Tom Hinshelwood - The Killer

It would be nice to have more missiles, but the greater the number, the harder it would be to transport and store secretly. Two missiles were plenty. Hell, he only needed to sell one to bank more money than he could ever spend.

Once the dust had settled, Ferguson would be whiter than white. There wouldn’t even be the barest hint he had anything to do with Tesseract or Ozols or the missiles. He thought about all the events that had conspired to create this result while the computer powered up. What could he have done to have made things work out more smoothly? Even with the benefit of hindsight there wasn’t much that should have been done differently. No one could have foreseen Tesseract’s surviving that ambush in Paris. Things had only become messy after that. The one mistake Ferguson knew he’d made was in using Sykes, but fortunately he was in a position to correct that.

His loyal deputy would take the blame for everything. Sykes had the power to have seen this thing through thus far-the ambition-and the idiocy to get himself killed in the process.

Dalweg and Wiechman had been contacted the day before and briefed on what was about to happen and what they were to do afterward, so Ferguson had only one message to send. The e-mail took him seconds to write and gave him considerable satisfaction to send. The e-mail contained just one word.

Proceed.

Tanga, Tanzania

Sunday

19:17 UST

The kitchen was even hotter than outside and carried the loud noise of busy work. There were maybe a dozen members of the kitchen staff working frantically, preparing and cooking food, washing up, cleaning. A huge chef was shouting orders with the vigor of a drill sergeant. Victor, with a small crate of fruit on his shoulder, drew neither looks nor words as he dodged around the working bodies. He appeared to have a purpose and a reason for being there, and busy people rarely interrupted their work to challenge someone else who also seemed to be working.

Victor kept his head tilted slightly forward so it was hard for anyone to see his eyes. Eye contact helped people remember. His gaze passed over the work surfaces as he moved, trying to find a knife to palm. He saw none and didn’t want to risk loitering and attracting attention just to get one. A weapon was always useful, but for what he was planning he could go without. He left the crate on the floor by the interior door before he slipped through.

The assassin had still been waiting outside when Victor left him. He’d taken the same flight to Tanzania, flying coach while the assassin flew first, and had followed the man since. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t have fancied his chances at shadowing so skilled a target, but Victor had one considerable advantage. He was supposed to be dead.

Victor had imagined sliding a knife into the assassin’s flesh alongside the spine and piercing the heart or maybe hamstringing the man first to watch him writhe on the ground before finishing him off. But that wasn’t what Victor did, even if he had been able to. He didn’t stab people in the street in front of dozens of witnesses, no matter how much he wanted to. That’s what amateurs did, and amateurs got themselves killed.

Even if the opportunity presented itself, Victor couldn’t kill him, at least not yet. The assassin was nothing more than a hired gun, a paid killer no different than himself. Victor hated the comparison. The man he’d followed wasn’t his true enemy; he was just a limb. Victor wanted to cut off the head.

The back corridors of the hotel were narrow but reasonably cool. In places the plaster on the walls was cracked and the doors thin and poorly painted. There were no cameras in this part of the hotel. No security guards either.

Victor stopped when he came to a door and passed his ear close to it for a few seconds. He heard people talking. He moved on, pausing to listen at another door. This time there was no noise. He moved on. He tried three more before he heard the quiet hum of electronic machinery. He slowly tried the handle. It was unlocked.

Inside the room was tiny, barely more than a closet. There was just enough room for the chair, table, two television monitors, and accompanying recorders. On the TV screens were the simultaneous live feeds from the hotel CCTV cameras. Each screen carried four feeds; one at the front entrance, lobby, elevator, and one for each of the floors.

Victor sat down and pressed rewind, watching the time until he reached midday. He then hit play and watched. A couple of minutes later he saw the assassin’s target and two companions enter through the front. They disappeared from one feed and appeared on the other as they crossed the lobby. The elevator took them to the third floor, and the camera there recorded them as they entered their respective rooms.

The picture quality wasn’t good enough to see the room numbers, but Victor counted how many doors were between the camera and the rooms, specifically the room where the lone man entered.

He was the key. It was obvious the other two were just the hired help. Victor’s first instinct was that they were bodyguards, but he had seen how the three operated together and dismissed that idea. Earlier in the day Victor had followed the assassin while he in turn followed the man to the harbor, where the target had joined the other two men. The equipment Victor saw on the boat indicated that the men were divers.

That the nameless target was being shadowed by the assassin meant he was important. By the way he carried himself, he wasn’t a case officer. He was someone’s subordinate sent out to personally oversee the last part of the operation. To salvage whatever was on that sunken ship that was so valuable and that was no doubt now in the truck outside.

He left the room and closed the door behind him. He made his way to the stairs and began ascending to the third floor. The assassin’s target knew something, something that made him a target, something that was a liability to whomever was in charge. And that something Victor needed to hear.

He just had to get to him before the assassin did.

Reed closed the e-mail and stood. He placed the smartphone back in his trouser pocket. He left the water on the table. The lobby was peaceful. Noise of merriment drifted out from the bar as he reached the stairs and took them to the fifth floor. He walked down the corridor and entered his room.

The gun was under the pillow as he had left it, and he pulled back the slide, loading a bullet into the chamber. He tucked it into the front of his trousers so the suppressor extended down along his left thigh. His shirt, hanging loose, disguised the gun’s handle.

The trousers were likewise loose enough so that, if he was careful how he walked, no one would notice he was armed. Though descending stairs was not possible with a big piece of metal down the front of his trousers. No matter, he could take the elevator down the two floors instead.

Reed took the spare magazines from the satchel and placed them in the pockets of the trousers: two in the left, one in the right. He did not expect to even use a single magazine of bullets, and only then if circumstances were truly against him. But Reed had risen to the very top of the killer’s ladder by being meticulous and prepared for the worst at all times. He was not about to change his habits now.

He left the room and headed for the elevator. He pushed the call button and waited patiently. Reed knew himself to be very good at waiting. He also knew, however, that he was considerably better at killing.

Victor reached the third floor and stepped out into the corridor that formed a rough square around the hotel. He walked around the circumference, getting his bearings while he located the camera. There were around fifteen rooms per floor. The corridor was wide but uncarpeted. The floorboards were polished and clean.