JJ responded to the sight of him by stopping his retreat and standing casually with the gun out of view at his side, like he was meant to be there, biding his time. And as the guy saw him JJ smiled and nodded, the passing nod men give to each other, and gestured silently with his free hand to show that Esther was on the phone. The guy acknowledged silently that he understood but he stayed where he was for a second, JJ mentally urging him to continue on his way to the bedroom.
He started down the stairs though, saying in a hushed voice when he was halfway down, “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Richard.” It was a voice that didn’t fit with the way he looked, a cleric’s voice.
In the other room he heard Esther say urgently, “I’ll call you back.” JJ shot the guy in the middle of the chest, knocking him backward, sliding down the stairs on his back then, like he’d missed a step and lost his footing. JJ moved quickly to the living room, firing a couple of shots blind as he walked in, a third as he got her in his sights, straight into the back of her head, sending her crashing to the floor and against one of the armchairs, where she lay immediately motionless, contorted like her neck was broken, her blood like oil stains on the blue fabric of the chair cover.
The guy was still gurgling on the stairs behind him, but JJ left him and walked in to take a closer look at Esther. Her face was bloodied, and one of his blind shots had caught her in the shoulder, a piece of luck that had probably given him the edge. Her gun was in her hand, pretty impressive considering how quickly she’d had to move, pretty impressive, period.
They’d had a conversation once in a pub not far from here, about who’d win out if they both had contracts on each other. He couldn’t remember what conclusion they’d come to, if any, but it had seemed hypothetical enough back then to keep them entertained over a couple of drinks.
Wider opinion had it different, but he’d always thought her the better all-around operator, even up to the way she’d caught him out there, but by the only absolute measure she was the one who was dead. If she hadn’t asked about the hotel, hadn’t raised his suspicions, she could have put a bullet in his back as he’d walked up the hallway, an error of judgment inexcusable for someone of her caliber, no matter what the basis.
He picked up the phone and pressed to redial the last number. As soon as it rang a woman answered, efficient sounding but giving just a simple “Hello?” It wasn’t a voice he recognized.
“This is Hoffman. I have a message for Philip Berg.” There was silence for a while at the other end, like she was consulting with someone or weighing how to respond. Finally she said, “Go on,” no discernible tone in her voice.
“Okay. There’s no charge for the one who raped my girlfriend, but he owes me the regular fee for Wilson and Sanderton. Tell him I’ll collect in person.” He hung up then and threw the phone on the sofa, looking once more at Esther, feeling coldly triumphant, surprising considering it was someone he’d thought he cared about, surprising too that he felt nothing else. He checked the boyfriend on the stairs as he passed, dead now, his dressing gown up around his shoulders where he’d slid down away from it; he was a hairy guy.
And then he left, stunned that he could have been so wrong, that she could so easily have turned against him, questioning whether he could ever have turned like that himself, against someone he’d known that well. He doubted it, but then he wasn’t an organization player, the same factor that had helped him stay alive, the factor that allowed him his own thoughts, that meant he didn’t always take the recommended path, the plus side of his isolated existence.
He crossed the street right outside the house and stood on the other side for a moment, making like he wasn’t sure which way to go, giving the impression that he was preoccupied. And he maintained that expression as he walked up the street, waiting until he was right alongside the car, betting that the guy inside would be averting his eyes too as JJ passed.
It was the second dummy he’d thrown the guy in no time at all, but it still worked well enough. Within seconds JJ was sitting in the passenger seat with the gun pressed into the guy’s ribs, the barrel tugging at the white cotton of his shirt, the guy shocked and reacting like most people did to the bruising up-close presence of a gun, holding his breath, like he wanted nothing to move, like stillness was his only hope.
He was young, probably even younger than Tom, which explained why he was on a detail like that, sitting in some quiet London street taking pictures of people coming and going at a particular house.
“Okay,” said JJ, once he was happy the situation was stable. “I have a question for you. Which state does Tom Furst come from?” The guy turned his head slightly, still tense, like he had an injured neck. He looked puzzled. “Just answer the question.”
He still looked uneasy, like it was a trick question, answering slowly, “I believe, sir, that Tom Furst comes from New Hampshire.” His own accent was southern, the Carolinas or somewhere like that.
“How do you know that?”
“Because he’s my colleague,” he said, and like he suddenly understood what JJ was doing added, “At the embassy.”
“Good. As long as you don’t try anything stupid, those answers just saved your life.” With his free hand JJ leaned over and picked up the camera, checking the number of shots taken. He put the camera back in his lap then and said, “Very carefully, and I mean very carefully, wind off the film and hand it to me.” The guy did as he said, his hands steady, no sign of the way he had to be feeling.
JJ slipped the film into his pocket.
“Now give me the roll you completed before this, just that roll; you can keep the others.” The American moved his hand slowly to the door compartment and lifted out a small black film container, holding it between his thumb and finger like it was something dangerous that had to be handled with care. JJ took it and asked, “Where’s your gun?” The guy gestured toward the glove compartment. JJ opened it and took out the gun, still in its shoulder holster. “Mobile?” The guy reached again into the door compartment, handing the phone over with the same precision movements. “And keys?” The guy allowed himself a little smile this time as he handed over the keys, perhaps again because he understood what JJ was doing or because he realized no one was ever that cautious with an imminent corpse.
The operation complete, JJ relaxed a little, even easing the pressure of the silencer against the guy’s body. “What’s your name?”
“Randal, sir,” he answered automatically, adding a little hesitantly, “Lucas Randal.”
JJ nodded.
“Well, Lucas, my name’s William Hoffman. People call me JJ. And at the moment people are trying to kill me, but if I survive, as I intend to, then consider me as owing you a favor.” Randal looked at him, that puzzled expression back on his face. JJ smiled and said, “I appreciate this leaves you with some explaining to do, so maybe one day I’ll make it up to you. Ask Tom: he’ll explain how useful my favors can be.”
“Thank you, sir, I’ll do that.”
JJ smiled again, amused and impressed by Randal’s southern manners, thanking the man who’d just robbed him at gunpoint. He opened the door, easing himself carefully from the car, keeping the gun on Randal, holding the three items against his stomach with the other hand.
“I’ll leave these on the street corner. Don’t get out of the car until I’m out of sight.” Randal nodded in response. “Oh, when you call in, you might earn some brownie points if you tell them the two people in the house are dead.”
“Should I mention your name?”
“Doesn’t matter to me. Probably better for you if you don’t. Except to Tom of course.” He closed the door and walked away, leaving the gun, mobile phone, and keys on the street corner, walking further before hailing a cab on a busier street.
With the afternoon passing but still warm, he left the films to develop at an express photo shop and crossed the street to a coffee bar, sitting in the window with a cup of lemon and ginger, watching the mix of tourists and businesspeople moving along at conflicting speeds.
He’d been tempted to go back to the hotel for an hour but had decided against the sleeping draft of a comfortable room, silence, a bed. He still felt okay, but he knew the need for sleep had to be building up inside him, ready to catch him off guard if he gave it a chance, and he couldn’t afford to do that, couldn’t afford to let the momentum go.
As it was, they were as much in the dark about him as he was about them. Perhaps his speed and the steady attrition would begin to get to them, draw Berg into mistakes, even out in the open.
And even if it wasn’t Berg’s game, he felt that if he could get to Berg he’d at least have some chance of freeing himself up. If it was the whole organization out to get him it would be harder, but except in the minds of the paranoid it was never the whole organization, only factions, and factions could be dealt with.
So for now at least, on a strangely aggressive high after killing Esther, he felt almost like he had the upper hand, that if he kept going there wouldn’t be much they could do to take him down. He felt more the hunter than the hunted, fighting in his own anonymous environment, as far away as it was possible to be from the place where Holden wanted him, and no need for his help either.
He was back at the photo shop early, hyped on the low-level exhilaration that was creeping through him, eager to see what information the films yielded. He waited surrounded by a group of Japanese girls who spoke to each other in quiet tones, talking like they were trying to make sense of all the minor mysteries they were encountering there.
They got their photographs first and looked through them straight away, enthusiastic, talking in rapid bursts punctuated by gasps of enlightenment, like the key to understanding the city was hidden in those pictures.
When JJ got his photographs, he too looked through them in the shop and was struck after half a dozen or so by how mystified the Japanese tourists would have been by the sight of them, all of the same nondescript house, the people caught in them equally hard to differentiate.
There were quite a few people in suits, himself included, a smaller number in casual clothes, the long-haired boyfriend going out for the paper, none of Esther herself. Most of the suits he recognized as other people who worked for Berg, people like Hooper, Elliot, Parker-Hall, a skinny Kiwi guy whose name he couldn’t remember.
In among them though was a bigger fish, Stuart Pearson, someone who was at least on a level with Berg and maybe farther up the food chain still. It was unmistakably him, the cropped sandy hair, bald on top, the small silver-rimmed glasses, the look about him of a doctor or lawyer, of someone working within some tightly defined professional structure.
JJ had never spoken to him, but he’d seen him a couple of times, knew where he lived too. And he knew that out of all the people in the pictures, Pearson would be the one with answers, about how far it all went, whether he could stop it by getting to Berg, maybe even where Berg was hiding out.
He didn’t know enough about the guy to know whether it would be easy to get that information, but he was in the mood now to get it whatever it took, angered, feeling full of poison. And he seemed to remember Pearson had kids too; so as long as he got him at home it was just a matter of finding his threshold, JJ free to operate without restraint, answerable to no one but himself, to a conscience which had long been reduced to the role of passive observer.
7
Pearson lived in a redbrick Victorian terrace that in any other city would have been home to students but in London was undoubtedly worth a fortune. JJ was thinking about it as he stepped from the cab, how people could live in places which had nothing attractive about them except the financial value of the property itself.
People worked hard, long hours, fighting their way across the city and back each day, worrying about crime and their kids, paying vast amounts to live in houses which would have been shunned by their own class at the time they’d been built. His place in Geneva wasn’t perfect but he was in no doubt as to who had the better deal.
It was only as the cab eased away and he started up the steps to the door that it occurred to him Pearson might still be at work. Even worse, if he had kids maybe his wife had given up work and JJ would have to spend time with her before Pearson got back.
He rang the bell and listened. He could hear children inside, and a woman who sounded foreign, a nanny probably. Then much louder and closer he heard another voice, Pearson’s he assumed, calling to the nanny that he’d get the door.
JJ drew his gun quickly and as the door opened stepped immediately into the gap, denying Pearson the obvious defense of slamming it again. So by the time Pearson’s thoughts had caught up JJ was already in the hallway with the gun easily visible.
“You people,” JJ said then, shocked by the way both Esther and Pearson had flung their doors open unchecked, “doesn’t security mean anything to you?”
Caught off guard Pearson reacted with a look of scorn and said, “What are you doing here?” The tone was wrong, like JJ was some social outcast gate-crashing a party, making him wonder whether, despite his visit to Esther, Pearson fully appreciated what was going on. More likely though, he simply hadn’t seen the gun, so JJ closed the door behind him and pointed it casually at Pearson’s stomach.
It seemed to answer the question, and for a few seconds the two of them stood saying nothing, Pearson still dressed as he had been in Randal’s photographs, minus the pale gray suit jacket now and the tie, the collar of his blue shirt open.
From the corner of his eye JJ could see the nanny fussing around children at the distant kitchen table. It was only a glance but Pearson caught it and said quickly, his tone suddenly conciliatory, “My study’s upstairs. Perhaps we can talk in there.”
“Lead the way,” JJ replied, confident he wouldn’t have any problems, and followed him up the stairs, keeping a couple of paces behind, letting the gun fall to his side rather than walk like a movie villain with it pointing at Pearson’s back.
The house was better inside, modern, simple, like it had been decorated by someone with an eye for design. Even the study avoided the traditional walnut and leather JJ had expected from the look of Pearson himself. Instead it was all light, brightly colored furnishings, a beech desk, a wooden seagull hanging from the ceiling.
JJ pointed at a small yellow sofa and waited till Pearson was sitting before perching on the edge of the desk. He was still looking around, noticing the children’s books among the others on the shelves, a teddy bear half out of sight behind the yellow sofa. Finally he made eye contact and said, “Why does Berg want me dead?”
“What are you talking about?
Berg’s
dead.”
“That line’s getting tiresome. Now let’s save time: I know Berg’s alive and I know he wants me dead. What I don’t know is why.”
Pearson responded, his tone clipped and harsh, “Okay, Hoffman, I won’t insult your intelligence, but kindly do me the honor of not insulting mine.” He sounded like a lawyer now as well as looking like one, a sense of gravitas about him that was as incongruous in the child-friendly surroundings as JJ with his gun. “If you place the needs of Russian Mafia factions above those of the British Government you can hardly be surprised at the outcome.”
“I don’t put anyone’s needs above anyone else’s,” JJ said, not making the more obvious objection that he had no Mafia connections.
Undeterred and combative, Pearson countered dismissively, “Of course! Your famous contractual status. But I’m afraid being a dual-nationality mercenary offers you no dispensation. You take the Queen’s shilling, you abide by the Queen’s rules. Viner knew that, you knew it, everyone connected knew it.”
JJ didn’t respond at first, confused by how certain Pearson was, and by his disdain and bloody-mindedness in the face of a gun. Then he realized that Pearson really didn’t have any idea what was going on, that he’d been fed a story and had taken it whole, choking on it, losing any sense of reason he might have had.
“You’re wrong,” JJ said eventually “Yeah, I kill people for money, but that’s all I do. I don’t deal information or play politics, I just kill the people I’m paid to kill. And Viner and the other people who worked with him ... Why would any of them have played games? What could they have gained from it that they didn’t have already ?”
Pearson’s expression changed to one of mild condescension and he said, “Taking what you say at face value, I am willing to accept the possibility of your being an unwitting pawn in Viner’s treachery, and if that really is the case then I do sympathize with your plight. But the die is cast. It’s in Berg’s hands now.”
“That’s why I intend to get to him.”
“A fanciful thought,” Pearson said, smiling, the condescension oozing like liquid around his words. “But Berg’s protection isn’t even in our hands. An overreaction in my view but, without knowing the full extent of Viner’s network, Philip thought it safer to be at a step’s remove.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry, I do sympathize, as I’ve made clear, but I really don’t think I’m in a position to help you any further.”
JJ had to admire his gall or self-belief or whatever it was making him talk like that when he was the one in the position of weakness. “You seem to misunderstand something, Pearson. I didn’t come here for help, I came here to get information. And I’ll get it, because out there maybe it’s my life in danger but in here it’s yours. And, if necessary, it’s your children’s too.”
Pearson snapped back, “Leave my children out of this.” A knee-jerk response, a reaction so immediate and powerful that for a moment he looked ready to launch himself from the sofa.
JJ responded just as forcefully though, suddenly sick of Pearson’s attitude, the words spitting out rapid-fire. “No! No one gets left out, not Viner, not my girlfriend, not me! Berg wants me dead. Well I have news—I’ve killed four people today and I’m nowhere near finished. I’ll kill you and your kids and the nanny and your neighbors if I feel like it, and I’ll keep killing people till they get the message that they picked on the wrong guy!” It worked, Pearson looking truly rattled for the first time. JJ added more calmly, “Now, how much do you love your children?”
“I love my children a great deal,” Pearson said, earnest, the first indication of a real person beneath all that bluster. “But I can’t give you information I don’t have.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. What were you discussing with Esther today?”
Pearson was suddenly too busy being compliant to notice the implication of JJ’s question, that he was getting intelligence from somewhere. “I was keeping them up to speed; there’ll be some restructuring once this is out of the way.”
“Who’s protecting Berg?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s a case of him being protected.” He was lying even now, a built-in inclination that was only slowly yielding.
“So take a guess. If he’s being protected, who might be protecting him?”
“I don’t know,” Pearson said again, more insistent, an air of convincing desperation creeping into his voice.
It was amazing to see, this Achilles’ heel opening up steadily before him, concern for his family gradually bringing Pearson around. Some of the people JJ killed professionally had families of course, but it was rare for him to kill family men in their own homes. He met most of them in anonymous places, in hotels, in transit, away from the kinds of witnesses who might act irrationally.
Pearson wasn’t a hit though, he was an information source, and the keys to that information were being fed in the kitchen directly below them. JJ didn’t want it to come to that, didn’t believe either that it would even come close, but he would if he had to and Pearson knew that too, now at least.
JJ plucked a small picture frame off the desk and looked at it, a smiling boy and girl of school age, a baby sitting vacantly between them. “Nice kids,” he said before putting it back down. Pearson didn’t respond, he merely stared at him, calculating perhaps or bewildered, all his arrogance faded. “I killed a kid once a few years back. I say a kid—he was only, say, eight or nine, but he was off his head and waving an AK-47. So I don’t know if that counts but he looked like a kid when he was dead, harmless, innocent. Then I suppose most dead people look harmless; it’s the nature of the condition.”
“Please ...”
The interjection was desperate, emotionally punch-drunk, but JJ continued, “I’ve never killed a real kid, you know, an untainted kid, and I have no doubt that it would haunt me. But, you see, that’s the trouble with me. I’d rather be haunted and alive than without blemish and dead. So you really need to start thinking, or we’re going down to the kitchen and I’ll line them up and kill them one by one till it comes back to you.” Pearson was slowly shaking his head, eyes downcast. JJ coaxed him further. “Think hard. Where might Berg be, and if he’s being protected by someone who might that be?”
He was convinced there was something in the last question, the fact that Pearson had described Berg’s protection as not being in their hands. If Berg had simply gone to ground Pearson would have said as much, so Berg was definitely being sheltered by some third party.
“I don’t know anything for sure,” Pearson said eventually. “It’s not my area and you must know how Berg is for keeping a lid on things.”
“But?” said JJ, speeding him along.
“In the last few months Philip has been nurturing some high-level links in Russia. I believe it’s how the situation being dealt with presently first came to light.”
“FSB links?” Pearson shook his head, like it still hurt him even to be giving this much. “Mafia links?” JJ asked, incredulous at the brazenness of it.
“It’s a blanket term, but yes.”
“So Viner gets airbrushed for supposed Mafia links while Berg relies on the same links for protection and no one thinks to question his operation ?”
“That’s a simplification, and you know it is.” Any hint of common sense was always dismissed as simplification. “And I don’t know for certain that he’s being protected by them at the moment. You asked me to guess.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” he said, emphasizing the words. “And I can’t guess. For God’s sake, your guess is probably a damn sight better than mine when it comes to the Russians.”
“Ah, but I have a tendency to simplify things.”
Pearson looked at him like he wasn’t quite sure where JJ was coming from. He seemed to be struck by some thought or other then and said, “You don’t stand a chance. You know that, don’t you? You can keep killing everyone you encounter but it won’t get you to Berg, and as long as he’s alive you’re dead.”
He had a point, particularly now, with unknown Russians entering his equation on Berg’s side. But that was no reason not to keep going.
JJ shot him in the chest, the force momentarily stapling him to the sofa, his shirt bloodied and wet. He spared him the head shot, thinking of his wife or whoever discovered him, so for a while Pearson sat there staring at him with a look of total shock, like he’d believed the information would buy his own life as well as his children’s. Or perhaps he’d thought it possible to reason and discuss his way out of it, that JJ could be drawn into reasoning and discussing too, and death made to creep away again.
But whatever the cause of that dumbfounded expression, it probably served as some explanation for the way he’d been with JJ from the beginning. Pearson had no idea what it was really like; he’d never been any closer to risk than sticking pins in maps. And then he’d come up against it in his own home and realized too late that he was out of his depth, like a peacetime general thrown into a guerrilla campaign. No wonder he looked shell-shocked.
After a few seconds though, he began to come out of it, his eyes working rapid expressions as everything else shut down around them, his mind finding a focus one more time. He began to mouth something and JJ moved toward him. Normally when people had the chance to speak it was something about it not being fair, like dying was a game where the best team always won. Pearson though said in a breathy whisper, “Don’t hurt my children.”
“I won’t,” JJ answered him, though in one way or another it seemed a little late for assurances.
He’d considered not killing Pearson but, as compliant as he’d seemed at the end, the fact was JJ had forced his way into his home, held him at gunpoint, threatened his kids. Part of the art of staying alive was knowing that a man like Pearson would never have let that go. He’d have waited for the right opportunity maybe, but he’d have taken his revenge sooner or later.