Which left his employer.
There was no internet cafe in Lavarone so Victor caught a bus to one of the larger, neighbouring towns. There he spent two hours performing counter surveillance before entering the lone establishment and sitting down in front of a computer. It was the first time he’d checked his CIA-supplied email account since before attempting the Yamout contract. As expected, there was a request to make contact for a post-action report regarding Minsk. He’d missed the prearranged call, but this wasn’t commented on. The tone of the email was neutral, nothing to give away just how angry his paymaster was at Yamout’s survival. The voice wouldn’t be happy about it, that went without saying.
Victor rubbed his right triceps before typing a response, stating a time he would call. A few days without strenuous activity had done his wound some good and it was healing well. There had been no infection and the pain was gradually subsiding. He took no painkillers for it. Pain, despite its inherent negatives, was the best indicator he had of how the injury was healing.
He spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the towns and villages of the Lavarone plateau, taking buses and walking, occasionally chatting with the friendly locals about their beautiful region, but never truly relaxing.
Victor returned to his hotel after dark, a newly purchased compact laptop hidden in a backpack. In his room, he powered on the computer, connected to the hotel’s internet, downloaded and installed the required software, and called his paymaster.
‘What happened?’ the voice demanded.
‘No attempt at small talk today then?’
‘No, not today, my man. Not when last week you failed. Not when you got four civilians killed in the process.’
‘When you give me such a limited time frame in which to kill an arms dealer shielded by ten armed men, in a restricted location, you should recognise such a contract has a limited chance of success.’
‘Don’t expect the second half of your fee,’ his employer countered, ‘and don’t think you only have the one job left for me after this debacle. I thought you were better than that, I really did.’
‘Given the unforeseen circumstances I encountered, if you had anyone else capable of pulling off that job, you really should have used them instead.’
A pause, before, ‘What circumstances?’
‘I don’t know where you’re getting your information from,’ Victor said, ‘but it couldn’t be less accurate. Those four civilians I killed were not civilians.’
‘So who were they?’
‘I don’t know,’ Victor answered. ‘I spotted one of them when I first arrived. At the time I thought he was one of Yamout’s people. But they weren’t allied with either Yamout or Petrenko. They were a surveillance team, though I use that term lightly. They didn’t shoot or fight like your typical pavement artists. They had Petrenko’s suite rigged with cameras linked to a computer in the suite next door. When I went after Yamout, they intervened, which is the only reason they died and Yamout lived.’
His employer processed the revelation for a long moment before saying, ‘If they intervened, then they-’
‘No,’ Victor interrupted, ‘when Yamout called for help they did nothing. If they had any association, they would at least have answered. They ignored Petrenko’s call for help too.’
‘Did you speak to any of them?’
‘Briefly. They told me nothing useful, but they spoke in Russian, though I don’t believe they’re Russians. Or Belarusians. The only one I saw in the daylight had tanned skin and dark hair. I guessed he was Middle Eastern, working on the assumption he was with Yamout, but he could have easily been South American or Mediterranean. Or just had some of that heritage.’
‘That’s pretty broad.’
‘Did I say it wasn’t?’
‘I don’t suppose they had ID on them, did they?’
‘Belarusian driving licences.’
‘Genuine?’
‘Expert fakes.’
‘So they’ve got resources.’
‘Plus training, experience, financing, and accurate intel — unless Yamout and Petrenko advertised their meeting in Arms Dealers Weekly.’
‘So you’re saying some intelligence agency was running an op on Yamout or Petrenko and we’ve stepped right in the middle of it?’
‘Is the most likely case,’ Victor agreed. ‘Or they’re private operatives working for some other organisation or individual.’
‘You said they had rigged Petrenko’s suite up with cameras, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So logic would dictate they were watching Petrenko, else they would have spied on Yamout back in his own country, wouldn’t they? Could have been cops or domestic agents looking to bust Petrenko for one of his many crimes.’
‘None of them tried to arrest or apprehend me,’ Victor explained, ‘which they would have done had they been from the Belarusian security services. My guess is they were interested in what Yamout and Petrenko were discussing, as opposed to them as individuals.’
‘Either way, we’ve been compromised. How exposed are you?’
Victor had been waiting for that question. He knew his employer would be paying very careful attention to his answer.
‘Minimally,’ Victor said. ‘I’m a careful kind of guy, and the four team members are all dead. I put a magazine full of nine mils through their computer’s hard drive. No one’s going to be able to recover the recordings.’
‘Good,’ his control replied through a sigh of relief that should have been better disguised, considering the implications had Victor’s answer been different. ‘And what about the next day? I heard there was a significant number of deaths at some train station. That wouldn’t be your doing, would it?’
‘I extracted by car,’ Victor answered. ‘Anything that happened the day after is likely to be Petrenko striking out against enemies he suspects came after him.’
‘I suppose so.’
From the tone, Victor couldn’t be sure whether he’d been believed, but there was nothing his employer could do to prove the incident at Minsk Central had been Victor’s doing. Any security-camera footage would be inconclusive at best.
‘Right,’ the voice said after a moment, ‘if there’s no exposure there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll let you know if that changes, but until then we carry on as normal. I won’t need you right away, but stay in Europe. You’ll be back to work soon enough.’
After the call had disconnected, Victor sat still in the darkness with only his thoughts for company. He examined one of the wallets he’d taken from the surveillance team, as he had done several times already. Aside from the Belarusian driver’s licence and some cash, it was empty. There would be fingerprints, of course, and if those they belonged to were on anyone’s database no doubt the CIA could identify that person, but Victor didn’t want his employer to know anything about his attackers before he himself did. If Victor’s suspicions proved to be correct, then it could put him in a very precarious position with the CIA.
He thought about the events at the Hotel Europe. There were some grey areas where he couldn’t recall every detail, but that was always the same after combat. Certain events remained vivid for years, whereas others — not necessarily of less significance — disappeared from memory within minutes. Victor didn’t understand the physiological or psychological reasons behind it, and he didn’t want to either.
Checking his other email accounts, he found a reply from Alonso, dated last week. The email explained that Alonso was in Europe for just one more day and if they were going to meet up it had to be very soon. That had been several days ago, so Alonso’s European contract would have gone to an alternate professional. The email also went on to say that, in retrospect, Hong Kong hadn’t been that much fun and Alonso wouldn’t recommend going. Victor deleted the message. He could have used the money the Hong Kong job would have given him, but it had been withdrawn for some reason. Maybe the client had got cold feet or the target had been hit by a train.
Victor found he’d missed out on another job from a different broker too. A Kazak working out of Moscow, who
