The Game (Tom Wood)

FIFTEEN





The waters of the Danube were grey and choppy. Ferries and pleasure cruisers passed in both directions. A seagull floated on the waves. Muir leaned against the low stone wall and watched it. The breeze pulled loose strands of hair from her hair band. Victor saw a kid waving at them from one of the passing boats and returned the gesture.

‘How old are you?’ he asked.

Muir didn’t hesitate because she found the question embarrassing, but she also didn’t answer automatically. She watched the gull take off from the water and flap away. She looked over her shoulder at him, answering his question with one of her own: ‘How is my age relevant to what we’re discussing?’

‘Any question I ask is relevant.’

She considered for a moment. ‘Okay, if you believe it’s important to know my age, I turned thirty last week.’

‘Happy birthday for last week.’

‘Thank you,’ Muir said after another pause, this time to decide on his sincerity. She turned around to face him properly and leaned against the stone fence.

‘Law or history at college?’

‘I majored in law.’

‘Never wanted to be a lawyer?’

‘Sure I did.’

‘So why aren’t you one?’

‘I don’t have the right qualifications on my resume: I have a conscience.’

‘CIA straight out of college?’

‘Yes.’

‘No gap year? No seeing the world?’

She shook her head. ‘On whose dime? I worked three jobs to help pay my tuition.’

‘So you’ve been at the agency for about eight years.’

‘That’s right,’ she said, hesitantly.

‘You’re a little inexperienced to be running this kind of show.’

‘I’m good at my job.’

‘I don’t doubt you are, but that’s not the only reason you’re speaking to me, now is it? And if you’re as good at your job as you say you are then you’ve already worked out that reason for yourself.’

She didn’t want to say it. For a moment it looked as though she would change the subject, but she said, ‘You’re saying Procter chose me to deal with you because he believes you’ll find it harder to say no to a woman.’

‘I’m not the only one who thinks that, am I?’

Muir’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Behind her glasses, he almost didn’t see it. She adjusted them. They didn’t need adjusting. ‘The thought has crossed my mind. It’s the twenty-first century but that doesn’t mean some guys aren’t still cavemen at heart. Procter thought you’re less likely to say no to a woman. He also thinks you’d be less likely to kill one if you reacted badly to being contacted like this.’

‘Why would a man be more deserving of death than a woman in a given scenario?’

‘Chivalry. I don’t know. It’s how we’re wired as a society. Women receive lighter sentences for the same crimes as men. I’m not saying it’s right, it’s just how it is. If it’s not true in this case then why would Procter think it?’

‘Because a good man – or woman – hopes to see the same good in others.’

Muir stared at him, attempting to identify any subtext, but found none.

‘Do you believe I’m more likely to accept this job because you’re a woman?’ Victor asked.

She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’

‘It matters to me.’

Frustration was obvious in her expression. ‘Yes, okay? I believe it does. I think it has to make a difference otherwise Procter wouldn’t have sent me. He hasn’t got a concussion, and like you said yourself, he’s good. He’s smart. He considers everything. If it didn’t matter he wouldn’t have sent me. There are guys who would have been more suitable.’

‘“More suitable”?’

‘Better,’ Muir said. ‘Men who have double my experience.’

‘Most people don’t care how or why they get a break. They just want one.’

‘I didn’t enter the intelligence business so I could be a pair of legs.’

‘You want an op assigned to you based exclusively on your proficiency, not your gender?’

‘Of course. It’s an insult that my gender is even considered relevant, let alone if it actually is relevant. It makes me angry, so what? It pisses me off. Wouldn’t it you in my place?’

‘I don’t get angry,’ Victor said. ‘And please correct me if I’m wrong, but an essential contributing factor to my suitability for this job of yours is the fact that I, like Kooi, am male.’

She stared at him, trying not to show her annoyance. But she couldn’t stop the capillaries widening beneath the skin of her cheeks any more than she could stop her pupils dilating.

‘If you’re trying to jerk my chain then let’s not waste any more of each other’s time, okay?’

‘I’m simply trying to understand you.’

Muir examined his face, trying to determine what he was thinking. She hadn’t yet worked out the futility of such an attempt, but the annoyance became confusion that became hope. ‘Does that mean that you’ll do it?’

After a moment, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘Because I’m a woman?’

‘Do I seem like a knight in shining armour to you?’

‘Then I can only assume you trust me.’

‘I trust that you understand the consequences of showing yourself to be untrustworthy.’

She nodded. ‘I’m here to play fair with you. I don’t know how to do anything else.’

‘Good,’ Victor said, ‘because if I’m played in any way the one thing I won’t do is play fair in return. Procter can tell you about that too.’

‘Understood. You don’t need to be concerned about being compromised. You’ll deal with me and me alone. We’re going to be a two-person show. Procter said that’s the only way you would do it.’

‘He was right. I take it you have all the information on you that I will need.’

She reached into a pocket. ‘Everything I have is right here.’ She withdrew a tiny flash drive. ‘Don’t lose it.’

Muir passed it to him and he pocketed it, thinking briefly about what had happened the last time he’d had a memory stick on his person that contained valuable information. He turned his mind away from the past because he would only survive the future by concentrating on the present.

‘There’s not as much intel as I would like,’ Muir began, ‘but that’s why I need you to fill in the blanks. Once you make contact we have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next. But I think we can assume that after you’ve been picked up at the airport you’ll be taken—’

‘If you’ve supplied me with all the facts you have there is nothing you can speculate on that I won’t consider myself.’

A pause, then, ‘Okay.’

‘If I’m blunt it is because we’re operating on a limited time frame, and, unless you’ve been withholding a significant amount of your personal history, I know more about this business than you do.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, of course. I understand. No offence taken.’

‘Good, then you also need to understand that once I accept a job I’m in charge. I’m not an employee. You supply me with all the intelligence you have and I’ll make the decisions on how to proceed with it. Agreed?’

‘Sounds perfectly fair. What I’m asking you to do is meet the broker and learn as much about him as you can. If that means accepting a job, great, I want to know about that too. I want this broker and the client too. So agree to anything he wants as long as it keeps him talking and gets you hired. Be his perfect assassin. You’ll need to wear a wire so we can record what he has to say and I’ll have some of my guys follow you from the airport.’

‘No.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘No wires. No guys. Whoever this broker is he isn’t stupid. He’s used Kooi before but he’s never met him in person. But he plans to now, because whatever this job is it’s big enough to require a face to face. He’s having someone else pick him up at an airport for a reason. He knows Kooi wouldn’t risk trying to carry a gun on a flight, and collecting him straight from the airport means he wouldn’t be able to get one on the ground. This broker is cautious. He’s careful. There’s a very good chance I’ll be searched or he’ll have electronic countermeasures. So no recording device of any kind. And your guys just aren’t good enough. I’m not having my life balancing on their skills at remaining unseen.’

Muir sighed and looked away. ‘Then it’s a no go. I can’t send you in without backup and if we don’t get anything useable on the broker then there’s no point going through with it.’

‘If I get hired the broker is going to tell me the target and the job specifications. With that you can work back to the client.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Yes, maybe. But that’s the risk you’re going to have to take.’

She stared back out at the river. ‘I don’t exactly have a lot of choice, do I?’

Victor remained silent.

‘Okay,’ she said eventually, ‘we’ll do it your way if that’s what it’s going to take.’ She turned back around. ‘You’re supposed to meet the contact tonight at 20:15, in Budapest. Which means you need to be on the 17:22 flight from Vienna International. We’ve already got you a ticket. We weren’t being presumptuous, just so you know. We didn’t want to risk the flight selling out. It’s business class, by the way, courtesy of the US government.’

‘Scrap it. I require an economy seat.’

‘There’s no need. We’ve already got the ticket. The price isn’t coming off your fee. Consider it a bonus, but it’s practical too. You’ll be more alert on arrival.’

‘Kooi used a charity as a cover for his contracts. A business class ticket costs several times that of an economy. No small charity is going to blow its budget sending employees business class. So neither would Kooi. If you don’t believe me check his flight history.’

Muir sucked in air through her teeth and grimaced. ‘You’re right. Damn. I should have considered that.’

‘Yes, you should. Because maybe this unidentified broker knows as much about Kooi as you do and has the resources to check on these things.’

‘I know, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.’

‘Nothing more needs to be said on the matter. Everyone makes mistakes.’

‘Do you?’

‘You’ll get your answer if I return,’ Victor said. ‘And if I don’t.’