The Enemy

CHAPTER 26

Victor arrived back at the Best Eastern half an hour after leaving the Europe, which was quicker than how he would prefer to do things, but proper counter surveillance wasn’t an option with an injured arm. Two hours making sure he wasn’t followed was fine in theory but not if the wound got infected as a result or was spotted by a vigilant police officer.

In his room, he stripped off his clothes and ran a bath. While the bath was running he examined his wound in the mirror. Blood stained his entire arm. The wound itself was about four inches in length, maybe an eighth of an inch in depth, and it was bleeding far worse than when he’d first been shot. He fitted the plug in the sink and turned on the hot water tap. The hotel room came with a kettle, mugs, teabags and sachets of instant coffee and sugar. Victor dropped two teabags into a mug and poured in just enough cold water to wet them. He took a clean T-shirt from his luggage and ripped it into strips. The resulting pain made him grimace.

He lowered his injured triceps into the sink and in seconds the water had turned a pale red. With gritted teeth, he washed the wound to get rid of any traces of clothing or other debris. He patted dry his arm with a towel, took the damp teabags from the mug and pressed them over the wound. He kept his elbow and shoulder horizontally aligned to balance the teabags while he wrapped a strip of T-shirt around his arm. He bound the wound firmly, but not too tight, to give the teabags the best chance at working. The haemostatic tannins found naturally in tea would help stop the bleeding, reduce the chance of infection, and aid the healing process. Victor checked the teabags after five minutes, finding them soaked with blood. He replaced them with two more and bound the wound with slightly more pressure. When he checked after another five minutes the bleeding had stopped.

Victor tore open a sachet of granulated sugar and carefully poured it into the wound channel. He didn’t know if the wound was infected, but the sugar’s antimicrobial action would ensure that it wouldn’t become so. And if it was infected the sugar would hopefully kill the bacteria, or at least slow its spread. He then rebound his arm with another strip of T-shirt, downed two miniature bottles of vodka from the mini bar and lowered himself into the bath, keeping his right arm clear of the water.

Now his wound was clean and had stopped bleeding it could begin healing properly. He was going to have another scar, but when he already had so many one more wouldn’t make too much difference. He wasn’t in the habit of taking off his shirt in public, but if the scar turned out to be too prominent yet more of his money would end up in the pocket of plastic surgeons. Aside from rich women, assassins were probably their best customers.

Good as teabags and sugar were at patching up injuries, it would have been better to use proper first-aid equipment. He hadn’t been able to risk trying to find an all-night pharmacy so soon after the attack as the police would be at their most watchful. Victor doubted they would know they were only looking for one man, at least so far, but if he was out on the streets he could be stopped at random. They would probably be smart enough to put hospitals and drug stores under surveillance.

The police presence would be huge all night, with the hope of catching the culprits as they fled. Running was the expected course of action. It was what criminals did in such situations. And Victor considered it a fine tactic in a crisis. If a location was compromised, withdraw. Once out of the initial danger area stop, regroup, formulate a plan. But a hasty withdrawal in this case was too risky with his wound. At night there were few people on the streets to disappear among and less means with which to escape with speed. While so fresh, the injury would be hard to disguise and would hinder him if he was spotted.

He felt tired. The adrenalin hangover was at its peak and he had to fight to keep his eyes open. Images of the attack flashed through his mind. It couldn’t have gone worse: Yamout had escaped, Victor had been forced to kill someone’s surveillance team, and he’d been wounded in the process.

He didn’t know much about the team, but he knew they had been there to record the meeting between Yamout and Petrenko, yet had no affiliation with either despite their intervention when Victor had started massacring everyone. If they had been associates of Yamout or Petrenko they would have responded to the cries for help. They weren’t Belarusian security services either. The watcher’s Russian hadn’t been good enough for a local, and cops or domestic spies would have identified themselves as such, and tried to arrest Victor instead of shooting at him.

He pushed the thoughts out of his mind for the time being. He wasn’t going to work anything out lying in the tub, and it was all moot if he didn’t get out of Minsk.

The taps pressed uncomfortably into his shoulders but it was necessary to face the bathroom door. He had it open so he could see into the bedroom and the small mirror positioned on the floor and angled so he could watch in it the reflection of the hotel room door. He didn’t expect anyone would be coming through it, but precautions only paid off if they were taken every time.

He spent twenty minutes in the bath enjoying the heat and the alcohol in his bloodstream. His tolerance was high enough that the intoxicating effect was minimal. A jolt of adrenalin would easily override it if it came to it, but the effect was just enough to help him unwind. He kept the watcher’s SIG in his left hand at all times.

When he was dry, Victor tidied and cleaned the bedroom and bathroom. Where blood had been, he wiped with a strip of T-shirt dampened with more vodka from the mini bar. The bloody towel and evidence of his ad-hoc first aid went into his attache case. He set out a clean set of clothes and ordered room service, then got dressed while he waited for his food to arrive. After he’d refuelled and ensured all of his effects were packed and he was ready to flee at a second’s notice, he tucked the SIG into the front of his waistband and lay down atop the bedclothes.

If his employer at the CIA hadn’t already found out what had happened, he would soon. Maybe the voice would be more forgiving if he knew that only the intervention of a third party had prevented the contract’s fulfilment. Or maybe killing those men would prove to be costly and put his paymaster under too much pressure.

And make Victor a liability he could do without.