Brian Freemantle - See Charlie Run

Olga sighed, thinking back to the training and its most basic precept: never move before a complete and thorough reconnaissance to learn everything possible about the target’s surroundings, and only move when you were sure of avoiding arrest or detection, after the act. She would not be able to do any of that, Olga accepted: the possibility of Irena spotting her was too great, and without reconnaissance she couldn’t properly plan the killing, and without a proper plan she couldn’t devise a guaranteed escape.

Oh dear God! she thought, too consumed by apprehension to care any longer about invoking the deity. She was numbed with fear, a physical sensation like the tingling which happened on bumping the sensitive part in the elbow, and there was another feeling, a welling sickness deep in her stomach, so real that she began to perspire, frightened she was going to vomit.

Olga stood, hurriedly spilling coins on to the table to pay for the coffee and starting off away from the bridge into the township. As she walked she told herself she was utilizing her tradecraft, losing herself in the jumble of streets instead of crossing directly to pursue Irena Kozlov from the hotel where a waiter or another guest might have remembered her later during any police enquiry, but she forced herself to admit the other, more important reason. She was delaying what she had to do, by any means she could find.

She crossed the colonial square beneath the unfocussed statues of Portuguese founders and plunged into the winding, haphazard alleyways beyond. Like Hong Kong, that other nearby relic of colonialism, Macao was being returned to Beijing and everywhere had the atmosphere of soon-to-leave neglect, like a house allowed to run into disrepair because its owners were about to move somewhere better. The warrens were crowded with stalls and people and noise and smells and bustle, and she let herself be jostled along by the tide, a piece of willing flotsam. Still going in the wrong direction.

There were cabs on the wider cross streets. She let two, empty, pass her and only tentatively hailed the next, but the driver was alert, jerking into the pavement, careless of upsetting both the pedallo driver and the tourists in his rickshaw, which shuddered to a halt against the pavement with obscenity screaming louder than the brakes.

Olga closed her eyes once more, against the scene this time, as if she did not want to see herself set off. Everything was an effort and she forcibly made it to look again. The car was just crossing the statued square: through a gap between the squared buildings Olga could see the yellow-stained river but not the bridge or the hotel beyond. No reconnaissance, no plan, no reconnaissance, no plan: the flaws repeated themselves in her mind and she frowned, trying to recall a familiar imagery and realized it was like the litanies she’d learned as a child in incense-filled churches with head-bowed parents, bribed with sweetmeats into obedience. The taxi went around the centrepiece directly in front of the bridge and then began its climb towards the far side and she saw, with the benefit of some elevation, that there were buildings beyond the hotel. She leaned forward, changing the address, gesturing to go by the Hyatt to the further cluster, the relief popping inside her. She would be far less conspicuous to anyone in the foyer arriving on foot than she would be by car.

The additional buildings appeared to be some sort of apartment complex. Olga paid the taxi off and for the benefit of the driver, making his turn to go back to the town, covered herself by appearing to enter the middle block. She waited until the car was actually on the bridge before emerging, going with reluctant slowness towards the hotel. She remained in the shadows of the last group of buildings, further protection to make her entry safely. Almost at once she was aware of the tourist coach crossing the bridge over which she had just come and smiled, at her good fortune. Olga didn’t supposedly believe in superstition any more than in religion, but she crossed her fingers and pressed them tight together, hoping the luck would last. She was aware for the first time how much her hands were sweating and instinctively pushed them down the sides of her skirt, to dry them. The wetness came back, immediately.

She timed her move with the confused disembarkation of a group she decided was German, letting herself be carried into the hotel as she had allowed herself earlier to be jostled through the alleys of Macao. Directly inside, she eased away, anxious not to be challenged by any tour leader. The reception area faced her, the elevators to her right. The ground area stretched away even further to the right, and Olga saw a magazine kiosk and moved towards it, eager for any excuse to orientate herself further. The move put her in the corner of the building, from which she could see the foyer completely to her left now, with the lounge and bar directly in front. There appeared to be a coffee shop alongside the lounge and another larger dining area to the far side of the main bar. She bought two English-language magazines — Newsweek and Cosmopolitan — for their protection and went cautiously into the lounge, intent on everyone around her, looking for the face of Irena Kozlov, briefly relieved at not locating the woman but not relaxing for a moment. There were no hide-away nooks or banquettes: the best was a table beside which some long-fingered plant emerged limp-wristed from an ornate tub, and Olga moved as quickly as she safely could towards it.

She did not know what she wanted when the waiter approached, just subduing the spurt of panic because to panic over something so inconsequential would have been ridiculous. She chose vodka, adding tonic as an afterthought, realizing she still hadn’t decided how to go about what she had to do and that she might need the excuse to remain there for a long time.

Olga moved the chair back slightly, better to gain the concealment of the plant, and held the Cosmopolitan in readiness for further concealment, if Irena suddenly appeared. She was appallingly exposed, Olga recognized, professionally: transgressing just about every instruction and lesson she’d ever learned. And badly placed, in addition. The lounge in which she sat was in an awkward part of the L-shaped floor design. At least half the immediate foyer area and the elevators from which Irena might emerge were virtually hidden from her view. And sitting where she was — minimally concealed — it was impossible to see beyond the bar, into the formal dining room. From either direction, Irena Kozlov could be upon her in seconds. The awareness brought a fresh burst of nerves, and Olga had to grip one hand over the other to quieten the shaking.

She sipped her drink, hoping it would help, striving to bring some rationale into her thinking. So she was here, in the hotel where Yuri three hours before had assured her Irena was hiding. Now what? She had to carry out some sort of survey — one more detailed than she had so far — but sitting for hours in a bar lounge wasn’t going to get done what she had to do: another way of hiding, in fact, like walking further than any precaution required into Macao. Room 525, Yuri said. Was that the way: stop hiding behind sagging pot-plants, go to the room with the special gun prepared for the moment Irena answered the door and fire, just once? All that was necessary, with the ricin capsule in the bullet tip, according to Yuri. One wound, anywhere, and the poison would kill her. What if it wasn’t Irena who came to the door? Panicked stupidity to expect her to be the one. There could be other people, an enclosing guard: so she could shoot her way in with the advantage of surprise, maybe take out one or two others but that was the maximum because the air pressure quickly dissipated from the gun, which was designed for the assassination of unsuspecting, unguarded victims. Which left her empty-handed, facing the rest of the protectors, and possibly with Irena safely bundled into another, unreachable room. Stupidity, she thought once more. The inner chant came again: no reconnaissance, no plan, no reconnaissance, no plan … What then? She didn’t know, Olga acknowledged, in a further sink of despair. She was sitting there with an assassin’s gun in the bag tightly held in front of her, intent to murder, but without the slightest idea how to go about it. Not wanting to go about it … Olga stifled the mental drift, bringing herself rigidly upright, as if a proper physical attitude would strengthen her weakening, inner resolve. She had to find a way: find a way to kill Irena and get back to Tokyo and Yuri and the life she knew they were going to have together.