The Hunter

CHAPTER 25

Budapest, Hungary

Thursday

17:46 CET

The sky above the city was overcast. The rain soaked through Victor’s overcoat. He shivered as he walked down a narrow street lined with puddles. The road was cobbled, the sidewalks uneven flagstones. There were no streetlights, just the glow from overlooking windows providing illumination. No one walked nearby. His footsteps echoed.

He hadn’t dared stay in Switzerland, where both the police and his hunters would be looking for him. Hungary seemed like a good idea. Victor hadn’t been to Budapest for a couple of years, so there had to be less chance of his being tracked here than some other cities. He didn’t believe a private operation could have followed him to Saint Maurice without his knowledge. It would take multiple teams of skilled shadows, precise coordination, access to CCTV footage, aerial and probably satellite surveillance.

Only an intelligence agency would have those kinds of resources and man power. Even then, few organizations had the reach to make such a thing possible. The assassin who’d tried to kill him in Switzerland had been an American. The leader of the kill team in Paris had been American too. Victor didn’t believe in coincidences. It could only be the CIA.

The walls of Victor’s world were crumbling down around him. He was on the execution list of the furthest-reaching covert service on the planet.

He was as good as dead.

His hotel was lost within the backstreets of Budapest’s red-light district. The room came with a bed with a sturdy metal frame and a whole drawer full of fliers for hookers, male as well as female. The hotel was the kind of place where he could lie low for as long as he needed while he collected his thoughts and decided on the next course of action.

Victor left the alleyway and kept walking, staying to the side streets, avoiding people, watching for shadows. He walked for longer than he planned, thinking, analysing. He thought about Paris, thought about his chalet in flames. Two attempts on his life within a week. He felt unpopular.

The sands of his life were running out with every passing second. Already the CIA would be scouring surveillance recordings, liaising with the Swiss authorities and foreign intelligence services — all the time narrowing down their search, closing in on him. He found an Internet cafe and took a terminal where he could watch the door. There were things he had to check if he was going to formulate a plan. And whatever plan he put into practice would require money. It was possible that if the CIA knew where he lived they had also frozen his bank accounts. There had been a time when a Swiss bank would never have revealed information about its clients, but the world had changed that day in September 2001. Now anything was possible.

He was relieved to find his money still in place at the primary bank he used. He would have to withdraw all the money as a precaution and booked an appointment at the bank. Victor had cash stored in various safety-deposit boxes around the Continent, but at the moment he was only concerned with his money in Switzerland. He realized he hadn’t eaten for a while and devoured three cheeseburgers at a nearby cafe. He finished off the milkshake on the street.

Nothing made sense to him any more. Did the CIA want him because of Paris, or did they arrange it in the first place? Did they hire him or did they hire the guys who tried to kill him or both? Did they track him from France to Switzerland or did they already know where he lived? Any answers he could think of led to more questions. He was reduced to speculation, guesswork, and he hated it.

He thought about the broker. This is not what you think, whoever they were had said. Maybe he should have listened. Perhaps the CIA had found out about his job and had tried to kill him afterwards; maybe Ozols was a CIA asset; maybe the flash drive belonged to the CIA; or maybe the CIA just wanted it for itself. Maybe the broker had been part of the set-up; maybe the broker was the CIA; or maybe the broker was on the same hit list as he. Too many maybes, not enough certainties.

Victor hailed a taxi, deciding at the last second to walk instead. The taxi driver hurled abuse at him in Hungarian, the gist of which Victor understood to be a reference to his mother. He didn’t look back. Falling snow mixed with the rain. It felt good on his skin. He walked past a group of homeless men passing around a bottle of something potent, judging by the stink in the air. He felt eyes watching him.

He put a hand to his chest for a moment. The pain was an annoyance but far from debilitating. There would be no longterm damage, but he now had a large bruise in the centre of his chest. When his current predicament was over, he planned to visit the company who had supplied him with the glass and creatively demonstrate to them just how bulletproof it really was.

The broker must have known something, he was sure of that now, but he had been so convinced they’d set him up he didn’t contemplate anything else. Now he was running for his life, maybe because of that bullheadedness.

He performed countersurveillance on autopilot, passing through side streets, doubling back, taking buses, changing. He’d decided to contact the broker long before he reached another Internet cafe, after trying unsuccessfully to come up with a course of action that didn’t go against his paranoia. If he had been right the first time and the broker did have a hand in what had happened in Paris, it wouldn’t matter, he would still be up against the same odds. But perhaps the broker knew something that could help him. He still had the flash drive. It could be the bargaining chip he needed.

He logged on to the game’s message board. The broker wasn’t logged in, but there was a personal message in his profile’s in-box. From the broker, dated Monday. He opened it. A response to their last communication, a rant about honouring the arrangement, about ‘trust’ of all things. Victor deleted it. He composed his own message:

Tell me what really happened in Paris and I may deliver the package.

He thought it short and sweet. All he had to do now was wait.