The Game Read online

  Kooi’s route was clearer, but he had first to turn back around and lost a little of his lead. He used his height and body mass to shove his way past the smaller Algerians in his path. They shouted abuse and waved their fists. Victor dashed through the gap in the crowd Kooi created, dodging his way around locals as the gap closed up again and shouldering past those he couldn’t weave by. He received his own share of jeers.

  His target had a fifteen-metre lead, but he was easy enough to keep track of as he stood several inches taller than those around him. But he was fast and determined and running for his life.

  Stalls flashed by in Victor’s peripheral vision. A woman screamed up ahead and he ran past where she sat sobbing on the ground, an ornate earthenware jar smashed nearby, the cinnamon it had held colouring the paving stones orange and drifting away in the breeze.

  Victor tripped over a foot and stumbled, but thanks to his agility and the mass of bodies in close proximity he avoided falling.

  He glimpsed Kooi veering out of the market square and down a side street shaded from the sun by tall buildings. The back and the right arm of his short-sleeved shirt were orange with smeared cinnamon. Victor entered the side street a few seconds after his target and caught sight of him as he turned a corner up ahead. Beggars sat with their backs against one wall, their legs crossed before them and wooden bowls near their feet, paying no attention to the men who ran by. Victor avoided crashing into a pair of men who entered the alley ahead of him, slipping side-on between them and round the corner Kooi had taken.

  The street that Victor found himself on was long and straight and he powered along the centre of it after Kooi, who rounded pedestrians and leapt over a bench to avoid a crowd that would have slowed him down. Victor did the same, and someone applauded the show of athletics.

  Kooi took another corner and when Victor reached it he saw a short walkway that crossed another. At the intersection he couldn’t see Kooi either to the left or right, but he saw to the right a number of locals with expressions of bemusement or curiosity.

  Victor headed that way, then turned into an alleyway where he saw boxes had been knocked over. He exited it and heard a horn blare, dashed across the road and cut through another alley, moving towards the sound, coming out on a tree-lined boulevard flanked by nineteenth-century French colonial buildings, grand but dilapidated. He caught sight of Kooi as he hurried through a restaurant’s entrance.

  More horns sounded as Victor cut across the traffic. Insults were cast in his direction. He pushed open the restaurant door and dodged around the tables and waiters before shoving open the only door Kooi could have taken, entering the kitchen and bundling staff out of his way to follow Kooi through a back door.

  He emerged onto another winding market alleyway, lined on both sides by ramshackle stalls. Victor headed left, because a stall had been upturned that way and traders were yelling and throwing things. He jumped up and scrambled over the stall, inflicting further damage and shrugging off the angry locals’ attempts to grab him.

  Kooi’s lead was short, but the streets of the old town were a maze-like collection of narrow cobbled walkways that wound and twisted between whitewashed buildings in no discernible pattern. He disappeared around corners and took intersections before Victor could see which way he went. Victor fell further and further behind as he struggled to deduce the correct turnings to take, looking all ways to identify Kooi’s path or listening to ascertain in which direction the sound of running footsteps originated from. Had Kooi known the city then his chances of escape would have been good, but Kooi was a tourist who had spent his days exploring the unfamiliar. He didn’t know Algiers. He didn’t know where to run to. He didn’t know where to hide. He was attempting to create enough distance to lose his pursuer. He was trusting to speed and stamina in an attempt to outrun Victor. He didn’t yet know such a thing was impossible.

  Victor ran into a small arcade, dodging past men and women amused enough by the spectacle to helpfully point out which way to go. The arcade opened out onto the seafront. Kooi was out of sight and the road was wide enough that his flight had not disrupted the foot traffic sufficiently for the wake to mark his route. He could have gone either left or right but Victor should be able to see him easily enough in the sparse crowd. But he couldn’t. Kooi must have backtracked.

  Victor turned around and dashed back the way he had come, picturing Kooi running along a parallel route, perhaps even slowing to a walk to attract less attention. He reached an intersection and glanced both ways down the perpendicular thoroughfare. If Kooi had retraced his steps along a parallel route he would appear after Victor, who had only had to run in a straight line, whereas Kooi had gone in an L shape having fled a little way first along the seafront.

  He appeared, to the left, and Victor was sprinting after him before Kooi realised he had been spotted. The Dutchman ran again, but now had a lead of less than five metres.

  After Victor chased him down another alleyway, Kooi ran across a wide French boulevard, in a straight line through the sparse and slow-moving traffic. He slipped off the cinnamon-stained shirt and tossed it aside, because at some point he would want to hide, to blend in, and the shirt would hamper that. He had a white undershirt beneath.

  Victor followed, running behind a backfiring car Kooi had run in front of. He headed into an alleyway that was barely shoulder width, scuffing and tearing his own shirt at the shoulders and elbows and scraping the skin beneath. Kooi took a corner eleven feet ahead, using his hands as brakes to pivot him ninety degrees and prevent him crashing into the wall. Victor did the same, gaining on Kooi because he knew what was coming.

  The paved ground sloped upwards in a series of long, low steps and then opened out onto a wide residential street where window boxes bloomed with colour and bright doors had grilled security windows. Kooi leapt up and vaulted over a wall. Victor did the same seconds later, landing on his feet in a courtyard filled with tall potted plants. Kooi shoved them aside and knocked them over as he ran. Earthenware cracked apart, spilling soil. Victor dodged around the debris, again closing on Kooi, who had to create the path for Victor to follow.

  Kooi ran at the wall at the other end of the courtyard and used the ball of his leading foot to catapult him upwards, pulling himself up and dropping down to the far side. Victor heard a yell and a crash and as he landed on the street on the other side of the wall he saw Kooi scrambling to his feet and a man on the ground, cursing and rubbing his ankle. Victor swerved around him as Kooi jumped onto the bonnet of a parked taxi, receiving a blare of horn in return from the driver, who got out of his vehicle to yell abuse. Victor had to shove the driver out of the way, and followed Kooi over the bonnet and up another set of long low steps.

  At the top an elderly woman was exiting the front door of her home. Kooi threw her aside and disappeared into the building. Victor heard his footsteps dashing up the stairwell as he entered the cool interior. Ceiling fans thrummed overhead. He raced after Kooi, not concerned about an ambush because he could hear his target’s echoing footsteps ascending above him.

  Victor reached the four-storey building’s top floor, rushed through an open doorway – the only way Kooi could have gone – and into a small apartment where a family sat on the floor, shocked and scared at the intrusion upon their afternoon meal. Glass smashed further inside and Victor found a balcony door kicked open. Out on the balcony there was no sign of Kooi. The street was too wide to leap across to the buildings on the other side and the ground was too far down to drop to, so Victor looked right – seeing nothing – then left.

  The Dutchman had jumped to the adjacent balcony. Victor did the same, stepping onto the stone railing and covering the distance by the time Kooi had reached the next balcony along. Victor hurried after his target, who had run out of balconies, but who climbed up on to the stone railing and jumped.

  He landed on the roof of the neighbouring building and rolled to disperse the impact of the two-metre drop. Victor rolled seconds later and Kooi g
lanced back over his shoulder, face shining with sweat, to make brief eye contact with his relentless, tireless pursuer.

  The next flat roof was only a short jump away, but Kooi stumbled as he landed and slowed his run to keep his balance. An exterior stone staircase descended from the far side of the roof and Kooi hurried down it, Victor now close enough to hear the Dutchman’s urgent breaths.

  The stairs led down to a small square, at the centre of which was an ornate tiled fountain where residents collected drinking water. Kooi grabbed a boy holding a bucket in each hand and heaved him backwards into Victor’s path. Victor dodged the boy but not the buckets spilling water. He slipped but stayed on his feet, losing a second on Kooi, who vaulted over a small wall and down to a neighbouring alleyway.

  Victor followed, absorbing the drop with bending knees, and caught a glimpse of Kooi as he rounded a corner ahead. Victor took the same corner moments later and sprinted down the adjoining alley, jumping over baskets knocked over by Kooi, past a small hovel with a red door, out onto a side street. He looked left, saw a long street Kooi hadn’t had the time to run the length of, almost no people, no restaurants or businesses, no way to veer off. Victor looked right – a dead end. Kooi could have gone neither way. Victor’s memory flashed back. The red door. No splinters of wood near the lock or hinges from a kick, but it was still slightly ajar, having been already open. He spun around and saw—

  Kooi, charging from the doorway, the glint of metal from a blade in his hand, meant for Victor’s back but now thrusting at his heart.

  THREE

  Kooi stopped, half a metre from Victor, the tip of the knife centimetres from his ribcage. It was a small weapon, painted black, with a triangular point and a recurve blade. A fine weapon – better than Victor’s own – folded high-carbon steel, wickedly sharp, strong enough to be capable of breaking bone without compromising the blade, but harmless while piercing only air.

  He was only a little older than Victor but far more fatigued from the chase. Kooi was about the same height and similarly proportioned, with long limbs, athletic and muscular but compact and lean. Sweat glistened on the Dutchman’s face and arms from the heat and the chase, and darkened the front of his undershirt. Kooi stumbled, but didn’t move any further forward. His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything. His eyes stared at Victor, but focused on a point somewhere behind him.

  Then he exhaled and wheezed. The black knife fell from his trembling fingers and clattered on the paving stones near Victor’s feet.

  The Dutchman blinked, his eyes watery, and placed both hands on Victor’s right arm to steady himself while he looked down at his abdomen, to where the knuckles of Victor’s right thumb and index finger pressed against Kooi’s white undershirt.

  The white shirt became red around Victor’s hand.

  ‘No,’ Kooi said, as if defiance could remove the blade from his stomach and repair the hole it would leave behind.

  Victor let go of the folding knife’s grip. It protruded at a downward angle from just below the base of Kooi’s sternum, the short blade buried up behind the breastbone, the tip puncturing the bottom of the Dutchman’s heart. He coughed and struggled to breathe as blood drained from the ruptured left ventricle and slowly filled the chest cavity, impeding his lungs’ ability to inflate and deflate. Victor eased Kooi to the ground as the stability left his legs.

  ‘No,’ Kooi said again, but quieter.

  He slumped against the alleyway wall, his legs splayed on the paving stones before him, his arms limp at his sides. He didn’t try to take the knife from his flesh. He had to know there was no point even if he’d had the strength left to tug it free of the vacuum’s pull. Such an action would only quicken his demise. Victor considered what he would do if their places had been reversed – whether it was better to live those extra few seconds in pain and fear or to hurry to the boatman.

  Victor patted along Kooi’s thighs and around his waist to make sure there were no hidden weapons that might be employed with the last of Kooi’s strength. He knew better than most that when faced with death, people could find a way to stay alive or take their vengeance, because he had done both.

  There was a wallet and room key in one of Kooi’s hip pockets and the statuette in the thigh pocket, but nothing else. Victor examined the statuette. It was about six inches in height and lacquered black. Victor didn’t understand what it was supposed to be. It looked like a reptilian man, somewhat comical and juvenile. Kooi had strange tastes.

  Victor slipped the wallet into one of his own pockets. He didn’t need to check the contents because anything inside the wallet was of no interest to him. He would dispose of it later. Taking it was merely to give the police a story. He unclasped Kooi’s wristwatch and ripped a pendant from his neck for the same reasons. There was no phone to take, but Victor rarely carried one himself.

  Kooi, his face pale while he sat dying, stared at Victor as he was robbed.

  ‘Who sent you?’ Kooi asked in a whisper.

  Even if paramedics showed up that second, Kooi couldn’t be saved, so Victor answered, ‘CIA.’

  ‘Are you…?’

  Victor shook his head. ‘Independent contractor. Like you.’

  The Dutchman blinked and swallowed while he gathered the energy to speak again. ‘For the American?’

  Victor nodded.

  A weak smile. ‘I knew I should… have said no… to that job.’ He coughed at the effort of saying so many words in succession. He fought to keep his head upright and his eyelids open.

  ‘Greed kills us all eventually,’ Victor said.

  ‘But me first.’ Another weak smile. Another cough. Blood glistened on his lips. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Ask me again when I join you.’

  He nodded, accepting the response. ‘Would you do something… for me?’ He paused and wheezed. ‘A favour. It’s important…’ His eyelids fluttered. Blood dripped from his chin. He tried to lift his hand. ‘Please…’

  ‘Maybe.’ Victor said. ‘What is it?’

  Kooi never answered.

  FOUR

  Somewhere over the Atlantic, three weeks later

  The Lear jet cruised at an altitude of thirty-one thousand feet. In the cockpit a pilot and co-pilot monitored the instruments and joked amongst themselves. There was no other crew. On the far side of the cockpit door, a woman and a man sat in the passenger cabin. The woman’s name was Janice Muir. The man was Francis Beatty. They sat on opposite tan leather seats, facing each other across a small table. The sky outside the small round window was black and absent of stars.

  A tablet computer lay between them. A photograph was displayed on its screen. The photograph was pixellated and slightly blurry, having been shot at distance and then enlarged as far as its resolution could handle. The tablet was rotated to suit Muir’s perspective. Beatty used a finger to wipe the screen and bring up other photographs. They showed a man in a suit walking along the street of a European city, then ascending some steps to enter through the black door of a whitewashed townhouse.

  Muir said, ‘Are we sure he’s the target?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Beatty answered. ‘Right height. Right build. Right sort of age. The hair is different, though.’

  ‘A wig?’

  ‘I’m guessing he’s just changed his style.’

  The woman thumbed the tablet’s screen to cycle back and forth through the photographs. ‘I’d like a little bit more than a guess.’

  Beatty frowned. ‘We’re working with intel that is out of date. People grow and cut their hair all the time. I don’t think it makes a difference.’

  ‘We’ve had two false positives so far. I’d prefer to avoid another.’

  ‘Perhaps it will be third time lucky.’

  This time Muir frowned. ‘I prefer to deal with facts, not luck.’

  ‘Just a turn of phrase.’

  ‘Probability?’

  He shrugged and rocked his head from side to side. ‘Hard to say.’

  �
��You’re being paid to say.’

  ‘Then I’d say sixty-five per cent, give or take.’

  ‘That doesn’t fill me with confidence.’

  ‘I was trying to be accurate, not reassuring. From what little we can see of his face in these photographs he seems a good fit. For what it’s worth, he matches the description as closely as we could hope for.’

  ‘As do a lot of men.’

  ‘I said for what it’s worth. What do you want to do?’

  ‘We have just one more potential after him, correct?’

  Beatty nodded. ‘But he matches the least criteria. This guy here’ – he tapped the screen – ‘ticks more boxes.’