‘Sounds delightful,’ Clarke said.
Procter leaned forward again. ‘No less than he deserves.’
He heaved himself out of the chair and walked to the window. Outside, early morning sunlight bathed the Virginia countryside. Procter loved this part of the country. If it were up to him, he’d move out of DC and get a nice rural house, maybe with a few acres for a horse. Patricia was too enamoured with city life though to give it up without one hell of a fight. Procter, a man who was always careful picking his battles, knew he wasn’t going to win that one just yet.
‘How sure are you he knows what we need?’ Clarke asked.
‘Oh, he knows all right. If there’s a better link out there to Ariff’s network then we’ll never find it. That Egyptian scumbag has done a mighty fine job of staying under the radar for a very long time now.’
‘Who’s going to be asking the questions?’ Clarke asked. ‘Because whoever is in that room with Callo is going to learn a lot of information. Information that, when all this is over, could end up being used as leverage over us.’
‘I think you’re overestimating who I’ve got in mind. There’ll be the British contractors you supplied and vouched for, of course, and they only know the barest of details. So no problems there. The guy overseeing it is Agency, and though he’s an ambitious little prick, he’s got balls of purest cookie dough. He won’t breathe a word to anyone, ever.’ Procter smiled. ‘He’s my own personal bitch. I’ve got enough shit on him I could ask him to cut a leg off for me and he’d say thank you for the privilege while he bled out. I keep him so strung out he doesn’t know whether I’m Jesus Christ or the devil himself.’
The last part prised something resembling a smile from Clarke. Procter said, ‘He’ll do what we need done and within forty-eight hours we’ll know enough to set up the next phase of the operation.’
Clarke seemed pleased for once. ‘Then everything is going exactly as planned.’
‘Exactly as planned,’ Procter echoed. ‘It’s going to be beautiful.’
CHAPTER 9
Berlin, Germany
According to the dossier, Adorjan Farkas would be arriving in Berlin the next day for a maximum stay of seven days. He would then return to his native Hungary, where, Victor presumed, either the Hungarian would be an exponentially harder target, or his killing would lose its value. A lifelong member of the Hungarian mob, Farkas was now fifty-two years old and making a name for himself outside the typical organised crime industries of drugs, extortion and prostitution, most notably in international people trafficking, and arms dealing.
The latter was why, the dossier stated, Farkas was to be removed from existence. In particular it was because Farkas was currently making a lot of money buying assault rifles from manufacturers in Eastern Europe and illegally selling them on to buyers in the Middle East. Farkas didn’t seem like a particularly high-value target on the global scale of bad guys; there was probably more to it than just the arms sales. The absence of a specific motive was further evidence of Victor’s need-to-know status. Farkas was likely part of a chain Victor’s handler wanted disrupting, and killing the Hungarian was either the simplest, or perhaps the only way of stopping the guns he traded killing Americans further along the line. Though, having had saved the life of one arms trafficker already, Victor knew that nothing was necessarily as obvious as it appeared.
Aside from an exact motive, the rest of the information on Farkas was particularly extensive — a lengthy biography, lists of associates, personal details and so on — but mostly useless. Recent photographs and Farkas’s location were the most important, and sometimes only, information Victor needed. Precious few other facts were relevant to the completion of the job. And as those who compiled dossiers didn’t operate in the field, what was relevant to them and relevant to Victor could be very different. Still, given the specifics for this particular job, it was better to have too much information than too little.
Farkas had to be blown up. No accident, no suicide, no gunshot wound, no slit throat. Farkas could only meet his end via high explosives. And only the explosives supplied by Georg would do.
Again, Victor hadn’t been graced with an explanation, but, as with the motivation for Farkas’s demise, he had a reasonable idea why this death had to be so particular. Blame. His employer wanted the spotlight for Farkas’s murder to shine on some individual or faction, and whoever those people may be, the explosives Victor used would implicate them.
He examined the cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine he’d acquired in Hamburg. Usually referred to as RDX, the compound was a common military- and industrial-use high explosive and one of the most destructive of all explosive materials. With the addition of some chemicals and motor oil, RDX formed plastic explosives like C-4, which Victor would have preferred to work with, but unfortunately he didn’t have that luxury.
The fourteen pounds of RDX Victor had collected from Georg’s van was packed in seven two-pound military-use blocks. Whereas plastic explosives were malleable, RDX was a hard white crystalline substance. With the blasting caps that accompanied the explosives, Victor constructed a compact bomb from a single block of RDX that had more than enough power to kill one man from several yards away. Using all fourteen pounds would have formed a devastatingly powerful device, but its larger size would render it problematic to transport, too difficult to plant secretly, and would make if difficult to fulfil one of the contract’s requirements. Despite the obvious risks associated with using a bomb, Victor’s employer had stated there must be no collateral damage. Not that Victor needed to be told. He wasn’t in the habit of killing bystanders, but with explosives that was always a possibility, and the primary reason he didn’t work with them.
Georg hadn’t supplied any remote detonating equipment, so Victor needed to place the bomb somewhere only Farkas would trigger it. He could form an ad-hoc remote detonator by rigging a cellular phone to the blasting caps and using a second phone to trigger the bomb, but Victor wasn’t keen on that idea unless he had no other choice. Such a bomb would require him to be in visual contact with the target at the time of detonation, which not only limited where the bomb could be placed, but also forced Victor to be in close proximity to the assassination. That and the fact that the one time Victor needed full service could very well be the exact moment when he had zero bars.
From the information supplied, however, Victor had a rough plan in mind.
For his stay in Berlin Farkas had rented out the penthouse in a block of luxury holiday apartments. He would have an entourage with him — anything between three and five of his mob subordinates — all of whom, based on Farkas’s previous trips abroad, would stay in the penthouse too. There was no intelligence on whether or not they would be armed.
The weather was cold but sunny in Berlin when Victor passed the apartment building. It was a grand structure in the heart of Prenzlauer Berg, one of Berlin’s most desirable districts. Four beautiful stone storeys rose from the street with one subterranean level beneath. Maybe two or three apartments per floor with a single penthouse.
Victor spent a while exploring Prenzlauer Berg, both routinely checking for surveillance and to get a feel for the area he would be operating within. It had escaped much of the devastation of the Second World War and so had been mercifully spared the post-war development the rest of the city had endured. What was built in the late nineteenth century as a working-class district was now a very affluent part of Berlin. There were many tasteful bars and restaurants, high-end fashion boutiques, delicatessens and cafes. Victor could see why a wealthy Hungarian gangster would choose to stay in this part of the city.