Assassin Down Page 2

  Once the doors opened, he entered the office space full of cubicles, and charged past all the beleaguered faces that looked up at him. The noise of celebrations grew louder as he approached the larger office at the far end, something that only incensed him further.

  He opened the door and stepped in. There was Juliette and Sebastian, accompanied by a bunch of faces he recognised well enough to understand they served a function, but little enough to care about their names.

  The television was on. The story was being reported. They were drinking morning champagne. Gloats and cheers and joyful triumph made his arms shake with rage.

  “Sir,” Juliette greeted him, a large smile as she poured his glass of champagne and offered it to him. “Are you pleased?”

  “Am I pleased?” he choked, and suddenly the mood fell sombre, and everyone looked at each other, confused, thrown off by his hostility.

  “Sir, I don’t understand,” Juliette said.

  “Of course you damn well don’t, you impudent fool.”

  He looked around at the subordinates staring at him with flutes hovering in their hands.

  “Get rid of the champagne,” he demanded, “turn of the television, and everyone aside from Juliette and Sebastian get the hell out of this room and back to work.”

  No one spoke. Everyone abruptly found the nearest surface to place their flute, not daring to look in one another’s eyes, scuffling out like beetles fleeing from a predator.

  Mulligan shifted his scowl between Sebastian and Juliette.

  Juliette. Young enough to be up and coming but old enough to not be such an idiot. She was ambitious but naïve. She wore her suit like it was a good disguise.

  Sebastian was the same, except younger and even more naïve.

  Why was Mulligan surrounded by children?

  “Well?” he said.

  Neither gave a reply, and before they could even contemplate mustering one, Mulligan slammed the newspaper upon the table, exposing the headline.

  RUSSIAN SENATOR HANGS HIMSELF IN FRONT OF PROSTITUTES

  Juliette and Sebastian shifted uncomfortable looks.

  They really, truly did not get what was wrong, did they?

  “You are insolent, childish burdens. The both of you. Can’t do a damn thing right!”

  “But–” Sebastian stuttered. “But—I don’t understand, sir.”

  Mulligan looked to Juliette. “And you? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m sorry. Was this not how you wanted it done?”

  Not how he wanted it done?

  How the job had been executed was, in fact, the one requirement they had met correctly. Suicide by hanging, leaving prostitutes as witnesses. That was the instruction, that was what they agreed, and that was what he had instructed them to relay to the staff.

  “And you really do not understand what my problem with this is?” he prompted, his thick hands shaking, his teeth gritting, his temple throbbing.

  Another annoying, pitiful glance at each other.

  Enough. Time to let them have it.

  “You gave the assassin that wrong fucking target, you idiots!”

  They were stumped. Jaw-dropped. Speechless. Dumbfounded. They glanced at each other again and again and, by god, if they kept doing that they would really feel his rage.

  “No, sir, it was—it was agreed, Senator Egor Kuznetsov.”

  “No,” he spat. “No, it sincerely wasn’t.”

  He took out a post-it note. The post-it note, in fact, that he had given them in their last meeting. The post-it note he’d had his secretary retrieve so he could be positive it wasn’t his screwup.

  And, of course, it wasn’t. He wasn’t as inept as they were.

  Upon the post-it note read the name: Senator Egor Kozhukov.

  Their eyes dropped. They finally understood. And his rage suddenly grew intensely justified.

  But that did nothing to quell his anger at all. In fact, it allowed him to undo any remaining restraint he had around his bursting aggression.

  “So now we have a dead senator, an alive senator we wanted dead, and a prime minister who is ready to string me up by the eyeballs. And you two stand here looking blank, like all that happened was your fucking pet died.”

  “Sir, we are so sorry–”

  “I don’t quite think sorry is going to god damn cut it!”

  He could feel his cheeks burning.

  “Now, we really need to fix this. I need to go to the prime minister this afternoon with news of how we have undone this extraordinary cockup. So now would be a marvellous time for your ingenuity and ideas—because if I lose my job because of you two cretins, I swear, I will burn down your bloody houses as you sleep.”

  Awkward silence.

  Glances.

  Desperate contemplation.

  Mulligan raised his eyebrows as if to say, well?

  “We could deny–” Sebastian went to say.

  “We aren’t denying anything. That’s an equivalent excuse of saying my dog ate my homework. Next?”

  “We could be honest–”

  “I will be honest, but I need something to follow up that honesty that makes it seem like we have cleaned up our mess. Do better.”

  Another few beats went by until Juliette finally turned and slowly raised her hand.

  “You are not in school you cretin; you do not need to raise your hand. Speak.”

  “We could retire the staff.”

  “Eh?”

  “As in, we could set our other staff the mission of retiring the assassin that did this. Then we could say it was his screw up and he would be too dead to argue to the contrary.”

  For the first time, red faded from his cheeks and his face briefly lit up.

  “Yes,” he said enthusiastically. “Yes, yes, that could work. Give him the responsibility. Explain that he has since been… how did you put it?”

  “Retired.”

  “Yes, retired.”

  Mulligan glanced at the clock. It was barely even 7.00 a.m.

  “My meeting is at three this afternoon,” Mulligan announced. “Do it now. I want him dead by lunchtime.”

  Paris, France

  Chapter Four

  The front page of the morning newspaper was the same in France as it was in Britain–as it was in Russia, in Kosovo, in Germany, in anywhere that had a newspaper to print it.

  Sullivan looked at the headline and felt content. His French was weak compared to his other languages, but he could still read and interpret the article thoroughly. The three prostitutes reported it to be a suicide, and everything had gone as planned.

  “Who’s that, Dad?” Talia asked, sipping on her cup of tea. It was a beautiful day to be relaxing outside a coffee shop in one of Sullivan’s favourite cities, and Talia had taken a break from her book long enough to notice the picture of an overweight Russian politician on the front of the newspaper.

  “No one,” he said. “How’s your tea?”

  “Lovely,” she answered, and took another sip. A waitress came over and paused by their table.

  “Bonjour,” she said, “puis-je prendre votre commande?”

  Sullivan lifted the menu and pointed to an item.

  “Escargot,” he replied. He particularly liked the sound of the garlic sauce it came in.

  “Tres bien. Et tu?”

  “What’s escargot?” Talia asked him.

  Sullivan smiled. This would be a perfect time to play a practical joke—but he decided not to be so cruel.

  “Snails,” he said.

  “Urgh,” she said, her nose wrinkling.

  She’d had tuna eyeballs in Japan, balut in the Philippines, and even crispy tarantula in Cambodia—yet she drew the line at snails!

  “I’ll have the scone please, dad,” she said.

  “De l’apres-midi, s'il vous plaît.”

  “Bien.”

  The waitress collected the menus and left.

  Sullivan looked around. They were in an
open area, full of tourists. A group of Japanese girls came out of a souvenir shop across the street, a man tried to calm a screaming child a few tables over, and a nun was stepping out of a church down a narrow alleyway.

  Everything was fine.

  “You know,” Sullivan said, not wanting to broach the subject but knowing it was time. “We need to talk about what you’re going to do. You know, when you turn thirteen.”

  “Dad, why this?”

  “Because it’s important that you have a normal life, darling.”

  “I want this life.”

  He bowed his head. He really wanted her to keep travelling the world with him, accompanying him to multiple continents, experiencing a vast amount of culture. But it wasn’t fair.

  She didn’t realise it now, but she’d hold it against him some day.

  “You need an education,” he said. “You need to be with children your own age.”

  “You’ve taught me to read.”

  “Yes, I have. But there’s more for you to learn.”

  “Then teach me.”

  “I can’t teach you everything. Like, history, for example. Or maths.”

  “I don’t need to learn maths. I want to learn to do what you do.”

  He sighed. He feared this happening. The life she had become accustomed to came with a cost, and she was too young to realise that yet.

  “What?” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “I don’t want you to do what I do.”

  “But you do it. If it’s good enough for you–”

  “Oh, Talia, you have it the wrong way around. It’s not that it’s not good enough for you – it’s that you’re too good for it.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  Oh, how he wished she could understand.

  How he wished she could be safe with a family and a house and a cat and parents who weren’t killers.

  He did not want this for her.

  He became quickly distracted by something in her hand. Something she was turning over. He recognised it instantly.

  It was her mother’s lucky clover leaf necklace.

  A little souvenir from their time in South Africa. It was where Talia had been conceived, and her mother had said that she’d never been so lucky.

  God, Sullivan missed her. Talia could have been home with her mother, waiting for Sullivan to return from his trip, going back and forth to school and hanging out with friends.

  Their life could have been so different.

  But Sullivan stopped dwelling on it. He wasn’t one for if onlys.

  He forced a smile. Looked around, aware of Talia watching him.

  “Look, maybe we should–”

  He stopped.

  Across the street.

  A man.

  There was something about this man…

  He didn’t look right.

  He sat outside another café. A café with pictures of food in the window and prices cheaper than McDonald's.

  The man dressed in a Givenchy single breasted wool suit. That suit cost almost two grand.

  And he was drinking a coffee that cost less than a euro.

  “What is it?” Talia asked.

  He placed a hand on hers.

  Kept silent.

  Kept looking.

  Outside the church, another man, wearing t-shirt and jeans. But he didn’t look like he should wear t-shirt and jeans. His beard was too neatly trimmed. That was a trim you’d get if you paid good money for it. It didn’t fit with how cheap his plain white top was, how his Primark jeans hung off him with such an ill fit. As if it was deliberate. As if they were bought especially without knowledge of how to acquire such a casual outfit.

  And outside the souvenir shop. A man with a stern face. Speaking with no one around him. As if his words were being transmitted through something hidden on him.

  “We have to go,” Sullivan said, standing.

  “But I haven’t had my scone yet!”

  “We’ll get you another damn scone, get up.”

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her up from her chair so abruptly she only just managed to grab her bag and put it over her shoulder. He pulled her quickly and assertively down a side street; she had no chance to question why.

  He turned down one side street, then another, making his movements as erratic as possible, as hard to track as he could.

  A man stepped out of a shop. He held an egg salad and a metal fork. He dressed like a tourist, but with a small bulge behind his rear end, as if he concealed a gun.

  Sullivan didn’t carry a gun. He didn’t consider them useful. He believed a true fighter should be able to use his environment, to manipulate resources to his will. Why would you need a gun when you can cup a man’s eyeball out with a teaspoon?

  Sullivan walked by this man nonchalantly, and as soon as he’d stepped beyond him, Sullivan let go of Talia and turned back.

  The man’s weapon was halfway drawn. Sullivan punched the wrist holding the handle and thwacked it against the stone wall. He slid the fork from beside the man’s egg salad and used a large rotation to swing it into his throat.

  It was a small fork, however, and a single stab wouldn’t so much kill a man, but give him a surprise burst of discomfort.

  He used that surprise to retract the fork and stab his throat several more times, before hitting him in the gut, then forcing the fork down the man’s throat, far enough that he choked on it.

  Within seconds the man was a bloody heap on the floor.

  He turned to Talia, who gaped back.

  He hated himself in that moment.

  He had never wanted her to see this.

  This was exactly what he wished to protect her from, exactly what he did not want her to see.

  He’d kept her with him for too long.

  Become complacent.

  Been selfish.

  And now that look on her face was burnt into his memory forever.

  “You still want to do what I do?” he grunted.

  “I–” she stuttered.

  They couldn’t wait around for an answer.

  At least now she understood the urgency, and why she couldn’t have that damn scone.

  He took her hand and led her down another side street. He paused at the edge and looked out.

  The man from the café walked down the street, looking back and forth.

  The man in the white t-shirt glanced upwards.

  A man discreetly assembling a sniper rifle disguised himself in the glare of sunlight on a window at least twelve stories up.

  Sullivan looked back down the alleyway. There was already a crowd around the corpse. Police would arrive any moment.

  He looked to Talia.

  To her pretty, young face, staring up at him, never looking as vulnerable as she did in that moment.

  Oh, how her mother would hate him right now.

  He decided that it didn’t matter what happened to him, just so long as she survived.

  Chapter Five

  Sullivan’s hand clutched onto his daughter’s wrist with a grip he knew was uncomfortable, but he wasn’t prepared to hold her loosely. For whatever reason, someone had targeted him—and that made her a target too.

  He had to get her to safety.

  He had to.

  But how? Where?

  The embassy, perhaps?

  For now, just away and hidden.

  Then he would decide what to do with her, how to keep her safe. His priority at the moment was not to consider the next week, day, or even hours—it was just to escape.

  To survive.

  He led her back down the side street, past the people on the phone with emergency services, speaking rapid French as they gathered around the suffocated, bloody heap Sullivan had left only moments ago.

  He ducked into another side street.

  Down the far end he saw a silhouette. From the way the man stood; the defiant stance, feet shoulder width apart—Sullivan knew that he was one of them.

 
Sullivan stopped by a door to a large building, possibly a block of flats, and tried to open it.

  Locked.

  Watching the back of the man’s head, ensuring he remained unnoticed, he stood back and charged at the door, bursting it open with his shoulder.

  The man turned. Slid something into his wrist. Strode toward Sullivan.

  Sullivan led Talia through the corridor, around the corner, and found a door to a flat, opening. A young man was leaving, early twenties, smart suit. Maybe he had a date. Maybe he had work.

  “Don’t move,” Sullivan instructed the man. The man didn’t have time to register what was happening as Sullivan shoved him back into his flat and placed Talia beside him. “Leave her side and I’ll break your neck.”

  From the look adorning the man’s face, Sullivan knew that his message had been received.

  He backed into the corridor and marched back around the corner. The man who had been a silhouette at the end of the alleyway bumped into him.

  He had prickles on his chin. Rugged hair. Stocky.

  Sullivan recognised him. Not by name, but by face. All the Falcon’s staff knew of each other.

  Which meant that his employers had turned on him.

  But why?

  Questions for later.

  For now, just kill.

  The man took out his gun. A silencer attached. Before he could raise it, Sullivan had taken his wrist, turned, and lifted the man onto his back. He twisted the man’s arm and pulled on it until his elbow snapped.

  He took hold of the gun hand, not wanting his prints to be on the gun. He turned it toward the man’s face and squeezed the finger nestled over the trigger, a flutter of air penetrating a hole through the man’s forehead.

  “Thanks,” he grunted at the shirt-wearing man gaping at him. He grabbed Talia and marched her back down the corridor and back into the side street.

  He turned right and strode, Talia’s feet scuffling behind him, struggling to keep up.

  Didn’t matter.

  She had to.

  Sullivan wasn’t slowing down.

  The man in the expensive suit appeared a few paces away at the end of the side street.

  He looked over his shoulder. The man with the bad Primark outfit was coming the other way.