these photographs he seems a good fit. For what it’s worth, he matches the description as closely as we could hope for.’
‘As do a lot of men.’
‘I said for what it’s worth. What do you want to do?’
‘We have just one more potential after him, correct?’
Beatty nodded. ‘But he matches the least criteria. This guy here’ – he tapped the screen – ‘ticks more boxes.’
‘But not as many as the two that came before him.’
‘Maybe that just means he’s good at staying hidden. As expected.’
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. ‘Tell me what your gut says.’
‘That the target has to be one of the four possibles and he wasn’t the previous two and he’s unlikely to be the fourth. Therefore, on the numbers, this guy has to be the one.’
‘I’m coming to the same conclusion.’
‘Shall I deploy a team?’
‘Unless you want to take him on with just the two of us.’
A smirk. ‘I don’t think that would be a particularly sane move given the target’s skill set.’
‘Scared?’ Muir asked.
‘I didn’t get this old by being brave.’
‘You’re not old, Francis.’
‘Saying that just means you’re getting old too. How do you want to do it?’
‘We’re running out of time so I want as many boots on the ground as we can get. But I don’t want any deadweight. They all have to be good. And each and every one needs to know exactly the kind of target they’re dealing with.’
‘Then you need to be prepared to bump up the fee.’
She shrugged. ‘Better than the alternative. I don’t want any amateurs with a guy this dangerous. We can expect he’s armed. Who knows what he’s capable of?’
He matched her shrug. ‘Put half a dozen guys on him and it doesn’t matter what he can do. It doesn’t matter if he has a gun. We’ll have more. Numbers always win in the end. What about at his hotel? He may have an idea who is staying there but we can trap him in the building. It’s public. We can—’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Not his hotel. Trust me when I say that would be an extremely bad idea.’
‘Okay. You know more about him than I do. So where?’
She tapped the screen. ‘We know where he’s going to be so let’s wait for him to leave. We’ll stay close – but not too close – behind and in front. When the opportunity presents itself – and it will – we move in and surround him. He can’t watch every direction at the same time. Speed and surprise before he can process what’s happening.’
‘You make it sound so simple.’
‘It will be,’ Muir said confidently. ‘He won’t know what hit him.’
FIVE
Vienna, Austria
The patient wore a charcoal suit. It was a smart business garment of obvious quality and cut in a classic style. The jacket was open and a steel-grey tie rested over a white shirt. He was tall and lean but unmistakably strong, and sat with a relaxed yet rigid posture, his hands resting upon the arms of the visitor’s chair. He looked a little younger than the age listed in his medical records. His dark hair was cut short and neat but was notably free of product or fashionable style. Eyes darker still than his hair betrayed nothing of his personality save for a calm watchfulness and keen intellect. Dr Margaret Schule, who prided herself on her people-reading skills, found him quite fascinating.
She examined the site of the surgery and asked, ‘Are you experiencing any pain?’
The patient shook his head.
‘What about when I do this?’
The patient shook his head again.
‘Okay, that’s tremendous. I’m so pleased.’
Schule tugged the latex gloves from her hands, bunched them up, and used the toes of a shoe to push down a pedal and open the clinical waste bin. She dropped the gloves inside. The bin was the only object in the room that marked it as the office of a medical professional, and its presence was as unavoidable as its appearance was unpleasant. She kept it in a corner, where it was less likely to draw the eye and disrupt the room’s carefully composed ambience.
Her office was on the third floor of a late eighteenth-century Viennese townhouse that had once belonged to a conductor in the Royal Orchestra in the time of Mozart. Schule loved to tell her patients of this fact. Brightly patterned Turkish rugs covered much of the dark-stained flooring. She refused to have carpets for hygiene reasons. Classically painted landscapes hung from the walls. The furniture was comprised