Headhunters (27 page)

Bachman dragged on the cigarette. He clenched his fingers, balling his hands into fists. He thought of the gun. He thought of the knife. Malakhi Rabin was watching from somewhere behind him, and, in the unlikely event that Bachman was observed, he would take care of any witnesses. They
could
wait until they were out of town, but what was the point of that? Why wait? Why not do it now? Bachman was frustrated beyond patience.

“You all right, sport?”

Bachman snapped back into awareness. He pinched the cigarette between thumb and forefinger, slipped it from his mouth, and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Fine. Just a million miles away. Thanks for the light.”

Douglas shrugged it off and took a half turn toward his car.

Bachman wondered, for a final time, whether he could afford to indulge himself, but he decided against it. Killing him now would be a foolish thing to do. There would be some short-term gratification, but that would pass and, when it did, he would have eliminated the best opportunity they had for picking up Milton’s trail again. Milton had called Douglas. Perhaps he would call again. Perhaps he would arrange to meet him somewhere. And Douglas had asked Milton where he was. Bachman had heard him ask the question. Perhaps Milton had told him something, given him some hint. Maybe, maybe not. But Milton and Douglas were friends. That meant that Douglas was leverage.

It was frustrating, but Bachman needed Douglas to be alive.

For now, anyway.

Douglas paused and looked back at him with a quizzical expression. Bachman nodded farewell and set off.

Later, he thought.

Later.

There would be time to release the frustration later.

AZABU WAS Tokyo’s most expensive residential district. Its appeal was partly geographical since it bordered the fashion district of Aoyama, the Akasaka business district and the similarly upscale Hiroo residential area. The area had a village feel and Ziggy had passed a number of small eateries that charged extortionate prices as he made his way to the address that Shoko had provided. The real estate here was some of the most expensive in the world. There were a number of embassies here, too, and that meant that there was a reasonable police presence. Ziggy had researched that and was confident that it wouldn’t be an insurmountable problem.

Ziggy parked his rental next to Azabu Gardens. He had researched the development as he planned the best way to complete the assignment. There were sixty luxury apartments nestled on a quiet, tree-lined street.

He reached across to the passenger seat and took his MacBook from his bag. He rolled down the window; it was another hot, muggy Tokyo night, and the interior of the car was stuffy. The garage was protected by a roller door with a control unit on a metal stalk sunk into the concrete on its approach. He had waited outside the block all yesterday afternoon until a resident had arrived to open the door. He had captured the frequency used and now, as he held up his transmitter and aimed it at the unit, the code was fired back and the door unlocked and rolled up.

Ziggy checked the street, saw nothing that concerned him, and rolled his car down the ramp and into the darkened garage.

The cars inside were all expensive, but the car he had been tasked to collect was the most expensive of all. It was a Bugatti Veyron. It was wide and low-slung, pressed down to the asphalt with the promise of immense power. It was the fastest street-legal car in the world, with a top speed of nearly 270 miles per hour. It was also the most expensive. This model, Ziggy knew, would have cost its owner more than two million dollars.

He found an empty bay with a line of sight to the Veyron and parked. He took his laptop and activated the software. He targeted the car and set the software to find the correct frequency. The algorithm sped through the millions of variations, slowly identifying the components of the activation code. The software’s timer displayed the interval it believed it would take to crack the code: nine minutes.

He had fretted about the wisdom of this misadventure for several hours after Shoko had sent him the details on behalf of her brother. He knew that he had been fortunate so far. He was careful, and he could minimise the risks of detection, but it was inevitable that the spate of high-end car thefts would eventually attract the attention of the police. Ultimately, cars like this one would be kept under surveillance. It wouldn’t matter how careful he was: he would eventually be caught. He knew that the sensible move would have been to decline the offer and put the whole silly episode behind him. He should have gone back to his apartment, packed up the things that he could not afford to leave behind, dumped the rest, and left. South Korea sounded good: highly technological and with the fastest domestic broadband system in the world. It was the kind of place that would suit him very well.

And then he thought of the night he had spent with Shoko and his resolution crumbled.

He would compromise.

This one more time.

That was it.

One more job for one more night.

And then he would leave.

The price for that night was the Veyron that sat in the lot ahead of him.

The timer counted down.

Three minutes.

He reached down and, without realising that he was doing it, rubbed his hand against the ache in his leg. He knew it was psychosomatic, but it always felt worse when he was stressed.

The software bleeped. It had isolated the code with two minutes to spare.

Ziggy took the transmitter, looked around the lot to ensure that he was still alone, and then fired the data at the Veyron.

The lights flashed, the wing mirrors folded out and he heard the
clunk
as the locks disengaged.

He slid the laptop and transmitter into his rucksack, opened the door and stepped out. He crossed the quiet space to the car, opened the doors and slid inside.

ZIGGY PULLED off the road, rolled down the ramp to the underground garage and pressed his pass against the reader. The barrier was raised and he drove ahead, turning to the right and then parking in the usual spot. Shoko’s BMW was opposite. The grumble of the engine echoed off the concrete floor, bouncing back at him, and, for a moment, it sounded uncomfortably loud. He pressed the button to kill the engine and closed his eyes, assailed by a sudden bout of lethargy. He felt brittle and bone tired.

The doors to the BMW opened and Shoko and her brother stepped out.

He did the same.

“There you go,” he said, indicating the Veyron with a sweep of his hand. “Not a scratch on her.”

Kazuki went over to the car and stroked his fingertips over the hood. “It is a nice car. Very nice.”

“For that much, it better be nice.”

Shoko glanced over at him. Her expression was dismissive, as usual.

“Who are you going to sell it to?”

“That is a matter for me. You need not concern yourself.”

“My money?”

“We need to talk about that.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. We agreed—”

Kazuki shrugged. “I will be honest with you. There is no money for you. Not this time.”

“We said—”

“What we said is irrelevant. You disrespect me, Ziggy. You disrespect my sister. I pay no money to a man who treats me with disrespect. And, for a man who disrespects my sister, there must be a reckoning. Do you understand my English? Do you know what I mean by that, you arrogant piece of shit?”

Kazuki undid the buttons on his jacket and let it fall open. Ziggy saw a shoulder strap and the glint of a weapon holstered beneath his left armpit.

Ziggy took a step away. “Fine. No money. We can call it quits. I’m through with this. You’ll never see me again. Just—”

“It’s not as simple as that. Arrogant foreigner, arrogant
gaijin
, you expect me to let you go? Just like that?” He laughed. “No. No, you need to learn about respect. I give you limp in other leg.”

Ziggy heard the sound of an engine and saw headlights arrowing down the ramp to pool on the ground just beyond the barrier. He looked up at the gate, but the glare of the headlights blinded him.

“Who’s that?”

He looked at Kazuki and felt his stomach turn over as he saw his face. The cocksureness had gone. He looked fearful now.

“Who is it?”

The car rolled down the ramp and turned in their direction. It was a Range Rover, big and boxy and intimidating. It stopped twenty feet away from them, the high beams still blazing out and making it impossible to see anything beyond them.

“Kazuki? Who is it?”

The man had backed up, his sister falling away with him.

Ziggy stepped even further away from them.

The passenger door and then both rear doors of the Range Rover opened. Three men got out. The engine was still running and the headlights still burned; it was impossible to make out any detail.

The door of the Veyron was still open. Ziggy edged over to it.

The newcomers stepped forward. They were all dressed in the casual uniform of the Yakuza, all sporting extensive tattoos.

One of them was at the front, flanked by the other two. He scanned the space, focused on Kazuki, and spoke to him in harsh, guttural Japanese. Ziggy tried to understand it, but his attention was hopelessly distracted and his vocabulary was insufficient. He picked out a few choice words—“theft,” “punish,” and a number of imprecations—and watched as the man pointed at the Veyron. He realised what was happening. This man owned the car. He had an air of authority about him, the impression that he was the kind of man used to giving orders.

Ziggy joined the dots.

This new man was Yakuza, too, more senior than Kazuki.

And Ziggy had been sent to steal his car.

He had been sent to steal the car of a Yakuza
wakagashira
.

The newcomer had a pistol in his right hand.

The men behind him were armed, too.

One had a shotgun.

The other had a cleaver.

Ziggy took another step in the direction of the Veyron.

Kazuki dropped the pistol and it clattered to the ground.

The man spat out angry invective.

Kazuki raised his hands.

The speaker advanced, raised his pistol and fired.

The round took Kazuki in the gut.

Shoko screamed.

Her brother took a step back, his hands dropping to his stomach, his fingers lacing across it. He bumped up against the wing of the BMW and stumbled forward.

The man fired again.

A kill shot this time. Kazuki’s head jerked all the way back, a mist of blood and bone and brain matter spraying across the BMW’s gleaming white paint. He bent backwards at the waist, his arms splaying wide across the hood before his legs buckled and he slid down to the ground, slumped there on his knees.

Ziggy hurried the rest of the way to the Veyron, ducked his head and slid into the bucket seat. He closed the door and locked it and then reached into his bag for his laptop. It was just sleeping; he slapped his hand on the keyboard to wake it up. The screen seemed to take an age to illuminate.

Shoko screamed again from outside. Ziggy looked up for an instant: one of the men had gone to her, penning her back against the wall of the garage. The other two were walking toward him. One of them had the shotgun.

Ziggy opened his app. The car used a rolling code to start the engine. The software was going to have to break it again.

He turned and looked into the barrel of the shotgun. It was aimed right at him, separated by the glass in the window, less than five feet away.

He stabbed at the keyboard over and over, trying to cycle the algorithm faster and faster, but knowing, deep down in his gut, that it was no use, and that he was dead.

“No!”

Ziggy cranked his head away from the shotgun to the man who had addressed Kazuki. He was waving his hand as he repeated his warning, and, incredulous, Ziggy understood what he meant.

He didn’t want the car to be damaged.

Ziggy reached across and fumbled for the central locking.

The man with the shotgun left it aimed at him while his friend tried the door handle.

The lock thunked into place.

“Open door,” the man shouted in poor English.

“Come on!” Ziggy stammered as he frantically hit refresh. “Come on.”

The algorithm cycled through and found the correct code.

Ziggy activated it, and the engine awoke with a feral growl.

The man who had shot Kazuki yelled angrily.

Ziggy put the Bugatti into reverse and stamped on the gas. The tyres screeched and then bit. The car lurched back, the man with the shotgun jumping clear just in time. Ziggy had overcompensated, and, before he could apply the brakes, the rear end crashed into the wall. The body of the car was light, made of a light carbon-fibre composite, and it crumpled in on itself. The small rear window was buckled out of shape, cracking down the middle and then shattering into the interior.

He heard a wail of anguish.

Ziggy fumbled the stick, crashing the gearbox into first and stamping down, too firmly again, on the gas. The car shot ahead, the rear end swinging out as he yanked the wheel all the way around, skittishly jerking left and right until he mastered it, pointed the nose at the ramp and let the rubber bite. The car crashed through the barrier, snapping it across the hood, and drew sparks as the underside of the chassis clashed against the abrupt incline of the ramp. Ziggy was dimly aware of the thought that he was wrecking the Veyron and that, therefore, it was more likely that it would cease to offer him protection, when he heard three sharp barking reports and heard the hiss of a round as it passed through the cabin from the rear to the front, punching a neat incision in the centre of the windshield.

The car hit fifty as it reached the top of the ramp, leaping into the air and then slamming down again with a ferocious din as the chassis buckled and the exhausts clanged against the asphalt. Ziggy tried to swing the car around, but it was travelling too fast and he was a poor driver, not nearly good enough to keep it under control. He stamped the brakes and skidded all the way across the road, carving a fortunate path through two lines of slow-moving cars that heralded his short journey with angry blasts of their horns, and came to a stop with a heavy thud into the side of a parked bus.