Free The Darkest Day by Tom Wood Page B

client stood exposed on the bridge, the easier a target he made of himself.
    So Victor had seven minutes. There was no need to rush. In fact, Victor needed to wait until the last minute.
    The client stood with all the patience that could be expected of a man waiting to meet a professional assassin. He was anxious. If he hadn’t been, Victor would have expected a trap. He was prepared for one regardless.
    At one minute past twelve he headed for the roof door because it would take him three minutes to get down to the ground floor and on to the street outside. It would take a further minute to reach the client.
    When his watch showed the time to be three minutes and forty-nine seconds past midday, Victor was walking through the main entrance and on to the street outside.
    He was going to walk straight along the street and on to the bridge where the client waited and the watchers weren’t going to see him.
    The client had been standing next to one of the ornate lamp posts, on its north side, making a headshot difficult from where Victor had been waiting. Deliberate positioning, no doubt. The man was also wearing that large bomber jacket. The temperature did not warrant it, so Victor pictured an armoured vest beneath; lots of layers of Kevlar reinforced by ceramic plates to protect the heart and lungs, both at the front and back.
    Even with the body armour and the lamp post impeding his line of sight, Victor could still have made a kill shot, had he wanted. The client knew enough about him to know Victor was capable of such a shot.
    But he didn’t intend to kill the client, at least not until after he had spoken to him.
    Besides, this guy wasn’t the client. But they wanted Victor to think that.
    It had almost worked too. Everything about the team and their positions and the ‘client’ had been right, except the black guy in the bomber jacket had made a single mistake. He had ignored the other watchers while he had walked along the bridge, but as he had taken up position next to the lamp post he had glanced at one of them.
    It was a reflex action, hard to control. He hadn’t glanced at the others. He had glanced at one in particular because one in particular had significance.
    The real client.
    He was on the bridge too. He had been one of the first to arrive, which had been a smart deception. He had exposed himself early and by doing so had caused Victor to all but ignore him. Until now.
    Outside the building Victor was even harder to see than when he had been crouched, high up on the rooftop – because he stepped into a huge crowd of people.
    Right on schedule, a march was heading towards O’Connell Bridge. The crowd of protestors numbered several hundred, which was a good chunk less than estimates on the organisation’s social media page had suggested. It didn’t matter.
    He would have been invisible in a crowd half the size.
    They were a mix of ages, more women than men, holding home-made placards and printed banners denoting their cause: opposition to austerity measures and cuts to frontline services. They were loud and raucous, but good-spirited, moved by passion and social responsibility, not anger.
    Victor slipped amongst them, joining their chants and whistles.
    He sidestepped until he was next to an old guy with a beard to his waist. ‘I’ll give you fifty euros if I can carry your placard for five minutes.’
    The old guy said, ‘You can carry it for free, lad,’ and passed it to Victor. ‘My arms are killing me.’
    As they approached the bridge, he saw the watchers panicking. They hadn’t expected a crowd of protestors. They hadn’t checked for such things. They should have found out why the bridge was closed to vehicles. They should have thought harder why Victor had chosen this location on this day at this time. Professionals, but not the best.
    They would waste precious seconds discussing and arguing and going through options. Their attempt at deception would work against them now. By the time they