The Hunter

CHAPTER 10

Charleroi, Belgium

Monday

17:02 CET

The kid behind the counter took Victor’s money without looking up from his graphic novel. With one hand he opened the register, dropped in the euros, and handed Victor a slip of paper without speaking a single word. Victor took a seat at one of the computers farthest from the entrance, selecting a position where he could still see the door without having to turn his head.

The computer monitor seemed a recent purchase, but dust had collected in the grooves of the keyboard. The plastic was yellowed and shiny from overuse. Victor, typing quickly, entered the tendigit code from the piece of paper and hit enter.

The Internet cafe had half a dozen other customers. They were all young. A Chinese teenager, her hair streaked with pink, entered while Victor waited for the browser to appear. An exchange student perhaps. After a cursory glance he paid her no attention.

He would have preferred a more crowded establishment to provide anonymity, but no one paid him a second of attention. The kid by the door hadn’t taken his eyes from the comic since Victor had paid. The front cover was all huge breasts and curved swords. In five minutes Victor would be gone, and five minutes after that he would be forgotten entirely.

A light rain fell. Through the window Victor could see pedestrians hurrying along the street outside, some with umbrellas, the unlucky without. No one seemed to be observing the cafe.

The rational part of his brain told him that no one could have followed him across the border, but there was a certain level of paranoia necessary for survival in Victor’s work. He understood that he was most at risk not when he was obviously vulnerable but when he felt safe.

After leaving the second hotel Victor had spent an hour on the Paris metro going back and forth between stations and changing trains at random to elude any possible shadows. It was highly unlikely that there were yet more people available to follow him, but protocol demanded caution at all times. And this was no time to abandon methods that had kept him alive for almost a decade in a profession as unforgiving as they came.

The Heckler and Koch he’d taken from the female assassin was thrown into the Seine after being wiped down thoroughly. A mile upstream his second FN Five-seveN suffered the same fate. The passport he’d been travelling under was burned and another taken from a safety-deposit box he rented under a false name. He had boxes in several European capitals and other cities around the world. In Victor’s experience prevention was always better than cure, and his earlier encounter vindicated this philosophy.

He’d discarded the nonprescription glasses and taken out the blue contact lenses before having a backstreet barber cut his hair clipper short and shave him with a cut-throat razor. On a wallmounted television Victor had watched a news item about the hotel shooting. So far the police had released few details. The dead man in the alley received no mention, probably because a mass murder was far more exciting to the viewers.

Victor had purchased a new suit from a department store and another shirt and a pair of shoes, each from a different shop. If he purchased them all from the same place the shop assistant might remember him. His other clothes were bagged and left in an alleyway to be recycled by the city’s tramps. The only physical evidence that he’d ever been in Paris were the corpses he’d left behind.

Perhaps if he’d stayed he might have found more out about his attackers, but while he remained in France he had to protect himself against both his hunters and the authorities. Outside it was one on one. Much better odds.

He had been careful at his hotel to make sure the security cameras hadn’t captured a good shot of his face, but maybe the receptionist or a guest would remember his features. The beard, glasses, hair, and coloured contact lenses would all help corrupt any artist’s sketch, but even so he would probably need surgery to change his face. He sighed heavily. It was a necessity that over the years he’d been forced to accept, even if he would never fully get used to it. The face that stared back at him in the mirror was no longer his, altered so many times he couldn’t remember what he truly looked like. Sometimes he was glad of that.

The Internet browser finally loaded up, and he entered the address for a proxy server where he had an account under a false name. Then, using the proxy server to disguise the computer’s IP address, he typed in the Web address for an online role-playing game forum based out of South Korea.

The game was hugely popular, and the forum had hundreds of thousands of registered users. The forum had its own sophisticated security system to prevent hackers disrupting its service. Not so good against governments, but with the amount of traffic that passed through the forum’s server it would be near impossible for anyone to intercept his communications.

Victor entered his login details and selected the instant-messaging option. He preferred it over a traditional message board, where posts can be stored almost indefinitely. With instant messaging the data passing between the computers left no trail at the forum for someone to discover. The only traces left would be at his computer and at the receiving computer his broker used.

Once he’d logged in he saw that the only name in his contact’s list was online.

The broker.

Victor double-clicked the name, opening up a chat window. He typed a message. To further hamper the odds of the NSA or GCHQ picking up on such conversation, he always avoided any of the obvious tags government supercomputers were programmed to look for. No Allahu Akbar or the like.

I had a problem.

The reply was almost instantaneous: What’s happened?

There was another firm in on the deal.

What are you talking about?

Seven rival sales reps, well briefed on my pitch. They waited until after my morning meeting and offered me a new position. Of the permanent variety.

The response took a few seconds. I’m sorry to hear that.

Be sorry for those reps. I was out of their price range.

Did the deal go through?

Yes, he typed. The customer found my offer irresistible.

Did you collect the item?

Victor thought for a moment being typing. I have it.

What do you need from me?

An explanation.

I don’t understand.

Then allow me to enlighten you. Besides myself, the only people who knew where I would be finalizing the deal are you and whoever you work for.

What are you getting at?

I’m not in the habit of sabotaging my own contracts.

This is not what you think.

Then what is it?

Whatever happened had nothing to do with us.

Victor sat back. The use of the word us made him think that the broker and the client were more closely connected with each other than he had thought.

Victor didn’t type anything.

The broker continued. I know nothing about what happened except for what you’ve just told me. You have to trust me.

If there was a button to simulate a loud laugh on the broker’s computer, Victor would have pressed it.

I prefer to trust myself.

So how can I convince you?

You’ve had your chance.

What about the item?

I won’t be delivering it.

There was a long pause. Please reconsider.

At best you were so incompetent as to allow a third party to find out about our arrangement. At worst just stupid enough to try and undercut me. Regardless, this is where we part company.

Wait.

You won’t see or hear from me again, Victor typed. But I may be seeing you.

He logged off as the broker was still typing a reply. It felt good to end with a threat. An old friend used to tell him any victory, however small, was still a victory.

The broker had said us. It could have been a momentary lapse in concentration revealing the broker and client had colluded to set him up, or it could be nothing. There was no way to be certain at the moment.

A noise made him look up. The annoying novelty ringtone of a cellular phone. The Chinese student fumbled in her pocket to retrieve it. Victor typed in another memorized Web address. There was a momentary delay before the new site appeared on the screen. He clicked one of the twenty links available and watched as the program downloaded.

It was only a few megabytes in size and it took just seconds on the cafe’s fast Internet connection. Victor then ran the program. He watched passively as a grey box popped up and a rapid stream of numbers and file names appeared, scrolling downwards. Two minutes later the program had run its course, having deleted all records of recent Internet activity from the computer’s hard disk. The program had not only deleted these records but also overwritten with useless data those sectors of the hard disk where the Internet records had been stored. It had then deleted that data and overwritten it again. This process repeated itself thousands of times in rapid succession, ensuring that the original data could never be recovered.

It then repeated the process on itself. Thirty seconds later there was no trace of what sites Victor had visited or what he had done there. A skilful technician might be able to find evidence of the program, but that would be all.

Victor rose from his seat and left the cafe. There was a security camera watching the front door, so he kept his face angled away as he’d done on the way in.

He headed for the train station.