‘We take out our enemies.’
He wanted to say, to where? Some people just didn’t like to say kill. Ridiculous euphemisms, however, were fine to say. He supposed it helped them sleep at night.
‘And how are we going to do that? I can’t kill the entire CIA. I don’t have that many bullets.’
‘The hit on Ozols wasn’t officially sanctioned,’ the broker said.
‘It was strictly off the books, old-school black bag. Someone ordered it, people implemented it, but the wider organization doesn’t know about it.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘There are lots of different reasons,’ she explained. ‘Starting with the way I was approached for the job. I had anonymous phone calls and meetings. I wasn’t told who I was working for or with, or what exactly I was working toward. It went way beyond need to know. Plus the fact that they needed you, a contract killer, one with no prior agency links. If it was a white job they wouldn’t have needed to kill you afterward or me or my control when it went wrong. They would have just used their own people or known contractors in the first place. Whoever is behind this really doesn’t want the rest of the CIA to know what they’re up to.’
‘The shooters who ambushed me in Paris,’ Victor said. ‘They were private sector. They didn’t know who they were working for.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And I had a run in with an American killer at my house.’
He didn’t say where that had been. To some extent it didn’t matter; he wouldn’t be moving back, but revealing personal information unnecessarily was one habit he wasn’t about to start.
‘In Switzerland, I know,’ she said. The fact she knew stung him, but he hid it. ‘It would’ve been a contractor, not an operative.’
Her voice carried weight, even if she didn’t explain herself. He believed her. No need to tell her he’d originally thought the opposite.
‘You’d already iced their shooters in Paris,’ she said, adding to the ridiculous euphemism count. ‘So they didn’t have much choice but to risk using someone closer to home to get the job done. They wouldn’t have been able to take the chance you might disappear while they assembled another unaffiliated execution team.’
Victor nodded, accepting the assessment. ‘This means that the wider agency isn’t looking for us at least.’
‘Yes, for the time being. But at any time something could happen to bring this out into the open. That bloodbath at your hotel attracted a lot of attention. I’m sure the legitimate CIA has people looking into it. Plus the French and the Swiss are now in on the party. Things are getting pretty crowded, even without the people who want us dead.’
‘So we’ll get to them before they get to us.’
‘Precisely.’
‘But how?’
She looked at him closely. ‘So you’re on board?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
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
