CHAPTER 16

It was early Friday morning in Singapore. When he walked out of the Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Square, he was not worried about any of the surveillance cameras picking him up. He looked completely different from the man who had checked in the night before. He wore beige overalls, white shoes, his hair was a bright blond. He carried a small Adidas bag in one hand. He limped a little on his left leg. The temperature was already eighty degrees and stifling. He walked along the Marina Bay. The thrusting skyscrapers were impressive. Several ships were at anchor. He looked at the grotesque (at least to him) huge Merlion fountain. Water spouted out of the statue’s stone mouth. He knew the name meant mermaid, but it looked to him like a lion’s head with the snout of a pig. Beyond it was the HSBC building, behind that the Hitachi building. Great monoliths, impersonal and cold. There was beauty in them, but he rarely recognized beauty in anything.

He walked all the way to the Overseas Union Bank Center. There weren’t many people out on the streets yet. He hoped Berezovsky’s intel was accurate. It would be early for the man to be at work in his office. The new building built next to the OUB Center was named One Raffles Place. He skirted the main entrance and walked down the street along the east side. There he found the entrance that Berezovsky had indicated. Sure enough, the door was unlocked. He pushed it open and walked into the skyscraper.

He found a bank of service elevators in a small hallway near the back. He took the ring of skeletal keys that had been waiting for him in a small box at the Ritz-Carlton reception desk. There had also been a Sar Arms Hawk 9 mm pistol in the box, a 9 mm Wraith QD suppressor silencer, and two boxes of ammo. He found the key with a red tag on it and turned it in the silver key lock beside the elevator. The elevator door opened. He stepped inside, flicked to the key with the yellow tab, and turned that in the key lock on the steel bank of floor buttons. A green light glowed. He punched the button for the thirty-seventh floor. The elevator whisked him up with no sound at all. He might have been in some kind of futuristic capsule being shot through space. There wasn’t even the smallest of shudders when the elevator reached the thirty-seventh floor. The door opened. He stepped out into a glimmering steel-and-gray hallway. He had studied the blueprints Berezovsky had sent to his iPhone. The man’s office was at the end of the corridor to his right through a reception area. The glass doors of the reception area were closed, but not locked.

He pushed one of them open. There was a Chinese cleaner inside, pushing a steel cart. He was probably in his sixties, in a gray uniform with the name ONE RAFFLES PLACE stitched onto the breast pocket. He turned at the faint sound of the reception door opening and Jovan Durković shot him through the left eye with the silenced Sar Hawk 9 mm. He fell behind a desk, making as little sound as the elevator had.

Durković walked through the empty desks to the corner office. The door had the kind of beveled glass you could not see through, like cascades of water gleaming down its surface. The man’s name glittered on the door: DINGXIANG LIM. He remembered that Dingxiang meant “stability and fortune” in Chinese. It was prophetic. The notes Berezovsky had sent to his phone had said the businessman was worth at least fifty million.

Durković pushed open the door to the office and was surprised.

He had expected to find Dingxiang Lim working at his desk, maybe a cup of coffee beside him, probably from Starbucks, they were everywhere, wasn’t there one just in front of the Giza Pyramids? The executive was at his desk, and did indeed have a cup of coffee at his right hand, but it was a large white mug of bone china, with the faint aroma of a fine Arabic blend. Durković could tell the businessman was tall even though he was sitting behind the desk. He had a crewcut of steel gray hair. He wore glasses that made his eyes almost completely disappear, the lenses were so thick. He was dressed in a gray suit with a dark blue tie. The cuff links on his white shirt were gold and looked expensive. He wore a gold wedding ring on his left hand and a gold signet ring with some kind of design on it on his right. Probably his family symbol. There was a manila folder open on the desk with business reports strewn across it.

The executive looked up, frowning, faintly irritated. He had not expected some workman to invade his privacy at this hour. All of that Durković had anticipated.

But Dingxiang Lim was not alone.

What must have been his family were seated on a white leather couch against one wall. There was a young man, who looked exactly like his father, except his hair was black and wavy. The young woman was probably in her early twenties, very attractive, dressed in a business suit. She didn’t resemble Dingxiang Lim as much, but it was either his daughter or the young man’s wife. Durković glanced at his left hand. No wedding ring. So perhaps his girlfriend. At the end of the couch was a very old woman, must’ve been in her eighties, her skin stretched so tightly over her face it made her appear desiccated. Dingxiang Lim’s mother. All three of them looked at Durković, not with fear, but with irritation. He guessed he must’ve interrupted some intense family discussion. Perhaps they were trying to persuade the rich executive to part with some of his fortune.

Berezovsky’s intel had said nothing about the man’s family visiting him. What were they doing there so early? Perhaps it had been a surprise visit? They had wanted to talk to the great man before his day started. They’d wanted to cajole him before his phone started ringing and his colleagues came in and out with files and demands and concerns.

It didn’t matter, but Durković felt a flicker of irritation himself. Berezovsky had not briefed him about the intelligence officers following Elena Petrov in Moscow, although, to be fair, that had been a last-minute crisis assignment and Berezovsky had just been lucky that Durković was in the city. Now Berezovsky had not factored this executive’s family into his intel. It’s probable that he could not have known they were going to be there, but Durković was still pissed off. These were loose ends that he was expected to tie up. He was not doing this assignment for his usual fee. Berezovsky was punishing him for not retrieving the flash drive from Elena Petrov’s body, and that was fair enough. He would only receive a million dollars transferred into his Cayman’s account for this Singapore job. It would pay off some gambling debts. He should charge Berezovsky by the body count, but Durković was a professional, and he was not petty.

Dingxiang Lim stood and came around his desk to throw the workman out.

Durković took the silenced Sar Hawk 9 mm out of his overalls’ pocket and shot him in both knees. He collapsed to the thick carpet with a shuddering cry. His body went into shock. He trembled as he stared up at Durković, almost uncomprehendingly.

The executive’s son leaped off the couch, picking up a heavy ashtray to hurl. Durković had to shoot him dead, between the eyes, there was no time for finesse. The attack had been very sudden and stupid. But the man’s sister, or girlfriend, just sat frozen on the couch, her eyes wide with terror.

Durković shot her in the right arm and the left leg. Blood spurted across her suit and the pale couch. She gasped and fell to her knees, clutching on to the glass coffee table, which had a big book on it extolling the wonders of Singapore. He shot the old woman in the neck. Her mummified hands trembled up to try and stem the blood pumping from the carotid artery.

Durković looked down at Dingxiang Lim on his knees, both of them shattered. Even if he survived, he would never be able to walk again. Right now he could not move forward. He could fall backward, but he would not be able to get up again, and he knew that. So he just knelt there, as if he was a spectator at a macabre cabaret show.

Durković turned back to watch the young woman writhe in agony. He wondered what it felt like? He suffered from sensory autonomic neuropathy—more specifically, CIPA—congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis. He had always been getting hurt as a child and not realizing it. He’d once fallen off his bicycle and his parents hadn’t taken him to hospital for days because they hadn’t realized he’d broken two ribs. He could not sweat. He had once gone on the Internet to see what it had to say on his rare condition. It was an autosomal-recessive disorder. Only a very few people in the world suffered from it, and most of them did not live past the age of twenty-five. Durković was thirty-six, so he had already beaten those odds. He lacked unmyelinated fibers and the amount of small myelinated fibers he did have were decreased—or some shit like that. He’d got bored and found some porn. At first doctors had thought it was a disorder he had got from his father, hereditary sensory neuropathy, although they never had the chance to examine his father. Durković had killed him when he was twelve. Taken an ax to his head. If not hereditary, Durković had what the doctors called a developmental defect. There was no cure. It didn’t bother Durković any longer. He just had to be careful not to get too badly hurt. Or rather, if he was hurt, to realize it. He had felt the tug on his left ankle when the bullet in the Disaster Park had hit him. He’d felt no pain, but at least he’d been aware that something had torn through his flesh. He had dealt with it later.

Dingxiang Lim’s daughter—he decided that’s who she was, there was a resemblance—cried out now. Her body convulsed. Tears burned down her face. Durković savored her pain. What must that sweet agony feel like? It gave him a thrill to watch her squirm and shudder. He could see that pain etched in her eyes, through the tears. He was envious. She could experience something he never could.

Dingxiang Lim made a sound like coughing. Durković looked at him. The executive was spitting Chinese at him, angry, vengeful words, probably the lowest curses that his language could provide. Durković did not understand Cantonese. The words would have meant nothing even if he had been able to translate them. He would not kill the executive yet. He wanted him to watch his family die.

The daughter was speaking now. The words were also Cantonese, and meaningless, but it was the look in her eyes. He realized she was pleading for her life. For the life of her grandmother. It was too late for her brother. Durković almost smiled. Did she really think he was going to show her mercy? What made her even hold out such a shred of hope? He supposed it was human nature. There was always hope.

She continued to shudder, gasping. Durković was enjoying it, but glanced at his watch. He could not allow his pleasure to compromise his job. Anyway, once he had watched the first sensations of pain and agony on his victims’ faces, the thrill diminished. It was always the same. Then it became a little tedious.

The young woman reached out to him. He shot her in the other leg and she collapsed onto the glass coffee table, spread-eagled, like a marionette with the strings cut. Blood was everywhere, on her hands, in her hair where she’d reached up, across her lovely face.

Time to go.

Durković shot her in the head. He heard Dingxiang Lim moan with horror. Durković walked around the coffee table to the end of the couch. He’d thought he might shoot the old woman one more time, perhaps in the leg, to see some agony. He had yet to see any in her eyes. They were defiant. She sat up—where she got the strength from he didn’t know—and spit in his face. He liked that. He shot her twice in the chest and she slid off the couch and lay crumpled like something thrown away.

Durković made eye contact with Dingxiang Lim before he shot him in the head. The force of the bullet sent the Chinese executive back almost behind his desk.

Durković walked into the tiled bathroom to one side of the couch. It was modern and spotless. He put the silenced Sar Hawk 9 mm onto the counter beside the sink. He reached into the Adidas bag and took out a small bottle of brown hair dye. He squirted it into his hands and ran it through his hair. It took six or seven applications, but in the end it worked pretty well. He certainly didn’t look blond. He’d wash both dyes out of his hair later. He scrubbed his hands, dried them, then unzipped the overalls and let them drop to the tiled floor. Beneath them he wore a gray tweed jacket, a black turtleneck, and black jeans. He kicked off the white shoes and took out a pair of black moccasins, the kind that were so supple you could fold them into an Adidas bag and they just snapped back into shape. He put them on.

He picked up the Sar Hawk 9 mm and walked out of the bathroom. The four corpses lay with blood spreading. Durković put the Sar Hawk 9 mm into his belt and buttoned the tweed jacket. It was a little awkward with the silencer still on, but if he had to shoot anyone on the way out he didn’t want to make a noise.

He walked back into the reception area and saw a uniformed security officer kneeling beside the fallen cleaner, feeling for a pulse at his throat. The officer’s head snapped up. He had a .38 Taurus Model 85 in his hand with a laser sight. He didn’t have time to aim through it. He just threw up his hand and fired.

Durković knew the bullet had ripped into his right shoulder because he felt the tug and saw the torn fabric of his jacket. He fell to one knee behind a desk, drawing the Sar Hawk 9 mm, aiming, and firing. The silenced bullet missed the officer, hitting the water cooler behind him. The glass exploded and sent a deluge of water spewing over the man. It caused him to stumble to his left and that’s when Durković had a clear shot.

He fired a soft pftt and the bullet hit the officer just above his right eye.

His body crumpled over the inert form of the cleaner.

Durković was on his feet in an instant, running for the door. He had had plenty of time before, but now it was of the essence.

He ran out into the corridor.

Deserted.

He ran to the bank of elevators. He put the red key into the key slot beside one of them. The door opened. He stumbled inside, took a handkerchief out of his pocket, unbuttoned his shirt, and jammed the handkerchief over the bullet wound. His body began to tremble. It felt the pain, even if he didn’t. He put the yellow key into the key slot on the panel and the elevator whisked him down to the ground floor.

Durković walked through a deserted side lobby and out into the street. He was not concerned about the surveillance cameras he could see high up in the walls. He looked nothing like the worker who had entered. Once he got to the airport, he would pick up his suitcase from the locker where he’d left it. Five minutes later he’d walk out of a stall in one of the bathrooms looking completely different to the man who had walked out of One Raffles Place at 6:42 in the morning.

That had been the plan before he got shot.

It would be tougher to execute it now.

He hailed a cab and slid with difficulty into the back.

At Singapore Changi International Airport Durković took his suitcase from the locker and barely made it to a stall in the first bathroom. He took off the sport coat, balled it up, and took off his shirt. The wound in his shoulder was raw and ugly, but by a miracle the bullet had gone right through the soft tissue and out the other side. In his suitcase was a medical kit, the kind U.S. Army medics used in Afghanistan. He ripped open an emergency trauma dressing and put it over the wound. He secured it with surgical tape. The bleeding had already stopped in the taxi, but he took out a SOF tactical tourniquet and wrapped it around the top of his shoulder just above the wound. He didn’t want it to start oozing again.

He had several dress shirts in the suitcase and two other jackets. He carefully put on a new blue shirt, buttoned it over the bandage, shrugged on the new jacket, a black tweed this time. The blood hadn’t dripped onto his pants, so he didn’t need to change them. But his shoes were splattered. He kicked them off, took black dress shoes out of the suitcase, and put them on.

He wrapped the bloodstained clothes and shoes in a big beach towel with a bright sun on it that he’d picked up in San Diego. Then he packed up the suitcase. He left the Adidas bag stuffed behind the toilet. When he walked out of the stall, there were four young men pissing into the urinals. He waited for each of them to leave. Then he washed the blond hair coloring and the brown streaks out of his long hair. It was returned to its natural black color.

Durković shoved the towel with the bloodstained clothes far down into a big round trash bin. He got rid of the Sar Hawk 9 mm and the Wraith QD Suppressor Silencer in the Cathay Pacific flight lounge. Then he walked, dizzy and nauseous, to his gate area. He found a leather chair away from the mob of people and sat back. His breathing was shallow. He had just closed his eyes when his iPhone vibrated. He took it out of his coat pocket and looked at the LED screen. A text from Berezovsky. Durković had already texted him that the mission was accomplished. He had not mentioned getting shot. He didn’t want the man to think his number-one assassin was continuing to make missteps.

Berezovsky’s text read:

TIMETABLE MOVED UP. MEET IN VIENNA TOMORROW.

Durković had no intention of changing his flight to go to Vienna. He needed a doctor to dress the wound who would not ask questions. There was only one place Durković could do that. If Berezovsky was having a problem with a new schedule, he would have to come to him.

Durković texted back a terse message that read:

HOME TOWN.

He put the iPhone back in his pocket. He closed his eyes and shut out the airport ambience.

He felt no pain.

He thought about the agony in the young Asian woman’s eyes as she writhed in the corner glass office.

It had been exquisite.

*   *   *

Karen Armstrong walked through the swinging doors from the back of the health club into the reception area, hefting her backpack a little more comfortably on her shoulders. She was exhausted. Her workout had been tough. She was certain that someone had switched the weights. They said ten pounds but she knew they were really twenty pounds. The treadmill had been ratcheted up so the LED screen read just short of the calories you needed to burn off to give you added incentive. Boy, was she going to ache tomorrow!

Then she turned her head.

He was standing in the reception area at the counter. Signing some kind of form. The shock of seeing him shot a pain right to the center of her chest. Hypertension. She fought for breath. She was suddenly acutely aware that her T-shirt was wringing wet and clung to her breasts.

Jeff Carlson turned and saw her. His eyes lit up with recognition and he smiled.

“Hey! Hi, there!”

And now the anger came, although it was more than that. It was an unstoppable rage that flashed through her like a fire.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she said, starting to breathe in gulps to get air into her lungs.

Carlson looked startled. So did the receptionist behind the counter, an attractive African American girl named Stefanie, who Karen had decided worked out every day for three hours a day and never broke a sweat. Two young women Karen knew vaguely to say hi to were walking through the front door from the street. They glanced at each other like, wow, paranoia time. A health club worker, in sweats, turned from pinning some flyers onto a bulletin board.

Carlson looked around at them all, playing the room.

“I just came by to renew my subscription. Maybe you’re mixing me up with someone else.”

“Stop stalking me!” Karen shouted.

Carlson threw up his hands, his smile now embarrassed. “Hey, look, this is nuts. I see you in the street sometimes. So we go to the same gym? It’s the best one in the neighborhood.”

Karen was trembling now. She kept facing Carlson as she moved toward the front door to the club. “I swear to God, if you come anywhere near me again I’ll kill you!”

Now Carlson retreated, his hands still held in front of him, as if protectively.

“You’re a crazy lady,” he said. “You stay away from me, or I’m going to call the cops and tell them you’ve threatened my life.”

“Stay away from me!” Karen screamed at him.

She pushed through the health club door out into the street.

Through the glass door she could see Carlson talking to Stefanie, shrugging expansively, like: What the hell was all that about? Stefanie was shaking her head. Her eyes flicked to the front door. Karen suddenly felt very foolish and embarrassed. She wondered if Stefanie was going to cancel her subscription to the club.

Karen was angry with herself. Could she have handled that situation any worse? She had played right into the creep’s hands. She had come off like a crazy person.

Resolve steeled her. Okay. Now she knew what she had to do.

She had to get a gun.