomach. ‘I’m fine, guys,’ she assured him, straightening her glasses so they sat properly. ‘Honestly. We’re just talking here.’

‘Doesn’t look like just talking,’ the man in the suit said, his eyes fixed on Victor.

‘We were having a lively discussion,’ Muir joked with a cough, and said to Victor, ‘weren’t we?’

He didn’t look at her. He didn’t answer. He kept her handgun steady and extended at the two watchers. The guy in the suit was younger and probably faster than the older man in the sportswear but his suit jacket was buttoned up, which would add a fraction of a second to the time it would take him to snap his own Glock up to shoot. Victor had the gun’s muzzle pointed at the gap of empty air between their heads. They were equally quick and he couldn’t predict who was likely to make a move first if it came to it.

The one in the sportswear said, ‘He’s got your gun.’

‘He’s just borrowing it,’ Muir replied. ‘He’s going to give it back to me any second now. Aren’t you?’

‘Any second,’ Victor echoed.

‘So give it back to her,’ the one in sportswear said.

Muir struggled to her feet. ‘Come on, Francis. Leave us alone for a minute. I’m giving you an order. Stand down. Please.’

The watcher in the sportswear gestured over his shoulder and said, ‘We’ll be right around the corner if you need us.’ He tapped the man in the suit on the arm.

Who said to Victor, ‘And we can be back in a flash, pal. Don’t you forget that.’

‘He won’t,’ Muir answered for him.

‘In a flash,’ the man in the suit said again.

Both watchers backed out of the alleyway, but didn’t turn around while Victor had the Glock aimed at them.

‘You could have made that a lot easier,’ Muir said and thumbed her throat mike.

Victor lowered the gun and faced her.

There was lots of communication back and forth between Muir and the remaining members of the team as she updated the others on the change in circumstances and assured them everything was fine.

She was half a foot shorter than him and he took a step backwards so he didn’t have look down at her at such an acute angle. She was wiry, but so thin she was almost emaciated. He weighed close to double what she did. When he had grabbed her upper arm to lead her to the alleyway, the tip of his index finger had almost reached his thumb, but the arm was firm with muscle, used to doing a job. She found time in her schedule to work out even if she didn’t make time to eat proper meals. Her gaunt features added a couple of years to her appearance. He could see the vitamin D deficiency from her skin tone and the lack of protein in her hair.

She rubbed her stomach and said, ‘I need your help.’

‘Credentials,’ Victor said.

She handed them over. The ID was genuine, but said she worked for the Justice Department. Common practice. Spies didn’t carry laminates identifying themselves as spies.

‘I need your help,’ Muir said again.

He handed back her ID. ‘You said Procter sent you.’

She grimaced. ‘That’s correct. He’s my boss at the agency.’

‘If he really sent you then you should have been told that I’m not of a particularly charitable nature.’

‘Okay, perhaps I should have phrased myself a little differently. When I said I need your help, what I really mean is: I want you to do a job for me. I want to hire you.’

Victor released the magazine from the Glock then pulled back the slide so the round in the chamber ejected. He caught it and handed the gun, the mag and bullet to Muir.

‘Thank you.’ Muir took the items and slipped them back inside her bag.

‘The answer is no.’

‘You don’t even know what I’m asking you to do yet.’

‘The specific details of the contract are immaterial. Procter should have explained to you that I don’t talk business with clients in person. Even those who don’t put a team of watchers on me.’

Muir shifted her weight. ‘Look, I’m sorry about that. I really am. But you have to appreciate the position I was in. I know how things work between you and Procter. I had to meet you in person. I couldn’t have just sent you an email and expected you to take me seriously, could I?’

‘I don’t have to appreciate anything. But what you need to understand is that Procter is my broker. I don’t deal with anyone else. Whatever your job is, if you wanted me to even consider agreeing to it, you should have allowed Procter to make contact. He’s the one I deal with. No one else. I’m going to leave now. I’ve given you the courtesy of not killing you or your men because of your relationship with Procter. And that’s a courtesy I’ll only grant once.’

‘Procter’s in the hospital,’ Muir said. ‘He was hit by a DUI. Some wasted guy in a Hummer. Procter’s got a shattered hip and a bruised spine, and even if he wasn’t high on opiates nine hours out of ten, he’s got a broken jaw the size of a balloon. He’s not in a position to contact anyone, least of all you. At an absolute minimum he’s going to be out of action for the next few weeks and won’t be back at the company for at least a couple of months. I can’t wait that long.’

Victor remained silent for a moment, then said, ‘Tell me what you know about me.’

Muir stopped rubbing her stomach. ‘I know you’re a professional assassin. Formerly freelance. Currently an unofficial asset for the Agency. Which I find amusing seeing as the CIA has a crisp termination order with your name on it. Well, codename. You’re also wanted by the Russian SVR and FSB, French Secret Service, Israeli Mossad and half of the police forces in Europe.’

‘Then when you claim to have so little information about me, how can you possibly know I can do what you need me to?’

‘Because no one else can.’ She winced and rubbed her stomach again.

‘The pain will come and go for about an hour. After that, you’ll be fine. But you might want to skip the situps for a few days.’

She sighed. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

‘What about the rest of your team?’ Victor asked. ‘What do they know about me?’

‘They know even less than I do. The older guy is Francis Beatty. He’s been at the agency for ever. He’s assisting me. The rest are a contract surveillance team purely here to establish if you were who I was looking for. They don’t know what I want with you. All they were told is that you were a contact, albeit a highly dangerous one, and that you would spot them if they were anything less than perfect.’

‘They weren’t close to perfect.’

‘And they’ll be reprimanded appropriately, but I didn’t have a lot of choice using them. You’re not exactly the kind of man that you can walk up to and ask if he’s really the assassin you’re looking for. But whatever, they’re of no danger to you now.’

‘They were never any danger to me.’

‘All I’m asking you is for thirty minutes of your time. That’s all. Just half an hour. Let me tell you what the job is. You don’t like what I have to say you can walk away and you’ll never hear from me again. You’ve got nothing to lose. I’m just asking you to listen to me here. See what I have to say first before you turn me down. I’ll even buy you a coffee. You do drink coffee, don’t you? Or tea if you prefer. You English guys like tea, right? Earl Grey or something like that. I don’t know. I never drink it.’

‘Who said I’m an Englishman?’

‘No one, I just thought that…’

‘Okay,’ Victor said after a moment. ‘I’ll listen to you, but I’ll give you ten minutes of my time. Not a second longer.’

‘Great,’ Muir said. ‘Thank you. But let’s talk somewhere else.’

‘There’s a nice place round the corner where we can talk.’

‘Sounds great,’ Muir said. She touched her stomach. ‘I could really use a sit down, you know?’