The Hunter

CHAPTER 19

North of Saint Maurice, Switzerland

Wednesday

08:33 CET

Victor’s breathing was laboured. The thin mountain air expelled from his lungs in clouds of white vapour. The first two hundred feet had been difficult, but the last fifty had been murder. He grunted and pulled the ice hammer from where it was embedded in the frozen waterfall and hacked it into the ice above his head. Ice and snow rained down over him and fell to the base of the waterfall far below.

He watched the glittering fragments fall for a moment and took in several large gulps of air. His face was red from the cold and exertion. A pair of climber’s goggles shielded his eyes from the unfiltered sun above. The ice of the waterfall was bright blue and white but much darker, almost black in the depths of the cracks and fissures. A distorted reflection watched him climb.

Up here it was easy to forget about the events of the last few days. He had no choice but to focus solely on what he was doing. Nothing could invade his mind except the task at hand, because if it did those thoughts would be his last. He’d rested his body as much as he could, but now he needed to clear his head. He had no friends he could talk to, no one to share his problems with, and this was the next best thing.

Alone in the mountains he felt as though he was the only person in the world. Just him and the brutal honesty of nature. He was as far from civilization as he could hope to get, and yet up here the world seemed far more civilized.

He pulled with his arms and pushed with his legs, wrenching the crampons of his boots free from the ice before jamming them in farther up. The stress of the climb shook his body, but the inherent danger calmed his mind. He was confident in his abilities, but he had to maintain one hundred per cent concentration. He used no screws, carabiners, or rope — so if he didn’t concentrate, he fell. If he fell, he died. It was that simple.

The only sound was that of the wind, of metal hitting ice, and of his own heavy breathing. The sense of utter freedom was prevalent. He was relaxed and at peace.

After another ten feet he paused. Leaning backwards, he took one hand from an ice hammer and reached into a pocket to pull out a hard candy, pleased to find it was a green one. He threw it into his mouth. They kept his mouth moist so he didn’t feel thirsty, but more than that they tasted good. Victor sucked on the candy and tilted his head to one side to enjoy the view. All he could see were mountains and trees topped with snow.

He could’ve stayed hanging there for hours, but he felt water strike his face. He looked up, squinting against the glare. Droplets of water glistened in the sun. The ice was melting. Not surprising with a cloudless sky. He climbed on, not hurrying, knowing he would reach the summit long before there was any danger.

The ice above groaned.

Victor stopped climbing and looked upward. Twenty feet above his head a sheet of overhanging ice broke away. Victor flattened himself against the waterfall, and chunks of ice and snow fell past him. He took back his previous judgment and quickened his pace. His muscles, craving more oxygen, filled with lactic acid, and his lungs ached from sucking in the frigid air. He climbed fast, driving the ice hammers and crampons home, pushing and pulling and repeating until he reached the summit and collapsed spreadeagled onto the snow.

He arrived back at his chalet several hours later and made himself lunch, his own recipe for bruschetta con funghi to start and two large sausage sandwiches for his main course. Just what he needed. He followed it with a protein shake and swallowed a handful of supplement pills. After bathing he sat naked on his bed and drew the handgun from the holster attached to the underside. He withdrew the magazine and popped the rounds, reloading them in the order they’d come out. He put the gun back.

It was late morning, the sun streaming between the Venetian blinds on the east wall. He walked over to the window on the west wall, pulled the string sharply to raise the blinds. The valley stretched off into the distance, the village of Saint Maurice visible at the centre, its triangular roofs topped with white. Pine trees covered the mountainsides. Snow-capped peaks lined the horizon.

There had been a time when Victor had almost believed he could separate his life from what he did for a living. Such a time had long passed. Now he realized he was merely just alive, that he didn’t really live. Normal people didn’t hide themselves away in remote mountain villages, protected by reinforced doors and three inches of armoured glass. It was hard to remember when it had been any different.

He lived alone for his own protection. Here nobody knew him and he knew no one in return. He found it easier, too, to live away from cities, from people. It was hard to miss something he didn’t see every day. Living alone had never been difficult for him, but total solitude was something Victor had been forced to learn to deal with. But like any skill he needed to survive, he had mastered it eventually. Staying busy was the most important element. When he wasn’t working he spent hours each day keeping himself in top physical condition, hours more training and honing his skills. Weeks may go by between contracts, but his was a full-time vocation. The rest of the time he climbed, skied, read, played the piano, and took frequent trips to explore the globe.

There were some things that such distractions could not replace. Victor’s idea of a relationship was a call girl he liked enough to use more than once and who was good enough an actress to pretend she didn’t find his touch repellent.

Looking out over the picturesque valley it was almost possible to pretend what happened in Paris wasn’t real. Here he was just another wealthy businessman enjoying an isolated mountain retreat. Maybe he wouldn’t leave. He had enough money stored away to live comfortably for years if he was careful. Maybe when it had run out he could take a regular job, teach languages or even climbing. If he wanted to teach though, he knew he was going to have to work on his people skills. Maybe in time he could actually start to live like a regular person. Assuming he could remember how to.

The first step would be to smash the flash drive into a thousand pieces, throw them into a ravine, and forget he’d ever taken the Ozols contract. He had escaped whatever enemies wanted him dead, and no one knew he was here. He could stay hidden, take no more contracts. They would never find him here. He nodded.

Yes, it was time to get out.

He started to turn away from the window when his eyes were drawn to a point high in the forested hills that lay to the west of the chalet. He saw a glint, a tiny flicker of light. The reflection of the sun on metal.

Or glass.

He understood what it meant too late, seeing the small, bright flash that appeared in the same place an instant later. He started to move to his left when a hole exploded through the window before him.

The bullet hit him in the middle of his chest and everything went quiet. He saw the cobweb of cracks in the reinforced glass, saw the tiny hole in the centre of the web. No sound reached his ears except the dull echo of his heartbeat.

Victor’s vision faltered. Lines blurred into one another.

The window seemed to move sharply away from him, and the ceiling came hurtling down. He didn’t understand but then the back of his head smacked against the polished floorboards. He tried to breathe, gasped, struggled to suck air into his lungs.

He raised a hand, inched his fingers along his bare chest, felt sticky blood, pain as he touched the hot bullet in his flesh. He’d expected to find a gaping hole with blood pumping freely, but the end of the bullet was protruding from his skin. It hadn’t penetrated the sternum.

The chalet’s polycarbonate and glass-laminate windowpanes would stop even high-velocity rifle rounds… not quite, Victor thought.

The glass hadn’t stopped the bullet but had slowed it considerably, so that, when it had struck, its kinetic energy was almost spent. Ignoring the burn, Victor pulled the bullet from his skin and tossed it aside. It exhausted him to do so. He tried to stand but couldn’t remember how to tell his limbs to move. The ceiling beams melted into one another above him.

He realized what was happening but could do nothing to stop it. The bullet’s impact had sent ripples of hydrostatic shock through his body, interrupting the normal rhythm of his heartbeat. His body didn’t understand what had happened and so was doing the only thing it knew how to do in the face of intense shock or trauma.

It was temporarily shutting down.

The shooter would have watched the bullet hit and Victor fall but wouldn’t be able to see him as he writhed on the floor, incapacitated but not dying. But all he would have to note was the thickness of the cracked window to realize that Victor was still alive. And he would come to finish the job.

Victor’s eyelids closed.