Quite a few of the other people in there were on their own, some reading books or newspapers, keeping their own company, others like him, clearly waiting for somebody, glancing toward the lobby now and then. They looked like an even split, locals and tourists, a mix of ages.
And as he sat there a couple of the other people were joined by those they’d waited for, one middle-aged woman greeting another, a young guy kissing his girlfriend, joking about the designer shopping bags she’d brought in. The two women talked urgently once they were together. The girl showed her boyfriend the things she’d bought, opening the bags but not removing the garments.
JJ took it all in but kept looking out to the lobby, patiently waiting, and then he saw who he’d been waiting for, saw him come out of the elevator and through the lobby, heading out into the street, the bodyguard they didn’t want killed. He waited till the guy had left and then finished his tea and walked out to the elevator.
Alone, he pressed for eleven and twelve and watched his progress as the numbers lit one by one. When it got to eleven he stepped out, pressing the Open Door button as he left, giving himself an extra twenty seconds to get up the two flights of stairs, heavily carpeted, easy to climb quietly. It was a simple maneuver but effective all the same.
He waited near the top, listening to the elevator’s clunking movement inside the wall, and then it stopped and there was a pause and the door opened, and within that second of confusing emptiness he leaned around the corner and took out the guy who was sitting there. He was built like a bull, the useless bulk of a show bodyguard, but he still made no noise as he fell forward and hit the thick pile of the carpet, blood gathering quickly and stickily into the fibers.
JJ strolled into the corridor then like a regular guest, inadvertently catching the other bodyguard listening at Korchilov’s door. He pulled away quickly and aimed an unfriendly stare at JJ, keeping eye contact in an attempt to brazen out his own embarrassment. It was a mistake, something the guy realized too late, going for his gun only as JJ fired his first shot. It knocked him backward, his body glancing off the wall, his footing lost as his mind struggled to catch up with what had happened.
Moving quickly, JJ finished him off as he opened the door and walked in to see what the guy had been listening to. Korchilov and a girl were on the bed facing him, the girl on all fours, Korchilov pumping her energetically from behind, both of them moaning, the bed rocking.
JJ didn’t even give him a chance to break his rhythm, putting a bullet straight into his forehead. Blood spurted out over the girl’s back before Korchilov fell backward and lay crumpled against the headboard, a look of amazement on his face, like he was too young, too alive and powerful for this to happen to him.
The girl looked like a child, confused, unsure why Korchilov had suddenly withdrawn. JJ glanced over at the coffee table, enough pills and powder on it to have had a full-scale party, and when he looked at the girl he could see she was tripping on cocktails. She clambered off the bed and stared at Korchilov for a second, then at JJ, puzzled but too dulled to work it out. She looked pretty, vulnerable, the kind of girl who’d been unlucky enough to be born with good looks and nothing else.
She stared at him like someone in a hall of mirrors, trying to make sense of what she could see, her pupils dilated. And then she seemed to focus on him, battling through the haze, her mouth moving like she was trying to say something. He shot her in the chest, the impact throwing her backward like a cast-aside toy, and shot her again in the head as soon as she’d hit the floor.
He left straight away then, walking along the corridor, getting the elevator back to the ground floor. He walked through the lobby, no one paying any attention to him, a businessman buttoning up against the cold. He walked out of the hotel, out into the busy city, the gray-skied morning, the upper reaches of some buildings half lost in the mist.
Early the next morning the mist was still there, obscuring the roof of the city, but it was a different kind of mist, snow flurries falling from it like ticker tape, dying dirtily on the street under tires and feet. After an hour on the train though, it was real snow, too much to be trodden away, swaddling bands on the world, enveloping everything.
The mood on the train was excitable, sociable, JJ letting himself get drawn into conversation now and then with other passengers. There were a lot of people heading up for the skiing, the weather keenly discussed, the condition of the snow they were passing through, how it was looking for the days ahead.