No Tomorrow (Victor, Band 4) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tom Wood was born and raised in Staffordshire, England, and now lives in London. He is the national bestselling author of a series of thriller novels featuring Victor the Assassin, including The Killer, The Game and The Enemy, as well as the novella Bad Luck in Berlin.

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Praise for The Game

Also by Tom Wood

SIGNET

For my parents

A Price Worth Paying

Bonn, Germany

Chapter 1

Today was all about waiting. Some things could not be rushed. Patience and preparation were necessary for the successful completion of even the most routine professional killings. Such jobs could be considered routine only because of the preparation that went into them and the patience displayed in their execution. If corners were cut in the lead-up to the job—should any contingency not be considered and planned for—mistakes would surely follow. Mistakes would also occur if the job was undertaken with anything less than the requisite calm and diligence. In this instance, considering the target, adherence to these two protocols was not only necessary but imperative.

He was a man somewhere in his mid-thirties, but maybe older, maybe younger. It was hard to be sure because almost all of the intel on him was unverified. It was either speculation or hearsay, rumor or guesswork. He had no name. He had no residence. No friends or family. His background was nonexistent. He was not a politician or drug baron or war criminal. He was not military or intelligence—at least actively serving—but he could not be called a civilian either. The only thing that was known with any certainty was his profession. He was a killer. The client had referred to him as the killer, warning that he had recently dispatched another team sent after him. If a book had been written on the art of professional assassination, he would have authored it. No such book existed, of course. If it had, the team getting ready to murder him would have memorized every word.

He had an unremarkable appearance. He was tall, but no giant. He had dark hair and eyes. The team’s women could not decide if he was handsome or not. He dressed like a lawyer or banker in good-quality suits, though ones that were a little too big for his frame. When first they saw him he had been clean-shaven, but he now sported a few days’ beard growth. The only notable thing about him was his slight limp, as he favored his right leg over the left. Not severe enough to take advantage of, they agreed.

A million euros sat in a Swiss escrow account. It was theirs upon providing proof of the killer’s death. His intact head, preferably, or at the very least irrefutable photographic or video evidence.

They were a tight quartet—two men and two women. All Scandinavians: two Danes, a Swede, and a Finn. They had worked together for years. Always the four of them. Never using anyone else. Never operating if any of them could not be present. They were friends as well as colleagues. It was the only way to guarantee trust in the business of contracted killing. When they were not working, they socialized whenever they could. They took turns hosting the others for barbecues, dinner parties, and movie nights. They had been more than friends at various times, but those times had passed. Interteam relations were bad for business, they had eventually agreed. Their assignments were inherently dangerous. They could not afford to be distracted.

There was no leader because they each had unique skills and talents and therefore inherent superiority in their own fields of expertise. When a bomb was used it was used under the instruction of the Danish demolitions expert, who named his devices after former lovers. When performing a long-range kill the Finnish woman, who had the most rifle experience, held seniority. When poison was required the Swedish chemist made the decisions in his authoritarian baritone. When shadowing a target the second Dane, who was an exceptional actress and knew the most about surveillance techniques, gave the orders. They operated democratically when no single team member held obvious authority. The arrangement worked well. Egos were kept in check. Jobs ran smoothly. No one got hurt—except the target. And never more than they were paid to be. The Scandinavians were not sadists. Except when they were hired to be.

It had been a unanimous conclusion that today they could only wait. The target was even more difficult to corner than they had been led to believe from the intel provided. He had no idea he was under surveillance, but his routine preventative measures bordered on the obsessive. Yet he was smart to use them. He was, after all, being hunted, and so far had given the team no opportunity to strike. Not only was he reputed to be an exceptional killer, but he was also proving exceptionally hard to kill. A good combination of talents, they all agreed, similarly agreeing that they should adopt some of his precautions into their own repertoire when this was over. Like him, maybe one day they would find themselves on the wrong end of a contract.

He was staying in a grand hotel in the city’s central district. Aside from the main entrance, the hotel had three other ways in and out. They could watch them all, given their number, but in doing so spread themselves out too thinly to act when he showed. He never departed via the same exit nor returned through the same entrance twice in a row—until he did, obliterating any chance they had at predicting his next choice. The Finn, who was something of a statistician in addition to being an accomplished sniper, snapped a pencil in annoyance.

The target had a deluxe guestroom on the second floor. He had also booked the room next to it. That made it problematic to know in which he slept. The door that joined the two rooms made it impossible. It seemed he slept during the daytime. At least, he spent most of his time at the hotel during daylight hours, though never for a duration that would be conducive to a proper sleep pattern. The single longest period of time he could be verifiably in either of his rooms was five hours. Often he was in the hotel considerably longer, whether in the bar, restaurant, fitness center, or just reading a newspaper in the lobby. He never arrived at or left the hotel at anything close to the same time. The only habit he showed was in opting for the stairs, never the elevator, despite the limp.

Not that the hotel was a good strike point. The rooms he’d booked were located near the elevators, where foot traffic was common. They had little to no chance of orchestrating a kill without the interruption of other guests. It was hard not to become frustrated. They were used to choosing where and when to finish a job, not having their target decide for them where not to make it. They kept their annoyance in check, reminding one another to stay cool. This was all to be expected. Preparation and patience.

He appeared to have no routine outside the hotel. Sometimes he patronized street vendors peddling artery-clogging junk food. At other times he dined in restaurants serving the most exquisite and expensive cuisine. One afternoon he might spend several hours browsing exhibits in a single museum. The next he’d read a book, moving from café to café with it, never staying in any one establishment for more than an hour at a time, and sometimes for only a matter of minutes. When they had figured him so impersonal as to be almost a recluse, he then spent an evening charming women in a cocktail bar.

He had no mobile phone, but at what the Finn deemed random intervals he used Internet cafés or pay phones. They found no traces of his activities when the Danish surveillance specialist then used the same terminal or phone booth. They debated whether such activities were even necessary for him or if they were merely for show, to trip up and distract any undetected tail.

“It’s working,” the Swede said.

They had no idea why he was...