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  ‘The answer is no.’

  ‘You don’t even know what I’m asking you to do yet.’

  ‘The specific details of the contract are immaterial. Procter should have explained to you that I don’t talk business with clients in person. Even those who don’t put a team of watchers on me.’

  Muir shifted her weight. ‘Look, I’m sorry about that. I really am. But you have to appreciate the position I was in. I know how things work between you and Procter. I had to meet you in person. I couldn’t have just sent you an email and expected you to take me seriously, could I?’

  ‘I don’t have to appreciate anything. But what you need to understand is that Procter is my broker. I don’t deal with anyone else. Whatever your job is, if you wanted me to even consider agreeing to it, you should have allowed Procter to make contact. He’s the one I deal with. No one else. I’m going to leave now. I’ve given you the courtesy of not killing you or your men because of your relationship with Procter. And that’s a courtesy I’ll only grant once.’

  ‘Procter’s in the hospital,’ Muir said. ‘He was hit by a DUI. Some wasted guy in a Hummer. Procter’s got a shattered hip and a bruised spine, and even if he wasn’t high on opiates nine hours out of ten, he’s got a broken jaw the size of a balloon. He’s not in a position to contact anyone, least of all you. At an absolute minimum he’s going to be out of action for the next few weeks and won’t be back at the company for at least a couple of months. I can’t wait that long.’

  Victor remained silent for a moment, then said, ‘Tell me what you know about me.’

  Muir stopped rubbing her stomach. ‘I know you’re a professional assassin. Formerly freelance. Currently an unofficial asset for the Agency. Which I find amusing seeing as the CIA has a crisp termination order with your name on it. Well, codename. You’re also wanted by the Russian SVR and FSB, French Secret Service, Israeli Mossad and half of the police forces in Europe.’

  ‘Then when you claim to have so little information about me, how can you possibly know I can do what you need me to?’

  ‘Because no one else can.’ She winced and rubbed her stomach again.

  ‘The pain will come and go for about an hour. After that, you’ll be fine. But you might want to skip the situps for a few days.’

  She sighed. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

  ‘What about the rest of your team?’ Victor asked. ‘What do they know about me?’

  ‘They know even less than I do. The older guy is Francis Beatty. He’s been at the agency for ever. He’s assisting me. The rest are a contract surveillance team purely here to establish if you were who I was looking for. They don’t know what I want with you. All they were told is that you were a contact, albeit a highly dangerous one, and that you would spot them if they were anything less than perfect.’

  ‘They weren’t close to perfect.’

  ‘And they’ll be reprimanded appropriately, but I didn’t have a lot of choice using them. You’re not exactly the kind of man that you can walk up to and ask if he’s really the assassin you’re looking for. But whatever, they’re of no danger to you now.’

  ‘They were never any danger to me.’

  ‘All I’m asking you is for thirty minutes of your time. That’s all. Just half an hour. Let me tell you what the job is. You don’t like what I have to say you can walk away and you’ll never hear from me again. You’ve got nothing to lose. I’m just asking you to listen to me here. See what I have to say first before you turn me down. I’ll even buy you a coffee. You do drink coffee, don’t you? Or tea if you prefer. You English guys like tea, right? Earl Grey or something like that. I don’t know. I never drink it.’

  ‘Who said I’m an Englishman?’

  ‘No one, I just thought that…’

  ‘Okay,’ Victor said after a moment. ‘I’ll listen to you, but I’ll give you ten minutes of my time. Not a second longer.’

  ‘Great,’ Muir said. ‘Thank you. But let’s talk somewhere else.’

  ‘There’s a nice place round the corner where we can talk.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ Muir said. She touched her stomach. ‘I could really use a sit down, you know?’

  ELEVEN

  The French bistro was small and cramped, with tightly packed tables beneath a low ceiling. Black and white photographs of famous French nationals covered the walls. Framed and signed football shirts had pride of place behind the bar. The lunchtime rush was over and there were plenty of empty tables, but the close proximity of neighbouring diners meant there was little chance of privacy, especially with the affable – and slightly drunk – owner making the effort to chat with all of his customers.

  Victor selected a table outside on the pavement where there were no other patrons. He chose the table furthest from the entrance and took the chair against the wall so Muir sat opposite him, her back to the road. Pedestrians passed in sparse enough numbers to ensure they were not overheard.

  Sunglasses shielded Victor’s eyes from the glare of a sun unobstructed by clouds. The photosensitive lenses of Muir’s own glasses had darkened automatically to compensate for the brightness.

  A waiter was quick to arrive with menus but Victor motioned for him to keep hold of them.

  ‘Just coffee, please,’ he said. He looked at Muir. ‘Espresso?’

  ‘Sure. Whatever.’

  ‘Two espressos.’

  The waiter nodded and smiled.

  After he was back inside the bistro, Muir placed her phone on the table between them and slid it over to Victor. He didn’t reach for it. He didn’t look at it.

  ‘Procter being out of action changes nothing about the way I conduct business. I’m not assessing a target in person and especially not in a public space. Put your phone away. I’m here only to listen to what you have to say. So say it. The ten minutes begin now.’

  Muir shuffled her chair closer to the table and leaned across. She tapped the phone. ‘Do me a favour and look at it, okay? It’s just a photograph. Just a guy’s face. That’s all. Just take a look.’

  ‘No,’ Victor said. ‘If you don’t want me to stand up and walk away right now, you do things my way. I’m here to listen. That’s all. Ten minutes isn’t a long time. I suggest you use it economically.’

  ‘You don’t have to touch the phone if you don’t want to.’ She manipulated it briefly and the screen lit up in Victor’s peripheral vision. ‘Just look at his face. It’ll make all this a lot simpler. And quicker. Please, it’s someone you know.’

  ‘I’m not sure why I’m failing to make myself understood. I’m not looking at the photograph. I don’t care who it is. I’m not killing him.’

  Muir smiled a little. ‘You can’t kill him. He’s already dead.’

  That got Victor’s attention, but Muir waited a minute until a couple of teenage girls had passed on the pavement. He overheard something about a double date gone spectacularly wrong.

  Muir slid her phone back and slipped it away into a pocket. ‘And the reason why this guy is currently horizontal is because you made it happen.’

  She sat back in her chair and watched him process the information.

  He said, ‘My previous contract.’

  She nodded. ‘Felix Kooi. Dutch national. Citizen of Amsterdam. Professional contract killer. Killed almost a month ago. Stabbed in a back alley in Algiers. A mugging gone wrong, according to the authorities.’

  ‘You told me you didn’t know the details of the work I’ve done for Procter.’

  Muir showed her palms. Her hands were small and glowed white in the sun. ‘I only know because it’s relevant. And it’s all I know. I promise.’

  ‘I’m not sure how much your word counts for at this particular moment.’

  ‘Hey, I don’t lie. All right?’

  ‘I imagine that stance poses significant problems for your chosen profession. Deception is inherent to spying, is it not?’

  ‘I’m not sure if we really have spies any more, at least in the traditional sense.’ She glan
ced around. ‘I’m an intelligence officer for the CIA. I gather information on the bad guys and sometimes I act on it, or on information supplied to me.’

  ‘All without a single untruth.’

  ‘Okay,’ she conceded, exhaling heavily, ‘sometimes I might take a liberal attitude with the truth. But only for the greater good.’

  ‘How commendable of you.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve with this.’

  ‘We’re having a discussion about how much your word is worth. Or not. I’m sure you can appreciate how that is pertinent to this conversation.’

  ‘Listen. I’m playing straight with you. I am. I wouldn’t go through all this to try and BS you.’

  ‘Very wise.’

  Muir glanced at her watch. ‘I’m going to continue, if that’s okay with you?’ She didn’t wait for a response. ‘You were supplied with a significant amount of intel on Kooi, of course, so I won’t waste what little time you’ve granted me regurgitating what you already know. The salient part of his bio is that he was responsible for the assassination of an American diplomat in Yemen two months ago, which is why Procter sent you to deal with him. He—’

  The waiter appeared outside with their coffees. He smiled as he placed them down on the table. The tiny white espresso cups were ringed with lines of red glaze.

  ‘Would it make you more comfortable if I explain how I found you?’ Muir asked once the waiter had left them. She tentatively sipped the steaming espresso. ‘Procter figured you’d want to know.’

  ‘I already know.’

  ‘How?’

  Victor remained silent and drank some coffee. He’d picked up the injury to the top of his left ear in the aftermath of his contract prior to Kooi. Procter, with his considerable power, and insight into events and those responsible for the injury, could have easily found out the specifics. He knew enough about Victor to know he wouldn’t be satisfied with a noticeable scar. Given the uncommon nature of the injury it would have been a relatively simple task for supercomputers and analysts to sift through the patient records of cosmetic surgeons for a man fitting his description.

  Muir said, ‘Procter just told me to say “your ear”. He wouldn’t tell me anything else.’

  Victor nodded.

  ‘You’re our third of four ear guys,’ Muir continued. ‘Today marks my third straight week of tracking down men with cosmetic ear surgery within the past twelve months.’

  ‘Procter’s a good boss.’

  Muir nodded. ‘Of course. He’s the best.’

  ‘Even though I imagine he hasn’t told you he’s doing it, he’s looking after you. There’s a good reason he’s supplied you the absolute minimum of information about me. Do you know why that is?’

  She nodded again. ‘So you wouldn’t consider me a liability.’

  ‘Most people wouldn’t be so careful. They wouldn’t even think about that.’ Victor sipped from his little cup. ‘You should send him a card if you haven’t already.’

  ‘I sent flowers.’

  ‘The last victim of Felix Kooi,’ Victor began after a nod. ‘When you say he was a diplomat in Yemen, what you really mean is he was a CIA non-official cover operative, correct?’

  She hesitated a moment, then said, ‘That’s classified.’

  ‘Of course it is, Miss Muir.’ Victor swallowed the rest of his espresso and placed his cup back on its little saucer. ‘And hence I’m afraid to say that you’ve wasted the past three weeks. Because one thing about me that Procter should have made unequivocally clear is my intolerance for the withholding of relevant information. Perhaps, if you would like to know more about why I am so inflexible on this particular issue, you can ask your boss. He knows.’ Victor stood. ‘Thank you for the coffee. It was delicious.’

  TWELVE

  Andorra la Vella, Andorra

  The man with sandy blond hair watched. He’d been watching all day. He would be watching into the night. He would watch the next day. Maybe even the day after that. Nothing but watching.

  Some people didn’t like to watch. They got bored with the monotony of it. They grew complacent. They became irritated. They missed details. They didn’t do the job they were supposed to. They were lazy.

  Not the man with blond hair. He didn’t get bored. He wouldn’t become irritated. He was never lazy. He maintained focus whatever the hour. However long he’d been watching for. No matter what the circumstances. It was the way it should be, even if it hadn’t always been so. As a young man he had lacked patience. He had hungered for excitement. Such was the folly of youth. Now, he could appreciate the quieter moments of life. He appreciated them because they were so very rare and therefore so very precious. Yes, he liked to watch.

  It was such a simple thing, to watch, but no small skill was required for that simplicity. Anyone with sight could watch. Yet to watch successfully meant to remain unseen in return. The man with sandy blond hair knew himself to be not unmemorable. He had enough height and breadth to make him stand out. His face had sharp features. His eyes imprinted themselves for ever on anyone who looked into their depths. Yet, despite his conspicuous appearance, he shrouded himself in a cloak of the mundane that few could hope to peer behind.

  The scenic locale and the sunshine made watching a more outwardly agreeable experience than perhaps it could have been, but a pleasant temperature and environment were quite unimportant to him. It would have made no difference had he been lying on frozen ground with an inch of snow across his entire body. He took his pleasure in the watching, not in the circumstances of the watch.

  A riotous mob of pigeons flapped and crowded before his feet, eager enough for the bread he threw to them that they passed underneath his legs and between his feet. Across his lap lay a baguette that had been baked that morning and gave off the most wondrous of homely fragrances.

  He was seated on an ornate iron bench set in Parc Central in the heart of the town that served as the capital of Andorra. It was a tiny settlement of less than twenty-five thousand people, and where often he discovered the charm of a town was in direct disproportion to its size, Andorra la Vella broke the rule he had witnessed the world over. He found it a horrid, soulless place, its buildings concrete monstrosities. Even the surrounding mountains failed to make a favourable impression. They were lumps of ugly rock fit only for the most ironic of picturesque postcards. He would not be sad to see his excursion here come to an end.

  The man with blond hair carefully pulled chunks from the baguette’s soft innards. While he rolled them into little balls between finger and thumb he tore off pieces of crust and fed them between his lips.

  The pigeons waited impatiently for the bread, but he only flicked it among them when he was happy the ball was perfectly spherical. Such attention to detail greatly mattered to him.

  When the ball of bread sailed through the air the resulting melee caused him to suppress a smile. Many times he’d watched the stronger pigeons shunt the smaller birds aside as they chased after the bread, else the fastest or most cunning pigeons would get to the food first and flap away before they were relieved of their prize. The weak and the slow were left hungry. It was life’s eternal struggle played out in miniature at his feet. He silently applauded the actors who performed with such passion. So savage and yet so very beautiful. Bravo.

  A middle-aged woman strolled by, draped in finery, dragging along a dog with bulging eyeballs and so small even the pigeons showed no fear of it.

  ‘You shouldn’t feed them,’ the woman called to him. ‘They’re a nuisance. Pure vermin.’

  ‘As are we all, madam,’ the man with blond hair said back. ‘But at least the pigeons have no pretence of grandeur.’

  She frowned and quickened her pace.

  ‘Everyone’s a critic,’ he whispered to his actors.

  He flicked another sphere of bread. It landed near the woman’s feet and the pigeons whooshed in her direction. She yelped and fled, jerking the tiny dog with her. It yapped.

 
This time he didn’t suppress his smile.

  Parc Central was one of the few green areas inside the town, but the surrounding valley was green under the summer sun. The pretty young mother and her son came here so often because it was so close to the boy’s school. The child still enjoyed playing on the swings and roundabout and climbing on the frame. They came most days after school and sometimes at the weekends too. The man with blond hair knew because they never went anywhere without his knowledge – without his presence.

  They lived in an apartment nearby. Although only a small dwelling it was located in one of the town’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. The mother worked part time as a sous chef in a fine restaurant and earned each month less than half the sum of the apartment’s rent. He had eaten at the restaurant and found the food to be quite excellent, if a little heavy on the saturated fats.