‘Head back to your car and drive away normally,’ Victor said. ‘When they realize I’m not going to show, they could bring you in.’
‘I’ll tell them you didn’t show. Which is true.’
‘They’ll make your life difficult if they can.’
‘Fuck them. I can take care of myself. I was thinking of moving anyway. The Caribbean maybe. I like the women.’
He spoke lightly, too lightly.
Victor’s jaw muscles flexed. ‘I’m sorry for getting you into this, Alek.’
Norimov was still pretending to smile. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry for.’
It was crowded and hot inside the back of the removal van, but no one complained. There were four men in total, aged between twenty-five and forty. All professionals, all experienced operatives for the SVR. They all watched the images of Norimov and the parking lot displayed on the seventeen-inch monitor. Colonel Aniskovach watched too. A directional parabolic microphone was covering Norimov, but it was too far away, and the ambient sound too loud to decipher Norimov’s words.
‘He’s definitely talking to him,’ an operative said. ‘Where the hell is he?’
‘He must be nearby,’ Aniskovach replied. ‘He’ll want to see Norimov with his own eyes to make sure he’s alone. He’s out there somewhere. When he is convinced everything is safe he’ll show to collect the package.’ Aniskovach grabbed a radio to speak to the men outside. ‘Do not move until the target is identified and I give the command.’
With less than an hour’s warning of where the exchange was taking place, Aniskovach hadn’t had the time to get snipers in position or a better plan put into action. Which was why, of course, the assassin had arranged things as he had. Aniskovach had to appreciate his cunning, but he had enough men in the area to trap him the second he showed.
On the monitor Norimov hung up the cell and placed it in his pocket.
Aniskovach spoke into the radio. ‘That’s it; they’re done talking. He won’t show until Norimov has left. Kill him only if you are forced to, wound him by all means, but I’d like him alive.’ Aniskovach turned to his men. ‘Be ready.’
Clouds obscured the sun. Victor closed the phone but kept watch over Norimov to make sure he was safe. It was the least he could do. Norimov strolled back to his car as if he had no care in the world. He moved to the passenger door and opened it. As he did so, Victor looked back to the blond man and saw he was talking, seemingly to himself. For a second the man glanced upstairs, straight at Victor.
The blond man must have eyes like a hawk. Victor took a breath, knowing he didn’t have long before they locked down the location and trapped him. But for the moment he was up here and they were down there. With both hands back on the rifle, Victor swung it towards the plain-clothes operative. He was already moving, knowing he had likewise been spotted, his right hand reaching to his belt.
Victor fired.
The bullet flew over Norimov’s shoulder and hit the blond man in the face. When his body struck the ground most of the head was no longer attached to his neck.
The Dragunov’s suppressor massively reduced the sound caused by the escaping gases, but the high-velocity round it fired created a sonic boom as it broke the sound barrier — unmistakably a gunshot. Victor watched the ensuing effect carefully. People in and around the parking lot ducked or flinched — shocked, scared, confused. All but two.
Victor killed the first with a bullet through the chest. The second, realizing what was happening, tried to run. He didn’t get far.
Norimov’s men pulled him into the car and the BMW’s tyres screeched as it reversed out of the parking space and headed towards the exit. Victor risked standing up to get a better view. They knew where he was now, anyway. He looked around. Below him there were screams, hysteria, people running back and forth. Where were the others?
To his right, he spotted a white removal van. The man behind the wheel had a frantic look on his face and a spiral of clear wire descending from his left ear. Immediately Victor crouched back down, grabbed the Dragunov, and swung it to the right. The reticule rushed over the parking lot.
The driver’s mouth was moving. Shouting something.
A small hole exploded through the side window, and the glass turned red.
Hearing the sound of breaking glass and a wet thunk, Colonel Aniskovach stopped barking orders and looked through the partition separating the driver’s cab from the van’s rear compartment. His mouth fell open at what he saw.
Bright gore plastered the front windshield. The operative behind the wheel was slumped to one side in his seat, his head split in two.
Aniskovach was already moving when he screamed, ‘EVERYBODY OUT.’
Victor let the magazine fall out of the rifle and slammed in the second mag. He worked the action, ejecting the previous round and loading an API. Through the sniper scope Victor watched the van’s rear doors swing open. He hovered the crosshairs over the fuel inlet.
A man leaped out of the back and ran. More boots dropped out of the back onto the road behind the first. Victor fired. The bullet punched a hole through the body work. Inside the van the incendiary charge ignited the traces of fuel in the inlet. Flames rushed through the fuel pipe, reaching the tank.
The van exploded.
It lifted off the ground, the force ripping outward, decimating it in a single instant. The fireball was huge, mushrooming upward, engulfing the operatives not fast enough to follow Aniskovach’s lead. The shock wave blew out the glass of the neighbouring vehicles.
Black smoke rose towards the sky.
CHAPTER 44
Paris, France
Monday
10:07 CET
Rebecca returned to her apartment with a bag of groceries. She locked the door before walking to the kitchen, where she placed the bag down on a work surface, poured herself the last of the coffee from the pot, and drank it bitter and lukewarm. In the lounge she stood in the gloom for a moment before opening the drapes to let some light in. Outside, Paris was grey and depressing. Her hair was wet and lank from the rain. She knew she looked awful without having to look in the mirror.
Paranoia made her check that all the windows were closed and locked. The apartment was old, the walls, floor, and ceiling thick. Little noise found its way into the space and the quiet unnerved her. She took a breath in an attempt to control her anxiety. No one knew about the apartment. It wasn’t hers. It had belonged to her uncle and was now the property of one of her cousins. She’d stayed for a few weeks a couple of years ago when she was given a set of keys and told to stay whenever she liked. Her cousin lived outside the city and didn’t rent it out but was too sentimental to sell it.
She tapped the space bar on her laptop to get rid of the screen saver. She’d left it powered on continuously — with only a laptop’s processing power the code-breaking software she was using could take several days, maybe even weeks, to breach the cipher on Ozols’s memory stick. Unsurprisingly it hadn’t found the code yet. The software displayed an ever-increasing count of the combinations tried. Billions down, billions more to go. Maybe tens of billions. Maybe more. If so, they would never crack it. Rebecca would die of old age long before the password had been discovered.
She considered e-mailing her friend at Langley who worked for the cryptography department. He had access to supercomputers that could smash open almost any cipher in hours, if not minutes. But her nameless companion was right, doing so would put them too close to their enemies.
Rebecca had entered into the software every word she knew that might have significance to Ozols. As part of
