14. Conversations Between Killers
Chapter fourteen
Conversations Between Killers
MICK
My phone rings while I'm reviewing projected production numbers for the expanded Vanta line.
It's Wraith.
"Talk." I'm not big on greetings and my men know it.
"Ethan clocked Kenneth talking to Lars Nystrom."
Ethan is an assassin on Wraith's crew. He excels at surveillance because of his training in recon.
I sit back in my chair. "Yeah? Who's that then?"
"Hitter out of Stockholm. Works primarily with the Swedish mafia," Wraith says, surprising me. "Dagda says he's good."
Since when did we have dealings with the Swedish mafia?
"Did you have sound for the meeting?" I ask.
"No, but considering Kenneth's plans, it's not a coincidence."
No, it's not. Kenneth wants to be rid of me one way or another. Him hiring a hit on me as backup if ratting me out to the FBI doesn't work out is almost smart.
He would have been even smarter if he hadn't tried to take what is mine.
"Do you want me to take Nystrom out?" Wraith asks.
"You've got enough on your plate right now, boyo. I'll take care of the Swedish assassin." Anticipation fizzes in my bloodstream. "I haven't been hunting in a while."
Lars is good. I know it within ten minutes of picking up his trail. Not because he spots me—he doesn't. Not because he loses me—he can't.
Everything he does tells me he has caution that rivals my own.
Twice he studies reflections in car windows without appearing to.
Three times he changes direction for no obvious reason.
Once he enters a coffee shop through the front door and leaves through a side exit that dumps him onto a different street entirely.
Professional. The kind of man who survives because he assumes someone is always watching.
Right now? He's right.
I follow him through Queens, from one of our warehouses to an apartment building with access to the Bunker in its sub-basement. He gets coffee at a café across the street, sitting at a table with a view of the apartment building.
He won't see anything he shouldn't. Yes, our soldiers come and go from the Bunker via one of three apartment buildings and the warehouse. However, unless they live in one of the apartment buildings, or it's an emergency, they use the warehouse access point.
And it's in a location that no one can observe from the outside.
Lars doesn't overtly watch the apartment building though. Nothing about his movements gives away the real reason for his presence. Recon.
He stays at the café for ninety minutes, pretending to be engrossed in his phone.
Then he gets up and strolls toward the street on which another one of our apartment buildings is located.
For a while, I simply enjoy the hunt.
It's been too long.
Most men I collect make mistakes. They get lazy. Careless. Predictable. Lars isn't any of those things.
He pauses at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Nothing unusual about it except the slight tilt of his head. The faint narrowing of his eyes.
The animal part of his brain is whispering that something is wrong.
Good instincts.
The light changes. He crosses. A block later, he turns down a narrow service alley between two commercial buildings.
I follow him.
Assuming he's going to have to kill someone in a city whose law enforcement his syndicate doesn't have in their pockets, he's choosing a setting for the upcoming confrontation that decreases the risk of him being caught.
I'm capable of hunting without letting my prey feel my presence, much less see it.
But it's always good to challenge yourself and enhance your skills through advanced training.
I could move into a doorway, make him wonder if his mind is playing tricks on him, but I'm ready to take him in for interrogation.
The training exercise is over.
He turns to face me, his hand already moving toward his jacket. His eyes widen infinitesimally when he realizes how close I am.
His hand clears the weapon.
I am inside his reach before he can pull the trigger. I drive two fingers hard into the nerve bundle below his ear. His body stutters. He twists with it instead of freezing, using the shock to lower his center of gravity and reach for my knee.
He really is good, but his shot goes wild, the round slamming into brick somewhere behind me.
Lars pivots immediately, using the movement to create space.
Smart. Distance creates options.
I don't allow him any.
I catch his wrist and drive him into the wall hard enough to crack mortar. He recovers faster than most men could. A knee drives toward my ribs. I turn into it, absorb the impact and answer with an elbow that snaps his head sideways.
The gun falls from his hand.
His other hand flashes toward his ankle. Knife.
I smile. Because of course there is a knife. My hand closes around his wrist before the blade clears leather. I twist. The joint pops.
Lars's expression barely changes.
Time to finish this.
I tase him. His body jolts with neuromuscular disruption and I take advantage of his temporary loss of voluntary control of his muscles to get the zip ties on his wrists and a strip of gagging tape over his mouth.
Interrogation Room 1 is exactly as I left it the last time I had to have an illuminating conversation with someone.
Brightly lit with full-spectrum LEDs, the extra banks off for now, its steel-lined walls are cleaner than the inside of an operating room.
"My men call this room hell," I say conversationally as I strap him into the steel chair bolted to the floor for this very purpose.
Wrists first, then his ankles and finally the chest harness. I won't use the head brace unless I resort to the extra bank of lights. For now, the goggles to protect my eyes from what amounts to looking into the sun reside on the bench beside a tray of implements of persuasion.
Lars tugs at the leather-lined, steel-core restraints, his miniscule inhalation letting me know he discovered the way they bite down like the sharp, angled teeth of a pipe wrench when he shifts. With much the same purpose. To prevent movement.
I nod in acknowledgement of what he just learned. Every movement he makes that I don't want him to will cost him in pain. "That's how I got the name, an diabhal. Because I am its king."
Refusing to reply, he tries to avoid the oxygen mask I strap over his nose and mouth still covered by the tape gag. But there's nowhere for him to go.
His pupils flare as the mix of oxygen and the Triad's benzo compound begin to release through the mask, but his breathing stays controlled. Disciplined under pressure.
The Triad formula makes most men pliable. The Greek compound in the hypodermic Wraith prepped for me earlier does something meaner. Wraith found the ratio that sharpens paranoia while making pain receptors more responsive.
I use a tourniquet to bring up a vein on Lars' arm and plunge the needle into it, depressing the plunger steadily until the hypodermic is empty.
After another sixty seconds, I remove the mask and then rip the tape gag from his mouth, leaving red abraded skin around his lips behind.
Pulling up a chair, I sit across from him, leaving less than a foot between his knees and my own. "Do you know who I am?"
He doesn't say anything.
I wait patiently to see if he will answer what should be a question with a low resistance threshold. This isn't television. Real interrogations aren't emotional. They're methodical.
Silence is a tool too. So, I let it stretch. Most men will fill it because they fear what they imagine in the gaps. Lars does not. He keeps his mouth shut and his eyes open.
"I know who you are, Lars Nystrom." I begin to read off the details Wraith's team accumulated on him.
His known address. Two of his safe houses. Names of family members that I doubt even the Swedish mafia he works for know about. Details of his last three jobs.
The Reid technique calls this direct positive confrontation. Present certainty. Remove denial pathways. Force cognitive load.
I finish with, "You're a hitter. Or do you prefer the title assassin? You met with former mob lieutenant Kenneth Shaugnessy on..." I name the date and time of the meeting, as well as the location.
His jaw flexes once.
Is that for my knowledge of his life and activities or the detail he didn't know? That Kenneth is no longer a lieutenant in our mob.
"What I want to know is why?" Is he ready to admit he was hired to take me out?
Is it the primary plan now things have gone awry for Kenneth, or a secondary plan?
"Ask Kenneth."
His English is clean. Accent there, but not heavy.
"I will." I step closer. "After you."
Theme development comes next.
Not the moral sort police use when they want a confession dressed up as regret. Lars isn’t sorry. I don’t need him to be. I give him a professional frame because that is the only one he’ll respect.
"You took a contract through channels. You did not create the terms. You were sent to do a job. That makes you a tool, not the architect."
His eyes change minutely.
A man like Lars does not mind being called dangerous. He minds being called a pawn.
"What are the terms of that job?"
Lars' dispassionate look is cracking around the edges. His jaw is growing slack. He has to lick his lips and close his mouth. Twice.
The compounds are working.
I stand and reach for my slapjack. "You work for Kenneth Shaughnessy."
That gets an almost-there negative jerk of his head. He doesn't consider Kenneth his boss on this job.
Noted.
I hit him in the lower ribs with the slapjack, short and precise. Air leaves him in a controlled grunt. He tries to lock down the reaction, but the compound is taking hold. Pain lands bigger than he expects. His wrists strain against the cuffs, adding more pain.
"You were hired as insurance."
His gaze sharpens slightly.
I hit him again, same spot, not hard enough to crack bone. Not yet. The second grunt tears out rougher. "Insurance for what?"
No reaction.
"Alternative question, then." This time my slapjack comes down on the forearm above the wrist I dislocated in the alley. "Were you here to kill me this week, or were you on a recon only mission?"