The Enemy

CHAPTER 21

‘Who was that guy?’

The speaker was short and muscular. His T-shirt was tight across his chest, shoulders and arms. The drapes were pulled across the windows of the suite and the light from the laptop monitor in front of him cast a pale glow over his tanned face. He looked to his right at the man sitting next to him. He was taller, slimmer, more senior.

‘I don’t know,’ the slim man said. ‘But he didn’t look like hotel management to me.’

‘Me either.’

The slim man turned over to a fresh page of his notebook and wrote a new log: 11.17, tall man (suit, dark hair) enters suite. He claims to be from hotel management. Looks around for a minute. Leaves. Don’t believe he’s management.

The laptop monitor was subdivided into five video feeds. One occupied the upper-left quarter of the screen and one the lower-left quarter. The right-hand side of the monitor showed the other feeds in three eighth-sized windows with another window showing controls for image and sound adjustments.

Each video feed was wirelessly linked to a tiny camera hidden inside the Presidential Suite and displayed a continuous live stream. In the upper-left monitor window the view was from an air vent high on a wall and showed the edge of the dining table at the bottom of the window, the door to the master bedroom on the right side, the main door in the top-right corner and the TV area at the top of the screen. The lower-left window showed the suite from the opposite angle. The other three feeds showed the master bedroom, second bedroom and a view from the television set.

None of the angles were perfect, but given the short amount of time they’d had to install them, the men were happy with their work. What wasn’t picked up by the camera’s fisheye lenses was recorded by the powerful microphones that accompanied them.

So far the cameras had recorded Petrenko and his first three men arriving and them sitting around talking, mostly about sports, gambling and women, nothing about business. Then the fifth man turned up and was chastised for being late and ordered to stay put while Petrenko and the other three left to get food. The late arrival had wasted no time locating a box of tissues and finding the adult pay-per-view, only to be interrupted by the man in the suit.

There was a knock-knock at the door. Both men looked up. When a third, harder knock sounded, the slim man stood, looked briefly through the spyhole for confirmation, and opened the door.

‘Number Three looked right at me,’ the new guy said. He was younger than the other two. ‘Cover is still good, but had to break off. No drama. They’re just going for waffles.’ He hung his brown suede jacket over a chair. ‘What’s been happening?’

The slim man said, ‘Someone claiming to be management had a look around.’

‘Show me.’

The video operator clicked on the upper-left window and rolled the mouse wheel down to rewind the footage for a few seconds. He let it play.

‘No way is that guy hotel management,’ the young man said.

The slim man asked, ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I saw him enter the hotel a couple of hours back. Walked right through the lobby. Never said anything to any staff and no staff said anything to him. There wasn’t even any acknowledgement between them. If he was management, someone would have at least said hi.’

‘You get a good look at him?’ the slim man asked.

‘Sure. Six-two, one eighty, dark hair, dark eyes, nice suit.’

The video operator grinned. ‘You checking him out?’

‘Screw you, I notice everyone.’

‘Ignore the resident child,’ the slim man said. ‘What did you make of him?’

‘Nothing,’ the young man answered. ‘He was just a guy. No reason to look at him twice.’

The slim man thought for a moment. ‘I really don’t like him. If he’s not with the hotel, why was he in the suite?’ The other two men shook their heads. ‘Whatever he wants, it can’t be good. He shows up again, I want to know straight away. If he’s a risk, we take him out. Got it?’