The Killer

SIXTY-SEVEN

Nicosia, Cyprus

Saturday

02:59 CET

Exercise always cleared his head and focused his mind. The simple pleasure of physical exertion was one that most people did everything in their power to avoid. Reed could not understand that, but he could not understand most people anyway. He grunted. He had his toes resting on his room’s high bed to increase the resistance of his one-arm pushups. He breathed hard. Sweat dripped from his nose.

His Smartphone flashed, breaking his concentration and interrupting his rhythm. He squeezed his eyes shut to regain his focus, determined only to stop for death itself. Training was about beating his body with his mind, and with a body so perfectly honed it was never easy.

He fought on-breathe out, push, breathe in, lower, repeat, repeat, repeat. Finally he collapsed, no longer able to continue. He lay with his face on the carpet for a minute while he regained his breath.

All the lights were off in his hotel room, and he operated only from his natural night vision. The phone felt heavy when he lifted it, but he knew the fatigue would pass shortly. Reed was at the peak of physical fitness. The new message was from his most recent client. He sat down on the end of the bed to read it.

Another contract. Reed absorbed the details and considered for a minute. The stipulations of the job required him to go to Africa immediately, but the target could only be dispatched once Reed had been given the green light from the client, who noted the target to be an easy feat for Reed’s skills. The Englishman shook his head. The appeal to his vanity was particularly transparent, even from a client he guessed to be American.

The idea of taking another contract so soon after killing five others was not something Reed would normally do. He needed to return to the Firm’s employment as soon as possible. He could only take so long an absence at one time without it creating problems. Plus, he did not particularly like the sound of flying to Tanzania and then waiting until the client gave him the go-ahead. The prospect of another sizeable donation to his bank account was, however, particularly appealing.

Reed composed a reply and sent it to the client. He checked his watch. It was too late to travel, so he decided to sleep for a few hours first. He took a pillow from the bed and placed it on the floor. He lay on his back, palms flat by his hips, knife within easy reach.

He woke precisely three hours later and phoned the front desk, asking for travel arrangements to be made on his behalf. He then showered, dressed, and packed his things. He checked out and collected the flight details from the concierge.

He climbed into a taxi in front of the hotel and told the driver to take him to the airport. Reed had never been to Tanzania before. If nothing else, the trip would broaden his horizons.

As Reed’s taxi pulled away from the curb, a man on the opposite side of the street lowered his newspaper. He was dressed like a tourist: swimming trunks, T-shirt, sunglasses, and ball cap. He waited until the taxi crossed an intersection and headed into the distance before dropping the newspaper into a trash can and crossing the road. It was a warm afternoon.

The man took the cap from his head as he entered the hotel. He walked through the spacious lobby and took the elevator as though he were a guest returning to his room. He used the key card he had stolen from a maid the day before to open a hotel-room door. Inside, he closed the door behind him and reached underneath the bed frame. After a moment his hand gripped the device and pulled it free from the tape that held it in place.

The device consisted of two components: a small radio receiver and an attached digital audio recorder. Sitting down on the bed, Victor scrolled through the noise-activated recordings, ignoring the sounds of a maid’s vacuuming, a door being slammed, and several TV news broadcasts. It was the last recording that he listened to twice, making notes on a small pad of paper.

He unscrewed the caps at either end of the room’s telephone receiver and opened up the case. Inside, the ends of two new wires were tightly wrapped around exposed sections of copper wire running the length of the receiver. Those wires formed a circuit that transmitted the sound waves of a voice as fluctuating electrical currents between the phone’s speaker and microphone.

The new wires were in turn attached to a small transmitter the size of a bottle top fixed to the telephone casing with superglue. The transmitter worked by emitting the electrical signal running through the wires as radio waves. Because the transmitter was so small, the signal sent was weak and could only be picked up from short distances. To be sure of an excellent recording, Victor had placed the receiver only a few feet away beneath the bed.

He removed the transmitter and wires from the phone before fixing the receiver back together. Victor left the hotel room and made his way back to the lobby. Outside, the keycard, radio receiver, and transmitter joined the newspaper.

The night of the explosion Victor had recognized the assassin straightaway. There could have been be no mistaking him. No one who witnessed a bomb blast behaved like that. Not unless they also happened to be the bomber. He had walked away casually, seemingly without a care in the world. He was dressed in khaki pants and a white long-sleeved shirt. He looked like a tourist, not a killer. That was the point.

Victor saw the telltale signs of countersurveillance in the assassin’s manner, even though he believed his job to be complete. He never walked at the same pace for long, sometimes crossing the road for no apparent reason, sometimes crossing back suddenly. He frequently paused to look in shop windows, to check in the reflection for anyone who might be following him. He was good, very good.

Victor had kept pace with him, mirroring his movements, staying out of sight. He stayed close but not too close, his face lost in the crowds that lay between them. Despite his precautions, the killer wasn’t as thorough as he could have been. But letting your guard down when the job was done and the danger past was a mistake everyone made at some point.

Victor corrected himself. Nearly everyone.

Once he had discovered where the assassin was staying, Victor had bribed an unhappy-looking concierge to find out which room was his. After stealing the key card, Victor had bugged the room when its occupant was eating dinner in the hotel restaurant. Now he knew that his mark was leaving Cyprus and where he was heading, even which flight he would be taking.

That he was leaving proved Victor’s enemies believed he’d died in the bomb blast. He was no longer a target. With such extensive fire damage, the authorities might never be able to conclude that only one out of the two guests were present in the room at the time of the blaze. All Victor had to do was get off the island and disappear. Even if his enemies eventually realized he was still alive, he would be ten thousand miles away with a new face and a new life. They would never find him.

The plan had been to kill whoever wanted him dead, to erase the threat, to stay alive. Now he didn’t need to do that. He could live his life without expecting an assassin’s bullet.

He’d won.

Victor hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him to the airport. He sat in the back, silently staring out the window. He thought about where he might go, thinking of those countries where he had never set foot, where he had always wanted to go. For prudence it would be best to go to somewhere in South America first. His Spanish was good, and he would quickly become fluent. He could pay for a new identity there, a genuine identity, become a citizen of Argentina maybe. Then from there, Who knew where he would go?

But he wasn’t going to South America, sensible as that idea would be. Because there was something he needed first. Something he couldn’t live the rest of his life without. Something he’d never wanted before.

Revenge.