It took a second for Aniskovach to speak. ‘I… didn’t.’
Victor took a hand from the Russian’s clothes and grabbed his throat, Victor’s fingers on one side of his oesophagus, thumb the other. He started to squeeze, hard, cutting off the air intake. Aniskovach choked.
Victor gave him ten seconds without oxygen before releasing the pressure enough for him to talk. He coughed for a moment. ‘I’ve only just got here…’
He started coughing again. Victor understood — they weren’t here for him. The flash drive. The SVR had found out what it contained and had come to collect whatever was on that sunken ship. That meant they had taken it from Norimov. The elevator doors closed and it started to ascend.
Victor tightened his grip on Aniskovach’s neck. ‘Did you kill him?’
The Russian looked confused. ‘Who?’
With his free hand Victor pressed his fingers into Aniskovach’s wounded cheek. He screamed and Victor squeezed harder on his throat. The Russian gasped and spluttered, his face reddening until Victor eased his grip enough for him to talk.
‘You know who.’
Aniskovach spat phlegm and blood from his mouth. ‘Norimov?’
‘Yes.’
‘We didn’t kill him.’ The Russian took a series of deep breaths and raised his head. ‘He was working for us.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Norimov… sold you to us.’ Aniskovach took great delight in the effect his words had. His face twisted into a smile, thin lips shining with blood. He spoke between coughs. ‘And he did so… for much less than… I would have paid.’
Victor’s grip unintentionally weakened. For a moment he couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything. Norimov, the only person he would even come close to considering a friend, had betrayed him. For nothing more than money. He felt hollow.
The elevator doors opened on the fifth floor and the noise brought Victor crashing back to the world. He glanced over his shoulder, ready to incapacitate whoever was waiting. A man stood outside the elevator. He had a lean, muscular physique, dark hair, and blue eyes, dressed casually.
Reed.
CHAPTER 73
17:22 EAT
The two killers stared at each other for a single long moment. Reed held the advantage, his enemy was half- turned away, hands gripping another man, pinning him against the back of the elevator. But Reed didn’t move.
Reed was rarely surprised, but he was as good as paralysed. Tesseract was dead. He had died in a hotel room in Nicosia, blown into atoms by an expertly placed bomb. Tesseract was dead, yet he was standing no more than four feet away. Reed stared forward blankly, his expression one of disbelief as his brain tried to rationalize what was obvious. He had failed.
Reed reacted second, only beginning to draw the Glock as Tesseract was already wrenching the other man away from the wall.
Victor swung Aniskovach one hundred and eighty degrees and threw him out of the elevator just as Reed extended his arm and fired; the man took the bullet meant for Tesseract in the chest, momentarily contorting before crashing into Reed. Both men were sent flailing.
Reed hit the floor first, on his back, Aniskovach’s body landing on top of him an instant later. He didn’t have time to brace himself, and the impact momentarily stunned his body but reignited his mind.
He couldn’t see Tesseract, and there wasn’t time to get out from under the dead weight, so Reed angled the Glock and fired blind.
Victor hit the button for the lobby and threw himself to the side of the elevator, back pressed flat against the panelled wood a split second before bullets struck the back wall. The mirror smashed, and Victor shielded his face with his arm against the explosions of glass. Jagged pieces rained down onto the floor. The doors closed.
A triangle of indentations appeared in the metal on Victor’s side. The elevator descended and the firing ceased. Avoiding the broken glass, Victor grabbed the Russian’s gun from the far corner. A 9 mm Browning. He ejected and checked the magazine, slammed it back in, worked the slide, and thumbed off the safety. Ready.
In seconds the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened. Before Victor stepped out into the lobby he used his knuckle to hit the buttons for the second, third, and fourth floors, and quickly stepped out before the doors closed behind him. There was no one nearby.
He had the Browning tucked into the front of his waistband with his shirt hanging loose to cover it. His right hand hovered by the grip as he walked cautiously forward. His gaze was fixed to the stairwell entrance, figuring the assassin would race down after him. It would take him considerably longer than Victor to reach the lobby, but still not long.
The assassin would know that too, and he would also calculate that Victor knew it. Taking the stairs would be the fastest way down, but in doing so the assassin would have to take the risk that Victor was waiting for him. There were other safer ways to the ground floor that would take longer. If their roles were reversed, Victor wasn’t sure what he would do.
He had no time to think about it further since he saw a group of men exit the hotel bar. They were all white, skins sunburned or shiny and starting to tan. The men were dressed as civilians but had the unmistakable bearing of military types. Victor knew they were Russians even before he heard them speak.
A couple of them glanced his way, but the others didn’t pay Victor any attention. Some carried rucksacks and looked weary from travel, while the rest seemed fresher. They’d obviously travelled separately in two groups to avoid suspicion. It made sense. It was the largest hotel in town and close to the port. Tourists were commonplace here, making it the ideal location to remain anonymous.
Any desire Victor had to wait and ambush the assassin disappeared now that there were seven, most likely armed, Russian soldiers in the lobby. The new arrivals started walking towards the elevator. Victor headed straight for the exit at a measured pace, just a guest hurrying on his way into town. A few of the Russians looked his way but nothing more. The ones without rucksacks congregated in the centre of the lobby.
As Victor passed the first group he hoped none of the seven had been involved in the St Petersburg’s incident. They would have seen that photo Norimov mentioned. If they had and Victor was recognized, he wouldn’t have much chance of escaping. He approached the middle of the lobby, veering to the right to avoid the Russians, estimating there had been enough time for the assassin to reach the bottom of the stairs. But the door remained closed.
The assassin clearly had something else in mind.
*
Reed made his way down the stairwell, taking deep, quick breaths as anger threatened to explode through his calm exterior. Tesseract was alive. Reed had failed to kill him. He had survived the bomb. No, Tesseract had found the trap and set it off to fool Reed into thinking he had been successful. The Englishman’s teeth ground together. He remembered thinking of Tesseract as an amateur, but if Tesseract was an amateur, what did that make Reed?
Reed could not remember the last time he had lost his temper, but now he felt the purest rage. Tesseract had beaten him, made a fool of him. Reed needed vindication.
He knew he would never beat the elevator to the lobby, and, if he took the stairs to the ground floor, Tesseract would be waiting to ambush him. Reed had no intentions of rushing into a trap.
He reached the third floor and entered the corridor. He quickly moved towards a window at the opposite end that he knew would give him a perfect vantage point. It overlooked the street outside the front of the hotel, and from that position Reed could wait for Tesseract to emerge from the main entrance and place two hollow points into the back of his skull.
Reed ejected the half-empty magazine from the Glock, the muscles in his jaw flexing periodically beneath the
