The Darkest Day

SEVEN

The balcony was narrow and overlooked an alleyway four metres below that ran through the centre of the block. It was clean and tidy with no discarded refuse. Everything had been placed by diligent boutique owners and store workers in bins or boxes. The sounds of the city were muted and quiet. Victor stepped up on to the black iron railing that surrounded the balcony and used a palm to brace against the brickwork while he found his balance.

He extended his arms above his head. The balcony above was just out of reach of his fingertips. He lowered himself into a half-squat, then leapt straight up, catching hold of cold masonry with eight fingertips because it was too high to also catch with his thumbs. Without them, he lost 40 per cent of the strength of his forearms, but he pulled himself up with the remaining 60.

When his head had cleared the lip of the balcony, he released his left hand and shot it up to grab hold of one of the iron bars. He then did the same with his right hand and heaved himself up enough to get a foot on to the balcony edge. He brushed down his suit to get rid of dust and pollution.

The balcony was the same as that of the tailor’s below, but the window led to a private residence. Victor ducked down so as to reduce the chances of being seen by the two figures — a naked man and woman — moving about inside. They were paying too much attention to one another to care about what might be happening outside the window.

He waited anyway, because he still had more than fifteen minutes before the old tailor returned with his finished suit.

Nine minutes later the two figures in the apartment stumbled from the lounge and disappeared into a bedroom. Victor sidestepped to the far edge of the balcony. A metre further along the exterior wall was another window. This one was open a few inches.

Victor sat on the balcony railing and pivoted round. With one hand holding on to the railing he stretched out the other arm until he could grip the windowpane and slide it higher to create a larger opening. When it was high enough to fit through, he gripped the sill in one hand, released the railing, and swung himself across. He pulled himself up and into the bathroom.

Six minutes left. It was going to be tight.

The bathroom was humid from the shower. The floor was wet in places. Victor avoided the puddles and footprints and eased the door open.

He could hear grunts and the knocking of a headboard against a wall. Outside the bathroom door he found a pile of clothes on the same armchair he had used the previous afternoon.

In a pocket of a suit jacket he found the accountant’s smartphone.

It was locked, as expected, but Victor removed the SIM card and inserted it into a credit-card-sized scanner attached to a second-hand phone he had bought for cash that morning. He activated the app and waited while the scanner extracted all of the data from the SIM and copied it on to the empty SIM in his phone. The scanner had been supplied by Muir, his CIA handler.

In his freelance days he had worked with a range of brokers, most of whom he never met or learned their identity. It had been rare to work directly with a client. Both they and Victor preferred to use professional intermediaries who understood discretion and knew how to put the right people on the right job. At other times they would be associates of the client in some capacity. They might be individual free agents or members of intelligence agencies or executives of private security firms or sometimes board members of multinational corporations with a cutesy brand image and beyond-ruthless business practices. In his earlier days he had worked for brokers and clients whom he knew, as they in return knew him, at least as well as anyone could. For years he had avoided any personal connection with his work, and it had helped keep him alive far longer than he had believed he would remain breathing. In recent times the majority of his work had come from individuals within the CIA, even though the wider organisation maintained a termination order for him. The arrangement was a good one, and not only for the intermittent donations to his bank account. His handlers kept him off the radar of the rest of the agency. That alone was worth maintaining the relationship. The jobs he received were infrequent and often dangerous, but that danger was offset by the lack of CIA contractors hunting him. They also paid well.

It was as good a business relationship as Victor could hope to have with anyone.

After a short pause the screen changed to denote the new SIM was now a clone of the accountant’s.

One of the perks of working for the CIA was access to such technology.

He removed the accountant’s SIM from the scanner and replaced it inside the smartphone he had taken it from. He slipped it back into the same pocket.

Four minutes remaining, if the tailor wasn’t faster than expected with the adjustments.

Victor crossed the lounge to the bookshelf and found cash placed between two historical fiction hardbacks.

He put some extra cash between the books to cover the cost of the broken extraction fan and exited the apartment the way he had come in. It sounded as if the accountant was almost finished.

Lowering himself out of the window, he inched along the sill until he could stretch one hand across to grab hold of the balcony railing while he supported his weight with the other.

Less than a minute after his return to the fitting room the door opened and the old tailor came in.

‘All done,’ the tailor said as he hung up the suit. ‘And when I say all done what I really mean is the abomination is complete.’

Victor said, ‘I’ll need a tie as well.’

‘Let me guess,’ the tailor said with an exaggerated sigh, ‘something plain? Nothing with even the remotest hint of style? Something insufferably boring?’

Victor raised an eyebrow. ‘How did you know?’