The Hunter

CHAPTER 32

01:5 °CET

Victor stood so he could see the front door and the entrance to the kitchen without moving his head. The broker was getting herself a glass of water. He heard her open a cupboard, then four seconds later the faucet began running. The sound of water hitting the metal sink. If the sound didn’t change within another four seconds he would go into the kitchen to find out what she was really doing. After three seconds he heard the glass filling.

There was a part of Victor that told him any time he spent with her only compromised him further. She had set him up before. He could never be sure she wouldn’t do so again. He knew he should just kill her now and be done with it. He spent his whole existence managing risk, and the survivalist part of him screamed that this was too much of a risk to take.

But the flip side of the coin had considerable weight to it. In one conversation he had learned more from her than he had in several days on his own. And there were still things he did not know or understand. He would listen to what she had to say and then decide whether or not to kill her. Not for revenge — which meant nothing to him — but for his own protection. The broker knew too much about him. She couldn’t know it, but she was interviewing for her life.

The broker reappeared. She took a sip of water and placed the glass down on a table. ‘Where did I get to?’

‘Black bag.’

She said, ‘At first I thought the operation was simply unsanctioned. I didn’t know that it was completely illegal or I would never have signed to it. Now, that helps us because it means we’re against only a few people. As long as it stays the way it is we can do something about it.’

‘Like what?’

‘If they want us dead to kill the connection between them and Ozols’s assassination, the reverse must also be true. We go after those who ordered it, everyone who knows about it. Maybe two or three people. Cut off the head and the body dies.’

‘When you say we, you mean me, right?’

‘But I’ll help you find them,’ the broker said. ‘At the moment we don’t know who our enemy is. I only had contact with one person, my control, and they’ve already had him killed. But I can find out who’s behind this.’

‘How?’ he asked.

‘We follow the money. That’s how we do it.’

‘Explain.’

‘Where there’s money, there’s a trail. The money from the Paris job was deposited into your Swiss bank account from another numbered account that I had control over. It was transferred into my account from, you guessed it, yet another numbered account.’

‘How does that help us? The account could have been set up purely for the Ozols killing.’

‘That’s not the case.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I used to work for them, remember?’

‘I haven’t forgotten. What’s your point?’

‘My point is that you used to work for them too.’

‘No I haven’t.’ He wanted to throttle the truth out of her. ‘I’m freelance. I work for private clients. And I don’t like games. Just tell me.’

‘I’m telling you that the Ozols job wasn’t the first one you’ve done for them. Over the last three months you’ve done three other contracts, through me, for the CIA.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘You think I’m lying. Why would I?’ He couldn’t answer. ‘I’ve been your broker three times, each time pretending to be a different person, acting out a different character. The job before this one, in Sweden, you killed an arms dealer. The time before that a Saudi. Do I have to go on?’

Victor looked away.

‘That’s how you people found out where I lived,’ he said, half to himself, now understanding. ‘The other jobs were dummies just to track me down.’

‘Not exactly. They were legitimate targets. Very nasty people, but yes, the jobs were covers for the surveillance. And it took three intensive ops just to get one shitty photo-fit put together. But we got where you lived.’ There was a measure of pride in her voice that made his teeth grind. ‘No one thought it would take so long. You were better than anyone thought.’

He shook his head. ‘You people.’

‘Don’t you dare.’ She actually looked angry. ‘You’re a hired murderer, remember? You have no right to judge anything anyone else does.’

He had to admit she had a good point.

She continued. ‘Don’t think I want to be here. It makes me fucking sick just being this close to someone like you.’

‘Don’t swear.’

‘What?’

‘I said don’t swear.’

She glared at him. ‘Don’t swear? Why the hell not?

A line appeared between Victor’s eyebrows. ‘That includes blasphemy.’

It took her a few seconds to see that he was being serious. She widened her stance. ‘Let’s get this straight. You don’t tell me what I can or can’t say.’

‘I just did. Get used to it.’

She scowled. ‘I think you’re forgetting I’m not working for you on this. We’re working together. That means you don’t tell me what to do or say and vice versa. You understand me?’

Victor checked his watch. ‘Have you finished?’

The broker took a series of calming breaths. She wanted to say more, he could tell, a lot more. He could imagine her practising being strong in front of a mirror.

‘You were saying something about a money trail,’ he said calmly.

She took another breath and swallowed. The look in her eyes told him she was telling herself to drop it, that he wasn’t worth the effort. It was a minute before she finally spoke, a measure of time he guessed would reassure her pride that she hadn’t backed down too easily.

She spoke. ‘The money that was paid into your account came from me, which came to me from someone else’s account, who probably got it from someone else’s, and so on. So we track backward, account to account until we find who started the first account.’

‘And you know how to do that?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded, almost believing she knew what she was talking about. ‘How?’

She was sitting down now, perched on the arm of the sofa. He heard wood creak when she moved. She spoke with her hands a lot, gesturing, emphasizing, illustrating. Victor remained standing, his back to the wall next to the window so he could watch her and the door at the same time.

‘We find out who or what that first account belongs to,’ she said.

There was a commotion outside. Some pimp yelling at his property. Victor had the window open so he could listen for people arriving.

‘You’ve said that already. How do we find that out?’

‘From the bank.’

‘Bankers don’t hand out information on their customers.’

‘You just have to know how to ask.’

‘And you do?’

She nodded.

‘And what’s my role in this?’

‘You don’t have one. At least not yet. After I have the information you’ll use it.’

‘Sounds simple.’

She shrugged.

‘And are you confident this will work, what you’ve proposed?’ It was the end of the interview.

Yes, she lived.

No, she died.

Victor saw her thinking carefully about her response. He watched her closely. Her lips pursed momentarily and she swallowed before answering.

‘Yes,’ she said, voice strong, assured.

‘Good answer.’

She smiled slightly, misunderstanding.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew the flash drive. He flicked his wrist, threw it to her, impressed when she deftly snatched it out of the air in one hand. Good reflexes and dexterity. She looked it over for a moment before looking up at him questioningly. He saw her wanting to ask why he’d lied but she didn’t say anything. She moved over to her computer and plugged it into the side. Victor stepped forward to watch. She sighed when she was asked to input a password.

‘They didn’t give it to you then?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘I was never supposed to come this close to it. I know a little about cryptography, but I can’t tell what level of encryption it is. If it’s low end I could probably break it myself in a few days with the software on my computer. Simple brute-force attack. But if I was transporting something people would kill over, I’d make sure it was high-end encryption, the best I could get. My laptop doesn’t have the processing power to even scratch the surface of those kinds of ciphers.’

‘I have an acquaintance,’ Victor said. ‘Someone who may be able to help decrypt it. I stress may. I’ll try them while you collect the information on the account.’

‘If anyone can hack this, my contact at Langley could.’

‘No. It puts it too close to our enemies.’

‘Does it matter? If they intercept it maybe they won’t come after us.’

‘Given their efforts to kill me so far I can’t see them giving up quite so easily. And if they did get their hands on it they’ll know I gave the drive to you. I’ve compromised myself by meeting you. I don’t want them to know that.’

‘I’ll try and decrypt it myself then.’

‘I prefer my way.’

‘We can do both,’ the broker said.

‘As we can’t do both simultaneously, I’ll try mine first.’

‘Who says we can’t do both at the same time?’

‘The laws of physics. We only have only drive.’

She didn’t speak. Her fingers worked the keyboard for a few seconds. Victor watched the file copying across from the drive to her computer. It took seconds.

‘I never thought to try,’ he found himself saying.

‘The file carries the encryption, not the drive itself. It’s just a commercial memory stick, a carrier, nothing special, no hardware-based security. Now you can try your way and I can try mine.’

‘And double our chances.’

She smiled at him. ‘See, we’ve made a good team already.’

He found himself looking at her lips. ‘Stop right there,’ he said, as he raised his eyes back to hers. ‘We are not a team.’

‘Then what are we?’

He struggled for a second, thinking about how to describe them, but without success, then said, ‘Nothing.’

The broker looked away. ‘Okay.’

‘Neither of us should be under any illusion about why we’re both doing this. You’re only helping me because you need me. I’m only helping you because for the moment you can help me, too.’ He avoided saying he needed her. ‘That’s the end of it.’

‘And what’s going to happen when I can’t help you any more?’

It took guts to say it. Victor respected that.

‘At that point we’ll part ways,’ he said. ‘And you’ll never see me again.’