Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

“We have no more.”

“Get some,” he ordered.

“There’s no time. A small avalanche just ripped out the slope behind us. The entire mountain could come down at any moment.”

Jonathan directed his gaze along the beam of light. The patch of red came into focus. He moved the light an inch to the right. It was the cross on his patrolman’s jacket. The glint of copper was his wife’s hair.

Emma. Her name caught in his throat.

He could see her now, at least her outline. She lay prone on her stomach, one arm extended above her head, as if calling for help. But there was something wrong…the ice around her was not white at all, but dark. She was lying in a slick of her own blood.

“She’s here,” he said stubbornly. “We can reach her.”

“She fell one hundred meters,” argued Steiner. “She could not have survived. You must come out. I won’t risk the lives of four men.”

“Emma!” Jonathan shouted. “It’s me. It’s Jonathan. If you’re okay, move your hand.”

His wife’s form remained still, as his voice echoed inside the chasm.

“Quiet,” said Steiner, his anger tight as a fist. “You’ll kill us all.”

The rope gave a jerk. Jonathan bounced against the wall and rose a few feet. Steiner was hauling him out. Enraged, he dug his toe spikes into the ice, then drew his knife and pressed the blade against the rope, inches from his face. He had crampons. He had an ice ax. He would climb down the wall to her.

He kept his eyes on the body. Already it looked smaller, somehow foreign. He detected no sign of movement. It didn’t matter if Steiner was right about the fall, whether it was too far or if there had been any obstructions to slow her descent. There was simply too much blood.

He pulled the knife away from the rope and freed his crampons from the ice. The lifeline jerked again, and he was lifted another meter out of the crevasse. He shone the light at the patch of red he’d seen, but it was no longer visible. He had lost sight of his wife.

“Emma!” he yelled as tears streamed down his cheek.

Only his voice called back, echoing over and over again.

The Land Rover hurtled down the Seestrasse on its way out of Zurich. A lone man sat behind the wheel. Heavy stubble covered his cheeks. Dark circles cupped his eyes. He had been on the move for twenty-four hours. He needed a meal, a shower, and a bed. All that would come. First, he had a job to complete.

Opening the glove compartment, he withdrew a silenced pistol and set it on the seat beside him. He looked out the window at the lake. Whitecaps flashed in the dark. Far away, the running lights of a large boat bobbed dangerously. It was not a good night to be on the water.

At the next signal, he turned and guided the car up a winding road. Falling snow choked the headlights, but he did not slow. He knew the route. He had driven it once already, earlier in the evening. He had studied maps of the area, committing avenues of access and escape to memory.

A burst of acceleration delivered him to a plateau. Large, well-tended homes lined either side of the street. This eastern side of the Lake of Zurich was known as the Gold Coast, for its dawn-to-dusk sun exposure as well as for its luxurious residences. He cut his speed as soon as he spotted the target’s home. Modeled on a French country estate, it was set back from the street on a rise with snow-crusted orchards bordering either side.

Twenty meters farther along, he brought the car to a halt in the shadow of a towering pine. He doused the lights and sat listening to the engine tick down and the wind beat at his windows. From his jacket, he removed a sterling silver case. Four bullets lay inside it. Slender shells with an X carved into the bronze-colored nose. Tapered fingers set them in a row on the center console. Next, he freed the ceramic vial hanging round his neck and unscrewed the cap. He began to chant softly, words from an ancient and forgotten language. By his own tally, he had killed over three hundred men, women, and children. The words formed a prayer to protect his soul against spirits from the next world. Twenty years as an assassin had left him a superstitious man.

One by one, he dipped the bullets into the vial, coating them with a viscous, bitter-scented liquid. It was his ritual. First the prayer, then the liquid. As a professional, he knew there was no such thing as too many precautions. In this world or the next. He blew a single breath on each, then fed them into the clip. When he’d finished, he took up the pistol, slid the clip into the butt, and chambered a round. He checked that the safety was on, then removed a sturdy twill bag from his opposite pocket and attached it to a point above the ejection chamber.

He stepped out of the car. Caged eyes darted up and down the street. He saw no one. Tonight the weather was his ally. At nine-thirty, the neighborhood was still.

Buttoning his overcoat, he set off briskly up the road. He was a trim man, no more than average height, with narrow shoulders and lank black hair that fell to his collar. His cheeks were sunken, his nose slender and aristocratic, his complexion so pale as to be cadaverous. From afar, he appeared not to walk so much as to glide above the pavement. It was this combination of his deathly pallor and his ethereal presence that lent him his work name. The Ghost.

Passing the target’s home, he was afforded an unobstructed view through a bay window adjacent to the front door. A woman and three children sat side by side on a couch entranced by their evening’s television. He slowed long enough to see that the youngest was a boy, dark and pale like himself, arms wrapped around his mother. His heart beat faster. Memories fluttered behind his eyes like a trapped bird beating against a window.

He looked away.

Verifying that no traffic was approaching from either direction, he hopped the single-strand wire fence fronting the meadow and took up position behind a woodpile stacked neatly against the side of the home. There, crouching in the snow, he waited.

At other times, he’d been part of a team, though never its leader. He knew that there should be a rotating two-man squad covering the target at the restaurant; a car to follow him home; and an extraction team waiting to whisk the shooter to the nearest airport or train station and out of the country. All were standard operating procedure.

But he preferred it this way. Alone in the darkness. An agent of death.

From a side pocket he removed a metallic box, activated its toggle switch, then slipped it back again. The box emitted a jamming signal that rendered the garage door opener inactive. The target would be forced to step out of his car to manually open the garage, or perhaps, to enter by a side door and open it from the inside.

In the distance, he made out the velvet growl of a powerful engine. He slipped the silenced pistol from his jacket and focused on the road at the point where the target’s car-a late model Audi A8-would crest the hill. Headlights appeared and grew bolder. His thumb nudged the safety downward.

All at once, the car was in view. As it passed under a streetlamp he confirmed the make and license. The car slowed, pulling into the driveway and stopping short of the garage. The driver’s door opened. The target stepped out. He was a tall man, solidly built, with ginger hair and well-nourished cheeks. An engineer of some stripe. A family man. A man of rigid discipline.

By now, the Ghost was making his approach. He covered the distance to the target in three effortless strides. The man looked at him, confused. Why wasn’t the garage door working? Who was this stranger appearing as if out of thin air? The Ghost saw all this in the man’s eyes as he raised his arm and pulled the trigger. Three shots struck the man squarely in the face. The shells flew into the twill bag. The target collapsed to the driveway.