Only someone who knew he would be in Paris to kill Ozols could have had assassins in place to kill him. He didn’t believe some third party was involved. The broker or client, or both together, had set him up, for safety, to save money, or some other reason he didn’t yet understand. At this moment the why wasn’t his priority. Staying alive was paramount, killing his enemies was secondary. Everything else was immaterial. If knowing why made it easier to protect himself only then did Victor care.
He opened up a file on the smartphone into which he had copied down all Svyatoslav’s details. It was too risky to try to take the actual documents across borders. He needed to find out who had hired Svyatoslav. Maybe it had been Victor’s own broker or maybe someone else entirely. Either way Victor had to know. Svyatoslav resided in Munich so Victor would start his hunt there.
He realized his eyes were closed and forced them open. His body needed the rest, but while his enemies were still out there he couldn’t afford to lessen his vigilance. He had spent his whole life being invisible, yet somehow, despite all the precautions, he’d been seen. Now more than ever he had to be on guard.
And in Victor’s opinion the best form of defence was to attack.
CHAPTER 13
Paris, France
Monday
22:48 CET
On the computer monitor a black-and-white image flickered incessantly. The picture was grainy, in places distorted, but the quality was just about adequate. It was low-res CCTV, so Alvarez was hardly expecting crystal clarity, but it would have been nice if the footage hadn’t given him a bitch of a headache.
He pinched the skin between his eyebrows and wiped the tears from his strained eyes. He felt like shit and guessed he looked no better. He stood in the basement of the US Embassy along with Kennard while a young tech guy whose name he didn’t have time to remember controlled the equipment.
After he’d got off the call with headquarters, Chambers evidently had applied pressure on the French because Alvarez had received copies of all pertinent documentation. He’d also been given copies of the security recordings from the hotel in which five people, including a woman no less, had ended up shot to bits. According to the police report one of the two corpses found in the apartment building opposite was another woman, and an elderly one at that. This was the single craziest thing he’d worked on in his time in the CIA.
Alvarez had been an operations officer in the National Clandestine Services, previously known as the Directorate of Operations, for nearly eleven years. Before that he had served in the Marine Corps after leaving college, but life as a jarhead hadn’t been for him. It had felt like treading water, always waiting for something to happen, but it never had. He’d joined up as a punk kid eager to see what he was made of, and the continual training and occasional humanitarian mission hadn’t shown him what he wanted to find out. It had been a different time then, now he would probably get more action than he could stomach. He had joined the forces for the wrong reasons, but he had signed up with the CIA for all the right ones. Alvarez hadn’t looked back since.
On the screen two men entered the elevator.
‘Who are these guys?’
While Alvarez stood straight backed with his big arms folded in front of his bigger chest, Kennard was hunched over, sleeves rolled up, elbows resting on the desk as he peered at the monitor. Kennard was a decade or more younger than Alvarez and was technically his number two, but Kennard liked to act as if they were partners. Alvarez, always the diplomat, let it pass to keep their working relationship friendly.
Kennard had an inch or two over him, used too much junk on his hair, and seemed to be on the agency gravy train just to get the health care. He was probably looking at it as a career stepping stone. Join the CIA out of college, get a few years under the belt; get experience and training; and then move on to bigger, better, and more highly paid things in the private sector. Alvarez didn’t have much time for that kind of attitude. He was in the CIA to do his duty as a patriot.
Kennard was usually all mouth and wouldn’t shut up unless his life depended on it, but he hadn’t been his usual cocky self all day. Perhaps the seriousness of the work had finally given the guy a much needed wake-up call. People were dead. This wasn’t some game.
Alvarez flicked through the photocopy of the preliminary case report. It had some extras his original copy didn’t have. He’d acquired the additional information from an agency source inside the Paris police. It had cost the US taxpayer a pretty dollar, but the thick wad of euros had done what the supposed agreement to cooperate had not.
He found the section of the report that listed each of the dead bodies. Apart from the old lady killed outside her front door, none of the corpses had identification. What most did have were radios with earpieces, guns, and ammunition. The French hadn’t ID’d any yet, but Alvarez had fed his copy of the fingerprints into the system and was waiting on the results. Something very big involving some very bad people had gone down at the hotel.
Watching the recordings was a mind-numbing process, but Alvarez’s motivation couldn’t be higher. Andris Ozols had been set to meet Alvarez when he was murdered and the intel he had been carrying stolen. Recovering that information was Alvarez’s priority, but equally important to Alvarez was catching the fucker who killed the Latvian and, at the very least, nailing him to the closest available wall.
Unfortunately the hotel made use of only two CCTV cameras, one in the lobby and one at the rear entrance. Cameras on every floor would have made Alvarez’s life a whole lot easier. With only two lots of footage to go on, Alvarez had to rely on what the police report told him to piece together what had happened. That report was, however, still frustratingly brief and full of holes. It would be a while before those gaps were filled.
‘Here he comes,’ Kennard said. ‘Walking to reception.’
Alvarez looked at the report. ‘Mr Bishop, room 407.’
On the screen Alvarez watched the mystery man move from the reception desk to the elevator, where he seemingly waited for it to arrive before suddenly standing to one side. Obviously hiding from the two men who stepped out.
Both he and Kennard had watched the relevant parts at least twenty times, and it still amazed Alvarez what he was seeing. As one of the soon-to-be-dead guys stood in the lobby, the killer moved right past him, coming so close it looked as if they were touching, before slipping unnoticed into the elevator.
‘Smooth,’ Kennard whispered.
Alvarez found himself nodding. ‘Fast-forward a moment.’
The tech worked the controls and a whizzing sound accompanied the scrambling picture for a few seconds.
‘That’s enough,’ Alvarez said.
On the screen there were now two men, clearly anxious, frantically stabbing at the elevator buttons before rushing to the stairwell and disappearing.
Kennard shook his head. ‘And a few minutes later they’re both corpses.’
‘They came to the hotel for him, not the other way around,’ Alvarez said. ‘Okay, let’s skip until the other guys come in.’
Alvarez loosened his tie for perhaps the tenth time, while Kennard stared at the screen. The tech worked silently on the fast-forwarding. The room was stuffy. There were no windows and the air conditioner was on its way to machine hell. Outside it was bitterly cold, but Alvarez, Kennard, and the tech geek had been in a ten-by-ten box full of electrical equipment for several long hours. The air was practically poisonous.
‘Here we go,’ Kennard said.
The man who had to be Ozols’s killer stepped out from the elevator and sat down in an armchair. Infuriatingly he kept his face hidden from the camera at all times, not overtly so, but with a gentle angling or inclination of the head ensuring the camera didn’t pick up his features. It was too much to be just luck.
He couldn’t have known where the camera was positioned before he arrived at the hotel, but he had checked in several days before, and the hotel only kept recordings for forty-eight hours. After that they were reused. Alvarez couldn’t see the point of that. The hotel might as well not have any cameras at all. He’d told the manager as much.
