Proctor sat at an oak desk in front of a flat computer screen, slicing an apple with his Ka-Bar knife. Sixteen centimetres of stainless steel with a serrated edge. The windowless room on the ground floor was a library stacked with musty-smelling books, the high ceiling edged with moulded-plaster cornices.
He glanced at his knuckles. They were a dull red and ached a little. Although he’d worked over the US Secretary of State, something that he’d found strangely empowering, he was thinking that he’d never killed a woman before, let alone at close quarters. He was a sniper, and snipers picked their targets with precision. From a distance. Beheading a woman was something else. He consoled himself by deciding that no one would see the expression on his masked face as the blade sliced through her neck, despite the otherwise macabre theatricality of the spectacle.
A French guard burst in. A pinched-lipped guy with a thin face and a long nose whom Proctor had secretly nicknamed, “The Shrew”.
“What’s wrong with your radio?” he asked.
Proctor put down the Ka-Bar and picked up the PTT radio on the desk, pushed the activation button. “Shit, it’s flat.”
“We have a problem,” The Shrew said.
“What is it?”
“Intruders. Armed.”
“Police?”
“Unlikely. Just two men and a woman. But they’ve killed Jacques already and taken out the CCTV cameras.”
“Alert the others. I’ll be out in a second,” Proctor said.
The Shrew darted out, a worried look on his ashen face.
Proctor took out his cell and phoned Swiss. After a couple of ringtones, he picked up.
“There’s an issue,” Proctor said.
“Tell me.”
“Two men and a woman with attitude problems.”
“So deal with them,” Swiss said. “Ring me as soon as it’s done. Don’t fuck it up.”
Proctor thumbed the red button, holstered his Slovakian K100 handgun fixed with a red-dot laser sight, stood up and walked from the room.