The Game (Tom Wood)

FIFTY-EIGHT





Coughlin used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from above his eyebrows and his top lip. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth. His nostrils flared with each heavy breath. Next to him, Hart was focused, but relaxed and calm. Coughlin didn’t like him. Coughlin was scared of him. They stood near the north-facing windows of the top-floor apartment. All the furniture had been pushed away from the windows to give them the best view. The only light came from streetlamps outside and the room was dark. Coughlin was glad of that. Hart wouldn’t be able to see how much he was sweating. He might be able to smell it, however.

Hart’s phone chimed. He checked the screen then thumbed a reply before calling Leeson. ‘Francesca’s sent the second code. Everything’s on schedule.’ He waited a moment as Leeson said something in return, then hung up. Coughlin said, ‘Couldn’t Kooi just force her tell him the code?’

Hart shook his head, somewhat contemptuously. ‘He’s at an embassy reception surrounded by security personnel. How is he going to get the opportunity to force her?’

‘I don’t know. But that’s only because I’m not the one who has to blow myself up. And if I was, I’d find a way to get that code, regardless of the consequences.’

‘What a fine father you’ll make someday. Kooi cares about his family too much to back out. But if he was as selfish as you, it would do him no good. Every fifteen minutes Francesca will send a different code that only she and I know. Don’t let appearances deceive you: there’s nothing Kooi could do to her in there to make her reveal the code and he won’t be as stupid as you would be in his place. Which is why you’re here and he’s in there. Amusing isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘How by virtue of your idiocy you will not only survive while Kooi dies, but you will profit from the demise of a more intelligent man. Natural selection in reverse.’

Coughlin frowned.

Through the window they could see over the crossroads to the Russian embassy. Much of the building was screened by the trees in the grounds, but from their elevation they could see above those on the south side to where the terrace stood. A couple of dozen guests were visible there, drinking and chatting. Coughlin couldn’t see them all because the trees to the west of the terrace partially blocked line of sight.

‘It’s not a problem,’ Hart said, reading Coughlin’s thoughts with unnerving accuracy. ‘The ambassador likes to make his speeches from the south side.’

‘How do you know that?’

Hart didn’t answer.

Coughlin asked, ‘What if the target is watching from the northern end, where we can’t see?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘But if we can’t see him, how do we guide Kooi into position?’

‘That doesn’t matter either.’

Coughlin sighed. ‘I could do my job a lot more effectively if you didn’t withhold intel.’

Hart faced him. ‘Your job at this time is to be a second pair of eyes for me. You just have to keep watching. Nothing more. That is within your capabilities, is it not?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then be quiet and trust and know that all factors have been considered.’

‘Look, I just want the job to work so I can get paid and I’m not going to stand here in silence if there’s something I think has been overlooked. If it hasn’t, great, but if you won’t tell me anything how can I know that?’

‘Fine.’ Hart stared at him. ‘Speak now or forever hold your peace.’

‘Okay,’ Coughlin began, happy to have got Hart to back down, albeit temporarily. ‘If Prudnikov watches the speech from the north side and Kooi ends up over there and out of sight, how do we know he’s going to stay in kill range if we can’t see and Francesca has gone?’

‘The moment Kooi steps outside he will be in range. The blast radius will kill anyone within fifteen metres, not five. He’ll wipe out each and every man and woman on the terrace. We’re not going to guide him into range, just like we’re not going to rely on him to detonate the bomb. As soon as he joins the crowd for the ambassador’s speech I’m going to call the phone and do it for him. Kooi didn’t need to know that.’

Coughlin nodded, understanding the logic and feeling better about his prospects of getting paid. Then he thought of something. ‘But Francesca is going to be there with him. When you say you’ll blow the bomb as soon as Kooi joins the crowd, you’re going to wait for Francesca to go back inside out of range, right?’

Hart looked at him like he was an idiot. ‘How is it going to appear if Francesca is the only survivor of the blast?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Suspicious.’

‘Correct,’ Hart said. It sounded vaguely insulting. ‘We don’t want anyone asking her difficult questions, now do we?’

Coughlin nodded his agreement, but when Hart looked away, he frowned in the dark and thought about what had happened to Jaeger.



The crowd in the music room expanded as more guests funnelled through the doorway. Victor watched every new arrival. Men entered adjusting bow ties and cummerbunds. Women checked themselves in the tall mirrors. Lots of hands were shaken and air kisses dispensed. Conversations in Italian and Russian and English provided a disharmonious clatter in Victor’s ears. He was fluent in all three, and snippets of small talk and serious discussion competed with each other and drowned the beautiful music of the string quartet. They had reached the last movement of Rosamunde, Victor’s favourite, and he wanted to make the most of it before it was time to go into action. Some things couldn’t be rushed.

Francesca signalled to a waiter for another flute of champagne. ‘I’m starting to get a taste for this,’ she said, sipping from her new glass. She checked her watch. It was thin and silver. ‘Not long now until the speech. How are you feeling?’

He didn’t answer.

‘You are going to go through with this, aren’t you?’ she whispered, quietly enough that no one nearby would hear.

‘Are you concerned I won’t?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m concerned by what Dietrich will do to your wife and child if you’re too scared to go through with it.’

‘Do I look scared?’

‘No, that’s the problem. You don’t look like a man who is going to blow himself up.’

‘That’s the point of the sedative, surely.’

‘Even so, I didn’t think it would be this effective.’

‘I’ve said already that you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll do what I have to do.’

‘If you’re thinking of trying something you must realise it won’t work. I’m not going to leave your side until you’re out on that terrace with Prudnikov. Then Hart and Coughlin will be watching your every move. If you try to slip away they’ll know. If that bomb around your waist doesn’t go off and if Prudnikov is not in the blast radius then they’re going to know about it. All it takes is one call to Leeson and Dietrich is going to start carving chunks from Lucille and Peter.’

‘Do you honestly think I don’t know all that?’

‘And,’ she continued as if he had said nothing, ‘if you leave my sight for just a second before the speech begins then I’ll be calling it in before you can be out of the building. Even if you had a helicopter waiting for you outside, you couldn’t get to the mill in time.’

‘Again, I know. You’ve done a very good job of orchestrating this.’

‘I think you’ll find we’ve done an exceptional job. The plan, even if I do say so myself, is perfect.’

‘It’s interesting you say that, because in my experience no plan is perfect. Everything goes wrong as soon as the bullets start flying.’

‘Quite the pessimist, aren’t you?’ She looked at her glass. ‘They certainly know how to make it strong in Russia. Let’s go for a little wander, shall we?’ She offered him her hand. He didn’t take it.

The other two rooms designated for the reception were obvious from their open doors and the guests inside. More ropes and signs made those rooms which were off limits just as obvious. Across the hallway was a study and library. One half of the room contained an antique bureau and swivel chair. On the wall behind the desk hung framed photographs of previous Russian ambassadors, all serious-faced men with grey hair. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with Russian and Italian texts occupied the other wall. Biographies of important Russians were turned face out on eye-level shelves. Guests perused the titles.

Francesca picked a random book from a shelf. ‘Are you a big reader?’

‘What difference does it make?’

‘I’m trying to get to know you.’

‘What’s the point?’

She shrugged. ‘I want to remember you accurately.’

He didn’t respond and she flicked through the book, frowning at pages of indecipherable Cyrillic script. ‘I’ve never seen the point in books.’

‘They say you get out of reading what you put in.’

She nodded as if in agreement, but also absently. She struggled to slide the book back into the gap it had left.

‘Let’s take a look at the terrace,’ Victor said. ‘I want to see where it’s going to happen.’

The last room holding the reception was bathed in a soft glow from gilded brass fixtures on the walls and ceiling that coloured the marble columns and arches in warm hues of yellow and pink. A conference table and chairs dominated one half of the room. The table and chairs were neoclassical antiques, as were the rest of the room’s furnishings. A fireplace stood on the wall behind the head of the table, with a neat pile of logs in the hearth, but only for appearances. The chimney would have been blocked up long ago. Above the fireplace hung a snowy cityscape by Boris Kustodiev. Victor recognised the style and signature from the many hours he’d spent in Moscow galleries, performing counter-surveillance while he enjoyed the artwork. He also recognised a painting by Ivan Aivazovsky on the opposite wall, that depicted naval battleships duelling during the Battle of Navarino. Beneath it stood a Mockba grand piano, white, polished to a mirror sheen. Victor felt the urge to play.

Guests stood in small groups around the table and piano. Three sets of French doors spaced along the opposite west wall were open. Cool night air seeped in from the terrace outside, where more guests drank and laughed and where the ambassador would make his speech in less than an hour’s time.

Francesca put her glass down on the conference table. The glass was about forty per cent full.

‘Had enough?’ Victor asked, a certain tone to his voice.

‘Oh, you’d like me drunk and pliable, wouldn’t you?’

‘You’re looking a little the worse for wear.’

‘After one and a half glasses of fake champagne? Keep dreaming, Felix. I know my limits.’

‘Then why are you holding onto that chair?’

She followed his gaze and snapped her hand away from where it had been gripping the chair’s back.

‘Let’s get you some air,’ Victor said.



He guided her outside onto the terrace, pausing before the closest set of French doors to let her pass through first. The terrace ran the width of the building’s west wall and overlooked the embassy’s small but perfectly maintained garden. Lights mounted in the ground illuminated the rows of plants and flowers. A waist-high stone wall surrounded the terrace. Guests leaned against it and rested their glasses on top. Francesca found a spot at the south wall and leaned against it herself. Victor stood in front of her.

The foliage of tall trees shielded the terrace from the buildings across the street, but Victor looked to the southwest, to where Hart and Coughlin watched from the five-storey apartment building. They had a good view of the terrace from across the four-way junction, high enough to provide line of sight over the trees to the south of the terrace, which were not as tall as those to the west. There were no lights on the terrace itself, but those from the conference room provided the space with subtle illumination. Victor’s eyes followed the width of darkness that lay between the glow spilling through the French doors and that of the lights in the garden.

Francesca’s phone chimed and she checked the screen. ‘Hart has a visual on us.’

Victor nodded in Hart’s direction in way of reply. Hart could see him from the apartment window. He had a good view. But not a great one, because the broad foliage of the taller trees to the west blocked line of sight from the apartment to the northwest corner of the terrace and reduced visibility to the terrace’s entire northern segment. A man standing inside the area of darkness between the two light sources would be almost invisible.

All Hart had to do was dial a number and the explosives strapped to Victor’s torso would obliterate him from existence. All that would be left of him would be his severed head, blown clear of his body but left intact, eyes still open.

He looked back to Francesca to avoid Hart or Coughlin noticing where he was looking and perhaps deducing what he was thinking. She had the small of her back against the wall and her elbows resting on top of it. From the apartment across the street she would look relaxed, but Hart and Coughlin couldn’t see her open mouth and her eyebrows raised with the effort of keeping her eyelids from drooping.

‘Shampanskoye,’ Victor said. ‘It’s stronger than you would think.’

‘I’m fine,’ Francesca said after swallowing a couple of times.

‘Let’s have a look at the gardens,’ he suggested and took her hands.

He stepped away and pulled with his arms to bring her away from the wall, and walked with her across the terrace to its northern half.

‘I thought we were going to look at the garden,’ Francesca said, voice quiet, as Victor steered her away from the wall and towards the northernmost set of French doors.

‘We need to get you some water, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. My throat is dry.’ She touched her neck.

‘You said it would be.’

‘When… When did I?’

Victor didn’t answer. He took her hand away from her neck and led her back into the conference room. They walked by the grand piano, Francesca trailing the fingers of her free hand across its surface, taking a circuitous route across the room. He kept one arm around her waist to help her walk and gave a knowing look to a tall man with white hair who noticed Francesca’s half-closed eyes and vacant expression as they neared.

She stumbled into the man’s much shorter wife, much to the wife’s shock, and Victor was quick to get Francesca upright on her feet again while the man helped his wife recover.

‘I’m so sorry about that,’ Victor said to both as he stepped away from them.

He headed to the room’s exit with Francesca and into the hallway beyond. The string quartet had begun playing Rosamunde again. Victor had expected them to play a different piece, but perhaps Rosamunde was the ambassador’s favourite.

As they passed the music room a man said, ‘Is everything all right?’

He was about six feet tall, with red hair cut short enough that his scalp was visible between the strands.

‘Fine,’ Victor replied. ‘She’s just had a little too much.’

‘I have not,’ Francesca interjected, words slurring.

‘Anything I can do to help?’ the man with red hair asked.

Victor shook his head. ‘Thanks, but she’ll be okay.’

The man nodded and Victor led Francesca away, wanting to glance back over his shoulder to see if the man was watching them, but not willing to risk it because he had seen him in the music room, circling the room with his hands free and not talking to anyone.

Francesca had trouble with the stairs and Victor kept a firm hold of her to make sure they descended without a problem.

‘What’s going on?’ she said, voice barely more than a whisper.

He led her down the corridor at the bottom of the stairs to the men’s room and pushed open the door. An overweight man with a thick moustache stood at the furthest urinal. He glanced over his shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ Victor said. ‘She’s going to be sick. You don’t mind, do you?’

The man didn’t break stream. He cast his gaze over Francesca and responded with an approving nod. He continued to stare at her while Victor took her into one of the cubicles. He toed down the toilet seat, sat Francesca on it, and closed and locked the cubicle door behind him.

‘I—’

He put a finger against her lips and she stopped talking. He waited, hearing the overweight man zip up his flies and then leave without a visit to the sinks. Victor took his finger away.

‘Am I drunk?’ she asked.

‘In a way. But you feel okay, don’t you?’

‘I feel great.’

He fished Francesca’s phone from her purse. She watched him, but didn’t speak, her head periodically nodding forward before she set it back again. He scrolled through her sent messages. She had sent two messages to the same number. The first had been after they had passed security at 07:33 p.m. The second had been sent twelve minutes later at 07:45 p.m. Victor and Francesca had arrived at the embassy at 07:30 p.m. in sight of Hart and Coughlin. The first message had been sent at the earliest opportunity as the time it took get through the security checks couldn’t be predicted. The next had been sent at a specific time. Leeson had said there would be regular updates. So there would be another at 08:00 p.m. and another fifteen minutes later and so on. Both of the messages Francesca had sent contained just a single word, different each time. Each was followed by a message back from Hart soon afterwards: confirm.

The clock on the phone gave the time as 7.54 p.m.

He adjusted Francesca’s seating position and rested her head against the wall of the cubicle. She seemed happy enough like that and wasn’t likely to fall off the toilet seat.

‘I’m going to leave you here now,’ he explained, ‘but I’ll be back soon. Okay?’

‘Why?’

‘Because the less people see of you, the better.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you can barely walk. You’ve had a strong dose of Flunitrazepam and you’ve made it worse by drinking alcohol with it. You just need to stay here and wait for me.’

She frowned. ‘But the… the drug was for you, not me.’

‘Yes, but I did a magic trick. You wanted to see one, remember?’

She nodded. The frown disappeared. She looked confused. ‘Yes, but…?’

‘And it was a good trick. You didn’t see me palm the capsule instead of swallowing it and you didn’t see me empty the capsule into your drink, did you?’

‘No.’

‘So it was a good trick, wasn’t it?’

She smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘Now you can do a trick of your own and stay here for a few minutes, okay?’

‘Okay.’

The men’s room door opened and Victor put a finger to Francesca’s lips. She smiled. Two minutes later they were alone again. Victor reached up, gripped the top of the cubicle wall and pulled himself up, hooking his left leg over and then his right. It was difficult to swivel his torso around because of the vest restricting his movement, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. He dropped down on the other side.

‘Just wait there,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back soon. Don’t make a sound. Okay?’

She didn’t respond. Either she had passed out or she was obeying his request, but as long as she stayed quiet he didn’t care which it was. He exited the bathroom and headed down the hallway past the busts and paintings. In the entrance hall he joined a short queue of new arrivals handing over their coats. When he reached the front he handed over the ticket belonging to the tall man with white hair whose pocket he had picked while he was distracted by Francesca stumbling – tripping – into his wife.

‘Tan raincoat and fur,’ he said to the attendant.

The young man who took his ticket nodded and left to seek out the garments from wherever it was they stored them. It wouldn’t be far. There would be a utility room or closet nearby. The embassy would throw enough parties to warrant the space and the stature of the guests would ensure the room’s proximity to the entrance hall. No one liked to wait. The rich and powerful wouldn’t stand for it.

He returned in less than three minutes with the white-haired man’s raincoat and his wife’s fur. Victor took them, thanked the attendant, and returned to the men’s room. It was empty. He hung the coats over the door of the cubicle, then hoisted himself over the cubicle wall. The vest slowed him down again, but not as much as the first time now he knew what to expect. Francesca still sat exactly as he had left her.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Her eyes stared into his but she didn’t answer.

He said, ‘You’re allowed to speak now.’

She smiled. ‘I’m fine. I feel good. Where did you go?’

‘Francesca,’ Victor began, squatting down so he could look into her eyes because she couldn’t keep her head upright. ‘It’s nearly eight p.m. In one minute you need to send a message to Hart. An update, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘What word do you need to send to let Hart know everything is okay?’

Her eyes were glassy, the whites bloodshot. ‘It’s a secret.’

‘I know,’ Victor said. ‘It’s a code word that only you and he know, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell me what it is, please?’

She stared at him. ‘It’s a secret.’

‘Yes, but you need to tell me so I can send it to Hart. That is what you need to do, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you want to do your job properly, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what’s the code I need to send to Hart to let him know everything is okay?’

‘I’m okay.’

‘That’s good, Francesca. You need to tell me the code now. We’ve only got a few seconds left to send it otherwise you’ll be late.’

‘I don’t want to be late.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re handsome.’

‘Thank you. Can you tell me the code now, please?’

‘No.’

‘Please Francesca, you really need to tell me the code so I can send it to Hart. You want to tell me the code, don’t you?’

The clock in the corner of the phone’s screen changed to 08.00 p.m.

‘No.’ She shook her head and reached for the phone. ‘I have to send it.’

‘Tell me instead. I’ll do it for you.’

‘No,’ she said again and stretched her fingers towards the phone. ‘You’re not allowed to know. I have to send it.’

He let her take the phone and watched as she fumbled with it, wondering how many seconds late Hart would accept before aborting the mission. She tapped the screen with a single finger, long delays between taps.

‘Done,’ she said and grinned.

‘Press send.’

‘Oh yes.’ She did. ‘Silly me.’

Victor took the phone from her and stared at the screen. She’d sent the word apple. There was no way to know if this was the correct code or a random word. Maybe it was the right code but sent at the wrong time.

Five seconds passed. Then ten. Fifteen. The phone vibrated.

Confirm.