The Game (Tom Wood)

FORTY-FOUR





Victor woke at 6 a.m. An hour’s sleep was not enough to recharge him after the escapades of the previous day, but he wanted to be up before his three teammates. Specifically, he didn’t want to be asleep while they were awake. He remained in his room until he heard Dietrich’s door open opposite, and then the heavy footfalls of Jaeger a while later. Victor waited another ten minutes and then headed downstairs.

It was cool in the kitchen. Light streamed in through the window above the sink. He filled a cast iron kettle with water and placed it on the stove. In a cupboard, he found a cafetiere and a hand grinder and downstairs in the single-room cellar he located a one-kilogram sack of roasted coffee beans, of which he took a handful. They smelt fantastic.

The cellar was at least ten degrees lower in temperature than the kitchen and made a reasonable cool room. He dropped the beans into a pocket of his trousers, slipped a packet of butter into the other, tucked a loaf of bread under his left arm and in his left hand picked up a tray of large brown hen’s eggs.

Coughlin was sat at the table when Victor re-entered the kitchen. He had left the cellar door open, but still hadn’t heard the Brit. Coughlin was not as physically dangerous as Dietrich or Jaeger, and though young he was measured and reputedly good with a rifle and quiet. Victor made a mental note to kill him at close range, when the time came.

‘Making coffee?’

Victor nodded. ‘How do you take it?’

‘As nature intended. Looks like you’re going to make breakfast too.’

There was a hint of hopefulness in his voice. Victor nodded again.

‘Scrambled egg on toast then, mate,’ Coughlin said, then added: ‘Cheers.’

Victor ground the coffee beans. He stood to the left of the sink so he could see Coughlin’s reflection in the window while he had his back to him. Coughlin picked at his nails and tossed the fragments to the floor. He didn’t look up at Victor once.

While he waited for the kettle to boil he cracked eggs into a glass bowl and whisked them with butter and a little water because there had been no milk in the basement, before adding black pepper and salt. He cooked the mixture in a copper skillet while he sliced bread and toasted it.

The kettle took a long time to boil because Victor had filled it with twice as much water as he needed. It started hissing as he placed the scrambled eggs on toast on the table before Coughlin, who wasted no time hacking off a chunk.

‘It’s good,’ he said, chewing.

Victor prepared the coffee and left it to brew for five minutes while he made some breakfast for himself. He poured them both a cup and sat down perpendicular to Coughlin, at one end of the table, his back to the stove and facing the door that led outside.

‘Ah, that’s the shit,’ Coughlin said after his first slurp. ‘Much better than that horrible sludge Dietrich makes.’

‘Where is he?’ Victor asked.

‘Probably running.’

‘Jaeger?’

Coughlin shrugged and shook his head. ‘He’s always in the barn.’

‘What’s he doing in there?’

‘How would I know?’ He gulped down some more coffee. ‘You should ask Dietrich to make you a cup just so you can see how bad it is.’ He smirked. ‘Idiot could get a glass of water wrong.’

Victor turned up the corners of his mouth in response. ‘I take it he’s better at his job than he is in the kitchen.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Top-up?’ Victor said, gesturing to the cafetiere.

Coughlin shovelled the last of the breakfast into his mouth and nodded. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’ve been here for a while, right?’

Coughlin nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘What have you been doing?’

He looked at Victor. ‘We’re not supposed to discuss the job.’

‘We’re just talking here. I don’t know anything about what we’re doing here.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘So what harm is there in telling me how you’ve been spending your time?’

Coughlin shrugged. He slurped some coffee. ‘Me and Dietrich stole an ambulance.’

‘What for?’

Coughlin shrugged again. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘Where is it now?’

Before he could answer, Jaeger entered and washed his hands at the sink, working up a lather with a block of carbolic soap and rubbing his palms together for several seconds. He washed each of his fingers in turn, then the back of his hand, and then did it all over again. Coughlin paid the long and careful routine no attention because he had seen Jaeger often enough for it to be a normal part of the day. After drying his hands on a towel, Jaeger said, ‘Who cooked breakfast?’

Coughlin pointed. ‘Kooi did.’

‘Was it good?’

Coughlin nodded. ‘Best I’ve had here.’

‘Coffee?’

‘Kooi too.’

‘Would you like some?’ Victor asked.

‘I don’t drink it. But you can cook me some food if you want to.’

‘Not particularly.’

‘That’s pretty selfish.’

‘It’s pretty lazy not to make your own. Takes all of five minutes.’

‘I don’t want any. I’ve already eaten. I just wanted to see if you would make me some.’

‘Why?’

Jaeger shrugged his big shoulders. ‘Just because.’

He left the kitchen. Stairs groaned a moment later.

‘Dangerous combination,’ Coughlin said.

‘What is?’

‘Being that big and that strange. Can’t be a good mix. Like cooking with napalm.’

Victor nodded. ‘Was he here before you?’

‘Yeah, and I’ve traded more words with you in one than I have with him in five. Did you see the way he washes his hands?’

Victor nodded again.

‘And?’ Coughlin asked, pointedly.

‘Maybe he’s got an obsessive-compulsive tic.’

‘Or?’ Coughlin asked, even more pointedly.

‘Or he really wanted to be sure there were no traces left behind of whatever it was that had got on his hands.’

‘Exactly.’

They held eye contact for a moment, but Coughlin didn’t say anything further and Victor didn’t either because Dietrich pushed open the exterior door. He wore khaki shorts and an undershirt dark from sweat. His face and shaven head glistened and his mouth was open. As before, he had his combat knife sheafed on his belt.

He turned on the cold tap and leant over the sink to drink straight from the flow for almost a minute. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of a hand and said, ‘What are you ladies talking about?’

Victor said nothing, but Coughlin elected to answer: ‘Your lack of culinary expertise compared with Kooi here.’

Coughlin picked some crumbs up from his plate and ate them for emphasis.

Dietrich looked at Victor. ‘I leave a woman’s work to a woman.’

He didn’t respond. He heard the rumble of an approaching engine and then the crunch of gravel beneath tyres. Both other men looked towards the kitchen window and to the driveway outside. It wasn’t just expectation, but trepidation too. Not because they were expecting Leeson or Francesca and the arrival of the two made them nervous. They looked through the window because they thought someone else might appear.

The other guy.

The team member Victor hadn’t met yet. The one they already knew. The one they respected. The one they were afraid of.

But Victor knew it wasn’t going to be the new guy even before the Toyota minivan came into view, because he knew the tone of that vehicle’s engine. So either the other guy drove a comparable vehicle or Dietrich and Coughlin didn’t pay the same level of attention Victor did. But few people he encountered did, else he would have died long before now, and his chances of surviving the impersonation of Kooi would be negligible.

Francesca walked through the doorway. She wore a flowing white halter-neck dress, patterned with undulating chrysanthemums, that stopped well above the knee. Dietrich and Coughlin didn’t attempt to hide their stares. She smiled briefly at Victor.

Leeson followed after a moment. He wore a different linen suit. Something was different about him too. He still displayed the veneer of confidence that had cracked apart last night in Rome, but his eyes were different. Victor wasn’t sure why: whether the weight of killing a man pressed down on his soul – which Victor doubted – or whether Leeson knew something today he hadn’t known yesterday.

Victor stood, because he had a dangerous killer to each of his flanks and a wall behind him, while a table blocked his route out of the building. He watched Leeson, ready for the first word or change in expression that would indicate his cover was blown.