The International Assassin A Sexy Times Crime Thriller (26 page)

“What time does your husband usually come home?” I asked.

“About six.”

I checked my watch. It was a little after four-thirty p.m.

“Who are you what do you want?” she asked.

“The people your husband work for are holding someone I love very much hostage. If he does everything I say you won’t be hurt. If he doesn’t I swear to you I will kill you, your children and then him. Are we clear?” I said. She started crying. “I’m sorry. Your husband really should do business with nicer people, then you wouldn’t have to be involved with all this.”

I didn’t like having to involve the children, while I may have taken certain latitudes with morally acceptable behaviour during my career as an assassin I wasn’t a psychopath. At that point I would probably have done anything to get Nick back and I knew that I couldn’t afford to be sentimental or give any quarter to my opponents, as Russians they would give me none in return and since her husband was unlikely to want to co-operate for fear of the retribution his clients would pay on him I had to ensure he felt the Russians were the lesser of two evils. This was an astonishingly difficult task given how little mercy Russians generally showed to men, women, children or animals if it didn’t suit them. 

I tied the banker’s family up and gagged them before setting to work rigging the C4 and remote detonator. 

At exactly quarter to six I watched from the front window as his BMW X5 pulled into the large drive. I moved and waited behind the door to the living room entrance. The door opened and he came in. He stopped in shock as he saw his family tied to a chair rigged with C4 packs. 

Before he had a chance to react I pointed the pistol at his head and primed the trigger.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” I told him coldly.

Chapter 21

THE BANKER
stared horrified at his family tied up as he saw the blocks of C4 wired up around them.

“Sit Down!” I barked at Erik Sorensson, a weasel looking man in his mid-forties. Judging by his trashy blonde wife she had clearly married him for his money since he was far from attractive.

“Where?” he asked nervously.

“On the couch. Keep your hands where I can see them and don’t try anything or I will kill you.”

I kept the gun trained on Sorensson as he slowly walked across and sat down on the sofa. I pulled up a chair turned it around and sat on it pointing the gun at him.

“What’s this all about?” he asked. “I don’t keep any money in the house.”

“I’m not after your money. It’s my money I’m interested in.”

“Are you a client?”

“In a manner of speaking. Johnny Van Sant. AKA Roy Jones.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Yes you do. And if you lie again I’m going to blow one of your kneecaps off.”

“Okay! Okay…I have a client. Mister Van Sant. What about him?”

“You carried out a large transaction on a number of properties, an apartment in Chelsea, villa in St Lucia and a house in Geneva. You transferred them into an offshore company in the Cayman islands on Mister Van Sants behalf.”

“Yes. It was a secured loan transaction.  We have placed the portfolio with an international property investor on a sale and leaseback deal for a secured loan of twenty million Euros.”

“Well those properties belonged to me. Johnny AKA Roy who is actually an electrician from Luton by the way, you really should do better due diligence on your clients…Roy stole the property from me and I want it back.”

“That’s going to be difficult. The transaction has already gone through. The funds are being transferred tomorrow.”

“I’m going to make it very easy for you. Property isn’t what it used to be so I will settle for the cash.”

“I can’t!” Erik exclaimed horrified. “Have you any idea the sort of people I deal with?”

“Yes. I’ve met them. They are charming aren’t they? But your questionable client roster is not my problem.”

“They’ll kill me. I can’t…I simply can’t!”

“That’s your problem. If you don’t do as I say I’m going to kill you and your entire family. I suggest you focus on the immediacy of your situation. Give me what I want and I will let you and your family go unharmed. You can take whatever bonus and embezzled funds you have acquired and disappear. At least you’ll have a head start on them. But if you don’t then you are going to die right here and right now.”

I pointed the gun at his head to make the point.

“Erik! Do what she says. Don’t be stupid!” his wife protested.

“Shut up! This is all your fault!” he scowled at her.

“How is this my fault?” she replied with indignation.

“If it wasn’t for your non-stop materialistic demands I would still be working for a decent bank instead of being involved in all this!”

“Oh is that how you feel? Well I’m sorry you aren’t man enough to provide for your family without resorting to crime!”

“You’re a gold-digging bitch! I should have listened to mother!”

“You always bring her into this! She’s poisoned you against me!”

I cleared my throat to interrupt.

“As much as I would love to sit here all night and debate the mercurial nature of your wife’s avaricious approach to life I do have a schedule to keep to.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“I’m sorry to here that. Perhaps you need to focus more on the problem.”

I lowered the gun and fired the pistol into Sorensson’s knee. He screamed in pain as his kneecap exploded in mess of blood and cartilage. 

“Do I have your attention now?”

“You goddamned bitch!” he yelled crying with pain and grasping his knee.

“I promise you it only gets more painful from here in.”

“Go to hell!”

I aimed the pistol at his other knee.

“Are you sure? Spending the rest of your life limping on one leg is better than being in a wheelchair. I’m moving onto your balls next.”

“
Alright
! Alright. I will do what you say.
Jesus Christ
. What the fuck have you
done
!” he cried clutching his bleeding knee.

“Good boy Erik.”

“They’ll kill you! The Russians!”

“They’ve tried that already. More than once. I’m still here.”

“You don’t understand! The whole thing is a setup. It’s Van Sant they want! There are no guns!”

“I don’t care if there are guns or not. I just want the money.”

“You won’t live long enough to spend it.”

“You let me worry about that. Get to work Erik.”

“We have to go to my office. I need to use a secure terminal there. I can’t log on remotely.”

“Right. Well here’s how it’s going to work. You see that large block of C4 over there? There’s enough to blow up the entire blissful little domestic situation you have here into the next street. It’s on a remote timed detonator. You do exactly as I say and I will disarm it once we’ve left. You try anything stupid and the timer will blow your gold-digging wife and two-point-two perfect brat children into the next life. There will be nothing left. The scenes of crime people will walk in and think you are a collector of modern art. Blood, brains and gold-digging wife plastered all over what’s left of your walls like a Jackson Pollock.”

“Alright! Alright!” Erik protested crying with pain.

“We’ll take my car,” I said as I threw a towel at Erik. “Bandage that up. I don’t want you bleeding all over my nappa leather. It’s new.”

Erik did his best to bandage his bleeding knee sweating profusely.

“How far is your office?” I asked him.

“Maybe fifteen minutes drive.”

“How long will the transfer take?”

“I’ll have to log on so maybe ten minutes.”

“I’m setting the timer for thirty minutes. If I don’t have my money in thirty minutes your wife has run up her last credit card bill.”

I dragged Erik to the car and slung him in the back then drove down to the business district and the large prestigious modern office complex that housed all manner of shady banks and enterprises.

On arrival I headed into the basement garage and backed into the space to enable a quick getaway. I got out and opened the back door checking my watch.

“You’ve got seventeen minutes Erik. I appreciate you are in a lot of pain but try and stay focused.”

Erik lurched out of the car. I grabbed a large bag with an M4 in it and some explosives just in case some have-a-go security guard decided to make a name for himself then put a pistol in Erik’s back and jostled him over to the lift. He swiped his access card. Moments later the lift arrived and we headed up to the fifth floor.

The office was now deserted. Erik led me over to a corner office by the window and sat down at his computer.

“I need the bank details where you want the money transferred,” he said.

I grabbed a piece of paper from the desk and wrote down my Coutts account number and passed it to him. His face started to turn white. Spotting a bottle of Absolut Vodka on the side I grabbed it and poured a large glass and handed it to him.

“This will help with the pain,” I told him.

Erik grabbed the glass from me and downed it hand shaking as he typed feverishly into the terminal. I walked over to the window and checked the car park below for signs of police or Russians.

“The transfer is instant but it takes a few minutes for it to go through the system,” he told me. 

I checked my watch.

“You have seven minutes.”

“I’ve done everything you asked. Just let my family go!”

“From the sounds of things Erik it sounds like I would be doing you a favour blowing her up.”

“My children!”

“They’re probably not yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“She looks that sort. She doesn’t love you. I can tell.”

“It’s my own fault.”

“Yes Erik, it probably is.”

“She was a prostitute,” said Erik embarrassed.

“Excuse me?” I said raising my eyebrows in surprise.

“I went to a brothel with colleagues. She was working there.”

“And you
married
her? Good God Erik, I knew bankers were morally bankrupt but you really have set a new low.”

“I loved her.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“What?”

“How much cock she’s sucked for money?”

“I didn’t really think about it until you mentioned it,” he said looking quite repulsed.

“Sorry,” I said shrugging my shoulders for highlighting what his whore wife had done as part of her job description.

“The transfer’s complete.”

“Good boy Erik. You see, that wasn’t so difficult was it? If you hadn’t been so awkward you would still have both your kneecaps.” I walked over to the terminal and checked the transfer had completed. I looked at my watch. “Three minutes to spare,” I said as I dialled the cellphone number to deactivate the bomb but it wouldn’t connect. “You wouldn’t believe it. There’s no signal,” I said shaking my head.

“Please, you have to stop it!” Erik said in panic.

“Calm down Erik. You need to keep your blood pressure down or you’ll bleed to death.” I walked across to the window until three bars lit up on the phone to indicate reception. “There we go. Lucky you are not in a complete blackspot or your hooker wife would be getting pimped by Satan in four minutes.”

I dialled the number and disarmed the C4.

“Is it stopped?” he asked.

“It’s done,” I said as I looked up and noticed a line of very familiar Mercedes GL’s arriving into the front office car park. The Russians were here. 

“Did you have an appointment with the Russians this Evening Erik?” I asked.

“What? No. Tomorrow. In the morning.”

“They are early.”

“That’s not possible, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“I saw your car outside. I thought you were here to kill me. I called them before I came into the house. They must have found my wife and followed us here.”

“Well that was very stupid of you Erik now wasn’t it?”

“I thought you were going to kill me!”

“I wasn’t but you called the Russians so change of plan.”

I grabbed the phone line cable and using it as an impromptu rope wrapped it around Erik binding him to the chair.

“What are you doing?” he protested.

“Causing a distraction so I can get out of here.”

“How?”

“With you.”

I opened the bag and took out the C4 block.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me!”

“You shouldn’t have called them. You only have yourself to blame.”

“You can’t! Just go out the back way! I will tell them I made a mistake!”

“No can do Erik. You are the only person who knows where that money went. Given the state of your leg it won’t take them long to figure this all out and make you talk.”

“Please! I will lie! I won’t say anything!”

“Erik, there is really no need to feel sad about this. We’ve established you married a whore whose only interest in you is financial. You are working for a bank that is very questionable and probably doesn’t offer you a good long-term career plan and as soon as they have what they want the Russians are going to kill you. This way you get to do some good with your life.”

“Which is?”

“Saving mine. Which is much more worthwhile.”

“I disagree!”

“It’s just as well this isn’t a democratic situation then. Your vote doesn’t count.”

I set the charge, picked up my M4 and smashed the computer terminal to pieces rendering it useless. I wheeled Erik on his chair over to the window and checked where the Russians were. They were parked right below Erik’s office in a line in the disabled bays.

“Tsk tsk. Some people are so inconsiderate. I bet they don’t even have disabled badges. Never mind, we can soon change that for them.”

I opened fire on the plate glass window with my M4 shattering the glass. 

“Please I’m begging you!”

“Don’t worry Erik, you won’t feel a thing.”

I pushed the chair as fast as I could across the room sending it on a trajectory out the window. Erik screamed as he fell to the ground smashing into the roof of the GL parked in the middle.

“
Bugger
. I might have got the timer wrong. Sorry about that Erik. That probably did hurt quite a bit.”