The Darkest Day

ELEVEN

Prague was a low-rise city. From only five storeys up Victor felt on top of the world. The cold morning air reddened his cheeks and numbed his hands. A thin layer of snow covered the flat roof and coated the hardy potted plants that formed a roof garden.

Footprints and a cleared bench showed the chill didn’t keep office workers from using it in such weather. Between the benches, a plant-less pot showed fresh cigarette stubs. The garden occupied about a quarter of the roof space. A low barrier of metal tubing fenced off the rest of the roof. Victor placed his footsteps in or over those of previous visitors and stepped over the barrier to approach the roof’s south side. He shuffled his steps to distort the prints left in the unbroken snow.

Vents and boxy air-conditioning units stood in a cluster. He rounded them and moved with caution until he was in position. He peered over the waist-high parapet and down to the street below.

On the far side of the street was the gated entrance leading to the basement where he had been ambushed the night before.

You’re lucky that cab went by when it did, the assassin had taunted less than twelve hours before. Otherwise you would have taken a seven-six-two in the back.

She was referring to a 7.62 x 52 mm bullet: a high-velocity rifle round. A useful one for an urban environment because the rifles that shot it weren’t as long or as difficult to position and transport as those that fired larger rounds. He pictured her assembling it from component pieces taken out of a briefcase.

Somewhere out there Al-Waleed bin Saud was flying to his next destination on a charter jet according to a coded email from Muir. Caglayan had disappeared.

Muir wanted answers. She wanted to know what had happened and what Victor intended to do to rectify his mistake.

His mistake.

Victor had elected not to reply. He didn’t know what had happened. He had been set up and ambushed. It wasn’t the first time. It was doubtful it would be the last. And he wanted answers beyond those his employers were able — or willing — to provide.

He had no interest in fulfilling his obligation on Al-Waleed when someone had almost killed him. His priority was to stay alive first, and get paid second.

He squatted low, imagining the assassin doing similar, maybe steadying the rifle with a bipod resting on the parapet. He saw no indentations in the snow for the bipod feet for the same reason he saw no footprints on the roof.

It had snowed overnight.

Victor inched forward to correct the perspective of a woman behind a rifle. How long had she been up here, waiting? He could not be sure. He had not seen her prior to the attack in the basement while he had performed routine scans of the area, but as he had noted at the time he had not had the window for thorough reconnaissance. The message with the time and location of the meet had only arrived an hour beforehand, and Victor did not know where or how she had gained her intelligence.

It had required no prior preparation for Victor to gain access to the building and its roof. It was an office building with no security greater than a bored guy behind a desk. Victor had walked straight by and taken the elevator up to the top floor and followed the signs to the roof. She could have done the same, or booked an appointment with someone in the building to provide an excuse for her presence, or she could have pretended to be a cleaner, or paid a bribe, or gained entry through any manner of distractions or bluffs.

It had been cold last night, and the woman was slight and had not worn any winter clothing. Like him, she opted for agility over comfort.

Using his knuckles, he brushed aside snow in a circle around him. He did so with a light touch to remove only the top layer of new snow. Nothing.

He widened the circle. Cellophane crackled. He removed a glove and picked the cellophane out of the snow with the nails of his thumb and forefinger.

It was crumpled and torn from its original box shape: three inches long by two wide and half an inch in depth. He recognised the shape from his days as a smoker. Though he had never littered like this.

He searched through the snow around where he had taken the cellophane from but found nothing further.

The roof was a big place. He could not search through every inch of snow. Besides, the assassin could have tossed any stubs off the roof.

He remembered yesterday’s wind, fierce and cold, blowing south. He hadn’t paid sufficient attention to estimate the wind speed, but that’s where weather reports came in. He looked over the parapet. He stood and brought his right thumb and index to his lips. He inhaled and moved his hand away, extending his index finger and parting it from his thumb in a flicking motion. He pictured a cigarette tumbling through the air, veering to his right and falling under gravity’s pull, but the wind blowing it back. He pivoted as he watched the imaginary butt arch back over the parapet and on to the roof.

Victor found it lying beneath the top layer of snow, next to an air-conditioning unit.

He used his nails to retrieve it by the burnt end. It was moist but not wet because the temperature had not yet risen enough to cause the overnight snow to melt.

A trace of mauve lipstick smudged around the filter end.

In the darkness, he had not noticed the assassin wearing lipstick — he had been too focused on staying alive to take in such details — but there was about half an inch of tobacco above the filter. No smoker threw away so much unless they had to — say because they needed both hands to operate a rifle now their target had presented themselves. That would also explain why she had overlooked the stub blown back on to the roof. She had been distracted by thoughts of killing Victor.

He broke off the ash from the tip and smelt the unburned tobacco. He hadn’t smoked for a couple of years but at that moment was tempted to start again.

He pushed the thought from his mind, breathed in the scent one last time, and dropped the butt into a pocket of his new suit trousers.

A taxi took him across the city and two buses brought him back in a circuitous route. He walked the rest of the way to Wenceslas Square, seeing no sign of a female assassin stalking him. He didn’t know if she was still on his trail or if she had fled or was preparing to strike again. The only thing he knew for certain was that she was alive because no mortuary in the city had received a corpse crushed by falling building material.

The old tailor grinned when Victor returned to the low-ceilinged atelier and moved to greet him with a youthful deftness to his step.

‘You’ve changed your mind,’ the tailor began with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. ‘You’ve seen sense, finally, else have been reborn and resurrected into a man of taste. Yes?’

‘Not exactly,’ Victor answered.

The glimmer faded from the old tailor’s eyes. ‘You don’t want me to adjust your suit?’

Victor shook his head. ‘I assure you I’ll consider it if I could have your opinion on something.’

The tailor looked at him with suspicion. ‘That sounds like a bribe to me.’

‘That’s because it is.’

‘Very well, let’s have it.’

‘You said before no two varieties of tobacco are the same. Was that hyperbole?’

‘It was not.’

Victor produced the cigarette stub. ‘Then can you tell me anything about this particular cigarette?’

He handed the stub to the tailor who first examined it in his palm, then held it beneath his nostrils to smell.

‘This is no ordinary cigarette,’ the tailor said. ‘This is a work of art. These are crafted with love and rolled by hand. Not some godless machine.’

The tailor squeezed some unburned tobacco into his palm, then pinched and rubbed it between his fingers and smelled his fingertips, one by one, before holding the butt under his nostrils.

‘This is a particularly good blend of tobacco, strong and sweet. An aftertaste of chocolate, I think. This is the Château Lafite of cigarettes. Hand-rolled from only the finest leaves, perfectly dried under only the hottest sun.’

Victor listened.

‘From the West Indies,’ the tailor said. ‘Almost certainly. Dominican, would be my guess.’

‘Guess?’

‘Please, child. They don’t come with a serial number.’

‘Don’t you need to light it?’ Victor asked.

‘You ask for my expert opinion and then question my methods?’

‘I’m sorry. Thank you for your time.’

The tailor made a small nod to accept the apology. ‘And your suit?’

‘Maybe the jacket can be brought in a little.’

Victor had never seen a man look so happy.