The Game (Tom Wood)

FOUR





Somewhere over the Atlantic, three weeks later

The Lear jet cruised at an altitude of thirty-one thousand feet. In the cockpit a pilot and co-pilot monitored the instruments and joked amongst themselves. There was no other crew. On the far side of the cockpit door, a woman and a man sat in the passenger cabin. The woman’s name was Janice Muir. The man was Francis Beatty. They sat on opposite tan leather seats, facing each other across a small table. The sky outside the small round window was black and absent of stars.

A tablet computer lay between them. A photograph was displayed on its screen. The photograph was pixellated and slightly blurry, having been shot at distance and then enlarged as far as its resolution could handle. The tablet was rotated to suit Muir’s perspective. Beatty used a finger to wipe the screen and bring up other photographs. They showed a man in a suit walking along the street of a European city, then ascending some steps to enter through the black door of a whitewashed townhouse.

Muir said, ‘Are we sure he’s the target?’

‘Possibly,’ Beatty answered. ‘Right height. Right build. Right sort of age. The hair is different, though.’

‘A wig?’

‘I’m guessing he’s just changed his style.’

The woman thumbed the tablet’s screen to cycle back and forth through the photographs. ‘I’d like a little bit more than a guess.’

Beatty frowned. ‘We’re working with intel that is out of date. People grow and cut their hair all the time. I don’t think it makes a difference.’

‘We’ve had two false positives so far. I’d prefer to avoid another.’

‘Perhaps it will be third time lucky.’

This time Muir frowned. ‘I prefer to deal with facts, not luck.’

‘Just a turn of phrase.’

‘Probability?’

He shrugged and rocked his head from side to side. ‘Hard to say.’

‘You’re being paid to say.’

‘Then I’d say sixty-five per cent, give or take.’

‘That doesn’t fill me with confidence.’

‘I was trying to be accurate, not reassuring. From what little we can see of his face in these photographs he seems a good fit. For what it’s worth, he matches the description as closely as we could hope for.’

‘As do a lot of men.’

‘I said for what it’s worth. What do you want to do?’

‘We have just one more potential after him, correct?’

Beatty nodded. ‘But he matches the least criteria. This guy here’ – he tapped the screen – ‘ticks more boxes.’

‘But not as many as the two that came before him.’

‘Maybe that just means he’s good at staying hidden. As expected.’

She sighed and rubbed her eyes. ‘Tell me what your gut says.’

‘That the target has to be one of the four possibles and he wasn’t the previous two and he’s unlikely to be the fourth. Therefore, on the numbers, this guy has to be the one.’

‘I’m coming to the same conclusion.’

‘Shall I deploy a team?’

‘Unless you want to take him on with just the two of us.’

A smirk. ‘I don’t think that would be a particularly sane move given the target’s skill set.’

‘Scared?’ Muir asked.

‘I didn’t get this old by being brave.’

‘You’re not old, Francis.’

‘Saying that just means you’re getting old too. How do you want to do it?’

‘We’re running out of time so I want as many boots on the ground as we can get. But I don’t want any deadweight. They all have to be good. And each and every one needs to know exactly the kind of target they’re dealing with.’

‘Then you need to be prepared to bump up the fee.’

She shrugged. ‘Better than the alternative. I don’t want any amateurs with a guy this dangerous. We can expect he’s armed. Who knows what he’s capable of?’

He matched her shrug. ‘Put half a dozen guys on him and it doesn’t matter what he can do. It doesn’t matter if he has a gun. We’ll have more. Numbers always win in the end. What about at his hotel? He may have an idea who is staying there but we can trap him in the building. It’s public. We can—’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Not his hotel. Trust me when I say that would be an extremely bad idea.’

‘Okay. You know more about him than I do. So where?’

She tapped the screen. ‘We know where he’s going to be so let’s wait for him to leave. We’ll stay close – but not too close – behind and in front. When the opportunity presents itself – and it will – we move in and surround him. He can’t watch every direction at the same time. Speed and surprise before he can process what’s happening.’

‘You make it sound so simple.’

‘It will be,’ Muir said confidently. ‘He won’t know what hit him.’