The Darkest Day

FIFTEEN

He walked on to the bridge from the south side of the river. Victor didn’t spot him straight away, but he saw the muted reactions from the watchers. They didn’t look at him, but they couldn’t help tense with readiness. Professionals, but not the best.

Upon seeing this, Victor identified the client within a minute. A military man, straight of back and gait, tough and wary. He wore civilian attire: jeans and a black bomber jacket. He was tall and strong, with coal-black skin and a shaved head. He had his back to Victor while he walked along the middle of the bridge, so it was hard to estimate his age until he stopped in the exact centre.

He turned around on the spot three hundred and sixty degrees, examining all the lone men standing nearby or passing. When he realised Victor wasn’t there, he backed up and leaned against the stonework. He touched his chin to his collarbone and said something into a lapel mike. Victor was at the wrong angle to read his lips, but he didn’t need to.

He was younger than Victor had expected: from this range, he looked to be no older than forty. There were no signs of grey in the stubble on his face or head. This was a man who had not absorbed all the excesses of civilian life. If Victor had expected him to have grown soft giving orders from behind a desk, he was wrong.

Two minutes to twelve. Victor didn’t move. He figured the client would wait five minutes, but from the agreed time. He wouldn’t fly across the Atlantic to leave again without giving Victor a chance to show. But he wouldn’t hang around longer. Victor had instructed Muir to inform the client to be punctual. If Victor was late, it would communicate that he wasn’t going to show, and that would smell of a set-up. The longer the client stood exposed on the bridge, the easier a target he made of himself.

So Victor had seven minutes. There was no need to rush. In fact, Victor needed to wait until the last minute.

The client stood with all the patience that could be expected of a man waiting to meet a professional assassin. He was anxious. If he hadn’t been, Victor would have expected a trap. He was prepared for one regardless.

At one minute past twelve he headed for the roof door because it would take him three minutes to get down to the ground floor and on to the street outside. It would take a further minute to reach the client.

When his watch showed the time to be three minutes and forty-nine seconds past midday, Victor was walking through the main entrance and on to the street outside.

He was going to walk straight along the street and on to the bridge where the client waited and the watchers weren’t going to see him.

The client had been standing next to one of the ornate lamp posts, on its north side, making a headshot difficult from where Victor had been waiting. Deliberate positioning, no doubt. The man was also wearing that large bomber jacket. The temperature did not warrant it, so Victor pictured an armoured vest beneath; lots of layers of Kevlar reinforced by ceramic plates to protect the heart and lungs, both at the front and back.

Even with the body armour and the lamp post impeding his line of sight, Victor could still have made a kill shot, had he wanted. The client knew enough about him to know Victor was capable of such a shot.

But he didn’t intend to kill the client, at least not until after he had spoken to him.

Besides, this guy wasn’t the client. But they wanted Victor to think that.

It had almost worked too. Everything about the team and their positions and the ‘client’ had been right, except the black guy in the bomber jacket had made a single mistake. He had ignored the other watchers while he had walked along the bridge, but as he had taken up position next to the lamp post he had glanced at one of them.

It was a reflex action, hard to control. He hadn’t glanced at the others. He had glanced at one in particular because one in particular had significance.

The real client.

He was on the bridge too. He had been one of the first to arrive, which had been a smart deception. He had exposed himself early and by doing so had caused Victor to all but ignore him. Until now.

Outside the building Victor was even harder to see than when he had been crouched, high up on the rooftop — because he stepped into a huge crowd of people.

Right on schedule, a march was heading towards O’Connell Bridge. The crowd of protestors numbered several hundred, which was a good chunk less than estimates on the organisation’s social media page had suggested. It didn’t matter.

He would have been invisible in a crowd half the size.

They were a mix of ages, more women than men, holding home-made placards and printed banners denoting their cause: opposition to austerity measures and cuts to frontline services. They were loud and raucous, but good-spirited, moved by passion and social responsibility, not anger.

Victor slipped amongst them, joining their chants and whistles.

He sidestepped until he was next to an old guy with a beard to his waist. ‘I’ll give you fifty euros if I can carry your placard for five minutes.’

The old guy said, ‘You can carry it for free, lad,’ and passed it to Victor. ‘My arms are killing me.’

As they approached the bridge, he saw the watchers panicking. They hadn’t expected a crowd of protestors. They hadn’t checked for such things. They should have found out why the bridge was closed to vehicles. They should have thought harder why Victor had chosen this location on this day at this time. Professionals, but not the best.

They would waste precious seconds discussing and arguing and going through options. Their attempt at deception would work against them now. By the time they had decided whether to close in on the real client or withdraw with him, it would be too late.

The crowd reached the bridge and Victor spotted the client still present, staring at the crowd. Not searching for Victor, but trying to decide what, if anything, it meant. That he didn’t withdraw was significant. It meant he was determined if nothing else.

The watchers did their best to find Victor in the crowd, now realising that he must be among them, but even having studied and memorised every one of his features, he was as good as impossible to spot in the dense mass of protestors.

Pedestrians and tourists moved out to the bridge walls to avoid the march. The watchers were now scattered and ineffective. They could no longer keep track of each other and their boss, let alone scout for Victor. He handed the placard back to the old guy with the beard.

‘Thank you, sir.’

With dozens of people now on the bridge between the client and Victor, it was impossible to keep the man in sight at all times, but the client was doing the sensible thing and remaining stationary, waiting for the crowd to pass.

As Victor neared the client, he changed his trajectory to walk behind the man with the beard and placard, ensuring the client wouldn’t see Victor’s face as he covered the last few metres.

A moment after the man with the beard and placard passed the client, Victor took the client’s arm and said, ‘Come with me.’

Before the client could react, Victor pushed two knuckles of his free hand against the small of the man’s back. Knuckles were more convincing than using fingertips as a fake gun — bigger, more solid — and the client didn’t resist.

He took off his camouflage baseball cap and placed it on the client’s head, pulling the brim down low to help conceal his face. Victor then ripped away the lapel mike and veered back into the centre of the crowd, taking the client with him.

Victor kept his gaze forward. He wanted to know where the watchers were and what they were doing, but any head movement created the risk of drawing their attention.

They maintained pace with the rest of the protestors until they had left the bridge on the north side. He headed right on to the pavement that flanked the road running alongside the river.

He guided the client across the road and between parked cars and around pedestrians.

‘Where are you taking me?’ the client asked.

‘You’ll know when we get there. Stop talking if you value your spine.’

After a few seconds, an alleyway opened up between the commercial buildings.

‘Turn here,’ Victor said.

The client obeyed.

When they were out of line of sight of the adjoining street, Victor pushed the client against a wall and patted him down, finding a wallet and phone but no gun. The man stood still while Victor checked him and took the phone.

‘There’s no need for any of this,’ the client said. ‘That’s my personal cell.’

Victor didn’t respond. He crushed the phone beneath a heel. ‘This way.’

He led the client along the alleyway for another ten metres, until he came to the faded back door of a commercial property with a ‘TO LET’ sign.

The door was unlocked because Victor had picked it earlier. He opened the door and pushed the client into the room beyond.