Dusseldorf

Martin would have preferred not to kill her. A limited amount of collateral damage was inevitable in his profession and he had learned over the years that moral issues were for his employers to resolve, not for him. Usually he had found it relatively easy to avoid wrestling with any remorse or guilt because the collateral damage tended to be inflicted upon known associates of evil doers. So taking necessary steps to secure his own safety from folk who may well not have been innocent did not normally disconcert him. Martin was not a psychopath. Circumstances had led him to an unusual career, but he saw himself as killing for a cause, not for pleasure. He had only killed 13 people in a 10 year career and in so far as he could tell from subsequent press reports and his own research in the planning phase, each of the targets richly deserved it. But that didn't mean that killing came easily and since he had first noticed Ursula Beck he had found himself wrestling with what he knew he would have to do.

Ms Beck had effectively committed suicide. He had met her in the bar at the Hilton Hotel in Dusseldorf. The last thing he wanted was to meet someone. For a start he had fallen in love for the first time in his life and had no interest in another woman. Above all, when on assignment he invariably took every conceivable step to be as anonymous as possible. But Ursula Beck had been impossible to avoid, and it was this which he now realized first aroused his suspicions. She had entered the bar and headed directly to the stool beside the one on which Martin sat even though the bar was otherwise empty of patrons. Martin knew he should have simply excused himself and returned to his own hotel but since she had made the approach he had to find out why. Ursula was strikingly beautiful with cropped black hair, wide black eyes and flawless olive skin. She immediately engaged Martin in conversation. She told him she was a fashion buyer from Munich checking out the new season's offerings from the fashion houses which surrounded the Hilton Hotel. She chatted freely about her own work and did not seek any information from Martin. After 30 minutes of harmless conversation she invited him to join her for dinner in the hotel's restaurant. Martin had no alternative but to accept. He had to know why Ms Beck had sought him out.

As the meal progressed slowly, softly but surely Ms. Beck began to turn the conversation to him and what he was doing in Dusseldorf. He explained that he was a lawyer specializing in cross border mergers and was in Dusseldorf on business. He said he could not elaborate further because the transaction was confidential. After the coffee was served, her invitation to him to join her in her room was inevitable. When they entered the room she kissed him lightly on the cheek and then walked to the far side of the bed. She was wearing a black St John knitted suit and she sat on the edge of the bed and slipped off the jacket, revealing only a black lace bra underneath, and her shoes. As she began to remove her stockings Martin knelt on the bed behind her and put his hands gently on her shoulders. She leaned to the right and brushed her check against his right hand. Quickly, calmly and with a minimum of movement he slipped his right hand under her chin, placed his left hand on top of her head and, with a quick twist, snapped her neck.

A post mortem investigation of her belongings was inconclusive, so Martin tidied her room, sanitized it to the extent possible of all forensic evidence of his presence and prepared to leave the room. Like many professional golfers, Martin used the drug Tenormin to slow his heart rate. It improved his marksmanship and helped him keep calm and composed when the unexpected happened. He found himself completely calm now as he reviewed his situation and the optimum steps he should take to ensure a clean withdrawal. The first step as he left the room was to wipe clean the Do Not Disturb sign and hang it on the door knob. The 6th floor hallway was clear and he had seen no evidence of cameras monitoring the hallway earlier when he had walked Ursula to her room. He now summoned the elevator with a gloved finger and took it to the 11th floor. On the 11th floor he waited a few minutes and then summoned a second elevator which he took to the ground floor. He went back into the bar, ordered a Campari Soda and engaged the barman in a conversation about the relative merits of Manchester United football club and Bayern Munich for a few minutes. His drink finished he wandered out the front door and headed across the road towards his own hotel, the Radisson.

Back in his room he spent an hour or so meticulously reviewing the day and the extent to which he may have been observed with the girl. He concluded that whilst clearly the barman and restaurant staff at the Hilton had seen them together, it was not in his hotel or in circumstances which might cause strangers to take particular note. No one had seen them enter the elevator together. Accordingly, the risk of checking out soon after the time of death would be far greater than staying put and continuing to pursue the ostensible purpose of his visit. He remained in his room for most of the following day, leaving only twice to wander past the Hilton Hotel entrance forecourt but there was no sign of any alarm being raised or police traffic and he concluded the body had not yet been found.

As evening fell Martin showered and changed into a Tommy Bahama silk shirt and jeans and went searching for a place to eat. Martin liked Dusseldorf, there was a refinement and elegance about it not present in all German cities. He liked the way strangers still greeted each other as they passed by. He liked to stroll along the banks of the Rhine from his hotel just North of the city to Konigsallee with its shops and restaurants. The elegance was coupled with a certain austerity which seemed to be getting more prevalent as every new building was erected with severe lines in grey stone – on the spectrum of architecture on which Barcelona is at one end, Dusseldorf is at the other – but somehow it all seemed fitting and harmonious. Now early on a summers' evening the Rhine terrace was busy with joggers and lovers enjoying the long balmy twilight. Martin, not for the first time, felt the loneliness of his profession but the thought reminded him that his survival depended on constant vigilance – it was time to stop dreaming and check his surroundings.

After spending some time observing the comings and goings of its patrons, Martin chose a restaurant renowned for its fusion cuisine – a fusion of traditional German cooking and Asian ingredients and methods. He had read about the restaurant and being unable to conceptualize German/Asian fusion in his mind he decided he should try it. Whilst in many ways Dusseldorf was the most German of Germany's big cities – with low visible diversity in its population – it boasted a sophisticated array of restaurants, several enjoying Michelen stars. It would be interesting to see how a cuisine based on large portions of flesh and potatoes as the staples could fuse with a rice based cuisine of vegetables, seafood, and delicate portions.

As was his habit Martin went to the bar area first and ordered his Campari soda. He surveyed the room, table by table, and saw nothing to alert his well trained defense mechanisms. He was given a menu and it certainly read inventively. After a brief deliberation he ordered white asparagus (although it seemed a little late in the season) poached in soy, sesame and ginger, followed by Atlantic Charr roasted with chilies over a bed of wasabi mashed potato, and complimented by a dry white wine from a winery he knew in Bad Durkheim about 2 hours upstream on the Rhine. The tyranny of the Mercantor projection made it difficult for Martin to associate upstream with going South and it had taken him years to get used to it.

The meal was excellent. He allowed himself an espresso coffee and a simple dark chocolate and then headed out into the cooler evening air. It had been his plan to walk back to the Radisson the same way he had come. But as he studied the folk milling about along the Rhine Terrace something stuck him as incongruous. He let his eyes sweep along the terrace again, slower this time, but he could not identify precisely what had triggered his concern. Perhaps the person had moved, if indeed it was a person. Although Martin could not identify any particular risk, he never took unnecessary risks so he walked back to a cab rank he had seen a few blocks in the opposite direction from the river and took a cab back to the hotel. The foyer was empty except for the receptionist who greeted him as he walked by her to the elevator.

As he entered his room Martin again felt his senses heighten. The room was small enough that a glance in the cupboard and the bathroom quickly reassured him there was no trespasser in the room, but something was wrong. As he always did when he left any hotel room, Martin had set up the room with a few elements of trade craft – ones that were a little more sophisticated than those he had learned in his training but ones which would be easily detected by a professional. He would then add another element. Something which depended entirely on Martin's own physical features so it would be difficult to duplicate. In this case it was line of sight as he stood at the doorway, through the bars on the desk chair, to the desk drawer handle. It was this which now caught his attention. Martin had discovered over the years that if he used the widely taught elements of trade craft but varied one almost imperceptible element it worked the best. Unwelcome visitors expected his room to be organized and were looking for it. When they found it organized as they expected they were sometimes sloppy in detecting the unexpected. And so it was tonight. All of the items he had aligned so carefully on the desk were precisely where they should be but whereas when he looked through the back of the desk chair from the doorway the top bar in the backrest and desk handle had appeared to be touching now there was a tiny gap. His visitor would have learnt nothing, whoever he was, but it probably vindicated his decision about the girl. He slept soundly.

Martin awoke early on the Wednesday. Before showering he went downstairs to the indoor pool in the basement and swam as many laps as he could in 45 minutes. This pool and its proximity to the target had made the Radisson a natural choice. The Radisson also offered an excellent continental breakfast in the room and after his shower he took advantage of it. He dressed anonymously in a dark Hugo Boss business suit, hand tailored white shirt and dark blue Canali tie. Martin was tall, nearly 2 meters, with dark brown eyes and black hair. His profession and his personal preference meant that he was very fit and he looked every bit the successful businessman in clothes that draped easily over his body with a hint of the hardness beneath. He checked out of the hotel and set out to complete his assignment. Although his destination was only about 2 kilometers from the hotel it took him three hours to make the journey. Most of that time was spent in misdirection ensuring he wasn't being followed from the front or from the near. After 10 years experience he was confident he could not be followed other than electronically, and he had satisfied himself the previous night that whoever the intruder was he or she has not installed any tracking device anywhere in his clothes or baggage. The remainder of the time was spent retrieving the Dragunov SVD-137 from the drop.

Now Martin was comfortably installed in a vacant apartment across the road from the IKB Bank headquarters building in which he was interested. The road between his apartment and the bank was wide with four lanes, the center two of which rose up and became a bridge over a busy thoroughfare about 200 meters to his left. The other two lanes were service roads, one on each side of the bridge. Despite the distance, he had a clear view of the entrance to the office and he had made shots of this length without difficulty before. As 1pm approached he readied the Dragunov on its stand. The Dragunov had been his preferred weapon for some years. Its most attractive feature was that, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it could be obtained cheaply and without formalities. Although the design was more than 40 years old, he liked the balance of its 4+kg on the stand and the feel of the open stock in his shoulder. The 600mm barrel was more than adequate for a shot of this distance and the retort could be silenced. He would have liked to be able to practice with the weapon first to correct the scope if necessary but that had not been possible this time. Martin loaded the 7.62x54mmR cartridges and focused the scope on the entrance.

Exactly as his employer had predicted, his target emerged just after 1pm as a Mercedes S300 swept up to the entrance to collect him. The target was accompanied by a tall, lean figure Martin recognized as the relatively new CEO of the troubled IKB Bank and another man. Martin took a head shot. The sight was true and his target fell. The retort had been silent and there was considerable confusion among the CEO, the man, and the driver across the street. Martin withdrew back into the room, being careful not to disturb the curtains or close the window. He waited a few minutes to allow the Tenormin to kick in and slow his heart rate again and then he undertook careful forensic cleansing of the room, to the extent that was necessary, leaving the rifle in place on its stand and the carrying case behind.

Apartment blocks in Germany were not ideal places from which to exercise his trade because of the number of elderly ladies who seemed to spend most of their lives sitting in their parlor windows watching the passing parade. Martin was accordingly exceptionally careful both before he entered the corridor and again at the stairwell to ensure he was not observed. Although he had arrived on foot using a variety of forms of public transport to get within walking distance, he now slipped out of building by the near entrance, which was only overlooked by high opaque bathroom windows, and into a public garage immediately behind the apartment block where he had left his rented car on Sunday. He tossed the overnight bag he had brought from the Radisson on the back seat, slipped the silver E Class Mercedes into gear and left the garage heading away from the scene of the crime. He had been lucky enough in Paris to rent a car with German plates from Sixt and there was nothing more anonymous in Germany than a silver E Class. Divided as the road was by the elevated central lanes, he did not expect to be observed and was confident he was not. As he headed south towards the centre of Dusseldorf he could hear the sirens of the arriving police car behind him.

It had been Martin's plan to drive on to Paris, taking the advantage of the absence of any border formalities to put risk free distance between himself and the job. But the girl changed that. He now decided to remain close enough to have access to the Dusseldorf newspaper on the Thursday. The girl should have been discovered by the cleaners doing their rounds on Wednesday and becoming impatient with the Do Not Disturb sign and it would be interesting the read the press reports. So he drove only to Koln and checked into the Hilton on Marzellenstrasse. He used the name and passport he had used to rent the Mercedes, which was not the name on the passport he used at the Radisson in Dusseldorf. He ate in the hotel coffee shop and went to bed.

Thursday���s newspapers had no news of the death of the girl, although the demise of his principal target was the lead item in every paper. It seemed even more likely that he was right about the girl and that a clean up team had removed her body and paid her bill. She had called herself Ursula Beck and it was that name which had started it all. Martin's grandmother was a Beck. He could not put his finger on what it was about the name which seemed wrong for Ursula to him, but it had prompted Martin to lead in a conversation in which her knowledge seemed out of line with the short biography she had given him when they first met. Her German was also too perfect, too free of accent, her story too pat.

The newspapers read, Martin checked out, reclaimed the rental car and headed for Paris and his fee.