The Darkest Day (7 page)

Victor had crossed fifteen metres of asphalt before he heard Muir’s voice behind him, shouting:

‘
Hey
.’

He stopped, turned. He watched her jog over to him. Graceful, efficient movements. Hurried, but not rushed. She wore a brown leather jacket over her work clothes. He recognised the jacket from the last time he had seen her. It flared at the waist, giving her the illusion of shape. She was narrow in width and depth.

‘You waited longer than I thought you would,’ Victor said.

‘Yeah, well, it’s hard to call after someone when you don’t know their name, right?’

She had the flat accent of a Midwesterner. Maybe she had come from somewhere with a regional accent, but many years in the homogeny of the heartlands had smoothed out any local intonations.

He didn’t answer.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I should be as honest with you as you are with me, but I’m in a difficult position here.’

She edged closer. The last time he had seen her she had been thin and unhealthy. Now, she was still thin, but she looked better. Her skin and hair spoke of plenty of rest and enough of the right kinds of food. The small amount of extra fat in her face smoothed out some of the lines and made her seem younger than she had then. She didn’t wear a lot of make-up, at least during the day, but she knew how to make it work for her. She looked uncomfortable in civilian attire. She would work long hours in a business suit. Time out of it would mean loungewear or pyjamas or workout gear. She wouldn’t own a lot of dresses. He didn’t imagine many heels in her closet.

‘You chased after me just to say that?’

‘No, I’m telling you that although I can’t – won’t – pass on personal information about the client, I will pass on your concerns.’

‘Not good enough,’ Victor said, and began to turn.

She reached out to stop him, but stopped herself an inch before her fingers came in contact with his arm. He looked at the fingers, picturing grabbing the index and forefinger in one hand and the ring finger and little finger in the other hand, and using the strong muscles of his upper back to rip the hand in two pieces, right down to the wrist bone.

‘Sorry,’ she said, snapping the hand away as though she had read his mind.

She was scared of him, he knew. Which was the way it should be. He didn’t seek to frighten, but if he ever met Muir and he saw no fear in her eyes he would know he had walked straight into an ambush.

‘But will you let me speak for a second?’ she said. ‘I’ll pass on your concerns and I’ll have him contact you. Maybe directly you can work this thing out.’

‘No,’ Victor said. ‘I’ll meet him, face to face, in one week’s time. On O’Connell Bridge in Dublin, Saturday, twelve noon.’

She regarded him, close and searching. ‘Why do you want to meet him in person?’

‘Same reason I met you in person.’

The breeze blew her hair across her face. She pushed it back behind her ears. ‘So you could tell if I’m lying?’

‘That and, if you were, so I could kill you.’

She inhaled and swallowed. ‘I can’t allow you to kill the client.’

‘That’s for me to decide.’

‘I’ll have to tell him you said that.’

‘Do so. If he has nothing to hide, there’s nothing for him to be worried about.’

‘Okay,’ Muir said. ‘I understand, but I guarantee he’ll feel the same way. Why Dublin?’

‘I like Guinness.’

She looked at him like she didn’t know if he was joking or not. Which was the point.

Victor said, ‘Please stress to the client the importance of punctuality.’

‘Right. And I suppose I should tell him to come alone?’

‘He can bring as many guys with him as he likes. Tell him it won’t make any difference.’

Victor had never been in Ireland on a cloudless day, but the sky above the city was as blue as he had ever seen it. The temperature was pleasant enough. Sunglasses and T-shirts were plentiful, even if shorts were not. He was on the south bank of the River Liffey, enjoying the sun on his face and the wind in his hair. As capital cities went, Dublin was as clean as any he had visited. On a roof five storeys up, the air smelled as fresh as countryside.

He liked Ireland. He liked that of all the countries of Europe, Ireland was one of the handful he had never worked within as a professional. That made it as safe to operate in now as anywhere could be for him.

Victor had a great view of the O’Connell Bridge and the streets that fed into it. The bridge was greater in width than the river it spanned. It had six lanes for traffic, separated by a central reservation on which stood wooden and metal boxes of flowering plants. Ornate lamp posts were spaced along at regular intervals. Connecting Dublin’s main thoroughfares, the bridge was often busy with traffic, but not today. It had been closed to vehicles.

Thanks to Victor’s view, he could see every one of the team. He counted eleven threats in all. They had spread themselves out – four were positioned on the south side of the river to watch each of the four roads that fed on to the bridge; three were doing the same job on the north side of the river; the other four were spaced out along the bridge itself with two on the west side and two on the east.

The client had yet to arrive.

Either the client had listened to what Muir had to say and deduced that Victor was going to kill him – which was a distinct possibility – or he had decided Victor was the kind of problem he didn’t need in his life. At that moment, it was hard to know which of the two explanations formed the justification for the presence of an eleven-strong team.

They were watchers right now, but he could tell they were more than mere pavement artists. They were all men, which he hadn’t expected. Multi-sex teams made far better shadows. It was easier to hide in plain sight as part of a couple than as an individual.

Over half were not Caucasian and those that were had tans from time spent in sunny climes. These facts led Victor to believe they weren’t locals but ex-US military, which had a disproportionate percentage of minority representation – which suggested that the client was as well. The client knew who he was dealing with. He wouldn’t trust his life to outsiders. Military men tended to put more faith in their own kind than intelligence operatives. Likewise, spies trusted other spies more than they did grunts or jarheads. The watchers were easy to spot because they arrived early to settle into their spots and they didn’t leave them again. They did their best to act inconspicuous, but there were only so many ways one could hang around doing nothing. They would have vehicles nearby, but there were few places to park in the vicinity, and none provided a good view of the bridge. So they had to be on foot, and in the open. They couldn’t hide. It would be a waste of manpower to have still more. If the client had brought an eleven-strong team to protect him, he wouldn’t have left men behind that could be better employed in his defence.

Victor had half-expected to find a watcher on the roof where he now crouched, but the client or whoever was in charge of his security had decided it was better to have the whole protective detail on the ground, where they could be employed in a range of tasks. Positioned on a roof might be useful for seeing Victor coming, but no good for doing anything about it.

Unless he planned to kill the client with a rifle. It was interesting that they hadn’t accounted for that. Or had they?

The lack of watchers on rooftops implied they hadn’t been able to get rifles into Ireland for snipers, which could reveal a lot about the client and his influence or lack thereof, but it was as likely they didn’t want gunplay on the streets of Dublin, whatever Victor’s intentions or their own. If he were to die, they would smuggle him into the back of a moving van and take him somewhere remote and quiet. No need to upset the locals.

Victor’s plan was working so far. It was ten minutes to midday and he had spotted the entire team and assessed their capabilities. They were good. They had positioned themselves well and done as good a job as could be expected at remaining unseen.

Professionals, but not the best.

Which again suggested ex-military. They had spent their lives training for battle, not for urban surveillance. If it came to violence, they would be more dangerous as a result, but it shouldn’t come to that if everything worked out as Victor had planned.

He wore khaki trousers and a denim jacket over a black T-shirt emblazoned with a faded motif of a band he didn’t recognise. A camouflage baseball cap covered his hair. All had been purchased from charity shops and dirtied in puddles. Non-prescription glasses completed the look.

The disguise was basic, and wouldn’t fool anyone who knew his face and was looking out for him, but it would be enough here.

With five minutes to go before midday, the client arrived.

He walked on to the bridge from the south side of the river. Victor didn’t spot him straight away, but he saw the muted reactions from the watchers. They didn’t look at him, but they couldn’t help tense with readiness. Professionals, but not the best.

Upon seeing this, Victor identified the client within a minute. A military man, straight of back and gait, tough and wary. He wore civilian attire: jeans and a black bomber jacket. He was tall and strong, with coal-black skin and a shaved head. He had his back to Victor while he walked along the middle of the bridge, so it was hard to estimate his age until he stopped in the exact centre.

He turned around on the spot three hundred and sixty degrees, examining all the lone men standing nearby or passing. When he realised Victor wasn’t there, he backed up and leaned against the stonework. He touched his chin to his collarbone and said something into a lapel mike. Victor was at the wrong angle to read his lips, but he didn’t need to.

He was younger than Victor had expected: from this range, he looked to be no older than forty. There were no signs of grey in the stubble on his face or head. This was a man who had not absorbed all the excesses of civilian life. If Victor had expected him to have grown soft giving orders from behind a desk, he was wrong.

Two minutes to twelve. Victor didn’t move. He figured the client would wait five minutes, but from the agreed time. He wouldn’t fly across the Atlantic to leave again without giving Victor a chance to show. But he wouldn’t hang around longer. Victor had instructed Muir to inform the client to be punctual. If Victor was late, it would communicate that he wasn’t going to show, and that would smell of a set-up. The longer the client stood exposed on the bridge, the easier a target he made of himself.

So Victor had seven minutes. There was no need to rush. In fact, Victor needed to wait until the last minute.

The client stood with all the patience that could be expected of a man waiting to meet a professional assassin. He was anxious. If he hadn’t been, Victor would have expected a trap. He was prepared for one regardless.

At one minute past twelve he headed for the roof door because it would take him three minutes to get down to the ground floor and on to the street outside. It would take a further minute to reach the client.

When his watch showed the time to be three minutes and forty-nine seconds past midday, Victor was walking through the main entrance and on to the street outside.

He was going to walk straight along the street and on to the bridge where the client waited and the watchers weren’t going to see him.

The client had been standing next to one of the ornate lamp posts, on its north side, making a headshot difficult from where Victor had been waiting. Deliberate positioning, no doubt. The man was also wearing that large bomber jacket. The temperature did not warrant it, so Victor pictured an armoured vest beneath; lots of layers of Kevlar reinforced by ceramic plates to protect the heart and lungs, both at the front and back.

Even with the body armour and the lamp post impeding his line of sight, Victor could still have made a kill shot, had he wanted. The client knew enough about him to know Victor was capable of such a shot.

But he didn’t intend to kill the client, at least not until after he had spoken to him.

Besides, this guy wasn’t the client. But they wanted Victor to think that.

It had almost worked too. Everything about the team and their positions and the ‘client’ had been right, except the black guy in the bomber jacket had made a single mistake. He had ignored the other watchers while he had walked along the bridge, but as he had taken up position next to the lamp post he had glanced at one of them.

It was a reflex action, hard to control. He hadn’t glanced at the others. He had glanced at one in particular because one in particular had significance.

The real client.

He was on the bridge too. He had been one of the first to arrive, which had been a smart deception. He had exposed himself early and by doing so had caused Victor to all but ignore him. Until now.

Outside the building Victor was even harder to see than when he had been crouched, high up on the rooftop – because he stepped into a huge crowd of people.

Right on schedule, a march was heading towards O’Connell Bridge. The crowd of protestors numbered several hundred, which was a good chunk less than estimates on the organisation’s social media page had suggested. It didn’t matter.

He would have been invisible in a crowd half the size.

They were a mix of ages, more women than men, holding home-made placards and printed banners denoting their cause: opposition to austerity measures and cuts to frontline services. They were loud and raucous, but good-spirited, moved by passion and social responsibility, not anger.

Victor slipped amongst them, joining their chants and whistles.

He sidestepped until he was next to an old guy with a beard to his waist. ‘I’ll give you fifty euros if I can carry your placard for five minutes.’

The old guy said, ‘You can carry it for free, lad,’ and passed it to Victor. ‘My arms are killing me.’

As they approached the bridge, he saw the watchers panicking. They hadn’t expected a crowd of protestors. They hadn’t checked for such things. They should have found out why the bridge was closed to vehicles. They should have thought harder why Victor had chosen this location on this day at this time. Professionals, but not the best.

They would waste precious seconds discussing and arguing and going through options. Their attempt at deception would work against them now. By the time they had decided whether to close in on the real client or withdraw with him, it would be too late.

The crowd reached the bridge and Victor spotted the client still present, staring at the crowd. Not searching for Victor, but trying to decide what, if anything, it meant. That he didn’t withdraw was significant. It meant he was determined if nothing else.

The watchers did their best to find Victor in the crowd, now realising that he must be among them, but even having studied and memorised every one of his features, he was as good as impossible to spot in the dense mass of protestors.

Pedestrians and tourists moved out to the bridge walls to avoid the march. The watchers were now scattered and ineffective. They could no longer keep track of each other and their boss, let alone scout for Victor. He handed the placard back to the old guy with the beard.

‘Thank you, sir.’

With dozens of people now on the bridge between the client and Victor, it was impossible to keep the man in sight at all times, but the client was doing the sensible thing and remaining stationary, waiting for the crowd to pass.

As Victor neared the client, he changed his trajectory to walk behind the man with the beard and placard, ensuring the client wouldn’t see Victor’s face as he covered the last few metres.

A moment after the man with the beard and placard passed the client, Victor took the client’s arm and said, ‘Come with me.’

Before the client could react, Victor pushed two knuckles of his free hand against the small of the man’s back. Knuckles were more convincing than using fingertips as a fake gun – bigger, more solid – and the client didn’t resist.

He took off his camouflage baseball cap and placed it on the client’s head, pulling the brim down low to help conceal his face. Victor then ripped away the lapel mike and veered back into the centre of the crowd, taking the client with him.

Victor kept his gaze forward. He wanted to know where the watchers were and what they were doing, but any head movement created the risk of drawing their attention.

They maintained pace with the rest of the protestors until they had left the bridge on the north side. He headed right on to the pavement that flanked the road running alongside the river.

He guided the client across the road and between parked cars and around pedestrians.

‘Where are you taking me?’ the client asked.

‘You’ll know when we get there. Stop talking if you value your spine.’

After a few seconds, an alleyway opened up between the commercial buildings.

‘Turn here,’ Victor said.

The client obeyed.

When they were out of line of sight of the adjoining street, Victor pushed the client against a wall and patted him down, finding a wallet and phone but no gun. The man stood still while Victor checked him and took the phone.

‘There’s no need for any of this,’ the client said. ‘That’s my personal cell.’

Victor didn’t respond. He crushed the phone beneath a heel. ‘This way.’

He led the client along the alleyway for another ten metres, until he came to the faded back door of a commercial property with a ‘
TO
LET
’ sign.

The door was unlocked because Victor had picked it earlier. He opened the door and pushed the client into the room beyond.