The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17) (3 page)

After the final bite of the granola bar, he neatly folded the wrapper, tucked it into his pocket, and checked the time.

12:14 a.m.

He adjusted the straps on the backpack, checked that his Glock 42 was safely stowed, and studied the street around him. In the alleyway he hid in, two large garbage bins sat to his left. The shadows cast by the buildings meant he could stand beside the garbage bin completely undetected by anyone who happened to glance his way. As long as he remained immobile, someone could walk right by his position and see nothing. Learning the art of not moving, remaining rigidly in one spot, was something trained into him for years as a sniper in Afghanistan.

As a Danish-born sniper with the U.S. Navy Seals, he logged more kills—170—than most of the men they sent over. The record of 173 goes to an unnamed British Royal Marine, but he knew he’d beaten that record by a dozen kills or more. Definitely more than Navy Seal Chris Kyle, and they made a movie about him.

Whether he was too lethal, or the fact that he was from a small island in Denmark, the American government kept his records sealed. No one knew his true identity and no one ever would. He had gotten too good, too precise, too detailed. When they told him to retire, he protested. To murder, to hunt humans, was all he ever wanted to do, and to have it sanctioned by the government,
and
get paid for it, was glorious.

The officer who informed him he had no choice but to go home, died slowly. No one told him what to do unless they were paying him.

He disappeared that day. Changed his face, his passport—one of many—and now worked his way toward creating a legend that would rival The Jackal, a notorious assassin from the ’70s and ’80s.

 
He achieved several nicknames during his time in Afghanistan. The one he liked the most, and the one he still used today, was The Clock.

Time was important to him. Kills happened on time. People lived and died on The Clock. Everything was about time and managing it properly. The time a bullet took from the barrel to the forehead. The time allotted for a job to be completed could affect the job.

Time was also a killer as it worked its machinations on every single person each and every day. Even he, The Clock, would be a victim to time. Eventually his hands wouldn’t hold the Glock just so, his eyes wouldn’t acquire the target accurately, and time would kill him.

But not yet. All in good time.
 

He smiled to himself as he glanced at his watch.

It was time.

With one last look up and down the street, The Clock pushed off the wall and started toward the building. At the front, he headed south until he got to the end of the building and moved into the shadows to his left. At the rear of the building, he quickly located the back door.

Beside the door, he located the phone box attached to the building’s brick wall. From his Kydex sheath, he withdrew his partially serrated, SOG Seal Team knife with its seven-inch blade and severed the phone lines. Unless the building’s alarm system had a cell backup, no one would be notified of the break-in until morning.

Even if the authorities were called, he would be in and out before anyone got there.

He retrieved the lock pick set from his inner breast pocket and counted the ten seconds he allowed himself to gain access to the building. On the eighth second, the lock clicked open.

The Clock pushed the door inward, then stepped inside the back room of the karate dojo. The smell of the gym hit him first. Rubber mats combined with sweat. They worked hard here. The back room was tidy and clean.

From the backpack slung over his shoulder, he removed the small bombs with timers attached. As he placed them throughout the dojo, setting the timers as he went for ten in the morning, he watched the clock and listened for the sound of approaching vehicles. If he tripped an alarm, they often had the registered key holder attend the premises. The police didn’t always respond. A key holder he could handle and still get the job done.

In less than six minutes, ten devices were secured in vents and in two separate places behind floorboards. Without a bomb-sniffing dog, there was no way they would get every device in time. He left two small bombs in his backpack for later use.

He checked his watch.

Time to go.

The Clock slipped out the back door, closed it and made sure it locked securely. The only evidence of his presence was the cut telephone wires. By the time the karate teachers arrived in the morning and the first class began at 9:30 a.m. as advertised on the front door, no one would pay much attention to a phone line being down. He was pretty sure Bell Canada or Rogers or whomever Aaron Stevens had servicing the phone at his Shotokan dojo wouldn’t have a worker out first thing in the morning. And even if they did, that employee would die in the blast along with the first class of karate students.

The same class that Aaron taught every morning.

The Clock had watched Aaron from the airport when he landed from Las Vegas. The Clock had called the dojo and inquired about tomorrow’s class. A man identified as Daniel told him that Aaron was teaching that class as he was back in town.

The Clock had brought lunch with him as he followed Aaron from the airport to the dojo where Aaron did an hour of administrative duties, collected his mail, and went home.

If anything, The Clock was precise. The client wanted the dojo destroyed. The client wanted Aaron destroyed along with it. The Clock didn’t ask why. It was none of his business. All he concerned himself with was doing the job right.

And getting paid.

A hundred thousand dollars for a simple pyro job. Not bad. The only downside was he would miss seeing the agony on the face of his kill. The aftermath, the charred bodies, sure, but he’d miss the life fleeing the eyes of his victims.

That was the hard part. In a way, he was being cheated because the client wanted an explosion.

He walked around the outside of the building, crossed the quiet street, and walked the two blocks to his rental car.

This was the client’s deal, the client’s money. He was paying for an explosion, so he got an explosion.

But The Clock was already looking forward to the next job.

It was with the same client. He was to pick up a girl at a hotel in Mississauga. Hold her for a week in the hotel, then kill her. Those were the simple instructions from the client. An easy job. Again, no details on why. Just a paycheck. And this client was efficient. It seemed like he knew everything. The client knew the flight number and time Aaron Stevens would arrive at the Toronto Airport. He knew where Aaron would be, when Aaron would be at the dojo, and where the girl was supposed to be.

The Clock liked working with this particular client. His tasks and their particulars were transmitted to his iPhone and money transferred to his off-shore account.

He checked his watch.

On time to the minute.

He started the rental and drove away, wondering how much sleep he would get before he woke for his morning exercises. There was simply too much excitement in his life at the moment.

Chapter 3

Anton Olafson stepped out of the Folketing, the Danish Parliament, and bounded down the stairs, raising his briefcase above his head to shield himself from the rain. He trotted through the Christiansborg parking lot, reserved for members of parliament, until he located his car near the back. Meandering through the tightly-knit cars from the Traffic Committee to the Radical Center Party, around and through several puddles, Olafson was happy to get to his car without a soaker. He fumbled with the keys, opened the door, and dropped into the front seat, shaking rain water off his briefcase before setting it on the passenger seat.

After slamming the door, he took a moment to catch his breath. The rain pounded the roof, a staccato music only the criminally insane or lunatic campers could enjoy. He hated the rain and everything to do with it. Anton often asked his parents why he was given the unfortunate luck of being born in Denmark and not Greece where the sun shone over ten months of the year.

After starting the Tesla, he connected his phone to the car’s Bluetooth and tried calling his daughter’s cell number again. Her voicemail picked up.

Clara hadn’t answered her phone all day. She had joined him on the ride to Copenhagen yesterday, then headed to a friend’s place on the other side of the city, claiming she’d be back this afternoon. The last contact he’d had with her was yesterday around lunch. She’d texted him a picture of a heart and a smile. Her way of telling her father she loved him.

With her not answering her phone and not leaving the friend’s address, Anton had no way of getting in touch with her. He’d left meetings early today to head home. Maybe she was already at home waiting for him. At twenty-three years of age, Clara still lived with him, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He made plenty of money. It was hard for the youth of today to find good paying jobs, ones where they could live on their own.

The new position at work had kept Anton busy over the past six months, but he was planning on taking a long summer break. He would make up for lost time with Clara then. Maybe they’d go to Fanø Island, rent a summer cottage on one of Fanø’s huge beaches.

The interior of the car warmed enough that his fingers weren’t so cold. He probed his ears to get at the rain water and winced when he bumped the new black helix ear piercing. He had wanted an industrial piercing, but felt his Danish government colleagues would frown on it. A rook or an anti-helix piercing was on the list, but Anton ended up with one helix on his right ear for now. As an openly gay man in government, he monitored how far he pushed his superiors. One never knew when they would reach their limits.

Marriage hadn’t worked. As much as he tried to be a heterosexual man, he and Clara’s mother didn’t see eye to eye. They divorced when Clara was eighteen, and a year later, Clara’s mother died of an aneurism. It was so sudden, neither he nor Clara had made it to her bedside before she died.

Maybe that was why Clara still lived at home. She wanted to remain close with her one remaining parent.

He tried Clara’s cell number and got the recording again. He flicked on the wipers and started out of the parking lot, the pit in his stomach getting heavier.

Where was she? Why wasn’t she answering? This was so unlike her. He avoided thoughts of what could have happened to her. They were baseless and a waste of time. Refusing to consider the worse, he still worried for her. What if something did happen to her? What if she was hurt somewhere, or worse? He was her sole protector. He should have done a better job.

“Where are you, Clara?” he asked aloud in the empty car. He glanced at his expression in the mirror and looked away to watch the road.

To access the E20, he changed lanes and headed out of the city. Work brought him to Copenhagen only a few times a month now, being able to do many of his parliamentary duties from his home in Skanderborg and his office in Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. From Copenhagen, it was at least a three-hour drive back to his house in Skanderborg. Three long hours to ponder where his daughter was.

Yesterday morning when they drove to Copenhagen together, Clara had told him she would take the train back to Skanderborg later that night. The trains in Denmark were efficient. Clara could take the train from Copenhagen and get off right in Skanderborg, then walk ten minutes to their house on the water by Skanderborg Lake. She was probably there now, reading in the living room by the fire as this spring hadn’t brought warm weather with it yet. Only rain. Too much rain.

Anton rationalized that his daughter’s cell phone battery must’ve died. Nothing else made sense. Denmark was a safe country. They were rated the happiest people on Earth. What could go wrong?

Yet the pit in his stomach grew with each passing kilometer. No one had answered the house phone either. He was sure Clara wasn’t home and that something had happened to her. The nagging feeling scared him to the marrow.

Denmark did have its fair share of problems. Anton Olafson was the director of the Danish National Cyber Crime Center (NC3) which had only been established a couple of years ago. Olafson was transferred to NC3 six months ago to liaison with the Danish Data Protection Agency (DDPA) on a case where a hacker had published stolen information from the Danish Land Registry. Because the hacker made the stolen information public, the cybercrime unit deemed it a breach of intellectual property, which broke Danish data protection laws.

As director, Olafson’s job was to keep the agencies working together to come to a common ground—which they did. The hacker known only as PAIN was shut down. His IP addresses—several hundred of them from around the world—had been monitored closely to ascertain they were his, and then their access severed from Danish government servers.

After receiving praise from several government parties at different levels, Anton Olafson was appointed to a full-time position with the NC3 as director, and placed in the Aarhus office, which worked wonderfully for him as he lived in Skanderborg, a twenty-minute drive from Aarhus.