The Accident Man

6

The other motorcycle pulled up two hundred meters farther up the road, on the Avenue de New York, just beyond the vast neoclassical expanse of the Palais de Tokyo, home of the Paris Museum of Modern Art.

Grigori Kursk placed his feet on the ground astride his Ducati M900 Monster, sat upright, and raised his visor. His eyes burned with the rapacious hunger of a man for whom killing was not just a job but a compulsion – one that he would gratify whether he was paid to do so or not.

He turned to look at his passenger, who was just stowing the camera in a basket on the side of the bike.

“Did you see that?” he crowed, speaking in Russian. “Did you see the look on that driver’s face? The poor bastard didn’t know what to do. Well, he’s just French pâté now!” He paused for a second, then continued more calmly, getting back to business: “Okay, that was just as easy as I promised. Now, let’s pick up the other half of the money.”

“Just pick it up fast, I’m in agony back here,” his passenger replied. “My knees are up around my ears.”

Kursk laughed. “Ha! I thought you liked it like that!”

He drove on another few meters till he found a gap in the parked cars just big enough for the bike. He positioned himself facing out from the curve, giving himself just enough clearance to see the exit of the tunnel. He then took a nightscope from the chest pocket of his biker jacket and held it up to his right eye, through the gap in his helmet. He was looking for the man who’d been on the bike at the far end of the tunnel.

Kursk knew two things about this man. He was ex-British special forces. And he was the next target.