and to avoid an oncoming car and disappeared into another quiet street.
Halfway along it he turned into the entrance to an underground car park, headed down a steep incline, ducked under an unmanned barrier and walked calmly into a low-roofed, cavernous and dimly lit enclosed space that amplified every noise. A tyre screeched somewhere below as a car turned a tight corner. Stratton speeded up to a fire exit and pushed his way in through the door as the vehicle appeared.
He paused to listen inside a concrete stairwell that zigzagged tightly upwards. The car drove off and the only sound that remained was a gentle hum from the stairway lighting. Stratton took the first flight at a brisk pace he could easily maintain and carried on to the top.
The stairs ended abruptly at a heavy metal door. Stratton paused to catch his breath and listen before easing it open to reveal a spacious flat roof in darkness, crowded with ducts and air-conditioning units. He stepped out into the icy breeze, closed the door quietly and crossed the familiar roof to a spot between two fan housings. The edge of the building was only feet away.
He removed the parts of a professional crossbow from his pack and quickly assembled the weapon, placing a foot in the stirrup and levering back the string that rolled through pulley wheels on the ends of the prods until it was locked by the trigger mechanism. The final component was a sophisticated telescopic sight that he locked into place.
Stratton opened a narrow plastic box to reveal three lethal bolts, their tips viciously barbed, their fletchings painted orange and with long slender green quetzal-bird tail feathers attached to the nocks by a line of gut. These were symbolic rather than a flight aid and an important part of Stratton’s message to his target.
He placed one of the bolts in the bow’s launch groove, inched forward to where he could see the street far below, rested the bow beside him and focused a pair of binoculars on the ornate entrance of a building opposite. Stratton could make out the partial figure of a man standing inside the glass entrance, illuminated by the colourful lights from a Christmas tree. A doorman or a security guard. With the party scheduled to end at midnight, in just over an hour, it was time for the old waiting game. An activity with which Stratton was more than familiar, particularly in the cold and holding a pair of binoculars with a weapon close by.
Stratton watched for more than an hour before the first men sporting dinner jackets walked out into the chilly air and down a flight of steps to the pavement. The flow of guests, all men, was intermittent, their breath turning to vapour as they came outside.
One of them paused at the top of the steps to pull on a coat. He looked familiar. Stratton scrutinised him through the binoculars. It was indeed Sumners, buttoning up his coat and looking back though the glass doors as if waiting for someone.
Stratton put down the binoculars, picked up the crossbow and balanced the stock in his hand. He made sure that the quetzal feather was neatly tucked behind the bolt and brought the tiller tight against his shoulder. He focused the cross-hairs of the scope on Sumners before moving them to the glass doors.
A group of four men came out. In their middle, holding court while fastening the buttons of his own coat, walked the one that Stratton had been waiting for. It was difficult to miss him, unfortunate perhaps for a man in his business - covert operations. He had a full head of thick white hair and he was also burly - not fat, just robust. He stood out in a crowd. Stratton had not seen him for several years but the last time was etched indelibly in his mind. The man had been standing on a cliff and looking down on Stratton hundreds of feet below, a gun in his hand. Their positions were now reversed: a poetic irony.
The target picture was perfect. The man had paused halfway down the steps to press home a point he was making, much to the amusement of the others. Stratton aimed the cross-hairs at the centre of the target’s torso and eased them closer to one of the man’s shoulders. It was important that he should drop him with the first bolt but not kill him. That was difficult to ensure because of the steep angle. He had to avoid the heart, of course, but also the main arteries leading from it or the man might quickly become unconscious.
Stratton exhaled. As his lungs emptied he steadied his grip on the crossbow and took first pressure on the trigger. The weapon jerked as the prods straightened, sending the bolt at four hundred feet per second towards its mark.
It struck the man with the force of a horse’s hoof, hitting him in the chest. The tip must have cut through his spine because his lower limbs folded instantly and he dropped like a dead weight, his heavy frame rolling down a couple of steps before he came to a stop on his back. The other men froze, except for Sumners who moved to the cover of the doorway.
None of them went to the man right away. He stared up at the night sky, an expression of utter shock on his face as he struggled to understand what had just happened to him. He fought to breathe and his hand quivered as he tried to find the object that was burning his chest. He was aware that his body had been pierced by something that was not a bullet. It occurred to him that perhaps something had fallen on him. But as his fingers found the end of the bolt and explored the fletching he realised it was an arrow of some kind. The quetzal feather moved in the breeze and through his fingertips and when he realised that it was attached to the arrow’s nock a memory worked its way into his thoughts. He had seen such a thing before. He inched up his head, forcing his chin towards his chest in order to look at it, but he was unable to raise his head far enough.
One of the other men finally dropped to his knees beside the wounded man. ‘Call the police!’ he shouted in the direction of the doorman. ‘Get an ambulance! Hurry!’
‘I want to see it,’ the wounded man rasped, grinding his teeth in determination. ‘I want to see it!’
His colleague seemed unsure what to do. But he put his hand behind the man’s head to help raise it up.
The man grimaced with the pain but he had never lacked grit or tenacity. When he saw the fletching and quetzal feather he knew its meaning straight away and relaxed his neck muscles as if there was nothing more to be done. His helper lowered his head back onto the step.
The man knew only too well the significance of the arrow. He squinted at the rooftops high above, hoping to see who had launched it. He could make out nothing but blackness, not even stars, but it didn’t matter. He knew who was there and that his nemesis had not yet finished with him.
A thin smile began to form on his lips but it faded as the vivid images of what he had done those years ago filled his head. If he could have said a final word to his executioner it might have been an apology, for it was the only awful deed in his life that he regretted. At the time it had all seemed necessary to him but even his black heart had been touched by the vileness of his actions. He wondered how long he had before the end.
The second bolt struck him in the throat, cutting through his larynx and smashing a chunk out of the concrete behind his neck. The man went still and blood trickled from his mouth, his open eyes glazing over as the life went out of them.
PART 2
Six Weeks Later: Central America
Harris looked exhausted. He sat on a rotten log, taking a breather, his safari clothes covered in a patchwork of sweat, his trousers muddy up to the knees. The narrow track they had come along had dried since the climb out of the valley and the trees had thinned. The sun - and the air - were welcome. He dug into a breast pocket and pulled out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, tossed the paper onto the jungle floor and pushed it into his mouth. ‘Gum?’ he asked his young assistant who was photographing some kind of insect on the ground.
‘Thank you, no,’ Jacobs replied, with a cheerful smile. Jacobs was as dishevelled as Harris but he did not look as tired as his boss.
Harris hardly knew Jacobs. He was a new guy on the team, fresh from the factory, an Ivy League graduate who had spent barely a couple of years stateside before getting a transfer to the Centrals. Rumour had it that his family was well connected. As far as Harris was concerned, apart from both of them being in the same business they were worlds apart. ‘Where’s he gone?’ he asked.
‘The soldier?’
‘No. I was suddenly worried about Elvis. Of course I’m talking about the damned soldier!’
‘He went into the bushes.’
Harris looked up and down the goat track that disappeared into the forest in both directions. ‘Are you
