Deception, p.3
Deception, page 3
‘Look, I’m not getting it,’ he said, putting the phone away.
She tutted and turned back to the pitch. A few moments later another ping. Voicemail. No harm in listening to it. Just Susie, to say the conference call had finally ended, more than an hour after it was scheduled to, and without resolution. Hardly a surprise. Too many big egos butting heads. He’d have to think a bit more cleverly about how to resolve that one.
The players came back out onto the field. Eli glanced over and Bracey gave him the thumbs up and his son beamed.
If his goal ended up being the winner…
Phone again. Bracey cursed under his breath. He should just turn the damn thing off. But what if…
Unknown number. Wendy wasn’t paying him any attention. The call rang out.
The silence didn’t last long though.
This time he did answer and Wendy turned to send him daggers the moment he pressed the device to his ear, even before he’d said a word, like she had a sixth sense of what he was doing.
‘Yes,’ he said, turning away from her and the field.
‘It’s me.’
‘What do you want?’ he said, cupping his free hand over the receiver. ‘I told you only to call if there’s a problem.’
‘Yeah. There is a fucking problem.’
No. This couldn’t be happening.
‘Talk to me.’
‘Muller. He’s gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean gone? Someone else has him?’
‘No. Yes. They did. But now he’s dead.’
‘How the hell–’
‘There’s a lot of moving parts right now. I don’t have all the details. But I do know Muller is dead. And you need to make a decision.’
His head spun. Decision? If Muller was dead…
‘Bracey, you need to tell me. I can’t do this without your authorisation.’
A chorus of shouts came from behind him. Bracey turned around and spotted the huddle of players. Eli lay on the ground, writhing in pain.
‘Bracey. Give me the instruction. We can try and rectify this and get back on track, or we can burn it all. Clean up and clear out.’
‘If we clean up and clear out…’ He didn’t finish the sentence. It was a thought more than anything else. But he feared that if they tried to gloss over their involvement now… who knew where it would end. Huge financial losses for some very important people would only be the start.
‘We need to get this situation back under control,’ Bracey said. ‘We’re too far in to walk away.’
‘Okay. So how?’
‘Not over the phone. We need to meet.’
‘Usual place?’
‘Yes. I’m leaving now.’
He put the phone away. A quick glance to the field. Eli was propped up on one elbow, his face creased with pain as he clutched his ankle. Wendy had run onto the pitch too. They both looked to him.
His heart stung… but Eli would be fine.
Bracey turned and strode away.
‘Davis!’ Wendy screamed. ‘Davis!’
He didn’t listen. Eli would be fine, he told himself again. Even if he wouldn’t understand, largely because Bracey couldn’t possibly explain the situation to them.
Life and death. Some people claimed football was even more important to them than that. But what about thousands of lives? Millions? What about decisions that could impact the futures of entire countries?
Whether directly or indirectly, that was what hung in the balance right now, and all of it dependant on the actions Bracey took from here.
5
Ryker reached his planted motorbike without further incident, though with frustration and regret taking over. The moment Muller – the man who Leia Devereaux had entrusted in Ryker’s care – fell to his death replayed over and over. Why had Ryker taken the risk with them both and tried to make those jumps? The whole point of his emergency exit route, if his past caught up with him, as it had so many times, was that it was a route that not everyone would want to take. Had there been a better way? Should he have stood his ground in his apartment and fought off those attackers directly, whoever they were? With Devereaux’s help?
What had happened to her, anyway?
In all honesty, Ryker didn’t know very much about Leia Devereaux on a personal level, other than she was a well trained and highly experienced hired gun with little moral conviction, who’d worked for both shady government organisations and criminal kingpins in the past. He’d first come across her when she’d been sent after him. But their first encounter hadn’t played out quite so simply as that, and in the end, Ryker had even helped save her life when they’d come up against a joint enemy.
Her whereabouts and activities since then? Ryker had no clue, and he couldn’t fathom why she would possibly have gone to the trouble to have sought him out for help.
How had she even found him?
Ryker checked over the motorbike. Good to go and with a full tank, and he’d previously filled the side saddles with a spare change of clothes – including a fresh pair of shoes which were particularly welcome with him having traversed his escape route barefooted.
He could easily have hopped onto the bike and ridden out of Rome – albeit with a stop at the safe deposit box not far away to collect his few valuables: passports, cash. He didn’t. While he had no clue what mess Leia Devereaux had brought to his door, Ryker also didn’t yet know whether he was now firmly part of that mess or not. Would the people who’d come after her – that man too – now see Ryker as their enemy, or just as someone caught in the crossfire?
He wouldn’t run away without first trying to figure out what he could, and whether he was now a target.
He left the bike in place and decided to exit the car park on foot, and at street level rather than trekking back through the sewers. At least approaching his apartment building from the opposite side from which he’d run should give him a small advantage if there were still any of the ambush group out there looking for him – and Devereaux?
He turned onto his street and stopped behind an ageing tree. To his surprise he saw no evidence of the ambush crew at all. Even though Ryker hadn’t seen their vehicles arrive, he knew that there’d been three. Hefty vehicles too – most likely large SUVs. On a street like this where the typically compact European cars were generally parked bumper to bumper both sides of the road, those three vehicles would have stuck out massively, and certainly from what he’d heard, the drivers hadn’t taken the time to neatly parallel park. The ambush had been quick, efficient.
But no signs of those vehicles now. Ryker thought back to what he’d seen and heard. The two flashbang grenades. Not exactly sophisticated military equipment, but military equipment nonetheless. Yet the two men Ryker had most clearly seen, up on the rooftops, had been casually dressed. Some elite tactical group? Possibly, but certainly not an official SWAT team or similar, otherwise the crew would have had uniforms, tactical clothing, and they wouldn’t have just scarpered like this. They would have been on scene still, working with the local police. The local police, whose presence was certainly noticeable further along the street, their activity likely clustered by the dead man, but not around Ryker’s apartment. Yet.
So an unofficial, or at most semi-official hit squad had tracked Devereaux and her now dead companion to Ryker’s apartment. Good guys or bad guys? Often the line between the two was impossibly blurred.
He sucked in a lungful of thick city air then sighed. How many times had he himself been part of an assault like that? Which only made him all the more curious as to what was happening.
He carried on walking along the street and moved on past the doors to his apartment building. No sign of any action in there. He didn’t have anything of particular value inside, except for some cash and a few weapons. He could leave it all if he wanted, or needed to. He wasn’t sure that was the case yet, but he carried on walking past anyway.
Ryker imagined himself lying in bed earlier. Back when he’d heard the car parking outside, right before he’d stepped out of bed. Devereaux’s car? He paid careful attention to each vehicle as he passed. Having walked this street more than once daily for months, he knew the regular cars. It didn’t take him long to spot the one that stood out most. An old Opel, its bodywork pranged here and there, rust eating into the wheel arches and elsewhere.
If that was her car, did that mean she hadn’t escaped after all? Or had she simply found an alternative route away?
Ryker glanced in through the windows of the Opel but still carried on walking. The street soon became more busy with curious bystanders, flashing lights from several police vehicles. Two ambulances. Two? Ryker thought again back to the rooftop chase. Had Devereaux killed any of the attackers up there? Had she been killed?
No. She was too wily, surely?
Ryker stopped and idled with the others, trying not to get too close too soon, but aiming to eavesdrop on the various conversations of the watchers.
A dead man. He’d jumped. No, pushed others thought – another man had pushed him off the rooftop. Gunshots heard up there too. An explosion. Two explosions.
Some of the conversations were likely from genuine eyewitnesses, some were rehashed. Some were pure fantasy. But Ryker knew it wouldn’t be long before the police realised they had something more than just a man falling to his death to deal with. Ryker’s apartment, the scene of two explosions, would soon fall within their scope. The rooftops too.
‘Did you see it?’ came a croaky Italian voice from Ryker’s right.
‘No,’ Ryker said, turning to the hunched-over man who stood by the police tape, a walking stick in his shaking hand. ‘Did you?’
The old man gave him a questioning look, perhaps because of Ryker’s accent. He could understand Italian perfectly well, and could speak it more or less fluently, but his accent gave him away as non-native. As English, to anyone who really took the time to think about his intonations.
‘I was drinking coffee,’ the man said, with a little wave of his stick, indicating the cluster of tables at a café that now sat just within the police cordon. Ryker knew the place. He’d been there plenty of times himself.
‘A suicide?’ Ryker said.
‘No,’ the man said with a stern shake of his head. ‘I’d already heard them. A bang. Shouting. An argument. I looked up. I saw. He was pushed. By another man.’
Ryker didn’t respond as his brain whirred. Not the best of eyewitnesses. If he’d really seen the action he would have seen Ryker leaping. Would have seen the dead man attempt the same. Would have seen – and heard – the shooter before the man’s grip left him and he plummeted.
So why that version of events? Most likely this guy had already been talking to others, and this was the story that was beginning to emerge from all as they made their own memories fit with what others had seen. Or claimed to have seen. But it did make Ryker wonder one thing: who had started the story of this being a murder? Of one man pushing another? Because he had no doubt that it could end up putting unwanted pressure on him. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d been framed for a murder he hadn’t committed.
Was that the intention?
Ryker looked around himself a little more carefully. Perhaps one of the attackers remained in the area? Not just waiting for Ryker – or Devereaux – to emerge, but to act as a thorn in Ryker’s side by feeding misinformation to bystanders, and ultimately the police.
‘What did he look like?’ Ryker said to the old man.
‘Who?’
‘The guy who pushed him.’
‘I couldn’t see him clearly because of the sun.’
Ryker nodded, but noticed the man’s curious look change to one more of suspicion.
Enough. Ryker eased himself back through the gawkers, looking about him as he moved. No indication that anyone was watching him too closely but he was nowhere near ready to let his guard down yet.
He reached the Opel. One more look in front and behind before he tried the driver’s door. Unlocked. Ryker sank into the seat and looked over the worn cloth interior that smelled of stale cigarette smoke. Glove box? He found the car key but nothing else. Interesting. No rental documents or anything else like that. He got out and popped open the boot. Nothing inside at all. Devereaux and Muller had travelled light. From where? The licence plate on the car showed it was Italian but it could easily have been taken from another vehicle and simply screwed on.
Ryker sat back down in the driver’s seat and thought a moment. He took out his phone. He checked the licence plate against the databases he had access to for the Italian authorities. Certainly not official access. When he’d decided on staying in Italy, he’d made sure he had every asset at his disposal, and several weeks ago had found an Italian hacker on the dark web who specialised in ghost accounts. By getting access to an organisation’s admin account, a hacker could create fake profiles, often employee profiles, with rights and accesses to match, and then sell those ghost accounts for money. Better than simply stealing the credentials of an existing account as those were too often compromised soon after when the legitimate user realised something amiss with their login.
Still, ghost accounts needed to be treated as temporary, as at any point in time a clear-up of an organisation’s systems would identify and purge them, but this account remained active still. Within a few minutes Ryker had determined that the licence plate in fact belonged to a twelve-year-old Toyota. Not much of a find, except to confirm that the Opel had travelled on fake plates.
From where?
Ryker looked up from his phone and fixed his gaze across the road. A man, walking. Nothing particularly untoward about him. He was in his thirties, perhaps early forties, casually dressed in jeans and a grey shirt. He walked with his head down, not paying any attention as he neared Ryker’s position. But it wasn’t the first time Ryker had seen him. The same man had been hanging around the crime scene minutes earlier. Now he was casually heading back in that same direction.
Which he knew meant one thing: the attackers were still here.
6
Ryker stepped out of the car, not caring about being discreet as he kept his eyes on the man across the road. The guy didn’t once look over to Ryker…
When the man was ten yards past, with not even the slightest of glances behind him, Ryker rushed for the doors to his apartment building. He moved up to the fourth floor. The corridor remained quiet. Wisps of black from the explosive charge of the flashbang scarred the already shoddy wall. But the remnants of the device itself had been cleared up.
Ryker reached his apartment door. Closed. Not locked. He opened up, carefully, and took a couple of hesitant steps inside. Warm air wafted in through the broken window in the living area. Glass shards lay spread across the heavily trodden floorboards. Once again nothing else remained of the flashbang except for the black marks on the wood. Other than that, the apartment looked exactly as Ryker had left it. Whoever had been here hadn’t trashed it, hadn’t searched top to bottom for anything, they’d simply cleaned up evidence and scarpered.
He moved to the broken window and looked out. No sign of that man now. Had Ryker got it wrong?
He spent a couple of minutes packing a shoulder bag, taking another set of clothes, phone charger, a bottle of water, the cash he had on hand, and the other hunting knife which he kept strapped to the underside of his bed. He stood by the sofa. It’d been some time since he’d stayed in one place so long. He didn’t have any deep emotional feelings about now leaving this apartment so suddenly, but he did know this was it. His time here was up.
One last look out of the window. All clear. Outside at least. Inside? Far more subtle than previously, but he was damn sure he’d heard it still. Footsteps. He took out his phone. The camera feed still worked. He’d fitted the pinhole camera himself, within the light-fitting in the corridor, a couple of steps down from his door. The device and its position gave a pretty much unobstructed view from his apartment back to the stairwell.
Sure enough, there he was. The guy with the grey shirt. Tiptoeing along the corridor, crouched down, handgun held in a double grip. Ryker watched him for a few moments.
From the fourth floor, he knew he could make an easy enough escape through the bedroom window, using drainpipes and window ledges. He’d be exposed to anyone on the street, but he’d seen no waiting crew there. This time.
Still, he didn’t take that option. No answers that way.
Instead, he creeped slowly to the apartment door and pulled himself up against the wall right next to the door frame. Gaffer tape dangled down next to his face where he’d previously had the knife strapped to the wall. Another look at the phone screen. The man stood in a near identical position on the other side of the door. Did he know Ryker was there?
Then in swift motion the man jumped in front of the door, lifted his foot and drove his heel against the spot right below the door handle. The door shuddered. In fact, the whole of the wall Ryker was leaning against did, but the door remained in place. Ryker quickly put his phone away before another slam and this time the door splintered around the closed lock and flew open and Ryker got ready with the knife…
Nothing happened. No sign of the guy. Ryker couldn’t see or hear him even though he must only have been inches away, on the other side of the wall.
The knife gripped tightly in one hand, Ryker reached his free hand down to his pocket, moving ever so slowly so as to not make a noise. He lifted the phone back out with two fingers then unlocked and entered the camera app without looking at the screen. But he had to look at the screen to find out where the man was.
A quick glance. Then another longer one.
The man was standing right there, gun barrel pressed up against the wall, exactly where Ryker’s head was.
Ryker threw himself down as the gunshot boomed. Plaster burst from the wall. The man raced in through the open doorway. Another gunshot and the bullet whizzed by Ryker’s ear. He went to swipe the knife across the man’s ankle but the guy was too quick and lifted his foot and smashed it into Ryker’s face, causing him to reel back. He took aim with the gun once more. Ryker stared down the barrel as blood dripped from his nose. Propped on his elbow he didn’t have time to leap up and reach the man before he fired.
