The International Assassin: A Sexy Times Crime Thriller Read online

  Contents

  Front Matter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  THE INTERNATIONAL ASSASSIN

  (A SEXY TIMES CRIME THRILLER)

  BY

  ADELE ASHER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text Copyright © 2014 Adele Asher

  This digital edition ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Chapter 1

  IT TAKES around nine months to create a life and less than a second to end it. The reasons for creating a life are often the same reasons for ending one. Children are born by their parents out of love, passion, by accident or for financial gain and people are murdered for much the same reasons. There is a perfect symmetry between the moment life is created and the moment life is ended. The journey in-between however is mostly unique.

  I used to have a recurring dream. I was holding a pistol, it was pointed at my victim and no matter how hard I tried I didn’t have the strength to pull the trigger. I didn’t tell anyone about this dream - in my line of work it is not wise to discuss ones insecurities about the act of killing another human being. To express weakness in the performance of your art would cast doubt at one’s ability to perform at the most critical of life’s junctures - the ruthless act of ending a life without pause or question.

  Sometimes guns break. I had a copy of a Beretta 92FF that would repeatedly jam spent cartridges in the breach. It was a fine pistol - delicate, balanced and with enough power to end life in a heartbeat. You could choose a Glock or a Sig Sauer for their brutal stopping power and reliability but they lack the markswoman’s finesse of the Beretta. People think as a woman I should carry a woman’s gun, a Walther PPK perhaps, but the PPK’s ease of being slipped into a purse comes at the cost of a woeful inability to inflict damage. A Walther PPK versus a six-foot amphetamine-fuelled Russian is like hunting for buffalo with a water pistol.

  The problem with all guns is they have limited use in many situations. They are loud unless you use a suppressor that generally ruins their power to kill. They are hard to conceal and more importantly for the situation I now found myself in, you can’t take them on a plane.

  I couldn’t tell you much about Vladimir Kolokov apart from what I had read in the papers. I had learnt little in the short time since the plane had taken off from Dubai other than he was fat, sweaty and drank too much Vodka. He also had a distasteful lecherous manner towards women based on my observations of his limited interactions with the Emirates cabin crew.

  As I sat reclined in my luxury leather seat of the impeccably trimmed first class suite on the aisle opposite Vladimir I pondered how many prostitutes he had availed himself to whilst in Dubai.

  Vladimir must have felt quite secure in the confines of the first class cabin. His usual entourage of gorilla Uzbek bodyguards were not travelling with him. He had mistakenly put his trust in the security of the airport system. I had waited several months for the brief window of opportunity to kill Vladimir. The next several hours aboard the Airbus A380 would provide me with ample opportunity to bring his contemptible life to an abrupt end.

  “Would you like more Champagne?” the stewardess asked me in an Australian accent.

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  Since I didn’t need sniper level accuracy to off the fat durak I felt obliged to imbibe the complimentary Bollinger despite it being three a.m. The stewardess recharged my glass for the third time. A slight state of drunken euphoria was setting in.

  Vladimir was starting to doze off, having scoffed the entire of his four course meal and washed it down with enough Vodka to kill a horse he settled back reclining his chair and started to snore. I expect he had run out of energy from his endless sexual exertions with Dubai’s prostitutes.

  I had briefly considered this as a potential modus-operandi to ‘do him in’. It was a simple enough proposition. Vladimir would cruise the bars of the Burj Khalifa and pick up some Eastern-European tart before bedding her. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to attract his sleazy eye but I had concluded the aggravation of escaping Dubai without fear of incarceration was too much, besides I had spent a lot of effort having my Louboutin heels crafted into the perfect clandestine dagger that it would seem a shame to waste them.

  Johnny had declined to accompany me for the trip to Dubai, which was a shame as the first class cabins on Emirates flights have a wonderfully large and private shower suite in the nose that is perfect for renewing one’s membership to the two-mile high club. There is nothing like a good shag in the nose of the worlds biggest plane at thirty-six thousand feet to pass time during a long haul flight. Unfortunately Johnny didn’t like Dubai.

  ‘It’s too hot and you can’t kiss in public’ he told me when I offered to pay for the trip.

  So Johnny stayed in Chelsea and looked after Foxy, my long crested Chihuahua.

  It’s really a question of timing.

  Impatience and opportunity meant I should really have just got on with it and done the fat bastard in as soon as the cabin crew departed for their mid-flight nap. However the potential that my deeds may be uncovered and force a landing in a jurisdiction not of my choosing would be too great. My mysterious employers preferred not to deal with such eventualities. Vladimir wasn’t going anywhere so time was on my side. I bided my time, watched Harry Potter on the inflight entertainment system and enjoyed the champagne.

  The cabin lights dimmed to the feint blue glow from the starlight fiber-optic feature roof. It was like a fairytale.

  But not for Vladimir.

  I was about to deliver him his worst bloody nightmare.

  As the fat oaf dozed into a sleep tucked beneath his airline blanket my moment presented itself. Satisfied we were all suitably pissed or asleep the barman and first class cabin attendants had disappeared into business class. The first class cabin was lightly populated. Most of the passengers were seated towards the front and had the privacy screens of their private suites raised. I reached down to remove my carefully modified Louboutin’s to reveal the most deadly of fashion accessories. Inside the four-inch stiletto heel was a beautifully crafted stainless steel needle tipped with a nerve agent. A hypodermic needle so thin it would barely leave a trace on its victim, its deadly toxin procured from a South American snake venom had all the hallmarks of a heart attack, something the overweight and over-drinking fat Russian should have been victim of during his sexual exertions in Dubai if ther
e was any justice. In the absence of natures intervention I was content to do Gods will and speed the fat Russian to heaven or (more likely) hell’s gate faster than the five-hundred and forty miles per hour the A380 was speeding us towards Heathrow at.

  I carefully removed the outer shell of the heel avoiding touching the deadly poison tip. It would be unfortunate if a spot of turbulence over Turkey caused me to stab myself by mistake.

  Satisfied my window of opportunity was clear I got up and walked down the aisle armed with my deadly heel. Unlike carrying a loaded pistol it was the perfect subterfuge, even if someone caught me what would be unusual about a girl carrying her shoes after a long days shopping in the tax-free mall? Of all my arsenal of lethal toys the killer Loubi was by far my favourite. The red soles almost demanded to be made redder by the blood of my hapless victims.

  I leaned over to check Vladimir was fast asleep. I didn’t want him waking up and start screaming but luckily by now he was in a deep Vodka induced coma. I leaned over and raised the shoe twelve inches from his exposed throat, a quick check to ensure nobody was looking and I slammed the deadly needle into him and withdrew it quickly before scurrying off to the rear bulkhead toilet. Vladimir of course woke with a start. Despite his drunken sleep being stabbed with a four-inch needle in the throat was enough to wake anyone.

  In the security of the bathroom I rinsed the bloodied tip under the sink and reassembled the shoes heel. Even to an X-ray scanner the metal core of my heels appeared like the perfectly innocent construction of an expensive French shoe. I removed my killer Loubi’s and took out a pair of the complimentary airline slippers from the shelf below the sink. Having waiting the allotted three minutes to elapse for the toxins to do their deadly work and satisfied Vladimir should be now a fat useless corpse I returned to the cabin.

  En-route back to my seat I passed Vladimir, his shocked eyes rolled upwards and his tongue hanging out with a foamy dribble down his chin. I pulled the privacy screen across and put the do not disturb sign on his cubicle wall before returning to my seat.

  Vladimir had spent fifty-four years on the planet. He had survived six assassination attempts and been shot no less than nine times. He’d been blown up in a failed car bomb and had two strokes. He must have considered that he was beyond the reach of death but it took me less than three seconds with a well-aimed designer heel to end his life.

  Satisfied at a job well done I finished the champagne and went to sleep.

  As the A380 made its way high in the night air above Europe I slept briefly until I had that dream again.

  The cabin crew had failed to notice Vladimir’s demise until I had disembarked the plane and even if they had, the carefully crafted nature of his death ensured at first glance he had died of natural causes. There was nothing suspicious to suggest foul play, at least until a detailed autopsy revealed the venom in his bloodstream - even then so subtle was the poison and with so many toxins of alcohol, nicotine and the cocktail of painkillers from a lifetime spent at the sharp end of the KGB then FSB would ensure the poison would remain undetected unless the pathologist ran a highly specific set of toxicology reports.

  The true art of killing is provoking death within circumstances that would not arouse suspicion. Whether it’s providing sufficient evidence to frame a jealous spouse or lover, the creation of a fake mugging gone wrong or in Vladimir’s case the illusion of death by natural causes. Just as the creation of life has consequences long after the initial act of a sexual liaison so does death.

  Johnny was waiting for me outside Heathrow Terminal One in the back of a black Mercedes S65 AMG. Johnny didn’t like the Roll’s I had suggested.

  ‘I like something with a bit of shove’ he had told me.

  The S65 certainly had that. Six-hundred and fifty insane, German-tuned angry horses worth of shove. Johnny was reading the Telegraph. Dressed in a neat Gieves & Hawkes made to measure black suit he looked like a German Banker.

  But Johnny was not a German Banker.

  Johnny worked for MI6.

  I called him Johnny because he reminded me of a cat I had owned when I was six. Johnny ( the cat ) would look at me with a curious mix of intrigue and suspicion that left me wondering if the dastardly feline was in fact plotting to kill me in my sleep.

  Johnny had that look.

  I didn’t imagine I would ever find out Johnny’s real name, but then I didn’t imagine I would ever care.

  “Good Flight?” he asked me as I sank into the caramel diamond stitched leather back seat whilst the driver loaded my Louis Vuitton cases into the boot.

  “Quiet. At least one of the passengers was dead to the world,” I replied kissing Johnny on the cheek.

  He smelt of Gucci by Gucci, which could only mean he hadn’t slept with anyone in my absence. I had a good nose for these things.

  “Did you miss me darling?” I inquired.

  “Of course,” he replied.

  We liked to play these little games. I was never entirely sure if I was just Johnny’s job or he actually loved me.

  But I loved Johnny. At least at the time I thought I did, it’s not until you really love someone that you realise what love truly means, but at the time compared with the average Rupert hanging around the wine bars of the Kings road Johnny was excitement personified.

  I was twenty-six when Johnny recruited my unique talents into the clandestine world of international killer elites. Johnny wasn’t rich but he was charming and charismatic with a mop of just got out of bed hair and a slightly dirty smile that suggested you would have an enjoyable evening in bed with him. As a bored young socialite whose life consisted mostly of the idle gossip of friends, shopping in Sloane Avenue and endless social engagements of dinner and drinks life in Chelsea had become something of a bore.

  Then I met Johnny.

  Unlike most of the trust-funded polo jocks who cruised the bars looking for unsecured relationships Johnny wasn’t money - old or new. His talents for MI6 entirely lay in his ability to persuade willing conspirators to aide him. According to Johnny MI6 doesn’t like to do her Maj’s dirtiest work directly, it’s much more palatable for the Whitehall apparatchik to outsource such indiscriminate state-sponsored mayhem to third-parties that are easily deniable, expendable and replaceable.

  Johnny’s job was to identify such individuals, by his very nature he was Her Majesties Gigolo and would very possibly be knighted for services to the crown, an O.B.E for seduction perhaps. Being seduced by a scoundrel was of course a delightful turn of events. Rarely can a girl claim to be bedding a proper spy, he was a simply marvellous plaything for a girl to possess.

  But Johnny was full of secrets, he might as well have had TOP SECRET tattooed across his derriere. Information flowed in one direction with Johnny. I have no idea why he asked me to kill Vladimir, if I had asked he would have simply dismissed it.

  ‘You don’t need to know, you don’t want to know, then if you get caught you can’t tell them anything that would give them reason to think you did it’ he would tell me.

  He had a point.

  Given my social situation - a wealthy family, property in several countries, a good education at England’s finest girls school and a degree in PPE from Oxford I had absolutely no reason or motive to kill complete strangers.

  There was possibly a second a reason. If you don’t know anything about a person then you can’t feel emotional about ending their life. You cannot reason to yourself as to why they should, or even deserve to die. You can create your own reason. They could be a child murderer, a Nazi, a rapist or someone who tortures kittens.

  In Vladimir’s case I considered he was the sort of person that had sex with prostitutes probably in a manner my mother had suggested no girl from SW3 should ever indulge a man, he then probably beat them up for cheap kicks. For my personal sense of natural justice that was enough cause to stab him in the neck with my Loubi’s sharpened poison heel.

  “Breakfast at the Grosvenor?” Johnny asked, which meant Johnny wante
d to have breakfast at the Grosvenor but merely asked me if I would like to as I would be paying.

  Johnny liked to have breakfast in hotels.

  Nobody pays attention to people eating breakfast at hotels according to Johnny.

  “That would be delightful darling,” I replied. “They do a simply marvellous eggs Benedict.”

  Johnny tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “Grosvenor.”

  “Right you are Sir,” the driver replied.

  Even he didn’t know Johnny’s name. Nobody knew Johnny’s name, at least that is what I had often thought. As I would later discover there was one person at least who knew exactly who Johnny was.

  “I have another job for you,” Johnny told me calmly as he dissected the hand-reared back-bacon with skilful precision.

  “Really?” I said as I sipped the late breakfast Champagne, a cheeky Dom Perignon ‘97 vintage which was much more delicate than the friskier Bollinger served by Emirates.

  “So soon?”

  “It’s more of a personal request from someone who may be useful,” Johnny replied cryptically.

  “Go on.”

  “His daughter has taken up a relationship with someone our friend would prefer she wasn’t involved with.”

  “Who is it?”

  “He’s a music artist,” Johnny replied. “If you can call it music…” he added disdainfully.

  Johnny liked Tosca so I deduced the musician in question was probably a rapper.

  “Lives in Hackney. A hateful place. It’s like Mogadishu. Without the prospect of UN intervention.”