The Hunter

CHAPTER 14

Munich, Germany

Tuesday

01:12 CET

It was raining when Victor left the train with fourteen other passengers. The station was mostly empty at that time of night and the amount of open space around Victor gave him some cause for concern. He did his best to exit quickly but without looking like he was he trying to do so. Outside the station there were no taxis waiting so he set off on foot. After sitting down on the train for several hours he was glad of the chance to stretch his legs.

He found a fast-food place that was still open and took a seat by the window to eat his meal. Substandard even for junk food, but he needed the calories and there was no quicker way to get refuelled. At least the milkshake wasn’t too bad. Vanilla.

He hailed a taxi, telling the driver the name of Svyatoslav’s street, acting as if he didn’t speak German so he wouldn’t have to talk inanities during the journey. The building was a four-storey apartment block in the east of Munich. The area was affluent, a nineties development of expensive river-view apartments and spacious housing.

The building’s main door was dead bolted, and a security camera and light made it too risky to pick, so he spent the night sampling Munich’s all-night bars, allowing himself no more than one drink an hour. He used his time eyeing members of the opposite sex like the other single men. He stayed a maximum of two hours per bar to avoid people remembering him too easily. At six he took breakfast in a small cafe before heading back to the building, a takeout black coffee in hand, steam clouding in the frigid air.

He stood on the opposite side of the road to the building, shielded from the drizzle by a bus shelter. The shelter also gave him a reason for waiting on the street should anyone notice him. Svyatoslav lived in apartment 318 according to the hotel records, but there was always the chance he wasn’t really Mikhail Svyatoslav. Victor was pretty confident this wasn’t the case. Svyatoslav’s passport was too well used to be a random identity and so was either genuine or his only cover. It contained numerous stamps for trips to countries outside the European Union, mostly old Soviet states — Estonia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, among others. He either travelled frequently for work or had been a keen tourist with an unimaginative taste in destinations. In any case, the address the identity corresponded to would be worth investigating.

Victor took a sip of the coffee. It was typical German fare. Awful. They made world-class firearms but seemingly couldn’t brew a good cup of coffee if the survival of their nation depended on it. Assuming they’d run out of guns.

Victor watched four people leave the building but no one enter. They were all dressed in suits, long coats, carrying briefcases. City drones on their way to service the hive. Between sips of coffee he watched people walking in the direction of the building, trying to gauge who intended to enter.

The morning was cold, damp, the sky above invisible beyond slate grey clouds. In summer Germany could be beautiful, but more so than any other European country Victor found it oppressive in winter. The Viking hell was a cold realm called Niflheim, and Victor imagined the Northmen had feared something not dissimilar to Germany in November.

He took another sip of coffee and saw a man with a woollen coat hurrying into the street, a metallic briefcase in hand. He had a long, pale face, dark hair. Victor recognized him, had seen the man leave the building ten minutes before. Better than perfect.

Victor waited until the time was right, threw the coffee cup into a trash can, and headed across the street. He controlled his pace to reach the steps at the same time as the man. He glanced Victor’s way, but Victor’s gaze was averted, his hands fumbling in his pockets for keys that weren’t there.

Victor allowed the man to reach the door first, who opened it with his key.

‘Danke,’ Victor said, taking the door before the man had a chance to question whether Victor lived in the building or not.

‘Kein problem.’

The hallway was brightly lit, clean, and spacious. Victor took the stairs, noting from the unblemished banister and spotless steps that the elevator was hardly ever out of use. The resident hurried to his apartment on the ground floor, disappeared inside. Victor hoped he got back to work in time.

Reaching the third floor, Victor opened the stairwell door and stepped out into the corridor. There were three locks on 318. Definitely an assassin’s place.

It took two minutes to pick the locks, and he went inside. It looked as if Svyatoslav had just moved in, not lived there for any length of time. There were just the bare essentials of furniture, a couple of photos, no real personal possessions to articulate his personality. It reminded Victor of his own residence. It was not a reassuring comparison.

There were two bedrooms, one of which was fitted out as a gym with a selection of free weights and an exercise bike. There was a large TV in the gym, positioned so it could be watched while the exercise bike was being used.

The master bedroom was as empty as the rest of the apartment, with just a bed, neatly made; dresser; wardrobe; and another TV fitted so the assassin could watch it in bed. There was a stack of films against one wall, console games against another. The ingredients of a sad and lonely life. The kitchen was modern, clean, almost straight out of a brochure. An old television set stood on one counter.

Victor searched every room, every drawer, every cupboard. He found nothing. No evidence of who Svyatoslav had been. Nothing that even hinted at the fact that he had murdered people for money.

Victor got himself a glass of water from the kitchen. He felt tired, drained. He turned on the TV, eager for some light distraction. Nothing happened when he pressed the on button. He noticed the TV was an old boxy set, out of place among the other modern goods. He pushed the on button again. Still nothing. The standby light glowed red.

Three TVs for one person in a small apartment was excessive, and an aging set in the kitchen when everything else was new just didn’t feel right. Victor ran his fingers along the TV’s case, finding the screws in the plastic depressions. The screw heads felt sharp on his fingertips. Recently used.

Victor searched the drawers until he found a screwdriver. He unplugged the portable TV and turned it around so he could see the screws. They were marked and grooved. It took him a minute to unscrew them all and take the back off the TV. Inside he found why it wouldn’t switch on. Apart from the standby light it was hollow. A hide. Inside was a 9 mm Browning handgun, a. 22 Luger, a separate suppressor for the Luger, a couple of spare magazines for each, a variety of knives, and two boxes of shells for the handguns. Just a weapon’s stash. Nothing else.

He’d been hoping to find a lot more, some small clue to help him find out who hired the kill team. He’d wasted his time, likely compromised himself in the process, and was no closer to his enemies. Victor resisted hurling the TV off its perch and took a breath to compose himself. He reattached the case to the fake set and placed it back exactly as he’d found it. He then washed the glass, dried it, and returned it to where it had been on a shelf. He performed another sweep of the apartment to make sure he hadn’t missed anything and he hadn’t.

Outside he headed back to the city centre. There was nothing else he could do in Munich with what little information he had. But he had the flash drive. Whoever wanted it was still out there, unseen to his eyes. How long could he stay unseen to theirs? He needed to formulate a new course of action. But for the time being he had to lie low, gather his thoughts while he considered his next move, rest where he knew it was completely safe. There was only one such place where he could do that. Near the village of Saint Maurice, north of Geneva, Switzerland.

The closest thing he had to home.

Before he left there was one other place that he needed to visit. It was that time of the year again, though because of the circumstances he had been putting it off, but he could do so no longer. He changed direction.

It was a run-down building, a spectre of the old in the modern area where he found it. The bricks were faded, grimy, dark in the rain. Orange streaks of rust stained the walls beneath windows protected by iron grilles. The door was unlocked, and he pushed it open. Inside it was dim, the high ceiling lost in the shadows above.

Victor’s shoes clicked on the tiled floor, the only other sound his breathing. He could feel his pulse rising steadily with each step that brought his ultimate destination closer at a frightening pace. It took a lot of will-power, as it always did, not to turn around and walk straight back out.

He pulled the curtain back and stepped inside the box he likened to an upturned coffin. He pulled the curtain shut behind him and fell to his knees, head bowed, palms together.

In a quiet voice Victor spoke to the faceless silhouette on the other side of the mesh panel.

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’