The Game (Tom Wood)

FORTY-TWO





He didn’t sleep. He sat on the end of the bed designated to him the previous morning. The mattress was soft and lumpy. The springs had taken a beating over the years. They squeaked and rattled in the centre of the mattress. They were quiet at the end Victor sat, where they had only had to support the feet of its former owners.

Victor’s watch had been dropped inside the canvas bag along with his other possessions and the room contained no clock, but the minutes ticked inside Victor’s head. Leeson and Francesca had left four and a half hours ago. Dietrich and Coughlin had retired to their rooms shortly afterwards and Jaeger a little after that. Victor had laid on the floor, in the centre of his room, in order to peer through the gap beneath the door at the strip of light under Dietrich’s door opposite. He’d remained on the floor until that light had gone out. Then he listened for the creaks and groans of centuries-old floorboards to stop, and waited until his internal clock reached 4 a.m.

He sat facing the bedroom door, at an angle where he saw the room’s small window in his peripheral vision. Those were the only ways in and out. Both door and window were closed. The door had a lock but Victor had no key. Not that the lock would hold up to a solid kick from Coughlin, a half-decent one from Dietrich or a gentle shove from Jaeger. The door had been made and installed with a mind to privacy, not security. The window was a little better. It had a latch – which would stop none of the farmhouse’s occupants – but its height from the ground offered significant protection, further enhanced by the rendered exterior walls only scalable by the most dextrous of climbers.

If an assailant came through either the door or the window it would be because Leeson had discovered Victor was not Kooi. Then it would be three against one, or four if Leeson was present for the assault. Victor had seen no guns apart from Leeson’s SIG, but he knew there would be others, kept wherever Leeson and Francesca were staying because he didn’t trust his hired killers to have sidearms that could be turned on each other or himself. But those sidearms would be distributed if he knew he had an imposter in his team.

But that wasn’t going to happen. At least not yet. Because Victor was awake in a quiet farmhouse and Leeson couldn’t arrive with guns for the others without Victor’s knowledge. If Leeson merely contacted Jaeger, Coughlin and Dietrich with the order to go after Victor the three would do so without firearms. Three against one: they might not see that as a problem, especially with Jaeger’s size and Dietrich’s cocktail of arrogance, psychosis and aversion. Leeson’s tale of what happened to the Georgians would give a man as considered as Coughlin pause for thought, but Victor had used a gun then. They might not see him as a threat without one because they had no idea what he was actually capable of.

They would simply open the door and attack, but they couldn’t do so without forewarning Victor. The farmhouse was too old and creaky to allow for the level of stealth necessary to take a man like him by surprise. And if he felt they would attack, he would pull the bed in front of the door to slow them down and go out the window. Hearing breaking glass, Dietrich, hot headed and eager for blood, would rush downstairs in pursuit, followed by one of the others – he wasn’t sure if that would be Jaeger or Coughlin – leaving the last man to check the room, maybe even try and spot Victor fleeing by looking out the window. Which would result in a ten-foot drop because Victor would not be on the ground and running, but on the roof above. And if the last man didn’t orchestrate his own death or incapacitation by his proximity to the window, Victor would swoop back into the room. Coughlin wouldn’t be a problem to deal with, but if that last man was Jaeger the broken shards of glass from the window would come in useful.

Leaving two against one on Victor’s terms. A formality.

But wishful thinking if they did see him as any kind of threat. Then they wouldn’t attack him in his room when he could hear them coming. They would wait until morning, pretending nothing had changed. There was already enough tension in the air that Victor might fail to decipher that another layer had been added to it. Then they could corner him in the kitchen or a corridor where there was nowhere to run or pick his battlefield.

He would fight, because while he drew breath he still had a chance. But Dietrich would have a knife and he wouldn’t easily be disarmed of it, which would give Jaeger more than enough time to grab Victor from behind. Then it was over.

He knew he could have smuggled up a cup of olive oil from the kitchen to grease the old hinges of his bedroom door, but the muted squeal they made was the only true defence the door offered. Dietrich and Coughlin hadn’t made a noise for four hours. Jaeger’s snores were loud and regular.

Victor opened the door. He did so quickly, so the squeal was louder than it might have been had he done so slowly, but it was over within a second instead of lasting several. Jaeger’s snores didn’t change. Maybe Dietrich or Coughlin might have stirred at the sudden sound, might even have awoken, but with silence restored when their eyelids opened and no further sound following, they would fall asleep once more and not even remember the incident come morning. The door stood open for five minutes before Victor stepped through it.

He had the limousine’s valet key in his pocket. He wasn’t planning on using it – yet – but he wanted to keep it on his person at all times. He walked with his boots hanging from a fist by their laces, keeping as close to the short corridor’s wall as possible, so the most worn floorboards in the centre did not suffer his weight. He did the same on the stairs. They creaked and groaned with every step. He waited at the bottom for another five minutes to see if the noise drew a response from any of the three killers upstairs. It didn’t.

The kitchen’s stone flooring was cool through Victor’s socks. He left via the kitchen door and circled around the building so he was beneath his window with fields of olive trees before him. He laced up his boots and made his way slowly down the steep slope and into the field. He ran.

The village wasn’t far and the stars were bright enough that the journey was easy to navigate. He exited the field and found a gap in the hedge at the far end. He crossed the narrow road into another field, running alongside its boundary hedge to avoid leaving his footprints because the earth felt softer underneath his boots. He jumped a stream and slowed to a stop at the edge of a copse of trees. A two-lane road lay before him. On the other side stood the first building of the village.

It was a tiny habitation of maybe two dozen buildings as old as or older than the farmhouse. Victor made his way to the centre of the village, following the road that snaked between the buildings. He speculated that in a village this far from modernisation there would be a public telephone, probably near the centre; if not, he would break into a non-residential building to use their phone. But he found a phone box outside what appeared to be the only commercial establishment in the village: a post office.

He dialled the operator and requested a reverse-charge call to the number Muir had given him. Since it was an overseas call the operator was hesitant, but did as he asked.

After a moment, he heard Muir’s voice say, ‘Janice Muir speaking.’

The operator asked her if she would accept the call. Muir didn’t understand Italian.

‘It’s me,’ Victor interrupted, ‘tell the operator si, accetto.’

Muir did so and the operator left them to the call. She said, ‘Don’t go anywhere. I’ll buzz you back. I’m driving.’

Victor set the receiver down on the hanger and snapped it back up midway through the first ring eighty-two seconds later.

She said, ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘I’m currently in a phone booth in a village about fifty kilometres south-east of Rome.’

‘What the hell is going on?’

‘Stop saying hell and I’ll tell you.’

‘Sorry.’

He summarised meeting Francesca in Gibraltar, travelling by boat to Italy, meeting Dietrich, Jaeger and Coughlin, and the shootout with the Georgians. Muir listened without responding until Victor had finished. ‘This is more dangerous than I anticipated. Far more. I promise you I did not expect any of this. The plan was for you to get hired, not to be a prisoner in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, part of a team of mercenaries waiting around for a job to begin at what could be any time, with any target. There are so many unknown variables here that we can’t even begin to get a handle on them.’

‘Every time I accept a contract I also accept it could very well be my last, but so far this is no more or less dangerous than I expected. Even the simplest job in theory can end up being a fight for survival in practice, and the most complex and difficult assignment is sometimes the safest.’

‘We don’t even know what the job actually is yet. If you want out, I understand. In fact it’s better for you to walk away now while you still can, before this gets any more dangerous. You didn’t sign up for this level of risk and I wouldn’t have exposed you to it had I known about it in advance.’

‘I know a little more about the risks than you do. At least this time the weather is warm and the scenery is nice to look at.’

‘I’d feel a lot better if you could take this more seriously.’

There was a short pause before he asked, ‘Do you think I’d still be alive if there was any aspect of my chosen profession that I did not take seriously?’

Muir was quiet for a moment.

‘’Why did you let Leeson know you knew there was a team?’

‘Because I wanted to see how close Leeson and Francesca are. The moment I asked about the team she looked at Leeson. Not in fear. She wasn’t scared that she had said anything to tip me off. But she was surprised I knew. A typical reaction would have been to stare at me. Searching for answers. An explanation. She didn’t do that. She didn’t care how I knew there was a team. She cared what Leeson thought about it. Because I wasn’t supposed to know. Because she knows why there is a team. Because she knew even before there was a team.’

‘That’s a lot to guess from a single look.’

‘It’s not guess. It’s fact. She told me, just without speaking. People say more without words than with.’

Muir exhaled.

‘Exactly,’ Victor said.

‘What are they like, Coughlin, Dietrich and Jaeger?’

‘Operationally, I don’t know yet. But I can’t see Leeson hiring them unless they were good. Dietrich is wound up pretty tight and doesn’t like me.’

‘With your charming personality?’

He didn’t comment. ‘Coughlin is more relaxed, but he doesn’t trust I can do whatever I’m here for.’

‘What about Jaeger?’

‘I haven’t formed an opinion yet because I’ve had less contact with him. When I do I’ll know more about why the other two don’t trust me. Or at least Kooi.’

‘That’s expected though, isn’t it? You’re the new guy, fresh off the bus. Stands to reason they would take a while to trust you. Especially when they’ve both known each other for a little longer. You’re the outsider. The new kid at school.’

‘It’s more than just being the newest member.’

‘Bottom of the pack then.’

‘Again no. There’s a hierarchy, of course. Leeson is at the top, naturally. Francesca is next one down, but also a separate entity. She doesn’t give orders, but she is closer to Leeson than the others.’

‘That close?’

‘I don’t know,’ Victor said. ‘Sometimes it seems that way, then not at others. I’m at the bottom of the pile, but the rest of the team are on the same level. They don’t seem to know any more about the job than I do.’

‘Could be they’re just keeping what they know to themselves.’

‘They are. They haven’t got tans just sitting around waiting for me to join them. Jaeger’s in the barn, and while I was with Leeson in Rome, Dietrich and Coughlin were in the city too. I don’t know why, but it was something to do with the job.’

‘See if you can get one of them to open up, but don’t push it more than you have to.’ Muir said, then paused a moment. ‘I’ve got an idea. Taking Jaeger out of the equation for a second, we know the rest of your team aren’t accepting you as an equal. Even though you’ve proved yourself by saving Leeson’s butt. You okay with the word butt?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Maybe it’s as simple as male pride, testosterone, any of that nonsense. They don’t like you because you intimidate them; because they’re threatened by you. But I know you’ll have gone out of your way to be the opposite. And, as you’ve just explained, none of you know what you’re doing there. You all share that lack of knowledge. Despite all that they don’t trust you.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘I think you’re wrong. I don’t think it’s a matter of trust, otherwise you would have felt that from Jaeger, regardless of how much contact you’d had with him.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘They don’t accept you yet. Because they’re reserving judgement.’

He was quiet for a moment while he considered that. ‘If they’re reserving judgement, then what are they waiting for?’

‘Won’t be until you’ve proved yourself because you did that a few hours ago in Rome. Can’t be until you’ve successfully completed some aspect of the job because they don’t know anything about it. So it must be until you’ve been approved.’

‘I think you might be right, but I already have Leeson’s approval, twice: first by putting me into the team and then by saving his life.’

‘And Francesca doesn’t give out orders. So it’s got to be someone else then, surely.’

‘There’s another person involved in this I haven’t met yet, but everyone else has.’

‘Then they must value this other man or woman’s opinion over Leeson’s.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it has to be Leeson’s client,’ Muir said, excitement making her speak fast. ‘Has to be. I never thought he’d show his face so this is too good to be true. If they’ve all met him, you will too. When we have him in the same place as Leeson and the others we can take them all down in one go. We won’t need any physical evidence. They’ll be falling over each other to cut a deal against the rest because they’ll be terrified someone else will first. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times.’

‘It’s not the client,’ Victor said. ‘It makes zero sense for a client to have a broker like Leeson running the show if he’s going to be personally involved. The broker is the first and most important layer of protection the client has. He wouldn’t scrap that. Besides, these guys wouldn’t care about the opinion of the man who signs their cheques. This other person is another member of the team.’

‘Who do they respect more than Leeson?’

‘Soldiers respect the men who fight alongside them more than they do the ones who send them into battle. That’s a given. But this is more basic than a matter of respect. It’s more primal.’

‘Then what is it? Why do they care what this other guy thinks?’

‘Because they’re afraid of him.’