Kill - Two Page 6

  He stuck his cigarette in his mouth ad pulled out his cell. Squinting his left eye against the trailing smoke, he typed with his thumbs. After a moment, he said, “Gare de Lyon. We have one at 2:07. Is ten hours. It arrives Madrid Atocha at midnight.”

  “That’s our train.”

  “It has one change…” He paused. “Barcelona Sans, but we are staying in the same station.”

  I nodded. “That’s our train,” I said again.

  “You outta your fuckin’ mind.” He said it without much feeling. He took a pull on his beer, keeping his eyes fixed on me. “Is never gonna work. The list of things that can go wrong is so long… One of them is gonna go wrong.”

  “It’s not such a long list. The risks are: he is recognized…” I raised my thumb to indicate number one. “He calls on the passengers and guards for help.” I raised my index finger as two. “He tries to escape among the throng of people.” I raised my middle finger. “Which takes us back to two, he tries to get help.”

  “Is enough. All of those can happen in a second, and we are fucked.”

  “No, we just need an effective way of keeping him from asking for help or trying to escape. That is not difficult. As to being recognized, he isn’t Tom Cruise. He’s an anonymous Euroman in a gray suit. And with the right motivation, even if somebody does talk to him, he’ll fob them off.”

  His eyebrows rose slightly. “Yuh? What kind of motivation?”

  “Preserving his life, what else? What have you got in the way of hardware?”

  He shook his head. “A Glock 19, nothing more. We have a guy here, but only small arms. What are you thinking?”

  I considered for a moment, then pulled out my cell and made a call to a number in London. A chirpy girl answered.

  “Perfect Party Supplies, how may I direct your call?”

  “Good morning, I have an account with you.” I gave her a number, then said, “Could you ask John to call me?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Smith. He’ll be in touch in three minutes precisely.”

  She hung up. We sat in silence for three minutes while Njal chewed his lip and stared at me. Then the phone rang. I answered and the kind of voice your mother would like your brother-in-law to have said, “Lacklan, good to hear from you. It’s been a long time. Couple of years?”

  “Something like that. How’s it hanging?”

  “Perpendicular. What can I do for you? I thought you were out of the trade, fixing cars in Wyoming or something daft like that.”

  “Yeah. I left the trade, but the trade never got the memo. I’m in Brussels.”

  “Where the sprouts come from.”

  “That place. I need some material. Can you get it to me?”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need a cake of C4, a Sig Sauer p226 with extended magazines. I need a box of rounds. And a remote detonator. Something I can use with my phone. And two doses of carfentanil.”

  There was a smile in his voice. “Interesting mix. You’re not doing a job for Rees-Mogg, are you?”

  “That’s funny. Can you do it?”

  “No problem. You don’t need a rifle? I have some nice HK-433s.”

  “It’s not that kind of party.”

  “Suit yourself. Where do you want to pick it up?”

  I thought about it for a second. “Paris. Emile’s place. Payment as per usual.”

  “Done. Don’t be a stranger.” He hung up.

  Njal sniffed. “C4? This is your plan? C4?” Before I could answer, he went on. “This call can be traced. You were using buzzwords like crazy. I thought you were pro.”

  “Shut up, Njal. The call was scrambled and rerouted six times around the world. It lasted a minute. You couldn’t have traced it in thirty.” He sighed, but I ignored him. “We can work out the precise details later. In broad strokes: We intercept Timmerman at the Gare du Nord, neutralize his bodyguards and bundle him into the can. There, we tape a square inch of C4 to his back, right over his heart, with VHB tape, triple wraparound, so the tape bonds to itself. The C4 carries a detonator triggered by a call from my phone.”

  “That is sick, man.”

  “The tape would take hours to remove. It would have to be done by a doctor, because it will remove skin. In addition, he could not reach back to the C4 to cut it out with a knife. And wherever he went in the world,” I held up the phone, “I could reach him in a matter of a couple of seconds. From the moment we slap the patch on his back, we own him.”

  “That is sick. I love it. So we travel down on the train like three old friends.”

  “Yeah.”

  “OK, so what about his bodyguards?”

  “We’ll wait for them at the station. They will have to cross the concourse to get to the exit where their car will collect them to take them to Montparnasse. I’ll wait near the exit. You wait by the barrier. We stay in contact on our cells.”

  “Why?”

  “Shut up and listen. You follow them as they come through the barrier. When you say, ‘OK, I’m on it,’ I’ll know you’re approaching. Keep talking on the phone. Pretend to be talking to your girlfriend. As long as you’re saying positive things, I know you’re on them. Stay within nine to twelve feet. Got it?”

  “OK.”

  “When I see you approaching, I’ll start walking toward you. When I am five or six paces away, I’ll pretend to recognize Timmerman. I’ll make a big show: ‘Hey, Jean-Claude, long time no see!’. You close in from behind. You’ll have two doses of carfentanil. They come in applicators. You apply it to the bodyguards’ necks. They will be tense and focused on me because I am approaching Timmerman. They won’t notice you till it’s too late.”

  “What is car…?”

  “Carfentanil. Elephant tranquilizer.”

  He went to pieces and laughed loudly.

  I ignored him. “It’s no joke. This stuff is ten thousand times more powerful than heroin. You touch it and it can kill you.”

  “Ah…” He nodded, wiping his eyes. “This is the shit they are cutting into heroin.”

  “When you prick them, they are going to turn around. You back up, apologize. They’ll move toward you, but straight away they’re going to start feeling weird. When that happens, I want you to call for help. For them, not for you.”

  “OK.”

  “Now, this next bit is real important. I’m going to discreetly stick a gun in Timmerman’s side and tell him to come with me.”

  “What if he calls for help?”

  “He won’t, trust me. But if he does, you’ll be screaming for help already and there will be a lot of confusion. I’ll scare the bejaysus out of him and silence him. I’ll take him to the public toilets and stick him in a cubicle. Meantime, I need you to act fast. I need you to be right behind me.”

  “What you want me to do?”

  “The second his guys start to show signs the drug is working, you move in on them. You take their wallets and ID from their jackets and you replace them.”

  “With what?”

  “We’ll have to get hold of some.”

  He snorted. “OK.”

  “Can you do that? It has to be fast and smooth.”

  “Sure.”

  “You start calling for help and then you move away. You follow me and Timmerman down to the johns. Do whatever you have to do but you keep people away from the cubicles until I’m finished. When we come out, he’ll have the tab of C4 taped to his back. Then we head for the Gare du Lyon. From that point on he will be totally cooperative.”

  “What will you tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him that if he is cooperative, he will be allowed to join his family in Normandy. He’s a politician, as long as he thinks cooperation might save his neck, he’ll cooperate.”

  Njal sat staring at his beer bottle for a long time. Then he sat forward and said, “OK, let’s go over it a hundred times and find the flaws in your plan.”

  SEVEN

  We went over it a hundred times and then a hundred more times, and I be
gan to see why Jim Redbeard regarded this guy so highly, and why he was so good. He was relentless and painstakingly detailed. We went over it from every angle and examined every realistic eventuality. By nine o’clock that night, we were exhausted and went down to the Soso to have a drink and a burger. It wasn’t cold, so we sat outside at a table.

  I said: “We can’t do any more on paper. We need to go to Paris.”

  He nodded with his mouth full of burger. “What about your delivery?” He jerked his head at my phone.

  “He’ll call when it’s been assembled.”

  “And the guy we collect from?”

  “He’s reliable. We always use him…”

  “We?”

  “When I was in the trade. If we had work in Europe. It happens more often than you think. You need tools but you can’t bring them with you, so you collect them from a reliable, trustworthy depot. We place an order with Perfect Party Supplies and collect from Emile.”

  “So you guys always use him.”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t say he can be trusted, but he can be relied upon. He has too much to lose if he screws up.”

  He chewed slowly, watching me, thinking about what I’d said.

  “You not in the trade anymore.” It was a statement, but the shrug that followed was a question.

  I nodded, then added: “But you’re never really out.”

  His eyes drifted from my face over my shoulder toward the bar and he twitched his eyebrows, telling me to look. I turned and saw that he was watching the TV on the wall inside the bar. I stood and went to lean on the doorjamb. From my schoolboy French, I could just about make out what they were saying. Belgian security forces had received an unconfirmed tip that there was to be an attempt on the life of President Emanuel Van Zuydam, widely regarded as the most powerful man in the European Union, and the architect of its federal future. The reporter said Van Zuydam had dismissed the threats at an international trade conference in Munich, and the shot changed to a view of the president standing at the head of a banquet table, with the Union flag behind him. There were delegates seated, looking up at him as he spoke in almost perfect English.

  “…I say to them, they can kill me, but they cannot kill the Union, they cannot kill the future, they cannot kill progress. Europe has a future, the world has a future. It is the future of humanity. It is a future of peace, of order, of well-being and security. It is a future without war and violence. So these people who threaten me with death, they are the enemies of peace, they are the enemies of humanity and the enemies of the future. So I say to them, ‘You are not part of the future. I have no time for you…’”

  There was a lot of applause. Despite the fact that the president had no time for those who threatened him, it seemed the security forces had, and sources had confirmed that security around the president had been stepped up significantly.

  I got two more beers and returned to the table. Njal said, “You know something about this.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I shook my head as I sat. “It doesn’t concern us. In fact, it might even help us. While they’re watching President Van Zuydam, their attention won’t be on Zeta.”

  “OK.” He took a pull on his beer. “We go at five thirty in the morning. It is a four hour drive. When we get there, we have two days to finish preparations.”

  “We have accommodation in Paris?”

  “Mm-hm, and a car in Madrid.”

  We sat for a while longer without talking, then paid and went upstairs.

  * * *

  We came in on the A1, then joined the N1 at Saint-Denis, crossed the railway lines on the Boulevard Périphérique, and rolled down the Rue des Poissonniers—not Poisoners’ Row, sadly, but Fishmonger Street—into the Barbes district, where classical 18th and 19th century Parisian architecture, with its exquisite proportions and understated moldings, had been vastly enriched by closed shop fronts and steel blinds, adorned with graffiti proclaiming illegible banalities in fat letters painted by unremarkable artists with nothing interesting to say.

  We pulled up outside a Congolese restaurant that had closed and was papered with posters that time and weather had faded and part peeled from its steel roller blind. They advertised yoga classes, white supremacy groups and jihad, all within a few inches of each other. I wondered for a moment if this was a symptom of Jim Redbeard’s chaos, his loss of uniformity, but I didn’t wonder for long.

  We climbed out of the car and I rang a dirty bell by an unvarnished door. After a moment, a voice that wasn’t French said, “Qua?”

  “I’m here about a package from Perfect Parties.”

  The door buzzed and I pushed into a narrow passage with no stairs but a second door at the end. Njal closed the street door and pulled his Glock. I went and hammered on the second door. It buzzed and opened and we went through into a small warehouse, about fifty feet across and maybe half that again lengthwise. The floor was bare concrete and the walls were red brick set around steel girders. The whole place was littered with crates, some stacked in large piles, others scattered at random around the floor. The effect was to form aisles that led to a central area where Emile could see us from his office, and shoot us if he didn’t like what he saw.

  Apparently he did, because he came out of his office smiling a big smile. He was wearing the same dirty white T-shirt, track-suit pants and havaianas he’d been wearing the last time I’d seen him, three years earlier; and he was making the same high-pitched squeaking noise in his throat, which was his way of laughing.

  “I nevah tink I am evah going to see you again, son of a gun.” He gripped my hand and we shook. “I cannot believe it. Who is your friend? If he is your friend, he is my friend. You know that.”

  “This is Bob, Emile, he doesn’t talk much. He’s just along for the ride.”

  “I understand. Hush hush. Enough said. Come on into my office.” He spoke slowly and deliberately as he walked, like he was trying to emphasize each word in its proper place. “Now, listen to me, I thought you had retired. They told me, ‘Oh, he is ovah the hill, he has gone to Wyoming with the cowboys!’” His wheezing laugh became a shriek. “I couldn’t believe it!”

  We stepped inside his office. It was a small, clapboard shack within the warehouse. It had a steel desk, two chairs and a filing cabinet, with a table for a printer, a kettle and a bottle of Scotch pushed up against the back wall. Njal put his ass against the table. I sat and Emile sat at the desk, still grinning.

  “Goddamn, son of a gun, it is good to see you. How is your new life, in Wyoming?”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment and I was aware of Njal watching me. Eventually, I nodded. “It’s good, Emil. Listen, we have to catch up some time, but right now we’re on the clock. Where is the order?”

  He winced, but without much feeling, and looked away. “Now, listen to me, this is something that I wanted to talk to you about. Because, there is a bit of a problem with the order. I have to apologize to you and your friend, because you know, you nevah had a problem with me before. And that is not a lie.”

  He held my eye and there was nothing apologetic about his expression.

  “What kind of problem, Emil?”

  “Well, I have to say that me and my associates have had a very bad falling out ovah this matter, because I was standing up for you, my old friend, all the way to the finish line. But my associates were very disturbed by what they are seeing as, shall we say, irregularities in the procedure.”

  I frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

  He raised both hands. “Please remember, Lacklan, that I am on your side. But what my associates are pointing out to me is, you are no longah with the Regiment, or any of the official British security outfits. So, this operation must be, shall we say, unofficial.”

  “Whether it is or it isn’t is none of your goddamn business, Emile. You’re the middle man. You don’t get involved.”

  He grinned and gave his high-pitched wheezing laugh. “Please, dear friend, there is
nothing to be gained by anybody getting upset, or angry. I am sure that we can resolve this issue like gentlemen. What my associates are saying, in fact, is that we should have been properly notified of the irregularity, and the unofficial nature of the operation, due to the extra risks involved.”

  I snarled, “What goddamn risks? You’re an illegal arms dealer! The risk is the same whoever your client is! And the nature of the operation is none of your goddamn business! Now quit playing games, Emil, and give me my package!”

  He sighed. “I am afraid it is not that simple, my old friend. My associates feel that, in this situation, where the risk to everybody is a little bit higher, then the fee should also be respectively higher.” He laughed and spread his hands. “We are all business men, we are all engaged in a little bit of free enterprise, and in this, shall we say, special kind of operation, this onus on me and my associates to be a bit extra discreet is very high. So perhaps our remuneration should also be a bit higher.” He paused, then opened his eyes very wide. “I was very angry with my associates when they said this to me, because it was my endevah to protect your interests at all times, but privately, between you and me, perhaps what they are asking is not so unreasonable. What do you say, my friend?”

  He leered.

  I said, “Son of a bitch, you’re blackmailing me.”

  He was still laughing. “Please! My friend! We don’t need to use that kind of language! Different situations call for different, shall we say, pricing scales…”

  “How much extra?”

  “Double. You pay the usual fee in the usual way, and then the same again in cash on delivery.”

  “What do you mean, on delivery? Where is the package?”

  “Please, Lacklan! I am not stupid!” He screeched laughter. “I know what can happen to a careless man in these situations! The package is at a secure location. You don’t need to worry about that! You bring the money and I will give you the package, no questions asked!”

  “Where?”

  “Just go to Rue de L’Evangile. You are driving north from Place Hébert, and you will come to a big, iron gate on the right hand side of the road. You will see it will be open. You can drive right in and we will be waiting for you.”