On the other side of the road, directly opposite from the hotel, a stocky man was hurrying down the steps at the front of a whitewashed apartment building. Slung over his shoulder was a large black sports bag, the kind that could easily contain a tennis racket, hockey stick.
Or high-velocity rifle.
He stopped dead when he saw Victor looking straight at him. His reaction a perfect ID. Both men stood completely still as chaos swept around them. The stocky man was first to break the stalemate. He glanced to his left, towards where the van was parked. He and Victor were equidistant from it.
Victor took a step forwards. The man took one backwards. He reached into his jacket. Victor did the same. A police car turned onto the street, lights flashing, siren blaring. Both men saw it and any thoughts of drawing guns vanished.
The assassin again glanced at the van, perhaps in the hope that help might be coming. When he realized it wasn’t he turned around and rushed back up the steps to the apartment building.
Victor quickened his pace but to avoid drawing attention couldn’t run. He reached the opposite sidewalk in time to see the door slam shut behind his prey. He took the steps two at a time. He tried the door handle but it was dead bolted. He couldn’t risk kicking it in or shooting the lock through, not with more police entering the street.
Victor descended the steps and looked up and down the street, searching for some way to get round to the back of the building. There was an alleyway twenty yards to the right. Victor hurried towards it.
As soon as he was out of sight he sprinted, coming out of the far end and into the backstreet, 45 in hand. No sign of the stocky man. If he’d left the building already Victor would be able to see him now. Which meant he was staying put. Victor was surprised. The assassin had chosen to wait, to fight.
Victor wasn’t about to disappoint him.
The lock on the back door was a good one and would’ve taken Victor almost thirty seconds to pick had the fat. 45 calibre slugs not blasted it to pieces. He loaded a full magazine and stepped into a wide, sparsely furnished hallway, the floor covered in a colourful mosaic. There were three interior doors, two with numbers on them. A large staircase dominated the space.
Victor approached it, gun held out before him in a two-handed combat grip. His hotel room had been on the fourth floor and so it would be from the fifth that the stocky man had been covering Victor’s window. That room was familiar, safe. If the man had fled to anywhere, he would have gone there.
Victor took the steps one at time, slowly, quietly, always looking up, ready in case the assassin was waiting to ambush him. He reached the second floor, scanned the landing, then started his way up the next flight of stairs.
He paused for a few seconds on the third floor to listen. When he didn’t hear anything he made his way up to the fourth. From the fifth floor, he heard a door open, then a woman’s voice, somewhat surprised, but friendly, helpful.
‘Puis-je vous aider?’ Can I help you?
Then a clack clack followed by the thud as a body hit the floor. Victor made his move, sprinting up the flight of steps while the assassin was momentarily distracted. He saw the stocky man as he was turning around from his kill, standing at the top of the stairs.
Victor fired on the move, the angle bad, and a hollow point blew a chunk out of the banister. The assassin instinctively lurched back, and as two more bullets blew holes from the ceiling above him, a fourth struck the black iron lattice beneath the banister and sent off a flash of bright sparks. The man let off a few rounds from his own handgun, firing blind as he threw himself out of Victor’s line of sight. He appeared again briefly, firing as he moved, Victor returning fire, neither man hitting.
Victor went into a crouch before he reached the top of the stairs and peered through the iron lattice. He saw the body sprawled out in the doorway of her apartment. A silver-haired woman in a raincoat lay dead, her only crime having asked politely if she could help the stranger waiting by the stairs. A good deed was its own reward.
The other of the floor’s two doors was half open, the assassin nowhere to be seen. Victor crept up the last few steps. He looked over to the first half-open door. It led to the apartment where the assassin had originally taken up position, the place to which he had no doubt retreated. Except Victor did doubt.
Making no noise, he carefully stepped across the landing, avoided the glistening pool of blood, and pressed himself along the wall. He edged towards the open door that led to the dead woman’s apartment. Victor almost smiled. He wasn’t about to fall for the oldest trick in the book.
When he reached the door frame, he looked across to the other apartment, the one where the stocky man would have been stationed, judging the angle to determine where someone inside the dead woman’s apartment would need to be to properly cover the other doorway.
Victor crouched down; placed his left hand on the door frame; and, using it as leverage, spun himself into the room. He saw the assassin straight away, in a crouch, leaning around a partition wall, gun trained at the door to his old apartment. The man’s eyes widened in surprise.
Victor fired twice, one bullet missing but the second grazing his target’s head above the ear, sending up a small spray of blood. The assassin managed to get a shot off in response before he fell back into cover. The bullet hit the door frame inches from Victor’s face, blowing a cluster of long wooden splinters into his cheek. He didn’t flinch.
Victor was on his feet in an instant, quickly changing position, moving into the centre of the room, knowing that he had to keep moving, that to stay in the same place only made it easier for his assailant.
The assassin ducked back round the corner and fired off two quick shots in the direction of the doorway, the bullets sailing through the open space where Victor’s head had been seconds before. He moved further into the room, making the angle between him and his enemy more and more acute. If the assassin wanted to see him he was going to have to stick his head around the corner. When he did, Victor was going to blow it off. But he didn’t take the bait.
Five seconds passed and Victor imagined the stocky man moving through the apartment to get behind him. There were two other ways out of the lounge, too far apart to watch them both at once.
Victor dashed over to the dining-room entrance, leaned round the corner. The assassin had gone. There was an open door at the opposite end, through which Victor could see the kitchen. Silently he moved over to the kitchen and peered inside. Empty. There was only one other door. Victor hurried over to it, noting the tiny dark spots of blood on the white tiled floor.
Looking through the doorway he saw the assassin. He was crouched down in a hallway, his back pressed against a wall, gun in both hands, about to lean into the lounge and shoot Victor in the back. At least that’s what he thought.
He was taking a series of deep breaths, summoning courage. He stopped mid inhale. Maybe he saw a dark shape in his peripheral vision, maybe some sixth sense warned him. He twisted to fire and Victor shot him in the chest. He slumped farther down the wall, still alive, the gun held loosely in his hand. On his face was etched an expression of amazement, as if he couldn’t comprehend he’d been shot. A red mist hung in the air.
The slide was back on the. 45, so Victor released the empty mag and slammed the spare in, pulled the slide to load a bullet into the chamber, and shot the assassin twice more.
Victor checked the body, took the earpiece and transmitter, but found nothing else. He headed to the floor’s other apartment. Inside the hallway he found the black sports bag; unzipping it he discovered a SIG556 ER rifle with scope and what looked like a custom-made suppressor. In a side pocket, he found a dry-cleaning receipt and an electronic door key. He took both. On the receipt it said: Hotel Abrial.
Now he had something.
He moved into the lounge and opened a window. Leaning out, he saw the blue van still parked by the kerb in the street below.
A crackle of static. A voice came through the earpiece. The French was broken, strained. Another foreigner. The ones who could speak French probably used it as the common language. Maybe it had been a requirement on the application form.
‘R e pondez quelqu’un, quiconque.’
In the background he could hear a police siren, close to the speaker. The last man was outside. Then the voice came through again. The same plea for contact. Again the police siren in the background, then the rumble of
