one bullet in the Makarov for you and one spare in case I decide to make you suffer first.’
Her eyes widened further.
‘However,’ Victor continued, ‘if this isn’t a setup then you can have the gun back after I’m done speaking with your boss, so if you tell him about it on the phone the only thing you’ll achieve is to inform him that you can’t be trusted to do your job properly. If your boss is the kind of man who will have no problem with that then by all means let him know I disarmed you. But it’s up to you.’
Victor placed his hand on the door handle.
She frowned and said, ‘I can really have it back after you’ve finished?’
‘Sure you can,’ Victor answered. ‘Now give me your car keys.’
A cold wind blew across the wasteland and rippled Victor’s jacket when he stepped outside the Saab. The cold air found its way under his shirt and he saw his breath cloud in the night air. He left his jacket unbuttoned and looked around. The half moon was the only source of light, but Victor’s eyes had adjusted to the night while he’d sat in the back of the taxi.
The Rolls-Royce limousine was painted black and polished to a gleaming shine, with blacked side windows. Whoever was in the car would be able to see him, even if the darkness would disguise his features. If Kooi’s broker knew what he looked like then he would know Victor wasn’t him before he got much closer.
He looked to his right, back towards the gate and the razor-wire-topped fence. He couldn’t see them, but they were there, approximately two hundred metres away. A short distance, but a long way to sprint in the dark if pursued by cars and armed men.
Running wasn’t an option. Nor was fighting – the limousine’s ground clearance was about an inch less than it should have been because it was carrying six hundred extra kilos of reinforced steel and polycarbonate. The Makarov tucked in Victor’s waistband wouldn’t make a dent. He would sooner face a tank, because at least a tank’s crew had limited visibility and the Rolls-Royce, even one carrying extra weight, had twice the top speed of the fastest main battle tanks in the world.
Which meant the Saab behind Victor was the only option if things went wrong. Ejecting Francesca from the driver’s seat, whether she was alive or dead when he did so, would take time. Inserting the key into the ignition, starting the engine, releasing the handbrake, circling towards the exit, would all take time. And he wouldn’t have that time.
Because he looked to his left, to the empty blackness that extended seemingly into infinity, and pictured someone lying out there, about a hundred metres away, peering at him down the scope of a rifle.
This Robert Leeson had sent an armed subordinate disguised as an unthreatening female taxi driver to pick him up directly from an airport to ensure he had no weapons. He was a cautious man. His precautions in Budapest wouldn’t end with an eight-shot Makarov. He was sat in the back of an armoured limousine. He hadn’t ordered Francesca to leave so much space between the two cars for some arbitrary purpose, and if she had received no order she would have parked closer. Leeson wanted the space for a specific reason. The same reason that meant they were meeting on empty wasteland for more than just privacy.
The marksman had to be to Victor’s left, because the entrance was to his right and the Saab’s headlights might have given him away as Francesca drove through the gates and across the site. Victor looked away so as not to let the marksman know of his deduction.
The only remaining question was whether the marksman was out there as a precaution, or whether he was there because Leeson wanted to erase the link between himself and the NOC’s death. He might have learned about the client’s disappearance and arrived at the correct conclusions.
That question would be answered when Victor was equidistant between the two vehicles, in the killing zone, with no cover and nowhere to run. Even if this wasn’t a setup, it was conceivable that Francesca would reveal that Victor had taken her gun and Leeson, ever cautious, would give the order to shoot rather than risk a face to face with an armed killer.
He waited next to the Saab. He was protected while he stayed there because the marksman had no need