The Game

TWENTY

Victor climbed out of the limousine. The air was cold. The wind rippled his jacket. He heard a jet pass overhead. As he shut the door behind him he thought about the marksman lying on the hard ground approximately one hundred metres to his left. He would no doubt be using a thermal imaging scope on which Victor would appear as a stark white shape against a black background. Victor preferred heat as black against a white background, but he knew he was in the minority. It would take a little over three-hundredths of a second for a high-velocity rifle round to cover the distance between where the marksman lay and where Victor stood. The sound wave produced by the gunshot would take more than twice that time to cover the distance. Victor wouldn’t hear it. He would already be dead when the sound reached his ears. He would never know a shot had been fired. He would just die. One second alive; before the next second was out, dead.

Not a bad way to go, considering. He knew that better than most.

But the bald-headed driver didn’t exit the car, so Victor knew he wasn’t going to die just yet. If Leeson had given the marksman the order to fire, the driver would know about it, and he wouldn’t have stayed in his seat. He wouldn’t have been able to see from there. He would have climbed out. He would have wanted to watch.

As Victor crossed the killing zone he saw Francesca looking his way. If she knew of any prearranged course of action, she wouldn’t want to see it go down, whatever he had done to her. She didn’t have the driver’s fondness for violence or Victor’s detachment from it.

He climbed into the back of the Saab taxi and shuffled on the back seat so he sat behind her. She was rubbing her throat. It would be sore for several days. She stared at him via the rear view.

‘How did it go?’ she asked, not because she was interested but because he made her nervous and conversation always induced less fear than silence.

‘Hand me your phone.’

She hesitated, confused and scared. ‘Why?’

‘Because I have a gun and you don’t.’

Francesca continued to stare for a moment, then twisted and tugged on the phone until she had freed it from the holder on the dash. She looked at it and hesitated, and Victor could read her thoughts clearly enough. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t need to.

Eventually, she swivelled in her seat so she could look at Victor as she held it out for him to take. She gripped one corner between her thumb and index finger and pointed the opposite corner his way to create the maximum distance between her hand and his when he took it from her. She didn’t want his fingers to touch hers.

‘Thank you,’ Victor said.

‘You’re welcome.’

It was a reflexive response, politeness infused into her from an early age. Even now, with someone who had nearly killed her, she couldn’t escape the conditioning.

The phone was clean and unmarked. A thin rectangle of protective transparent plastic covered the screen. When the screen came out of hibernation the service provider’s default background lit up. There was no pass lock and he checked the call log. Just one number. Four entries. The most recent call lasted nine seconds and was made eight minutes ago, moments after he had stepped out of the taxi. The others were spaced out over the evening. The earliest was three hours ago. He loaded the location app.

Francesca was watching him through the rear view mirror while she gently massaged her throat.

Victor turned off the app, put the screen back into hibernation and held out the phone and the car keys in one palm.

She looked at him, suspicious of a trap. She was right to be cautious of him now she had an idea of what he was capable of, but at this particular moment there was nothing to fear.

He said, ‘Take them.’

Francesca twisted in her seat again and picked the keys out of his open hand, careful not to make contact with his skin. She snapped her hand away, then paused when he made no movement to grab at her, before taking back the phone. She looked at it suspiciously.

‘There’s nothing to be concerned about,’ he said. ‘I haven’t tampered with it.’

She didn’t believe him, but also didn’t know what he could have done to the phone in such a short time. She stared at his reflection as she slipped it into a pocket.

‘You shouldn’t be working for Leeson,’ Victor said.

‘Really? And why exactly shouldn’t I?’

‘You haven’t got what it takes for this kind of life.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because I know a little something about it.’

She spoke through tight lips. ‘What do you care?’

‘Who says I care?’

‘I can look after myself, all right?’

‘Like you did on the way here?’

‘Well, I’ll be ready next time, won’t I? Now I know there are assholes like you in the world.’

‘But that’s the problem,’ Victor said. ‘There are people even worse than me out there.’

She huffed. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘And that’s what will get you killed.’

She didn’t respond. She just stared at him.

He sat back and looked out of the side window. He wondered if the marksman was still in the same position or whether he had moved to another. Had their roles been reversed, Victor would have moved so that on its way to the exit the car would pass horizontally through his field of view, so if necessary he could shoot someone in the back seat with minimal risk to the driver.

‘There’s a flight leaving soon,’ he said. ‘I’d like to be on it.’

Francesca turned the ignition key and shuffled on the beaded seat cover to get comfortable. ‘Can I have the pistol back as well?’

‘That’s up to you. You can either have it back when we get to the airport, or you can have one of the bullets now.’

She frowned and released the handbrake.